Waking Life

I wake up every day. It does not happen in the morning when my eyes open and my head lifts from my pillow. At that time my mind and body physically arouse from a night's sleep, and I start my day. But I don't wake up until later.

Generally I have two times of spiritual practice each day. One is in the morning. It is a simple practice after breakfast - a little scripture, a little prayer, and a lot of writing. Instead of reading devotions, I write them in the form of this blog. I find I am more attentive that way.

Then at the end of the day after supper, I have another time of spiritual practice. That is normally when I wake up. Spiritual awakening always surprises me; it is always unexpected, new and fresh. I kneel down to pray as my old tired self, and after a few minutes I wake up as more than my self.

Until that moment I had been living semi-consciously. It would be more accurate to call it unconscious. That is how different it feels. The mind is active during the day, but the soul is in the background. Then in evening prayer the background becomes the foreground, and the foreground becomes the background.

In prayer I wake up to who I am. It is like coming out of a trace or arousing from a long daydream. It is like waking up to find I had been sleepwalking. I am not just self-conscious; I am conscious that I am more than self and not self. I am aware of God and aware of the world as it is, unfiltered through self-consciousness.

I am more than my personality. I am soul - the bigger self - within which the personal self is just a small part. The persona is like an app; it is software that is very useful for getting things done but nothing more. The personality is a function of consciousness; I am consciousness.

This spiritual self is aware that it is always me, always has been me and always will be me - regardless of what happens to this body and mind. This waking self is not the local consciousness attached to this fleshly bag of bones. This spiritual self is the soul "seated in the heavenlies with Christ." It is the one "chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world." It is the one that is "risen with Christ." It has eternal life that survives earthly death.

This is who I am. I am not the old natural man of the flesh. He died and is buried with Christ. In Christ I am resurrected as a new self. Every day I wake up to that reality. That makes every day a resurrection day for me, a foretaste of that future Day when all who sleep in Christ will arise never to sleep again. I can't wait! Hallelujah!

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Art is Primordial Awakening by Daphne Stammer

Stephen Hawking's Universe

Last night I watched renowned physicist Stephen Hawking being interviewed by ABC News' Diane Sawyer. I stand in awe of the mind of this great physicist. His intellect is said to equal Einstein's and Newton's. I read his book "A Brief History of Time" and scratched my head at an intelligence that can come up with ideas like warp space, warp time, and alternate dimensions.

But when it comes to God, Stephen Hawking doesn't know squat. Listen to his take on theology: "[One] could define God as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of as God. They make a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Hawking knows science, but he doesn't understand religion. From his wheelchair he may be able to peer into the origin of the universe, but he doesn't know the Originator of the universe. He is an expert in the questions "What?" and "How?" but he is clueless when it comes to the question "Why?"

Sawyer asked him if he could ask the universe one question and have it be answered, what would it be? He replied, "I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something rather than nothing." Hawking has no answer. Hawking believes in aliens, but not in God. Why?

God is too obvious. Hawking has a superior mind, but it is not mind that apprehends God. It is soul. Hawking has a great mind, but the mind is a very limited instrument. It is very good at deciphering the complex and difficult. It is stymied at the blatant and obvious. The presence of God is so obvious that it is easily missed. But when one becomes aware of God, this awareness is the most obvious fact of the universe.

Hawking exists in God; that is why he can't see God. In God we live and move and have our being. God is too close for any electron microscope to see. That is why Hawking can't see him. He is the Knower; that is why Hawking can't know him. He is Subject and cannot be perceived as an object.

Hawking expects God to be observable by science. But science is too limited in its scope. He is expecting a God who can be understood; but such a god would not be God. He is looking for a being, but God is Being.

For my understanding of the physical dimensions of the universe I will still look to Stephen Hawking. But when it comes to theology, Hawking's universe is too small.

College Reunion

Last weekend my wife and I attended our college reunion at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. It was the first class reunion we have attended since we graduated in the early seventies. We were never able to attend previous such events because they were always held on weekends, which is a pastor's prime time. Now that I am pulpitless we took advantage of the opportunity to visit our alma mater.

It was not the stereotypical weekend of clichés. I did not wonder why these alumni looked so old. I knew they would look like me ... people pushing sixty. I noticed how different the conversations were among my peers as compared to those of younger classes. No talk of careers or childrearing. There was no competition, no comparing of social status, and no name-dropping of important contacts. These people had learned what was important in life.

It was talk of family, friendships, and simple joys - the things that last. These people had not returned to campus to recapture their lost youth or hold onto the past. These were people comfortable with themselves and the flow of time. These were mature people ... good people.

What is the lure of college reunions? I think it is biological, or at least deeply psychological - the desire to return home. The words "alma mater" mean "nourishing mother." It is a Latin phrase that originally referred to the mother goddess of ancient Rome and later to the medieval Virgin Mary.

There is a deep instinct in man to return to our alma mater, and it is not an Oedipal complex or Freudian neurosis. It is part of our spiritual journey, an expression of our religious instinct. Man is by nature a spiritual animal - homo religious. College reunions prove it.

College is one of those times and places that shape us more than we realize at the time. For most of us it was our first "home away from home." To come back to campus is to return to the matrix (another maternal term) in which we were formed.

It is part of a more profound return. We are earth and to earth we shall return. Likewise we are spirit and to spirit we shall return. As Ecclesiastes says, "The dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it."

Life is a round trip. As soon as we leave the womb we begin our journey homeward. At first we cannot wait to get away from home. Then we try our best to make a home. Finally we begin the long journey home. Reunions are part of that homecoming.

I did not return to hobnob with old friends or see old professors, although I did both. But most of our friends did not attend, and almost all my professors are gone. I came to warm myself at the ancestral hearth, to walk the labyrinthine campus paths that wind back to my center.  For me it was not about the past or who I used to be. I came to reconnect to who I am and who I will be.

A Room With a View

When I kneel in prayer and meditation each day, I face a window that opens onto my backyard. Years ago I chose this setting so that I could look upon God's creation as I prayed. But recently it has served a purpose I never imagined. It has become a metaphor for my life.

As I look through the window I am aware that I am a window that opens onto the world. My consciousness is an opening in an unconscious world. The world is not completely unconscious of course. The rabbits and birds in my backyard are sentient also, but they not conscious that they are conscious. As a human being I am a self-conscious portal of consciousness through which the creation is aware of itself.

As a human being I am a creature, a part of creation. My body is made 100% from the elements of the ground. I am dust and to dust I shall return. As a member of the species homo sapiens, I share 96% of my genes with my simian cousin the chimpanzee. I am an animal among animals. I feel the kinship. I am a creature too.

But I am a human creature. As a self-conscious creature, I look out the window into creation. I am aware that I am a window of consciousness through which creation is aware of itself. I am creature conscious of creation. Through me creation looks in the mirror and sees itself. Through this window creation is aware of Creator. Through this window creation prays to Creator, and Creator answers creation.

Scripture repeatedly tells us that God is Spirit. God has no physical eyes or ears or body. So we serve that purpose. The Scriptures says that his people are the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. God uses our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our body to smell and touch and taste.

The consciousness of God meets the conscious creation through the consciousness of man. I am a window. I am a being aware of Being. Being looking at itself. What a view!
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Art is The Open Window by Juan Gris, 1921 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas.

Being Human

 

I am a human being.

I am a human being having a spiritual experience.
I am a spiritual being having a human experience.

I am being experiencing Being.

Being experiencing.

Being.

I am a human being.

Resist Not Evil

These three simple words, "Resist not evil," are the most difficult of all the Master's teachings. I have never met anyone who has fully accepted them. Even the modern saints of nonviolence - Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. - rejected the teaching. They practiced nonviolent resistance to evil as a political strategy, not nonresistance to evil as a spiritual discipline.

I am not judging these two great men; I made the same choice. I first heard these words when I was 19 years old and struggling with the morality of the Vietnam War. Uncle Sam was calling me to fight, and I was forced to examine my beliefs about the morality of the war. I read Gandhi and King.

It was through Gandhi that I first heard these words of Jesus. "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also." I had never heard them in church, but this Hindu introduced me to them.

Like everyone else I found a way to reject the ancient wisdom. I explained them away in order to ensure my self-survival. The literal meaning was too radical to consider seriously. Only recently, thirty-five years after that war ended, am I starting to comprehend the profundity of these words.

They mean to accept things as they are. That is why they are so offensive. It feels like surrender to evil. It sounds like fatalism. There is a lot of evil in the world. If I do not resist it, then evil will win. Then where would we be?

But Jesus is not advocating moral surrender. He is not telling us to cooperate with evil, condone evil, or submit to evil. He is asking us to think outside the box. There is very little of that happening these days - or any days. We always think within the box of opposites: right and wrong, true and false, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, freedom and oppression, good and evil. We pick a side, hoping to choose the right side.

Jesus is pointing us to another way. Let things be as they are. Do not resist the evil. Without good to resist, evil cannot exist. Only that which you resist persists. Evil only exists in opposition to good. They are two sides of the same coin. If you pick up the good side of the coin, you will get the evil side also. You can't have one without the other.

Nonresistance to evil means to refuse to fall into the trap of Adam and Eve. Refuse the temptation to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Instead choose faith. Choose God. Walk by faith and not by sight.  Be active, not reactive - and certainly not passive!

To "resist not evil" is to trust that God is working all things out for Good. Not the little good that resists evil, but the Good that is so big that it incorporates evil into the divine plan.  As the Desiderata says, "Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God...."
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Art is "Resistance Non-Resistance" by Aldo Saurini, acrylic on canvas, 2009

The Right War

I never fought in war. Every generation of Davis men did, from the American Revolution to WWII, but I broke the family tradition. I had an opportunity to fight in Vietnam, but I respectfully refused. I believed then ... and now... that the Vietnam War was a mistake. It was the wrong war in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. I feel the same way about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But I have great respect for veterans of war, including friends who fought in Vietnam. I salute them. They may have made a different choice than I, but their courage humbles me. They are willing to risk life and limb for country and kin. How can anyone not honor such heroism?

Jesus himself said, "No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." That happens on a regular basis in theaters of war, and that sacrificial love must be honored.

Such sacrifice I respect. It is killing I hate. So does every soldier I have ever met. I am not a pacifist. If necessary I would kill to defend those I love. I would not be able to live with myself if I didn't. But I am just not convinced that self-defense is the reason for our current wars.

I am not so naïve as to think that Al Qaeda and militant Islam are not threats. They certainly are. But I do not believe that the present American war strategy is addressing those threats. Once again we are fighting the wrong wars in the wrong places for the wrong reasons.

There is a deeper spiritual issue. War is a reflection of the war within man's soul. American Cold War diplomat Francis Meehan said, "Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself." Until the inner war is stopped, wars will never cease.

The apostle James wrote: "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" It is the inner battle that causes the outer battles. The war in the human heart is the real threat to mankind's existence. This war is not being addressed by religion. On the contrary, wars are often fought in the name of religions. Crusades and jihads. Gott mit uns.

I am religious, and I have war in my heart. That is what is causing the wars overseas. It is not Bush nor Obama nor the military industrial complex. It is the human heart. We act out our inner wars on outer battlefields. We are fighting the wrong wars in the wrong places for the wrong reasons.

The First World War was optimistically called "The war to end all wars." That was the right reason but the wrong battlefield. The right battlefield is the human heart. The right war is to end war.