Musings

Beyond Translation

"Allahu akbar!" thundered the voices of 150 men, standing in rows under the dome of the Masjid Omar mosque across the street from the University of Southern California.  The imam continued his high, wailing, soulful, minor-keyed incantation of the Friday prayer.  Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, African-Americans, Ethiopians, Nigerians, Turks, Saudis, Indonesians, Central Asians, and more nations and ethnic groups were represented.  Behind where I and the USC students sat in the visitors' area was a line behind which about 50 women sat on the vast carpet inside the mosque, facing, like the men, toward Mecca.  The men knelt and lowered their hands and heads to the carpet.  They rose for another part of the prayer, then dropped to their knees and foreheads again.

I was with students as part of a new program we started at our Office of Religious Life - "Souljourn".  Every weekend we visit different houses of worship in the area around campus.  We started last weekend with a visit to the Japanese Buddhist temple a few blocks from campus.  This Sunday, we'll visit the big and famous First African Methodist Episcopal Church a mile from campus.  We'll be visiting Sikh and Hindu temples, a 7th Day Adventist Church, an Ethiopian Orthodox congregation, and many others.

The men in front of us represented not only a United Nations at prayer, but also a sampling of socioeconomics.  A man in a dirty tee-shirt, apparently a construction worker, was holding his hands in front of him in supplication next to a man in a tailored business suit.  An apparently mentally-ill man was trying to maintain prayerful concentration at the back of the crowd, shifting from one foot to the other.  A big young black man with a turned-around baseball cap and "gangsta"-style clothes was praying near a small, old, grey-bearded black man with a knitted white skullcap.  All of them - rich, poor, of every shape, size, and complexion - joined in the ritual of humility before Allah.

"Allahu Akbar! (God is great!)"  the voices thundered again, and I felt a rush of emotion sweep through me.  I was moved to tears by the intention and the solidarity of the people in the mosque, joined in one voice with the Divine beyond their egos, communing with the holy Self beyond their separate selves.  For a moment, I, too, had an out-of-ego experience with them in prayer.

Last week, at our USC Interfaith Council, some of our Muslim student members talked about their relationship with the Koran.  One of them, an Iranian graduate student, said that whenever she loses something, like a book or a set of keys, she repeats the word "Ya'Seen" 40 times.  "Ya'Seen" is the opening word of the Sura Ya'Seen in the Koran.  She explained that the word "Ya'Seen" has no known meaning.  Not only is it not translatable into English, it has no known meaning in Arabic.  She said there are a few other words like it in the Koran, which also have no known meaning.  They are purported to have deep and powerful meaning, but not the kind that can be expressed in words or definitions or descriptions.  An unknown word can help you find what you have left in an unknown place.  

So it was for me at the mosque.  All but a few of the Arabic words chanted in the prayer were unknown to me.  Yet those words, and the people who uttered them, empowered me to rediscover the presence of God that is lost to me so much of the time.  "Allahu Akbar!"

 

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PLURALISM SUNDAY happens on May 3, 2009 - a worldwide celebration of the idea that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us - sign up your church to participate now!  See: www.pluralismsunday.org for details --

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Red Line Epiphany

Leaning with one arm wrapped around a pole, I held a copy of Antonio Machado’s poetry in Spanish in one hand, and a Spanish-English dictionary in the other.  Machado’s “Proverbios y Cantares a Jose Ortega y Gassett” are dense, rich, philosophical fragments.  One piece burst within me, like a dash of spice flavoring a whole dish:

“Buena es el agua y la sed;
buena es la sombra y el sol;
la miel de flor de romero,
la miel de campo sin flor.”

“Good is water and thirst;
good is shade and sunlight;
the honey of rosemary flowers,
the honey of a land without flowers.”

“La miel de campo sin flor….”  That is poetry.  The honey of a land without flowers.  Subtle honey carried by a subtle bee, delivered from an early 20th century poet of Spain across time and space and into my heart as I stood on a subway in Los Angeles in 2008.  “Buena es el agua y la sed….”  The thirst for God is God.  I tasted at least some of the meaning concentrated in that bit of poetry, and it brought me bliss I hadn’t expected on my evening commute.

But there was yet more satori in store as I continued reading:

“Los ojos por que suspires,
sabelo bien,
los ojos en que te miras
son ojos porque te ven.”

“The eyes for which you long,
understand well,
the eyes in which you look
are eyes because they see you.”

My inner eyes gazed into their reflection and honored their other-ness.  Machado snapped me out of my self-absorption, reminded me that each person packed into that subway car was somebody else.  Not what I thought of them, not how I saw them, not who I believed them to be.

“Ensena el Cristo: a tu proximo
amaras como a ti mismo,
mas nunca olvides que es otro.”

“The Christ teaches you to love
your neighbor as yourself,
but never forget he is an other.”

Ecstasy – “ex – stasis” – out of state – out of my state of glib preoccupation with my self-image, my schedules, my definitions of other things and of other people.  Out of my, me, and mine, I was liberated by Machado’s terse verse.  A poetic epiphany on the Red Line – how could I have expected it?

 

NEXT BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS book tour events with Jim Burklo:

Sat Oct 25 - 9-3 - Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Orinda, CA - seminar on MINISTRY AS CARING WITHOUT AN AGENDA- selling/signing books as part of the event

Sun Oct 26- 10:30 am - preaching/book signing re: BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS at Fairfax Community Church, 2398 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Fairfax, CA

Thurs Oct 30, 7-8:30 pm - PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS - panel discussion with Jim Burklo - Doheny Intellectual Commons, 2nd floor, Doheny Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (free)

Inner State Five

Dry grass drapes the folded hills
Glowing gold in setting sun
It matters not how far it is to home
Here I am and here I do belong

Now leaves behind an asphalt line
That I pay no mind as I grip the wheel
A minute ago as gone as eons past
An hour ahead blends into a billion years
Roads fool me only when I forget
That my journey can't be repeated

Into the infinity of passing orchard rows
There's always another half way in between
I hear the eternity of the humming tires
Time like a tumbleweed caught in barbed wires

My moving eyes shape-shift the land
Now a mountain casts its cloak
Slowly over a canyon's cleavage
On turning earth no alluring view remains

Darkness envelops an oilfield to the west
Brightened in isolation its few lights shine
Out of reach of all but imagination
That lets me arrive at inner state five
Where on the way is the destination

NEXT BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS book tour events:

Sat Oct 25 - 9-3 - Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Orinda, CA - seminar on MINISTRY AS CARING WITHOUT AN AGENDA- selling/signing books as part of the event

Sun Oct 26- 10:30 am - preaching/book signing re: BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS at Fairfax Community Church, 2398 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Fairfax, CA

You Made It!

Early one morning as I walked along the dirt road atop Griffith Park, I came upon a time-worn wooden fence post with a small wooden signboard attached.  Beyond it were the big buildings of Hollywood, and of Los Angeles beyond it, glowing in the dawn light.  On the weathered little signboard was a note, written with a felt pen, that said "You made it!" followed by a smiley-face. 

Something about those words claimed my attention.  I stared at the sign for a while, contemplating its meaning.  Who knows who wrote it, or why?  Maybe someone went on a run to see how fast they could get up to the ridge, and then celebrated the accomplishment with the note on the pole.  Or celebrated the accomplishment of someone else. 

Or perhaps it was a prayer, acknowledging "You" as the maker of all that lay around and below the fence post.  "I" certainly didn't make it... not I, nor any one individual who uses that personal pronoun.  It was arresting to consider just how many human beings, and how much human effort, it took to make what lay at the foot of those hills. Anyone looking for a miracle wouldn't need to go further than that viewpoint, considering the marvel of cooperation, hard work, and skill required of millions of people, other than me and my puny contribution, to build this vast city.

Nor would a person need to look any further than the oak trees, chaparral, rocks, and birds of Griffith Park in order to remember that a "You" other than "I" was the maker.  Wearing the edges from the rocks, shaping the draping forms of the hills, coaxing life up from the rugged landscape, were beings and forces beyond me.

That little note delivered me into humility.  For a blessed moment, I sensed my place in the universe.  It was calming, relaxing, to drop my pretense about the scale of my role in the world.  And soothing to feel the embrace of the divine "You" to whom that note might have been addressed.

"You made it!"

Indeed, and amen.

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BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS seminars/book talks/signing events with Jim Burklo:

Tuesday, 9/23, 4:30 pm:  Doheny Library, Intellectual Commons, 2nd floor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles - free and open to all

Saturday, 9/27, 10-2: BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS Seminar at Irvine United Church of Christ, Irvine CA - www.iucc.org/calendar.html for info -

Sunday, 9/28, 8:45 and 10:45 - BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS - sermons in worship by Jim Burklo at Irvine United Church of Christ

Sunday, 10/5, Noon:  BOOK TALK/SIGNING at Christ Church Episcopal, 70 Santa Rosa Ave, Sausalito, CA

Saturday, 10/25, 9:30 am:  "Season of Care" Seminar at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Orinda, CA - www.lopc.org

Sunday Morning Hike, Hollywood Hills

Climbing high in first day dawn
Mountains glow in sun gone round;
Day-off city quiet keeps
Under foggy blankets sleeps;
Breathing I become aware
Of dewy sagebrush-scented air.

As I walk around the bend
Round this day is come again;
I face the sun this Sunday morn
And see that earth again is born;
And see creation start anew;
Another chance to dream and do.

My Little God

One of my first tasks in my new job as Associate Dean of Religious Life at USC has been to read prayers.

The university's buildings are mostly rather drab brick structures, with some lovely exceptions.  One of those is the old Town and Gown building, with its decorative stonework and graceful interiors. Attached to Town and Gown is The Little Chapel of Silence.  For decades, this tiny chapel has been open all day and into the evening as a place where anyone can sit for a while on one of the pews and quietly pray or meditate.  On the unadorned altar is a shoebox with a slot in it, with pieces of paper and pens next to it.  Students, staff, and visitors write their prayers, in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and other languages, and put them into the box.  No indication is made about what will become of the prayers.  There they sit until someone from our Office of Religious Life removes them; until now, there has been no particular attention paid to them.

I was given about six months' worth of the prayer slips, in my first week on the job.  I started to read them, and was overwhelmed by the prayers.  I found myself moved nearly to tears by the soulful expressions on these little pieces of paper.  Longings for love. Broken hearts.  Family crises.  Health challenges.  Deaths and divorces.  Gratitude.  Awe for the divine mystery.  After reading dozens of these prayers, I resolved to create a student group to read and meditate on them regularly, and let the writers of these prayers know that others will be sharing their intentions.

Several of the prayers in Spanish began with this address to God:  "Diosito mio...."  I remembered hearing this phrase in hispanic Protestant churches in the past.  Literally it means "my little God".  It's the diminutive form used so often in Spanish to address someone or to describe something dear. 

It might seem a heresy to address God as "little" and as "mine".  It might seem like an attempt to shrink ineffable, transcendent divinity down to something that can be kept in a teacup cabinet.  Yet the sincere prayers directed to "Diosito mio" belie that suggestion.  My dear little God, to those who thusly start their prayers, is, to them, not a God they made small, but the God who became small and dear for them.

I'm pretty sure that this phrase, "Diosito mio", was not developed by a theologian.  I'm pretty sure that the Catholic church didn't invent it.  I would venture the guess that this phrase comes from the depths of the human soul.  It comes from the transpersonal realm of the spirit which we all share, which relates to the divine mystery in a very human way.  It is natural for us to relate to the Source and Center of the cosmos as if it were a beloved, and loving, person.  The gospel myth of Christianity reflects this reality of the soul: Jesus is God in human form: vulnerable and mortal, little and dear.

So while it might seem to be a "pathetic fallacy", which we were warned to avoid in English class, "Diosito mio" reveals something deep and basic about our innate spirituality.  To be sure, it's a paradox to suggest that the essence of the cosmos is "little and dear".  But maybe it's a paradox with which we can live, and let live, for the sake of bringing us closer to the heart of ultimate reality.

 

The Clay Bird: a parable

One day, long ago, in a place far away, a boy named Yeshua went out to play.   He ran to the center of the town to see if he could join some other boys in a game.

“You’re too little to throw rocks with us,” said the boys who aimed stones at the broken urns in the garbage ravine at the edge of town.  “Go away!”

Just when Yeshua was born, the king killed all the baby boys in Israel.  Fortune-tellers from the East had told Herod that one of them would grow up to take over his throne.  Yeshua’s family had escaped to Egypt with Yeshua during that time, returning only after terrible king Herod was dead.  So now, as Yeshua ran through the narrow, dusty streets of Nazareth, the people of the town stared at him in silence.

“You’re too young to roll hoops with us,” said the boys he met in front of the potter’s workshop.  “Go away!”

The potter, his hands spattered with wet clay, saw tears running down Yeshua’s cheeks.  “I’m sorry they were so mean to you, Yeshua,” said Ezra.  “You must be lonely.  You are the only boy in town who is your age.  But remember this, when people reject you or hurt you.  God made you out of a lump of clay and breathed life into you.  That life is forever, and nobody can take it away from you, even if they break your clay.  Always remember who you are: the breath of God that is eternal. Here, sit next to me.  I’ll give you some clay and you can make yourself a friend out of it.”

Yeshua wiped the tears from his eyes, and quietly sat down on the ground with the lump of clay.  He looked at it for a while.  He thought about what Ezra had said. 

Dipping his hand in a basin of water to keep the clay wet, as Ezra had taught him, he slowly, carefully worked. 

“Here, Ezra,” said Yeshua.  “Do you like it?”

“Oh! What a beautiful bird!  Is this your new friend?  What beautiful feathers you have marked into the clay!  And what is this hole in his beak?”  asked Ezra.

“That’s so he can breathe,” said Yeshua.  “So he can be alive.”

Ezra laughed.  “That’s wonderful!  Now you wash up and go home, and come back tomorrow.  I’m going to fire your bird in the oven to make it hard.  Tomorrow you can pick it up and take it with you!”

Yeshua thanked him and walked home, feeling happy inside.

The next day, he went to the shop of Ezra the potter.  The bird was on a rough wooden plank near the potting wheel.  It was hard and smooth and beautiful.  “Do you like it?” asked Ezra.

Yeshua smiled as he stroked it and held it close to his chest.  “Oh yes, I like it!” he said, looking into Ezra’s eyes with grateful joy.

And then Yeshua put his lips around the beak of the clay bird.  “You’re going to make it breathe?” Ezra laughed.  Yeshua nodded and blew into the clay bird, and it made a whistling sound.

Ezra’s jaw dropped as he saw the tail of the bird twitch once, then twice. Where marks on clay once had been, real feathers spread out and fluttered.  Yeshua held the bird in his hand as it came to life, its clay eyes giving way to bright, glistening ones; its beak moving as it sang.  Ezra backed up, terrified.  “No, no, it can’t be!” he muttered.

The bird flew up and around Yeshua’s head a few times, singing beautifully, and then returned to perch on his hand.  “Be free,” said Yeshua.  “And always remember who you are!”  The bird rose up and circled his head over and over, chirping wildly, and then flew away.

Ezra was shaking with fear as Yeshua came up to him and reached for his hand. “Don’t be afraid!” he said.  “Thank you, Ezra.  You made me feel better yesterday.  You reminded me of who I really am.  And you helped me find a friend!”  Ezra blubbered a response as Yeshua ran down the twisting street.

When Yeshua was a young man, he went to the Jordan River to be baptized.  His cousin, John, did a ceremony of washing people clean of their mistakes and failures, so they could feel closer to God.  Yeshua wanted to be as close to God as he possibly could get.

John was surprised when he saw his cousin standing in the line by the river, waiting to be baptized.  John wondered if Yeshua had ever made a mistake or had any failures.  Why would he need to be washed clean?  But Yeshua had his reasons, and wanted John to do the ceremony.  And as soon as John poured the water over Yeshua’s head, standing in the middle of the river, the bird appeared over them. Yeshua looked up and saw it.  “My friend!  You’ve returned!”  And the bird circled his head, over and over, chirping excitedly.  Yeshua put out his hand and the bird landed on it.  The bird chirped, and Yeshua spoke to it in return.  As their conversation continued, John fell on his knees in the river, and as the water rushed around him, he prayed that he could be as close to God as was his cousin Yeshua.

After a while, as the people waiting by the river stared in amazement, Yeshua said goodbye to the bird and it flew out of his hand. 

The bird had told him to go to the desert and wait.  So that’s what Yeshua did.  Above the river was a desolate land of dry-washes and rocky canyons.  Into one of the canyons Yeshua walked, and up the side of a ridge he climbed, until he found a flat spot with a view of the valley below.   And there he sat.

In the middle of the day, he sweated in the hot sun.  In the middle of the night, he shivered in the cold wind.  He was hungry and thirsty.  Over and over and over again, a question repeated itself in his mind:  “Who am I?”

Strange, frightening dreams came to him. Or were they real?  One night, a voice whispered to him:  “I know who you are!  You’re a sorcerer.  You can make a clay bird fly.  So you can make these stones into bread!  Prove me right!  You can do it!”  Yeshua stared at the rocks around him, and in his hunger he wanted more than anything to turn them into loaves of bread.  “No!” he yelled aloud into the desert emptiness, his voice echoing.  “No!  I am not a sorcerer! I’m here for another reason!”

“You are an all-powerful king,” whispered the voice on another night.  “Look out over the valley, and the lands beyond.  It’s all yours!  I know who you are.  The only boy who survived King Herod’s murders!  You are the king of Israel!  You have the power of life and death over all the people of this land.”  Yeshua trembled, tempted to believe it.  “No! No!  I am not the new King Herod!”

A week later, the voice whispered again, even more insistently:  “You are the all-mighty one!  Jump down into the canyon below you.  You’ll land on your feet! Prove me right! You’re a superhero!”  And Yeshua stared down into the deep, stony canyon, and shrieked “No!  No!  I have a higher purpose than working wonders!”

And after forty days and forty nights, the bird appeared.  It fluttered over his head, trying to get his attention.  He was so exhausted, body and soul, that he didn’t notice it at first.  He put out his hand and instead of landing on it, the bird dropped a date into it.  The bird flew down to the palm grove in the valley far below, and brought back another one for Yeshua, and kept delivering dates to him until he was strong enough to stand up.  “Thank you!” he cried out to the bird when it had brought him the last date. “Now I know who I am.” 

Yeshua walked back over the mountains to the populated side of the country. He became a rabbi and wandered from town to town, teaching and healing.  One day, he led a large group of people to a hillside and gave them lessons about how to get closer to God and kinder to each other.  Suddenly the bird flew to him, circled his head over and over, chirping loudly.  The crowd was amazed.  He reached into his pouch and pulled out some crumbs of bread and put them in on his palm and offered them to the bird, which landed on his hand and ate them.   “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life!”  He lifted up his hand and the bird flew away.

As the people were leaving, Yeshua saw that Ezra was in the crowd.  They embraced.  “I’ve never forgotten your kindness to me that day when I was a little boy,” said Yeshua.  “You were there to help me when I needed a friend.” 

“The clay bird visited you today, didn’t it?” said Ezra.  “I recognized it.   I hope the bird reminds you of who you really are.”

“It does, dear Ezra, it does!” said Yeshua, embracing him again.

Yeshua had many followers who wanted to join him in being close to God and being compassionate to each other.  But others were jealous of his fame.  They were afraid he might become too powerful and deprive them of their wealth and influence.  So they decided to kill him.  They bribed one of his friends to betray him, and they caught him and took him away to be beaten and then crucified.

Ezra was there, standing behind the crowds that watched what was happening to Yeshua, hoping and praying that somehow his life could be spared.  When he looked toward the cross, he saw the  the bird flying frantically around Yeshua, chirping.  Ezra saw that it flew to a date tree and brought fruit for Yeshua, who didn’t have the strength to eat it.   But when Yeshua saw his friend, the bird, he remembered again who he was.  He got up just enough strength to utter these words:  “Forgive them!”

After the soldiers took Yeshua down and carried him away from the cross, and the crowds walked away, Ezra went up to the cross to see if the bird was still there.  There was only silence.  No fluttering of wings, no singing.  But there, at the bottom of the cross, was the clay bird that Yeshua had made so many years before. 

Ezra picked it up, whispered a prayer, and then blew into its beak.  It made a whistling sound.  He held it out in hope that it would come alive and fly away, but there it remained, smooth and hard, in the palm of his hand.

Fifty-three days later, Yeshua’s friends held a secret meeting in Jerusalem, and Ezra attended, carrying the clay bird with him.  The room was packed with people who were talking all at once.  Some were crying, some were arguing.  “Who are we, now that Yeshua is gone?”  The noise got louder until Ezra elbowed his way to the middle of the room and lifted the clay bird to his lips and blew into its beak.  The loud whistle brought the whole crowd to silence.  Ezra blew into the clay bird again, and again, and again.

And then, suddenly, a flock of birds flew into the room, swirling around Ezra as he blew into the clay bird.  Everyone watched in amazement as the flapping of the birds’ wings stirred the air like wind.

And when Ezra stopped blowing, the birds flew out the windows and away.

Ezra told the story of how Yeshua had made the clay bird come alive.  He told them how he found the clay bird at the foot of the cross.  And when he was finished, he said, “Now you know who you are.  You are clay birds that Yeshua has brought to new life.  You are the friends he needed, the friends he created.  So go, be free, serve each other and serve everyone you meet, and stay as close to God as you can!”

NOTE: This story is based on myths about Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) that appear in the Bible and in other traditions.  The Koran (Surahs 3 and 5) says that Jesus (Isa) made a clay bird and then brought it to life.  The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical early Christian document, says that, at age 5, Jesus made twelve sparrows out of clay, clapped his hands, and they flew away.  In Matthew 3, a dove alighted on Jesus when he was baptized by John in the Jordan, and in Matthew 4, “angels came and waited on him (Jesus)” at the end of his forty day temptation in the wilderness.  Matthew 6 includes the part of Jesus’ sermon on the Mount about looking at the birds of the air.  In Acts 2, the followers of Jesus gathered for the celebration of Pentecost after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” 


 

A Tree Story

Lately, I’ve been taking a long, steep walk on the Cypress Trail above Mill Valley, almost every day.  I’m unemployed, and I savor the time this passage in my life has afforded me to enjoy the great outdoors that surround us in Marin County.   Between stints on the phone and computer to find a job, I’m enjoying nature like never before.   I’m running out of money, but getting healthier and stronger in the process.  I need to put a new hole in my belt to cinch up my hiking shorts against my shrinking waistline.

Every day, I stop along my hike to gaze at a strange sight.  A madrone tree is sawing down a redwood tree, slowly but surely. 

Here in northern California, there is a succession of forest life.  After wildfires scorch the mountainsides, the first to emerge from the ashes are wildflowers, then chaparral bushes, then oaks, bay trees, and madrones, and then the redwoods.  Our mature forests are stands of soaring trees surrounded by the few shrubs that can live on shadowed light and resist the toxic leachate from the fallen redwood needles. 

At this particular spot on the trail, this succession process is displayed in a dramatic fashion.  A mature, sinewy madrone tree grows next to a middle-aged redwood.  The madrone, angling out to reach for the sun, leaned into the redwood as both trees grew.  The madrone is shorter, but its wood is harder.  A thick branch of the madrone is cutting into the redwood trunk, squeaking and creating a puff of fine sawdust with each breath of the wind.  The redwood has formed blisters on either side of the deepening wound in its trunk. The rest of the madrone is thriving, but its dead lower branch has cut the living redwood in half. 

Which tree will prevail in this struggle?  Will the madrone hold the succession process at bay by cutting down the redwood?  Or will the redwood tree grow upwards soon enough to snap off the dead madrone branch that is cutting it apart?  If that happens, perhaps the redwood will become a huge tree that eclipses the sunlight, causing its neighboring nemesis to wither.

Every day as I walk by these trees locked in mortal struggle, I stand and wait for a puff of wind to move them, yielding a groaning, grinding sound as the madrone digs ever so slightly deeper into the heart of the redwood.

From the first time I saw these trees, I wondered what sermon I would find in them.  Each day, as I passed by, I developed further theological interpretations.  And personal ones, as well.  Did the two trees represent my grinding frustration in job-seeking, as I apply for dozens of positions and wait for months for answers that never come, or often disappoint?  Did the madrone symbolize the way that patience and persistence can prevail?  Did the intersection of the madrone branch and the redwood trunk represent the cross, life sacrificed for the sake of opening space for new life to grow?  Did the redwood represent the sin of pride, destroying itself with its own urge to tower over all others?

Finally, a few days ago, as I stared at the spectacle once again, I questioned all these potential meanings.  Sure, each of them could be the source of insight that could be useful to me or others.  But I realized that perhaps I don't need these trees to be about something else.  Perhaps they just are. 

I meditated on my own powerful urge to find meaning.  As life follows a progression in the forest, so consciousness seems to follow a trend toward complexity.  To be sure, that trend can lead to dead-ends.  It can take a zig-zag course of two steps forward, one step back, two steps sideways, one step ahead.  The evolution of human consciousness has led us to seek for meaning.  This urge leads us to remarkable technical and scientific achievements, wonderful cultural accomplishments.  It also can lead us into folly. 

Religion can be one of those follies when we confuse the leap that is faith with certitude in the incredible.  We are so eager to find meaning in the difficult moments of our lives that we are tempted to suspend common sense and scientific analysis, and embrace beliefs that seem to make sense of it all.  When this life is too much to bear, we are tempted to account for it through rewards in an afterlife.  When good things happen to bad people, and vice-versa, we are tempted to find meaning in a supernatural realm where justice ultimately will be done.  When I see two trees grinding against each other in the forest, I would rather find a positive, uplifting meaning in what I behold.

But religion has another function, and that is to let go of meanings altogether.  Let go of explanations, and let ourselves, and all that surrounds us, simply be.   Faith finally inspired me to stand in front of the struggling trees and just breathe whatever mystery was pushing them together.  It allowed me to not-know what it meant.  Faith allowed the trees to be whatever they needed to be, on their own terms, not mine.  It allowed me the peace and equanimity of simply being.

Several years ago, my friend Jim Garrison, an artist, retired high school teacher, and lay teacher of meditation, taught me to recite Psalm 46:10 in a special way.  I silently repeated it as I stood in front of the trees:

“Be still and know that I am God.”
“Be still and know that I am.”
“Be still and know.”
“Be still.”
“Be.”

Island Prayer

Island Prayer

I scan for your island horizon
I follow the fish in your sea
I swim past the stones in your tidepool
And slide on the sand of your beach

I study your tracks in the ocean
I’m guided by stars in your sky
I aim myself toward your volcano
And follow your birds as they fly

I slip on the paths in your jungle
And slosh through your tumbling creeks
In each step of my seeking I find you
As I climb up the spines of your peaks….

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PS: Have a look at my updated website, OPENCHRISTIANITY.COM - especially the new pages for KIDSOUL - progressive, pluralistic, interfaith resources for families with kids.  I'd love to get your suggestions re: resources, programs, materials, and curricula for families that want to raise their children in a spiritual but not necessarily traditionally religious manner. Also, I'd love ideas and feedback from you for my whole openchristianity.com site.  By the way, my first book, OPEN CHRISTIANITY, is back in print - you can get it at this specific site: Open Christianity at Amazon.com (the version now in print is from St Johann Press)

misticism

  among shadows of tall trees
  hazy morning sunshine

  from redwood branches
  attracted by the sodden earth
  jewels drip off tips

  the boiling cloud i exhale
  floats sun-soaked
  beyond me