Musings

Sespe River Trail: A Meditation

Hiking on the Sespe River Trail a few days ago, marinated in mountain sunlight, I spied ahead an outcropping of ragged rock on either side of the river.  Harder than the surrounding sandstone, it had narrowed the channel.  As I approached, I heard the tumble of water over rocks.   I wandered off the trail to examine the boulders:  limestone studded with fossils and crystals of gypsum, blinding white in the mid-day light.  Later I learned that the screw-like shells were Turritella sea snails, dropped into the seabed about 40 million years ago and subsequently lifted up to this mountainous plateau by plate-tectonic force.  I gathered a few specimens of the jumbled fossil formation and put them in my backpack. 
 
As I walked back to the trailhead, gazing at 6600-foot Pine Mountain looming with stone spires and lines of sky-scraping trees, I contemplated.  I practiced prayerful attention, beginning with my inner experience, and observed that the serene magnificence in front of me brought alive snippets of memory.  Stepping on the dust of the trail took me back, with vivid intensity, to running at dawn in the oilfields of Taft, California, when I was fifteen years old, on a visit to my grandmother’s house.  An aspect of the mountaintop delivered me, in and for a vibrant instant, to the high Sierra, where I went on backpacking trips with my pals in my young adulthood.  The shimmering, fluttering leaves of the cottonwoods along the streambed bosque switched the channel of my attention to a joyful micro-memory of hiking along Big Tesuque Creek just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, a year ago.  On and on and on, these bright bits of recollection formed and flashed and faded. 
 
Close to the trail I found the spent stalk of a Spanish bayonet yucca.  I trimmed it with a couple of snaps of my boot against the ground, and smoothed it against a block of pale sandstone.   A perfect walking-stick – strong but feather-light, smooth to the hand.  As I punched its narrow tip into the trail ahead of me, its hollow report became my hiking metronome: one-one-one-one step at a time, marking passage of each memory-association to the next.
 
Then I observed a different kind of association.  Like my mind, the limestone and gypsum formation was a mass of moments of memory, lifted through millennia into sight by the endless churn of earth’s crust.  There is no past other than the one present, in the conscious memory of my mind, contemplating the geological stratigraphy before me.  There is no future other than the one presently imagined, as I conjure the lay the land might take in millennia hence.  Now is a chunk of fossiliferous stone weighing down my backpack.  Forty million years ago is no more or less the past than my last footstep on the powdery trail. 
 
Awareness of my awareness of those rich moments of my past delivered me into the eternity of the present, as my walking stick poked through dust to clink on hard dirt.  Now, now, now, now, now….

 

Flag Abortion?

 

 

In Tulsa, the president proclaimed that there should be a law against burning the US flag.  In the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of protest against police violence, in the midst of an economic meltdown, he has attempted to elevate a (literally) fringe phenomenon into the spotlight. Hardly anyone burns the American flag, and when it does happen, the act is almost universally condemned.  Making it illegal to burn the flag is itself illegal, as the courts have determined repeatedly. 

Trump's declaration was pure theater.  He was wrapping his divisive rhetoric and his disastrous policies in the flag.   

But most Americans understand that the right to burn our flag is an important reason for us to wave it.  It stands for freedom of speech.  It stands for the civil rights of people of all political and religious persuasions.  So, friends, let's out-flag Donald Trump and his flaggy followers. Let's display the flag in front of our houses and at demonstrations and public events.  Not to worship it, but to lift it up as the symbol of freedom and democracy for us all.  Again, if we don't use it, we'll lose it to people who stand for the very opposite of these principles.  When we claim the flag, it ceases to function as the talisman of right-wing extremists.  Let's follow Nancy Pelosi's example.  Whenever she holds a public event, there is a row of flags behind her.  She knows exactly what she is doing! 

Years ago, during a previous Republican pretense of trying to make flag-burning illegal, I wrote this spoof:

 

Flag Abortion: The Debate

 

Does a flag become a flag after the first trimester – when 17 stars are sewn onto it?  Or is a flag a flag at conception, when someone merely considers making one?  Does a flag have a right to wave before it is completely sewn together?

At the Crisis Flag Center, which masquerades as a flag-planning clinic, unsuspecting flag-makers are offered complete pre-flagbirth care.  But all they get is a 45-minute video of the horrors of flag burning.  “See?” the staff says, looking clinical in white smocks as they point at a flag development chart.  “Perfectly formed stars and stripes.”

Meanwhile, the pro-choice lobby gathers momentum.  “Why,” they argue, “should we bring flags into the world unless we planned them?  What is wrong with burning a fetal flag?  A flag is not a flag until it can wave on its own.”

Moderates propose compromises.  “Flag burning only in cases of flagmaker incapacitation or gross star or stripe deformity,” they say.

The stench of scorched nylon overwhelms such voices.  And the Right-to-Flag-Lifers press on, demanding an end to flag burning in all cases.

When they get their way, there will be a constitutional amendment denying the right to think about burning the American flag.

This Is Our Flag

(My friend and USC faculty colleague, Leah Buturain, calls this "musing" a "Reclamation Proclamation"!)

 

Very few American flags have waved at the recent protests in defense of black lives.  I hope that this changes, and fast!  The peaceful protesters for justice are the real patriots in our country today.  It's our flag!  If we don't use it, we'll lose it.  How can we allow people who don't represent its true values claim it exclusively as their symbol?  When progressive people wave the flag, we transform it away from being a sign of backward-looking nativism.  People vote their identities more than they vote their own economic interests. Turn the symbol of their identity into one that represents inclusion and racial justice, and we begin to shift politics in a hopeful direction. 

Today, Confederate flags and statues are coming down.  So American flags should go up!   Finally, 155 years later, all Americans are winning the Civil War: black, white, northern, southern, and the rest of us.  If ever there was a time to wave our flag high and with pride, this is it!  

To that end, I wrote This Is Our Flag.  The tune, Finlandia, was written by Sibelius, a Finnish composer.  His words to the hymn were overtly and even obnoxiously nationalistic: it was a time when Finland was threatened with absorption by the Russian Empire.  In contrast, an American, Lloyd Stone, wrote lyrics in 1934 that expressed national pride but with deep respect for other nations:  This Is My Song.  I wrote two versions of This Is Our Flag, one is American and the other is "international" in flavor: 

This Is Our Flag

(Tune:  Finlandia - Jean Sibelius)

Words:  Jim Burklo
 

This is our flag, inviting every nation

To human freedom and democracy

Red, white, and blue: we sing out our devotion

In harmony from our diversity

Our creeds and tongues and points of view are many

We stand as one defending liberty

 

This is our flag: its stars and stripes are many

As we have gathered from so many lands

Into this tapestry we're sewn together

Raising our flag, and all for which it stands

Our Constitution binds us all together

Under our flag, in humble unity

 

This is our flag: it waves for all our people

Who gave their lives extending liberty

It waves for votes in free and fair elections

It welcomes migrants yearning to be free

It stands for truth, the rule of law, and justice

Long may it wave, held high by you and me!

 

(Ana Gobledale of Worship Words inspired me to offer an "international" version of this song:)
 

This is our flag, inviting every nation

To human freedom and democracy

We lift it high, and sing out our devotion

In harmony from our diversity

Our creeds and tongues and points of view are many

We stand as one defending liberty

This is our flag: a banner stitched from patches

That we have gathered from so many lands

Into this tapestry we're sewn together

Raising our flag, and all for which it stands

Our loyalty binds us all together

Under our flag, in humble unity

 

This is our flag: it waves for all our people

Who gave their lives extending liberty

It waves for votes in free and fair elections

It welcomes migrants yearning to be free

It stands for truth, the rule of law, and justice

Long may it wave, held high by you and me!

 

PS:  Ruth Carleton, a peace activist and parishioner from my days as Associate Pastor of First Congregational Church, UCC, in Palo Alto CA, wrote this alternative "pledge of allegiance to the flag.  She taught it to her students when she was teaching in an elementary school:

Mine is the home of the land of the free

This is the place I most want to be

Home of the kind, the brave and the true

Whose flag is the colors--red, white and blue

Sighs Too Deep

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."  (St Paul, Romans 8: 26)

I needed to sigh. 

So up to the mountains I went this past Saturday, and hiked among the huge slabs of sandstone at 4,000 feet on the desert side of the San Gabriel Mountains.  I paused to stand under a scrubby piñon pine tree and listen to the voice of its stubby needles in the cool clear wind. 

Last week, while I was teaching a mindfulness meditation class for USC students and staff on Zoom, we got into a discussion after I led the group through a "body scan" meditation, guiding them to attend to any emotions that might be associated with sensations in their bodies.  Several said that their breath was the focal point.  One woman said she found herself sighing in the meditation - and sighing a lot in general.  Others reported the same experience.  Then a graduate student in the class spoke up:  "Isn't this what's up for everybody now?  The coronavirus takes away your breath.  George Floyd, as he was dying under the policeman's knee, cried 'I can't breathe!'  And we are all sighing because of the mix of emotions we are feeling!" 

Her astute observation reminded me that when the virus started spreading, and the lockdown began, I found myself sighing a lot.  What was happening to the entire human race, all around the planet, was truly breathtaking.  In recent weeks I have noticed that the sighing stopped.  I habituated. 

I also habituated to police violence against black people. When the news about George Floyd's murder came out, I was saddened and disgusted, but my breath was not taken away.  Just another incident in a long series of examples of the lingering scourge of racism in America. 

Until I read a Facebook post written by a fellow member of Mt Hollywood Church in Los Angeles.  Hilary's anguish was palpable.  As a black woman with a son, she was in despair that what happened to George Floyd could happen to her own child.  Her despair broke through my spiritually-insulated, white-privileged soul.  With hers, finally, my sighs were too deep for words. 

I'm grateful that Hilary took my breath away.  I'm grateful to belong to a church where the Spirit can blow down the walls that inhibit our vulnerability, as she did for me. 

If we're sighing, we're not alone.  We're sighing with the Holy Spirit of divine Love who comisserates with us.  The biblical Greek word for "spirit" is "pneuma", which also means "breath".  If we're sighing, we're feeling emotion.  And emotion is energy.  Mindfulness practice and contemplative prayer are not about breathing deeply and being relaxed.  They are about paying attention to our experiences and thoughts and emotions and letting them be, even if they're hard.   And if we know our emotions, we'll be in touch with their energy, and then we can channel that energy into creative, positive work to relieve the suffering and injustice around us. 

Contemplative practice is the very opposite of withdrawal from the world and its struggles.  It is what we do in order to feel again when we've become hard-hearted, and to get clarity about how best to direct that power for the good of others.  When I am hard-hearted, when I am complacent, I don't know how to pray as I ought.  I need help.  Hilary helped.  And so did that piñon tree in the mountains.

Each kind of pine has its own voice in the wind, tuned to the length of its needles.  I stood and listened to the piñon, until divine Love made me sigh once more.

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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

How? can we end systemic racism....

 

(Our family is having some intense Zoom and email conversations this week, motivating each other to get educated and activated in support of racial justice.  In one email thread, our 13 year old granddaughter, Rumi, asked this potent question:  "How?"  She wants to know what she can do to make a difference.  Here's what I wrote back to her.)

"How?" you ask, Rumi -- yes, that's the right question!  To make change, we have to exercise power - and there are different kinds of it.

Money is a big one, for better and for worse:  people with a lot of money have more potential political and cultural influence than normal folks.  And some rich people and their corporations have used their power to prevent black people, and others, from getting what they need to rise above the 400-year-old legacy of racism in America.  These rich folks have used their influence to cut taxes and cut government spending on health care, housing, and social services that could lift up people from poverty.  They are guilty of systematic racism:  they have supported an economic and political system that makes life hard for a lot of black people.  They don't need to say bad things against black people:  they just take actions that will hold them back.  But rich people with the right intentions can do a lot of good toward ending systematic racism, by donating their money wisely.

 

Institutional power is the power held by people who control companies and governments.  CEO's, politicians, government officials, police officials, etc.  They control the institutions that have the ability to help or hurt people.  Companies and governments can do a lot to make policies that counteract systematic racism.  For instance, politicians can make sure that police are trained to be sensitive to minorities and trained in non-violent crisis management techniques.

 

People power is another form of power.  See the image above!  When regular people without a lot of money get organized and focused, they can force businesses and governments to change their policies.  Little fish, organized together, can make the big fish change direction!  Organized, peaceful demonstrations in the streets are examples of "people power".  Also, regular people joining advocacy groups like ACLU and NAACP can have big influence, because they represent millions of voters.

 

Cultural power is a kind of people power.  And I think this is where you and your friends can make a bigger difference than you might imagine.  Music, art, TikToks, videos, etc, can have a huge influence in changing the direction of our country toward racial justice.  A handful of young people in Serbia, back in 2000, brought down that country's brutal dictator by using cultural power that inspired a larger people power movement.  In Latvia, a "singing revolution" starting in 1986, was crucial in ending the rule of the Communist system there .  The upcoming election in November is a big deal for racial justice.  Biden is not perfect, of course, but he is light-years ahead of Trump in fighting systemic racism.  Culture power can help Biden and other Democrats get elected. 

As a 13 year old who is fluent in social media, you have a lot of potential culture power.  And you can have fun using that power!

 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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

Dreams in a Time of Pandemic

 

A few nights ago, I met Jim Burklo.

I dreamed I was walking down a scruffy downtown street, and passed by a dingy storefront with a dirty glass door, behind which was an old steelcase desk with a map of the world pasted onto the front. On each country of the world was pasted somebody's last name.  One of the names was "Burklo".  Intrigued, and with a bit of trepidation, I entered the door and encountered a young couple: a smiling woman and a grinning man.  I told them I was fascinated by the map on the desk.  I leaned over the desk to shake the young man's hand and introduce myself:  "Jim Burklo".  "Yes!" he answered.  After a moment of awkward confusion, we realized that we were both named Jim Burklo.  We then had a lively chat about our shared heritage.

I shared this dream with the other members of the Dream Analysis Campfire I lead for students at the University of Southern California.  I have led groups like this for students in the past.  But since the pandemic, the subject of nighttime dreams has come up a lot in my chats with students by Zoom and on the phone.  So I realized this might be a great time to run a dream group again.

And indeed that has been the case.  With all that is going on in the world, there's plenty happening in people's heads these days.  And it is processed creatively in our dreams.

I started leading dream analysis groups when I was the pastor of College Heights Church in San Mateo, CA.  We followed the format developed by Jeremy Taylor, a Jungian psychoanalyst and Unitarian pastor.  Taylor taught that the images and events in dreams have no fixed meanings.  And this free-form aspect of dreaming is its magic:  so much can be discovered about our inner lives by exploring the many possible portents in the elements of our dreams. 

When I lead dream groups, we follow this system:  The first person shares a dream.  Then other participants ask the dreamer questions - no comments or cross-talk.  Then, one by one, the other participants answer this question, followed by questions:  “If it were my dream, this is the significance it would have for me….”  When circle is complete, first dreamer reflects on responses of the others.  Then the next person shares a dream.  Whatever is shared is kept confidential:  when somebody shares a dream, often they have little idea at first about how much they've revealed about themselves.  The vulnerability that happens in these groups creates a strong connection among the participants:  it's a really powerful way for people to bond at a deep level.

Nearly every time a dream is shared, the dreamer gains a new insight from the questions of other participants and from the ways that others appropriate the dream for themselves.  And when a person "takes on" another person's dream as if it were her or his own, very often that person has an "aha" moment, as well. 

In the church setting, we kept our group going for many months, and after a while, an element of one person's dream would show up a few weeks later in someone else's dream - but with a completely different meaning or significance.  We were "seeding" each other's dreams - a very special kind of spiritual communion!

Our current student dream group has revealed a lot about how we are affected by the pandemic.  And we have exposed much else about ourselves, while holding each other's vulnerability with reverent gentleness.  In their appropriations of my dream, students gave me insight about meeting another Jim Burklo. One of them asked if I have been questioning my own identity lately.  That was an "aha" for me: the answer is yes!  The current upheaval is forcing me to re-evaluate who I am and how I want to do life.

And who are you, in this identity-shattering era through which we're living?  Journaling your dreams and sharing them with others might help you answer that question....

 

Deeper Attention: The Soul of Charles Darwin

The Alvord Desert playa, SE Oregon

 

In the springtime, water tumbles down the flanks Mt Tamalpais in Marin County, north of San Francisco.  My wife and I lived in Mill Valley next to a steep flume that ran with cold, clear water.  Our dog, Kai, was fascinated: he would see a riffle of water jetting out between rocks, and he would try to bite it.  To him, it looked like a thing he could grasp with his teeth as a plaything.  But every attempt frustrated him.  He would keep biting at the water riffle, over and over, unable to comprehend it.
 
I am not much different than Kai in my inability to apprehend the natural world.  This very morning, I hiked up Ladera Canyon above Ojai and stopped above the creek to gaze at a little waterfall tumbling between pale sandstone boulders.  The shape of the flow the water was constantly shifting, if only slightly, but enough to create an irregular foaming churn below.  Is Ladera Creek an object or an event?  A noun or a verb?  It stays mostly the same, but changes constantly. The water carves out a cleft in my categories.  It erodes my assumptions.
 
And it is just this mental disequilibrium that draws my attention closer.  A rushing creek on a mountainside invites me to pause and watch the flowing water.  And my awareness of my inability to file this experience in the cabinet of my mind is its own experience, inviting deeper observation.
 
Charles Darwin was a keen observer of nature.  He was steeped in the scientific culture of his time, which was all about categorization.  He followed in the tradition of Linnaeus, from the 18^th century, who came up with the system of naming living things based on their “family trees”.  In 1831, Darwin embarked as a naturalist on a British ship sent around the world on a mapping expedition.  The Voyage of the Beagle is his journal of the journey. 
 
When we imagine Darwin, usually we picture him as an old man with a dour scowl under a hoary beard.  But there is no hint of that persona in his book.  Darwin as a young man was a bold and enthusiastic adventurer.  He ventured into wilderness among hostile native tribes in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and braved raging rivers, waterless plains, austere mountain passes, and a massive earthquake. 
 
And along the way, he catalogued the animal and plant life in great detail.  He studied the geology of each terrain, carefully observing the relationships between the rock layers in different zones, speculating about their origins.  Reading his journal, his amazement at the unique species of animals on the Galapagos Islands is palpable.  He wrote the book before he came up with the theory of evolution, but strong hints of his future discovery abound in The Voyage of the Beagle.
 
For page after page, the reader is deluged with Darwin’s attentiveness to the details of the natural world.  And then, such accounts are sharply punctuated with his attentiveness to his inner experience.  His outward observations periodically built up and poured out through his emotions, forcing him to pause from his enterprise of Linnaean categorization.
 
In Brazil, walking through the rainforest, he was overcome with feeling for a whole that was beyond the sum of its parts:  “It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.”
 
In Patagonia, walking alone in the desert, he experienced an epiphany:  “All was stillness and desolation.  Yet in passing over these scenes, without one bright object near, an ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly excited.  One asked how many ages the plain had thus lasted, and how many more it was doomed thus to continue.”
 
After carefully exploring a mountain in Chile, pondering the enormous antiquity of its underlying granite, his soul suddenly drew him closer:  “The limit of man’s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest, which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.”
 
He began to question his own ability to comprehend or describe the world he was seeing.  In Tierra del Fuego, he noticed that his perception of the height of its mountains was illusory:  “I was frequently surprised, in the scenery of Tierra del Fuego, at the little apparent elevation of mountains really lofty. I suspect it is owing to a cause which would not at first be imagined, namely, that the whole mass, from the summit to the water's edge, is generally in full view.” 
 
After experiencing a tremendous earthquake in Chile, he found himself at a loss for words to describe its devastating effects: “I have not attempted to give any detailed description of the appearance of Concepcion, for I feel it is quite impossible to convey the mingled feelings with which one beholds such a spectacle.”
 
At the top of the Andes, his heart burst him out of his heady geological analysis:  “I felt glad that I was alone: it was like watching a thunderstorm, or hearing in full orchestra a chorus of the Messiah.”

On his last sojourn in Brazil, walking through the jungle, he was wistful that he might never see such beauty again.  And he was acutely aware of the limits of his observational powers:  “Such are the elements of the scenery, but it is a hopeless attempt to paint the general effect. Learned naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil?”
 
He ends his journal with this expression of humility:  “…it appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries…The excitement from the novelty of objects, and the chance of success, stimulate him to increased activity. Moreover, as a number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the habit of comparison leads to generalisation. On the other hand, as the traveller stays but a short time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of more sketches, instead of detailed observations. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses.”
 
Charles Darwin discovered something even more important than the theory of evolution.  He learned that his careful, systematic observations of nature pointed beyond themselves into endless, alluring mystery.  His attentiveness to nature’s details led him into attentiveness toward the details of his own inner world, which led him to examine his own perceptions and assumptions.  Surely this capacity for humble self-reflection was critical to his ability to discover the theory for which he is best known. 
 
To know something new requires un-knowing that you know it all.  Darwin’s epiphanies deliver the reader into this place of un-knowing, which opens us to the knowledge of what lies beyond.
 
 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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

Wisdom Calls

 

“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?  On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.  O simple ones, learn prudence;  acquire intelligence, you who lack it.” (Proverbs 8: 1-5)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, in the ancient book of Proverbs, chapter 8, we read the words of a woman, tenderly calling from the gates of a town where all could hear her, inviting the people to wisdom – to herself:

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.  Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.  When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.  Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—“  (Proverbs 8: 22-25)

Mother Wisdom is described as God’s “master worker”, in there with him designing and building the cosmos and the earth.  She is celebrated as a manifestation of the divine. Jesus honored her when he said “…wisdom is vindicated by all her children.” (Luke 7: 35) 

“And now, my children, listen to me:  happy are those who keep my ways.  Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.”  (Proverbs 8: 32-33)  Holy Mother Wisdom - Sophia, in the original Greek language of the New Testament – exhorts us to listen.  To pay attention.  And to pay close attention to details, as she did when designing and crafting the universe alongside God.

 

”The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” (Proverbs 9: 10)  In this context, “fear” doesn’t mean anything scary:  it rather expresses reverence before Ultimate Reality.  Wisdom starts with humility:  “Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate,” says Holy Mother Wisdom (Proverbs 8: 13).  Foolishness generally follows when people act like they know it all. 

 

Wisdom is paying attention while refraining from the assumption that you understand everything about what you are observing.  Indeed, in order to pay full attention, we must release our grasp on what we do know, so that we make room in our hearts and minds for further knowledge.  Sophia’s students open themselves to new experiences and information, giving the attention that is one and the same with unconditional love.  “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”  (James 3: 17)

Wisdom = attention = love = God.

 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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

Sisar Canyon: a meditation

 

(A great joy of my work at USC has been my participation, from its inception a few years ago, in "Peaks and Professors", a student group that invites professors to go on hikes.  The conversations I've had with students on these many walks have been rich and satisfying...  so it was very sad that our last hike together for this academic year had to be cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis.  The student leaders asked me to take the group on a virtual hike -- and that led me to make this video.  Here's the transcript of it.)

I very much hope that every one of you is safe and secure and finding ways to tend to your souls during this time of “shelter in place”.  My own experience of living through this event, which has changed the world profoundly almost overnight, often rasters between viewpoints.  I look at the news – trying to be careful to rely only on reliable, vetted sources – and see a global disaster.  Then I switch to looking down at my feet, and see that they are still on solid ground.  I observe my actual experience in the present moment, and all is well, I’m grateful to say.  To meet this moment, I and the rest of us must learn to see things two ways at once.  We must be informed about the seriousness of the pandemic and act accordingly, while at the very same time appreciating whatever level of personal health and security and webs of loving relationships we have in the present moment.  This appreciative attention is as much a responsibility as following public health guidelines.
 
Our plan was to hike up Sisar Canyon from the upper Ojai Valley.  I’ve been walking this trail often since the quarantine began.  I notice that my relationship to the environment along the way is changing, as I reflect on the changes in my own life and the life of humanity on this planet.  I have a job at USC:  Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life.  But I have a different job on the Sisar Canyon trail.  It is my job, my responsibility, to appreciate what I experience of the natural world along the way.  I stop and stare at the vistas of Topa Topa Mountain’s sheer cliffs.  A few years ago I wrote this poem about this wall of rock, which lights up with rich color at sunset on clear evenings – a time that people in Ojai call “the pink moment”: 
 
Great power moves
in the silent austerity
of a distant mountaintop cliff
glowing above fanned skirts
of fallen rock.
 
Shelf of stone, above all -
the throne
that is the king.
 
I stop along the trail to attend to the plants and animals.  A few years ago, the devastating Thomas fire roared through these mountains.  The ceanothus bushes, also known as California lilac, were burned into blackened sticks.  But now, just over two years later, shiny light-green stalks have sprung from those sticks. And from them, dense clusters of tiny white or blue flowers have bloomed, filling the air with a sweet fragrance.  There’s poetry in those blooms, raised into the air by those blackened trunks.  How long will it take for new life to bloom from the consequences of our present crisis, I ask myself as I enjoy the scent of the ceanothus?  But that’s projecting my own preoccupations onto them.  Deeper attention – the attention that is love – asks me to go further.  To let go of my own interpretations and categorizations and names I give to them, and let the what I call the ceanothus bushes be whatever they are on their own terms.  And appreciate them as they are, in themselves – inviting me into the mystery within and beneath them.
 
I wish we could be together on this trail right now, to say nothing of wishing we could be together in a few weeks!  But I suppose I need to let go of that wish, and choose another in its stead.  And wish that wherever you are, you can put on a mask and go outside and take a walk and join me in our human responsibility to attend to nature and appreciate what we find in it.  Give the lizards and the frogs and the flowers and the stalks of grass the attention that is love.  Let go of the names and narratives we read into what we see, and let what we call trees and what we call birds be what they are, in and for themselves.  So that we can hold, and be held in,  the eternal now of the present moment.  From this loving attention will flow our activist commitments to preserve human life and the lives of all beings on our planet.
 
Till Peaks and Professors meets again, Hike On!
 

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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

Home by Another Road: A Post-Pandemic Vision

 

^"And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road."  Matthew 2:12

Wise men and women know that there are times when you can't go back the way you came.  So it was for the three magi from the East, who, having caught the vision of the Christ in Bethlehem, knew they needed to take another road home. 

So it is for us, having witnessed in our hearts the resurrection of the Cosmic Christ at Easter, while yearning for a pandemic pass-over.  Wisdom whispers to us that we can't go back the way we got here.  Things will never be the same. 

I feel a manifesto is in the making.  A global free-form, rough and ready, collective envisioning is underway.  We can no longer abide the oppressive political and economic structures that we used to tolerate as inevitable.  Alternatives that a few months ago seemed pie-in-the-sky are now burning necessities.  Critical changes that seemed impossible are now proving to be realistically attainable. 

So what track shall we cut to get where we want to be?  For this road-building work, I lean into my shovel and dig up some words to summarize the way ahead:

"We covenant with each other, and with Ultimate Reality, to continue protecting each other when this pandemic passes.  We are one people on one planet.  Today, sheltering in place and keeping physical distance from each other are acts of service and kindness to our fellow human beings near and far.  Wearing masks and washing hands in Boise protects and defends our sisters and brothers in Bangalore. 

"The coronavirus has proven to us that health is a public good.  So we covenant together to assure that all people have access to quality health care, regardless of their ability to pay. 

"The epidemic has proven to us that facts matter.  So we covenant together to resist demagoguery, to vote liars out of political office, to carefully choose our sources so that we get accurate information, and to support the advancement of science with our taxes.

"The virus has treated us as equals, bringing suffering and death to all classes and kinds of people.  But our response to the virus has exposed glaring and even deadly inequalities.  So as equals we covenant to fight the virus and other threats to our common good - including social and economic structures that pile benefits on the privileged few at the expense of the many.  We will establish a universal basic income, childcare and family leave for all parents, and paid sick leave for all.  We will have real democracy with majority rule: neutering the Electoral College, wiping out gerrymandering, making voting simple, easy, and universally accessible.  We will tax ourselves progressively, with richer people paying incrementally higher rates on income, and with a meaningful tax on wealth, in order to pay for government services that ensure the common good.  Private enterprise will thrive in a population kept healthy and secure by governmental services.

"The pandemic showed us what clean air looks like, as we cut back on transportation while sheltering in place.  We have dramatically reduced carbon emissions in this crisis.  We have proven that we can do it!  We covenant with each other and with the Earth to keep it that way, reversing global warming and protecting soil and water from pollution.  The pandemic has taught us that our fates are inseparable.  We covenant to remember what we have learned in this crisis, and to continue in solidarity as one human race on our one precious planet." 

How would you summarize the way forward?  Let's keep the conversation going!

JIM BURKLO

Blog: MUSINGS

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