god is in the details

"Indifferent things can go either direction
depending on the desire, will and character of the user:
wealth, power, honor, bodily strength,
health, beauty, life itself and death,
poverty, bodily sickness, insults.
Nothing should be called bad
other than sin alone."
John Cassian Conf. 6.III.2

Today’s Gospel (Luke 16:1-13) presents us with a kind of a two-edged sword. It’s easy to remember the famous one-liner that closes it––“You cannot serve both God and mammon.” This word “mammon” is interesting: it doesn’t just mean money; it signifies wealth when it is an evil influence or, perhaps more important for our purposes, a false object of worship or devotion, in other words, an idol. And yet the whole Gospel story has been about a dishonest servant who has acted prudently with money, and Jesus explains it’s because children of the world are more prudent in dealing with their own than children of the light. That’s us, by the way: let’s assume that we are, or are meant to be, children of the light, those who are in some way supposed to be as good as what we do as others are at what they do, perhaps to say as good at our spiritual duties as others are at their worldly duties.

At the beginning of the spiritual life there is a common tendency to think in terms of black and white––this is good and that is all bad; the soul is good, the body is bad; everything supposedly sacred––church activities, church music, church organizations––are good and everything secular is bad; being holy is good, money is bad. And yet we find ourselves trying to live and survive and raise children in the world that demands that we know how to act responsibly. Maturity brings with it a certain nuance about these things and actually makes us walk an even finer line, a higher road, through a narrower gate. We learn that there is a progression from our duties in this world to our spiritual duties, almost as if how we fulfill our duties in this world is going to affect how we fulfill our spiritual duties. God is in the details! The person who is trustworthy in small matters is also trustworthy in great ones.

This reminds me of the four stages of life in India, how one moves from being a student, to being a householder––with the mandate to make lots of money and raise and care for children and parents––before one moves into the more contemplative phases of life. None of these stages are bad, and holiness is to be found everywhere in whatever stage or station in life we find ourselves.

The nuance that we learn is that all these beautiful created things that surround us have an importance, but they have a relative importance, that’s all. My favorite example these days has been the ego. Sometimes people in the spiritual life think that they have to destroy the ego. But I think that is very dangerous language. The Sufi teacher Kabir Helminski writes, “The ego is a fundamentally positive energy with many positive qualities: aspiration, diligence, responsibility, self-respect, discipline, integrity.” These are the positive qualities that Jesus seems to be alluding to in the Gospel, don’t they? Well, that’s because these positive qualities belong to and come from the divine Source, and then they get reflected in us. And as we develop the positive aspects of ego, we find that the ego can be undergirded and supported by spiritual intelligence and wisdom, and then it can act as an instrument of this greater intelligence and wisdom rather than merely as a proponent of its own self-interest. What is needed is “to establish a subtle balance––the ego in co-creatorship with the Spirit.” Co-creatorship: that is what we are about.

I love this essentially optimistic approach: Whatever exists is essentially good. If there were not some good in it, it would not exist at all. So the ego is not to be destroyed but to recognized for what it is and/or can be: a friend, a servant, an instrument, and not a master, or an object of worship. And the same applies to all our wealth, our material wealth, our talents, our sexuality, music and the arts––they are all our friends! If they were not good they would not exist. And we need to keep them in perspective as friends, servants and instruments, and not let them become gods and monsters.

And part of the function of the talents is that they are to be put at the disposal of the world, so that we too become servants, friends and instruments, instruments of God’s peace for the world. That’s why we also hear from the prophet Amos railing against those who trample on the needy and destroy the poor. All of this wealth we are given––our wealth, our material wealth, our talents, our sexuality, music and the arts––are meant as gifts for the world. We are meant to be co-creators, pro-creative in our world, laying our lives, our wealth, and our talents down for the sake of the world as friends, servants and instruments of God’s peace. That’s why the Eucharistic bread gets broken and passed out, and the Eucharistic cup gets poured out and shared. So do we get broken open, passed out shared; poured out and passed around for the sake of the world. When we know who we are, we know what we are meant to be and do in the world, for the sake of the world.

So let’s pay attention to the little things in our life, recognizing that all these little things are gifts for our use, never letting them become masters and god and objects of worship, but seeing them as instruments, servants, and friends, so that we in turn may be friends, servants and instruments of God’s peace in our world.

praying and playing for peace

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.
Leonard Bernstein

I wasn't sure when I started this blog if I was going to be able to keep up with this... It seems as if it is much easier when I am on the road sitting in an earthy internet café than when I am home sitting comfortably in the woods. But I am forcing myself to get a few more things on right now, due to the upcoming anniversary, tomorrow, of the terrorist attacks in 2001 (I have some resistance to softening the event into a slogan by referring to it simply as "9/11").

Two friends of mine and I are doing three concerts this week. It comprises mostly music from the east, songs that I am slowly working on and recording for my "dream album," and also songs that have an unabashed hope that we can actually change the world and influence world peace just in their singing. Hence, "Lead Me from Death Into Life," the mantra from the Bridharanyaka Upaishad that was adapted by the World Council of Churches as the World Peace Prayer––our version of the refrain is "Lead me from death into life, / lead me from falsehood to truth, / lead me to hope from despair, / lead me from hatred to love, / lead me from war into peace, / lead me from death into life!"; hence, my friend John Marheineke and my version of Jack Johnson's version of Ben Harper's "(I can Change the World) With My Own Hands,"; and our version of Rev. Heng Sure's setting of the Metta Sutta, "(May All Become) Compassionate and Wise." I am performing with the aforementioned John singing and playing guitar with me (I think the first time that I have worked with another singer guitarist since I was in high school!), and a brilliant (in both senses of the word) local percussionist named Steve Robertson playing mostly tabla and a bit of udu, that is, a clay pot, the African version of a similar instrument from India called a gattam (forgive my spelling if I got it wrong). I am having all kinds of flashbacks of Tiruvanamalai, performing with Theophilus at the foot of Mount Arunachala, the first time working with tabla and guitar, and the the next day performing "My Own Two Hands," complete with hand gestures, with the 3000 Indian school children at the Danish Lutheran Mission School, not to mention two other new pieces that we are doing––"Vedahametam," which began as an instrumental inspired while at Sriramana Ashram and ended up as a setting of the beautiful passages from the Svetasvatara Upanishad and Sri Guru Gita, and "Spirit in the Cave of the Heart," inspired by a bhajan at Shantivanam and performed for the first time also that night in Tiru. Mother India gave me new music during the last trip.

We played our first gig yesterday on an outdoor stage for a parish festival for Our Lady Star of the Sea in Santa Cruz. We went up after a classic rock band and the "La Chicitita" contest, little girls lip-synching, singing and dancing, (Was it George Burns or Jimmy Durante who said that you should never follow child or animal acts?) and right before a Mexican band called T'quila. It was a nice stage and a very competent sound engineer and system, and I thought we played very well, even considering the fact that it is the first time that the three of us had performed together. But the audience was totally underwhelmed by our performance. Only a handful of people even listened, and even fewer applauded. We were definitely out of our proper milieu. It somehow didn't bother me one bit. I believe so much in this music, and I luckily had the two others on stage with me, both of whom seemed to be having a good holy time singing and playing. John and I made up for a bit by stopping on a bench on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz and singing a couple of songs on our way to eat lunch afterwards.

Tomorrow, September 11th itself, we will be in front of a more sympathetic crowd, I firmly believe. Our friend Shannon for the third year now has organized an inter-religious concert in a very fine space in Aptos. We are only doing two numbers, but we are closing the event. I have been encouraging all my friends to be there and to encourage their friends to be there. Then on Saturday we are going to Berekeley where Rev. Heng Sure and his friends are sponsoring an inter-religious festival of the arts at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. There we will do the whole set.

This is what music is for, at least for this monk-musician: singing hope, encouraging others to continue believing that peace can prevail, building bridges between peoples and traditions, and, most foundationally, fostering an experience of Spirit in the cave of the heart, because, "when your soul is in peace then you are in peace and your soul is in God." I found a surprising and beautiful verse in the Quran that I am going to quote (I checked with me Muslim sources first to make sure that it was no offense for a non-Muslim to read from the Quran), where the Prophet (Peace be upon him!) addresses the other "People of the Book"––that is, Jews and Christians––saying: "Let us concentrate on the things we have in common, belief in the one God." I hope that it will also be of no offense if I broaden that to include all good people of good will who are seeking God in the multitudinous names and forms––let us concentrate first of all on the things we have in common.

I "composed" a little prayer for us to use to begin these performances:

"O Lord of Love revealed in the Scriptures,
may the song on our lips be the song of our hearts,
and may the song in our hearts be the sound of your voice.
May our lives proclaim your goodness
and our voices sing your praise."

Anyway, in case you have never seen it, I am including here below the Assisi Decalogue for Peace. After Pope John Paul II's monumental inter-religious gathering in Assisi in 1986, he reconvened the gathering in 2002, in direct response to the catastrophic events of the previous Fall. This was drafted and passed by delegates of 12 world religions, and 31 Christian communities, at the conclusion of the inter-religious peace summit held on 24 January 2002 in Assisi.

1. We commit ourselves to proclaiming our firm conviction that violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic spirit of religion, and, as we condemn every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or of religion, we commit ourselves to doing everything possible to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.

2. We commit ourselves to educating people to mutual respect and esteem, in order to help bring about a peaceful and fraternal coexistence between people of different ethnic groups, cultures and religions.

3. We commit ourselves to fostering the culture of dialogue, so that there will be an increase of understanding and mutual trust between individuals and among peoples, for these are the premise of authentic peace.

4. We commit ourselves to defending the right of everyone to live a decent life in accordance with their own cultural identity, and to form freely a family of his own.

5. We commit ourselves to frank and patient dialogue, refusing to consider our differences as an insurmountable barrier, but recognizing instead that to encounter the diversity of others can become an opportunity for greater reciprocal understanding.

6. We commit ourselves to forgiving one another for past and present errors and prejudices, and to supporting one another in a common effort both to overcome selfishness and arrogance, hatred and violence, and to learn from the past that peace without justice is no true peace.

7. We commit ourselves to taking the side of the poor and the helpless, to speaking out for those who have no voice and to working effectively to change these situations, out of the conviction that no one can be happy alone.

8. We commit ourselves to taking up the cry of those who refuse to be resigned to violence and evil, and we are desire to make every effort possible to offer the men and women of our time real hope for justice and peace.

9. We commit ourselves to encouraging all efforts to promote friendship between peoples, for we are convinced that, in the absence of solidarity and understanding between peoples, technological progress exposes the world to a growing risk of destruction and death.

10. We commit ourselves to urging leaders of nations to make every effort to create and consolidate, on the national and international levels, a world of solidarity and peace based on justice.

Let us concentrate on what we have in common!

"i can change the world..."

NE SONO SICURISSMA
IL REGNO DEI CIELI
IL SIGNORE LO PROMETTI
EL LA DONA SOLO AI PROVERI
1st Letter of Saint Clare to Agnes

I spent the weekend with my godson and his family. I love calling him that, for some reason. This is Alberto Molina, boy genius, and his wife Dana and their baby Catalina. I met Alberto when I was still a postulant at New Camaldoli. The family of a classmate of his brought him down to the Hermitage for a retreat just after his graduation from Yale, double major in Political Science and Drama, which do not seem so disparate when you think about it, the possible birthplace of some very astute guerilla theatre. My recollection is that we met in the bookstore at NCH when I was on duty, and we got to talking, which led to a walk up to the lake, which led to a 15 year friendship. At one point, the summer of 1995, I was in New Hampshire staying with Romuald, of happy memory, at Epiphany Monastery, and Alberto came to visit for a week or so. Romuald left to accompany another monk who was transferring there on a drive across the country, leaving the place to Alberto and I, and we had a writing week. We both had our respective Powerbooks, and he would retire to a little shed out in the front and I would set up mine at the dining room table. He was working on a play at the time, and I was working on the Camaldolese Psalter, the Sunday Office if I recall correctly. We would touch base around noon, and then again at dinner time, after which we would roll a couple of Drum cigarettes on the back porch and talk ‘til bedtime. It is a great memory. We also drove out to the New Hampshire coast one day, which was quite a discovery to me––that New Hampshire even had a beach. At the end of that week I drove Alberto into The City (if you have to ask…), where he was sharing a loft near Chinatown with some friends. That’s another wonderful memory, shopping for dinner at little local store, meeting a group of high-powered Yalie classmates, many of whom were already working in media, MTV, Disney, etc. We have kept in touch as he pursued a career in stock trading and then all kind of creative ventures in computer technology. The latter is his métier now, running Topaz Groups interactive media and building a creative web-based community called MassMind, hosts of our foundling consiglipennington.com web page. Alberto also met me in Italy in 1999, at the end of my first visit there, and we spent about a week together exploring Rome and Florence. In spite of the fact that I, having just finished an intensive one-month course in Italian, was supposed to be able to get us around with my command of the language, my main memory of tha time is of Alberto speaking very loud Spanish to waiters and shopkeepers while I slunk out to the sidewalk and waited. He is rather fearless.

I also prepared he and Dana for marriage, my one and only marriage prep to date, and presided at their wedding in Princeton in 1993. (This is why they refer to me as “our monk.”) They still tease me about the fact that I was more nervous than they before the wedding. It was only my second wedding, and had been fraught with difficulties: Dana is Jewish so we had to get special permission for Alberto to marry a non-Catholic non-Christian; they wanted to have it in a place that was not a church, so I had to get special permission for that; and then in the midst of a flurry of letters back and forth between their diocese and ours Alberto revealed to me that he was pretty sure that he had actually never been baptized. So, on one day Bishop Ryan was signing permission for me to perform his wedding to a non-Catholic in an extraordinary place, and the next day he was granting me permission to baptize and confirm him. Hence how I also became his godfather. (Richard Crowe from St Francis Kitchen actually stood in as proxy while I administered the sacraments.)

They now live in Princeton in a spacious house right next door to Dana’s parents home, where Dana actually grew up. Jim is a retired professor and academic dean from the University and Kate is among other things the former mayor. I’ve been to Princeton three or four times now, and I must admit that my earliest memories of New Jersey (Newark, Elizabeth) have now been replaced by images that justify it being called the Garden State. I love it there.

Sunday morning Alberto drove me down to the Monastery of the Poor Clares in nearby Bordentown, NJ. I know the nuns there from the Franciscan Camaldolese Contemplative weeks hosted by Dan Riley et al up at Mount Irenaeus, most especially Sr Mary Franics Flynn who has been one of my faithful ammas these past years. I have a special love for the Clares (le Clarisse, in italiano), or “the Poor Ladies,” as I like to call them. I love the fact that Francis established a strictly contemplative female counterpart to his own charism as hermit-preacher-wanderer, almost as if he knew he had to root himself in both the feminine and the contemplative, to which he often returned for spiritual refreshment like a wandering sannyasi pulling in at an ashram. As a matter of fact it was in the garden of the monastery of San Damiano, under the care of the nuns while suffering excruciating pain from his eye disease, that Francis wrote his Canticle of all Creatures. I began sketching some songs some months ago for an idea I had of a musical based on the life of Francis. My idea (please do not steal it, anyone!) was to have Clare narrate it. One of the texts that I want to adapt for a song is this one that I saw in a calligraphy on the wall at the monastery in Bordentown the last time I visited and later ascertained was from Clare’s first letter to Agnes.

NE SONO SICURISSMA
IL REGNO DEI CIELI
IL SIGNORE LO PROMETTI
EL LA DONA SOLO AI PROVERI

Of this I am sure,
the Lord promises and gives
the reign of heaven
only to the poor.

Mary Francis had invited me to preside at Mass, an invitation I was glad to accept. My homily, by the way, is an abridged version of the preceding blog. Afterwards Alberto and I along with a visiting friar (who is stationed at the New York province’s house of studies in Rome and who also works for the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith who had con-celebrated with me) were invited into a small dining room where we had a little breakfast and lively conversation with a handful of the nuns. I felt so comfortable there, as if those women truly know how to treat a passing pilgrim. Alberto seemed to have been very touched by their warm hospitality as well and I have hopes he will return with his women-folk.

Later that morning we headed into Manhattan (Men(h)a(t)’n I believe is close to the correct pronunciation, “h” and “t” optional). Two friends of theirs are involved in a new play that has been a part of the “Fringe Festival” on the lower east side. The neighborhood, the theatre and the audience itself were all in keeping with the fringe aspect. (There was an impressively optimistic but ultimately failed attempt at finding curb side parking.) The play, called “As Far As We Know,” is a re-creation of the story of Keith Maupin, a soldier from Batavia, Ohio who has been missing in Iraq since 2004 since his company was ambushed. There was one videotape released of him early on, and another very grainy one relased some time later that alleged to be his execution, but it was said to be inconclusive. His company came home but the military claims to be continuing the search for him even as his family still keeps hope alive that it was not he in the second videotape. The story is mostly their story. In a fascinating process, the play began with many of the members of this ensemble sitting around simply discussing the topic of torture and then improvising lines and scenes about it in something they called “The Torture Project.” Then when they heard of this story one of their ensemble went to Batavia and did research, interviewing the Maupin family extensively. After that they got more serious about it yet, and basically came together, chose characters and improvised scenes and lines until some kind of story and script emerged which was later written down by the director. This was off-Off-Broadway, mind you, and certainly not the slickest of productions nor the most professional, but I had not been to a live play in I can’t remember how long, and I was fascinated by the whole thing as well as, later when I found out about it, fascinated by the whole process.

We had dinner afterward with one of the lead characters, Sarah, who did a fine job playing the female military official assigned to be the liaison to the family and winds up getting too emotionally, personally involved with them, until she is later assigned to active duty in Iraq herself. Of course you can tell the anti-war, anti-military prejudice in something like this pretty far up-front, but they really did resist getting too heavy-handed. As Sarah explained to me afterward, the family is still supportive of President Bush and the war, and they wanted to be sympathetic to that if they were to tell the story truly. One scene, in which the missing soldier’s twin sister is doing research about various methods of torture, which morphs into a fantasy scene about a mock quiz show about torture methods (reminiscent of Bob Fosse’s death scene in “All That Jazz”), I found myself getting me very agitated then angry. I kept thinking that they were going “too far” and being disrespectful, but by the end of the scene, as the sister is coming out of the fantasy, I was almost in tears. Very disturbing.

Even more fascinating to me was to be around this group of people dedicating their lives to the arts in small ways, little theatres, obscure scripts, and genuinely seeming to be very dedicated to it as more than a passing hobby. As we walked to dinner I was asking Alberto why––Why do people write plays and act in them and dedicate themselves to theatre? It is the same question I have to ask myself about music all the time, especially since I am a monk as well; as Thomas Merton said that a monk had to ask himself every day why he became a monk, I have to ask why as a monk am I wandering around the country and the world singing? His answer, for himself at least, was about the same as mine. We really believe we can change the world, make it a better place, use art as a medium for convey truth and a better outlook on life. Just as they really think that that play can really effect change in the world, so I really do believe that the music I do changes peoples’ hearts––makes the world a “better place… a kinder place… helps the human race.”

After the play we went to a restaurant called Quintessence, “Raw-Vegan-Organic.” A very creative and delicious––and expensive¬¬––meal all made entirely of, well, raw, vegan, organic ingredients. It is an understatement to say that it was a stimulating experience to be in New York City even to just get a peek at some of the souls meandering and strutting through even a few of the panoply of neighborhoods there in their various habits and haloes in the self-named Capitol of the World.

east and west, alpha and omega

Strive to enter through the narrow door.
Luke 13:24

I just finished doing a Spirit, Soul and Body week at Omega Institute in upstate New York. Even a year ago I didn’t know anything about the place, but was told vaguely that it is like the “Esalen of the east coast.” The place has been around 30 years now and considers itself “a pioneer in exploring, teaching, and embracing new ideas focusing on health and wellness, personal spiritual growth, and self-awareness.” They also have another mission: to create a peaceful oasis in a hurried world, and an environmentally aware one as well. To give you an example of what goes on there, the same week that I was presenting there was a workshop on the “Sexual Body and the Yoga of Light,” another very popular one on shamanic healing and shape-shifting, one on yoga and one on Thai massage yoga, and one called “the Natural Singer.” This weekend as we were leaving they were going to be hosting Robert Bly and Arlo Guthrie, and local boy Noah Levine of the Dharma Punx¬¬––the name of whose latest book I love: “Shut Up and Sit Down.” The last weekend of August there will be the ecstatic chant weekend with Krishna Das and Jai Uttal, both of whom I love, and would I love to be there! (There is actually kirtan singing regularly, as well as an all cultures pow-wow.) The place is beautiful in the lush countryside of the Hudson River Valley, near Poughkeepsie, Westpoint and Hyde Park. The staff was very gracious in accommodating me, sent a limo to pick me up the airport when I arrived (three hours late) and hired a driver to take me all the way to Princeton, New Jersey when we finished Friday.
The architecturally and in other way inviting and contemplative library is named after Ram Dass, who I have admired for some years, especially for three things of his: his book “The Journey of Awakening” was one of the foundational teachings for me on meditation; the album he recorded with Krishna Das and Jai Uttal, “Amazing Grace,” on which he reads the poetry of eastern mystics has been one of my favorite listens for years and also was the inspiration for some of the recorded work that I have done; and a cassette tape of a talk he gave called “Death is Not an Outrage,” during which he told the story of his own life. I was tempted to buy the new DVD about his life, “Fierce Grace,” which I hear is wonderful, but it seemed a little spendy at $32.00. Anyway, when I first walked into the Ram Dass Library the woman who was working there (I later found out her name was Page––“No jokes, please!” she said) looked up from the counter and said, “Cyprian!” I asked her if she knew me, and she said that she had been looking at my picture in the catalogue for some time and had been waiting for me to come in. It was so nice to be welcomed like that, and we became pretty good friends over the course of the week.
Coming so recently off of the Esalen experience, I couldn’t help but make comparisons, mainly about the experience of the workshop. At Esalen we had people from a wide variety of spiritual traditions take the workshop, which was pleasing to me, but the description of the workshop had not made it very clear that I was coming mainly from a Christian background, even though bringing in elements from other traditions (Universal Wisdom). I was also hopelessly naïve thinking I could slip in things like Bede’s version of the Our Father and Hail Mary without more than raising eyebrows. In the end it went well, but there were some rough moments that could have been avoided, and I was actually afraid that the ritual was so much of a buzz factor that they were not getting the stuff of the talks. On the other hand, even though the material and ritual was more inclusive and universal at Omega, it had been advertised in such a way as to make it seem off-putting to non-Christians (one Jewish man told me so), and so all the participants were Christian, (at least nominally so; I made it a point not to pry into their affiliation or involvement, though some of that came out). One of the attendees was an articulate ordained Baptist minister, who was a delight to have around. As a matter of fact, they were a little surprised (though, thankfully, delightfully so) that I was drawing so much on Universal Wisdom, so I found I couldn’t always assume that everyone knew what I was talking about when I referred to the Upanishads or the Dhammapada.
Though it was a long week, it was a good thing to have four and a half days this time. I knew I had enough material and I also didn’t have to rush, so I could relax and sit back and talk more off the cuff, as well as review and make sure folks were following along. The participants were wonderful, engaged and committed to the work of the week, which of course included chanting, prayers, yoga and lots of meditation. We also, each afternoon, had a period of group lectio divina. This is the first time I have been able to do it fully this way: on Monday we read from the Gospel of Luke, but then all the other days we read from non-Judeo Christian sources: the Upanishads, the Tao te Ching, the Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita, as we do with Sangha, applying the same method of reading four times, pulling out one word, then one phrase before opening the floor up to discussion about how we were encountering this word (Word!) today. I think the best discussions of the week came out of those lectio sessions. I have two things in mind when I do them: first Abhishiktananda having the lectio sessions on the Upanishads, and second how Bede said over and over again that he wanted to encourage people to be able to meditate each others’ Scriptures––hence, of course, the book Universal Wisdom. So we were very much in the lineage.
Outside of my particular group, I was delighted to be in an environment like that. Once again, for all the bad press that the Roman Catholic church has gotten these past years––and especially ordained Roman Catholics––I felt as if people treated me with a great deal of respect even before I had earned it. I also love being in such an idealistic environment––I am a hopeless optimist about the human race––where people really believe that they can change the world by changing themselves and the way they live (and they can––“with my own two hands…”). My optimism carries over into all of these creative, and sometimes seemingly whacky, new approaches to spirituality mainly, I posit, trying to invite the body and the earth back into the temple. That, of course, is a large part of what we deal with in the Spirit, Soul and Body sessions. I explained this time that the reason I spend so much time talking about Christianity during the “body” section is not so much to try to convert others or be an apologist for Christianity, but because western Christianity is largely to blame for the mess we are in because of its dualistic and decidely non-incarnational approach to spirituality. It is other traditions who are teaching us westerners, Christian or not, how to bring our body into the temple. (I am halting here before I start quoting my whole first two talks, Wendell Berry and Sam Keen.)
But yes, optimistic, that these kids and other folks at Omega are not only sincere (even a murderer can be sincere) but are quite often on the right path, discovering truth, beauty and goodness, discovering new wine for their new wineskins in many ways. I was thinking of the two preceding popes, first of all how Pope Paul VI at the opening session of the Second Vatican Council urged the Council fathers to change their attitude to the world––“not to conquer but to serve; not to despise but to appreciate, not to condemn but to comfort.” Specifically as regards the ritual/prayer service I had been worried about diminishing the Christian element too much, not wanting to make it seem as if I were ashamed of Jesus somehow, remembering Martin Marty’s warning that we are in danger of losing the cross, “and that,” he wrote, “as they say, is crucial.” But then suddenly I remembered John Paul II’s hopeless naïveté in 1983 when at the Assisi gathering of the world’s religious leaders he announced that they would now all “go and pray together,” a remark that was later stricken from the record since there are those who think that people of different traditions cannot pray together. I can celebrate Eucharist and the other sacraments, the Rosary, the Liturgy of the Hours on my own. When I am with others not of my tradition, I want to find a way that we can pray together, find some words that we can all agree on or at least words that do not exclude each together, and/or of course, to sit together in the sacred silence.

To my surprise I ran into someone I knew there, a girl named Rebecca who I had met over a decade ago through the Four Winds Council when she was living at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. We had had a few nice visits back then and had also exchanged a few letters but I have not seen her since. She appeared at the door of the building where I was doing my sessions and I was both surprised and not surprised to see her again, and there. This was her kind of place. We had a long hug and a quick visit, and then she was whisking off to be with her yoga gurus for a few days, so we made plans to visit later on Thursday when she got back.

They have open “sampler sessions” on some nights of the week so that people from one workshop can get a taste of another. My sampler was Tuesday, and I had planned to do my musical presentation that evening, even though it wasn’t typical of what the rest of the week was. We had a nice little crowd come besides my own participants, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing the concert again, which is also always a relief from speaking. Through it I got to meet another handful of great folks that I would run into again over the course of the week. And somehow I still feel like this is what I really do––I’m a singer not a teacher! It is true: music cuts through all the ideology, especially since we have really been able to develop a repertoire drawn from poetry from many different sources.

Thursday I had dinner with Rebecca and then a long visit with her again after my evening session over a cup of tea. She is so impressive. She has traveled the world partly for the experience, partly finding ways that she can be of service. She has been heavily involved in animal rights activism and nature causes. She has taken lay ordination in the Soto Zen tradition and has studied yoga extensively in the jivamukti lineage, and also seems very conversant in Sufi mysticism. We had a thousand things to talk about and by the end of the evening, well after midnight, I was so charged up I could barely sleep. I am just so glad that there are people who are that alive in the world, who care that much about the future of the race and the planet, and who care so absolutely little for social convention and security. She is a real sannyasin. She had had no idea what had become of me over this past decade and so was equally excited to hear about all my wonderful spirit, soul and body adventures, and was a captive and appreciative audience when I sang three or four of the new songs for her. I had this same feeling that I get from time to time, like singing for Jojo and his friends in Durango, that I was able to write these songs just for them, just for Rebecca, just so I could have a bridge to cross over into Rebecca’s world and she to mine.

The weird thing is I feel like I get all my naïve optimism from my reading of the Scriptures. The prophet Isaiah says some shocking things. In regards the above quote of Paul VI, that’s also what comes to my mind when I hear the words of Isaiah 40 at the beginning of Advent: “Comfort, give comfort to my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” And I think of Isaiah 43:18-19––“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”––when I read this passage from Is 66:18 that we use in the lectionary today: “I know their works and I know their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come to see my glory… to the farthest coastlands far away that have not heard my fame or seen my glory… and I will take some of them as priests and Levites.”

Isaiah seems to be already pointing toward the universality of the covenant, that at some point, even if it has started with Abraham’s children, his seed by blood, it is soon to include people from all nations and tongues, from the farthest coastlands. (Jesus will take that to its extreme when he says in Matthew 3: “I tell you, God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”) This has got to have been a shock for the Hebrews to hear at that time. The monotheistic religions––Judaism, Christianity, Islam––have all inherited this tendency to turn the scandal of particularity into a scandal of exclusivity. But how could it be so? How could God be so small? Now, ripped away from the security of the temple in their exile, the people of Israel have had to discover a new interiority––the 1st Axial period––and that new interiority in some marvelous way is also calling for a new inclusivity.

In the Gospel of Luke (13:22ff.) when they ask Jesus how many will be saved, Jesus doesn’t answer. He turns it back on the questioner: “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” I find it very funny that he doesn’t answer. “Many will try to enter and will not be able to”; on the other hand “people will come from the east and west, from the north and south.” And if it will be in keeping with the rest of Jesus’ ministry, those who will enter might be all kinds of unexpected people, the blind and the lame, the tax collectors and prostitutes, unclean and outsiders, people from Omega Institute and Esalen, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and Mount Madonna, white guys with dread locks and Jewish girls with multiple tattoos and body piercings––not who we thought was going to be first, but those we might have thought of as last. Not the ones who are necessarily calling “Lord, Lord” but those who are showing that the law is written on their hearts.

Many of the people who frequent and run places like Omega are those who have turned the backs on institutional religion (for the most part Christianity) because they feel as if institutional religion turned its back on them, or because they weren’t finding transformative experiences or inclusivity inside of churches, and so they have built an environment of transformation and inclusivity. I know a lot of people in Christianity scoff at folks like this, and giggle and snicker at their costumes and antics and diet and drums and dancing, but I see, “They were hungry and no one was there to feed them. They were like sheep without a shepherd.” And so now they, the children, are leading the way.

There’s a movement in the human person, a natural movement that must be respected. We all start out selfish; we’re supposed to be selfish as children. It is our survival method. We automatically know how to cry when we need to feed, when we are too hot or too cold or in danger, so that we will be cared for. (It’s actually amazing to me just how helpless human children are for so long. Other creatures in nature seem to be self-sufficient a lot sooner.) But slowly, slowly our parents wean us not just from our dependence on the breast, but also from our selfishness, and teach us that we belong to something bigger. The first something bigger that we learn that we belong to is the tribe, or our family; we learn even that our personal survival also depends on survival of the tribe. Some people say that in women it is the growth from selfishness to care, meaning care for the tribe, for the family; and in men the growth is from selfishness to rights, to protecting the family and the tribe. But there is a greater belonging too that we learn, and another move that we need to make: from care for the tribe to universal care; from rights for the tribe to universal rights. In a sense this is the ultimate selflessness, extending care, extending justice outside of our known categories and cultures. At some point we are going to realize that our personal survival also depends on this universality, that we are all one body. (I’m thinking again of the marvelous experience of Malcolm X just before he was murdered, what he called his “second conversion,” when during his hajj to Mecca he realized that all these people around him, black, white, brown skinned, from every nation and language group, were all his brothers and sisters, and he left the Nation of Islam of Elijah Muhammed to form Organization of African-American Unity, and eventually moved from fighting for civil rights to fighting for human rights.)

In some ways I think that it is contemplatives, meditators, who should be able to understand this the best. “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” The narrow door is the one leading into the inner chamber, ascending to the depths of the heart, and then all of this will make sense. It’s narrow because we have to shrink and shrink and shrink some more to fit through, like the healthy ego that is lean and mean, servant and friend and messenger, like the seed that falls to the ground and dies, like the yeast that disappears into the dough, like salt disappears into whatever it is flavoring. We have at some point to cast off all our bloated self-importance and our cultural baggage if we are to be people of the spirit. The new interiority gives birth to a new inclusivity. Bede Griffiths wrote that at the level of the body and the soul we are all separate, and constantly yearning for the re-connection. But at the level of the spirit we are one. We are all contained in God, permeated by the Spirit, swimming in Spirit.

Bruno writes that this new period of post-modernity and globalization is marked by a transition from a Eurocentric to a global consciousness, and that both monasticism and the church in general are being invited to open themselves toward “a larger emergent reality, which can itself be seen as a fruit of continuing incarnation––of the working of the Christ mystery in the earth of humanity.” Instead of the scandal of exclusivity we move from the scandal of particularity to the scandal of the Incarnation. This, of course, is why we study Universal Wisdom, and why we teach of the Universal Call to Contemplation, why we watch for and applaud it wherever it is happening. This has great implications for and is the very basis of inter-religious dialogue.

conversation and war

I am the rite, I am the sacrifice.
I take the offering, I am the offering
I am the father and mother of the world.
In ancient days I established it.
I am what need be known, what purifies,
The sacred syllable OM,
The verse of the sacred books
Your way and goal, upholder, ruler,
Witness, dwelling, refuge, friend,
the world’s origin, continuance and dissolution,
abiding essence, changeless seed.

Bhagavad Gita 9:16-18

A friend sent me a YouTube link recently. I think he was thinking that I would really enjoy this talk by Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. It starts out with these words on the screen:

"We have no reason to expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Faith is intrinsically divisive. We have a choice between conversation and war. It was conversation that ended slavery, not faith. Faith is a declaration of immunity to conversation. To make religious war unthinkable we have to undermine the dogma of faith. The continuation of civilization requires not moderation but reason."

Harris's basic theme is that the time has come to speak openly and clearly about what he sees as "the dangers posed to society by religious belief. While highlighting what he regards as a particular problem posed by Islam at this moment with respect to international terrorism, Harris makes a direct criticism of religion of all styles and persuasions, as both dangerous and impeding progress toward what he considers more enlightened approaches to spirituality and ethics.” (thanks to Wikipedia)

"To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world – to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish – is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance."

My first response, though being no great student of history, was to wonder, “Didn’t we already go through this during the Enlightenment?”––reason as the primary basis of authority, the Scientific Revolution, rationality. I understand that the great figures of the Enlightenment were reacting against the stale traditions, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny of the Middle Ages, and that they believed they could lead civilization to progress––but did it work? Reason divorced from religious intuition and mythic imagination? Is this not what gave birth to unbridled capitalism, the military industrial complex and all its spawn?

My friend argued that Harris is “a huge defender of the mystical aspects of religion” but is it not true that not only cultures and civilizations but people themselves aren’t simply born into the mystical aspects of religion. Those same cannot easily be divorced from the popular mythological aspects of religion. Does not Jungian psychology suggest that if we were to rid ourselves of all the religious imagery and language it would all rise up again?

I am no defender of fundamentalism in any of its forms and would count myself first in line to decry the abuses in the name of religion. But “gibberish”? Is biblical, quranic, vedic or any other religious language merely gibberish? Is mythology––or art, for that matter––gibberish?

Fr Bede, in his introduction to Universal Wisdom, says that this is the difference between the mind of western man (sic) and that of the people of the ancient world, and that it is typical of a male patriarchal culture. The human being in the west is "described as a ‘rational animal,’ that is, an animal being with body and soul, of which the faculty of reason is considered to be the highest power... and no knowledge is considered to be scientific which does not depend on this…” On the other hand, as Jacques Maritain, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung point out, there is another way of knowing––imagination, images and archetypes, the intelligence of myth and the intelligence, if you will, of religion. And it is actually a superior way of knowing. And in these great myths (albeit when not taken literally), Bede says, a profound wisdom is contained in which “reason is implicit but not explicit” and reason proceeds from it by abstraction, “from its embodiment in the imagination. The wisdom of a great poet… a wisdom which grasps reality not in abstract concepts but in concrete images.”

And then I thought about Mahatma Gandhi (faithful devotee of Sri Ram), and Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez. Would they be excluded from Harris’ conversation? Or did they ever exclude themselves from their current conversations about social change, all four devoted ahimsa–non-violence, peacemaking? And was slavery really ended by unaided reason, not, at least in some cases, “reason informed by faith”?

That latter, “reason informed by faith,” was actually the only thing I offered by way of a, looking back, somewhat pathetic salvo to my interlocuter. In the odd position of using Pope Benedict as an counter-example, I wrote that the flaw in Harris’ argument is that someone like the present pope, for example, does not base his opinions just on revelation, but is a stalwart defender of Greek philosophy, and of the fact that the “will of God” is reasonable, ie., a hopeless defender of the logos of the Greeks, and so things like slavery or spreading religion by violence are against true religion, the abuses of religion in the past notwithstanding and no longer to be condoned. But, I added, obviously people who don’t believe in the reality of grace, coming from any tradition, are always going to think that even religious ritual and praxis (and not necessarily only the higher stages of mysticism) are going to have nothing to offer to either human or social development, and so have no place in the conversation that Harris rightly declares to so precious.

It's Harris' argument that I don't think is reasonable.

We are so often stuck between a rock and a hard place, as Bruno (Barnhart) describes it: “a climate polarized between a reductionist rationalism on one side and an immobile institutional dogmatism on the other. In the midst of the continuing war between scientism and fundamentalism… it has never been easy to imagine and to develop a third sapiential possibility.” (The Future of Wisdom, p. 23)

aurobindo's assumption

The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine.

Sri Aurobindo

August 15th is not only the feast of the Assumption of Mary. It is also India Independence Day, the day that India gained her independence from England in 1947, 60 years ago. I am reminded of that because my arrival for my first visit to Shantivanam occurred just days before India Independence Day and I got to witness first hand the festivities, the colorful chalk drawings on the ground around the ashram, the raising of the Indian flag accompanied by the singing of the national anthem, and the children breaking a pinyata-like object filled with sweets. I also will never be able to forget the connection because of a startling something I read while visiting the New Delhi branch of Auroville on my last trip, the ashram founded on the teachings of Sri Aurobindo. I was sitting in the meditation room in mid-afternoon, killing some hours before I caught my flight out that evening and leafing through some pamphlets I had picked up n the bookstore. One of them was the story of Sri Aurobindo’s life. He had been a kind of Indian freedom fighter in the early days. He first turned his prodigious intellect toward a short political career and became one of the leaders of the early movement for the freedom of India from British rule, mainly through journalism and other writing. But then he “turned to the development and practice of a new spiritual path which he called the “integral yoga,” the aim of which was to further the evolution of life on earth by establishing a high level of spiritual consciousness which he called the Supermind that would represent a divine life free from physical death.” As it turns out, his birthday was also August 15th, and when India finally won her independence, someone wrote to him remarking that wasn’t it wonderful that India should have won her independence on his birthday? He replied that it had an even greater and deeper significance that India would have won her independence on the feast of the Assumption, a feast which "implies that the physical nature is raised to the divine Nature"–– and that of course was the point of his integral yoga. He thought that physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself could “reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine.” I think that he perhaps understood the promise of the Gospel even more than most Christians.

I think we have to turn back to some events in Jesus’ life first to realize the significance of this story, mainly to the story of Jesus' ascension. There was another shocking thing I read some years ago about Jesus’ ascension from the French liturgist Jean Corbon: “There is but a single Passover or Passage but its mighty energy is displayed in a continual ascension and Pentecost.” A continual ascension!? What does this mean? Not only is Jesus at the Father's right side. We are, Christ’s body. Jesus is the head of this body, and his fullness is in us, the rest of the Body. I have a quite literal image in my mind of this. The head of the body is there, but for all of history that head, Jesus, will be dragging, sometimes kicking and screaming, the rest of the body behind him, to follow him, to be with him, at the right hand of the throne of God in glory. Us, his body! We are the work of this continual ascension. We are meant to ascend, we are "being ascended"! Because our high priest Jesus is there, drawing us to himself. I have also the image of the tides and the moon: the same water (that is, the Spirit) who raised Jesus from the dead is in us, and like the moon draws the waters to itself, even more so we are being drawn to Jesus, drawn to God, drawn to glory, even in our very flesh. Jesus' public ministry is done, but his work continues, from the right hand of the Father, the work of drawing us to himself. Did not Jesus say in his final discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper (Jn 14:3) I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also?

And Mary stands for Christians as the first fruit of that promise.

I read something about Muhammad recently in Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion that made me think of Mary. It said, concerning Muhammad, “There was always a thin line between emulation and veneration, between making him an ideal exemplar and dehumanizing him into a perfect man. One could imitate him, but not completely, because he was too special; but one could not make him so special that he was not human.” In dealing with any religious figure, and especially with Mary, there is always this thin line between emulation and veneration; there is always a thin line between making of Mary an ideal exemplar and dehumanizing her into a goddess, making her so special that she is no longer human. The danger of the latter is that we can imitate, but not completely, because she’s too special; and we project all of the promise on to her and forget that we, humanity, are the subject of the story.

Under the pontificate of John Paul II we almost had "the Fifth Marian Dogma," a dogmatic recognition of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Co-Redemptrix. Mary had already been designated by the Church with four other holy attributes––as Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus in 431, as ever Virgin in 649, as immaculately conceived by Pope Pius IX in 1854, and as being assumed into heaven body and soul by Pope Pius XII in 1950. The proposed dogma of co-redemptrix would have held that by her unique co-operation with God as the Woman, New Eve, Mother of the living, and having been assumed into heaven, Mary continues this saving office as Advocate and Mediatrix of all grace by her constant intercession to obtain for the gifts of salvation for all people. Even though Mary’s role would still have been subordinate to and always dependent upon the essential and chief role of Jesus, one of the reasons this was controversial is because it paints a very thin line between her and Jesus––it deifies her. I was of two minds about it. On the negative side, I do not want anyone else between me and God. I never like the saying, “To Jesus, through Mary,” for instance. On the other hand, one of the reasons I liked the idea of Mary being raised up even more was specifically because of this thin line. Mary has been the only feminine face of the Divine for Christians for centuries. (And it has often been the common people––the sensus fidelium––not the scholars––the sensus fidei–– who have clamored for her being exalted). But Mary is also not only the feminine. By virtue of being the feminine she is also the connection with the earth that is groaning and in agony while we await the redemption of our bodies. She is also humanity; she is one of us, the first fruits of the promise. I love the idea of Mary, and so humanity, the feminine, the earth being deified, a concept that the eastern Christian tradition speaks of much more than the western.

I love the Rublev icon of Abraham’s three visitors under the oaks of Mamre, and I have used it as a sort of emblem for all my work. The thing I especially love is that in the image there is a place at the table for us to enter––why it is so wonderful at the entrance to the chapel at our monastery––to enter right into the life of the Trinity. On the other side of the chapel, right in front of the Marian icon, there is an echo of that configuration in a design in the granite stone that was laid down some years ago. There is a triangle there, representing the Trinity, and a smaller triangle in front of it opening toward it. That’s Mary breaking into the Trinity, but that is also us and behind us all of the earth that is groaning and in agony while we await the redemption of our bodes, being led by Mary where she went, where Jesus is, into the Life Divine.

I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Some last words from Sri Aurbindo:

In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle.
In the past the body has been regarded as something to be overcome and discarded rather than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change.

But if a divine life is possible on earth, then this perfection of the body must also be possible.

st hippolytus and malcolm x

O beautiful one,
they are liberated whose kundalini is awake.
They are liberated who hear spontaneous repetition of hamsa.
They are liberated who have envisioned the blue pearl.
But they are undoubtedly liberated
who experience the transcendental state beyond form.
Sri Guru Gita, 122


I just read Wilber's essay on "Translation versus Transformation." I usually use the words "conformation versus transformation," but he writes in a very similar vein to what I have already learned and I was thinking about that in relation to today's feast and have borrowed some of his language.

Today is the feast of Pontian and Hippolytus on the Roman calendar, second century Christian martyrs. Similar to Ss. Cornelius and Cyprian, Hippolytus is always associated with Pontian, who was a pope, but Hippolytus outshines Pontian in many ways. But, also similar to Cornelius as opposed to Cyprian, Hippolytus was the harsh one, the intransigent one. If I had to guess, I would say that Hippolytus was an 8 on the Enneagram––his first answer to every question was “No.” For example, in regards to the liturgy, he was steadfastly against people using the vernacular for the Eucharist, and he wanted to retain the liturgy in the sacred scholarly language. Meaning, he didn’t want the Eucharist celebrated in that vulgar language of Latin––he wanted it to stay in Greek. (So, even our current language debates must be put into perspective.)

But worse than his refusal of Latin, he refused to accept the teaching of the legitimately elected Pope Zephyrinus and called the next pope, Callistus, a heretic, and then allowed himself to be named an anti-pope by a circle of followers who thought of the church as an elect community of pure souls who had to remain sharply and uncompromisingly separated from the world and all its dangers. He and his friends remained in schism through the next two popes, Urban and Pontian. But then, as ironic fate would have it, he was exiled with Pope Pontian. It is only then that some kind of reconciliation took place, and Hippolytus resigned. (Maybe the one area where Pontian outshines Hippolytus was in his humility. Pontian himself resigned his office for the good of the church.) When they died their bodies were brought back to Rome together and buried with solemn rites as martyrs. So, basically, what we have here is someone who was a schismatic and a heretic himself. And I can’t help but think that the martyrdom of exile itself was some sort of grace of God––to finally break through his self-will.

Religion seems to perform two very different functions. I think of them as conformation and transformation. First of all religion can act as a way of creating and building up a sense of a separate self, and then a collective of separate selves. That separate self or the collective of separate selves then has to be fortified, defended and promoted. At this stage we think that as long as we believe the myths, performs the rituals, say the right prayers (in the right language), and embrace the proper dogmas, we are going to be saved. This is the process of conformation, conforming to an external framework, perhaps akin to the purgative phase of the spiritual life. But at some point, hopefully, the spiritual aspirant is going to feel comfortable enough within and with this framework to open up to more than conforming, to open up to transforming instead of conforming, transforming self and transforming the world from within––to going beyond the external signs to actually “circumcising our hearts.”

For example, in the Book of Deuteronomy (10:12-22), we hear the Israelites being challenged to stop being so stiff-necked, and now that they have circumcised their foreskins––now that they have fulfilled the external signs and practices––to circumcise their hearts––internal transformation. And part of that internal transformation involves breaking out of the caged little world of self or the little protected collective of separate selves: not only accept no bribes, not only care of orphans and widows, but even to care for aliens. This isn’t all about you! Open the doors! I’m thinking of the marvelous experience of Malcolm X just before he was murdered, what he called his “second conversion,” when during his hajj to Mecca he realized that all these people around him, black, white, brown skinned, from every nation and language group, were all his brothers and sisters, and he left the Nation of Islam of Elijah Muhammed to form Organization of African-American Unity, and eventually moved from fighting for civil rights to fighting for human rights. Ken Wilber refers to this movement as moving from selfishness to care, to universal care; or from selfishness to rights to universal rights. This is the work of transformation, inner transformation that enables us to transform the world.

Unfortunately, sometimes this circumcising of the heart, this opening of the heart only happens when that whole structure gets challenged, undermined and perhaps even dismantled completely––like Hippolytus being sent into exile, like the falling out between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam (who will eventually have him killed). At some point authentic transformation is not a matter of merely believing, but about the death of the believer, a total surrender of self with all its opinions and plans. And then authentic religion becomes not a matter of merely conforming and making the world conform, as much as about being transformed and then being able, through our transformation, to transform the world around us. As we realize our own transformation, our very presence automatically effects transformation in others, like yeast in the dough, like salt in the earth.

Ironic and typical in today’s Gospel, after the glorious vision of the Transfiguration, and Jesus announcing that he is going to suffer, be handed over and killed, immediately he and his disciples get faced with a bunch of petty questions about paying taxes (Mt 17). It’s almost as if Jesus says, “Whatever! Pay it! We’re free. We have seen the glory; we know where we are going.” That’s the freedom of transformation, and that’s how we become agents of transformation in our world. As we realize our own freedom, our very presence automatically liberates others.