“Let all earth fear LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.” -Psalms 33:8 KJV

“He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” -Psalm 147:4-5

“But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done : and there is no respect of persons.” -Colossians 3:25

Moses throwing down the Tablets

Of all the many well-known ideas of the Bible, perhaps nothing offends, perplexes, or just galls the ordinary person more, or stands as a greater barrier to the practice of Christianity, than this idea, that we must fear God. Why in the world should we fear God?! Of all the religious ideas, I think this one caused me more doubt than any, and it kept me away from God as a result.

My reaction to the phrase is understandable, I think, and I’m sure many will agree with me: Our natural reaction to this is to question loudly, if I am a child of God, why should I fear my own creator, my own father? The whole concept, the whole tenor of it, sounds and feels so “Old Testament”, so fire and brimstone, so angry God, so much the capricious and dangerous LORD of bloody sacrifices on desert mountains, Moses throwing down the tablets in anger. The “Fear of God” strikes just about any modern person as archaic and childish. Really, it makes very little sense to us. Now, of course, God is all powerful, and he can snuff us out like snuffing out a match between fingers. Ssssst! But that’s the angry God of the Old Testament, isn’t it, not the God of Love of the New?  God is Love, isn’t He, so how does it make any sense whatsoever to fear Love?

The law of karma, embraced as a central and driving concept in certain Eastern philosophies and religions such as hinduism and buddhism, gives us the clue. First, a definition. Simply speaking, karma is the effect of our actions on our lives. Karma itself is not bad or good, it is simply a law of effect. Our action is the cause to which there is an effect. That is simply speaking. Cause and effect, more or less, but not quite…

A more nuanced view of the law of karma reveals the power we have over our own destinies, for it is not only what we do (our action) but our intention in doing so. Therefore it is as possible to kill someone with intention as it is possible to kill the same someone accidently. Just as the courts of law would judge us according to the intention, the effect of the law of karma concerning the act itself and the attending intention will determine the lasting effect. (See Karma on Wikipedia for an extended discussion on the law of karma.)

In the practice of Buddhism, it is believed that it is possible to bring an end to the effects of karma by living a life in which one’s actions are done so selflessly that no karmic effects are produced whatsoever. Gautama Siddartha, the Buddha, is one who achieved this and so at his death was not reborn, but vanished utterly into the stateless state called nirvana. The blessed state of Enlightenment, a state that all Buddhists understand is within reach of every human, if only we can get it right, precedes the final annihilation that is nirvana.

One of the obvious things about karma is that every action creates an effect. So every act, every thing, is subject to, and is apparent to, this law. That is, the law “sees” every action, or, the law of karma is invoked in every movement, every action, every thought. God created, and continues to create moment to moment, the world, you and I, and everything in the world. It is not that God created the world long ago. He creates it always and continuously and so is there at every point in space and time creating, overseeing, more to the point, seeing.  Remember, and we know this from quantum physics, the smaller particles that make up atoms, flicker into and out of existence countless times per second. That flickering is God creating continuously, creating everything, always, and so always present and always and ever conscious of His creation.

And so, God sees everything. No, let me make this clear: God sees everything. Oh, we’d like to think He’s in His heaven surrounded by angels with His Jesus at his right hand, or maybe He’s in the shadows in the other room, or looking the other way while we do something, or, better yet, we just pretend He doesn’t see us, doesn’t exist. But, no, honestly He is fully conscious, fully present in every place, seeing every action, directing the consequence of every action. He is the only one who is fully conscious. God, the creator of everything, including the law of karma, sees all, every action every thought.

What is worse than this frightening fact that God sees all and every little thing we do is the fact that for every little thing we do there is a consequence. Cause and effect. The law of karma. God sees all and for every thing there is a consequence. Notice that I said “worse than the frightening fact that God see all…”. “Frightening” it is that God sees our every action and that for our every action there is a consequence. Frightening, because now we see that what we do is seen,  has meaning,  has a consequence.

So we have discovered our reason to fear God, and it is a reason, and it is reached by reason. It is a reasonable fear. God sees all and for every thing there is a consequence.

Kate was talking about how the world can be so full of competition, anxiety, stress, and rush, rush, rush, how it is often self-centered, harsh, and even dangerous in some ways. Kate often speaks to our group about the world and how we might live in it in a better way. This time she was reminding us of what she called our “counter-culture”. She was talking about our group, our little community of people who are trying to create an alternative world.

For most of my life I saw the world as dangerous, unfriendly, and ultimately a lonely place, a place where, in the end, you are on your own. Everything told me this. Or perhaps I should say, nothing, not my family, not school, not my friends, nothing told me otherwise. School was a nightmare for me. By the time I was 20 I had attended nearly 20 schools. Always being the new kid, impossbly left out of groups that grew up together, I felt isolated. There was no real culture of thought in my household either. No discussions of meaning or morals or lofty goals, no words of peace, no vision of a kind world. The culture was television and old gangster or cowboy movies where a guy had better be tough and get over it, stand alone against all odds. Well, perhaps I exaggerate a bit. There were glimpses of a kinder world, a little peek here, a scent there, but this alternative world seemed like a joke to a young cowboy…

Kate was saying that, on the one hand you have this big world with its good things, and with its many not-so-good things, like the stress and relentless competition and the sense that you are really “on your own” out there, loneliness. On the other hand, she said, you have us, us busy creating a counter-culture, if you like, a place, a world, a community, where inter-personal competition is frowned upon, where individualism gives way to group effort, where we actively and purposely help each other to succeed, where we mindfully practice love, compassion, and cooperation in an overt way while still remaining individuals, individual members. What a wonderful idea, creating a world as, perhaps, it ought to be. Who would not want that? But don’t get me wrong, we absolutely have no illusion that we are perfect. In fact, human imperfection is understood. Given that understanding and not cynically defeated by it, we strive for the vision of a kinder world where no one has to go it alone.

So, this very vibrant group of people that Kate was talking to, the “us” in her story, spends a lot of time, energy, and pooled resources, including money, on projects for people in and outside the group who are in need. Kate reminded us that, for example, in our little counter-cultural community we have projects for feeding homeless men and providing a place for them to stay now and then. We have a project for feeding needy families by distributing bags of groceries every week; lots of bags of groceries.  A small group of knitters in our group create beautiful woolen shawls at their own expense and give them away to elderly people who need a little extra warmth on a winter night. During the holidays, we try to pool our resources with other counter-culture groups, collecting presents for parents, who can not afford them, to give to their children. A larger project that we contribute our time and money to is disaster relief, not just in America, but around the world. Some of us were there after Katrina, rebuilding; others, including some of our youth, volunteered at a Native American reservation, making repairs on homes. All of these projects are done in a conscious spirit of love and mindful, selfless giving. In fact, that’s a requisite.

Kate pointed out that not everything our counter-cultural group does is charity. Some of it is just for the sake of beauty and the uplifting of the spirit, or just plain fun. For example, a number of our people spend extra time each week practicing songs that they later sing to us. We join in with them to the best of our ability and even if you can’t carry a tune, it’s okay. The music ranges from classical to folk and comes from many traditions and ethnic groups, but it is always beautiful and inspiring.

Though there are many meetings throughout the week and the month, small groups mostly, and little events like barbeques, beach cleanups, youth parties, movie nights, and fundraisers, we try to get together once a week just to celebrate the world we are helping to create and to be thankful for the vision we have and to wish each other “peace” and to re-dedicate ourselves to the task. Our meeting place, where we all get together at one time, is an old building built in 1878 in a style called Carpenter Gothic. That means lots of gothic arches and leaded glass windows. Everything is built of ancient redwood from trees culled over two centuries away. The old wood glows with a warmth of many venerable years of striving to create this world of peace and love.

The walls fairly speak of peace. In the middle of the week, on a hectic day, it is possible to enter into this dark and inviting room, with its romantic arches and its warm light slanting across the cushioned seats. It’s a good place to sit quietly, to step out of that big world out there, that world of stress and competition, gather your thoughts privately, and listen to that “still, small voice”.

The weekly meeting, though an important part of what we do, is only a fraction of what we do, a smallish part, that is much less important than the projects we foster. From the outside, I’m sure that this is not clear to the casual observer. I know it looks different from the outside because I once stood on the outside and saw only a cartoon glimpse. The meetings are what the world sees of us, and from a distance at that. But get up close and you see us reaching out into the world, smoothing it here, wrinkling it there, encouraging it, challenging it, feeding it, listening, being with. That’s the real work. Its the part that the casual observer never sees.

Kate, or Marcia, or Richard, or one of the other leaders of our little counter-cultural movement, speaks to us in our weekly meeting about the vision we have, and reminds us of just who we really are at heart, persons of peace like our founder, and of how we are required to serve the world in precisely these ways. We respond to Kate and to each other, renewing our commitment, extending our hands to one another in peace and saying it all out loud. Then we set out again, out into that big world, ready, once again, to polish off a few more of its…and our…rough edges.

Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. -Luke 12:35 (NIV)

Just Now

I lay face down across the bed, happily drifting in an afternoon nap, stolen from a frenetic day. Even in my dreamy state I was aware of him entering the room, felt him lean over me, sensed his breath, but I wasn’t afraid. He lay his hand on my shoulder. I felt its warmth and heard him say, in a very gentle but firm voice, “Get up…It’s time.” I roused myself and turned to see him standing now by the door in a shaft of sun that slanted through the curtained window across his white clothing. His kind eyes pulled at me, his body poised for movement, drawing me to follow him out the door. I did not know him and yet he was oddly familiar, like a good friend I had known only over the phone or in letters. A slight smile. A mere turn of his head beckoned. I knew what time it was…

San Francisco, 1968

Poster by Robert Lewis

I walked down the carnival street named Haight and came to the intersection of Ashbury, swimming in a fantasy parade of scores of young people who were dressed, no, decorated in clashing colors and patterns, tied with scarves and tassles, bell-bottomed in jeans dragging along the sidewalk, leather belts tooled with “Peace”, hair, hair, hair curling down over shoulders, nipples edging out of blouses, and dreamy music floating on the incensed air. Until my first moments in Haight Ashbury of 1968, I thought I was “hip”. I wasn’t hip. They were hip. I was clearly the right-wing ultra-conservative idiot in this beautiful, flowing sea of humanity, despite my long hair and my bell-bottoms. Next to me, as my head swirled, taking it all in, a young man was hawking his goods: “Grass, hash, acid!”, he called out as if selling fruit from a stand “Grass, hash, acid!”. The entire scene seemed impossible.

I came to San Francisco because something big was happening and I knew in my gut that I should be there. Despite moving there, growing my hair long, and being opposed to the Vietnam war, I didn’t consider myself a hippie. Hippies were cool, self-assured, seemed to know all the answers without doubt, and also smoked marijuana, tried all drugs and got laid, a lot. All of that attracted me, excited me, but, most of all, it frightened me. Anything but self-assured, I remained a jealous observer, longing to take part, but afraid of losing control, unsure of the rules, in an exotic, sexy world where all the rules were being tested, where sometimes, there were no rules.

Nevertheless, there was a place for a non-smoking, drug-free “hippie”, a place as an artist, a poet, and a naive dreamer. That was me. I believed the whole line about the world needing love and about the here and now. That’s how I came to design, for a local printer/publisher, a poster that eventually became a national best-selling poster by 1969. The poster depicted, in Old English lettering on a gold background, a popular “proverb” making the round: “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” It seemed a positive and powerful concept to a simplistic young man in his early twenties. I believed it was powerful because it was obvious that if you considered today the first day of the rest of your life then the past was gone and forgiven and a daily fresh start was always just a day away. I was happy to see it published and felt I contributed something to the culture of the time.

Last Night

Just before bed, I often read a little, rarely a novel, mostly philosophy or religion, subjects which I never seem to tire of since my very poetic and passionate teen years. Last night I was reading through a book called The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. On page 40, Warren mentions this famous saying I talk about above, and he suggests a revision to it. Wouldn’t it be far more powerful if it read “Today is the LAST Day of the Rest of Your Life.” What an amazing difference one word can mean. This new version says that today is the day my life on earth is over. Now think about that. Suppose you wake up and you understand that you will not be here tomorrow. Would not every choice you make this day be especially important? Or, more to the point, what would you choose not to do today?

Of course, most of us don’t get to know when our last day will be. We continue to act as if we will go on and on, even though all of us know the truth of that. So, what good does this new version of this old platitude do us, unless we try it out, unless we practice it, if only for a day? Suppose we just try to act as if we know this is our last day? I turned out the light around 11pm and lay in the dark a while , my mind whirling. I decided to try to live my next day as if it were my last.

Today

I woke up this morning to fog drifting through the pines and a cool breeze swirling in the yard, turning back the curtains. My head cleared, and then I remembered: Today is the last day of the rest of my life! Oh. My. God. By nightfall, I will be gone and tomorrow’s fog or sun or rain will not find me breathing or laughing or loving. Before I could finish this thought I was up, tiptoeing past my young son’s room to the kitchen to boil water for a cup of strong English tea. Watching it steep, I remembered a poem I had written when a teenager, during that energy-filled time when you could find me literally in the top of a tree during a thunderstorm writing poetry on little notepad. It read:

A bitter tea,
reality.
Strong and sweet,
hot and dark.
A bitter tea,
reality.

There was much to do, today. Much to do, and much to not do. I sweetened and creamed my tea and went back to bed to sit up, sip, and think…with a very clear mind.

The human mind, or should I say, this human’s mind, has an attention span of nearly 10 seconds before its lofty intentions degenerate and go directly to food or sex or anything, anything but what needs to be done mindfully. So, living  the day as if I would cease to exist sometime in the evening was not easy. Well, first of all, I didn’t believe the premise. I would live forever, even though I know that I won’t live forever. Nevertheless, the effect was immediate. If, and when, I could stay focused long enough to keep my mind off sex, food or anything but what I needed to do, I managed to give my actions a bit of thought.

No point in being too demeaning of my abilities; I suspect we are all the same. And, so what? That’s just the way it is and we already know that. But, in the course of the day that was to follow, there were many times that I considered what I was doing, was “mindful”, as Thich Nhat Hahn would say. This mindfulness went hand in hand with thankfulness. Indeed, they are, I do believe, the very nearly the same thing. Thankfulness, to God, is mindfulness, and here we have yet another convergence of Buddhism and Christianity. Except that, in the traditional conception of mindfulness, we are merely mindful, aware of what we are doing. It is a way of maximizing our experience, or of being totally present to our experience. This is, I believe, a good thing, for it seems to me that it is better to at least experience one’s life as it happens than to only look back on it with a sense of regret.

So, thankfulness is mindfulness, as I like to say, on steroids. Because, so what if you are mindful, if what you are mindful of is essentially meaningless? But if you are thankful to God for the creation that he has given and continues to give you, moment to moment, does this not mean that you are experiencing your life as it is happening, and, more than that, you are grateful to the Father that loves you enough to provide this experience of your life? Isn’t it better to feel this gift as a gift, rather than just experiencing the stark presence of cold unfeeling reality. Perhaps my view is sentimental, but you can’t deny that it is more palatable.

At the end of today, I had enough success in this practice that I was ready to die. Yes, I was. Really. There really was a peace and an acceptance that had descended upon me. Descended is the appropriate word, too. I do think that practicing simple mindfulness would have given me a somewhat similar experience, but at the end of the day, as I breathed my last breath, mindful, mind you, I believe I would have left this life in a state of mind that would have required far more bravery than I am capable of. Late afternoon, exhausted, I fell asleep and had the strangest dream…

Oh, when the Lord gets ready
You gotta move…

[Full Lyrics]

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:18 [NIV])

The Seen

My Best Friends

Howdy Doody

We were out on an errand in the car, my mother, my stepfather and me, heading down the road. As I sat in the back seat, pressing my 9-year-old face against the window that reflected the freckles and crew cut features of a typical boy of the mid-50s, I was watching with an intensity that somehow I knew my parents could not sense and certainly would not have understood. What I was watching was thrilling, amazing, vivid, and wonderful; it was Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Howdy Doody sitting in a little Tonka Toy pickup truck, careening down the road beside us, holding on in fear at the speed, laughing and talking, and winking and waving at me. They went everywhere we went in those heady days and I loved to watch them driving alongside us. I want to make one thing very clear: I could actually see these characters. They were dimensional. The sunlight played off of them like off of any object. They threw shadows. They were vivid.

Back at the house, in my room, I had set up a cardboard box on its side. I had cut windows and doors in it, found a woven placemat that made a perfect living room carpet, cobbled together pieces of furniture including a cigar box bed with scraps of materials that made the blankets and sheets. My invisible friends lived in the box. My mind was afire with a fever that envisioned these friends so completely that they seemed completely real and visible to me. At the same time, I had actual Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Howdy Doody puppets that I would use in my fantasy, but, when the puppets weren’t available, such as when we were traveling, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Howdy Doody were there, nevertheless, and nonetheless visible, vivid, tangible, and full of expression. We had a wonderful relationship, full of love and communication.

But this was a dark time in my childhood, and I’ve often thought that this incredible fantasy, which for me was a major event in my childhood, necessarily emerged to take the edge off the reality of our lives, a life of deceit, loss, and insecurity.  My mother, pregnant, was humiliated by a philandering and drunken husband who, on one hand, though could be charming,  needed to grow up. He was somewhat younger than my mother. Her anger was palpable and her depression spread over our lives. Like shades drawn over sunny windows, my mothers troubles darkened my boy days casting a pallid yellow light across the landscape. My life was beyond my control. I turned to happy lives that I could control. And so my invisible friends came to life and, no matter what happened beyond my boy’s life, we had happy adventures and marvelously funny conversations.

Death of a Fantasy

My fantasy evolved one day at a toy store where I saw a figure, a kind of “hobo” doll based on the famous clown Emmett Kelly (right). When I saw the doll suddenly the fantasy moved to another level, his realism grabbed me, his accessible sadness spoke to me, and this minature human person was all I wanted. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Howdy Doody began to lose their gloss and I could think of nothing else but my Hobo. Even I, in my dazzled boyhood craze, sensed that my fantasy had taken a dark turn, that somehow this was no longer just fun, but some kind of obsession, though I certainly didn’t know the word. Nevertheless, I wanted him for Christmas, which was just around the corner.

The painful climax of this obsessive fantasy took place at Christmas. My stepfather, an Air Force sargeant, had received his transfer orders and they fell in such a way that we were forced to move out of our rented house and live in a motel suite for two weeks. The baby was about six months old now, sick with flu, and Christmas was on us. They were in the main room wrapping Christmas presents and I was in the second room of the suite when I heard arguing. It soon became clear that the argument was over the hobo. My mother had obviously bought the hobo for me and my step-father objected to the gift. The essence of his argument was that it was “playing with dolls” and I should grow up. “Playing with dolls” hit me like the back of a spade to my face. Embarrassment, anger, hatred, in that order.

The tragic fate of the hobo, poor unsuspecting figure that he was, is a sad story that has parallels elsewhere in life. Suffice to say that he was not an invisible friend. He was real and in the world and the infatuation I had with him turned to hatred and I “killed” him. I have always thought of it that way. Killing. He represented something lost. He was a visible, tangible reminder. Not long after we left the motel and were moved into our new place, I spent an afternoon throwing him up in the air and letting him fall on the cement driveway. Finally, after an hour of this he was barely recognizable. One last throw landed him up in a tree where he remained until he vanished.

❧

The Unseen

Air

In my early childhood, my parents and I lived in the corner house in a post-WWII neighborhood with unpaved streets on a patch of land that had once been a walnut orchard. My mother’s parents, Grandma and Grampa, lived next door to us to one side, and to the other side lived my grandfather’s brother, my Uncle Bill, and his wife. An old walnut tree stood between our house and my grandparents house, and around the tree a cement patio had been poured. This was my world, going from my house to theirs for anything I could forage as a little boy, and spending the dreamtime of early childhood playing under the tree.

At the end of every day, my grandfather would come through the old gate, and I would turn to run to him, jumping up in to his arms. He would hug me, smelling of cut wood, sweat, and tar. He was a carpenter and a roofer, swabbing tar on the roofs of hot L.A. homes. His hair, black as tar, slicked back, fell into his eye. He was tanned dark and muscular, dashing. Sweeping me up in his arms he’d yell “Bobby!”, and the world became lucid and sparkling in his arms. That was our daily routine without fail.

One weekend he took me with him to do some carpentry repair on a church that, I suppose, he and Grandma attended. I went inside the little wooden church alone, while he stayed outside working on what I now think was a mail slot. Inside the church, I went over to the hole he had cut in the exterior wall, and I stuck my hand out through the slot and wiggled it at him. He grabbed it. Then he went back to work and I turned back into the dark church. There were windows up high, ordinary windows, not stained glass. Shafts of light angled down into the dark room onto the pews and the altar. It was quiet, empty, but the look of the church interior gave me a little tickle in my stomach, butterflies. I felt excited somehow, to be alone in this sacred space. The room was so dead still that the shafts of light were almost audible, little particles floated in the air, little sparkles. I regarded them, ignoring the muffled sounds of hammering and sawing.

Then I heard something new. It was a soft, sweet swelling of music. The music grew until it filled the room and amazed me. As I look back on this early memory, I really can not quite remember the style but it has left me with the impression of a rather sentimental orchestral piece, full of great, sweet passion, like the Air on the G String.

It was beautiful music to me. I looked around to see where it was coming from. I looked this way and that but I could see no radio or person playing. It was just in the air. I ran over to the mail slot and yelled through it “Where’s that music coming from, Grampa?!” But chills ran down my spine when Grampa answered “What music? I don’t hear anything.” I turned around fast, frantically searching the music filled room. But the music was coming from nowhere. It was in the air floating, played by unseen hands. And because I alone was hearing it, I became afraid and ran out of the dark church and into the brilliant sun.

Though I told my mother about this incident, I realized, even at 6 years old, that there are some things you can tell your parents that they just don’t take seriously.

Message in a Bottle

Several months later, Grampa and Grandma were sitting in their tiny living room in the house next door to us. It was dusk after a clear, sunny day. There was a sound at the door and the door knob rattled and turned. Grampa jumped up and flung the door open. No one was there. Perplexed, he went back in and sat down again. Again the door rattled and the knob turned ever so slightly. This time they both got up and flung the door open, hoping to catch the prankster. But no one was there, and there was no time and nowhere to hide. They stepped out onto the little cement porch.

My grandmother described that moment vividly to me: As they stood on the porch at dusk, wondering who or what had turned the knob, a deep peace fell over their world. She said it was like someone had placed a glass dome over the house and the yard, as if they were bottled up like a model ship in a glass. She felt like they were beyond the ordinary world somehow, that everything within the yard was still in every sense of the word. Still, but not dead, the air sweet, pleasant, vibrant with a soundless humming energy. Beyond the rose bushes and the little picket fence was the rest of the world, but they could not hear it and it did not impinge on this momentary peace. The sun had gone down and the evening was darkening. She told me she had the sense that she was being told something, that some message was inherent in this, but she just couldn’t figure it. When they went back inside, my grandfather was thoughtful, pensive. After a little while, Grandma asked him if he understood what it all meant. Yes, he said. He did not explain what he meant by this yes and she didn’t feel it was right to ask. The next day he began putting his affairs in order.

Two weeks later, while at work on a carpentry job with Uncle Bill, the two were taking a break when my grandfather said “Bill, go get me a soda pop. I don’t feel so good.” He sat down on a stack of two-by-fours. When Bill came back, soda pop in hand, Grampa was still sitting there, but he was dead. When my grandmother heard the terrible news, she understood the message that she couldn’t quite make out on that bell jar evening of the mysterious visitor at the door.

I’ll See It When I Believe It

As a child I was drawn to a vague idea of God and even of Jesus, but we rarely went to church. In fact, I think we only went two or three times and so I understood little to nothing of what drew me to God. But, of my meager church experience, it was the Holy Communion, or Eucharist, that caught my mind. Even a child can understand, at some level, the eating of sacred food, food that is somehow sparkling with holy substance. As a child we may experience things more directly, with less clutter in the mind, less doubt. We may just know something is sacred. Whatever the reason, I was impressed with the Communion and felt connected to something through it

What I knew of God in my early years came to me through movies and through my Grandmother, though she rarely attended any church. I later understood that she and my grandfather had attended a Unity church, perhaps the same church where I heard the mysterious music. From her and from movies, I knew that God is invisible and yet God is everywhere and very nearby. God sees everything. This gave me chills down my spine when I thought about it. Since I was not taught how to think about this information, I saw God as a voyeur who, though benign, was lurking about, watching me. Sometime later in my childhood, I pictured Jesus this way in a childish image of him, dressed in his long white robe, poking his head around the corner watching me and shooting me with a pea shooter, like a prankster, when I wasn’t being aware.

Despite my impaired education on the subject, I nevertheless had a spiritual bent from the very earliest days. I was ten years-old when my neighborhood friends banged on my door one day trying to get me to come out to play. Usually the most playful of all the children and always ready to be a wild boy running amuck, that day I was “reading the Bible, leave me alone.”. I’m know my friends were perplexed, amazed and yet respectful of this because, in the 1950s, God was a still alive. It was a fact, I was completely absorbed in the Book. Being just a child, and not having a parent to foster my interest, and being that the Bible is a pretty difficult read at ten, this obsession only lasted a few days. Yet, I still remember it well as a telling incident.

No one in our family prayed. Prayer is ridiculous to those who don’t believe in God, or to those who do believe, but don’t believe that God listens, or to those who only see the negative in the world and find it hard to believe in anything other than what we can see and touch. I never heard mention of God or prayer from my parents, only from my grandmother.  I understood, as a child, that praying is talking to God. I understand it in more depth now, of course. Suffice to say that I only came to prayer when, after a lifetime of being an avowed Buddhist, my life had become a disaster in every way. Immensely unhappy, searching for some kind of spiritual peace, some way of salvaging my life, I came to realize a disturbing and depressing fact: that my life as an atheist had always, and in every way, been a lie at its core. The truth was, I had always believed there is a God. I realized that I had been fighting this belief, running from the god I didn’t believe in, running until He caught me.

This realization may seem like a wonderful thing, and certainly in one way it was, but in another way it was horrifying. The very thing I had denied as false, and feared I would embrace, had now happened. I was a believer and, worse, I was in mortal peril of becoming, God forbid, a Christian! Admitting this was like coming clean, however, and in a single moment, a whole lifetime was swept away. The tension of this dammed up feeling burst, and I tossed and swirled about awash in the current of something I wasn’t sure I wanted. I wasn’t embracing Christianity just yet, I was embracing God. Now I was willing to explore what church might offer. After all, church is about God, the very One I now understood is real. If I was to abandon refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I must find God, the Truth, and the Congregation.

I really have condensed this long exploration in this post, so just let me say that I explored and read about many things and had come to some conclusions based on logic and my own experience. One concept was that of the “still, small voice”, a biblical way of thinking about the voice of God speaking as the Holy Spirit. In this idea, the Holy Spirit speaks to each of us from within. In other words, God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit and the voice we hear is the “still, small voice”. Another way of thinking of it is as intuition. Whether it is the Holy Spirit or just intuition, the voice does speak to each of us, I came to believe, if we listen. I began to listen. To ask, and to listen.

A Guardian Angel

And there were answers. Just one quick example.  One day I went to the library to find a message. No, I didn’t go to find a book, I specifically went to find a message. I wanted to ask and be given an answer. My question was whether I was following the right path, the path of fine art painting. In this spirit, I walked down the aisles of the library running one hand along the books and trying to be “open” to a book that might stop me. I just wanted a word, of encouragement, of advice, something, anything. It didn’t take long. It was the old cliche of “Lord, give me a sign!” My hand came to rest on a book. I hadn’t been looking at the titles, but just walking slowly along brushing my hand along the books. Something made me stop at one book. I turned and pulled it off the shelf.

It was “How to Know God” by Deepak Chopra. Now, I had already read this book recently and Chopra had explained clearly how the universe is created moment by moment, blinking in and out of existence, thousands of times a second, how God maintained this coming into being everywhere and at all times, from the closest breath of existence to the furthest blade of alien grass on some distant world a million light years away. I loved this exlanation. Here was this book in my hand again, almost as if it had pushed itself off the shelf into my awareness. I opened it and flipped the pages. Immediately, something in the book caught my eye. A marker or a card or a piece of something. I caught my breath. I closed the book, not daring to look at the item in the book.

I was looking for a message, and in this book was a something that someone had left as a bookmark. No, I didn’t open the book to the page with the marker. Instead, I closed the  book tight and hurried for the check out, excited, heart pounding. I had asked and now I was about to receive! I checked the book out and ran outside, jumped in the car, and opened the book to the marker.

I opened the book with a great feeling of expectation. Think about it. I had purposely asked for guidance, had walked the aisles of the library specifically to be spoken to, to have something reach out to me and tell me something. Here was the book in my hands. The day was hot. The windows of the car were up. I was sweating. Would it be a disappointment? Would the card be a receipt or a scap? I opened the book to the page where the card lay. It was a card the size of a playing card but not a playing card. I could see right away that it was a card from a deck of divination cards, a deck of angel cards. The angel on the card was Gabrielle , the female version of the Angel Gabriel, the very angel who whispered the miraculous news to Mary. In the early days, Gabriel was female. Here was Gabrielle in purples and blues and with some words for me. The word went something like this: “You are a creative individual and you have a gift to give to the world. Do not worry. I will help you.”

Under the Apple Tree

There is a line in a beautiful hymn that goes “I’m weary with my former toil, Here I will sit and rest a while:Under the shadow I will be, of Jesus Christ the apple tree.” So, there I was at that moment, not a Christian but seeing in Christ God, God in our world. And God had just run me down, tackled me, and threw me to the ground, had spoken to me through his angel, the Holy Spirit, the still, small voice, had written it out on a card and placed it in a book for me. Later, listening to this old hymn about Christ, the idea of laying down my toil, my burden, and resting in His shadow “a while” was irresistible. The “a while” worked for me because it was non-commital. I could try it out. After all, I had a promise that there would be help.

This asking and receiving led me to real prayer. I was scientific about it. From my reading, I understood this much, that you have to give everything over to Christ. Everything. The good and the bad, The worst in you and the best in you. This is the only gift you have to give. Most of all, you must forgive. It’s all about forgiveness. So my first prayer lasted a very, very long time during which I enumerated every horrible thing I could think of that I had done, every bad and thoughtless act, every lie, everything that I would be embarrassed to admit openly. I enumerated every good thing as well. All of these things, the good and the bad, I lay as a gift before God, before Christ, as a sacrifice. It was a sacrifice because these good and bad things were mine, I was attached to them.

Then I forgave everyone who had done me wrong, I forgave every hurtful thing. Some of these things were hard to forgive, for they had affected by whole life and I was still angry. But I was determined to give them a way, to be done with them. They had happened, but they would no longer be mine. So I gave the anger and the hurt to God as my gift. After this lengthy enumeration, I was very emotional from the sheer volume of “gifts” I had given Christ. Then, in tears, I asked for forgiveness, letting myself fully and whole-heartedly believe “Ask and it will be given to you…” (Matthew 7:7 NIV). The forgiveness of others is a key to our own forgiveness and, once forgiven, a great burden is lifted.

My Invisible Friends

So I come to my invisible friends. Not Mickey, Donald, and Howdy Doody. No, they were visible. I could clearly see them. Not the hobo. He was real but lifeless. I come to my invisible friends who are not friends really, but three ways of looking at one friend. And not really a friend, but much more than a friend or a mother or a father.

My invisible friends are God my Father, Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, that still, small voice, the voice of God. To those of you who may find this idea ridiculous, take a moment, try to be open-minded and open-hearted, and consider the possibility: If you can agree that the universe did not create itself from nothing, but was created, then you can agree that the Intelligence that created it might be called God, that God is clearly the ultimate mystery, the creator, the sustainer, the destroyer; that an Intelligence that can create and sustain this vast, immeasurable universe can do anything He/She/It chooses. God is the Father who created us.

But who is this Jesus, the “Son” of God? Another primitive and ridiculous idea? It is really straightforward. Jesus, or Christ, is God in the world. Christ is God in the world, and God comes into the world to grace us with a way to be born anew. The Holy Spirit is God inside the world, inside you and I, inside each and every molecule, guiding, speaking to us, helping us, creating us moment to moment. We speak to God through the Holy Spirit and God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. But, don’t be confused, it’s not like God is three things, as the concept of the Trinity can be misunderstood, but God is One thing, and we limited, simple creatures, experience God this way. God the creator, God in the world, God inside the world.

No matter how you look at it, whether you divide God into three parts or not, in the end, it is only God and his love for us that matters. Everything else is just details, details, details. If one can agree that God exists, and that God created us and is our Father, and that a father loves his children, then all the rest falls into place. It is a wonderful fact that God blesses us with His invisibility so that we may struggle with doubt and faith to rely on, and walk hand in hand with, our invisible Friends.

God Bless †

In Buddhism, the most important practice is mindfulness, a difficult thing for us monkey-minded creatures. In the practice of Buddhist mindfulness, we are to constantly remind ourselves to be aware of the world around us, of our breath, of the birds singing, the grass growing, the cars grumbling by on the frantic streets, and even the taste of the food we eat. Imagine actually being aware of our dinner as we eat it. It’s almost laughable. Oh, yes, we are aware in the first minute or so, then it’s just more of the same and our mind, our internal monkey, leaps from that branch to another branch, and dinner becomes just so much material shoveled in.

Mindfulness. It is the most important thing because in practicing mindfulness we experience our life as it happens. Many books have been written on the subject. Thich Nat Hahn has made a career of pulling us back to the now, and God bless him for it, too. He has written some of the best on the subject.

One day, I was painting at the edge of Plum Village, a little farming community established by this Vietnamese monk in exile. I was painting plein air in the newly harvested hay fields that surround the village in this very beautiful Bordeaus, France, countryside. There before me was a gorgeous rolled hay bale (right), absolutely glittering in the early morning sun. Perhaps because mindfulness emanated from Plum Village, I felt immersed in it, practicing it as I painted and filled with joy. This may be why this was one of my better paintings. Mindful of the privilege I had to be able to do this, mindful of the clear air, the sparkling dry hay, mindful that not far away were Buddhist monks, here in this French farmland. It was glorious. I felt thankful. I wanted to thank someone. Someone.

Finishing the painting well before noon, I packed up my easel and wandered through the hay stubble and dirt clod field over to Plum Village, and into the compound which was bustling with carpentry, chores, and chimes. I still wore my big, wide-brimmed, cream-colored, woven hat, and carried my French easel, painting supply bag, and my wet painting. Dressed like Claude Monet, I’m sure I stood out. After a few minutes, a young woman came up to me. Rachel and I talked a bit, she curious, me too. Rachel, from Brooklyn. I was taking it all in, Rachel, pots and pans clanging in a kitchen, herbs simmering in the morning sun, little roadways leading between makeshift building. Here I am!, I thought, in Plum Village!

“You do know, don’t you”, Rachel said, “that you’re in the woman’s village?”. It’s funny how one can go from feeling wonderful and peaceful to feeling like a Suspicious Character, possibly even a Rapist!. She was fine with me being there but wondered if I would be more interested in seeing the men’s village. I had no idea that Plum Village had gotten so big that it had two locations, the men’s village being a mile or so down the road. She pointed the way and told me that everyone was preparing for the big event, a yearly retreat. There would soon be hundreds of meditators arriving, all of them ready to be mindful.

Just up the country road, up a turn in the road and at the top of a hill with a view half way to Bordeaux itself, was the men’s village. I drove through the gates and looked for a place to park, not far from the main buildings. Again I was mindful of the distant clanging of pots, the friendly sounds of a morning kitchen.

I started pulling out my easel and supplies, and then I saw him. A Vietnamese monk, dressed in grey and black robes and wearing sandals, coming around the corner into the sandy parking lot pushing a wheel barrow. He was bent over the barrow, very intent, pushing it with a fierce focus I can still recall. Then he spotted me. He stopped short, looked at me in surprise and dropped the barrow. Then, in a very comical manner, he looked up into the sky with a puzzled look, then he looked all around, then back up in the sky, and then back at me, eyeing me up and down with a sly smile. “Where you come from?!”, he said. Then we both laughed.

We talked a bit and I think the conversation was as surprising as everything else had been though I can not remember exactly we said. Except one thing. I asked him if I could have permission to paint there. Again, he comically looked around, up and down, then said “You see any guards?”. We laughed at the image of guards posted at the gates of Plum Village, rifles in hand. “Go to kitchen and get something to eat first.”, he said as he took up the wheel barrow and disappeared. I’m in the capital of Mindfulness and forgiveness, I thought, on the very grounds where the Master himself walks in meditation. Of course I can paint here.

Now, as I walked around the grounds, a thin, older monk, dressed all in black, wearing a Nón lá hat, emerged from the woods near an impressive building I took to be the Master’s. Was this the Master himself? I eyed him sideways not wanting to be too obvious. After all, he is Very Famous and probably doesn’t want his mindfulness to be disturbed. There was a bit of a garden and we walked around it on opposite sides, me trying to determine if it was Thich Nat Hahn or just a close ally. He seeming too unfriendly, almost glaring at me. Didn’t look like the friendly Master. Then I could see it didn’t matter. I could see that, compared to him, I was a bit of fluff in the wind.

This man was strongly set into the field he walked upon. The bright sun cast his face in the deep shade of the coolie hat. His eyes regarded me, neither friendly nor unfriendly. I was insubstantial, floating, barely attached to the earth. And I knew that the difference was the state of our minds. He was fully mindful of each second, and so he was fully “there”. On the other hand, I was not there, but in my thoughts, barely tethered to the earth. This man’s mindfulness was a powerful vessel, and I stood in his wake. Now, for that moment, I became fully raw with mindfulness and the reality of life was on me and I was on it.

Satisfied with my experience I left, never having visited the kitchen.

Mindfulness of this sort, or of any sort really, requires great practice, great discipline, a deep will and seriousness. Perhaps that is why I’ve always found it so hard, being by nature rather scattered and unsure, feeling windblown and lightweight. There is nothing to make mindfulness happen in my life but my own will power and my own very weak discipline. I suspect I am not the only one like that.

Those who practice the awareness of God have a bit of an advantage in the practice of mindfulness. Though we approach mindfulness a different way, a possibly more practical way, it is nevertheless mindfulness. The practice is to be ever thankful for God’s world and our life in it. The practice is simple, as simple as “Thank you, God, for this beautiful day.” and a moment later “Thank you, God, for the air I breathe.” and then “Thank you, God, for this sidewalk I walk on, and those who made it.” and “Thank you, God, for this food.”and so on. The practice is, moment to moment, now and every moment, to thank God, in the words of the great hymn, “from whom all blessing flow”.

There were many dark moments in my life. Moments of deep depression, regret, loneliness, guilt. I do believe that most people find themselves in this place of darkness. But perhaps not. I could be wrong; I’ve been wrong before. So let me just speak for myself. There were many dark moments in my life, moments of deep darkness and loneliness.

For now, I won’t go into the long and torturous path I took. Suffice to say,  all along this road I was always looking for something. Looking into the deep woods that lined the road, or looking into the sky above between the clawing branches, looking in books along the way, looking into they eyes of lovers, into the reflections in midnight pools and in the sparkling sunlight that glinted off the edge of the hill ahead. Always looking and always sorry for the things I’d done to ease my dis-ease. For it truly was a disease, this sadness, this longing, this grasping. Embarrassing too, this stereotypical behavior that told the world I was a lost soul and an idiot.

A life-long Buddhist, I nevertheless longed for the forgiveness of God, of Christ, and yet, as a life-long Buddhist, I didn’t believe in God. Or did I? I do remember things from my childhood. That time when I was 10 and the children were knocking at the door asking me to come out to play. No, I couldn’t; I was reading the Bible. Or that time I was in a little church all alone and a beam of light touched me and music swelled and I called out to my grandfather, who was outside doing some carpentry on the church, “Where’s that music coming from?!”. “What music?”, his reply. Or dozens of other times.

And so, it was Christmas, and I had been going to church with my girlfriend, exploring the possibilities of Christ. Was this for me? I had always thought that becoming a Christian would be the weirdest thing that could happen to me. Not afraid of new ideas, I was exploring this idea, that Christ was worth looking into.

I heard a beautiful Christmas carol that year called “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” (see performance). The song talks about becoming weary of the world and especially one’s struggles in it. Of how we strive in the world and find so little satisfaction and how, in the song, Christ is the fruit and the beauty. But these words especially spoke to me: “I’m weary with my former toil, Here I will sit and rest awhile: Under the shadow I will be, Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.” ( read full lyrics). “Here I will sit and rest awhile…”.

For a man weary of his former toil, these words were almost magical. I could see myself in this safe place, cared for, loved, sitting bathed in a peaceful light. The entire picture was so compelling for me that I think that is the moment that I realized that my worst fear might one day happen, I might become a Christian. But for now, I need only sit under the tree.

I had already learned one thing in my reading, one concept, prior to hearing these words, and that was the notion of giving it all to Christ. But what can we possibly give Christ, if he does exist? It goes like this, give him what you have. What do you have? You have your sorrow, your regret, your guilt, and not just that, you have your talent, your smile, your hopes and dreams. Just give all of it to Christ. That is your offering and, for now just trust me, Christ can take whatever you give.

What’s the big deal? So what if you do this? Well, if you give your sorrow away, give your regrets away, give your guilt away, then you don’t carry them anymore, do you? Oh, but can you do this? Can you give these things away? Or are they part of who you are? Are you clinging to your guilt or regrets as much as you cling to food and love? I think yes. But let me only speak for myself; yes, these things I clung to. They defined me. And they made me miserable, but without them, who was I?

So…I kneeled down one day, right there in the privacy of my little apartment, in front of a makeshift altar, and I gave it all away, gave all of it, every ugly thing, and every beautiful thing, to Christ, as an offering. It was a long list, very long. I was determined to get it all out and the more I talked the more I remembered, until there was nothing more and, in any case, my tears would allow no more words to come out.

That was the day I gave it up, gave it all away, and sat down to rest awhile under Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.

It is a good thing when people do good things for others. When asked why they do it, many might say “because it’s a nice thing to do” or “I’m a nice person”. This is a flimsy reason for doing anything and, worst of all, it completely relies on a person’s willingness to do a “nice” thing. In other words, if I don’t feel like being nice today then I’m not. If I do feel like being nice and I am “nice” then hurray for me, I’m a nice person.

But you see the problem. All of this niceness relies on one’s will and one’s mood at any given moment, rather than emerging from reason. Nice-ness, being nice, is unreasonable, an irrational whim of the human heart. So, what seems nice is not nice, it’s a convenience, a self-congratulatory stroking of one’s own ego. Niceness does not come from any universal value. It is entirely ego-based. Egotistical pandering.

Instead of talking about “being nice”, I want to change the argument to “doing a good turn” for a moment, just for a different way of talking about this. Suppose that doing a good turn was not being nice in the sense described above. Suppose that doing a good turn was a requirement, a law, or a command, something expected of one.

What happens when we think of it this way? Suddenly, we are not doing a good turn or being nice based on our mood, our ethic, our state of mind, or some general sense that “it’s nice to be nice”.  Suddenly, our good turn ceases to arise from the ego and is nothing to be congratulated for.

Jesus asked his followers over and over (John 21:17) “Do you love me?” and when they affirmed their love he said “Feed my sheep.” This is a command, not a request. So, being nice is not nice, it’s egotistical and one does it for the wrong reason. Christ tells us to take care of one another, and Buddha doesn’t expect a pat on the back when He does a good turn. It’s what’s required. Period. Nothing nice about it.

* Here’s more on this subject from the NIV translation of Matthew 6: “

Giving to the Needy

1“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

5“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. “

There are two wells in this story. “….Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.    ⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”"

The dissolute son finds himself far away from his home and his father, debased, degraded, demoralized and defeated. At home in the mud pit of his own doing and yet not at home. A vague memory stirs. Home fires burning somewhere far away.  He pulls himself out and starts home.

His father, seeing him coming from afar, drops what he is doing and runs to his son and welcomes him back, treating him to all the good things he had walked away from. Of course, the father in the story is the Father. This is the beauty and the sweet message of this story, that though the son strayed so far as soon as he headed home his father ran, did not walk but ran, to meet him. For every turn we make toward our Father, He turns even faster, ready to meet us and take us back.