My dear friends, I do not use Messenger. I have never used Messenger. You will never see a response from me if you post or contact me using that platform. Not ever! Until the END OF TIME! Use email or txt me, or call my wife. That said, one of my friends, a whacky but sweet and kind woman, uses messenger to communicate to me. It turns out that, in her case, this is a good thing. I never have to look at it. I love this friend. But I know what she’s sending to that mailbox and I’m happy that I don’t have to spend anytime looking at it. It’s usually something like “COME TO JEEESUS OR BURN IN EVERLASTING HELL!!” Now, with all due respect, I don’t need or want the aggravation of seeing those posts. Both of my parents were preachers and I know that, according to Jesus, we were all given free will and also that heaven is not some kind of private club. So I’m just going to practice love and forgiveness and take my chances. The fact that I don’t use Messenger, ever, will let those posts babble to each other in purgatory until the end of time.
Anyway, here’s the deal. I don’t believe there is any kind of god with anthropomorphic qualities. But I’m also not an atheist. Humility prohibits me from going quite that far. I’m just going to have to say that I’m an agnostic. Looking at the known universe and asking myself the big questions of “Why?”, “Was there something before?”, “Are we alone?”, “Is there some limitless intelligence that lies within everything, everywhere?”, and “Are there some things we’ll never know, ever?” I find I have no answers. So in the face of that profound awe I can’t be self-righteous on this subject.
In the early 70’s, my late 20’s, I lived in an ashram in San Francisco for a couple years under the traditional renunciant vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. I was a renunciant following a pudgy young guru named Maharaj Ji. In retrospect it was one of the weirder detours in my life but I joined the company of some pretty smart people, Rennie Davis for example, who was one of the Chicago 7 defendants. My generation came of age during the Vietnam War, 1955 to 1975, and many of us, looking for answers about that insane cruelty, were openly seeking, for peace, for enlightenment, for universal love. We were trying on a lot of gurus and teachers for size. Some of us hoped, with Guru Maharaj Ji, that we had found the teacher who would bring us there with some kind of guru voodoo. Our hearts were in the right place but we were young and naive. To my credit I retained in my brain, during that period, a kernel of “I’m either in the center of the holy universe or I’m a stupid child wandering around in the basement of a teenage con man.” My family and friends chose the later and thought I had gone off the deep end and,… well,… OK, yes I did. But fortunately after a couple years I sorted it out.
And that’s why I can’t judge my wacky sweet friend who is trying to save my soul. If she was here with me in my office right now I would get up from my desk and give her a long tender hug. I’m already trying to save my soul, but not for some fancy la la la resort in some place called heaven, or “God’s Heavenly Chateau” or whatever they call it there. I’m trying to save my soul now, while I’m conscious in my body. For me “saving my soul” means filling my heart with humility and love and living in that state of tenderness with all people, with all living life and nature, and now, not for some kind of private afterlife club. I feel clumsy trying to put it into words. So I’ll just leave you with this. There is a way of being, of living, that is truth and holy and love suffuses it.
That said, let’s move on to the inspiration for this post. It’s from the NY Times. This wise woman with her beautiful words made me realize that I pray. I didn’t know that. I was thinking of prayer in too narrow terms. I pray every day. I am praying as I write these words. But first a little commercial, a word about the source. Please support one of the great national newspapers with a digital subscription. You’ll find more than just the news of the day. You’ll find important analysis of the moving pieces, large and small, national and international. And there’s also wisdom to be found there, like the wonderful open heart of this woman and her beautiful piece of writing in the link below that inspired me to write the screed above. .
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/prayer-supreme-court-football.html
As this link takes you to the New York Times website you will see adverts. Like you, probably, I am annoyed by the adverts but it costs money to make a company like the Times work. As one of the most respected newspapers in the world they provide a very important service to us. I encourage you to get a digital subscription. I spend some time with them everyday on my phone or my computer.