Comfort in the midst of Despair

O God, you know the emptiness of my heart. Sometimes I wonder if you are there...if you hear...if there is any hope that my situation will be different. When loneliness looms around me, when my questions are unanswered, when no one seems to care, when days and nights go on and on with no change, when I fall deeper into despair, I pray that you will let your peace fall upon me as gently as the spring rain that waters the earth. Remind me of your unconditional and eternal love for me. Assure me of your presence. Fill my heart with the hope that my life is held in your hand. Lift my pain from so that joy may flow freely again through me. I ask this for the sake of your love. Amen.

Article on the Golden Compass Books/Movie

From the Boston Globe: boston.com

God in the dust

What Catholics attacking 'The Golden Compass' are really afraid of

By Donna Freitas | November 25, 2007

ON DEC. 7 New Line Cinema will release "The Golden Compass," starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, the first movie in a trilogy with the massive budget and family blockbuster potential of "The Lord of the Rings."

Yet, even before it opens, "The Golden Compass" finds itself at the center of a controversy. The Catholic League, a conservative religious organization, launched a campaign on Oct. 9 calling on all Catholics to boycott the film. The group also published a lengthy pamphlet attacking the story and distributed the pamphlet to Catholic schools across the country. Other groups have joined the fray, including the evangelical nonprofit Focus on the Family, whose magazine Plugged In urged parents to keep kids out of theaters showing the film. And the Christian blogosphere is alive with warnings not only about the movie trilogy, but also about the series of books it is based on.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, charges that the books, known as the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, are deeply anti-Christian. Donohue says he fears that the film will inspire parents to purchase "His Dark Materials" for their fantasy-hungry kids on Christmas, unaware that the third book of the series, "The Amber Spyglass," climaxes in an epic battle to destroy God. Some of the book's villains are referred to as the Magisterium - a term used to refer to the Catholic hierarchy. The British author, Philip Pullman, has said openly that he is an atheist, and Donohue charges that his books are designed to eradicate faith among children.

But this is a sad misreading of the trilogy. These books are deeply theological, and deeply Christian in their theology. The universe of "His Dark Materials" is permeated by a God in love with creation, who watches out for the meekest of all beings - the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. It is a God who yearns to be loved through our respect for the body, the earth, and through our lives in the here and now. This is a rejection of the more classical notion of a detached, transcendent God, but I am a Catholic theologian, and reading this fantasy trilogy enhanced my sense of the divine, of virtue, of the soul, of my faith in God.

The book's concept of God, in fact, is what makes Pullman's work so threatening. His trilogy is not filled with attacks on Christianity, but with attacks on authorities who claim access to one true interpretation of a religion. Pullman's work is filled with the feminist and liberation strands of Catholic theology that have sustained my own faith, and which threaten the power structure of the church. Pullman's work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox.

This emerging controversy, then, is deeply unusual. It features an artist who claims atheism, but whose work is unabashedly theistic. And it features a series of books that are at once charming and thrilling children's literature, and a story that explores some of the most divisive and fascinating issues in Catholic theology today.

Pullman wasn't always "the most dangerous man in Britain" as he has been called by columnist Peter Hitchens. Pullman studied literature at Oxford, went on to become a schoolteacher, and then discovered he had a knack for drawing middle-school-aged children to the edge of their seats over classics like "Beowulf." Pullman began to write stories of his own in the early '80s.

It wasn't until Pullman married his talent for epic adventure with the genre of children's fantasy in "His Dark Materials" that he reached a wide audience. The book the movie is based on, "The Golden Compass," came out in 1995 and won the Carnegie Medal, awarded for an outstanding book of children's literature. The sequel, "The Subtle Knife," was released in 1997, and the final installment, "The Amber Spyglass," was published in 2000 to wide acclaim, including the prestigious Whitbread Prize, the first given for a children's book. The series has sold some 12 million copies worldwide.

In interviews, Pullman has gone on record as an atheist, not only doubting God's existence but charging that organized religion has been an instrument of evil in world history. He has criticized C.S. Lewis's Christian allegory "The Chronicles of Narnia," because Pullman sees in "Narnia" a world in which innocence is so prized that Lewis never allows his heroines and heroes to grow up.

But to reduce Pullman to these few juicy sound bites is to ignore the whole of a complex, exuberantly curious intellectual who has infused his writing with a complex, crisply rendered theology.

The trilogy is a retelling of Milton's "Paradise Lost," the classic epic poem from which Pullman borrowed a line, "His Dark Materials." Milton tells of the battle between Lucifer's army of fallen angels and God's rule in heaven. In "Paradise Lost," God prevails. But in Pullman's book, the two child protagonists help to defeat the rule of the Authority and the Authority dies.

When critics say that Pullman's series advocates killing God, this is what they mean. But that is the most literal possible reading, and misses the point of the books.

The "God" who dies in "The Amber Spyglass" is not a true God at all. Pullman's Authority is an impostor, more like Milton's Lucifer than like a traditional conception of God. In the novels, the universe's first angel tricked all other angels and conscious beings created after him into believing he is God, and has spent an eternity building a corrupt empire for the purpose of hanging on to absolute power.

Readers of the trilogy know that the Authority is a tyrannical figure who uses his power to deceive, to conceal, and to terrorize. His death not only liberates all beings, but reveals the true God, in which and in whom all good things - knowledge, truth, spirit, bodies, and matter - are made. The impostor God has spent an eternity trying to wipe out all traces of the divine fabric of the true God - what Pullman calls Dust - because it is so threatening to his rule.

Most Christians are taught to imagine God through the first and second parts of the Trinity, through the Father (God) and the Son (Jesus). Pullman's vision of God is much closer to the third part of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. Dust is the Holy Spirit.

For Christians, then, perhaps the most important concept of all in the story is that divinity isn't just a being, but a substance that loves us and animates us, yet has a mind of its own. In the books, Dust's love for humans is unconditional, even though they often do things to hurt and deplete Dust's influence and presence. Dust has many names in "His Dark Materials": Wisdom, Consciousness, Spirit, Dark Matter.

Dust also has a distinctly female cast. When Pullman personifies Dust, and he does on occasion, he uses the pronoun she. Evoking the third person of the trinity as female is nothing new - in fact it's biblical. Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) is the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit. One finds God spoken of as she in both Proverbs and the Psalms (among other places). Framing the divine through Spirit-Sophia is nothing new either - this is a move made famous by the work of revered Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, a professor at Fordham, in "She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse," now a classic text among Christian feminist scholars.

God is not dead, then: A false God has died and the true God - a feminine divine - is revealed.

The universe of "His Dark Materials" is far from atheistic or anti-Christian, but to understand why, we must allow ourselves to open up to a theological vision that exceeds the narrow agenda set by some Catholics.

Pullman's Dust certainly moves beyond orthodox Christian ideas about God. Dust is a "spirit" that transcends creation, but all living beings are made of Dust, so Dust is a part of creation. While Dust is indeed the divine fabric of the worlds of "His Dark Materials," Dust is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and immutable. Dust is as dependent on creation for its sustenance as we are dependent on Dust for ours.

This view of Dust echoes many of the theological ideas that the Catholic Church finds threatening today. The most obvious thread is liberation theology, the Marxist and socially progressive rereading of the Gospels born among Catholic theologians in Latin America in the 1960s. Liberation theology teaches that Jesus is a political revolutionary who loves all that God has created and wants all creation to flourish on this earth, not just in heaven. Liberation theology also holds that believers should disregard doctrine that leads to oppression.

This is not an idea in favor with the current leadership of the church. In placing the common welfare above the dictates of church authorities, this movement has sparked a long running battle with the Catholic hierarchy. The Church has issued high-profile attacks on liberation theologians, both in official Vatican documents and, perhaps most famously, in the reprimands issued to the former Brazilian Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The cardinal is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Dust also reflects strains in feminist theology that reframe the divine as feminine and hold that Christians' relationship with the divine is mutual, not hierarchical: We make ourselves vulnerable to God as God makes God's self vulnerable to us. Many see this feminized God as a kind of heresy - a rejection literally embodied in the fact that women are forbidden to represent Jesus through the Catholic priesthood.

Pullman's characters who discover the true God fall so deeply in love with the divine that they will sacrifice everything - even the bonds of first love. They are willing to hold on to this God even if it requires that they wage war with the powers that be, the authorities called Church and Magisterium - those who rule by secrecy and serve a false God who takes the form of the old man in the sky.

It is a beautiful story, and a Christian story. It is a story that could prompt believers to reflect on their faith. It is just not a story that everyone may want you to read.

Donna Freitas is a visiting assistant professor of religion at Boston University. She is the coauthor of "Killing the Imposter God: Philip Pullman's Spiritual Imagination in His Dark Materials," and author of the forthcoming "Sex and the Soul" from Oxford University Press.

© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

An interesting way of thinking....

How an “X” Written on Your Hand Can Equal An Act of Kindness... and Improve Lives

By Brian Vaszily, Founder of IntenseExperiences.com

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind. – Henry James
If someone you know reasonably well has written an “X” on the back of their hand, you’re naturally curious what it means. Especially if it is an adult who penned that “X,” as writing on the skin is a far more common pastime of kids and teens.

I am routinely one of those Xing adults.

Perhaps once or twice a month, and despite the fact that my cell phone, computer, watch and probably other gadgets all have audio reminder capability, I’ll find myself scribbling an “X” in the canvas between the back of my thumb and forefinger to remind myself of something particularly important.

”Peacock Leaf,” by Deanna Leonard.

Inevitably anyone who knows me and who sees this has to ask, “What’s that for?” And usually my reason is mundane; the other day I did it to make sure to get my ex-wife a birthday card, for example. “Oh” is all people usually have to say when you give them such boring truths.

But the time before that, about a month ago, the “X” I had scribbled in black on my hand had a more interesting purpose behind it.

Nice Teeth, Brian

That morning, I awoke in one of those super blah moods where I knew that, if I allowed it to, the world and everyone in it was going to grate on my nerves. I realized why I was in this bad mood – not enough sleep several nights in a row, consuming fast food for the first time in a very long time the day before – and I also realized I had better go through certain motions to release those negative emotions before I faced the day.

I went through those motions, but this time – perhaps because I chose to supersize the %$^#& fast food the day before – enough of the blahs still lingered that I had to do something more.

So I decided to try something different.

With a black pen, I created an X on the back of my left hand that was double the size of my normal X. Then I outlined it with a red pen. Now, discounting the voice of an old schoolteacher who warned her students that the ink would surely leach into the skin and poison us, and accepting that my left hand wasn’t the world’s most professional-looking left hand but that was a small price to pay, I felt prepared to face the world.

That’s because that black X in red outline stood for a commitment I made to myself so as not to let my chemical mood get the best of me and ruin my and other people’s day (or worse), and in fact to possibly transform it: no matter who I encountered, the X said, I would pay them a big, honest compliment. Two or three if necessary.

Kindness at all costs, even if I encountered the very devil or the very ex-girlfriend from long ago who stole my entire cassette tape collection.

Since I was the first person I met that day, I looked at my X and then stared into the mirror. “Wow Brian,” I complimented me, “kudos to you for so vigilantly trying not to let your toxic emotions control you.” I also added, “Nice teeth,” because after brushing they looked particularly bright and shiny.

The next person I encountered was my wife. Now, anyone who is married knows that, when you’re in the throes of the blahs, the one other person most likely to pay for it is your spouse. Especially if she’s running late for something and doesn’t like her hair that day. So I looked long and hard at that X on my hand – I would’ve even licked it if necessary – and then paid her a series of important compliments.

And she left the house beaming.

I did the same with my kids and, although both seemed to have awakened on the same side of their beds as me that morning, after my compliments their stomping turned to happier, buoyant steps out the door.

I won’t give you a chronological history of everyone I encountered that day in person, on the phone, and via email or the compliments and kindnesses my X made sure I handed them. But I will share with you two important points:

Three Ghosts Not Required for this Scrooge

First, one of the people I encountered earlier in that day was someone who, in a different, younger life, I would have called a complete and total jackass (in a moment of contemporary weakness I still might use this designation). This person, being full of anger and therefore vindictive, and also being in a position of power, had stabbed me and many others in the back over the years.

I only still dealt with him periodically because business demanded it of me.

The call he was placing to me was not to chat about old times or make amends… on the contrary. Momentarily I wondered if I would fail my X, if I should’ve carved it deep into my flesh versus merely using ink, but I pressed forward. As he launched into the nature of his call, negative tone intact, I dual processed, considering the biggest compliment I could hand him.

When he paused, I inhaled deeply and began: “Before we go on, I just always meant to tell you something despite our history together.” And I proceeded to tell him how much I admired his tenacity in the face of adversity (leaving out his part in the adversity) and several other compliments. (Everyone – and I mean everyone – has some good qualities, something you can learn from or appreciate in them.)

When I finished, and though admittedly I expected him to proclaim my compliments nonsense, an amazing thing happened. His entire tone changed, as did the intent of his call. I could feel him backtracking – still preserving his ego of course – on his intent as he spoke. By the call’s end, he had basically talked himself out of the negativity he had meant to pursue.

I realize kindness is not always this immediately “magic,” and that my compliments to him likely didn’t change the man permanently.

But I also strongly suspect that if I and others more vigilantly responded to his anger with kindness, that act alone really would “magically” help heal his heart and transform his character. His anger had typically been met with more anger and fear – and negative emotions only breed more negative emotions – but what if it had been met with unrelenting kindness? What if it could be?

Though it is perhaps the hardest medicine of all for people to administer, kindness cures where nothing else can.

In Which the X is Transferred to My Heart

The second important point I want to share is that, even before the near-miraculous transformation of Scrooge earlier in the day as noted above, and certainly thereafter, several amazing things happened as I presented compliments and kindness to everyone I encountered:

”Veined Splendor,” by Deanna Leonard.

1) My day brightened… intensely. It is a beautiful thing, and it should be an obvious thing though all too often it is obvious only in retrospect, how shining light upon someone returns light. Simple kind words – to business associates, friends, the man behind the counter at the gas station and other strangers – can transform a day (or more), transforming yours right back.

2) After a certain point, I no longer needed to look and listen to the X on my hand at all. Around midday was the last time I recall needing to look at it, in fact. After that point, the compliments and kindness to friends, associates and strangers just came naturally and easily. It was now penned on my heart (which would make my old schoolteacher really nervous about the ink leaching through if she knew.)

Now, I would love to conclude this piece by noting that since that day I have been committed to constantly practicing kindness, including kindness in the face of adversity.

But that wouldn’t be true.

I don’t always pay sincere compliments to those I encounter, though I have seen the power of it and know doing so would be best. Due to negative emotions or lack of sleep or a headache or any number of other excuses I can muster, I am not always kind … though I have seen how being so can transform people, including me, like nothing else in this world.

I have not been 100% kind and complimentary since then, and I also know I will never be 100% so. But I thoroughly intend to try to be so -- and to kindly forgive myself when I fail and keep trying again – because everything that needs to be said and done can be said and done far more effectively in a kind way.

There is nothing more that we or the world around us needs more than that knowledge, and that commitment.

As J.M. Barrie, author of perhaps the greatest children’s story ever told, Peter Pan, noted, ”Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.”

That is worth remembering, even when it takes a black X outlined in red on the back of your hand to do so

Daily OM for October 17, 2007

In The Presence Of Difficulty

Compassion

Compassion is the ability to see the deep connectedness between ourselves and others. Moreover, true compassion recognizes that all the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and others are an illusion. When we first begin to practice compassion, this very deep level of understanding may elude us, but we can have faith that if we start where we are, we will eventually feel our way toward it. We move closer to it every time we see past our own self-concern to accommodate concern for others. And, as with any skill, our compassion grows most in the presence of difficulty.

We practice small acts of compassion every day, when our loved ones are short-tempered or another driver cuts us off in traffic. We extend our forgiveness by trying to understand their point of view; we know how it is to feel stressed out or irritable. The practice of compassion becomes more difficult when we find ourselves unable to understand the actions of the person who offends us. These are the situations that ask us to look more deeply into ourselves, into parts of our psyches that we may want to deny, parts that we have repressed because society has labeled them bad or wrong. For example, acts of violence are often well beyond anything we ourselves have perpetuated, so when we are on the receiving end of such acts, we are often at a loss. This is where the real potential for growth begins, because we are called to shine a light inside ourselves and take responsibility for what we have disowned. It is at this juncture that we have the opportunity to transform from with! in.

This can seem like a very tall order, but when life presents us with circumstances that require our compassion, no matter how difficult, we can trust that we are ready. We can call upon all the light we have cultivated so far, allowing it to lead the way into the darkest parts of our own hearts, connecting us to the hearts of others in the understanding that is true compassion.

How?

How did we get to this place?
Where we may never again see each other's face...
And if we were face to face,
instead of miles from each other's place...
would this painful tearing of each other's hearts continue on?
or would we find a way...
over/under/around/through, I always believed there was a way...
as we wandered further and further into the pain.
And now, I look up, and I can barely see you over there
the anger and pain between us is thick in the air
keeping us both from one another.

We cannot go back
We cannot go forward
The pain consumes us
I am frozen in place
devoid of the grace
to know what to do, what to say, what to be
that makes you know what you mean to me.

How do I say, I am sorry about that day
Mistakes were made on that day
Mistakes were made days after
Mistakes that hurt and killed your laughter,
when I know that were I to change NOW,
turn around,
say it different,
mean it different,
change anything about it,
it wouldn't be believed anyway.

So if I say it one way, I lose you...
If I say it the other way, I lose you...
there is no way to say that doesn't cost me you.
A price too high to pay, really.
But then, I am not the one with the choice here.
And you have made your choice.
And I am the one who will pay
For the rest of my days.
Without my beloved daughter
in my life anymore.

I was told today...

That I'm not a Christian because I believe that knowing GOD through the Holy Spirit is a mystical thing. I was told that anything mystical is not of GOD. And that if I say the Holy Spirit spoke/speaks to me that I am a liar...

So sad, so truly sad that Christianity has become words on a page and not an EXPERIENCE of the heart/mind/soul.

As if ALL THAT IS GOD can be contained in a book...

Why then even send the Holy Spirit if one cannot experience the Holy Spirit...if one's spirit cannot commune with the Holy Spirit? How does the Holy Spirit indwell one if one can not be spoken to by "spirit"???

On Mysticism...

Mysticism is not the same to every person that experiences it. So, there are various kinds or types of it.. Various mystics adhere to one of two different theories of The Divine: emanation or immanence. In the emanation view, all things in the universe are originating and flowing from God. In the immanence view, the universe is not projected from God, but is part of God.

Mysticism is usually thought of as being of religious in nature, which can be either monistic or theistic. The objective of monistic mysticism is to seek unity and identity with universal principles; while theistic mysticism seeks unity and oneness, but not identity with God.

Apart from religious mysticism is nonreligious mysticism, different though somewhat connected. This is more of an experiencing mysticism through, or from, the earth and nature, although some have thought to have discovered God through such experiences. An presumed authentic experience of mysticism derived from earth or nature is essentially the uniting of the subject and the object. In other words, the person becomes one with the earth and all in it; all boundaries or separation between the person and nature seem to disappear. The person becomes apart of nature, merged with it, and is not separate from it.

Instinctively every one has done what the Pagan religion openly admits to doing, and that is calling Earth, "Mother Earth." This association of Earth as a "Mother" is explained because we all are dependent on "her" for our survival. Just as a child comes to love it's mother who cares and nurtures it, so too, we love our Mother Earth who we feel loves and nurtures humankind as her children. At the very heart of the matter, this is the true definition of mysticism.

Mystical doctrines typically refer to various religious texts from different sects or cultures. Within particular religions, mystical traditions are by nature controversial, and may be considered a heretical or blasphemous belief in some cases. Most mystical teachers typically have some type of history or connection with a mainstream religion even if such belief is actually against their core religion.

The term mysticism means, in part, a stepping beyond traditional interpretation of the religion or belief and mystical traditions are often considered to be more inclusive and universalist, rejecting particular doctrines associated with traditionalist, fundamentalist, or extremist beliefs.