The Friendship That Can Never Cease: A Tribute to the Rev. Dr. Rhys Williams

Today marks what would have been the 82^nd birthday of my friend and former minister, the Rev. Dr. Rhys Williams.  It seems funny now to say that Rhys was my ‘friend;’ we never spent much time together when I taught at the church he served for over 35 years as senior minister, the former First and Second Church in Boston, and we socialized very little outside the church.  I attended his daughter, Nory’s, wedding. I am still happily shocked today that I even received an invitation to it since I was a very new member of the church at the time it took place.  The Christmas party he and his wife, Eleanor, hosted each year was the only other time I saw him socially apart from a few surreal lunches we shared at his favorite restaurant on Newbury Street, Thai Basil.  Still, Rhys was my friend.  I know that more certainly today than I ever have, and as I think about him today, I realize that he has been the truest, most devoted human friend I’ve ever had though I could hardly appreciate this fact when he was alive.  The famous 19^th century social reformer and former Harvard Divinity school intern at the church, Henry David Thoreau, once said, “Friends . . . they cherish one another’s hopes.  They are kind to one another’s dreams.”  Rhys embodied this definition of friendship.

One afternoon after I had finished setting up my classroom for the following Sunday’s lesson Rhys’ inimitable assistant, Susan Twist, and I were talking in the office at Park House about possible subjects for my senior thesis, which was to encompass an aspect of 19^th century American history.  Rhys happened to pass through the office to pick up his phone messages during a lull in our conversation, and, peering at me over the top of his glasses as he scanned his messages, he began to casually relate the broad outlines of the careers of the more outspoken of the church’s social reforming ministers, such as that of Thoreau’s friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, encouraging me to consider one of them as my subject.  It seemed preternatural, his intuition at this moment, and I thought, ‘Wait.  He only just walked in.  How does he know we’re talking about my coursework?  Does he remember the majors of all the church’s members who are in college and their matriculation?’  It took me barely a second to realize that he did.  In the deepest parts of his psyche, Rhys cared about others.  He cherished their hopes for themselves and silently cheered for them to achieve their greatest dreams probably just as much as they did, offering whatever help he could as he saw a need.  My own commencement would not have been possible without him.  Having been made ill yet again by a vaccination, which officials at my college claimed was prerequisite to my undertaking a student teaching practicum, I struggled in my part-time transcription jobs to afford my increasing tuition and living expenses.  By the end of my junior year, it looked as though I’d never be able to finish my final two semesters – until Rhys loaned me nearly $900 from the minister’s fund, which enabled me to do so.  He only ever asked one thing of me in return, several years after I had graduated:  to help Susan, who was then in the thick of what would be an almost ten-year battle with breast cancer.  I was pretty sick myself toward the end of her struggle, but I knew better than anyone by then that there’s a difference between giving people the ‘help’ you think they need and giving them the help they actually need.  Having witnessed my declining health even as he waged his own battle with cancer, Rhys recognized that I was uniquely capable of the latter – not least because he, himself, demonstrated this type of empathy time and again, with me and with what I have come to learn have been countless others.  I have come to believe that Rhys was something of an expert at empathy and the friendship it makes possible – another byproduct of his meticulously honed insight into the nature of human relationships.  Though Susan eventually lost her battle on opening day, April 2, 2001, I was honored to lend her what support I could to make her chemotherapy appointments and her life a little easier.  In return, I was privileged to enjoy Susan’s famous hospitality, wry sense of humor and a closer friendship with her than otherwise would have been possible – she, sharing her secret passions for jeopardy and the Red Sox with me while we ‘gardened’ on her small balcony at her Longfellow Place condo, and I, perfecting my favorite holiday recipes with her help.  I still miss it, the friendship Susan and I developed in that last year-and-a-half of her life, and I’m thankful to Rhys for having made it possible.  I suspect he knew I needed Susan’s friendship as much as she needed mine.  His vision of the ministry and friendship he knew we are all capable of when we embrace the noblest of our human characteristics was flawless, and he set an unremitting example of that vision, deftly offering only the subtlest guidance when he saw a need for it.  He could bring out the best in us because he could see in us not merely our own dreams of the best versions of ourselves (he certainly understood deeply that we are all works of art in-progress) but also the best possible versions of humanity in each of us.  That’s only possible in a person with profound humility – a person with a more-than-usually healthy distrust of his own perceptions and judgment.

Others who have been lucky enough to know Rhys have remarked on this particular gift of his, this remarkable ability of his to lead from behind.  I like this testimony from one of the many interns he mentored, the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen (now also deceased), because it exemplifies so well Rhys’ atypical ability to see others in process and yet, as whole, worthwhile human beings:

“Rhys was very much what I like to think of as a ‘Hands-on/Hand-off’ kind of mentor.  He was always there to listen, and to provide encouragement; but he never tried to tell you what to do or how to do it, and whenever you came to him uncertain of yourself or the quality of your own work, his response would inevitably be ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’  Not that it always was, mind you, but he gave you the freedom to learn from your mistakes without necessarily suffering the consequences of failure.  His leadership style was to find the best people possible and to give them the room to discover and do their best; and he was particularly adroit at mentoring younger seminarians such as myself, who may have possessed plenty of ability and ‘potential’ but who were perhaps not quite as sure of themselves as Rhys was of them."

I’ve thought a lot about our first meeting over the years, about the time I first noticed this particular grace of his, that day we first met.  For many years, the only way I could conceive of the experience of being in Rhys’ presence was to liken it to being smiled on by the sun, if the sun were to have a face.  Rhys radiated a deep respect for others.  His focused, yet respectful attention on the person in front of him unsettled me when I found myself facing him in the recession line after services the first Sunday I attended them – until I realized the unsettling feeling I was experiencing came from the fact very few other people with whom I’ve interacted in my life have had the same abandoned yet purposeful approach to others; it was a pure, non-judgmental expectation of what might come from an encounter with another person that Rhys had which captivated me that morning way back in 1985.  I think most people who knew him would agree that Rhys was not the type of person one occasionally sees throughout one’s life but with whom one has no genuine connection.  That observation might shock a lot of people; I’ve heard him described as “conservative,” though I knew him as more self-disciplined than ascetic, more reserved than dogmatic.  Early in my church membership Rhys said to me, “If this country is ever going to be saved, it will be by the work of people who are trained in the Humanities.”  It was late in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and people then openly feared the prospect of the increasingly despotic administrations that have succeeded it.  One clergy member who I met a few years ago and who claimed to have met Rhys described him to me as “charming,” and I thought, ‘Well, she must be confusing him with someone else,’ because although Rhys was personable, he was in no way beguiling.  Rhys simply had no allure – other than his gentle, albeit stoic, willingness to engage with others, which might easily have been mistaken for not for charm but actual aloofness by those who couldn’t accord him the same space in which to be himself that he accorded others.  He treated me that day as he always did:  as though he believed in my ability to face all of my encounters with the same grace – even those times I gave him controvertible proof of that ability.

Though I rarely took advantage of his open office door and willingness to talk I knew instinctively that if I so chose, I could rely on Rhys to listen to my greatest hopes and deepest regrets, knowing he would accept me graciously into loving communion, no matter how ludicrously high those hopes, or how repugnantly disappointing those regrets.  I have had a chronic pain syndrome – debilitating dysmenorrheal – since I was 11 years-old.  Every 28 to 30 days, five days and four nights of constant, often knife-sharp pain incapacitates me.  I spend these days in stupors, taking 10 to 12, 200 mgs. Tablets of Advil every four hours – whenever possible, in a steaming hot tub – because in 37 years of this torture no doctor has treated me with appropriate pain care.  And I have seen more than my share of doctors.  It’s hard to live a normal life like this – to hold a regular job, to attend school full-time, to plan for a normal social life – but there’s no point complaining about it.  We get by as best we can:  drugged up and lethargic, darting in and out of a regular daily routine as best we can, hoping not to be noticed and missed every fourth week, and then pacing ourselves the following week while trying to recover from the poisonous level of OTC pain killers we must take.  Then comes the exhaustion from trying to live full-out in a week of relative freedom, before the cycle starts again.  It’s a recipe for bi-polar disorder.  Rhys and I collided in the church office again at the end of one of these final weeks for me, when my back was beginning to stiffen, signaling impending disaster.  I was fretting anxiously to Susan about how impossible it then seemed that I could accomplish the coming week’s demanding schedule.  “This is intolerable sometimes, living like this,” I tearfully confided.  Sue’s eyes darted toward Rhys as he approached the corner of her desk from behind me.  “Next Tuesday, when I ought to be here, preparing my lesson for the following Sunday, I’ll be in a bathtub from morning to, well, the next morning, and the next morning, and the morning after that.  It’s torture.”  The only thing that kept me from crying was the shame I felt for my self-absorbed near tantrum.  And then I heard Rhys gently say, “What’s the matter?”

Another woman probably would have been embarrassed, but I’ve always gracelessly subscribed to the ‘misery loves company’ maxim where my period is concerned because I know that I am not a graceful person by nature.  A person as sick as I often am, who is expected to appear and act as does everyone else who is not as sick as I often am, cannot be graceful about it.  She might be for the first decade or so on most occasions, but after that, it isn’t her priority to spare others the discomfort of having to experience her pain vicariously.  It’s not her priority to spare others the disequilibrium that results from having to confront the fact that we live in a society ruled not by compassionate professional people, some of whom occupy gate-keeping positions within the health care industry, but rather, in a society that is run by social Darwinists, who not only have no understanding of Jesus’ teachings but don’t want one either – including, especially, those within the medicoresearch industry.  She could care less about the feelings of others who could care less about her actual torture, and that’s a shame because such a state of mind usually precludes engagement with the compassionate, few though they may be in number.  I say, ‘usually,’ because on this occasion, it didn’t.

Rhys listened, gently twirling his reading classes by the ends of their half-folded arms with his left forefinger and thumb, occasionally rubbing the back of his left hand and wrist with his right hand.  “I’m just venting, I know,” I began.  “But it’s really frustrating, trying to live a normal life while having to carve out huge chunks of it when you can’t live at all.”  I explained about how the next day I would have to start a week of sleeping in a hot tub, gobbling handfuls of Advil.  How, every day between that day and the following Wednesday, it would be the same:  Advil, bathtub, throw up, pass out; Advil, bathtub, throw up, pass out.  The following day, that would be the routine; and the next Tuesday, it would be the same routine.  The day before Tuesday would be the same as Tuesday.  “What do you have planned for next Tuesday, Rhys,” I challenged him.  “I have nothing.  I can’t have anything.  It’s ‘Advil, bath tub, throw up, pass out day.’  Think of me tomorrow; that’s what I’ll be doing.  And any time that you think of me between now and next Tuesday – any time, day or night, on the train, walking through the Garden, in a meeting, at a concert – I’ll be doing the same thing.”  That Sunday, I managed to drag myself into the church long enough to teach, and then I threw myself into a cab I could hardly afford and beat it back home.  The next Thursday was the earliest opportunity I had to get back to the church to work on the following Sunday’s lesson plan, and when I passed by Rhys’ office, I heard him quietly say, “Nice to see you.”  Slightly more civil (and a whole lot more embarrassed) that afternoon, I poked my head into his office, and he looked up from his desk – again, peering over his glasses.  “Hi.  Pretty day, isn’t it,” I muttered.  My face flushed.  He smiled, then offered, “I thought of you on Tuesday.”  It wasn’t the shot of morphine I’ve always known could restore me to normal function, but it was the first time in my life – the very first and ONLY time – another human being acknowledged my unnecessary distress as real (yes – dozens of gynecologists, PCPs, researchers included; the only relief I ever received was after five years of the antiviral treatment that cured the non-HIV/AIDS I had for a decade).  It shocked me near mute, this tiny act of compassionate seeing.  And it also reminded me that I had an obligation to my friends not to inflict my distress on them unnecessarily.  I shook my head up and down.  “Thanks,” I managed to croak, and I skittered up the stairs to my third-floor classroom before the tears started.

I don’t question for a moment Rhys’ commitment to me, or to the many others with horribly unmet health problems I’ve subsequently learned he helped.  He saw people for who they really were – in toto – not merely the trappings of their social roles and their talents and aspirations, their foibles and the challenges they faced, and none was more worthy of his ministry and friendship than another.  I prize it a gift this supremely graceful individual accepted me enough not to hold my meltdown against me.  Only the person who believes in your capacity for grace even when you don’t believe in it (or, rather, especially when you don’t believe in it) yourself can do that for you.

And what else other than this unfailing acceptance of others might anyone have expected from the person who wrote, when he applied for his own ministerial internship: "I wish to become a minister because I believe in the total worth of each person, I believe in a force beyond human understanding and the ethical values of Jesus."  He was, indeed, the truest Christian I’ve ever known, this humble Unitarian-Universalist minister – embracing with his every interaction both tenets of the Agape doctrine with evident and abundant belief in the ‘force beyond human understanding’ to which Jesus had hoped to draw our attention with his dual prescriptions.  He was – and I don’t think I’m overusing this word here – uncommonly graceful.  He could treat others with the respect he wished to receive from them because he believed each and every one of us was as capable of giving that respect to others as we were worthy of receiving it.  Here is a testimony by the (again, very sadly) late Rev. Dr. Forrest Church about Rhys’ unwavering trust in the worthiness of every person:

“I owe,” he wrote, “my own ministry to Rhys Williams.  Taking me under his wing during my years as a master's and doctoral student, he guided me from the academy to the parish.  His direction was so deft that I remained completely unaware of it.”

I feel certain that at the heart of his own ministry was Rhys’ belief that by helping others to be their best selves the best vision of humanity – the ideal of harmonious, peaceful communities of people committed to civilized society and freedom for all – was brought to reality.  In another casual conversation that Susan, Rhys and I had during my protracted deliberations on a topic for my thesis, Rhys said, “You know, the people who founded this country were idealists,” and then he dematerialized from the room, leaving me to ponder what type of people were the people who were then ruining our country.  It’s taken me some years and lots of observation of the brutal changes that have taken place in American culture and society to realize precisely what type of fascist the hypocritical moralists who have controlled our country these 30 years are – and why Rhys felt the need to draw my attention to the difference between our founding fathers and the criminals in control of our country today, no doubt anticipating the deleterious effect on our union of neocons’ political rhetoric on “values.”  One day, after being fed up to the back teeth listening to George W. Bush harp on about ‘values’ as he bombed into oblivion innocent infants, children, elderly and productive men and women in Iraq, I realized that I was listening to an arch-hypocrite – cut from the same cloth as those who had falsely accused as witches, and then hanged, their neighbors in 17^th century Salem.  Same thing, his father, with his ‘thousand points of light’ cast, no doubt, by the incendiaries he lit when he set in motion the combining of local law enforcement with the most insidious of our military, the CIA, by proposing the latter share their secret weapons with the former at a time just after his predecessor made military surveillance of American political dissidents a feature of domestic policy.  “Ideals are immutable.  Freedom.  Truth.  Justice.  Everyone knows instinctively what these are, even if we can’t always agree on how to achieve them, but values are always biased.  Neo-cons say LGBT community members don’t have family values; they say, ‘Of course we do.”  Whew.  Talk about hands-on/hands-off mentoring!  One tiny – teeny tiny, if I’m honest – observation to ponder, shared at the most auspicious moment with the most receptive mind.  One itsy-bitsy musing on which to feed, as it turns out, for decades.  I think now Rhys was also a bit of a magician.

Rhys and I never talked about theology.  Church history – Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian controversy of the Puritans; Roger Williams and the history of the separation of church and state – sure.  Not theology.  He cast an appropriately demur look at me the day I brought into the office the issue of Rolling Stone on which the Rev. Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing:  A Primer in Creation Spirituality, was pictured in the cover art.  But for one, single question he asked me regarding my beliefs, the informal discussions Rhys and I had that touched on theological matters were just that:  informal discussions and only incidentally theological.  I can’t, therefore, say what his thoughts and feelings were about the Agape doctrine, nor would I wish to speculate on them.  We have his testimony, and we have the evidence of the life he lived as a friend to all, denying brotherhood to none.  That’s more than enough evidence of his profound understanding of it.  Still, sometimes I find myself wondering what he thought about the first of the two positive prescriptions Jesus said were the only things we G_d –revering people must do:  love G_d with all one’s heart, mind and strength.  It’s been clear to me for quite some time that Jesus conceived of G_d as the omnipresent, almighty, infinite source of all, just as Moses did, the kingdom of which is “at [our own] hand[s]” and not any type of being, however supernatural. It’s difficult for me to resist seeing Rhys’ unrelenting devotion to creating the ideal human experience as each moment to do so presented itself as evidence he believed G_d to be just as omnipresent and almighty, just as powerful a tool to create the kingdom of G_d that lies within the reach of us all – the “force beyond [ordinary] human understanding.”  He was a much bigger catalyst for creating good than I’m sure I will ever know, but as I look back on our first meeting and I once again realize that what Rhys was offering me in his greeting that day was an opportunity of engagement that might precipitate such a moment for us both, I am comforted that this vision of the kingdom of G_d was likely what he anticipated with each of his interactions.  That’s faithfulness – that act of creating the kingdom.  Sure – I sometimes miss the effortless way he offered a pointed observation to guide me in a particular, more rewarding direction than the one in which I may have been headed whenever he saw the need for it, but more than anything, I miss his presence and the tiny piece of the kingdom I was privileged to enjoy with him.  The memory of it makes me realize how accomplished a mystic was Jesus; you really don’t need ten rules or a library of Midrashim to live a good life.  You just need be passionate -- with all your faculties alert -- revering the ever-present force beyond human understanding, and you need to be respectful of others. 

St. Jerome said, “The friendship that can cease has never been real.”  It seems when I look back on it as though my friendship with Rhys couldn’t be ‘real.’  There are no high-school yearbooks penned with mutual affection; no stories of long nights studying together; no vacation pictures of our two families together; no reminiscences of joyful or sorrowful times we shared, other than the faint memory I have of the beautiful day Nory was married.  But it continues to this day, this friendship I have with Rhys.  Its effects, equally as intangible, are nevertheless vivid and palpable all around me in the confidence I have in my own ability to see truth and relate it soundly in my writing, often relying on the things I learned during my years as a member of Rhys’ church; in the certain knowledge that I have as much right to live in freedom as those who aspired to the same ideal before our country became a closed, police state; even in the righteous way in which my never-prepossessing comportment now fails to hinder my resolve to help others free themselves (I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam).  Graceful in the way Rhys was I shall never be, I know, even though I can see his influence prodding me toward that better vision of myself all the time.  I often feel his patient, serene, subtly enthusiastic energy around me, ready to help bring to fruition whatever dream I feel compelled to contribute to this vision of the kingdom of G_d.  He is in death to me as real and as supportive a friend as he was in life.  The sense of encouragement and support I received from him when he was alive seems to grow in magnitude with each goal I accomplish, and I feel a diffusion of this same loving concern just as much (and often, more) today as I felt it when he was alive.  It never diminishes, or goes away.  I have no doubt the observations he shared with me at those three or four odd-for-so-many-reasons lunches we shared were to guide me as well, and I pray often for the ability to eek out of each of their memories every intersection, conjunction and fractal of possible meaning, implication, motivation and message of which they give evidence so that I may be as effective as I can in my work, which I hope proves me worthy of Rhys’ belief in me.  And if ultimately it doesn’t, if ultimately my work fails today to inspire others as Rhys inspired me, I’m OK with that because I understand now that the greatest testament to my friendship with him is our shared belief in a noble vision of humanity based on Jesus’ values – whatever anyone chooses to name them – and my own belief in my ability to give life to that vision in each moment I am blessed with time-space dimensions -- including by supporting others who share it.  The way is what matters, not solely the final destination.  Today, almost eight years after Rhys’ passing, the exquisite depth of insight, compassion and vision which were his alone continue to inspire in me the confidence to live my life in full faith that each moment in which I find myself is a moment of boundless opportunity for engagement with divinity and perfect therefore, no matter how dark any one of them at times may be.  I hope one day it’s said of me that I was able to befriend others this way.  I understand now, thanks to Rhys’ exemplary life, that this is the only type of friendship there is – the real friendship that lasts forever, true brotherly love.

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Happy Christmas!

I posted a comment last Sunday morning on Ricky Gervais’ op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais:  Why I’m an Atheist.”  It’s a charming, passionate, and at times funny, essay, and it has sparked a lot of comments – about 3,500, to date – as one would expect a provocative piece challenging the existence of G_d at Christmas to do.  I repost my comment here, with my apologies to those of you who’ve seen it already; I believe, if you’ve followed the blog link in it to get here, you’ll appreciate the few (hopefully) elucidating thoughts I’ve appended to it, below (or at least, the slight editing).

“Hi, Ricky. Love the Brit-Com, The Office (and Ghostown, and The Invention of Lying). Never thought I'd be doing this, but I want to answer your question.  Problem is, I don't think this blog gives me enough space.  A sincere question requires a sincere - and full - answer.  If I have to post an incomplete response, please see my Easter 2010 blog (linked in the archive, or in the first line of John Donne's poem, in the blog's sidebar). It's at www.dontfearyourfreedom.blogspot.com. First, though, let me assure you that I am not trying to convert you - just trying to do as you try to do, which is to give a reasoned answer.  Also, while my blog does deal with the sensitive issue of what it means to be free in America today, I am not an extremist of any kind.  You have nothing to fear.  So here goes.

When I was about five years-old, I was playing in the street with my Super Pinky.  It rolled under a neighbor's car just as the neighborhood bully and his Alsatian came into view.  My brother is 16 months older than me, and so I had had, by then, enough experience with being bullied to know that it only encourages a bully when you back down.  I decided not to run and instead went about trying to shag my ball.  I mean, fetch. (Shagging in this context means retrieving, not knocking boots, obviously).  Sure enough, the inevitable happened.  Joel saw me and decided I'd be his target for the day.

Unfortunately, my experience with bullies wasn't limited to just my relationship with my brother.  My mother was a pretty stressed out, over-worked mess who screamed more than she ever discussed anything rationally.  Before I could retrieve my ball, Joel had managed to roll it out from under Mr. Snyder's car.  He held it aloft, right in front of my face, and began taunting me. ‘Well, look what I found - a brand-new ball.  I guess I can keep it, since no one's around.’  Just then, I realized that Joel and my mom were a lot alike - they had no true friends, and didn't know how to make them, and so that made them even MORE miserable, which misery they felt compelled to share with everyone else; it does love company.  I felt sorry for him.  But not sorry enough to walk away without my ball, to a coward's ignominy.  I thought, ‘There must be a way to get out of this with my ball, without fighting.’ And then, the entire neighborhood receded out of view, and time ceased.

I felt as though there were no longer such things as minutes, or seconds - that I could stay here as long as I needed to for my solution. I was anxious because I didn't know what was happening, but I calmed myself and thought, ‘This special moment is for me.  I can create what happens next here.’  It was the compassion software we all come bundled with kicking in.  I thought about how my older sister engaged my mother when she was being impossible, and I knew then what I had to do.  I looked up into Joel's face and said, ‘Want to play night tag with us tonight?’  He jerked his head to the side, then slowly he turned to me and said, ‘Sure. I'll be there.’  And you know what?  He DID play with us kids that night - and several other nights more that summer.

As you can perhaps imagine, I thought a lot about my moment with Joel. I've thought a lot about it since.  Then, riding home in the car after church one Sunday (mother is Danish-American, so we were raised Lutheran; Dad's from Mississippi and he was Methodist), I asked my father to explain what Pastor Hanson meant when he said G_d is omnipotent and omnipresent. (My father was a construction lineman, a journeyman who worked away from home weeks at a time, so when he came home, I never wanted to leave him, and insisted on being in the church’s sanctuary with him on Sunday instead of nursery school.) Dad said, ‘All powerful and everywhere.’  That was when I realized my 'moment' with Joel had been a moment with G_d. What's more powerful than that which can stop violence, even wars, like the desire for and creation of peace?  That was also the moment I realized that G_d is not - G_d cannot be - an entity of any type.  Entities, like all objects, have space/time limitations.  They can’t be omnipresent, or omnipotent.

Naturally, there are other things I've realized in the intervening 43 years since my encounter with Joel about G_d, such as the fact G_d doesn't just change from Old Testament to New, or even the G_d of Abraham to the G_d of Issac and then back to the G_d of King David.  People have been changing G_d almost since the moment Moses introduced G_d to us:  remember what happened to that first draft of the first top 10 list in history?  Moses destroyed it when he found his followers had reverted to idol worship when he was grooving on Mt. Sinai.  I'm convinced that even after 40 years of trying to get their act together, they STILL were idol worshippers (though their new idol was a man-like being), and Moses gave up trying to get them to worship the G_d that is.  That's why he didn't follow them into Canaan, telling them that G_d wouldn't let him (even if God may have).

I hope this answers your question about why I believe in G_d.  Is it orthodoxy?  Certainly not.  But your love for Jesus will no doubt enable you to appreciate that I arrived at these cherished beliefs by doing as he bade us in the sermon on the mount (and on the hill, and many other places, I'm sure):  I have loved G_d with all my heart, mind, and strength to gain this understanding of G_d, as often as I can, except during (sometimes lengthy) crises in faith - in my writing, my cooking, my work, my relationships, among people I encounter - wherever I can create goodness.  Am I perfect?  Certainly not. Perfection is not what it's about - just better than I was a moment ago, hopefully, in this new moment we call 'now,' where G_d, as Moses told us in Exodus 3:13-14, 'is.'

Happy Christmas!”

It was about 8:30 in the morning when I wrote it, so I was a bit bleary-eyed and, as I’ve said, I’ve cleaned it up slightly.   The blog’s had hundreds of hits since I posted it, so I guess it gets where I wanted it to go even though I would have elucidated a few other points as well if I had known that I had the space to do so.  Here, for your contemplation, they are.

Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon.

I can hear it now:  “You can’t sit around, meditating all day and hoping for an ecstatic experience and the kind of enlightenment you had as a five year-old.  Life has to be lived.”  “Too true,” say I.  And then, “Thank heavens, I don’t have to!” And neither do you.

I was a pretty ordinary little five year-old when I had my moment of G_d with Joel – hanging out in the street, playing.  Just playing.  And the fairly typical five year-old experience happened to me – older kid bullied me.  Nothing special about the event at all – except the intensity of my awareness of it, and my subsequent fearless willingness to engage in that awareness.  The payoff?  Activating this little-used awareness “muscle” brought me to that (for lack of a more concise word) transcendent moment, that moment of ecstatic mystery.  Some part of me recognized that I was being led to a ‘space’ in which I could find the answer I then needed.  I call that part of me my soul, or spirit.  It’s the key that unlocks the gnosis, wherever that gnosis may ‘be’ – within my memory of past lives, within the collective subconscious, within both (or are they the same?).  Joel and I couldn’t have faced each other, eye to eye (or, really, eye to knee), for more than a minute, but in all honesty, I felt as though I might as well have been in my jammies, dallying with my toothbrush in the bathroom, reluctantly getting ready for bed while someone nagged me to hurry up.  I was just taking my own, sweet time, waiting for my answer, waiting to be shown what to do.

These are the things I've deduced in the 43 years since my moment of G_d:  (1) this experience of what is ordinarily beyond my perception was as 'real' as any other I've ever had, from the mundane experience of handling a toothbrush to clean my teeth to the more expanded perception of being able to appreciate a line of poetry or another great work of art beyond being merely cognitively assaulted or titillated by it in some way; (2) the full knowledge that this moment was a moment that would change the course of our lives - was the genesis of the alternate 'reality,' or one of the string 'tunnels' interwoven among the parallel universes that quantum mechanics tells us exist, if you prefer - was palpable. I sensed it, it was outside my normal perceptions but there nevertheless; (3) ergo, the fact of this type of human experience existing is just that - a fact - and this existence is a prioi; (4) it takes a skepticism of one's perceptions to be able to engage in this type of encounter with the infinite, the humility we are so much exhorted to in scripture that pietists mangle into some type of abusive self-loathing; (5) goodness comes from engagement with G_d. For me, it was peace. For an artist, it is not only the 'product' of the creative process - whether it is a moving sculpture in dance harmonized with another work of art, or a mind-bending short story (Flannery O'Connor had A LOT to say about encountering G_d through writing, and the belle of gore is probably the LAST person one would think would be able to effectively do so, but she certainly did in her many treatises on writing) - but the actual creative process itself; (6) theologians call this experience the 'hand of [God]' reaching out to us in revelation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked of this hand.  Though I am fairly certain he conceived of G_d as a finite being for most of his life,  he certainly had the opportunity - in fact, he made the opportunity often - to understand others' conceptions of G_d, most likely even this type of one, which many native American tribes hold. I base this opinion on the fact he wrote Act and Being.  It's entirely possible he read Martin Buber's 1923 treatise, I and Thou (Ich und Du).  Bonhoeffer was clearly thinking about 'metaphysical' issues. I maintain it's high time we start calling them supraphysical issues.

I’ve heard sculptors, woodworkers and jewelers speak about being led as they worked with awareness to liberate from their material the art within.  Your ‘material’ may be something completely different – the language of math, or, like my five year-old self’s, violence. Biography channel did a fantastic two-hour documentary on Jimi Hendrix that finally showcased Jimi’s thoughts on his creations, such as Purple Haze, and the experience of engagement with creation that gave us – well – The Experience, and the song Are You Experienced?  Some people call G_d source; Jimi called G_d ‘experience.’   And if you’ve ever seen clips of Jimi in concert, you cannot fail to recognize that he had soul - and that he knew how to use it.  You sort of expect a guy who gets what sacrifice is about enough to light is favorite guitar on fire on stage as an offering to have an old soul, but I’ve been a Hendrix fan since I was 15 and I have to tell you, I was deeply moved and incredibly impressed with his ability to express his thoughts about ‘experience.’ (Duh.  What else should we expect from a genius?)  And I’m not doing them justice here; if you have the chance to see the program, do.  Spoiler alert - Sorry, all you psychedelic/acid blues rock haters out there; Jimi wasn’t trippin’ when he wrote Purple Haze; he had just read a sci-fi novel that featured a monster made of purple miasma.

My point is this:  you don’t have to groove on a mountaintop, or in a church sanctuary to find, or to know, G_d.  You don’t even have to be a rock legend to know G_d.  G_d is.  In fact, the guy who’s birthday we are celebrating at this time of year told us, in his words and his deeds, that G_d could not be known but through all of our deeds because ‘the kingdom of G_d is at hand.’  The degree to which we experience G_d is the degree to which we allow ourselves to be aware of G_d.  Louisa May Alcott, author of the Christmas classic, Little Women, said of her experience of G_d, “I had an early run in the woods before the dew was off the grass.  The moss was like velvet, and as I ran under the arches of yellow and red leaves I sang for joy, my heart was so bright and the world so beautiful.  I stopped at the end of the walk and saw the sunshine out over the wide meadows.  It seemed like going through a dark life or grave into heaven beyond.  A very strange and solemn feeling came over me as I stood there, with no sound but the rustle of the pines, no one near me, and the sun so glorious, as for me alone.  It seemed as if I felt [God], and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that happy sense of nearness all my life.”  For Louisa, it was when she ran in the woods around Walden Pond and marveled at creation that she felt nearest the source of creation, when she had one of her ecstatic experiences; who knows when, where or how many others she had, but I can guarantee you they certainly happened when she wrote.  She writes further, “. . . for I most sincerely think the little girl got religion that day when dear mother Nature led her to [God].”

From G_d, goodness comes.  That’s G_d’s chief feature.  In Alcott’s case, we have her immense oeurvre of not only novels for girls and boys but also her gothic horror tales – not, perhaps, acceptable reading material for fundamentalists of the day, but certainly an enjoyable entertainment for thousands of individuals and families in a time before radio, TV, and internet.  She understood the power of creation.  And isn’t this force that which is described in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, the one we are told begets goodness?  This story gives us the first morality lesson in scripture; it’s the first place we see a moral qualifier, the word (translated into English), “good.”  “And G_d ‘saw’ that it [creation] was good.”  Sure – Moses may have personified G_d in this story to give us a retrospective sense so that we could vicariously reflect on the process that gave us this goodness, but he only did it because we cannot perceive all, all the time, and can only conceive of a process retrospectively.  That’s a literary device for which I can forgive Moses because he equivocates in much of the rest of his writing on the personal god, as we see him doing in Exodus 3:13-14 (‘Who should I tell my people have sent them?’ ‘Tell them, I AM THAT I AM hath commanded you.’).  I’ve said it before, and I’ll remind readers again:  G_d is not a Billy Mays-like pitchman in the opening passages of Genesis, who introduces us to his ‘products’ so we can ‘buy’ them.  G_d is.  It’s worth noting that these first monotheists were a group of people who lived in a society that worshipped entities, and Moses knew, just as the Catholic Church a thousand years later would learn when it converted paganism into Christianity, that gods evolve.  ‘Almighty’ G_d in this community was too great a leap for most people to understand, and evidence suggests it’s still a tall order.  There are still plenty of people in the world today that believe G_d is an entity – usually, a capricious and vindictive, old man in the sky – and that’s why Jesus told us that one – and the very first – of the only two commandments we have to observe is to love G_d by using all our mind (cogitation), heart (will) and strength (assiduity), whether we are five, or fifty-five, or 105 years-old. That means, seek G_d everywhere, all the time (because G_d is). People who accept uncritically the beliefs of others – their parents, their church or temple leaders, their cliques – aren’t doing this.   They’re missing out on the dynamism that characterizes the G_d that is, the "one, true" G_d (sorry if this offends you; there's only one infinite).  In this arrogant state, where we just assume that we don’t have to make an effort to ‘know’ G_d, is it any wonder there are large groups of people who deny the existence of G_d fighting with those that say G_d is an entity?  That’s where arrogance gets you – really far away from G_d.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  We don’t have to fight over G_d, or anything else.  We can change our disposition toward G_d.  All we have to do is to keep one thing in mind: we have to make the effort.  We have to love G_d with all our mind, heart and strength.  And to do that, we have to admit that we don’t know G_d; we don’t have the answers to G_d; we have to mindfully open ourselves up to G_d right here, right now.  We have to be humble.

The humility with which we are exhorted to conduct ourselves in sacred texts has nothing to do with religious observance, or any type of saintly behavior.  This is the type of humility to which scripture alludes:  an ongoing awareness that our mere perceptions cannot give us true knowledge about G_d.  Not our cogitations about G_d.  Not our conversations about G_d.  And certainly, all attempts to craft the perception of one’s saintly character through obsessive religious devotion will result in a false piety that has absolutely nothing to do with the type of humility with which we are charged in scripture to behave.  These admonitions are less against unsaintly behavior than they are practical instructions on how to allow your soul to engage the infinite; less prescriptive and more descriptive.  It’s not a plan, this humility, but an awakened sense of acceptance and expectancy.  And this is what we’re admonished to accept:  that our ability to perceive G_d is going to be restricted because we, ourselves, have space and time limitations (not to mention, mind and personality limitations), and G_d is infinite and does not because (all together now) G_d is. When we run around arguing with others that the god entity does exist, or doesn’t exist, we’re supremely deluded by our limited perceptions, and these admonitions are the reason we are exhorted in Judeo-Christian scripture to be humble – to accept that we have limitations which preclude our total knowledge all the time of G_d.  Now, my father assured me that when he died on the operating table during heart surgery, he saw ‘the old man,’ and I have no doubt he encountered beings in spirit form that were powerfully loving in that realm.  But I am extremely dubious that any one of these spirits was God since the man recounting this tale has never questioned the prejudices about the Almighty that he was given; he’s never abided by that first commandment Jesus gave us, and I can assure you that when a 60-something year-old man who’s never tried to know G_d as Jesus told us we should try dies, that’s not the time he’s going to suddenly know G_d.  G_d is.  Right here.  Right now.  G_d is not ‘transcendent,’ or other-wordly.  G_d (say it with me one more time) IS.  When you accept that you can’t commune with G_d constantly and you must, therefore, dispose yourself to do so, it becomes much easier to ‘know’ G_d and to choose to know G_d whenever you have the chance: opening the door for someone who needs it; writing a poem; making your employees’ lives better.  The way to know G_d is everywhere our actions create a better life because G_d is. That’s what those admonitions to be humble are about.

You don’t have to be Jimi, or Jesus to know G_d.  Go for a run and stop to marvel at nature and you, too, like Louisa May Alcott, will get some sense of G_d, and if some sense is all you can have in a given moment, isn’t it still better than none?  Isn’t it enough?  Artists throughout time have said, ‘yes’ with their creations, and when you create goodness, you have an opportunity to know G_d even more, perhaps even to an ecstatic degree.  You can beat the limitations of most of your time/space and other restrictions, even if for only ‘moments’ at a time – because (well, you know).  So that’s enough about why and how to avail yourself of G_d.

What else? Ah – the negative covenant.

The only way you can be sure you’ll never experience G_d is by exercising your will over others and treating them not as individuals with the capacity for this subjective experience of G_d, but merely as objects for your use; merely as consumers to sell your wares to; the trophy wife or husband; as your most handsomely paid CEOS who run your companies regardless of the devastating “externalities” that pollute, maim and kill; as serfs you recruit into your military to kill for you, certainly – all of which requires you objectify yourself, too, as the bastard boss, or user spouse, or exploitative corporate board.  Exercising one’s ego - because ego is self-objectification – and treating life as a game in which you have to be the winner at all costs, including the cost of life to others you subjugate to your will, ain’t gonna get you knowledge of G_d, or put you anywhere near the neighborhood of the kingdom of G_d.  Though Jimi trained as a 101st Airborne, he understood this, too.  He was about as unconcerned with his image and the impact of his music, or the money he could make from it, as any sage could be; he was universally regarded among his peers as incredibly humble, this inventor of entire genre of music, the greatest electric guitarist in history.  On the other hand, the Bush dynasty/regime and G_d? Ah – no.  Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the regime’s propagandists, both right and pseudo-left (because there is no left, left)?  Again - no.  Don’t be ridiculous.  You can’t approach people with any kind of agenda and expect to experience G_d with them.  Not how it works.  And you don’t have to be a bastard boss; you could be your bastard boss’s victim and quash any chance of knowing G_d with him or her because of your expectations s/he will mistreat you.  Stop worrying about what may never be.  The last line of the Sermon on the Mount, remember, is, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil therein.”  Live in the moment.  But if your problem happens to be that you’re the bastard boss, can you ever expect to completely escape ego? Of course not.  (Sorry you young Buddhists; the middle way is the way.)  All we can do is stop it from getting out of hand, even if we’re the victim of a bastard boss, and stop seeing others, or ourselves, as mere objects.  That takes grace.  Accepting our objectivity when we must, but also not relinquishing our, or denigrating others’, subjectivity.  We don’t have to pimp our misery on 16 and Pregnant any more than we have to vote others off our islands.  Reality and truth are two different things, people, and you’re not going to find the most fulfilling type of human experience clamoring after (or participating in) ‘reality’ shows. (That’s the reason scripture advises modesty.)  Stop objectifying yourselves and one another.  Start experiencing your subjectivity to its fullest.  And accord others the right to do so.   Groove on – whenever, wherever, however.  Could the Bush dynasty/regime know G_d?  Certainly.  Because (are you tired of saying it, yet?) G_d is.  But I see a lot of solemn runs in the woods for each of them individually, a lot of packs of crayons, maybe a kazoo or two, some quadratic equations, ENDLESS community service in their futures, if they ever have a hope in this hell they’ve made for the rest of us of doing so.  Now there's something to pray for.

Reconciliation.

I blanch when I re-read the messages I exchanged with Davidson Loehr earlier this year, after I found his November, 2004, essay on fascism on the web.  I had asked him what, if anything, he would change in it, and he was kind enough to reply that he would change one or two materially insignificant things about it, but not much else.  It's a comprehensive, concise and accurate essay that I strongly encourage you to read, but I was angry with him when I received his reply.  It's conclusion offers ways of resisting American fascism, but nothing about helping the what is estimated to be the already millions of victims of it.  I thought, “Anyone who’s writing an essay about American fascism ought to be willing to write about the actual experiences of its victims.” But, of course, this was misplaced anger.  I had been rebuffed by a talking head who publishes prolifically on the subject of American fascism, and when Loehr said he originally intended on publishing his essay without the hopeful ending consisting of these suggestions which it now contains, I exploded.  There are those of us out here for who American fascism is a fact - not a theory, or supposition, or possibility - and our stories need to be told as much as we need to tell them (guess why).  For more than 20 years I’ve had to hear from people who’ve reified my body with hideous bioweapons research to hope for a better tomorrow, so I’m a bit dubious of the peddlers of hope.  I want G_d with them now, not tomorrow.  I don’t want to be objectified for their profit, or convenience, or comfort.  I don’t want to be anyone’s cash cow, or object of pity.  Not today.  I could be dead, after all, tomorrow; today is all I have.  But then I realized this covert war that Bush promised us would last in perpetuity is just that – covert – and if it were readily possible for those in positions to do something about it to see that there is a need for them to, it wouldn’t be covert.  Duh.  Likewise, I have always felt I have a right to expect G_d experience with other human beings; it’s what I try to give them – at least, most of the time – even though, cognitively, I know now that not everyone is in the same place on his or her journey to know G_d that I’m in.  This is where a runaway ego gets you, folks – a loss of integrity where you can’t walk your talk.  I never heard from Loehr again (surprise, surprise), and I’m certain I’ve alienated a potential ally.  So go carefully, my friends.  You’ll regret not having done so, and who needs to live with regret and the knowledge you’ve caused another pain?  The knowledge you put not goodness into the world, but more evil that has to be ameliorated?  Go carefully.  If you think you’re the bomb because you put food on your table by pretending to be Jack Bauer, informing on and terrorizing your fellow law-abiding citizens, or propagandizing for the fascists in control of our country, in the covert war against us liberals, you need to make a U turn because you’re only doing evil on behalf of those whose single-minded goal in life is the persecution and subjugation of us all, and you’re never going to know G_d doing so - not ever.  Not asking you to be a saint; a saint is not what you have to be; every “moment” is a potential moment for you to engage G_d: smiling at the barista at Starbucks and creating a pleasant encounter therefrom; watering your ficus and enabling its growth; composing and/or playing a piece of music; crafting a work of art (even a Haiku qualifies); working out a math problem; turning a confrontation into a moment of peace.  It’s all good – and all G_d.  Just asking you not be a menace that helps create hell here.  Go carefully, my friends.  Go carefully.  Be a blessing, not a curse.  Do as Hannah Arendt suggested when she said, "Most people never decide to be good, or bad," in The Banality of Evil - choose to do good and to not do evil.

Where Are We Now?

I’m just a middle-aged, menopausal, chronically ill, unemployed target of the US government’s covert war against liberals who actually oppose its imperialism, and if you don’t want to take my advice, you don’t have to.  But you should know that others besides Moses, Jesus, Jimi, Louisa and I have experienced G_d – many, many, many others all over the world, in every culture and every period of recorded history, and then some.  If the only person you will esteem with your trust on the subject of G_d is a white man, then I encourage you to read Martin Buber’s I and Thou, which expounds much more poetically than I have on the “is-ness” nature of G_d.  But if the only thing you do after reading this essay is one thing, I pray that it be that you understand that G_d is.

Next week’s post, my final of the year, will be like that most popular of hairstyles in the American south, the mullet – business in the front, party in the back.  You won’t want to miss it.  Happy Christmas, everyone – and may every moment of your holiday and new year find you in the kingdom of G_d.

Happy Easter.

There's a billboard in my neighborhood for a new church -- a new Christian church -- that pamphlets and direct mails my neighborhood pretty heavily.  On it, there's a crisp, clean logo that suggests an A-frame sanctuary with a tall steeple topped by a cross which is next to a quote by one of the church's new converts.  The quote appears in bright, ecclesiastical-colored purple and gold lettering with the author's age and occupation.  "Until I came to this church, I never felt God's presence," it reads.   The author is a 20-something information technology specialist.  The church's marketing strategy is clear:  you'll find what you're looking for at this church, just as others your age have, if what you're looking for is God.  It makes me want to cry each time I drive by this billboard.  Instead, I fantasize about googling the name of the person purported to have made this statement, or searching area phone directories for it, and then emailing or calling him to ask if he really said this and, if he did, if this really reflects how he feels.

It's certainly true that America isn't completely populated by Christians though according to a 2007 survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Life, 78.4 percent of American adults say they are Christians.  I find that difficult to believe when I'm confronted with statements such as the one quoted on the billboard above.  In a nation that claims it is overwhelmingly Christian, we also have an overwhelming and shocking ignorance about what it means to be Christians, apparently.  Since Christianity, because it was founded (allegedly) to teach others about the life, philosophy and work of a Jewish sage named Jesus, is based in Judaism.  Ask any one of them where G_d is and you're likely to hear, "in heaven," and by the accompanying gesture -- a roll of the eyes upward, or a wave in the same direction -- you know they mean something like, 'up there, out there, beyond the universe.'  How can that be?  Jesus knew where G_d was; the scripture developed by his people very clearly demonstrates, particularly throughout the first two books of it --in  Genesis and Exodus -- where to find G_d.  They weren't looking in the great beyond for G_d.  Here's where the scripture developed by Jesus's elders told him to find G_d:  "And Moses said unto G_d, Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The G_d of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name?  What shall I say unto them?  And G_d said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM:  and he said, Thus shall thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."  (Exodus 3:13-14)  Clearly, scripture teaches us that G_d is here.  G_d is now.  G_d is.  That's where and what G_d is -- here and now.

There's no picture of G_d anywhere in scripture -- I checked when I was a little girl.  Opening passages of scripture depict G_d at work.  They don't feature a Billy Mays-like, Oxyclean-pitching spokesman, who introduces himself and then launches into a pitch for the creation we see G_d making:  'Hi, folks.  G_d here.  I've just created this fantastic world and you will be amazed by everything in it!'  "G_d's not a person," I realized.  "G_d is creation."  And not just any old creation -- G_d is ongoing creation, the spark of creation here and now, the source.

We humans are creative critters, too.  That's what about us makes us "in G_d's image," ("God created man in [His] own image, in the image of God [He] created him; male and female [He] created them."  Gen. 1:27)  It's our ability to create.  But so much of the time we forget that what G_d created -- and what we, by implication of our similarity to G_d, are charged also to create -- was good for all.  "And G_d saw everything that [G_d] had made and beheld that it was very good."  (Gen. 1:31)  Just to reiterate what was known about where and when G_d is ("what" G_d is for those of you who persist in objectifying G_d), Jesus taught those in his communities the first principal of creating goodness for all and, therefore, instant G_d presence:  "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them:  for this is the law and the prophets."  (From Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:12).  Here's Mark's recollection of Jesus's teaching on this particular lesson:

"And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel: the Lord our G_d is one Lord:  And thou shalt love the Lord thy G_d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength:  this is the first commandment.  And the second is, namely this, Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.  There is none other commandment greater than these." And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth:  for there is one G_d; and there is none other.  And to love [G_d] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength" (as I'm doing here and encouraging you to do also by sharing my thoughts with you), "and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." (which were, as we can learn through anthropology lessons, scarce and costly)   "And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of G_d."

Jesus made it his mission in his later life to remind other Jews where they could find G_d, too, because he looked around and saw that they needed to be reminded; they were being oppressed by an invading nation again and, just as his ancestor, King David, had advised his people, "It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.  It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidences in princes."  (Psalms 18:8-9), Jesus could see the corrupting influence of Roman rule causing his community to turn on one another.

Jesus died in 29 AD and just 37 years later, in 66 AD, the Romans began expelling Jews from Judea because certain of his followers (who were viewed by Roman rulers as Jewish) were agitating for social reforms.  At the time Jesus lived, there was no such thing as a free-market in Judea, where the prices of goods and services were more or less standard from one buyer to the next.  Individuals bargained the prices of everything.  Because this practice leaves so much room for exploitation, it's easy to imagine how a simple act of going to market could be the occasion for persecution if the buyer had no leverage to induce the seller to give him a good price, such as the reciprocal favor of a good price for the goods or services the buyer, himself, marketed.  Remember Jesus's protest in the Temple against the money brokers?  The persecution Jewish people experienced for their lack of wealth had fueled a fear in many that unless their community was adept at generating wealth, that community would never last.  Since these were the days that Rome was still amassing it's wealth, many citizens of the republic, Jews and Romans alike, saw it as a chance to profit.

The Roman empire is remembered today as the post-republic that imploded in on itself because of massive bureaucracy.  It wasn't able to keep up with its aspirations of empire through conquest because, more and more, private citizens -- who were once those folks that paid tributes, or taxes, to Rome's rulers in order to pursue their private enterprises -- had to become the empire's "soldiers," in other words, it's bureaucrats.  It took about 500 years for the republic to self-destruct, for all of the wealth of the Roman republic to be transferred to its government, which then became an autocratic dictatorship.  Voila!  Empire.  That's what led to the demise of the Roman republic and the birth of the Roman empire, which lasted another 1,100 years -- "Divide and conquer."  The Romans invented it, right on their own home turf first.  When most Romans became Rome's functionaries, Rome became a welfare state.  Sound familiar?  Today, our taxes go to pay for our nation's empire building -- and they'll continue to go to pay for our greed for generations to come because of our irresponsible fiscal policies, such as deficit spending.

Jesus thought it was important we remember things such as this -- that G_d is right here, right now and that, if we want to know G_d we must be involved in the creation of good for all, also known as "the kingdom of G_d."  

It boggles the mind how the majority of Americans can call themselves Christian when the political system by which the majority of us (because we live in a democracy and not the constitutional republic our founding fathers gave their sweat and lives to create) have condemned us all to live is so anti-Christic.  Health maintenance organizations that ration medicine when, in a free market system where supply is supposed to respond to demand and an inverse relationship is created in the price of any commodity to its availability, are simply communistic -- Mao Tse Tung's type of communism -- at best, and anti-Christian in actuality.  All health insurers practice the HMO model of gatekeeping in order to ration medicine, where they price-fix services.  Their disease managers are more adept at odds making than Vegas bookies, and the system they've created is in no way a free market system.  It's also inhumane -- which makes it anti-Christic.

HMOs prevent people from gaining the health they need to participate in society.  That's oppression.  And they kill people.  Is there any more exclusionary a practice than murder?  There's virtually no debate on these issues.  Scads of documentaries and infotainment programs and books and articles and organizations designed to expose and change these practices tell us these things all the time.  But this is the system that is government-sanctioned (read, "regulated" -- in the same way the SEC "regulated" Bernie Maddoff's Ascot Investments; the SEC was created specifically to prevent Ponzi schemes such as Maddoff's!).  Millions of American Christians participated in creating this communistic medical system and millions more work in it.  But it's not a system in which everyone is treated the way we all want to be treated -- with the medicine we each need.  We've been told this is the only system available to us -- the best system -- because of its utilitarianism.  There's some artificial limit on medicine out there, they tell us, and supply just can't keep up with demand.  No so.  Anyone with any will to look at the state of the science in any area of medicine can see that's not true.  No one need die from bird flu, for example; the first antiviral ever made was created in the late 1960s and acted against 9 different viruses (New York Times, September 27, 1970; IV, 14:1).  Antivirals are cheap to make -- so cheap that when George Bush said he wanted to vaccinate the world against small pox because that was one of the biological weapons he lied to the world about Saddam Hussein having, Sweden began stockpiling antivirals.  Sweden's leaders said, "No, thanks.  We don't need any of your [bioengineered to create disease] vaccines."

Every politician who claims to be a Christian is doing the work of the anti-Christ if he or she supported the creation, or today supports the perpetuation, of the HMO model of health care.  And more of this system -- so called, "Universal Health Care" -- is not what we need.  This system simply oppresses and kills Americans.  It's exclusionary.  It's discriminatory.  But it's the dominant institution in American -- the one that 78.4 percent of Americans who claim to be Christians apparently believe represents their Christic beliefs.  Massachusetts residents have no legal right to eschew participation in it.  They're even penalized with unfair taxes, if they don't participate in it.

Tomorrow is Easter.  Every year, I get melancholoy beginning on Maundy Thursday, thinking about how the Christian martyr who 78.4 percent of Americans claim as their "personal savior" is so misunderstood by them.  "Jesus died for my sins," they tell us.  If you've ever doubted the efficacy of "mind control" techniques, you need look no further than this bastardization of Christian philosophy to see it.  Here's why Jesus died:  Jesus died because he was a radical political activist who got off his butt and went around empowering people to create just communities -- the "kingdom of G_d" -- in a society that was ruled by politicians that had created an inherently unjust society.  That's why he died.  He was upsetting the status quo.   The leaders in his community didn't like it.  Let's not forget, too, who really killed Jesus:  the mob who said that he, and not the thief, Barrabas, should be crucified.  He was arrested for sedition.  He was betrayed by his friends and his community and then he was abandoned.  He was a Jew but no minyan ever said the prayers for the dead over him.  He died for the same reason Martin Luther King, Jr. died.  He died for the same reason John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, died.  All of these men died because they challenged the status quo.  They've all empowered millions of Americans to look at one another not as the enemy but as people like themselves -- people who wanted freedom and justice from the elites who oppressed them.

Today, vigilantes employed through local sheriffs' offices gangstalk law-abiding, deeply spiritual people, like me.  A college girl is stalked and murdered in Vincennes, Ohio, because she reported on a campus rape in her school newspaper.   A couple's landlord in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, terrorize the couple by stealing the family's pets and murdering them -- and admits to them that he has done so.  The county prosecutor does nothing to the landlord, despite pleas from PETA's activist network.  Peace and environmental activist Robert Woodward was shot dead by Brattleboro, Vermont, police officers in All Souls Unitarian-Universalist Church Sunday morning, December 2, 2001, as he lay, unarmed, on the floor.  Howard Dean's attorney general exonerated the police office after a patently corrupt investigation.   Militarily-developed technologies have long been available to the public, and vigilantes such as those seeking the social extermination of Brook Baker, the Olsons and Robert Woodward were given even more training in the tactics and the technologies used to stalk their targets by the justice department in 1991.  Subsequent laws passed by the executive branch in both the Clinton and Bush administrations have given these technologies to all local law enforcement agencies.

These vigilantes even sometimes claim to be liberals fighting for "liberty" as "libertarians," or those who want to "restore the republic," by which they mean a government that has no concern for the general welfare, one in which citizens don't pay taxes and, therefore, have even less ability to direct their government than they do today, with a corrupt suffrage, when they are really neo-cons posing as centrists (neither left nor right, but the mob in the middle that our founding fathers cautioned us against creating; haven't we seen enough of them?).  Ron Paul is their leader and he advocates a return to the gold standard -- at a time when most people don't own gold or interests in gold investments and have no ability to acquire either.  The people who hold the most Treasury notes (for which we've received the money we use to run our government, on which we pay interest that requires every cent the government collects as taxes from us) are the Chinese and the Saudis, who also control the world gold market in Dubai.  I don't understand fully the libertarians current drive to eliminate the Federal Reserve, but I do know that those of them who are vigilantes are not to be trusted.  They're liars.  They're anti-Christic.  They're the worst form of hypocrites.  These are the types of people whom Jesus encouraged us to resist and these are the people who killed him.  They don't love G_d and they are creating hell on earth for decent people.

The kingdom of G_d is at hand, Jesus and his disciples knew, when you do all that you can each moment of your lives to create goodness for all, and if you must dismantle unjust systems, then you must dismantle unjust systems.  That's the only way to have the hope of being in community with G_d.  The sins Jesus was killed for two millennia ago are the same ones we all have a choice of practicing today -- or not.  They are the sins of willful ignorance, cowardice and merciless extrajudicial terrorism and torture.  They are the sins of not seeing those who would create justice in your communities as your brothers and sisters but instead acting as their henchmen because you've been told by your leaders to do so.  Are those your sins?  Those are the ones for which Jesus died, and if he is going to save you, the only way he can do that is by offering you a model to emulate.  You have to behave as he did -- not as how the mob that killed him did.  That is where your salvation lies -- in directing your energy to do as he advised instead of proselytizing your salvation as a mere belief in any supernatural powers Jesus may have had to grant you that salvation in any other way.  Jesus didn't want you to deify him and he didn't want you to create a movement to do so.

"Now when He was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in His name, when they saw the miracles which He did.  But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man for He knew what was in man."  (The Gospel of St. John, 2:23-25)

If free agency was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.  No one needs to be venerated like a pop star simply because she, he or it, in the case of a religious group or church, is flacked as spiritual (or for any other reason), just as no truly spiritual person (or organization) would want groupies.  Yeah -- I'm a heretic, just like Jesus.  And for apparent, good reason.  There's no such thing as an extra-mortem heaven; heaven is what you make itright here, right now.

"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."  (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, 2:12)

If free agency was encouraged by the de facto founder of the Christian church, free agency is good enough for me.  It's hard to imagine for whom free agency is not good enough.  Jesus never said to balkanize yourselves into exclusive groups and persecute others who do not believe as you believe.  Life isn't supposed to be lived by some artificial, prescribed way that directly undermines the development of the individual's own mind and soul because everyindividual is of and by G_d, including -- egad! -- homosexuals.  Everyone deserves your respect and support of their individuality.  Membership may have its privileges, but the kingdom of G_d is not one.  Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling and let others do the same.  As you can see, we do.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.  Do men gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles?  Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit."  (From Jesus's Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:15-17)  Is the HMO system giving us good fruit, or evil fruit?  Are those who espouse it's universality sheep, or ravening wolves?

If we lived in an America where 78.4 percent of its adults were truly Christian, we wouldn't have things such as a communistic HMO system that extorts, enslaves and murders people.  For that matter, we wouldn't have a military-run government whose leaders are ravening wolves in sheep's clothing who sanction unconstitutional invasions of other countries that have done nothing to us or anyone else, notwithstanding the immoral things its leaders have done to some of its citiziens (which are the same things, coincidentally, that our own government has done and does do to all of its own citizens, such as the atomic veterans and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study victims and the AIDS research victims).

I'm not selling a new philosophy here, or an interpretation that is any way out of line with what Jesus believed and taught others to believe.  I'm just reminding you of these very old truths.  I don't want your money, or your allegiance.  I just want you to stop displacing your responsibility to create the kingdom of G_d right here, right now onto a dead sage.  I want you to get off of your butt -- or at least stop persecuting those of us who have.

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them:  for this is the law and the prophets."  (From Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of St. Matthew, 7:12)

All you need to know about Jesus and the kingdom of G_d is right in this message.  The rest isn't even commentary, as has been suggested; it's distraction.  If all of this seems boring to you and you already realize these things -- forgive me.  I was speaking to those of you who are not true Christians, such as the fellow who was quoted on that billboard about which I began this essay discoursing.  Those who profit from suggesting that G_d is unknowable, or so elusive G_d can only be found in church (their church) -- or is not omnipresent and omnipotent -- those who create organizations to perpetuate these untruths, are ravening wolves.  How worthwhile is something that purports to be where G_d can be found only for a few hours a week and in a few limited places?  Would Jesus -- or anyone, for that matter -- give up his or life to proselytize that?  I doubt it.  I doubt it very seriously.  It's not "normal" to not see these truths; it's propaganda that makes you not see that G_d is and that you don't have to go looking for G_d.  This is the source of your power -- in realizing that G_d is among us all.  That's why Jesus died -- because an empowered people creates problems for those who oppress them.

G_d is.  Create goodness for all and be in community with G_d, in G_d's kingdom because you do.  Empower others to do likewise -- that's what Jesus told us to do.  Create just societies out of unjust ones together.  This is what makes you a true Christian.  Period.  No multi-volume set of writings is necessary; no seminary classes are required; no membership in an exclusive club that can fast-track you to a position of power among your peers.  Just do these things and you'll know G_d -- and be a true Christian.  Going to church a few days a year, or for any type of emotional high you get from belonging to one, or from being told you're "good" for showing up at one, isn't what makes you a true Christian.  Certainly, perpetuating the wicked lie that there's some kingdom apart from the one in which you live that is more of G_d than the one you have the ability to create -- and that you'll get there if you kill or otherwise oppress anyone who doesn't believe this lie -- is about as anti-Christic as you can get, and no sage -- dead or alive -- will save you from the wickedness you help perpetuate.  What goes around, comes around.  We are all at the mercy of the HMO system, the fascists who've created it and their minions.

America needs it's own Conclave, or Confessing Church, because today, America is Hitler's dream come true.  If you want to follow Jesus -- to be 'saved' by emulating him -- here's a way you can do it:  agitate as he did in your religious communities to fight the fascists who control us all, starting with the militarized law enforcement in our local communities.  Take your grievances to your state and federal representatives and senators.  Are you a functionary of our empire's bureaucracy?  Roll up your sleeves.  You've got work to do.  Work to create good for all, as G_d is doing.

Happy Easter.

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