Suffering and Grace

It is easy to get mired in suffering, whether our own or that of others, and in so doing we become defensive and protective of what we have, often in ways that may be either assumed or puzzling . . . or both. However, suffering focuses on the internal challenges and at times misses the opportunities to experience grace.

Granted, this does not mean that suffering is a good in itself, but rather something that occurs in ways beyond our control or ability to stop. This does not mean we have to react in a certain form or not, as it is our reaction to suffering, the way we can reframe or reconceptualize it, that demonstrates how much grace we have or sense we make of difficulty.

This was a difficult message to make sense of in Ram Dass’s Polishing the Mirror, where he speaks of his own stroke, his father’s increasing helplessness and care needs, and how he could only try to make sense of pain and suffering as an opportunity to learn and grow. Taken out of context, this can seem cruel and heartless, yet that is not the intention. If anything, it is the opposite. Taken as the case that one would not freely choose to inflict suffering, the only thing we can do is reframe it as an opportunity to learn something new through reframing it.

This is similar to seeing all challenges as opportunities — what we face may be the same thing, but it is all about how we make meaning of it. Something to consider when exploring what ministry is all about.


This posting is part of my ongoing, shared journaling related to the Formations for Modern Pagan Ministry course I am taking during the summer of 2017 at Cherry Hill Seminary.

You are welcome to join me on this journey!

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Conscious Living & Dying

I have been reading about conscious living and conscious dying in Ram Dass’s Polishing the Mirror, and found a combination of profound insights and disturbing thoughts about how to manage the dying of those around us.

To be fair, we do not exactly manage death, but rather do have the capacity at times to manage our response to it.

Dass claimed that our way of relating to death was itself an extension of how we relate with aging, something I recently started to explore. If we deny that we will all die, then we have a tendency to present those who are dying with a false hope that they will recover and things will be ok. Our efforts are much better oriented toward helping them to embrace the present.

Difficult words to be sure, though it springs from the same notion that embracing life as a cycle means that we embrace and celebrate birth, though somehow see the end of the cycle as a finality (though a great many religions teach that it is really a transition into something else, potentially even something better). While modern Paganism has many threads for what happens to people once they die, one of the roles of a minister is to meet their spiritual needs and act like a midwife, though into the beyond.

Dass talks about death midwifery, and while he embraced opportunities related to authentically living and celebrating the many ways that we, and undoubtedly the loved ones who accompany the dying to their final moments, he encouraged us to consider how “death is a reminder to live life fully” (p. 94). While some aspects of his writing in this area did not resonate with my spiritual approach to life (i.e., astral travel with shared  peace between one in a meditative state and the other who was dying), it was overall a perspective that in many ways is pre- or post-Christian (with death a punishment for sin and redemption through death on the Cross and the like). Death is a part of the process, and while we cannot understand it fully, neither can we do that same for birth, either, yet we celebrate one and try to flee or deny the other.

Death is a part of the Wheel of our own lives, and while many unknowns can be scary, it is also something that everybody who went before us has encountered and passed through. It reminds me of the story in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, “And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.”

I think Pagan ministry needs to grapple with the concept of death, especially as we may be looked to as we help with the crossing over.


This posting is part of my ongoing, shared journaling related to the Formations for Modern Pagan Ministry course I am taking during the summer of 2017 at Cherry Hill Seminary.

You are welcome to join me on this journey!

 

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Aging and Changing

Chapter 4 of Ram Dass’s Polishing the Mirror was about aging, and while this is a topic that has always seemed so far away — so old — that it was a distant and potentially distinct future. Often for someone else. While we all get older every day, something that is readily forgotten as lost in our daily routines, this is not quite what Dass is talking about. No, not at all.

Indeed, when he said, “Until I was about fifty, I thought of myself as a teenager” (p 61) I stopped cold. You see, I am nearing that threshold and have always thought that about myself. The teenager, that is, the one with nearly unlimited potential and future and energy.

What do I want to do next?

I can do that! Who needs sleep, anyway?

Sure, let’s go. We can fit it in!

Why take a cab, let’s carry the bags of groceries and walk!

Alas, my first tip-off was that my coveted pattern of traveling with a maximum legal size carry-on backpack for any trip of any duration was  increasingly a challenge. While I still travel with one bag and a small personal backpack, I just cannot do it on my back any longer.

To be fair, I can still lift it and carry it all, but it is no longer a comfortable way to travel. I love the freedom of a one-bag backpack, but the downside is not really worth the benefits. Since I do travel for work from time to time, my physical needs are now altering how I travel, and this is related to . . . aging.

“Much of the suffering of aging comes from holding onto those memories of who we used to be” (p. 62). We hold onto a past that no longer exists, right? Comfortable. Familiar. Youthful. Energetic. Or perhaps the glossy-eyed past really did not exist as neatly as we may recall it, and in so thinking about it, I think we have selective memories of the good ol’days. Alas, I know I do, though Dass has a manner of waking us from a reality that exists only within our own eyes, and in many ways invites us to see what some of those implications mean.

With the only real rite of passage (aging) being Medicare (still a while away, but still…), I am thinking about how the Indian traditions that guided much of his life has those of us in the 40-60 age range as time or inclination to study philosophy or engage in spiritual practices, it is no wonder why I, at my age and with already a couple of university degrees under my belt, has chosen to expand this via my studies at Cherry Hill Seminary. Where else would I have had this provocation to read Dass and consider how aging is like the natural cycles in nature, similar to the Wheel of the Year, where we are the wheel?

Yes, aging may be somewhat disorienting or disconcerting, and I choose to see it as an opportunity rather than a challenge. I prefer to reframe things in positive ways rather than dwelling on the negatives or lack of future orientation. To this point, “conscious aging has to do with letting go, which allows you to come into the present moment — into spirit” (p. 72). Perhaps, though the present moment can be grokked by anybody, yet doing it in a way that recognizes limitations and through them opportunities may be a step toward wisdom.

The trick just may be on how to consider my own personal aging while also consider its implications for ministry and spiritual support of others….


This posting is part of my ongoing, shared journaling related to the Formations for Modern Pagan Ministry course I am taking during the summer of 2017 at Cherry Hill Seminary.

You are welcome to join me on this journey!

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Polishing the Mirror (Chap 1-2) via Ram Dass

Next on my reading list for Formations for Modern Pagan Ministry is Ram Dass’ Polishing the Mirror. I have heard a lot about Ram Dass over the years, though never got around to reading him. Probably for the best, as I would not have really appreciated his work or approach before.

While 2 chapters into it, he has packed a lot into his book while simultaneously keeping it very simple. To this point, there are two things that have thus far stood out to me that I want to mention as I continue to process it.

Firstly, I thought his comment, ” And at that moment, I realized that people arrive at spiritual understanding through a much wider spectrum of experience than I ever anticipated” (p. 5). No surprise there, but it was in the context of somebody listening to one of his speeches who did not seem to fit in, yet who still profoundly got his message. I can relate to the not seeming to fit in, while still having much more occurring internally that may be externally present.

Secondly, when Dass was speaking about his experience swimming with a dolphin, he held onto one, Rosie, and had a profound experience. He commented, “The wild creature model of who I had thought she was had stopped working” (p. 20). Rosie became a combination of a teacher and a guru at that moment, helping him to experience a higher level of consciousness in a way he did not expect. It is through this image of learning and experiencing in more profound ways than we expect that I really started to appreciate the author, and in that way his message.

Lots more to still process in this text, though it is off to a good start.

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