Spiritual but not Religious

I am comfortable describing myself as spiritual but not religious and to name Jesus among my spiritual inspirations. When I say I am spiritual but not religious, I mean this and more.

I am inspired by the life and example of Jesus who wasn’t a Christian, not even a religious person but a lover of life and a champion of the poor. The only time he is recorded as having gone to church was to protest religious corruption and hypocrisy.

I feel the presence of divine beauty all around me without being limited by the gods of one religion or another.

I find inspiration in the Bible as poetry without reading it literally or feeling limited by the lens of a particular tradition.

I experience every moment as a miracle without having to deny science or natural laws.

I live my life with optimism and love without needing to look over my shoulder in guilt or fear of judgment.

There is a verse (Isaiah 6:1) that illustrates some of these spiritual but not religious principles.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon a throne, and his train filled the whole temple.” A little later in the same chapter, “The whole earth is full of His glory.”

These verses CANNOT possible be understood literally. The dimensions of the temple are well known. It was HUGE. When Princess Diana got married, the train on her wedding gown was 25 feet long? That’s impressive, but wouldn’t fill a temple. The longest train ever worn was 4468 feet in Cyprus a few years back. That’s almost obscene, but still wouldn’t fill a temple.

Understood literally, the words lose all meaning. Understood as poetry, the train becomes a beautiful metaphor. The train of a gown or robe has no function, other than the hint of mystery. It hints at what lies just beneath the surface, where life comes alive with new awareness and wide eyed joy. Life is an outrageous miracle full of abundant mystery and extravagant wonder like a massive train.

It speaks of the mysterious connectedness of life, the bricolage of seamless entities that fills my life with synchronicity and meaning. It reminds me that I am connected to the world around me in so many ways. I am connected to the people around me – every one of them is an expression of divine beauty. I am connected to my passions and when my passions intersect with the world’s needs, healing takes place. The world becomes filled with possibility.

Spirituality without religion honors science and common sense without being limited by literalism or dogma. I can honor facts and scientific knowledge and yet spirituality is an awareness that certain facts give me goosebumps. They change me from the inside out and motivate me to be all that I hope for in the world.

Look around you! The whole earth is filled with the train of God, the hint of mystery and the miracle of love.

This is part of what it means for me to be spiritual but not religious. What does it mean for you?

How Do You Like Your Eggs? The Power of Self Knowledge

How well do you know yourself? What’s your favorite color? What makes you giggle like a five year old? How do you like your eggs?

There is a scene from the movie Runaway Bride which offers a nice analogy for how well you know yourself. Maggie keeps finding fiancés and then running away just before the ceremony. She also can’t seem to decide what eggs she likes. When she is with one man, she likes scrambled eggs. With another, she likes fried. With another, poached and so on. It seems that she likes whatever eggs the man likes.

At the end of the movie she comes to an amazing realization.

“When I was walking down the aisle, I was walking toward somebody... who had no idea who I really was. And it was only half the other person's fault... because I had done everything to convince him... that I was exactly what he wanted. So, it was good that I didn't go through with it because it would've been a lie.……I love eggs Benedict. I hate all the other kinds of eggs. I hate big weddings, everybody staring. I'd like to get married on a weekday while everybody's at work. And if I ride off into the sunset, I want my own horse.”

She got engaged to avoid truly getting to know herself, just in case she didn’t like what she saw. As Goethe said, “Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.” There are other ways to run away. Some people drink. I tend to eat. What do you do? Awareness is the beginning of knowledge. Awareness with acceptance is even better. Awareness with outrageous appreciation for your own unique style is best.

Get to know yourself. Learn your own preferences without judgment. Be boldly yourself. As for me, I like my eggs lots of different ways. I like eggs nuked in a McMuffin style sandwich. I like devilled eggs in a sandwich, but the sandwich has to be quartered of course. I like my eggs fried on toast but poached on spinach. Call me eggcentric, but eggs are diverse and so are my tastes.

Knowing how you like your eggs is part of the first layer of self knowledge. Take your self knowledge a step further. Ask yourself why certain knowledge moves you, and makes your skin tingle. Just as your body has tickle spots, your spirit is moved by different knowledge. What makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? Last night nature put on the type of fireworks show that you couldn’t pay for. I had a physical reaction, as if the electricity was running through my body. Knowledge is my awareness that the distance between the thunder and lightning shows how close the storm is. Spiritual knowledge is my awareness that the storm evokes fear and wonder in me and moves me to ponder my place in the scheme of things and the fragility of existence.

Spiritual self knowledge is not so much about what I know but why certain experiences move and change me from the inside out. Knowledge is my awareness of what a CD is, and how the CD player works. Spiritual knowledge is my awareness that certain music can lift my spirit out of a limited perspective and fill me with optimism.

Knowledge is my awareness that I love my wife for rational reasons, such as she is creative, fun and getting ever more sexy with every passing day. Spiritual knowledge is my awareness that I can enjoy the miracle of love because I have come to a place of self love. As Ayn Rand said, “To say ‘I love you’, you must first be able to say the ‘I’”

In my best moments, I know that life is a spiritual shiver constantly looking for a spine to run up and down. Let it be me, easing wonder's zipper along the connection between my mind, body and spirit. Let it be me. I offer my spine to life’s shivers any time she wants to surprise me. I long for spiritual knowledge that moves and shakes my spirit. I long for self knowledge that knows what I like, why I like what I like, and what is emerging inside me.

Knowing facts is intelligence. Knowing myself is wisdom. Knowing skills leads to strength. Knowing myself is the power of self mastery that open doors of possibility beyond my wildest imagination. As Thoreau said,

"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant."

Celebrating and Nurturing the Miracle of Life

Happy Father’s Day. Here’s to all fathers and the fatherly heart in all – fathers, grandfathers, uncles, coaches, big brother mentors and all those in the village, men and women, who take seriously your role in guiding the next generation of young lives. Be the best person you can be, Families come in all shapes and sizes. There are one and two parents families, by design and by circumstance. There are no judgments on any family type. The true measure of your life and your family will be the love you leave behind when you’re done.


Start by giving thanks for the privilege of partaking in the miracle of life. Feel this joy deeply. Each moment is a miracle. Let the beauty wash over your mind, body and spirit. If you are a parent celebrate your special, co-creative role in the miracle of life.

Consider the single cell you contributed to the miracle of new life. The cell was so small that you couldn’t see it with the naked eye, and the nucleus in the center of the cell that contained the DNA was even smaller. And yet if you unraveled the DNA of this single cell, unwound and uncoiled it, it would stretch to over six feet long. Now if you are like me and you look eye to six foot high eye with your kid, you are looking eye to eye with the miracle of life. In my case, I’m looking at a six foot bundle of creative potential with the world at his feet. Then I lower my gaze to my second, and I see a five foot bundle of gentle compassion who holds the world in his heart. Then I lower my gaze still further to my four foot miracle of sweetness with my heart wrapped around her finger.

Now as you look at your four, five or six foot miracles, consider that if you took all the DNA from all the 50 trillion cells in their body, and unraveled and uncoiled it, it would stretch to the moon and back multiple times. It’s no accident that this is also the amount that you love them. To the moon and back…. multiple times.

Let the miracle wash over you. No matter what has gone down between you and your father or the father figures in your life, the miracle that you are connected at a cellular level puts everything in perspective. Let go of bitterness or bad feeling. Let go of hurt and ill will. You are related at the most intimate level. Make this a day of forgiveness, letting go and moving on.

In the words of Ecclesiastes, ‘A three-fold chord is not easily broken.” I love this verse. The author of Ecclesiastes suggests that life is basically meaningless. There is no ultimate meaning in life other than the meaning you make of it. He does however say that there are better and worse ways of living. One of the better ways of living, that creates great meaning in your life, is to make a priority of relationships. You can work hard your whole life but if you don’t share the fruits of your labor with someone, what’s the point? Create chords of love and connection in your life and make these relationships your priority. A single chord is easily broken. A double chord is strong. A threefold chord is hard to break. Here is what I love about this analogy. If you look closely at an image of DNA, it looks like twisted, looping cords. It’s a long intertwined cord that connects you to life, to your children, to your ancestors, at a cellular level. How incredible! Let the miracle wash over you. Father’s Day is a celebration of the miracle of life down to the smallest detail and out to the largest perspective.

Evolution and Fatherhood

Maybe you think that this description of fatherhood is a little lofty for your experience of dads or of being a dad. We dads are often just goofy and embarrassing. Cornball humor is part of the job description of being a dad. What do you call the two people who embarrass you in front of your friends? Mum and Dad! Give thanks for all that is goofy and cringeworthy. There may be evolutionary reasons for the embarrassment. A psychologist in a University in the UK conducted an interesting experiment. He compared the dancing styles of different aged men. Men between the ages of 35 and 60 think they are awesome dancers. They let loose on the dance floor and attempt the most complex moves. But their lack of coordination is obvious to all except them, and it is especially obvious to their kids at a family wedding. The conclusion of the study is that middle aged men are atrocious dancers for an evolutionary reason – to divert the attention of young women away from them and onto younger, more appropriate partners.

So Dads, next time your kids mock you for your dancing, or general goofiness, let them know that it’s out of your hands. It’s an evolutionary survival instinct.

Here’s the point. Life goes in stages and each stage has its purposes and benefits. You are engaged in a push/pull relationship with your family for good reason. Your goofiness is drawing you close to younger kids, making them feel safe, and helping them to bond. And it’s helping older kids learn independence and appropriate boundaries. There is a reason and a season for everything – from bonding to embarrassment to independence.

Does your family get you down, frustrate and annoy you at times? Consider that they are just reminding you of the possibility of human growth and change, preparing you for life in the so called real world. The push/pull of parent/ child relationships is nothing new. It’s been going on for centuries. Remember Isaac’s eleventh hour reprieve from Abraham’s threatened human sacrifice. That is some crazy family rivalry. Give thanks for your fathers, even the goofy and annoying parts. They are reminding you to hold loosely to life and expect change. Give thanks for fathers and father figures, even those you have unresolved tension with. They are making you stronger and more independent.

Do you sometimes get discouraged that you aren’t appreciated in your family? It happens to most of us at some point. Smile as you consider that everyone is growing and doing the best they can in the moment. See beyond the superficial frustrations to the deep connections that are a threefold chord. There aren’t many days that go by when I don’t say to my youngest and only girl, “You are the sweetiest sweety in the whole world.” Do you know what she does? She rolls her eyes at me. But I can see in her rolling eyes the glint of recognition that she is loved and accepted. It’s a simple thing, but it’s a miracle and a gift. If you feel unappreciated, give more love, encouragement and praise and watch it all come back to you in spades.

Fatherhood Across the Generations

Maybe you are sandwiched in the middle of three generations – with children who are pushing and pulling, and parents who are growing to depend on you more and more. It’s an interesting stage in life, with its own challenges. There’s a great scene in the Simpsons TV show where Homer is trying to bond with his son Bart. Homer’s Dad, Grandpa Simpson is standing by watching.

Homer says, “Hey boy! Wanna play catch?” Bart says: “No thanks dad.”
Homer mutters under his breath, “When a son doesn’t want to play catch with his father something is definitely wrong.” Grandpa Simpson over hears his son and chimes in, “I’ll play catch with you son!” 
Homer says, “Go home old man.”

Parent/ child relationships are changing all the time. So much family suffering comes from expecting otherwise. I remember the day soon after I was received as a minister in the Anglican Church, and my recently retired Dad began attending the church I was running. Now you have to understand how much I respect my father. I had sat at his feet, and learnt so much from him. It was a dream come true to have him at my church. He said to me after the first service, “My son is now my father.” That stopped me in my tracks. Our relationship was changing and growing. It took me a while to fully process the change. We all have these changing roles and relationships.

It’s a little like the man who married a widow. His father then married the widow’s daughter. So his father became his son-in-law and he became his father’s father-in-law. Legally his daughter became his mother and his wife his grandmother. Things became even more complicated when he had a son. His son became his father’s brother and his own uncle. It got completely out of hand when his father had a son. Now his father’s son was both his brother and his grandson. The poor confused man was his own grandfather and his own grandson.

Learn to flow with the natural changes in relationship that take place in families and you will enjoy incredible family bliss. Each stage is important and has important lessons to teach you if you stay alert to its wisdom. There is a season and a reason for everything.

Being the best Father you can be

Who are your role models for being the best father and father figure you can be? When Senator Ted Kennedy died recently, one of the things that truly inspired me was when his children talked about their Dad. Kennedy’s public credentials were legendary, and he was widely respected. It was inspiring to me to hear that his private life was also rich and full of integrity. When his son gave the eulogy at his funeral he told a story that really captivated me. Ted Kennedy junior lost a leg to bone cancer at age 12. He was still getting used to his artificial leg when they were out sledding on a steep driveway. Ted Kennedy junior slipped and fell. He started to cry and said, “I’ll never be able to climb up the hill.”
His Dad lifted him up and said to him, “I know you can do it. There is nothing you can’t do. We’re going to climb the hill together even if it takes us all day.”

That’s the fatherly heart, and you have it as well. You have the divine joy and responsibility of making young people in your life feel safe, protected, empowered and optimistic.
Did you know that the root Hebrew words for teacher and parent are the same? Use all your wisdom and experience to prepare children for the realities of life.

Teach your sons that size and speed may matter but depth matters even more.

Teach your daughters that diversity is beautiful and beauty is diverse and that they are beautiful and completely accepted just as they are.

Remind your sons and daughters that you have their back. They can set out in search of their dreams and you will be there through thick and thin.

Calling All Fathers

I don’t need to tell you the awful statistics as they relate to fathers. Fathers are absent from homes in epidemic proportions, and the consequences are devastating. The situation is even worse in the African American community. Both fatherlessness and our prison population are at all-time highs and these two facts are not unrelated. In 1960 less than 10 million children were growing up in father absent families. Today it’s over 24 million. One in three children in America will go to bed tonight without their fathers in the home. 40% of children who don’t live with their fathers haven’t seen their dads in the past year. One half have never even set foot in their father’s home.

Children who live apart from their fathers are 5 to 6 times more likely to be poor. They are twice as likely to manifest emotional disorders, to abuse alcohol and drugs, to drop out of school and twice as likely to end up in jail. According to a Princeton University study each year spent without a dad in the home increased the odds of future incarceration by 5 percent.

Calling all fathers! It’s time to take your place in the family and in society. What you do matters. If you have chosen a family without a father, then make sure there are healthy male figures in your child’s life.

Even fathers who are at home are often confused, not knowing how to be an effective father. What does it mean to be a dad in this season of life? If in doubt, just be present and alert and see how you can serve your family. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as we make things. Calling all fathers. Get together and inspire each other to get serious about your role.

Calling all fathers, and the father heart in all. Take a moment to honor the miracle of life that you helped bring into the world. But conception was just the beginning. Now you have the responsibility to nurture and lead these young ones to take their place as responsible citizens. It’s a responsibility. It’s a privilege and it’s a joy.

I honor the father heart in you, and greet you from my father heart. Namaste.

For Further Reflection

What do you appreciate about your father and father figures?

In what ways do you experience gratitude, even for the difficult family times?

Who are your models for living with an open fatherly heart?

One With the Sun- Taking an Evolutionary Perspective

You know you’re getting a little long in the tooth when you describe your life in decades. “I did such and such in the 80s, the 90s were a blur and the noughties were all diapers and Hop on Pop.” A decade feels like a long time. But when you think about time from an evolutionary perspective, a decade is a blink of an eye. As Richard Dawkins said,

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?”

We have only brief decades in the sun. How do we make them meaningful? Is there a meaning in life or is there only the meaning that we make?

The cranky Old Testament book Ecclesiastes uses the phrase “under the sun”. “There is nothing new under the sun. All is meaningless and vain under the sun.” What does this mean? The usual interpretation is that everything worldly is under the sun, and everything heavenly is above the sun. Many of us were taught in religious classes that without eternal salvation everything on earth is pointless. This worldview was trapped in its own three tiered universe. Heaven was literally above the sun. We know more about cosmology now. There is a spiritual perspective that honors evolution, deep time and infinite fields of connected possibility without needing supernatural causes and effects. As above so below is an ancient intuition of an evolutionary truth. Everything is connected, including the mysteries of time and space.

I wonder about a new interpretation of “under the sun”. The sun was seen as heaven’s porch light in the ancient world. It was also a tool for measuring time. Maybe Ecclesiastes was saying something profound about time. If you take a narrow view of time, there is nothing new or meaningful. If you expect time to stand still, you can expect suffering and frustration. If you are held captive by time, you can become paralyzed by interpretations of the past or anxieties about the future. If you think you can conquer time, time will make a fool of you. As Pink Floyd sang, “You run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking, and racing around to come up behind you again.”

A deep time perspective adds life to decades and meaning to life. When you make peace with time, it warms your life like our middle aged sun’s rays. When you expand your consciousness to include the millions of suns that circle millions of planets that circle millions of galaxies that dwarf the pale dot of earth and see your decades old life as a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” then life falls into clearer perspective.

When you see yourself as created out of stardust and our sun as earth’s closest star but still 90 million miles away, light bulbs go off in your mind. It’s all related. We are part of an immense symphony. Every breath you take, every move you make, every meal you eat, every song you sing, every decade you live, is a result of our sun’s ancient drama.

The timely lessons of the sun are both mind blowing, consciousness expanding, and also ordinary and practical. No matter what scars the decades have left in your life, you can always, always start over again. There is no end. Everything is becoming, including you. Do your best in each moment. Change or stay the same. Either way, life will continue to move forward. If you need to miss a step, just pick up with the next beat. Get in tune with your past, but don’t be held captive to the past. Plan your future, but don’t be held prisoner by your plans.

No matter how it feels, you are not alone. The nighttime coliseum of stars is your family tree. Join the dots on your awesome connections all the way back. Look again and you will see something new and beautiful. They look closer than they are, reminding you that the inner light that shines your path is nearer and more accessible than you imagine.

If this all feels a little “out there” take the advice of Vincent Van Goth who said, "If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle."

Either way, pay attention. Whether in the radiance of a beaming sun or the glint in a baby’s eyes, hear in this moment the wise silence, see the immense beauty, the universal intelligence, the awesome grandeur to which everyone and everything is related. You are Life becoming more alive, God becoming more divine, Spirit itself in action. Tippy toe from moment to wonder filled moment, stride from discovery to breathtaking discovery, leap from realization to earth shattering realization. Life evolves from cell to organism, question to deeper mystery, ever more complex, connected and conscious, sourced by a great unknown, and bound by the elastic string called time.

Gulf Coast Healing

There is a Facebook group for people who Want to Plug the BP Oil Spill with Sarah Palin. That’s quite an image. It appeals to my cynical side. I considered joining just for fun, but decided against it. Healing is what is needed, and adding negative to negative doesn’t bring healing.

I’ve had several people email me tragic images of graceful, white egrets covered in black oil. It is an awful reminder of human mindlessness. The beauty of nature is now hidden behind oiled birds and soiled marshland. At first it seemed important to closely study these images. I needed to feel the pain of the birds and ocean as deeply as I could. But then it started to feel like a car crash. Who was I helping by staring at the helpless egrets?

This issue comes up again and again. While oil gushes into the ocean without a filter, raw and live data gushes around the internet, also without a filter. Is this a good thing? Does it make us more informed and passionate, or are we just becoming inactive voyeurs? Are we simply polluting our minds with more negative images and not doing anything that heals the situation?

I’ve decided not to watch any more television coverage of the oil spill, and I choose not to look at any more emails of black swans. I understand the gravity of the situation, and want to make a difference. I will make a difference by living mindfully and addressing my own unrealistic lifestyle choices. Others will continue to work on fixing the valve, and still others will work on policy and industry accountability issues.

I seek to be informed by the lessons of the tragedy but not dwell on hopelessness. I came across a verse from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah that puts the oil spill into awesome perspective. Isaiah 65;17 says, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”

My take away from the verse is that a new earth is emerging. The Gulf of Mexico may never be the same again, but it will recreate itself. We will all play an active part in co-creating this new earth. The lessons of the past are integrated into who we are now, but there’s no point dwelling there. I am so focused on healing, and my mind is so full of restoration, that mistakes from the past and tragedy don’t even come to mind. I focus on the seed of re-creation and encourage healing.

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “I have noticed that people are dealing too much with the negative, with what is wrong. ... Why not try the other way, to look into the patient and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?"

My mind is full of images of a healed Gulf Coast, a restored new earth. I see it as it will be again – crystal clear water, and beautiful rejuvenated marine life. I am one with the ocean, the sea life and the oil. I intentionally shift my energy from tragedy to restoration. I see the oceans healthy and clear. I see the sea life healthy and growing again. I see everything flowing in its organic state.

To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, seagulls, fish, plankton, coral, algae and all creatures in the Gulf of Mexico,
I am sorry for my carelessness.
Please forgive me my mindlessness.
Thank you for your patience.
I am part of you.
I support your healing and restoration with every part of my mind, body and spirit.

Every cell, fiber and muscle knows deep unity with the earth, for our hearts beat as one. Love, restoration and healing to oceans and animals, and all affected by the oil spill. Namaste.

Bringing Heaven to Earth

Are you going through the motions, or are you giddy with excitement to be part of a world changing, inclusive spiritual community? If you’re looking for giddy excitement, then you’ve come to the right place. If you enjoy diversity, then you’ve come to the right place. If you want to make a difference in the world, then you’ve come to the right place. If you believe that love is the heart of all traditions, and that love unites us despite our differences, then you’ve come to the right place.

I want to reflect on memory and gratitude as a path to loving service.

Memory, Gratitude and Commitment

We talk a lot about living in the present. It’s an important principle. So what is the relevance of learning from the past? Memory has its benefits and pitfalls. We all know that memory can get you in trouble. Consider this story about the challenges of memory.

An elderly couple, George and Sheila, were neighbors in a North Carolina mobile home park. He was a widower and she a widow and they had known one another for a number of years. One evening a meal was held in the park and the two found themselves at the same table, seated across from one another. As the meal progressed, George made several admiring glances at Sheila and they flirted throughout the evening. Before the night was over George gathered up his courage and asked her, ‘Sheila, will you marry me?’

After about five seconds of “careful consideration”, Sheila answered. ‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

The meal ended and, then they went to their respective caravans. Next morning, George was troubled: ‘I remember asking Sheila to marry me but did she say “yes” or did she say “no”?’ He couldn’t remember. Try as he would, he just could not recall. Not even a faint memory. So he nervously called Sheila. Firstly, he explained that he didn’t remember as well as he used to. Then he reviewed the lovely evening past. As he gained a little more courage, George inquired gingerly, ‘Sheila, when I asked if you would marry me, did you say “Yes” or did you say “No”?’

Sheila said, ‘Thank goodness you called. I remember saying I would marry someone, but have no memory of who it was.’

These two had photographic memories. They just forgot to put film in. But it all worked out for them in the end.

While there are many pitfalls to living by memory, there are some ways in which it’s important, and one of them is gratitude. The life you live is built on the efforts of others. Pause and feel the significance of that statement. It has huge implications in terms of the way you live your life. Think of reality as a giant set of broad shoulders that includes everything, I mean everything, that came before you. You are standing on them, offering you a bird’s eye view of all that led to this moment. This broad set of shoulders includes humans and non humans, things known and unknown. It includes soldiers who fought and died in wars that you agreed with and wars you disagreed with. It includes people who you respected and people you didn’t respect. They are all important.

Give thanks especially for those who came before you that you disagreed with. They kept you on your toes, and always gave you something to think about. Give thanks for religion, even if you consider yourself to be spiritual but not religious. Religion, even bad religion, created the platform for the type of inclusive spiritual community that brings together so many diverse people across so many different life experiences and traditions. Drop all your judgment about the past, and give thanks for all of it. Everything you remember either inspired you or had lessons to teach you. Everything you remember and everything beyond your memory forms the backdrop to reality as you now experience it. So give thanks for all of it.

Include and Transcend

What is our attitude to the past? Include and transcend. Include and move beyond. That’s always the nature of life. Include what came before, because if you don’t include it, don’t come to terms with it, it will come and latch on to you like a shadow or a bad smell. Embrace the past, forgive it, be grateful for it, love it into submission, until it is a fully connected part of you. At the very moment that you embrace the past, you will immediately move beyond it. It won’t seem so ominous and overbearing. Include and transcend, Gratitude and growth. Acceptance and movement.

This means that what we are creating today will also be transcended in the future. This is one of the ways that gratitude guides our actions. Let me illustrate with a story about gratitude and service.

After a monsoon rain, an old man went out and dug some holes in his garden.

“What are you doing?” his neighbor asked.

“Planting mango trees,” was the reply.

“Do you expect to eat mangoes from those trees? “

“No, I won’t live long enough for that. But others will. It occurred to me the other day that all my life I have enjoyed mangoes planted by other people. This is my way of showing them my gratitude.”

May your gratitude be active, stretching beyond yourself to include others, even future generations. Do things which have a positive effect beyond your knowledge, even beyond your lifetime. Do at least one thing today that you won’t see the benefit from, as a reminder that you build a platform for future generations – plant a slow-growing tree, deposit money into a random bank account. Be creative. Let your act be a reminder of the many unknown and unnamed acts of kindness that your life is built upon, and feel enormous gratitude for the web of life that supports your existence.

One of the criticisms of the spiritual but not religious movement (or as we call it “inclusive spirituality”) is that it’s too individualistic and disconnected from the past. It doesn’t have to be that way. Inclusive spirituality is connected to everything in the past. It’s connected to the largest story of all – the evolutionary story. It also doesn’t have to be individualistic. This connection to everything means that all thoughts, words and actions are opportunities to manifest love in the world, heaven on earth.

Critics point to the danger of egocentric spirituality. If you don’t belong to religion, they say you aren’t likely to care beyond yourself. I don’t see it that way. In an inclusive spiritual community, our care goes beyond people who share our religion. In fact it goes beyond people at all. The evolutionary story connects us by care and service to all things and all people, past and present.

As for practicing in a religious community, we get the best of both worlds. We have the freedom and self responsibility of spirituality freed from shoulds and musts and dogmas. But we also have a community to practice being human together, to get beyond our own perspective and to make a difference in the world.

Heaven to Earth

The Hebrew prophets had an amazing vision for personal and social harmony. Isaiah used the famous image of the wolf and the lamb lying together, where age has no meaning and there is no sadness and suffering. Isaiah imagined this vision being fulfilled in history. By the time of early Christianity, when this vision had not been realized, they created beliefs about an afterlife heaven where the vision would be realized. Heaven became a future time of perfection and peace because they were jaded and cynical about this life.

One of the key features of inclusive spiritual community is that heaven is not some far off carrot dangled in front of you. Heaven is a state of mind that you bring to your life right now. When the wolf and the lamb lie down together within you, and you include all aspects of yourself in an incredible whole, you are able to transcend your small self and you immediately find peace. This is heaven. This new perspective ends so much suffering and is the foundation for love and peace in the world.

An old Hasidic Jewish story describes the difference between heaven and hell.

Heaven and hell look just the same. They are both large round tables with an assorted collection of people around them. Here is the difference. In hell the people are desperately hungry, which doesn’t make sense because in the middle of the table is a huge pot of stew. The people all have spoons with very long handles which could easily reach into the pot. The problem is that because the spoon handles are so much longer than a person’s arm, they cannot bring the food to their mouths. So in hell the people are all suffering and hungry because they are trapped in their own desires.

Then there’s heaven. Heaven is just the same. It’s a large table with a similar connection of people. But these people are satisfied and content. They also have a pot of stew on the table and they also have long handles on their spoons. The difference here is that they have worked out that they can use their long spoons to feed each other. They are in heaven because they have learnt to get beyond their own desires and see themselves as connected.

When you live with the sort of gratitude that connects you all the way back, and all the way forward, you bring heaven to earth. When you realize that you are not alone, that you are connected to all people, all things and all situations, you bring heaven to earth.

When you live with gratitude, you realize that there are no endings. The effect of every action carries on into unknown futures. When you live like this, you bring heaven to earth. When you live with openness and optimism, you bring heaven to earth. When you feel like you have come to a dead end, look at the evolving universe and remind yourself that there’s always more to come. The future is unknown. You are creating it as you move forward. It can be scary to look into the future and not see anything, but it is also empowering. You are the co-creator of all that is to come.

Love is the Glue

What is the glue in an inclusive spiritual community? It’s not beliefs. You should believe what makes sense to you and question everything you hear. Traditions are not the glue. We are diverse when it comes to traditions and no one tradition is more important than any other. The glue in this community is not beliefs or tradition. It is love.

The Dalai Lama said, “All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness. The important thing is they should be part of our daily lives. “

Scientist Marcel Vogel went a step further. He said, “Love is the glue of the universe and helps keep matter in form. When I love you, I empower you to bring yourself into a state of wholeness.”

Over the next few weeks, the large cross out the front of the church will come down. It will go to a good home, to a group who want the Christian tradition to be their glue. We are part of a much broader vision. Christianity is part of it, but the cross is only one symbol amongst many that expresses the heart of this community. So we plan to put some art work on the large brick wall to be seen by people driving past. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what the art work should include. We have decided to use the image of a heart, to symbolize the love that is the glue in this community. We are exploring the possibility of including some symbols, religious and other symbols, in the heart of the heart to remind us that all traditions are valid and welcome but that love is the glue.

Love is the glue that makes us stick,

it gives us courage, through thin and through thick.

Love is the power of working as one

That connects us with all that is under the sun

Love is the yeast that helps makes us rise

To keep believing in miracles, possibilities and surprise.

Love is a force that directs our thoughts outwards

To life that is precious, beautiful and treasured.

I honor your big heart, and the heart of life. From my heart to yours, connecting us to the heart of the universe. Namaste.

For Further Reflection
How do you learn from the past without dwelling on the past?
How do you experience gratitude, even for people who have made your life difficult?
In what ways do you experience heaven on earth?

Books and Resources
Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness, Brother David Steindl-Rast
The Dalai Lama’s Book of Love and Compassion, Dalai Lama

Gratitude- The Grass is Green Where you Water it

How quickly we forget! I find myself resenting a cool 60 degree morning, when not three months ago I would have given my right arm for that sort of tropical delight. How easily we take things for granted, and forget the miracle and gift of being alive.

Entitlement is the nemesis of inner peace. It is an insatiable beast. Even laying the whole world at the feet of entitlement is not enough. His first response, “what took you so long”, the second, “Where is the moon?” Entitlement convinces you that the world is in debt to you, and all good things are barely enough payback for what you deserve.

Gratitude is the anti-venom that neutralizes entitlement’s poison. Gratitude is related to grace which is the opposite of entitlement. Gratitude begins with acceptance of what arises exactly as it is. Gratitude is appreciation for things and people and situations as they are, rather than as you wish they were or expect them to be. Gratitude is not about benefits or usefulness or outcomes. You are thankful that things are just as they are — diverse, surprising, authentic and real. Gratitude is the beauty to entitlement’s beast.

Thanksgiving is an awesome celebration. We can’t have enough reminders to dwell in gratitude. Thanksgiving was traditionally a time to give thanks for the harvest. By regaining a sense of the original harvest thanksgiving, we learn so much about our own inner lives. Harvest was all about cycles, and each cycle carried a large degree of uncertainty. A bumper crop would mean long and luscious lunches. A lean harvest would mean winter diets of turnips and cabbage soup; dried beans if you were lucky. For some it would mean starvation, or dependence on charity, just to survive. They waited each year with bated breath.

We don’t have this challenge anymore. We just truck over and tuck in, fly down and fry up. We buy bananas from the local store, oblivious to their long flight from Ecuador. We fly in whatever takes our fancy from anywhere in the world, no matter what the season. It doesn’t even cost more. Why would we be grateful for our food, when it all seems so easy? As Bart Simpson prayed before one meal- “Dear God, we paid for this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing,"

Of course there is a cost and there is a cycle, even if we are oblivious to it. The journey of the banana from Ecuador leaves a trail of ecological disaster behind it – a reminder of our lack of gratitude, a massive carbon footprint that stamps “thanks for nothing” all over the sky. If we really understood the cycle; where our food came from, and its seasonal sojourn, we would never eat a thing without enormous gratitude for the web of nature/ human collaboration that brought it to us; the earth that prepared it for us, and the future life of the planet that depends on our choices.

If we were grateful for our food because we knew weren’t entitled to it, we might also come to appreciate the economic cycles of markets, the moods of friends and the seasons of the soul; even the dark and lonely times. Life is change. Gratitude doesn’t enjoy the hard times. It appreciates the lessons of growth and the assurance of movement. Life is like gravity. It goes both ways. What goes up will come down, and what comes down will go up again. It may never match your expectation, but it will keep changing. Learn gratitude for the cycles of change.

Comedian Lous CK performed a famous routine on Conan O’Brien called Everything is Amazing, and Nobody’s Happy. It’s very funny and so true.

He satirized entitlement. In the old days, you spent the money you had in your wallet, and then when you ran out of money you stopped buying things. Now we feel entitled to credit. Then there is travel. Louis was flying next to someone who complained about losing his internet connection midflight. “How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 20 seconds ago.”

Everyone has a story about travel woes. “We were delayed for 20 minutes. We sat on the tarmac for 40 minutes. “Then what happened”, Louis said, “Did you partake in the miracle of flight?” “You are sitting in a chair in the sky” and you complain about how far it reclines? The 4 minute clip is well worth watching. http://tinyurl.com/deg5wc

Catch yourself when you start complaining. When you hear yourself moaning about the weather or how much work you have or how inconvenient this is or how boring that is, say to yourself “and then what. Do I get to partake in the miracle and gift of life?”

The grass is never green enough for entitlement. The grass may be greener on the other side, but even that is unlikely to be green enough. Gratitude reminds us that there is no other side. This is it right now. The grass is greener where you water it. So water this moment with your love and appreciation. You will be amazed at the results. You will grow a whole garden of inner peace.

Gratitude is the parent of all other virtues. Gratitude’s children include optimism, generosity and kindness. Her cousins include abundance, joy and contentment. What came before gratitude? Only the awareness of gratitude. What comes after gratitude? Your life lived with joy and goodwill.

Life is a gift, given as a loan, to regift to future generations.