To love is to act according to your true and deepest nature.

— Richard Rohr

You might have never heard of the psychologist in the British “object relations” school named Harry Guntrip. One, among many, interesting pieces of Guntrip’s life was that he was also a Christian minister, and it may have been his faith tradition that led him to understand that that there is a deeper level of human development than psychological health.

It is, he said, “the experience of ‘being’ that is the beginning and basis for the realization of the potentialities in our raw human nature.” By the natural developmental process of losing knowledge of who we really are as humans of “being,” he saw that we also lose the “capacity for healthy, spontaneous ‘doing’” as well.

We know that the love of God is within us and that we are acting from our true nature, when we ourselves can “do love,” writes Richard Rohr. God is now working in us—but as us—and the two loves (human and divine) become one.

The greatest 20th century spiritual teacher you’ve never heard of, Karlfried Graf Durckheim, said it this way: It is essential to discover in ourselves an attitude—even a physical posture—in which we can be open and submissive to the demands of our inner being while at the same time allowing this inner being to become visible and effective in the midst of our life in the world. And for this to happen we must so transform our ordinary daily life that every action is an opportunity for inner work.

In learning how to simply “be,” then, we have the potential to fulfill what Durckheim calls “the purpose of all living things: to manifest the divine in the world.”

What’s important after all?

“You’re important,” answers A.H. Almaas. “You don’t need to do anything important to be important. You don’t have to achieve enlightenment or accomplish any noble action to give importance to your life. You are. That is the most important thing there is. You’re very special, always. You are not important because someone thinks you’re special, nor because of any unusual capacities or accomplishments. You are important because of your nature.”

Your true nature is as a divine “being.”

Shalom,
Rev. David S. Hett
Minister of Religious Life and Learning

I’ve been thinking much more about human maturity following a May pilgrimage to the north woods of Wisconsin on the death of my last surviving aunt. As my first cousins, one brother, and I stood in Aunt Velda’s kitchen, where we all hung out last as wild, crazy, and naïve kids, the realization dawned upon us one by one that we—the carefree kids—are now the elders.

It reminded me of something the philosopher Alan Watts once wrote, that the one secret that parents always keep from their children is that they don’t feel grown up either.

Maturity doesn’t automatically come with getting taller, or even by becoming a “success” or amassing degrees, wealth, or prestige, and I don’t see much evidence for it among contemporary politicians, pundits, business, or religious leaders.

So I was impressed with some recent thoughts by someone who seems to have attained elderhood: Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World), who believes we need an upgrade on an old “rule:”

“The Golden Rule or The Principle of Reciprocity (you shall do unto others as you would have them do unto you) can no longer just have a horizontal dimension – in other words a ‘we’ and ‘the others.’ We must realize that the Principle of Reciprocity also has a vertical dimension: you shall do to the next generation what you wished the previous generation had done to you.”

A practical application he suggests: “We should only permit ourselves to use non-renewable resources to the extent that we at the same time pave the way for our descendants to be able to manage without the same resources.”

He is talking about what Robert Moore (The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine) describes as the task of men and women who have fully matured the “Warrior” energy that every person is born with: they “steward this power for the good of an inclusive community…to aggressively seek to extend the boundaries of Shalom – of peace with justice.”

“We want ‘grand’ fathers,” says Richard Rohr; those who offer “a worldview in which we all feel safe, alive and adventurous.”

“No civilization has survived spiritually,” he warns us would-be ‘grand’ fathers and mothers, “unless the elders saw it as their central task to pass on wisdom and actual life to the next generation.”

This is our challenge – to extend the boundaries of Shalom.

Shalom,

Rev. David S. Hett
Minister of Religious Life and Learning

There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is how far is it from midtown, and how late is it open?

–Woody Allen, Without Feathers

Our native theologian of angst, Woody Allen, once again perfectly characterizes the human spiritual condition: the belief that the unseen world is somewhere other than, well…what we see.

However, the spiritual traditions tell us that “if we have eyes to see” this unseen world can be revealed in most, if not all of its fullness. This requires removing “the scales from our eyes,” as the Book of Acts describes Paul’s enlightenment experience; that is, by lifting the veils, obstacles, and obscurations that conceal this so-called unseen world.

Inseparably, both the visible and the “invisible” world are right here – in “the naked now,” as Richard Rohr calls it. Jesus used the Jewish metaphor of the Kingdom of God to describe this reality. The here-and-now yet often unseen realm is our true home, in this world.

So one of the first obstacles to remove in order to “see as the mystics see” (Rohr again) is the conception laid bare in the Woody Allen joke—that it is somewhere other than here (but hopefully close to midtown Manhattan) and now (“how late is it open?”).

This split between the seen and unseen worlds (and to call them two different worlds is characteristic of this split), between, say, spirit and matter, is a by-product of our theistic religions that resulted in an anthropomorphized God – a Being –  “out there” in “heaven” or somewhere. I prefer to describe God as Being rather than as a Being, because this emphasizes that all of what is both seen and unseen is God.

In this light we are not just “human beings,” but rather, humans of Being, and like Jesus, we uncover our true Being-ness by intimately embracing our full humanness.

Putting Jesus on a pedestal is a subtle way to avoid imitating him, says Richard Rohr in The Naked Now. “We worshiped Jesus instead of following him. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God. This made us a religion of belonging instead of a religion of transformation.”

In his book, Rohr sums up his whole message, saying, “I am a man of one major idea: immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union.”

Shalom,

David S. Hett

Minister of Religious Life and Learning

I did not have space in the last column/blog to mention the most important point about transformation: we don't do the transforming.

God or Being or Mystery (call It what you will) is what does the work of transformation, because otherwise trying to live a transformed life becomes just another ego-ideal/ego-project and is ripe fuel for superego attacks (“Look how far short you fall!”) and (just as insidious) superego “praise” (Wow, you really are doing a good job: peaceful, compassionate, mature!).

As Marcus Borg says in The Heart of Christianity: “To be a Christian means a relationship with God, lived within the Christian tradition. To be a Christian is to live within this tradition and let it do its transforming work among us.”

What we can do is “set the stage” for the inner divine movement to perform its naturally healing, optimizing restoration of our true, divine nature. Mostly, that happens by “getting out of our own way;” by relaxing our ego structures, by allowing space for God, for Being, to have Its way with us. Good old Jesus taught his followers a prayer for this: “Thy will be done.” Paul put it like this: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Nevertheless—and paradoxically—practice is seemingly necessary for getting out of our own way. Swami Sivananda said, “Without preparing ourselves through preliminary practices, the only answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ is this: ‘The same old fool.’”

Mariana Caplan recalls in her book, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, a period of time following ten years of “rigorous, dedicated meditation and dietary practices, when I felt the need to test the importance of practice.” So she stopped practicing altogether. Her reasoning to continue practice is instructive:

I considered if I were to be a fully mature woman on the path of life…how would I live my life? And I realized that I would choose to do the very things I had once called “practice”anyway because it made sense to do so. I would try to spend time daily in meditation or contemplation and in study. I would eat well, in a way that gave good energy to my body, and I would exercise my body because I knew it was a fleeting gift. I would try to live with integrity, strengthen my conscience and self-knowledge... and make my life one of service.

In other words, she realized, the practices I had been doing for so many years were not just a means to an end, but an expression of that end itself.

Maybe another way to approach it is to ask the question, “Who is practicing?” Or “Who is practicing whom?”

Shalom,

Rev. David S. Hett

Minister of Religious Life & Learning

Religion comes down, finally, to this: Out of a deepening relationship to the Source, living a transformed life.

“The Christian life,” writes Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity, “is not about believing or doing what we need to believe or do so that we can be saved. The Christian life is about a relationship with God that transforms us into more compassionate beings.”

Conversion is not about changing religions or adopting a creedal statement; its true meaning is transformation. Paul’s conversion experience is the archetype of religious conversions, and this is what Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock say about it in The People’s New Testament Commentary:

Paul was not converted from one religion to another … Paul was not converted from being irreligious to being religious … Paul was not converted from unbelief to belief … He was not converted from insincerity to sincerity … He was not converted from atheism to theism. [What Paul does undergo is] a fundamental transformation and reorientation of his life in his encounter with the risen Christ.

Paul himself puts it like this: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

So the question I posed recently to the Adult Learning Council and to our church’s entire education staff at all age levels, including Akita staff, was this:

What does it mean for an adult to live a transformed life?

Here are just a few of the answers I received:

Unconditional love and acceptance of others

Balance

Resilience

Maintains sense of (or can reconnect to) Divine presence in adversity

Present … humble … joyful

Having a simple, grounded sense of what you can do, and doing it; of what is not yours to do, and not doing it.

To know that complete vulnerability is without fear and full of wisdom and true strength

Attunement/alignment with the divine creative force of the universe

Self-confidence

Compassion … humility … courage … patience

Awareness: of others … self … God … Cosmos/nature

Paul has a list found in Galatians 5:22. But Jesus’ beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 add to the fullness of what it might mean to be a true “human of Being.” As A.H. Almaas writes, “When a human being truly grows up and becomes an essential adult, she lives the life of Being;” the life, that is, of God.

What, for you, does it mean to live a transformed life?

Shalom,

David S. Hett

Minister of Religious Life and Learning