First report from India

Just to let you all know that I have arrived and am well.  As it turns out I will need to be using the Ashram internet system in order to communicate, so if you want to keep up with my posts, please subscribe to this blog.

11/29

We arrived at the ashram, half a world away, and have already ran into other people from Seattle and elsewhere that we have known in association with Amma.  So we are being made to feel at home.

The flight from Seattle to Dubai (14 hours) was made more tolerable by a bit more leg room in the Boeing 777, and several amenities such as hot wet towels and personal entertainment centers with hundreds of choices.  We landed in Dubai at night so couldn't see much of it, but the Dubai airport was glitzy.  It was like being a big shopping mall.  There were even grocery style carts for carrying around your purchases.  The on-board magazine for Emerits Air had an add about Dubai and its "shopping festivals."  Fortunately we had a short lay over there and in another 4 hours we were in Trivandrum arriving at 3:30 AM on Thursday (having left home on Tuesday).  We weren't in our taxi more than a few minutes when it all came back about driving in India.  Just sit back and don't look out the front window.  We saw 2 working elephants along the road, several churches, mosques and temples, a dusty green bird, and all the familiar landscape of coconut palms, backwaters, fences plastered with bright colored advertisements, people walking, riding bicycles and motor bikes, tata trucks and motor rickshaws and those old fashioned looking cars.

11/30

The ashram without Amma has much fewer people.  When she arrives on Saturday all that will change.  Even more people than in the past are expected.  Much about the ashram is the same, but there are some changes which seem to be good and more efficient and convenient for handling more people.  There are new buildings and the development of a new gathering place outside other than in front of the temple which is limited in space.  They moved the juice bar there and have another canteen set up there and a coconut stand for getting the ever popular green coconut water to drink with a straw right out of the coconut.

Having arrived in Trivandrum at 3:45 AM we had a very long day of it Thursday.  But we pushed through, took only an hour nap in the afternoon and managed barely to stay awake until 9:00 PM before dropping exhausted into bed and sleeping 10 hours straight.  It's been a marathon!

By the time we got through immigration, got our luggage and had the long taxi ride to the ashram, we arrived in time to check in and get our room before breakfast at 9:00 AM - iddlies and sambar!  Yes, we were back to south India cooking.

We took the whole day slow, getting our supplies and getting set up in our flat, which was in the same building one floor lower than when we were here 7 years ago.  We look east over the backwaters, the new foot bridge to the mainland, and the groves of trees along the water's edge.  This makes our room cooler as we do not get the sun in the afternoon as they do n the west side that looks out on the Indian Ocean.  In the last six months a new phenomenon has occurred.  Each even at dusk massive flocks of birds of different kinds descend on the ashram to roost in these trees - right outside our window.

All for now, time is up.  More later.

Announcement: I am on Sabbatical!

Through my position at Emmanuel Episcopal Church I am privileged to have a sabbatical supported by the congregation.  So I am taking three months for continuing education and professional development from December through February. 

The purpose of this sabbatical for me is for spiritual development, and this is not in an academic setting.  Instead I am returning to India and will again be doing my meditation practice at Amritapura Ashram in Kerala.  This is a continuation of the rich experience I have had in the presence of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, also known as Amma.  What I have learned from her in the past has deepened my understanding of the discipleship process that Jesus had with his disciples and which continues through the work of the Holy Spirit.  This will be an intense and challenging time, one that will stretch my limits and move me out of my comfort zone, and yet, I trust, will be significant for my own growth, healing and personal transformation.

While I am away members of the Community of the Lamb are continuing to meet on a regular basis to meditate with each other.  Everyone is invited to join them.  Regular meditation and biblical study courses will resume in March when I return.

Here are the current meditation groups:

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

4400 86^th Ave. SE

Mercer Island

Monday weekly 10:00 AM

Tuesday weekly 7:00 PM

St. Dunstan Episcopal Church

722 N. 145^th St.

Shoreline

Sunday monthly on January 13 and February 10 (no December meeting)

Blessings in the Lamb to you all, and keep meditating!

Beverly

Sermon at Emmanuel, Last Pentecost 11/25

Today is the last Sunday in the Church Year,

            commonly referred to as Christ the King Sunday.

Now, I just plain don’t like this title.

            It’s just not the Jesus I know

                        either in my own experience or from the witness of scripture.

It was only a few Sundays ago, in fact, that we had the story

                                                                        of the disciples James and John,

            asking Jesus about sitting on his right and on his left

                        when he ascended to that throne as the Messiah King.

And Jesus put them in their places very clearly and firmly,

            letting them know that if they wanted to be on his right and his left,

            then that would fix them with him in serving everybody else.

King is certainly not a title that Jesus ever applied to himself.

Not even when asked directly,

            such as when Pilate, in today’s gospel reading, asked,

                        “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”

When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom,

                                    it is not his own kingdom he is talking about.

It is his Father’s Kingdom, where God reigns,

            and what Jesus perfectly reflects and witnesses to with his whole being.

See the Kingdom of God as all divine, omnipresent self-revelation.

Jesus is a walking parable of the Kingdom of God and how it works.

Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed to his Father,

            “Not my will, but yours be done.”

In Jesus the full will of God is expressed transparently.

But Pilate doesn’t get it.  He says,

            “So you are a king?”

And Jesus answered, “You are the one saying that I am a king.”

            BUT for this I was born, and for this I came into the world,

                        not to be a king,

            but to testify to the truth, be a witness to the truth, to what is real.

            Everyone who is of the truth is able to hear my voice, to hear my witness.

And Jesus puts his life on the line for the sake of testifying to the truth.

Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,

            as he is described in the reading from the Book of Revelation for today.

But Pilate, having been put on the spot

            and needing something to pin on Jesus to justify a crucifixion,

isn’t able to hear his witness or recognize the Truth right in front of him.

                                                What is truth? Pilate asks.

And that is the main question of the whole Gospel of John:  What is Truth?

What is Truth?

            That is also the question that leads me into my sabbatical.

I’ve been asked to say some things about this sabbatical happening immanently.

The question of truth and reality is very much at the heart of

            why I am using this sabbatical in this way.

The answer to this question – What is truth? –

                        will not be found in any academic pursuit,

            because truth is not captured in a grand unified theory

                        or any intellectual understanding,

            but in knowing, in experiencing, in encountering

                        what is REAL in our lives.

It is a matter of consciousness, awareness,

            and the realization that comes out of lived experience.

The recognition of truth is a matter of awareness, not information.

Jesus said, “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free,”

and Jesus, pointing to himself in terms of full realized union with the Father,

            could then say, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

So, for this sabbatical, instead of going off to study some course,

                        work on another advanced degree

                        or get credentialed in some new area of certifiable competency,

I am going to one of the few places on this planet

            where spiritual work is taken seriously and is respected and revered,

            and where there is a spiritual master who will work with me and on me

                        for facing that question of what is truth,

            someone who provides a potent and intense environment

                        for seeing the truth about oneself,

                        for the liberation of awareness and expansion of consciousness.

So, you see, folks, I am not going to India as a impoverished nation,

                                    impoverished in the eyes of western capitalist thinking.

No, I am going to an immensely rich cultural environment that has produced

                        the most profound holy scriptures and holy people ever known.

I am not going on a mission, I am going on a sabbatical.

I may or may not be engaged in some form of social action or ministry

                                                                                                                        while I’m there,

            but if so, that will be part of the educational process of the sabbatical.

My study on this sabbatical will be of myself and the process of awakening,

            the process of coming into greater awareness of the truth

                        of my own identity in Christ,

                        what my baptism really means,

            not as an academic exercise, but as experienced reality.

I am going to be in the presence of Amma, the hugging saint of India,

            a realized spiritual master who is someone through whom,

                        I truly believe, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Resurrection Jesus,

            works with great effectiveness.

In her presence the agaph unitive love of God flows abundantly

            for healing grace and empowerment for transcendence.

I go to India to do my own spiritual work,

                        something not usually measurable or quantifiable,

            but utterly essential for the kind of work I do here.

I tell you about this, in part, to set an example.

We all have our spiritual work to do,

            even though this culture has a really juvenal idea

                                    about what that spiritual work is.

Life is set up for doing this spiritual work.

If we don’t learn our lessons when we are young,

            then life will keep giving us repeating events with the same issues,

until we finally face them and get it.

For instance, how long does it take for us to learn

            that aggression intensifies and perpetuates alienation,

            that security does not come from having enough possessions,

            that others are not objects for our use – and abuse –

            or that perfect love casts out fear.

Name your own issues.

Back to the liturgical theme for today, Christ the King Sunday.

Some might argue that, of course, Jesus is not at all like an earthly king or dictator.

Instead we are to have Jesus rule in our lives; we are to obey him as our ruler.

But that’s not good enough,

            that is a deficient view of what discipleship with Jesus is like.

Discipleship is not about ruler-ship.

Discipleship is about liberation of consciousness

The discipleship we are called into is a relationship,

            a relationship with Jesus

                        in which we are open in letting Jesus work with us and in us.

He came to forgive us, to help you get rid of your sins, to wash that away

            for your awareness to rise up to eternal life,

            to know yourself and self being as one with the Father,

                        that state of transcendence,

                        that glory that Jesus had with the Father before the world began,

for the ultimate dissolution of all the existential positions and historical hang ups

            which we all have with such great intensity.

            Where does Jesus bear witness to truth?  How does that occur?

The witness to the Truth occurs in every person through the Holy Spirit

            who is the Presence of Resurrection Jesus in us.

The realization of that is there for us.

It is a revelation – not something told us about Jesus,

                        but Jesus as transparent as when he said to Thomas,

            “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

The Holy Spirit is the witness to the Truth, to enable it come into actuality in us,

            to make us transparent also.

And love is the effect, the result, the fruit,

                        the outcome of divine self awareness,

            to realize the truth that the self is love –

                        that is the main issue of the development of the self .

And as a community of faith,

            that is our work together.

Sermon for All Saints Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012, Emmanuel, Mercer Island

This is All Saints Sunday,

            and one of those four special times during the Church Year

                                    especially appropriate for baptisms.

And we have two today! – a brother and sister, Matthew and Ava Wiliamson.

We, as members of God’s family, will welcome these two children

            and pledge ourselves to support them in their new life in Christ.

And we will also remember the fact that each of us are also

                        baptized into Christ.

As the Apostle Paul states so clearly in his letters,

            this means that now our lives are not our own to claim for ourselves;

we live no longer for ourselves but for Christ who lives within us.

Now here is where reality sets in.

If we look at the way we live,

            most of the time it IS very much for ourselves and our own self interest.

And then there are the Saints, those whose lives really did show

            that they no longer lived for themselves, but for Christ.

In today’s pop culture we might tend to think about saints

            as religious superheroes.

Certainly in what we know about saints,

            they seem larger than life,

            able to do incredible good deeds, proclaim the gospel eloquently,                                                 endure suffering, persist in faithfulness through great difficulties.

And they have done this in the face of what the rest of the world

                                                might think as foolishness and a waist of effort.

That is what that first lesson describes,

the reading from the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,…

In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,

and their departure was thought to be a disaster,

and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.

For though in the sight of others they were punished,

their hope is full of immortality.…

They were tried and refined like gold,

and the effect of their lives on all around them is described like

            “sparks running through dry stubble.”

What an image! 

The Saints have been like sparks here and there

            setting the whole world ablaze with the testimony of their lives.

Yet any saint who has earned that title would tell you

            that this has not been the result of any superhero special talent.

For what does the text say?

         The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,…

         Those who trust in him will understand truth,

            and the faithful will abide with him in love,

            because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,

            and he watches over his elect.

Grace and mercy – it is God’s providence, care and attentiveness

            that are the source of the glory of the saints.

They are in God’s hands,

            and in their trust in God, they will understand truth, understand reality,

                        they are at one with the mind of God.

Again I say, it is all God’s work.

            They have been made a new creation.

The saints, like St. Paul, would be the first to say,

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.                                                                                                                                     Galatians 6:14

Or these words from Philippians 3:7-9  

Yet whatever gains I had, [Paul declared]

these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

More than that, I regard everything as loss

because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,

and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

and be found in him,

not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law,

but one that comes through the faith of Christ.

The saints are those just like you and me, with one distinction:

            they were open and malleable for God’s grace and mercy

                        to make them into a new creation.

So what’s our excuse?

Maybe we can get some good news from the gospel reading for today,

            a rather strange reading to have for All Saints, one might think,

the raising of Lazarus.

Is this all about a hope in a personal resurrection to assure our own immortality?

No, not really.

There is something else going on in this story.

Jesus had been away, across the Jordan, out of the country,

            when Lazarus got sick, and Martha and Mary had sent word to him.

But he delayed in returning until Lazarus was already dead for four days.

Martha and Mary both stated that if Jesus had only been there in time,

            their brother would not have died.

They believed that Jesus could heal, but they couldn’t see beyond that.

They did not understand why he would delay nor what was possible,

            for they were lost in their grief.

The Greek in this passage reveals more about what Jesus was feeling

            than our English translations do.

Jesus was greatly disturbed, yes, disturbed,

            not with his own grief about the death of his friend,

- of course not, because he had a plan and knew what he was doing in delaying -

Jesus was greatly disturbed at how limited they were in their thinking,

            Martha and Mary, and those with them,

            and about how much grief they were suffering as a result.

The Greek indicates he was both angry with the situation

            and in tears himself in compassion for them in their grief.

The great indictment to this lack of faith and closed perception

            is revealed in his words to Martha

                        when she expressed reluctance to open the tomb.

"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

So notice this: the only one having faith in this situation was Lazarus,

            and he was dead.

It was, of course, the word spoken by Jesus,

            who is described in the Gospel of John as the Word of God

                        who was in the beginning with God and who was God,

                        the Word through whom all things came into being,

                        who became incarnate among us,

this Word of God, Jesus, standing there who said, “Lazarus, come out!”

            that gave new life to a four day old corpse.

Imagine how much easier is it

            for God to work with those

                        who are merely spiritually dead or asleep or half conscious!

Wake up!  Let God work with you!  Cooperate with grace!

The world needs us.  That ought to be obvious.

So much potential for sainthood is sitting here.

If God were to get his hooks into you,

you too might run like sparks through the stubble.