Yesterday, a leader in the Presbyterian Church (USA) posted something on Facebook he thought was cute. While on a tour of Washington D.C., the guide mentioned that things were in place for the President’s arrival by helicopter. The guide said that Trump would drop in between the White House fountain and the White House. My Presbyterian brother asked if we could drop him from 10,000 feet. Reportedly, the bus erupted in laughter.

I commented, “Interesting that we live in a culture where someone can joke about killing the president and others just laugh.” He replied, “When the President is a joke, what do you expect?”

What do I expect? Damn good question!

I expect us, as followers of the Prince of Peace, to model something different. I expect us to discipline our tongues as Jesus’ brother James admonished. I expect us to have an allegiance that goes far beyond the corrosive division spreading like cancer in our nation.

I do not support Trump. I am opposed to his policies on the environment, immigration, and health care. I won’t even get into examining his character revealed in one tweet after another. I am working locally and internationally to counter his Administration’s policies.

But his election has had a curious effect on me. Rather than radicalize me, it has drawn me further into the center. Why? Because like never before, I see the toxic underbelly of what we call the “progressives movement.”

It’s too easy to traffic in memes about peace and justice. It’s too easy to fly a banner that quotes Gandhi’s, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The real test is to live it out. I have been listening and watching, and here is what I see. We progressives can be just as controlling and insistent about our world views as any fanatic on the right. Our comments, like the one I mentioned above, can be just as incendiary as right-wing bigots. We call for others to repent of their racism, classism, and homophobia, but fail to remove the planks in our own eyes, thus contributing to the disease eating America from its core.

I’ve been guilty of it myself, and I am sorry.

A few weeks back I linked to an article by David Brooks in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt.

“Some people treat the Trump White House as the ‘Breaking Bad’ serial drama they’ve been binge watching for six months. For some of us, Trump-bashing has become educated-class meth. We derive endless satisfaction from feeling morally superior to him — and as Leon Wieseltier put it, affirmation is the new sex.”

I’m going to work on recovering from my addiction to political controversy and polarization. I can only hope that my other brothers and sisters who are Christian leaders will do the same.

Can you name something a beloved family member has taught you, a gem of wisdom conferred through words or example?

One of my wife’s many contributions to my life can be summed up in a simple exclamation: “Look! A cougar!”

I first heard it on a drive through the San Jacinto mountains of southern California. We were on an early date, prompted by our mutual love of nature. The highway stretched before us, bathed in thin sunlight, towering Ponderosa Pines and Black Oaks lining the roadside.

We came around a bend just as a squirrel scampered across the pavement. “Look!” Donna said, “A cougar!”

“What?” I responded. “Where? All I saw was a squirrel.”

“Exactly,” she replied with a smile. “If I said, ‘Look, a squirrel,’ you’d hardly be interested. But a cougar? It made you look more closely, didn’t it?”

And here was her lesson in a squirrel’s nutshell: view the ordinary as if it’s extraordinary. Take time to notice and absorb the beauty in life’s small, often stunning, details.

Cliché? Perhaps for some of you, but it was a lesson I needed, and she knew it. As a cleric, I had often waxed eloquent about the need to live in the present. “Consider the lilies” was one of my favorite admonitions from Jesus. But my frenetic inner dialogue, fueled by a hyperactive metabolism, compelled me to move too fast. Even my time outdoors was spent cataloging memories, taking photos, “bagging” peaks to add to my list.

Slowing down, luxuriating, settling into this infinity of the present: it wasn’t easy. Sometimes it still isn’t, but inexorably, like drips of water forming a stalagmite, it has changed my life. It’s why I often share this age-old salutation from the Roman poet, Horace: “Carpe diem!”

How about you? How is your mindfulness of each passing day? Lebanese American poet, Kahlil Gibran, once said, “In the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” This dawning can happen any moment, because it contains all we need to banish preoccupations and experience this Presence that surrounds us.

You may know the story of Brother Lawrence, son of a poor French family in the mid-1600s. His lot in life was so desperate that he joined the Army just to secure hot meals and a bed. Stationed at a lonely outpost in the winter, he had a life-changing experience. He was gazing at a barren tree standing in a field of snow – no leaves or fruit – but the knowledge that it would once again flourish come springtime made him realize that the grace and promises of existence are with us always.

Lawrence later joined a monastery in Paris, and because he lacked formal education, he was told to labor in the kitchen – cooking, washing dishes, mopping floors, scrubbing walls. There, at the bottom of the pecking order, he resolved to experience – once again – the truth he had glimpsed in a frozen French landscape.

The result? A legacy of mindfulness passed on through a compilation called “The Practice of the Presence of God.” I close with his words – overtly Christian, yes – but followed by a simple summation.

“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

Look! A pot! A mop! A cougar! A moment to be seized and savored!

In 1970, George Harrison released his magnum opus All Things Must Pass to universal acclaim. Ben Gerson of Rolling Stone magazine called it an “extravaganza of piety and sacrifice and joy, whose sheer magnitude and ambition may dub it the War and Peace of rock and roll.”

I was 14 years old at the time, and it struck even then that Harrison’s Hindu faith rang out clearly over American airwaves. Driving in our cars, we heard his songs My Sweet Lord that contained chants to Krishna and Give Me Love that prayed “Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth.”

I love those words, keep me free from birth! Liberate us from the tedium of endlessly starting over. Keep us from being mired in recurring issues that reach no resolution. Release us from character traits that repeatedly undermine our freedom and joy as human beings.

Our most popular notion of karma makes sense – the idea that for every action there’s a reaction. We reap what we sow is a truth found in proverbs around the globe. But does this spiritual axiom echo into eternity? The vast majority of us – even those applauded for our sterling characters – will die as unfinished works of art. We too often take repetitive and destructive behavior patterns to our graves. If there is an afterlife, will we receive a gift of peace and rest? Or are we slated for multiple incarnations until we get it right, fresh opportunities to push our Sisyphean karmic stones up hills of our own invention and finally hurl them into the abyss?

My mind is open to any possibility, but ultimately, I believe this question is more critical for our lives HERE AND NOW. What have we done to secure liberation in this (possibly) one life we’ve been given?

As a pastor for 32 years, I performed hundreds of memorial services. Too many of these were for people who had not done the work required for personal freedom, and I thought, “How sad to live an unexamined life, to tolerate these insanities that dictate our life’s scripts!”

Think about your own life. Are their thoughts and actions that spin you on the hamster wheel of your mind? I certainly have my own: impatience and entitlement, the futile need to exercise control, expectations that ferment into resentments, fears that borrow trouble from the future.

It’s getting better, much better. Assisted by diverse influences – Taoism, the Twelve Steps, the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha, writers like Wayne Dyer – I am experiencing longer reprieves from the madness within and without. But I want this liberty to last, so I resonate with Harrison when he sings keep me free from birth.

Join me! There are so many disciplines to help us recognize and overcome our character flaws on a daily basis. Meditation, centering prayer, recovery programs, therapy, spiritual regimens from many traditions, the counsel of trusted mentors and spiritual guides. We must use our willpower to employ these tools.

If we listen to the still, small voice inside us, it says, “Awaken. Be free NOW, not after you die. Become as self-realized as possible in THIS (re)incarnation. THIS ONE! Learn to shed the cultural and genetic overlays that blind you to the beauty of this present reality that shines with possibility!

Whatever your notion of time, hear these words attributed to Marcus Aurelius and spoken by Maximus to rally his troops in The Gladiator. “What we do now echoes in eternity!”

Yes, give us light, give us life, keep us free from birth!

When I “came out” clearly in my support of gay ordination and marriage, I was serving as pastor of a conservative, small town church in South Texas. Mind you, I never trumpeted my views from the pulpit. I never used this issue – or any other – as a litmus test to determine the faithful. I abhor fundamentalism.

However, this article circulated widely on the internet. A couple mornings later, one of my favorite members of that church walked into my office with a stricken look on his face.

‘Krin,” he said, “I read your article. I think what’s hardest for me is that even though I disagree with you strongly, I have already grown to love you as a friend. Now, somehow, I have to put those extremes together in my head and heart.”

He smiled ruefully and shook my hand. We remain friends to this day.

The truth hurts, especially when it’s rooted in love.

Our country’s recent elections were the most rancorous I’ve experienced. I heard truths that hurt PRECISELY because they came from people I love. I’m not naïve. I’ve always known that the cultural fault lines in our country zig-zag through my circle of family and friends. Until now, I’ve delighted in the dialogue that has marked these relationships. I like to think I’ve grown from them.

But there was something brutally naked about this latest election cycle. It pulled back the cloaks from ALL OF US. I’m afraid it has underscored our divisions rather than offer a healing path forward.

Why does this hurt more than ever? Because with some of my closest relationships, it’s like living in different worlds. We don’t speak each other’s languages. There are niceties, politeness, but no real connection at the deepest level of our world views. Agreeing to disagree feels like drifting apart.

I struggled to find an analogy, and what came to mind – oddly – is a scene from my youth. I share it with this qualification: I love my father deeply, and I know he loves me.

I was always an avid reader, far more attuned to the humanities than math or science. This confounded my Dad, a successful corporate career man, who would have loved to groom his son for a place in the business world.

One night I was reading The Country of the Blind, a brilliant short story by H.G. Wells. I don’t recall the exact passage that enraptured me, but it gave me wings! I had to share it with someone.

I made my way to Dad’s office. He was seated in front of a ledger and his adding machine, intent on complicated problems.

“Dad,” I said, “you’ve got to read this!”

He looked up, distracted, took the paperback from my hand, then speed read the page I pointed out.

“That’s good writing,” he said, his eyes straying back to his calculations. “Thanks for sharing it.”

Even as a young man, I felt the fissure. What did I know of elegant algorithms or the intoxicating air of high finance? What did he know of the power that words have to transport us into realms of imagination?

And yet, there is love, and it remains…

I took the book back, touched him on the shoulder, returned to my room.

(The torch of faith passed on to me from childhood has illuminated corners of existence my family never imagined. Still, early lessons can be powerful! I first shared this in a weekly column I wrote for the “Alice Echo,” then later in a collection of meditations called 52: Weekly Readings for Your Journey)

We all have favorite school teachers who taught us more than subject material; they imparted lessons about life. Yet in the cradles of our journeys, parents remain our earliest, most potent tutors. Their words and actions mold our outlooks from infancy.

Clearly, this can be positive or negative. In decades of working with people, I have seen both kinds of parental legacies. Learning to claim the best (and leave the rest) from our families is a healing journey many of us have taken. Some of us still need to.

On this Mother’s Day, I celebrate my Mom. Our relationship hasn’t been easy. Thankfully, over time we discovered a grace that is the cornerstone of our faith. This faith has been my mother’s greatest gift to me, a priceless heirloom. Let me share a memory that clearly highlights this.

My childhood neighborhood swarmed with kids, evidence of the Baby Boom. Like typical children, we often took sides and fought with each other. One day the conflict moved from taunts and posturing to rock throwing and BB guns. On the other side, I could see one of my “enemies.” His name was Gentry and he was a Goliath, heads taller than the rest of us. He was also mean as a snake, channeling anger from a severely abusive family.

Under a bright sun, we lined up in two gangs and advanced toward each other like fronts in a medieval battle. When fists started flying, Gentry singled me out. He had a board with rusted nails that he hurled like a lance. It struck my head, leaving a gash that gushed freely down my neck and onto my shirt.

The sight of so much blood drained the fight from all of us. We halted and scrambled back to our homes.

That night, my stitched head wrapped in Ace bandages, I lay under the sheets. My mother came to my bedside for prayer, a ritual she kept with all her children.

“We have something special to pray for tonight, don’t we?” she asked.

“We sure do,” I replied. “That God would take the pain from my head.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” she said. “We should pray for Gentry, that God would take the hatred from his heart.”

I felt an instant wave of resent. Why pray for that jerk? He was the guilty one. He was my enemy.

But with a sudden flash of wisdom beyond my years, I thought about the daily dysfunction Gentry endured in his family – the lack of a love I took for granted. My resent morphed into compassion. My mother waited silently, hoping this would take root in my heart. Finally, I took her hand and we prayed for Gentry and his kin.

One of the core teachings of Jesus is to love our enemies. Do not return evil for evil, but pray for those who persecute you. That night my mother illustrated one of the greatest elements of the faith she was passing on to me. I carry that torch to this day.

Mothers and fathers, your influence is incalculable! Raise your children with love and encouragement. Most importantly, pass on any faith you have that calls us to a higher plain.

And Mom, thanks for doing this with me. I love you!

I have friends who are Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Jews, Baptists and Sikhs. Others are atheists or agnostics. Still others hate labels of any kind. We are multicolored, multi-talented, multicultural, gay and straight, from all hues
of the political spectrum. I try to understand their journeys and cultivate mutual respect.

Most of us agree that I Corinthians 13 is a Himalayan peak of world literature. Written by the Apostle Paul 2,000 years ago, it is a lofty call to love.

Thankfully, it is not some ethereal standard impossible to emulate. What we find here is deeply practical, a chance for ALL human beings to choose this character trait in our daily lives.

Throughout February – a month long associated with love – I’ve invited friends to reflect on this sublime passage. Please take the time to hear them. Together we’ll get a view from this Everest of Love.

There’s a Benedictine tradition called Lectio Divina. It’s a way of reading and meditating on scripture as living words, not just objects of scholarly study. It requires deep listening and can be applied to the sacred writings of any tradition. Consider Paul’s words again. No matter how familiar they are, let them burrow into your spirit.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

To show how just a few words of this poetry can challenge us, I choose “Love is patient…”

I’m sure I’m the only one who struggles with patience.  🙂 Perhaps that’s why God deemed me (un)worthy of fathering a special needs son.

Every day, I must draw on subterranean founts of forbearance. Doing so, I now consider Kristoffer my resident guru. He unwittingly teaches me patience on a daily basis…

• His speech can be hard to decipher. I have to listen carefully, and if I need to hear him again, I gently ask for rephrasing.
• He perceives reality from a unique vantage point. It takes painstaking effort to enter into his world.
• He has the autistic trait of repeating his words and actions. I try to accept each version with new interest, or gently redirect him.
• Though he masters some activities quickly, there are basic skills that take him forever.
• He moves slowly, oh so slowly…

Patience! Just one aspect of Paul’s lofty call to love,  worthy of a lifetime’s cultivation.

Please check back here and see how others are climbing this Everest of Love in their own lives.

Carpe diem, friends!

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

Many years ago, while strolling through the Sacramento Zoo with my granddaughter, Lola, we stopped at a playground. She clambered on top of a frog statue, and I snapped her picture. What still strikes me about this photo is the wonder in her eyes.

She gazes at a world full of possibilities. More importantly, she’s ready to vault into the next adventure with all her attention.

When does this childlike wonder begin to wane? When does it get ironed and pressed out of us? When does the stirring of a breeze lose its tantalizing invitation? When do colors begin to fade to black and white? When do the tyrannies of should and ought cancel the allure of leaping into the full-blooded present? When do we become part of the living dead?

Is it from taking on the harness of duty? Is it the stain of watching countless evils on the evening news? Is it the weight of too many sorrows? Is it our unwillingness to heal from wounds inflicted by others? Is it fear of our own mortality?

Or do we just get jaded?

Some of you remember The Logical Song by Supertramp.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees,
Well, they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

Part of the problem is that we let wonder remain a noun while it longs to be unleashed as a verb. Instead of a passive, fleeting emotion, it wants to be our standard bearer, leading us on a journey of discovery!

I affirm Picasso’s quote. There’s an artist in ALL of us, no matter our Meyers-Briggs Type or Enneagram number. ALL of us. I know so many…

Engineers whose algorithms explore the edges of reality. Parents whose canvas is a nurturing home. Coaches who are Michelangelos of motivation. Travelers with trippy itineraries. Preachers who tell stories that keep us rapt. Quilters with uncanny eyes for color. Photographers who make our jaws drop. Gardeners who turn backyards into oases. Note writers gifted with encouragement. Rembrandts of random kindness. Nurses who exercise the healing power of touch. Cooks with tantalizing recipes. Animal lovers who speak the languages of horses, dogs, and cats. Architects, teachers, musicians, community organizers…I could go on, but I’m breathless!

Haven’t found yourself in this list? Then ask your spouse, a family member, or your closest friend, what do you think I’m good at? They’ll have an answer. Why? Because you, too, are an artist! Use their response as a springboard and let your giftedness vault you into a new life. Begin to wonder just how far your unique abilities can take you!

What if each of us was to test the boundaries of our own creativity in 2023? What if we did so without regard for the criticism of others, simply daring to be fully ourselves.

To all you artists reading this – yes YOU! – let’s turn wonder into wondering!

Two young girls organize a life-changing ministry, bringing clean water to more than 90 villages and cities. Click on the blue “Paper for Water” link to read my article in the current issue of Presbyterians Today. These girls are remarkable!

Paper for Water

If you’ve been able to strut through life with unyielding confidence, impervious to criticism, don’t read this. If, instead, you’ve allowed damaging messages to occupy your head, hear me out.

I believe in original innocence, not sin. In ways that matter most, each of us is born a tabula rasa, a fresh soul launched, as Lao Tzu says, into this world of “ten thousand things.” And some of these teeming influences are destructive.

We get placed on a social pyramid based on our looks, intelligence, or aptitude. We may have parents who project their untamed demons onto us. We may become the target of bullies. We may possess a tender spirit that observes the evils of this world and recoils into self-defeating isolation. We may struggle with depression, addiction, or some other malady that makes each day unduly burdensome.

If you, like me, have ever wrestled with doubt, self-judgment, or limiting thoughts, my heart goes out to you. I ask you to whisper a simple prayer with me: “May 2016 be a year in which we learn to be gracious to ourselves.”

This isn’t a new sentiment. It’s just hard to make it real.

I heard a woman teach about “the two great commandments,” Jesus’ summation of the copious Hebrew laws. One, love God will all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Two, love your neighbor as yourself. She focused on that kicker at the end. If we have not learned to love ourselves, our treatment of others will mutate. Our inner incrimination spills over like poisoned wine from a dirty cup.

“By learning to love ourselves,” she said, “I don’t mean pride, egotism, self-flattery, or insistence on our own way. And we can love others even when we don’t treat ourselves kindly. But let me ask you? Do you believe love is our highest calling? (Everyone nodded). Do you believe that grace and forgiveness are a needed balm in this world? (Again, unison nods). Now, do you consistently apply this love, grace and forgiveness to your own soul?” (A deep silence).

While in treatment for alcoholism, I met a cadre of broken men still fighting this disease that doesn’t discriminate. Like flowers in the dustbin, not all their suffering was wasted.

One of them, a prominent lawyer, said to me: “Krin, every day it comes down to this: Who do we let have the microphone in our head? Will it be the Critic, the Doubter, the Deceiver, the Comparer? Or will it be the Encourager, the Affirmer, the Gracious and Loving Voice of our Creator that lives inside ALL of us? Take back the mic!”

Do you still cling to regrets, nurse resentments, or allow the limiting voices of others to rent space in your brain? Are you still unconvinced of your splendid and unique beauty?

If so, may you find the disciplines to dispel these self-defeating lies. Call it the power of positive thinking, Rational-Emotive Therapy, or self-talk. Whatever method you use, take back the mic this year! Let your Original Self/God/the Creator’s Presence speak healing words into your spirit!

If you are reading this, I love you. Please whisper this prayer with me one more time: “May 2016 be a year in which we learn to be gracious to ourselves.”

Selah.

In “Walden and Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau said, “The mass of men (sic) lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country…”

George (Richard Gere) is homeless on the streets of the Big Apple. He’s already living in his own desperate city, both physically and mentally. Whether he will move permanently to his desperate country remains to be seen. Selling his coat for a few beers, sleeping in a prison-like shelter, dozing on benches, daring to visit his estranged daughter – these are the bleak patterns of his day.

His story, told in the movie “Time Out of Mind,” could touch the core of your humanness. IF you dare to watch it.

Why do I use the word dare? It’s simple.

There is nothing Hollywood about this film. No special effects. No dramatic plot line. No titillating sex scenes. No swelling score. No heroes or heroines. No pandering to our mass appetites.

Even the cinematography challenges our norm. Gere was filmed with hidden cameras, often through windows or doorways on the gritty streets, a cacophony of random voices carrying on in the background. It’s almost clinical, like Italian neorealism, detailing his struggle with inner demons from a dispassionate distance.

And those demons are certainly there. We get no clear, linear explanation of George’s past, but the scant details give a glimpse of his descent. They highlight in painful relief the final, strained connection he has with his daughter, Maggie (Jenna Malone).

Justin Chang, a critic with Variety, called this film “a soulful, fascinating, and haunting piece of urban poetry.”

One of its eeriest elements is the character of Dixon, played with panache by Ben Vereen. He gloms on to George, shadowing him day and night. Is this happenstance or fate? Is Dixon even real? His nonstop talking is a one-sided dialogue with the repressed elements of George’s character, like a split personality given flesh. When Dixon’s fingers hover over the keys of a café’s antique piano, it embodies the last vestiges of hope in George’s spirit. And when the authorities force Dixon from the shelter, he hurls two prophetic phrases at George. “Don’t give in to the demons!” “You owe me an apology!”

If I could petition the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences about this film by Oren Moverman, I would say, “Give Gere the Oscar for best performance! Let this low-budget masterpiece, like ‘Leaving Las Vegas,” be lauded as an example of cinema’s potential to explore the edges, to light up the human experience in ways we never imagined.”

Say it any way you want. Black lives matter. Homeless lives matter. All lives matter. If you believe it, I dare you to watch this movie, to get outside your consumer expectations and let it work its magic on you.

I cried as the credits scrolled. I know why. In an unglamorous career as a pastor, I had the privilege of meeting people this world will never celebrate. They let me enter into their desperate cities and walk alongside them for a while.

And sometimes, not always, we found a way out together.