Everything Matters; Nothing Matters

 "I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings".  George Fox

 

"Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all this fear and pain.  That force will sustain by feeding your heart from deep within."    Michael Singer

 

"Nor is the God-blinded soul given blissful oblivion but, rather, excruciatingly sensitive eyesight towards the world.  The sources of suffering for the tendered soul are infinitely multiplied, well-nigh beyond all endurance.  I recently had an unforgettable hour with a Hindu Monk.  He knew the secret of the paradox “Nothing matters; everything matters.”  It is a key of entrance into suffering.   The one who knows only one-half of the paradox can never enter that door of mystery and survive."

Thomas Kelly

 

"God give me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference."

Serenity Prayer

These 4 quotes come together in an interesting way for me.  As a life long Quaker I have most of my life had an outsized sense of what we have the strength to change - ie Quakers lead the Abolition movement and the suffragette movement, etc. so it seemed possible to change BIG things.  

As someone in my 20's I was very much an "everything matters" person and as Kelly describes with excruciating sensitive eyes to the suffering of the world.  I worked hard on the disarmament movement and through most of my 20s did not intend to have children as I thought they would simply be blown up in a nuclear war.  Somehow in my 30's that shifted enough to have my beloved daughter, and now I live with the irony that instead it maybe climate change that will destroy her and her peers life.  In my 2o's I also took that famous Fox quote as a powerful affirmation that love wins, that love has the power to overcome the darkness.

However, through my life I have seen much personal suffering as well as watching my clients suffer and much of the social justice gains of the 70's and 80's dismantled by the Bush and Trump administrations.   I began to feel some what disconnected from the power of love....it seemed hard to locate it in the face of so much suffering.   

It is helpful to hear Singer, a mindfulness teacher, slight twist on the ocean of love, that it is "behind the fear and the suffering.  Jampolsky famously said it is not hate that is the opposite of love but fear...it is fear that causes us to shut down and disconnect from that Divine Ocean of Love.   Recently I heard a podcast with the author of Eat, Love, Pray.   And she described her daily spiritual practice of decades - she writes a letter between she and Love.  Just hearing it my mind turned towards Love and started talking and I was amazed by the ocean like wave of Love that rushed towards me with compassion and encouragement!  It is important to me to realize that it is a Presense that is always there - and that is quite divorced from whether it "overcomes" hate or darkness or fear.   In other words - this is not a competition where one is winning.  Both suffering and Love are constantly present - it is simply how we learn to live with them.

A decade or so ago I heard a famous mindfulness teacher.  He was talking about observing our emotions, observing suffering - from a position of "just noticing"   He described his wife who he was happily married to coming to him upset and angry and being able to just observe and hear a voice that said: "and this too".   It was to me an acceptional ability to notice that everything matters and nothing matters.  That of course it mattered that she was upset - and that in the hugeness of human experience and the vast universe - it also did not matter.   It was a surrender to the fact that there are no seperate or protected parts of our life - immune from the suffering or strife.

I have been wondering if I have become numb or if I indeed are coming to some of the "wisdom" of the serenity prayer, but I have noticed in the last 5 years that as the long, ever increasing list of calmaties, system failures, irreverible man made environmental collapses occur that there is a voice in my head that just says "and this too".   This does not stop me from still trying to effect change.   But it does (usually) stop me from despair or desperation.  I remain in a calm center acting as I can and surrendering the rest to the ocean of Love.   This week I have faced that we may all soon die in a nuclear war...or we will once again skate thru another confrontation by nuclear powers with the price of the conquered Ukraine, and all the death and suffering this has brought.   Given the US invation of Iran, Iraqi and Afgahstan in the last two decades (also encased in death and suffering)....I can hardly find any difference between these acts of aggression by imperil powers.  So everything matters and nothing matters.

Holding a Vision

Most people I know are very glum about the multitude of terrible things that Donald Trump is doing to our country.   With good reason!  And I have heard many activists sort of trying to figure out how to even sort out priorities in a time this dark with so many things going wrong at once.  It is quite critical that as People of Faith that we listen for leadings and inner promptings of the Spirit and be faithful to those.   As my favorite quote from Thomas Kelly says we are not called to die on every cross but called to our particular task.   This is even more important to be clear about in times of crisis or we become scattered and unfocused and thus also unfaithful.

"I dare not urge you to your Cross, but God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing God's burdens in us.  God gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of the sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience.  Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, aand this my task matters for me and for my fellow human and for Eternity. ....

In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, our night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It may or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security.....Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world...kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world."
Thomas Kelly The Testament of Devotion 1941

So I urge you to be clear about what the Divine Author has tenderized your heart to and be faithful to acting on that now because the threat the Trump Administration places upon American Democracy and the world as a whole is indeed grave.

If you have read my previous posts about the research on the 14 signs of fascism, then by logical extension the types of activities that will protect democracy from fascism are ones that: protect freedom of press, speech, and assembly.  Activities that lesson fear (deglorify the military and patriotism) , and promote feelings of tolerance, the embrace of differences and diversity and the inter-connectedness of all peoples - especially calling out sexism, homophobia, anti-semeticism or xenophobia when it is promoted .  Actions that call corporations and big money interests to accountability and challenge corruption and cronyism and other unethical behaviors at they appear. The protection of intellectual rigor, education, labor, and science as they come under attack. Strenuous objection, challenging, and resistance to police violence, state violence (like torture or assassinations), or the invasion of privacy and the increase of surveillance of the general population. And the protection of voting rights and fair elections and other civil liberties.  These are the actions which are protective of democracy.

I would also hold out to you that while keeping a careful eye on the incursions against our freedoms and the destruction of various departments of the US government that it is also important to keep a vision of what we want.  It can become too easy to become so focused on the destruction that one can no longer remember what you want.   I would also say as a silver lining that some of what we had was "good enough" but not actually what we want.  The ACA is a good example.   It insured many more  people than before and yet fell far short of universal coverage and by keeping the insurance companies enshrined in the heart of it, it kept it really expensive.   Maybe the attempts to destroy it could actually lead, if we keep a vision of single-payer health care, to just that.  Bernie Sanders is holding up that vision by offering a bill to that affect.

What are the other things we really want?  George Lakey recently reminded me that William Penn founded PA as part of the "holy experiment"...that this holding of vision for God's kingdom is in the DNA of Quakers.  All through the bible the prophets are people who give voice to vision and call others forward.  George also points out that the left has not done a very good job of promoting vision for decades.   He is reading at each bookstore he talks at on his book tour the Black Lives Matters recently released vision statement.   What is your Vision?  We won't get there folks without one.

Discernment...A Quaker Gift for the World

Modern Quakers tend to see clearness committees as for membership and for marriage.  And I have heard some Quakers complain that convinced Friends may see this as more of a rubber stamp function because “of course we want this person to join our Meeting or to get married.”  In a life time of Quakerism I’ve only twice known a clearness committee for marriage to find a couple “not clear” to be married.  In both cases the couple did wind up breaking up, so presumably the clearness committee discerned correctly that the proposed marriage was not rightly ordered.  Done right the clearness committee can ask questions that prompt a deep and meaningful self-reflection.

I would like to argue here that the tool of discernment is one of the greatest gifts Quakerism has to offer the world and should be applied more widely.  So for example here are some of the other uses of a clearness committee I have known people to use a clearness committee for: whether to take a job (especially one that involves moving away or maybe is ethically challenging.), whether to enter a certain profession or change professions, whether one is called to commit holy obedience, or whether one has a leading to work for a social justice cause.  One may also discern whether to leave a marriage, whether to sue someone, whether to “come out”, whether to have a baby and even whether it is time to die!  As you can see the sky is the limit, and think how rich it is to have others to help discern God’s will about such serious and life changing decisions.

Early Friends had Committees of Elders to support members who had been found to be carrying an ongoing ministry.  Their purpose was to make sure they stayed faithful and grounded in their ministry – did not go up in their ego and “outrun their leading.”    Now a days we call these anchor committees.  Some people call them support committees but I’m afraid that secularizes the process and sees it as just “emotional support” – and overlooks the primarily spiritual task of anchoring the person in spirit.

Rightly ordered a clearness committee is not a body to “just listen” or to give advice.  It is to listen in a worshipful way – for each member to try to notice if the person is rightly ordered, to ask questions to try to help clarify, and to reflect what each member understands in the spirit.  Quite profound.

I have an anchor committee now for over 6 months which is helping me discern the right steps for my ministry regarding climate change.   Recently I was at FGC leading a workshop on Quaker practice – I was having to talk about and explain Quaker practice.  Somehow something came together in my head and I realized that many of the non-Quaker activists I knew (some spiritual, some not) were struggling to discern correct steps and some were struggling because they have not discerned and are in the chaos of being pulled hither and yon and everywhere with their concerns for our troubled world.  They do not have Thomas Kelly’s wise words: 

"I dare note urge you to your Cross.  But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks,our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizes His burdens in us....
     In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It maybe or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security."   (Amazingly he was writing this during WWII because it is a timely now as it was then.)   He goes on to say:
     " Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world, kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world.  Our churches were meant to be such groups, but now too many of them are dulled and cooled and flooded by the secular.".

So I started explaining just a bit to my activist friends and asking them if they would appreciate some help with discernment.  They were quite interested in the idea and I started having one on one meetings with people and simply asking the question “what are you most passionate about in the work against climate change?”  I listened and asked more questions to help them explore.  What emerged was a wonderful flurry of creative and spirit led activism.  My next move would be to teach a clearness committee structure so they don’t have to be dependent upon me for this.   I thus highly recommend that Quakers start learning how to take the discernment process out into the world.