Dan Brown and The Kingdom of Heaven

I thoroughly enjoyed The Da Vinci Code – book and film, not least because of it's capacity to force people who should, think again about their faith.

I am prompted to the Da Vinci Code comment because I am reading, “The Wisdom Jesus” by Cynthia Beaugealt, who draws on The Gospel of Mary Magdelene to make her point that Jesus was quite Zennish in his approach. CB prompted me to ask some pretty fundamental questions about the teachings of Jesus that had never occurred to me before. Why SHOULD he teach in parables, for example? Why not just come out and say stuff? Parables are inherently unsatisfying – especially the ones about people hiding treasures in fields, that sort of thing. They play on the mind. Well, there you have it! What the brain can't fully grasp, it never lets go of. I have noticed this – 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like a crossword clue that you can't get, but might … ” the old grey matter chews it over and over until the light goes on and “Eureka!” Is heard throughout the land.

I love going to church, to hold in my hand and in my mouth the essence of God herself and KNOW beyond thinking, that We are becoming One. It's a deeply mystical encounter that takes me out of myself and into everybody else. Is this what the church teaches? Well, sort of.

Frankly, you can keep much of the rest. Sorry, fellow believers, I can't be doing with male supremacy, dodgy saints, self-serving prayers and lives lived filled with guilt and emptied of compassion.

Uh-oh, the Bhuddist that sits on a cushion in the back of my head is whispering, “Judging mind!” And I have to sigh and respond with, “Too bloody right!” And Enlightenment eludes my grasp once again.

I cling as precariously to my Catholic faith as ever I did, often wondering why. Then Pope Francis comes along and sticks his head out of a window in Rome and advises the church to get its hands dirty,

I am quite looking forward to see how this translates into action. I hear he's getting a lot of stick. “The Red Pope!” Is being bandied about like it was an insult.

Go for it Your Holiness. If Church doesn't serve the poor, it isn't serving its Founder.

As for the Da Vinci Code, well: a great story. Mary of Magdala has been pretty much written out of official church history despite her impressive discipleship (SHE didn't leg it when things turned nasty … ). She obviously loved her teacher with a tender passion that I really hope brought him joy.

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Signing Up

I’ve signed up to writing a blogpost every day for a month, and frankly, this blog could do with the attention.

Intention. A fundamental question that reminds me at every moment that I have a choice. What is my intention? If my intention doesn’t correlate with my values, I have a split-second between ‘what is’ and ‘what might become’, to make a choice. I expect I shall expand upon this as the month advances.

I did some cool stuff today For example, I played Pooh-sticks with my granddaughters. My intention? To remind myself that there is joy to be had here, now, and in the most obvious places – if you choose to look.

Scouring The Universe

God within you wants to know Herself in you.

Sometimes whilst scourning the Universe looking for an answer to the unanswerable question, “What Is the meaning of life? ” I hear something that opens a window, and all sorts of things make sense. I’m not talking about TRUTH mind, as in something fixed, and eternal, no, just a glimpse of a something that makes sense for now. Tomorrow? Who knows? Tomorrow holds the promise of taking care of itself, which might necessarily mean bringing a different truth. There are, as you know as you get older, very few absolutes.

There’s the preamble. Here’s the Amble:

I have just finished listening to a Dharma Talk (and I WILL write up my visit to Darlene’s neighbours, the Buddhist Temple, soon, I promise… ) The teacher today quoted my opening gambit, which bears repeating: God within you, wants to know Himself in you.

When I was in Sunday School way back in 1955, Miss Fleet ( Thin, old, bun, bicycle, lovely… ) told me that God is everywhere. A five year old just nods. Very little is known about the ever-widening world, everything makes complete and wonderful sense, and I just accepted it. Of course I had no idea who God is, and that’s perfectly OK, because I’ve hung around Her skirts for nearly sixty years now, and I still don’t. I have learned that this is just fine with God, and also, to be a bit wary of people who tell me they do.

At Baptism, I was taught, God comes and lives in us. Don’t know what for, exactly, though I have always hazarded a guess that S/he popped in with the general aim of making me a better person, and good luck to Him/Her: Frankly, I could use the help. However, I am struggling a bit to make sense of this, because if that were the reason, S/he doesn’t aopear to be all that great at it. “God, “I might say, with real conviction, “You are pants at making us good.”

I am, as I have said before, a reluctant Theist. I believe in a Great Something Other, but have no idea what the GSO is. So, hearing that this pre-existing Entity IS indeed everywhere, but maybe not quite as I expected, is, well, Quite Interesting. Getting to kmow Herself in me , eh? As if I were, as you are, and everything is, an expression of Her (Lord! Give English a gender-free pronoun!, PLEASE!) and He experiences who She is through every expression of Himself, which is the entire cosmos, of which I am grateful to be a teeny-weeny part.

As this is really too much for me to take in, I wrote a poem.

I invited God to tea. For If
(And I say IF) we are to become
Lovers
We really ought to get to know one another better
First.

It was a great success.

Though, unused to juggling a cup and a plate on
His lap, God,
Was a little awkward. Just at first –
Shy, even.
But the cake went down well.
And for the rest?

He left me with a smile and a promise
Of great times ahead –

And an invitation to tea,
For you.

Happy Happy

I am a phenomenally happy person. I knew this before I enrolled on this EdX course from Berkely: ‘The Science Of Happiness’ I guess I wanted to know WHY, as that’s the way I am.

50% Genetics! My smiling and unflappable father springs immediately to mind. Thanks, Dad!
10% Circumstances. Yup. I am comfortably off, and I am content.
40% Social Connection. I can do that! Though being an introvert, I have to work on it. The upside is, I don’t need a LOT of people around me to MAKE it work.

What I’m really about here, is finding something to do with the ungodly hours I acquire, compliments of jetlag. It’s 0630 here in the beautiful State of Washington, and I have been awake since four-fifteen.

I completed Week One of the EdX course, took the quiz, which I did OK on, and wrote up my Three Good Things Happiness Exercise, which was to record in detail just that. Breakfast with Darlene and Carol, walking the dogs in Idylwood Park on the shore of Lake Sammamish, and the sense of achivement at getting my homework in on time, covered it for yesterday. I don’t know what today will bring, but whatever it does, I suspect I shall look upon all I have made, and declare it GOOD.

The Ice Cream Maker

Seven years ago, I thought, I MUST HAVE AN ICE-CREAM MAKER! I scoured the shop-sites for the best deal, and bought a shiny new Kenwood. I admired it, read the directions, invested in the cream and etc., and fired it off. Twice.

It now sits at the back of a cupboard as a permanent reminder that the pleasure of acquisition is an extraordinarily fleeting one, and that Ben and Jerry offer much easier alternatives, frequently at half the price.

I write this as a lesson to you on the futility of seeking pleasure in things, and an illustration as to why “Circumstances” – in this case having enough free money to spend on non-essentials- comes in at only 10%.

Far more effective happy- generators are, gratitude, Random Acts of Kindness, the company of good friends, and the support of family. To my friends and family I have two things to say: (apart from soppy things, like, “I love you”)

1. Don’t buy me any more stuff.
2. Want an ice-cream maker?

Contemplative Mind

I am probably the least qualified to contemplate the contemplative: I plash about in the shallows with a grudging acknowledgement that I need to get a lot more serious about it to make a real difference to my life. So I say, but I look back at that sentence and begin to laugh, because the striving to do better, get more, reach a goal – even that of becoming a saint – really isn’t what it’s all about. No, not at all. Nevertheless, I made an important point, I don’t know a lot. So you won’t find any great wisdom here, just chatter.

I am thinking about non-dual thinking. A gem of the contemplative, and a key to unlocking imaginary prisons as well as taking down some serious barriers. I have been exposed to this teaching for about five years, coming in at the time I needed it most.( Long story, never mind. )

I once held very firmly to some ideas. I was staunchly left-wing. I was a particular brand of Evangelical Christian, I had strict views on how to do this, and accomplish that. I made a habit of making other people’s causes my own. I jumped onto bandwagons (providing they were heading in the ‘right’ direction.) I was, all-unknowing, schooled by my upbringing, to react in a certain way to certain stimuli. I knew who the bad guys were. My thinking mind was set to automatic , and my responses were of the knee-jerk variety.

I am no longer a staunch Evangelical Christian. So quoting St Paul here is going to seem a little counter-intuitive, but I tell you, if you sift St Paul, and don’t take everything he says as gospel, there’s some thunderingly good stuff in there. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” He writes, which is to say, find a practice that you are comfortable with ( and there are myriad to choose from) that stops you thinking the same old crap just because it’s what you do. Wonderful. Then there’s my signature verse, Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Chapter 5 verse I: It is for freedom that Christ has set you free, so do not therefore subject yourselves once more to a yoke of slavery.”

Now leaving Christ out of it for a moment, no offence meant, but here is a great invitation to realise you CAN be free from thought patterns and behaviours that keep you miserable, and you can also return to them if you don’t stand guard over your heart and mind.

For YEARS – and here’s a prime example of pre-programmed-thinking – I didn’t get the irony of evangelisation that promises ‘freedom from sin and death ‘ and then immediately loaded the new convert down with a list of do’s and don’ts longer than your arm. Some freedom.

I am letting my fingers tap away without me again. Non-dual thinking: no knee-jerks. Do you think in black and white? Well here’s the thing, your brain isn’t called ‘grey matter’ for nothing. Contemplatives don’t judge or pre-judge. Everything is as it is. the key question is never,”Is this position/person/point of view right?” Rather, “How much of this is right?” Hold the judgement.

I haven’t put that well. Way back when Adam and Eve were living up in the garden, they were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”Right? Well, no, they weren’t. They were strongly advised not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There’s a difference. The wisdom hidden in this myth, is: stay away from the battle-lines. Don’t take sides. Don’t judge. Stay whole, stay balanced.

I watched a guy on You-tube today rant for ten minutes on the illegitemacy of Obama’s Presidency because of the persistent myth that he has a forged birth certificate. Rant rant rant … This person’s obsession, which was beyond hatred, fuelled by his conviction of his ‘rightness’ had quite obviously poisoned his life. I left him a message:

“Your behaviour is irrational. Stop trying to be right, start trying to be happy.”

There! That’s it.

The Pendulum Swings

God knows how. It’s a mystery.

I expect you think I’m being metaphorical on the pendulum question. Poets have the write. But no. This post is not a plea for politicians to behave themselves, or family values to go this way, or that. It’s about a remarkable timepiece.

Three years ago I bought a rather kitschy clock in Aberystwyth. It’s a glass-fronted pretty little thing with flowers and songbirds etched around its face. I gave it to Kate as a house-warming present, but somehow in her going from here to there, and back again, the clock, still boxed, ended up in the spare room with a rich collection of my daughters’ left overs.

Well, I like it. So I deboxed it, and hung it on the wall in my bedroom.

It’s a stupid clock in some ways. It has birds and flowers, but no numerals, so timing is never quite exact, and the pendulum is purely decorative. Or has been. For three years the pendulum has hung stubbornly and uselessly down. In the beginning, I tapped, pulled, adjusted, swore, tinkered and, in desperation, bashed, but to no avail. The pendulum moved not a twitch. I gave up.

This is hard for me. I don’t usually give up, and, believe me, this is not always a good thing. Eventually I allowed the pendulum BE a metaphor:

There are some fights you can’t win.
Some things you just can’t fix.
There’s room in my life for the purely decorative

I reconciled myself to a clock with a pendulum that wasn’t going to work.

Then a window opened, the sun shone in, and the pendulum began to swing.

Early morning sunshine struck the silver disc and reflected a shiny penny of light, which oscillated gently, left-right, left-right, on the wall over there > >>>. It was this movement that first caught my eye. It took me less than a second to look up that way < <<< to discover the clock proudly presenting me with a fully functioning pendulum. Left-right, left- right. Tick-tock, tick-tick.

That was twenty minutes ago. It's still going. I am thinking perhaps the slight breeze coming in through the open window is the cause. I don't know, I'm afraid to touch it in case it stops. Instead, I shall revisit my metaphors:

Never write anything off.
Sometimes broken things fix themselves.
There's still room in my life for the purely decorative.

Time to get up.

Oh! By the way, Kate – if you read this – you're not getting your clock back.

Pursuit Of Happiness

I wrote down as one of my goals today, to write on the Pursuit of Happiness, and as I’m at the stage in goal-setting where the goals are pursued whether they make me happy or not – i.e. Day One – I’d better get started.

Naturally, I have nothing original to say, but as this is no hindrance to any other of the blogs around, I’m not going to let THAT get me down.

(Two paragraphs … Well, it’s a start.)

This all stems of course from my Resilience Training, which is now in Week 6. We are doing TLC’s which in the context of my RT means, Therapuetic Lifestyle Choices. Groan. I eat too much, I don’t get enough sleep, exercise is horrid, and I spend too much time doing untherapuetic things like … Sitting on my big fat sofa watching highly unsuitable television. I do have some fun too, but it does rather feel as though I shouldn’t …

“Seriously, Mary,” I nag, (And you know me, I NEVER nag.) “You have to make some changes if you want to live to be 106 in order to get every last penny back that you invested in The Prudential.”

The above is a long story, and I strongly suspect only I find it interesting, so moving on… .

There’s an App for it, says Clay Cook, the prof delivering this course, so I went to look, and there IS. I have been tinkering with it all day, and I am now checking on every one of my goings-on in order to decide whether or not I derive any benefit from them. It might sound very selfish to ask of the World, “Are you making me happy?” But as happiness is derived as much by giving as getting, or more so, it can work out to everyone’s benefit. Besides, if I’m pissed, everybody gets it. Not good.

Actually, apart from a slight ‘not being in the moment, moment’ when I thought something unpleasant about a woman who drove discourteously in my direction, and advising her to be more considerate in future, I haven’t done too badly today.

Nothing dramatic. No adrenaline rushes or mighty acts of mercy, just this:

Took clothes to a charity shop
Made a conscious act of forgiveness
Cleared out some junk
Bought a Big Issue
Ate a fruit salad instead of a bar of chocolate
Did my exercises the physio gave me for my back
Weighed in on Wii Fit
Spent some time in silence after doing the church flowers
Offered to help a friend out on Sunday
Played with my granddaughters
Had a glass of wine with my lunch
And finally…
Sat in the garden with the flowers, trees and birds and
Blogged.

Not a single moment of unhappiness.

Result!

I Believe

My inner- writer will give me no rest until I do this. That is, write a Statement of Faith.

This is SO HARD. What possible purpose would it serve? Who knows or cares?

I’m time-wasting, because as of this very moment, I have no idea what I’m going to say. So it’s down to my subconscious to bail me out again: I shall take this opportunity to give my Right Brain the reins, and let rip:

I know that the Cosmos of which I am a speck, is more than 99% void. I look upon the void with wonder. I wonder that I am matter, and I wonder that I am conscious. Life is of inestimable value, conscious life even more so. I, you, everyone: so rare, so precious.

There rises from deep within me a profound gratitude for Being. This gratitude is unfocused, but real. I delight in every manifestation of life, especially in those three lives I helped to bring into Being. My children.

I have searched and searched for meaning, and for a purpose in my life, and have not arrived at any conclusions. This is what I think today, tomorrow I shall be as happy as I am now to write something quite different.

As there are as many purposes in life as there are gurus to tell me what they are, I may as well invent my own. Like you, I will do this in accordance with my personality, my upbringing and my circumstances.

I discovered that ‘ I believe ‘ is too passive. So I ditched it for, I will. And maybe I will. I hope so! Here I am:

I will do what brings me peace.

I will pursue happiness.

I will revel in adventure.

I will make myself laugh, and in doing so, I hope to make others laugh too.

I will endeavour to gladden the hearts of those I meet, and I will not always succeed.

If I have to be angry at all, it will be FOR others, and not with them.

I will try always to be kind.

I will react to the suffering of others – in all it’s manifestations – with compassion, and I will,when I can, do what I can to alleviate it.

I will retreat into silence from time to time to connect with Gratitude, and give thanks for Being.

I will never forget how to play.

I will accept that this form will fade and die. Whether there is another form to come, doesn’t matter: this one flawed, but perfect, life will have been enough.

I will make every day count by continuously calling myself back to being conscious and present in every moment.

I will remember love: that it is the most lavish and beautiful of gifts, that it never dies, and is never wasted.

I will try to remember how flawed I am, and bring no judgement down on others.

I will forgive myself for my imperfections, and offer the same gift to others.

And finally:

I will remind you, wherever you are, whoever you are, that you are loved.

A New Earth

I had to have two goes at it. This  is because I am not prone to giving up. This stubborn adherence to the unlikely, the improbable and the hard to swallow is my one weakness. (Ho ho ho)

The ‘it’ to which I refer in my opening shot, is a book: ” The New Earth: Create a Better Life” by spiritual teacher and winner of my Peter Pan look-alike award, Ekhart Tolle.

The first time round, I found myself, after just a few paragraphs, in ‘hard to swallow’ mode. I am not THAT sceptical, in fact just the opposite: it’s scarily easy to lead me on and catch me out investing trust in the most outlandish propositions. I’ll believe anything, and usually do.

I once gave myself a migraine ranting in full-on indignation at the television set over an EU regulation specifying the length and breadth of carrots, the piece coming complete with the presenter holding the mould into which carrot seeds were to be sowed, in order to ensure compliance. It was a hoax. it was All Fools Day, and I came top.

I’m not stupid, however, so I have to believe that intelligence and gullibility are not mutually incompatible. I like being a trusting softie, it keeps me smiling, and out of as much trouble as it gets me into.

Yes, I’m rambling. Let me take a sip of my tea and…

In the back of my mind sits ‘Number 45′ in my ’99 Things’ book. ‘Write A Statement of Faith’.

I have been a Christian since the date of my baptism which was in November 1950, and as I was only six weeks old at the time, I like to think some kind of pre-bap agreement had me covered even earlier.

I believed nothing at six weeks, of course, and in the course of the following fifty years or so, I came to believe A LOT. Sometimes, I even acted on my beliefs, with a startling caveat. I never really swallowed hell. Or punishment of any kind. I nodded in the direction of it, and never wasted my breath opposing it, I just knew at a deeper level that a God who spends your whole life telling you he loves you, then throws you into a fiery pit because he caught you out doing something you didn’t ought to have done, which he allowed you to do, didn’t add up.

I don’t know that the insights into the incomprehensible world of the Spirt that I gained from Ekhart are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, I don’t even know if ‘right or wrong’ works with the unknowable. I guess you just have to go with the intangible, but ever-present inner witness, that whispers a silent, ‘Yes!’ and warms your heart. You may not be comfortable with that concept, but you know it’s there. Recognising its Presence is the beginning of awareness of your spiritual evolution that has nothing to do with hell, and everything to do with truly knowing who you are, and what your purpose is.

Ekhart writes that your purpose is to bring consciousness into the world. To walk through your day fully aware, totally present, not harking back to the past, or concerning yourself with the future. There’s more, lots more, but that, I think, is enough.

Is he onto something really big? I don’t know. How could I? I do know that a lot of what I believed for more than fifty years served no useful purpose whatsoever. So my Statement of Faith, when I get around to writing it, isn’t going to be very long.

Cosmic Naughty-Step

Last Week’s New Scientist featured The Death of God, though in all honesty it didn’t put it QUITE like that, if for no other reason than death presumes erstwhile life. The study under scrutiny will tell you what you already know: that in Western society the majority approach to divinity is ‘Who cares?’ God has become for many one great irrelevance. We are no longer ‘for’ or ‘agin’ religion, we just don’t give a tuppeny damn about it.

I say, “we”, but that wouldn’t be exactly true, because I have something entirely inexplicable that I don’t seem quite ready to let go of.

It seems to me that enlightened faith is a good thing. On balance. I mean, it prompts altruism, offers comfort and gives you an opportunity for a sing-song on a regular basis. But to get to a reasonably enlightened position, you do have to jettison a lot of nasty stuff. All the elements of Jehovah, for example, that are blatently evil: murder and mayhem for starters. Or as one of my tecahers put it:

” You can’t have a god who says ,”I have loved you with an everlasting love,” whilst at the same time promising that she’ll do indelicate things to you with redhot pokers, for all eternity, if you don’t do as you’re told. ”

My evangelical friends at the City Mission are convinced that hell exists and awaits everyone who doesn’t toe the line in the here and now. As I have long since accepted that I have a very limited capacity for toe-lining, I am in a bit of a quandry. Do I ‘fess up and say, “Actually, I think what you believe is barbaric.” and get myself drummed out of what is a really splendid organisation, or do I keep mum whilst never assenting to the hell-fire and damnation requirements?

The gospel according to me is pretty basic.

You are completely and unconditionally loved
You are of infinite worth
Whoever you are, whatever you do, is none of my business
You’re better off being kind and doing good, because you’re hardwired to benefit from it
All of the above are God in me reaching out to God in you, (whoever he is) as an equal.

No angels or demons, no heaven or hell, no cosmic naughty-step, just this wonderful life on a beautiful planet with a consciousness capable of reaching beyond the stars to adventure, wholeness, and, with a bit of effort, peace.