Inscriptions of Epiphanies We Share

The text of this sonnet can be seen at the end of this reflection.

Epiphany comes from an ancient Greek word meaning to reveal. When we say we have had an epiphany we mean the recognition of a truth that has suddenly been revealed to us, an “aha!” moment. The church season after Christmas is called Epiphany because it celebrates God’s presence on earth revealed not only in Jesus but also in the manifestations of light we can see in all people and all nature.

Humanity needs both kinds of epiphanies right now as we search for a way forward through a world that has been made strange to us by our own actions.

We need to see new truths, and we need to see ancient truths anew. We need to shape a new story out of the old, expressing a new understanding of our place and purpose in the universe. Following our old story, our society has become polarized, our earth unstable, greed out of control. Racial, economic and environmental injustice are bringing society to the point of upheaval. And yet the heart of the old story has truth in it that we need to carry forward.

The violent riot that smashed its way into the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 carried signs, shouted slogans and blasted music that identified it as a white supremacist, fundamentalist, Christian-nationalist event.

The New Yorker published footage taken by journalist Luke Mogelson from the midst of the insurrection that he filmed with his phone. Continue reading →

Grace and Greatness at a Vigil at the Village Church

[The words of this sonnet about Grace Paley are printed below. It is closely connected to another poem and reflection on this site, “In the Shadow of Absence” that you can see by clicking here. It also relates to a recent sermon, “My Feets Is Tired but My Soul Is Rested” that you can see here.]

All Saints Day approaches. One way to define saint is as a hero who also is a great soul. This poem is about Grace Paley who would have laughed at being called a saint. She was a true hero, though, and more than once she was called a great soul. I think it honors the name “saint” to call her one.

We are at a moment of history that needs heroes and great souls. We have no time to wait for them to appear. We need to be them ourselves.

Some feel we need one great leader to emerge, but the world needs every hero and great soul it can get. We don’t have to worry about being just ordinary people. Most heroes and saints have been so only because the moment required it of them and they rose to meet its need.

What does it take to be a hero with a great soul? Continue reading →

The Harder Task, Revisited

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

We have a task that is of the highest priority. It will take us all giving our all to accomplish it. It will also take a cultural change of consciousness, maturing to a new Enlightenment, in order to have the wisdom, commitment and courage we need.

Elections are part of the task, Friday climate strikes and Black Lives Matter protests are part of it, the Poor People’s Campaign and all the liberation movements—they are different means to reaching the same goal, a world that is livable, lovable, sustainable and worth giving our all to save.

David Attenborough has produced an extraordinary film, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, that includes both his witness to the existential crisis that humanity has created and his vision of how we could still change course and reverse the damage and restore the stable planet that humanity has enjoyed for millennia. (You can see the film’s trailer below and find ways to watch it on YouTube or Netflix.)

His perspective is specifically focused on the biodiversity that we are rapidly destroying without which we may well become extinct, but the hopeful task he gives us is essentially the same in every crisis of injustice and abuse that we face, whether social, economic or environmental. Whatever issue concerns you most, listen to his words and see how they apply: Continue reading →

Unbroken Prayer

This sonnet is a little parable about two monks, a novice and a master sage. It can be read literally, or you could see the master sage as anyone or any situation in your life that challenges you. The poem speaks to all forms of suffering that we transform into wisdom over time.

[The words of this sonnet are printed below. It relates to another sonnet on this site and its reflection, Judging at the Ox Pull.]

Greta Thunberg believes that humanity is unable to address the climate crisis because we do not yet have the level of consciousness we need to change civilization as much as we must. She puts it this way, “To get out of this climate crisis, we need a different mindset from the one that got us into it.”

The same could be said of any crisis, personal as well as global.

Greta echoes the wisdom of Albert Einstein who said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe…. A new type of thinking is essential if [humanity] is to survive and move toward higher levels.” (New York Times – May 25 1946, p.13 – ‘Atomic Education Urged by Einstein’)

The poem “Unbroken Prayer” is a parable about attaining a new level of consciousness that is able to resolve and move beyond obstacles that we have not been able to overcome. On its surface it describes an evolutionary inner path that spiritual sages of all traditions have found and mapped, the contemplative path, traveled by means of meditation and mindfulness practices and spiritual friendship.

Greta has come to this “different mindset” by another path. She says, “People like me – who have Asperger’s syndrome and autism…. see through the static.”

It is urgently important that we find a path beyond the way of thinking and living that has led to the crises that now threaten to destroy the ecosystems on which all life depends and the democracies that have aspired to ever greater freedom, equality and justice.

We need the dominant culture of human civilization to evolve, and that will take millions of individuals who can “see through the static”—the static of the self as well as the static of our current culture—millions who rise like the novice in the poem to act from an enlightened heart.

The spirit of life has guided evolution over billions of years from the simplicity of the first single-celled prokaryotes to the complexity of the human mind. It doesn’t matter whether you think of that spirit as a personal God or as a set of laws—what matters is that the same sense of direction that has guided life to this moment is within us each now, and it clearly wants to point its creations in the direction of survival and ever greater life.

It is not just a higher power, it is the highest power within and around us.

The highest power in the universe wants to help us find our way through the crises and obstacles we face, so the most important thing we can do now is connect to that power and listen to its guidance. We can find the strength we need in it to enable us to serve its purpose with our every thought, act and gift.

The last words of the sonnet are “Stay there.” It means to stay connected to that power in whatever you do, to live from the new mindset it gives you, and to work from that transformed consciousness to transform the world.

Unbroken Prayer

When he would come across the novice praying
the master sage would prod him with his cane
and tell him they had bills that needed paying
or order him to go unplug a drain.
The novice knew that this was just a test.
Still, to be deep and yearning toward the goal,
his sacred calling, then be poked and stressed—
he felt rage surge that he could not control.
For years he suffered the indignity
of watching as his worst self would arise,
but slowly he gained equanimity,
and welcoming his weakness, he grew wise.
One day he rose within unbroken prayer.
The master said, “No, I will go. Stay there.”

Judging at the Ox Pull

The presidential debates, climate change, George Floyd—the news is full of human power gone beyond sane limits. Yet we see even more displays of power restrained and used responsibly. Gandhi was right when he said that violence is not the dominant human instinct—nonviolence is far stronger in us. If that were not the case, he said, cities could not exist.

We can still choose the path of lovingkindness that represents our truest, best homo sapiens self. This poem reflects on that choice.

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

This sonnet relates to another on this site, Waking the Power, and also “Gandhi’s Path of Higher Power: From Zero to One” on The Golden Room website.

Bill McKibben wrote a sobering but ultimately hopeful book entitled Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? The great hope he finds is that humans can destroy, “but also we can decide not to destroy.”

He writes in his epilogue, “Yes, we can wreck the Earth as we’ve known it, killing vast numbers of ourselves and wiping out entire swaths of other life—in fact, as we’ve seen, we’re doing that right now. But we can also not do that.”

McKibben sees two technologies as most important in changing the course of human civilization away from self-destruction. The first is the solar panel.

The second is nonviolence, which most people do not think of as a technology because they do not understand it fully. It is a technology that enables us “to stand up to the powerful and the reckless.”

Many people know of the dramatic incidents of civil disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi in India. Fewer realize that most of his campaign was made up of constructive programs designed to create a strong, independent Indian society—improvements to farming, local business, education and health care.

Even fewer people realize that there was a third part of his “technology” of nonviolence: Gandhi firmly believed that anyone could do what he did, but he was equally adamant that no one could do it without being grounded, guided and empowered by the spirit.

Gandhi is a model for everyone in the inner source he turned to in order to guide and empower his life, but not everyone shares his calling to lead a social revolution. Some of us, thank goodness, feel called to work with oxen or to be teachers or healers or countless other vocations.

How can we find that source within us? Eknath Easwaran explains how Gandhi found it in his invaluable book, Gandhi the Man: How One Man Changed Himself to Change the World. Gandhi confessed to having been a coward as a boy. A wise elder taught him to say the mantra “Rama” (a Hindu name of god) whenever he was afraid.

He tried it, and he found it helped, so he kept using it even when he was not afraid. He credited all his power, wisdom and love to that practice combined with daily meditation.

The results were amazing. Easwaran tells the story of an evening prayer meeting when a deadly cobra came into the outdoor space where hundreds were sitting on the ground. Panic began to rise and people could have been trampled in the stampede, but with a motion of his hand Gandhi signaled for people to remain where they were.

Maybe drawn by the motion, the cobra came toward Gandhi. It slithered up onto his bare thighs. Gandhi remained calm the entire time, no doubt saying “Rama, Rama, Rama” to himself. The calm seemed to affect the cobra as well as the crowd of people. It slithered across his lap and off into the brush. (Gandhi the Man, p. 115)

The story is emblematic of Gandhi’s encounters with individuals and empires. His presence was transformational.

The consequences of human abuse of power are creating suffering on a massive scale, whether from killer climate events or economic inequity or racism. We are undergoing convulsions of fear in our society, leading to even greater violence.

We do not need to give in to that base instinct. We have a deeper impulse in us. We call that nonviolent, generous-hearted, highest law of human nature by the simple word, “love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky gave us the teachings of his character, the spiritual master, Father Zosima, in The Brothers Karamozov. Zosima said:

“One may stand perplexed before some thought, especially seeing men’s sin, asking oneself: ‘Shall I take it by force, or by humble love?’ Always resolve to take it by humble love. If you so resolve once and for all, you will be able to overcome the whole world. A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it.” (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)

I have been deeply moved by the power of that love in the judging ring at the Tunbridge World’s Fair. You can see sometimes a small eight year old girl guiding two gigantic oxen around the circle in perfect harmony with merely a word and a light tap, her love of them and their love of her evident in every move.

The poem below takes place in another area of the Fair—not the quiet, open, airy and light ring but the loud, dark, crowded, walled-in runway of the pull contests. Even there, the power of humble love can be seen doing its transformative work.

Judging at the Ox Pull

The idling tractor’s new hydraulic winch
hauled back the stone boat easily each try
even when loaded so to move an inch
the massive oxen foamed with wild rolled eye.
Some drovers screamed and whipped their ox so hard
they laid a lash mark down the fair-groomed hide,
and though the goading left the charged air scarred
the crowd would laugh to see so little pride.
But other teamsters kept themselves restrained—
a quiet word, a tap or pat or prod,
and even losing, dignity remained
as something worth more, something won for God.
The diesel fumes and screams and whips all show
the limits past which power should not go.

Waking the Power

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

This poem and reflection follow the poem and reflection How to Walk on Water.

Astronauts look back at the earth from the moon and see how tiny it is in relation to space, like a lifeboat on an endless ocean. Today the lives on that boat are in great danger. We have created a violent storm that threatens to sink us. Our thoughts and desires have created the storm, expressed in the way of living our societies have promoted.

Humanity has caused this danger and humanity can prevent it, but not without a higher power of wisdom and creativity than we currently possess. As Albert Einstein said, speaking of one aspect of the entire storm: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe…. A new type of thinking is essential if [humanity] is to survive and move toward higher levels.” (New York Times – May 25 1946, p.13 – ‘Atomic Education Urged by Einstein’)

The wisdom of the 12 Steps lays out a practical, tested way to transform human thinking and behavior. The first step we need is to acknowledge that our wisdom, our strength of will and our current level of thinking is inadequate to save us from the insanity that threatens to destroy our life—and this is true whether that insanity be addiction to alcohol or shopping or nuclear weapons or fossil fuels.

The assumption that we can fix ourselves can sink us. People who are suicidal need higher power to attain a new way of seeing, understanding and functioning in their life. They need the higher power of wise guides and psychological tools and spiritual practices to help them transform their consciousness and behavior. It takes a higher power to save suicidal societies as well as individuals.

We need to change the way we live to keep life on earth afloat, we need to change governments, businesses and homes, and we need to change fast, but no material change will be possible without humanity changing its heart, mind and spirit sufficiently to transform our dominant culture.

The success of the 12 Steps depends on believing that a higher power can restore us to sanity and we by ourselves cannot, and then turning our will and our life over to the care of that higher power, however we define it. The 11th Step is to increase our conscious connection to the higher power through meditation and prayer, seeking its guidance and the power to follow it.

Secular and spiritual mindfulness and meditation practices transform the brain in ways that neuroscience is able to document. Thomas Keating co-founded the Christian forms of heartfulness and Centering Prayer, and he observed over decades that the real transformation they created was visible not as much in the inner experience as in the way people lived.

The fruits of mindfulness and meditation are the very changes we need in order to save life on earth: an evolution toward universal compassion and unconditional love based on a new perception of the oneness of all beings and all the earth.

This is what Gandhi saw released when people ‘reduced themselves to zero,’ as he did through his own contemplative practice. It is the power that enabled him to change the thinking and behavior of the greatest culture the planet had yet seen, the British Empire.

Human consciousness has evolved in miraculous ways in the past, and we seem to be on the verge of the next leap. The wisdom and power we need are in the boat with us even now, they are latent in every heart and mind, asleep in the stern while we are flailing desperately to avert disaster by our old way of thinking and working. This poem is about waking the power we need. Continue reading →

Fiddling While We Burn

[The text of this sonnet is printed below.]

I wrote this sonnet years ago as many problems were increasing—poverty and economic inequity, racism and religious nationalism, militarism and environmental destruction—and too few people seemed aware of the threat to our society and world.

The poem asks, “How long before the people feel the heat?”

The good news is that millions of people are waking up to what is happening and are rising up to demand human civilization change.

We cannot let up. The transformation needed is more than any government alone can solve, as Greta Thunberg and the Rev. William Barber and countless others are saying. Greta says, “The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today’s political and economic systems,” she said. “That isn’t an opinion. That’s a fact.”

Yes, it is absolutely crucial to elect new leaders this year at every level of government who will work for change, but the global arson that has been accumulating power and consuming the earth for decades requires a fire brigade that is hundreds of millions strong, dedicating their time, talents and resources to creating a sustainable and just civilization and restoring the earth. We need to make up our minds that this will be our work beyond this election and as long as we live. We need to make working together toward this new world a joyous, hopeful part of our daily lives.

It is not enough simply to feel the heat. We need to wage a revolution of values, we need to legislate public policies and regulations based on the principles of compassion, the Golden Rule, the love of neighbor and the recognition of our oneness—that everyone and every creature on earth is our neighbor.

So it is urgent that we stop “fiddling while we burn” and spread this revolution of values. Thank you for doing your part!

Continue reading →

Stop the Seeds from Getting Sown

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

Partisan media are inciting hatred and violence, polarizing a democratic, peaceful nation, and helping autocratic, fascist leaders rise to power who use their positions to inflame the situation to the point where citizens take up arms against people they no longer consider fully human, people of another race or culture or people who disagree politically. The media and leaders and their backers create a crisis situation that gives them the excuse to unleash a civil war and slaughter millions.

That was Rwanda. If you live in America in 2020 and don’t feel alarmed reading that description, I recommend you watch the film Sometimes in April. It is worth doing anything to prevent it from happening here or anywhere else ever again.

We need not only to change the structures and systems, such as the ability of partisan media to take over a market without regulation providing restrictions and balance, but we also need to be aware of the seeds of fear, hatred and violence in our culture, our government, our homes, and stop them from growing, or from getting sown.

One of the moments in Sometimes in April that made my blood run cold was when the hero finds out that his family is on the list to be killed even though he is in the military and of the approved race. It could happen to anyone. I could imagine it happening to me. It reminded me of a saying attributed on the internet to many different sources:

Solon (the Lawgiver) c640 – c556 BC Statesman of Athens, writer of its compassionate legal code:
“Wrongdoing can only be avoided if those who are not wronged feel the same indignation at it as those who are.” from Greek Wit (F. Paley) found on http://sqapo.com/aphorism.htm

The film helped me feel as if I were among those being wronged. It helped me love my neighbor as my self, in true oneness. I wrote this poem several years ago in response to the film and the genocide and the dangerous situation I saw building in America that today is starting to explode.

All of us who believe in the global ethic shared by all religions need to act now and transform society to live by the laws of compassion for the vulnerable and oppressed, love of neighbor, the Golden Rule in all its formulations. We need to speak out, we need to organize, we need to vote and we need to watch the seeds and… Continue reading →

Reflections On War and the Military: “Training Flights” and “Hanging Between Two Dying Ways”

I share two sonnets below, “Training Flights” and “Hanging Between Two Dying Ways: A Lament,” both from my collection “Sonnets for the Struggle for Peace, Justice and the Care of the Creation.” I am publishing them here to follow up a facebook exchange that you can see below about the recent use of F-35 war jets to honor medical workers treating coronavirus patients. This is a long introduction, so if you are more interested in the sonnets, skip to the end of this page.

Many reasonable people disagree with my feelings about war planes overhead and about militarism and modern warfare. Some of those people are in my family and among my friends, and I respect them. Their reasonableness and wonderfulness as people does not change my position, but it makes me want to explain myself. Continue reading →

The Harder Task

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

I recorded this poem in the summer of 2019 which seems like another world, another age of the world. It seemed then as if the worst of the climate crisis era was still ahead a decade or so. Now we are in it. This is what it looks like: tens of millions of climate refugees; the erosion of democracy and the rise of fearful autocratic entrenched nationalism; the rich grabbing more and the poor suffering more and inequity worsening; ever increasing ecological devastation; accelerating species extinction; and yes, pandemics and economic collapse and social upheaval. We are in it now.

Some of the wealthiest are trying to escape, as this poem suggests, but millions of people of all kinds are working hard to change the world to reverse and heal the damage we have done and create a global society that is just, equitable, sustainable, resilient and at one with all peoples and all nature.

This is “the Harder Task.” Thank you so much for all you are doing for that cause. Please make up your mind now to do even more, to give it all your time, energy and resources. This is the greatest struggle any generation has ever faced, and it will take even more dedication and effort than World War II. Choose an organization and join together with others, contribute what makes you feel good. Do what you love to do the best that you can do it for the cause. Thank you!

The Harder Task

Plop a banana peel into the compost
and watch the fruit-flies scatter through the room.
The bucket is their world, all else, the moon
and Mars and distant planets that will host
them till they can return. What distant post
can we fly to when our world meets its doom—
when asteroid zooms in, or human plume
or magma ash turns earth to ice or toast?
It seems we have two tasks to undertake:
first, finding places that will serve as well,
and how to get there. That task is unnerving.
The next one’s worse. Somehow we have to make
our life more worth the saving—learn to dwell
in kindness, love and beauty worth preserving.