Musings

The Ten Amendments

 

The ten commandments endure as a foundation for morality, after thousands of years.  But just like the American Constitution, from time to time we need to add amendments to them.  The ten commandments are a short list, and that is a very good thing.  They mostly tell us what not to do, giving us the freedom to do most everything else. 

But not everything else is so wonderful.  In every time, in every life, we need to make additional lists for spiritual and moral guidance.  Things we need to do, or to avoid, to amend our lives and mend our relationships. 

Here I offer a list of such amendments.  They are my own ethical “marching orders”:
 
1.  Thou shalt be amazed by the good in people.
2.  Thou shalt avoid judgment of others.
3.  Thou shalt not injure others with sarcasm.
4.  Thou shalt not jump to conclusions.
5.  Thou shalt attend to details in serving others.
6.  Thou shalt make realistic promises and keep them.
7.  Thou shalt have clear priorities for thy time and attention, for thy body, mind, and heart, and thou shalt act on these priorities.
8.  Thou shalt wait 24 hours before doing or saying anything negative about another person.
9.  Thou shalt not say “yes” when thou meanest “no”.
10.  Thou shalt ask before acting.

Each one of these amendments reflects my own failure to follow it!  The list reflects the ways my life needs to change for the better, in outward actions and inward intentions....

What's your list of "ten amendments"?

 

(And here's a list!  from "musings" reader and friend, Yanna McLaughlin:)

 1.Thou shalt honor and protect all of god's creations (nature and all living beings), air, water and soil

2. Thou shalt preserve the earth's crust (don't extract anything from below)

3. Thou shalt empower and share with those less fortunate than yourself

 

4. Thou shalt seek to partcipate in advancing your community's wellbeing

 

5. Thou shalt work with nature (and not against it)

 

6. Thou shalt teach everyone the things you know that help protect our and our children's futures

 

7. Thou shalt protect the climate and the world's ecosystems

 

8. Thou shalt believe in the good of people 

 

9. Thou shalt only borrow/take/own what you need for as long as you need it and ensure it keeps having a purpose when you are done with it

 

10. Thou shalt love life and share gratitude every day

 

 

(And another!  from my friend and "musings" reader, Susan Kirsch:)

 

My ten Amendments for healthy living, taken from American folk wisdom and inspired by Jim Burklo:

1. Thou shalt take time to smell the roses.  
2. Thou shalt not sweat the small thing—and from the eternal perspective, it’s all small things.  
3. Thou shalt treat others like you want to be treated.  
4. Thou shalt be willing to initiate what you want in your life, relationships, careers, all things.  
5. Thou shalt not put off ‘til tomorrow what you can start today.  
6. Thou shalt be willing to make mistakes, try again, and keep risking and learning.  
7. Thou shalt be patient with yourself as you are patient with others.  
8. Thou shalt never let a moment for love pass with the deception “there’s not enough time.”  
9. Thou shalt celebrate lifetime courage to take baby steps.  
10. Thou shalt affirm the good and be unattached to the outcomes.  

 

 

 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

 

 

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

Respect the Vote, Respect the Voters

 

 

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  (Paul, Ephesians 6:12)

Since November 3, I’ve been hiking daily in the mountains that surround us here in Ojai.  The strata on the faces of the cliffs are testaments to geological time that puts the present moment into much-needed perspective.  Gazing at those heights takes my election-induced breathlessness away. 

For all the exhaling in relief, we’re still facing a very serious threat.  The Republican Party has become an immediate danger to the survival of democracy.  It is pandering dangerously to Trump’s baseless claim that voting fraud is stealing the election from him.  The Republican governor of Florida is urging swing states to violate the will of the people and appoint electors that will vote for Trump.  The Republican candidates for Senate in Georgia are demanding that the election officials in that state should resign due to failure to correct nonexistent election irregularities.  The Republican Party has convinced a majority of its voters that outlandish vote-rigging conspiracy theories are true.

I am still hopeful that when push comes to shove, cooler heads among the Republicans will stop the current drift toward a constitutional crisis.  I sense that enough of them are weary of Trump’s antics to put on the brakes and demand that the will of the people prevails.  But while the majority of Americans are celebrating Biden’s clear victory, our democracy is in acute peril.  We must prepare to act, if and when the Trumpers try to subvert the vote.  (Join your local Indivisible chapter to be ready to be mobilized.) 

A peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden will not eliminate the threat of Trumpism once and for all.  A current Atlantic Monthly article outlines the long-term danger that we face.  The next would-be autocrat won’t be as incompetent as Donald Trump.  He or she will learn from Trump’s spectacular mistakes, and can take full advantage of the loopholes in the Constitution to sabotage the will of the people.

There will be much to ponder after the final result is clear. There is understandable despair that while the popular vote was decisive, there was no landslide. Despair that so many Americans voted for such a bad person and for so many of his enablers.  Despair that cows in sparsely-populated “red states” have more representation in the Senate than humans do.  Despair that gerrymandering by Republicans will ensure minority rule in statehouses and give them outsized power in Congress. 

But despair isn’t a sustainable option.  We must with vigor carry on our march for progress on all fronts: reversing climate change, getting health care for all, humanizing our immigration policies, ending racism.  And most importantly, we must march on for protecting democracy itself.

And we must do so with respect for the people who didn't vote the way we wished.  Real respect.  And this respect is at the heart of voting itself.  Our democracy is meant to renew the institutions of government as the hearts and minds of citizens are renewed.  The will of the majority changes.  We must respect that will, or we’ll be ruled by tyrants who lock our government into agendas that we can’t change.

Good people vote for bad people for all sorts of understandable or not-so-good reasons. Donald Trump should be impeached again for calling himself the victor and lying that there was widespread voting fraud - an outrageous attack on the very foundation of our democracy.  We should condemn the political party that he has so deeply debased.  But we should not impeach the people who voted for him. They deserve our loving attention.

They’ve become entangled in what St. Paul called a “spiritual force of evil”.  Or in the words of the King James Version, a “power and principality”: an organization so corrupted that it must be eliminated or completely reformed.  But we must be very clear that an organization or institution cannot be equated with the people who lead or support it.  “Powers and principalities” have lives of their own, distinct from the people associated with them.  They are systemic.  Racism is bigger than any individual with racist ideas or actions.  Same with sexism and homophobia and religious intolerance.  We should condemn racism but be gentle with the individuals who are infected with it.

We can attack nefarious organizations and “isms” without attacking the people who, for all sorts of reasons, are caught up in them.  In our words and actions, we must model the kind of country we want America to be. Only by doing so can we begin to change hearts and minds, and get where we need to go as a nation.
 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

The Longest Election

 

"for every mile the feet go the heart goes nine"

One of my favorite lines from ee cummings, that lowest-case of poets.  If ever there was a time to let go of writing in capital letters - especially writing tweets - this would be it.

That line neatly sums up the emotions of many of us in the run-up to the longest election in memory in America -- both in terms of subjective and objective time.

Because while we're waiting with literally bated breath for November 3, that is not the day when the outcome will be determined.  Days or weeks are likely to pass before we know for certain.  This alone indicts our absurdly antique electoral system.  Even under the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic, a swift and accurate count would be possible if the whole country adopted the simple, fair, and easily-accessible systems of Utah, Oregon, and California.  When this mess is finally over, it will be a really good time to rally all Americans behind fundamental changes:  eliminating the Electoral College, wiping out gerrymandering, ending voter suppression, allowing any voter to get an absentee ballot for any reason, and funding the Post Office as a public utility instead of pretending it is a for-profit business. 

Within myself, I am noticing the very high volume of this election.  And I'm not just talking about a certain candidate's decibel level.  I'm talking about the inner, subjective volume of political narratives roaring through our minds and bodies.  I need, we need, to prepare spiritually for the likely debacle ahead. 

I've found that the Jesus Prayer is a powerful means of drowning out the noise of the election in my head:  "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me..."  I sing it aloud, then in silence, as I take my daily bike ride and walk in the foothills.  It works.  I'm sure the mantras of other religions work just as well:  "Sri Ram, jai Ram, jai jai Ram Om..."  "Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhisvaha...." 

As faith communities, we must prepare to do our part to defend democracy between now and January 20.  There is nothing partisan about demanding that the fully-counted votes of citizens, and not partisan machinations, determine the outcome of the election.  "Hold the Line" offers a clear plan of messaging and non-violent action to defend the vote: I suggest that all pastors read it and commend it to their parishioners.  Faith in Public Life is offering workshops online for faith communities - on media/messaging, nonviolent civil action, and de-escalation.   Our faith leaders' statement on election integrity is still gathering signers.  Dust off your congregation's vinyl banner and get ready to march with it:  to know when and where to take nonviolent action on the streets, join Indivisible: this organization, in coordination with others, is preparing to mount the largest demonstrations in the history of the country. 

Progressive Christians have a very important role in this struggle.  We are theists who oppose, for theological reasons, the theocracy that a minority is imposing on our country.  We are a moral voice for election integrity.  We hold up voting as a sacred expression of the dignity and worth of each citizen.  We wave the American flag and we follow the Christian cross, but we make a clear distinction between the two.  We don't want "Christian nationalists" running our country.  We have the spiritual conviction to be forthright about our demands, and at the same time we are spiritually-centered peacemakers inspiring calm in volatile situations, modeling the kindness that we want to prevail in the policies and personalities of our government. 

So let's be ready to mask-up and get out there in the public squares, the social media spheres, and all the other realms where this struggle must play out.  In Zoom worship, in our virtual pulpits, let us preach boldly.  Let us chant our prayers, publicly display our faith identities, and join our friends of all or no religions in defense of democracy....

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

The Long View

Years ago, my wife, Roberta, taught her daughter Josie how to cut fabric in a straight line.

"Look where you want to go, and your scissors will follow."  Don't watch your fingers working the scissors.  Keep your eye on the end point to which you want to cut, and you'll go straight till you get there. 

Decades later, Roberta was babysitting our granddaughter when Josie came home late, burst through the door, and announced:  "Mom, I get it now!  I get what you taught me about cutting fabric in a straight line!"  She put the lesson to work in building her successful business - Josie Maran Cosmetics. 

Keep your eye on your goal, and you will get where you want to go - straighter and faster.

It's in the Bible, in the words of Jesus: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  (Luke 9: 62)

This wisdom haunts me while hiking in the Sespe Wilderness above Ojai.  I look up, slack-jawed, at the towering cliffs in the blue haze of distance, and my legs cut the trail toward them like a pair of scissors straight through a bolt of soft cloth.  It's not till I get back to the trailhead that I realize I've had a workout.

The most momentous election of our lifetimes will happen in a few short weeks.  We're writing postcards in Pennsylvania.  Phoning in Florida.  Texting in Texas.  Votivating voters in Vegas.  Such are the scissors we're working.  But to go straight in the short term, we need a long view.  We need to keep our eyes on the more distant prize.

Let’s activate our moral imaginations, aim toward our vision, and cut in a straight line toward it so that we can quilt America’s social fabric together again.  Imagine a nation of free, prosperous, creative, diverse, hard-working people who feel confident in venturing new enterprises because they know that we have ensured basic health and well-being for everyone, without exceptions.

 

Can we rebuild trust in facts, science, and civic institutions?  Yes, if we look ahead.  Can we do court correction  to assure that real justice is done?  Yes, if we look ahead.  Can we have a strong economy while reversing carbon emissions to stave off catastrophic climate change?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.  Can we have the social protections that Europeans enjoy, while having an even more lively market economy than theirs?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.  Can we steadily move toward health insurance for everybody, like the Canadians provide, and run it even better than they do?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.   Can we end poverty in America once and for all, without discouraging personal initiative?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.  Can we have effective consumer protections without impeding the flow of capital?  Yes, we can.   Can we dramatically reduce the violence and racism in policing?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.  Can we have comprehensive, humane, fair immigration reform?  Yes we can, if we look ahead.

Let us take the long view while putting our hand to the plow to win this election -  for planetary survival, for human thriving, and for continuing this grand experiment called democracy...

 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

 

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

Faith Leaders for Election Integrity

Defending the Democratic Process: A Faith Community Call to Awareness and Action

Sign on HERE

 

(Our country is facing unprecedented threats to the integrity of the upcoming election. This statement was drafted by myself, Rev Peter Laarman, retired Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, and Rev John Dorhauer, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. Sign on and share!)

 

The freedom of religion that all Americans cherish is but one treasure passed down to us over the course of the American experiment in self-governance. Democracy itself is another – and a foundation of our other treasured liberties. The fact that we have learned to take it for granted makes it no less precious today. 

 

One of the cornerstones of democracy is the assurance of a free, fair, and respected election. Free, meaning all eligible voters are able to vote safely and without hindrance; fair, meaning all the votes are counted transparently; respected, meaning the results of the election are accepted. Today we are coming to understand that our democratic inheritance is only secure when all of us are willing to defend these basic principles.

 

Accordingly, we ask faith leaders at every level to make themselves and their communities and congregations aware that democracy itself could disappear if the people's will, as clearly expressed through the ballot, should come to be set aside by authoritarian means and antidemocratic directives. We call on people of faith to insist that the vote of the people and the proper functioning of the Electoral College be respected by all parties to the national election. As peacemakers ourselves, we call on other faith-grounded peacemakers to join us in upholding the principle of the peaceful transfer of power. And we urge all who cling to the concept of Beloved Community to prepare themselves to respond to any attempts to undermine this process, including supporting and even joining those who may find it necessary to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in the event of any unjust usurpation of state authority.

 

We continue to pray for and expect a peaceful and orderly electoral outcome. But we must not and we cannot be passive witnesses to the death of democracy, should the worst occur. We hold our American democracy to be a sacred trust, and we pledge ourselves to safeguard it with every ounce of our God-given strength and spirit.

 

Sign on HERE

 

 

Initial signers:

 

Bishop W. Darin Moore

Presiding Prelate of the Mid-Atlantic Episcopal District of The AME Zion Church 

 

Bishop Frank Krebs 

Presiding Bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion 

 

Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II 

Stated Clerk of the Assembly, Presbyterian Church USA 

 

Rabbi Rick Jacobs 

President, Union for Reform Judaism 

 

Jim Wallis, Founder of Sojourners 

 

Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray 

President, Unitarian Universalist Association 

 

Jim Winkler 

General Secretary, National Council of Churches 

 

The Rev. John C. Dorhauer

General Minister and President

United Church of Christ 

 

The Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson

Associate General Minister

United Church of Christ

 

The Rev. Traci Blackmon

Associate General Minister

United Church of Christ

 

Rev. Tim Tseng, Ph.D. 

Pacific Area Director

Graduate and Faculty Ministries

Intervarsity Christian Fellowship

 

Bishop Michael L. Mitchell

President, Council of Bishops, AME Church 

I'm Voting for Voting: Votivator 2020

(Do an online version of this ceremony:  BLESSING THE HANDS THAT VOTE - in your congregation in upcoming Sundays!  "With what hand will you be marking your ballot in the upcoming election? (show of hands on screen) - "May Love guide your hand to vote for the common good.  Amen!")  

 

I wish I could claim that my voting choices are perfectly rational.  I try to stay informed by attending to credible sources of information about the issues and the candidates.  But my heart moves my mind to move my hand to mark my ballot.  And a multitude of motives influences each step.  I have tribal allegiances.  I have ingrained habits of seeing and thinking.  My sense of personal identity is tangled up with wider social identities.  

And so it is with every other voter in this upcoming momentous election.  And in every other election since the founding of this amazing United States of America by people who knew full well the limitations of our rational faculties.  That’s why they wrote the Constitution, a document reflecting the highest of our human potentials precisely because it reckons so brilliantly with the lowest.  It inspires the best of our instincts by accounting for the worst… which we’ve seen in abundance for the last four years.

And that is why the Constitution itself is on the ballot on November.  We can and should debate responses to critical issues like climate change, health care, women’s rights, and civil rights.  But large as they may loom, they pale in comparison to the question of whether or not democracy in America should continue.

The real question on the ballot is whether or not ballots matter.  We have a president who consistently has denied the lawful result of ballots cast since before he took office.  He did not affirm that the 2016 result would be valid even before it was decided.  He claimed that he really won the popular vote despite losing it by 2,850,000.  And now, in what should be no surprise, he is declaring pre-emptively that the only result of the 2020 election that could possibly be valid would be one in his favor.  So Republicans, in a number of the states they control, are scheming to invalidate the results of the upcoming election by appointing partisan slates of electors. 

What faces us in this election is unprecedented: it is so outrageous that it strains credulity.  But we’ve got to take it seriously.  If we hold democracy sacred, we’ll vote for it.  And then we’ll defend it firmly and peacefully on the streets in the days and weeks after November 3.

We’re not just voting for Trump or Biden.  We’re not just voting to Make America Great Again or Make America Kind Again.  We’re voting on whether or not America should be America.  Or whether it should be Russia.  Or Hungary.  Or Belarus.  Places where elections are held, but the results are pre-determined.  Countries that have sham democracies.  Countries where checks are only money and balances are only how much of it is in the hands of the few who make the rules. 

We’re voting for voting itself.  We’re voting to decide if votes can be cast freely and easily, and counted fairly and completely, and if votes will determine the outcome of the election. A vote for Biden is a vote for voting.  A vote for Trump is a vote against voting.  If voting wins the vote, and that vote determines the outcome, then – and only then – can we take deep breaths and begin to grapple with the country’s many other challenges.

 On November 3, I’m voting for voting.

 

Jim Burklo:  VOTIVATOR

Nov 3, 2020

Candidates (I now live in Ojai, CA)

Biden/Harris – need I say more….

US Representative 26^th CA:  Julia Brownley

State Senator, Dist 19:   Monique Limon

State Assemby, Dist 37:  Steve Bennett

Ojai Mayor:  Wm Weirick – incumbent City Council member, very competent and good on the issues… environment, social justice, etc… much more experience than his opponent, who is also good on the issues

Ojai City Council Dist 4:  Suza Francina – incumbent, good on issues – her opponent works for rich coastal property owners to block public access to beaches.

Ojai City Clerk/ City Treasurer – unopposed incumbents

(I hope you’ll join me in supporting Christy Smith for Congress in the CA 25^th district – Simi Valley to Lancaster…  send her campaign $$ and offer your volunteer time! A Republican Trumper now holds this closely-contested seat.)

State Propositions:

14:  No.  Bonds for stem cell research.  A good cause, one taken up in the state during the Bush administration which obstructed this research at the federal level.  But now, in the midst of a crisis in state finance, funding for such research should come from a level of government that is able to print money! 

 

15: Yes.  Revises Prop 13 to allow for taxing commercial/industrial property at market rate.  This will not touch the low rate of tax on homeowners.  It is way past time for this reform, which will not only bring in much needed revenue, but will make the commercial property market more efficient.

16:  Yes.  Allows for affirmative action by government agencies in CA.  There are smart and less-smart ways to do affirmative action re: race, gender, etc.  But without this law, options have been limited and this has slowed down the quest for racial justice.

17:  Yes.  Allows state parolees to vote.  Another step forward in ending the bad consequences of mass incarceration. 

18:  Yes.  Lets 17-year-olds register to vote in upcoming elections at which they’ll be 18.

19:  No.  Lets seniors keep their low property tax when moving to another home, and also takes away the Prop 13 tax break for people who inherit properties that do not become their primary residences.  The last half of the proposition makes sense, but the first is just another tax giveaway to people (like myself) who have already overly benefited from skyrocketing home values.

20:  No.  Restricts parole in ways that will pointlessly increase mass incarceration. 

21:  Yes.  Expands the ability of local governments to impose rent control.  Rent control is a blunt instrument, and even judicious imposition of it will result in unintended consequences - but it is a tool that should be available for local governments.

22: No.  The Uber/Lift initiative to relax recent state rules giving gig workers employee protections.  This has no business being on the ballot.  This is a very complex and changing arena of policy that definitely needs further tweaking, but it should be the job of the state legislature.

23:  No.  Regulations for kidney dialysis centers.  Another matter that has no business being on the ballot.  Let the legislature work this out, threading the needle between regulating the creepy corporations that control this medical market and meeting the need for enough of these clinics throughout the state.  This proposition does neither adequately.

24:  Yes.  Amends consumer privacy laws.  It is an improvement for consumers, but again, it will need further regulation beyond this proposition.

25:  Yes.  Ends the outrageous practice of money bail.  The objections to this proposition are important ones, regarding the potentially racist outcomes of algorithms used to determine risk of accused people.  But the public defenders in CA believe that this proposition will end the dreadful practice of bail and leave enough room for tweaking the algorithms over time, to assure fairness regarding pre-trial release or incarceration.

I am now a resident of Ojai, in Ventura County.  But I’ll weigh in on a couple of LA issues.

LA County Measure J:  Yes.  Really it amounts to asking the voters to slice off a significant chunk of the Sheriff’s budget to be spent on community programs related to housing, youth development, mental health care and criminal justice diversion programs.  This partly reflects the current war underway between the Board of Supervisors, which put this on the ballot, and the highly problematic Sheriff.  And partly it reflects the current nationwide push for major police reform and resource re-allocation.   

LA County District Attorney:  Gascon.  Time for a district attorney that reflects the community’s social justice values. 

Back to my new home turf:

Ventura County Measure O:  Yes.  Allows for regulated marijuana cultivation. 

Ojai Measure G:  No.  Imposes new city tax on cannabis.  Very many local jurisdictions see cannabis as a tax cash cow, and up to a point, that’s okay… but the total tax burden on legal cannabis is getting way too high, and this just drives the market underground – with all the old problems that entails. 

Ojai School Measure K:  Yes.  Bonds to improve schools.

The Light of Longing

 

It's that time of the year, when shadows fall long across the land.  When turning leaves flutter in the breeze.  When the cusp of day and night brings whispers of cool air over still-warm earth.  It's that time of delectable effulgence radiating from mountain cliffs, from dry grass on brooding hills, from stone walls.   When the smallest pebble glows on the ground, drawing attention with its stretching shadow.

I marinate in it here in Ojai, California, a verdant valley nestled between mile-high mountains running from southward-tilting sunrise to sunset.  I've steeped in it on drives through fall-colored forests of oak and maple in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  I've savored it on the golden flashing leaves of aspens and cottonwoods in the Southwest.  I've been spellbound by its glow from the bark of redwood trees struck by slanting sunbeams in the Santa Cruz Mountains: the first time I can remember that sight was at the age of four on a Sunday drive with my parents.

It has haunted me for my entire life, but only lately have I claimed the term to express it:

Lumbre. 

The word in Spanish has an alluring range of meanings.  Light, but also splendor.  Fire, but also firewood.  The light of a burning match, but also the match.  Lumbre connotes not only light, but the fire that generates it:  not only fire, but its potential in the fuel that can release it. 

Lumbre reflects the consciousness of another age, when people believed that the light of the seventh heavenly realm of perfect divinity made its way through the lower six heavens down to earth, and hid itself in the bodies and souls of people and things.  That divine light, trapped in human hearts and even in those of trees, yearned to return to its source.  The 14^th-century German mystical preacher, Meister Eckhart, compared the soul to a spark rising from a wood fire at night, glowing and then extinguishing on its way to ecstatic reunion with the divine Light far above the darkness here below.  The light is latent within the wood and within the soul.  Fire releases the light inside the wood.  Spiritual practice, in its many forms, releases the light inside our souls that longs to return to its Source.

I discovered the word as a consequence of my enchantment with Tierra Lumbre, as the landscape above Abiquiu, New Mexico, is known.  It is a huge basin rimmed with steep red-orange and gold cliffs that seem to generate the ever-changing light that reflects from them.  After hiking up one of the mesas, sitting on the glowing rock at its edge, lumbre soaks into me even as I contemplate with eyes closed. 

In a deep hollow in Sisar Canyon above Ojai, bright sun spangles pale rounded boulders with high mountain water splashing around them.  Arresting my attention, the lumbre from those boulders ignites the lumbre within me, in a yearning that satisfies itself with itself. 

Here I attach an image of a wood-block by Gustave Baumann, one of the great Santa Fe artists of the early-to-mid 20th century.  It is an aspect of the Santuario de Chimayo, a little adobe chapel in the New Mexico mountains that has been sacred to thousands of pilgrims over the past 200 years, myself included.  Lumbre, infused in gnarly tree bark and dry grass and irregular sun-splash on adobe, leaps off the print like a lover embracing the viewer with open arms.  It is New Mexican lumbre, flowing through Baumann's inner lumbre, flowing with the lumbre of deep bright ink onto paper, inflaming the lumbre within the print's admirers. 

Lumbre: the light that makes artists, poets, and preachers ache with longing. 

Lumbre:  saying the word aloud delivers me into its rapture. 

Lumbre:  it exudes from the word itself.

 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern Californi

 

 

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern Californi

Contemplating the Cross

 

To follow Jesus is to face the cross and aim our lives through and beyond it.

As is the case with authoritarian regimes around the world today, Rome distrusted anyone who attracted a following that might turn into a rebellion.  The Jesus movement made the Roman occupiers and their Jewish collaborators nervous.  So it was not too surprising that they manufactured a sedition case against him and subjected him to death by torture:  a slow, agonizing execution that was meant to frighten Roman subjects into obedient submission. Jesus was but one of very many others killed in this manner. 

The Romans intended the cross to be a symbol of the consequences of defying the power of the empire. But the early Christians turned the symbolism of the cross on its head.  Through Jesus’ crucifixion, an alternative empire was being established on earth, in direct contradiction to the empire of Rome. Through the crucifixion, God's realm of peace, justice, equality, and charity was coming into being - not just in heaven, but on earth.  A few hundred years after Jesus’ death, the Roman Empire collapsed.  But the cross remained, adorning the tops of Christian churches throughout Rome’s former territory. 

And it has aimed beyond itself ever since.

The people of Israel, wandering in their forty-year desert exodus, began to despair of their fate and were then punished with a plague of snakes that bit and killed some of them. Moses cried out to God for help, and God told him to put up a bronze serpent on a pole and have the people gaze at it, and thus be healed of the snakebites. The gospel of John (3:14) said that as the serpent was lifted on the pole to save Israel, so Jesus would have to be lifted up in order to save humanity. The bronze serpent was spiritual homeopathy, the ancient system of medicine based on the principle that “a dose of that which ails you is the cure”.  The caduceus, the symbol of serpents on a pole, is the symbol of medicine.  Likewise, the cross is sacred medicine, spiritual homeopathy for the human condition of suffering and mortality.

The cross is anything that we think will save us, but crucifies us instead. The cross is anything in which we put our ultimate trust and faith and hope, which in turn betrays us.  The military might we hope will save us, but instead entangles us in terrible wars.  The medical technology in which we put our faith, but then addicts us or torments us with bad side-effects.  The vehicles we think we can’t live without, which then ensnare us in traffic jams.  The Romans thought the cross would save their Empire.  But their brutality contributed to its fall.  The early Christians turned a symbol of torture and state power into a symbol of personal and social liberation.  We can do the same with the crosses that torment us today.  By facing our crosses squarely, seeing them for what they are, we move through and beyond them.

Medieval Christians created the Stations of the Cross, depicting fourteen stops along Jesus’ way from being condemned to death to being crucified and buried.  Images of these stations are often found on the walls of Catholic Christian sanctuaries to this day.  Some of the stations are based on passages in the biblical gospels, and others are based on later legends.  They are a powerful means of contemplating the “passion” of Jesus’ last days. 

One of the legends, represented by station number six, is that a woman named Veronica -- whose name in Latin means "true image" -- wiped Jesus' suffering face with a cloth as he carried his cross past her.  In so doing, an image of his sweaty and bloody face was left on the cloth, which became a legendary religious relic in the Middle Ages.  But there is mystical significance to this legend.  It wasn’t just the cloth that bore the Veronica – the true image of the Christ.  It was Veronica herself, as well.  When we face the suffering of Christ, opening our hearts to it, we fully encounter our own sufferings.  We face the vivid reality, the true image, of our own human condition of suffering.  The Christ is the mirror in which we gaze, in order to go through and past our suffering. 

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous begin with the same paradox.  Step One says: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”  But if the alcoholic is powerless, where’s the hope of recovery?  This looks like a wall, not a step. 

And yet, this is the true image of the alcoholic.  He or she does indeed experience hopelessness in addiction.  But by fully facing and naming this true image, by gazing at this cross in all its horror, the alcoholic takes the next steps on the journey through it and beyond it. 

The shape of the cross has spiritual significance, as well.

As Rabbi Lawrence Kushner once said, every word, and every letter of every word, of the Jewish scriptures is hyperlinked.  In traditional Judaism, each letter has at least four levels of meaning.  Each letter is a word:  for instance, the letter G, the third in the Hebrew alphabet, is pronounced gimel, which means camel.  Each letter is a number:  gimel is 3.  Each letter has a spiritual meaning: some say that gimel represents the balancing of opposites.  Each letter also has a meaning based on its shape.  Gimel's shape is ג , creatively interpreted as a rich man chasing after a poor man to give him assistance.  Choose from the options of meanings of the letters in a word, and you can choose a unique meaning for the word as a whole.  The imaginative possibilities for interpretation are endless!

Such was the free-spirited approach to scripture that Rabbi Jesus practiced.  So why would we, as his followers, be shy about using the same methods in interpreting the New Testament?

In that spirit, we are free to ponder the possible meanings of the form of the cross.  It is an axis mundi, a center of the world marking the x-y coordinate from which the past and the future, the up and the down, the conscious and the unconscious, the inner and the outer, the lesser and the greater emanate.  Its two bars converge on a focal point directing our attention toward deeper awareness and compassion. 

The shape of the cross aims us where we need to go. 

In churches, I often find myself contemplating the cross.  It is a kind of “visio divina” – another way of climbing Guigo’s ladder, through seeing.  It becomes the means of focus, and the focus itself, of worship.  It centers and guides me toward the life-giving Love that is God.

The Jesus Prayer

 

At the University of Southern California, I'm struck with how hungry students are for experiential Christianity.  To the degree they have any experience with the faith at all, they're rapidly losing interest in its dogma and taking much more interest in its ancient spiritual practices.  They want God, not just talk about God.

To that end, last year, with a student, I started leading "Desert Contemplatio Retreats" - one-day forays into the Mojave for students to experience the spiritual disciplines of the early Christian monastic "Desert Fathers and Mothers".   And now I'm teaching a non-credit course for students and staff entitled "Contemplative Christian Practices". 

Our class practice this week is the Jesus Prayer:  "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me...."  It is the ancient Christian answer to St Paul's admonition in 1 Thessalonians to "pray without ceasing".  This practice is central to the spirituality of early Christianity, and became integral to Eastern Orthodox mysticism.  The foundational text of the Orthodox contemplative tradition is the Philokalia, which recommends the Jesus Prayer as the passageway into "hesychasm", or direct encounter with God. 

I've been chanting the prayer aloud a few times a day, then repeating it in my mind, then releasing the repetition to contemplate its "echo" - the "aftertaste" of the prayer.  I've prayed this way in the past, but had not done so for a long time until this week.  I'm amazed at how powerful it is, and how timely.

Timely, because the volume in my head is way too high.  The upcoming election will have enormous repercussions in our country and around the world.  I'm preoccupied with it, specifically in my involvement with an ecumenical effort to urge all sides to show respect for the lawful process and ultimate result of the vote.  If I had more hair, it would all be on fire!  And the people around me are also engulfed in some combination of activism and panic.

Nothing clears the loud narrative running in my mind more completely than chanting the Jesus Prayer.  It is the mercy for which it prays.  It is a short, clear story that displaces, at least for a while, the stories that roar around and within me, and puts them in a much longer and deeper perspective.  What is going on in America today could not be more important, and engagement is called from us all.  But our efforts will be wiser and more effective if our souls are steady and our priorities are clear.  We need mercy within in order to spread mercy in our country and world. 

This ancient Christian practice gives us the spiritual re-set we need in times like these:   "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me....  Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me.... Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me...."  And upon us all!
 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California

Fool for Christ - But Not for Trump

The President of the United States thinks I'm a fool for following the way of Jesus.  He thinks I'm an idiot for loving my enemies and for loving my neighbor as myself.  He thinks I'm a schmuck for worshiping God instead of mammon.

In the words of the President of the United States, Christian beliefs are "bullshit" and Christians are "fools", "idiots", and "schmucks".  There's already a public record of such comments from him, corroborated further in Michael Cohen's new book about Trump.

But my faith calls me to rise above his insults against me and my fellow Jesus-followers.  As St Paul said:  "We are fools for the sake of Christ..."  (1 Corinthians 4:10)

But let's not be fools for the sake of Donald Trump.

Many Christians excuse Trump's gross disrespect of our faith by comparing him favorably to Cyrus, the non-believing king of Babylon who liberated the people of Israel from exile and restored them to freedom in Israel.   They believe Trump is delivering Christianity from what they call a “war on religion” in America.  In actuality, if there’s a war at all, it is one conducted by a fundamentalist Christian minority to impose their "religious freedom" to take away freedom from the majority of Americans, who want to live in a country where abortion is legal and where LGBTQI people are not discriminated against in public life.  It’s a war that right-wing Christians really are waging against themselves:  the harder they try to impose their religion on others, and the more subservient they are to Trump, the more Americans disaffiliate from their churches.  This from Pew Research Center:  "65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009."
 
But back to old Cyrus.  Right-wing Christians celebrate Trump as his resurrection.  But that’s only because their version of Christianity pays scant attention to the historical context of biblical texts.
 
Cyrus used the people of Israel for his own political purposes.  They returned to their homeland to restore their temple in Jerusalem in exchange for being pawns of Babylon.  Cyrus sent them home in order to defend the western flank of his empire. 
 
Cyrus had an entirely transactional relationship with the Jewish religion.  Just as Trump has an entirely transactional relationship with right-wing Christians.  What is Trump getting out of the deal?  He’s getting a subservient Christianity - a meek, obedient, anti-Jesus religion that anoints his agenda of corporate greed and disregard for the common good.   For a mess of pottage, right-wing Christians have sold their religious inheritance to a man who insults all Christians and protects nobody's interests but his own.
 
And that points to another extremely troubling aspect of the comparison:  Cyrus was a king.  Right-wing Christians are celebrating Trump’s autocratic instincts.  Democracy is in serious danger as Trump actively sows distrust and disorder in the voting process.  Christians should remember that the Jews weren’t sent into exile in Egypt and Babylon by presidents voted into office in free and fair elections.
 
In this Babylonian bargain that right-wing Christians have made with Donald Trump, they get nothing of real value in return.  Was it worth it to be allowed to discriminate against gay people, impose their opinions about abortion on others, and deny complete health care benefits to their employees?  This seems like trivial tribute, hardly worth the resulting mass exodus of disgusted young people from their congregations.  Unlike the Jews in Babylon, right-wing Christians built temples and churches all over the land, long before Trump came along.  They already enjoyed the full religious freedom afforded to them by our Constitution. 
 
Contingent as it was, the break the Jews got from Cyrus was a whole lot better than the one that right-wing Christians are getting from Trump.  Endorsing an anti-Christian candidate in exchange for hallucinatory privileges?  Now that’s the “art of the steal”!
 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California