I will be dropping off of the internet for the next month or so, but I am not dropping out of the struggle to create a just, merciful, harmonious and sustainable nation and world. I am taking the next month to improve my ability to contribute to the struggle, as I will describe below.
The quote from Gus Speth that I have included here is central to my understanding of what we need in order to survive our current polycrisis and emerge into a healthier civilization. It also is central to my calling as a poet and spiritual writer, contributing to inner and world transformation. Part of that work is promoting “the emerging ethic of the environment” and “the old ethic of love of neighbor,” with the recognition that everyone and everything on earth is our neighbor, explicitly opposing exploitation or oppression.
Gus says that to make the transition to a new society we need a new consciousness. He has identified six ingredients to make that change:
1. raising awareness of the unfolding calamity; 2. cultivating wise leaders; 3. articulating a new narrative and positive vision; 4. building a unified social justice and environmental movement; 5. putting out effective social marketing; and, 6. developing models of a new way of living.
We each can contribute to one or more of these. I am excited to be part of it, but I need to add a precursor in order to be most effective, which is pursuing my own new consciousness and reorientation of life.
The word for this in my spiritual tradition is “metanoia,” an ancient Greek word that means to move beyond where the heart, mind and spirit have been to a greater level, or as the spiritual teacher, Mark Kutolowski, puts it, to expand the vision of the heart.
I will be spending the next month or so in retreat with Mark at Metanoia of Vermont, a lay Catholic homestead and community that he and his wife, Lisa, founded. The mission of Metanoia is to help people grow in lives of prayer, contemplation and care of the land. Mark is a trained teacher of Centering Prayer and a spiritual director. He will be accompanying me through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, a retreat experience that I hope will be a path of metanoia.
I can’t know where this path will lead other than into the place we each have within us where we meet the spirit of life that flows through all the earth and makes us one. The way I understand it, that spirit sparked life into being and inspired every step of evolution, so it must still want life to survive and thrive. I believe that if we each listen to that spirit’s guidance and let it lead us, we will find a way to contribute to its evolutionary cause—we will discover the individual contributions we each can make to help create the major cultural change that we now need.
That’s what I hope I will be doing over the coming month— practicing listening for that spirit and letting it lead me. Thank you for your part, however the spirit moves you! I’m with you all the way.
Here is the Poem of the Week, written on April 2nd. Our nation’s government was admittedly flawed before January 20, 2025. Forces of greed held us back from closing the obscene income gap, from legislating a livable wage, from reversing climate and other environmental catastrophes and making the super-rich pay taxes as a form of paying back what they have stolen from the poor, the middle class and future generations of life on earth.
Yet we can now see how much love shaped our government. It’s really extraordinary if you think about it. Our love was compromised, but it was there in our care for the poor–food programs and heat assistance and medicaid and more.
We loved our elders enough to provide social security and medicare. We loved humanity enough to do research to safeguard our health and heal disease.
We loved the earth and all interconnected life enough to regulate, however insufficiently, the polluters and extractors and abusers of the earth, and to fund the scientific research that gave us needed information about our impact and learn how to live on earth harmoniously and sustainably.
We loved our neighbors around the globe enough to offer at least some help when they were suffering, and enough to try to prevent wars and cooperate on global economic and all other kinds of well being.
We loved our neighbors enough to make sure they could have the right to think and speak and vote, at the same time as limiting freedom responsibly, just enough to protect everyone from harmful actions.
I could go on and on–so much love!
And now that imperfect but virtuous government is being torn down to the ground, and will love guide those who are doing the destruction as they govern? Will they create a more loving government for all? We may not know what is coming, but we do know, because history and personal experience have proven it, that love is the highest power on earth. We can be sure that love will rise again.
The text of the poem is below. This is a first draft, first take production. I am preparing books where each poem has been through many drafts, which is my inclination, but those could take years to be published. I feel compelled to share some of my daily poems each week because they speak to this time we are going through together. These words are coming straight from my heart in this moment, and I hope they provide some kind of gift to your heart. They help me to write. I hope they help you to read. And we sure need help, don’t we? This poem is about one place I find it.
Such Places
I climb this hill each day for sanity. It’s keeping me alive as so much dies. I find great comfort in this massive tree that has survived somehow, by storms made wise. I’m also humbled by the many signs of fellow creatures, up here to survive. Tossed leaves, dense tracks, their hungers’ zig-zag lines. We share this path. I’m glad we’re all alive. I’m glad that underneath the snow-packed leaves the deer and turkey find some nuts and seeds. I’m glad I find within this mind that grieves the deeper calm and wisdom our world needs. All plants and animals will soon be dead unless such places fill our heart and head.
Here’s the Poem of the Week for March 28, 2025. It’s another hai-net, seven loosely linked sort-of haiku that take on some of the characteristics of a sonnet. I have several other poems from this week that I hope to share as well. The struggle of this time is calling forth all our voices. Right now it is crucial that we respond. Courage and love are indeed contagious. We have the power we need if we will use it! Please do!
For a copy of the hymn set in the music email rev.thomas.cary.kinder@gmail.com
For Countless Generations Tune: Llangloffen 7.6.7.6.D. (tune of “O God of Earth and Altar” and other hymns
For countless generations Saints dreamed Christ’s reign of peace, Love ruling hearts and nations, Compassion without cease, When laws of human kindness Will overrule cruel greed, And truth of oneness bind us To serve all earthly need.
We gather here still willing To dream like saints long past. But time for its fulfilling Has come to earth at last. We hear the cries of science And those who suffer wrong. We rise with faith’s reliance. Christ makes us wise and strong.
We rise to fill Christ’s vision, To build God’s realm on earth. No church has ever risen To serve more urgent worth. God’s power brings transformation Like Christ’s baptismal dove. It drives our generation To give our lives for love.
The poem text is below. It is a first draft written during the week of March 10, 2025. It is another hai-net, seven loosely linked strictly syllabic sort-of haiku that together have some of the characteristics of a sonnet. Please “use your voice, earthlings!”
even short scraggly pines whisper heart longing songs with gods breath in them
ravens on tall pines sound alarms protest loudly silence condemns us
yesterday the stream sang joyful spring snowmelt songs today ice is back
the old activist sings out we shall overcome dying in the wind
nevertheless she persists a grouse hen gives all to save what she loves
estonia rose singing as one for freedom beauty to die for
as long as earth breathes wind will lift her song back up use your voice earthlings
The worst storm rages. The storm poem is a hai-net, seven loosely linked strictly syllabic sort-of haiku that together take on some of the characteristics of a sonnet. The natural storms are signs of collapse or instruments of collapse or warnings or even worse to come. The social storms are intentional attempts to bring down the whole house of our law-based democratic-republic and crush all opposition by any means, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical.
Shakespeare’s play King Lear is a tragedy, and the storms are overpowering, and yet heroic courage and humble love prove to be higher powers. Please be courageous, humble and loving and use your voice even as the storm rages and seems to carry the sound away. Please trust in higher power and do your part to serve it. Thank you!
Please honor the Tao or Spirit of creation and use your voice and actions courageously to build a wise and loving world.
Speeding Blindly Toward Doom Down a Dangerous Road
Out here, immersed in nature, we can see inherent worth in worms and trees and birds. We see as well our shared humanity, despite our different views, behaviors, words… so those who out of greed dehumanize the poor they rob or all who block their way, and who treat earth as if it is their prize for being rich, so nature must obey, sound stupid, dangerous, like utter fools who lack the common sense of any child who learns hot stoves will burn and other rules of higher powers that must be reconciled. Out here, we see our doom when we don’t know to honor Tao on roads of mud or snow.
Thank you, Honorable Al Green, Congressional Representative from Texas, for daring to stand up and speak truth to power, saying “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid,” as you waved your cane at the president, making what the Honorable John Lewis, would call “Good trouble.”
Thank you to all who stood with Al Green in that deep dark well of the House where he was censured, all together singing “We Shall Overcome” not letting him stand alone, not letting yourselves be silenced.
Thank you for an act of nonviolent civil disobedience for the sake of the millions who will suffer because the Republican administration and congressional budget are cutting billions of dollars from taking care of the poorest Americans when they need help most, when they are sick and cannot afford care.
The sickening question is, why did every other congress person not stand up and join the protest? Why did they not feel sick themselves over the suffering of the people they represent, sick enough to demand that the most vulnerable be protected and the most greedy be denied?
And what about us? When that suffering comes to us, when it is someone we love who is sick and cannot afford care, or when we get cancer and the research that could have saved our life has been cut, or when we are injured by a shoddy product made by the richest in the world because they intentionally destroyed the government agencies that protect the American people from their own corporate irresponsibility, or when we suffer because the health care for the climate has been cut and storms and fires and droughts and floods rage, creating refugees with nowhere safe to go, will we be thankful for the Honorable People who have dared to stand up and protest along the way?
If you want to thank the Honorable Al Green, or those who are taking to the streets and speaking out wherever they can, then join them. Use your voice. The more of us who do, the more other people will wake up to the suffering coming their way, and do something about it.
The more you use your voice, the more joy you will feel, and the more you will overcome those trying to keep you silent out of fear, despair or powerlessness. We the people have the power, and all we have to do is use it and keep using it.
These sonnets are first drafts written the week ending February 28, 2025. In the past I have always put poems through many drafts before sharing them, but I believe the relevance and urgency of the poems written in this time of crisis compensate for the roughness.
My friends, we have heroic work to do. The highest meaning life can have is ours if we lay down our lives to fight the few amassing wealth and using all their powers to bribe or brainwash or intimidate or crush or kill to stop the side of love for all who live. Our enemy is hate in any form that places one above and others far below an equal worth. We fight not for ourselves but what is right. We fight for all who share this fragile earth. We fight the darkness with the tools of light, not harming just as we would not be harmed, armed with a love that cannot be disarmed. 2/23/25
Our fear at how dehumanizing hate now has the power it needs to kill at will is urging us to run before too late, but love is whispering, “There is hope still.” Our rage at how hate treats the earth, the poor and all not Christian-hetero-male-white sparks thoughts of vengeful sabotage and war, but love is whispering, “Stay in the light!” We need to find a way to fight this wrong. We need to stand with all who are oppressed. At threat of death, may courage keep us strong to speak and act to show that we protest, to model worlds of love we seek to build, by force of light no hate has ever killed. 2/25/25
I am so deeply grateful for the many, many people I know who are sacrificing their time and energy to canvass and phonebank and be poll watchers and volunteer in so many ways for the sake of democracy, equality and the saving of the nation and life on earth.
I have given more of my all to this election than all the prior elections combined, but now in the final days my job is to serve as pastor to my community, so I am intentionally seeking the deepest spiritual place I can attain, meditating several times a day, and spending as much time in nature as I can tear away from my pastoral work.
Today what came to me was enormous gratitude for all you who are working so hard for this cause, and the strange thing was that I felt the gratitude was greater than just mine. I felt I had connected in me with the spirit that is in all the living things around me here, and I wanted to say thank you on behalf of all those creatures that have no vote, thank you to all my friends in swing states and working at home to make the world safe for all species.
So this poem and short nature video are for you. We are all with you. The force of nature, the will of the earth is with you. Please feel its power and joy in everything you do, and keep pushing until the polls close!
Chief Oren Lyons asked the United Nations where was the four footed, where the eagle, why do they not have their own delegations? Excluding them cannot be right or legal by nature’s law—the law that judges all on how they treat all creatures and the earth. Fifty years ago now he gave that call and every day his words gain greater worth. A bobcat crossed my field the other day as I prepared my ballot for the mail. Her grace and beauty took my breath away, her powerful muscles, that mysterious tail. It was my legal signature I wrote, but hers the higher law, and hers my vote.
Friends, we are almost there—we are almost home, and that’s what today’s Poem of the Week is about (see below)! It’s really natural and even rational to get caught up in all the drama that is swirling around this election and to be feeling discouraged, disheartened or paralyzed by fear because of the fierceness of it and because of the stakes. (Read today’s 11/1/24 excellent free substack letters of Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson.)
We can’t let ourselves get paralyzed because we are almost home, and the saying is that a poll that is within the margin of error (as they all are) is within the margin of effort.
That’s what we need—we need to be giving all we have now for the next few days to get out the vote, everything we’ve got, and adding our voices to the growing joyful crowd endorsing Harris/Walz and Democrats.
In order to do that, we have to stay in the light, we have to keep positive and up, and there’s good reason to, so whatever works for you, wherever you find the light, please fill your vision with it now, and let’s take this baby home!
Here’s the poem, a stealth sonnet:
Coming home over Alger Brook we saw, just as we crested down from Blue Moon hill, this brilliant yellow poplar, like a flaw that flashes from a gem—that radiant thrill to see this candle flame where all was bare, and know our home was waiting in its light, and now when earth is shadowed with despair it gives the feeling life may yet get right, or that at least tonight we may find peace, the comfort of an evening by the fire, the quiet darkness, letting stress release, brief sweet fulfillment of earth’s deep desire, reminding us of all that we defend, the light at this long homeward journey’s end.
The word epiphany comes from the ancient Greek verb “to reveal.” The church holy day of Epiphany celebrates the Magi seeing the presence of God—the spirit that created the universe—revealed in Jesus. The church season of Epiphany is about recognizing that same spirit’s manifestation not only in Jesus but in other people, in nature and in ourselves.
The word epiphany in everyday use means an “aha!” moment. To have an epiphany is to have an insight that feels like an urgent truth revealed.
Right now humanity is facing a multidimensional global emergency. We need epiphanies, and we need the spiritual wisdom that the church tradition of Epiphany can reveal, to help us resolve these crises.
Epiphanies pave the path to a new consciousness. We can help our entire culture move along that path by sharing our own epiphanies of the Spirit’s guidance, and our insights into the purpose for our lives, and our glimpses of the light shining ahead that beckons us toward a healthy, just and sustainable way of living on earth.
The Hubble telescope is a metaphor for what epiphany calls us to do—peer into the depths of the universe within and around us and send back what we find.
This is an extraordinary half-hour film. You can watch it by clicking on the image above, but I encourage you to read the background about it first at https://deepfieldfilm.com/. Particularly read about the composition of the music, which is equal in importance to the breath-taking images. The music is designed to follow the history of the Hubble telescope and to reflect the experience of humanity receiving Hubble’s epiphanies. The choir that you hear in the vocal portions is made up of over 8000 voices of all ages from 120 countries, and you will see some of their faces at one point in the film. It is as if the earth itself is singing, and we are merely the part of the earth that was created to attain this universal consciousness and sing its song. The video is intended to spark epiphanies in us and be a religious and transformative experience.
We need epiphanies now, both ancient and modern.
The Christian tradition of Epiphany comes from the second chapter of the gospel of Matthew where the Magi follow a star to the child Jesus. The Magi were a combination of contemplatives and scientists. They were priestly holy people and wisdom seekers who were steeped in the most advanced observed knowledge of nature. They believed that the spirit of the universe was trying to communicate with humans so they studied the skies for signs and listened to voices in their dreams.
We can look to similar sources for the epiphanies we need. The spirit that created nature speaks through other life forms to help us understand what it needs from us in order to sustain life. The spirit that evolved our consciousness speaks to us from our depths and helps us keep evolving.
We need to be both scientists and contemplatives to catch the epiphanies the spirit is trying to give us now.
We need to cultivate our heart’s core, our inner Golden Room, the place within us each where we meet the spirit, where we find the ability to perceive intuitively what God or the universe is saying.
It takes courage to open ourselves to urgent truths because they can be painful. The second chapter of Matthew describes how Herod responded when he realized that the Magi had disobeyed him. He sent soldiers to slaughter all the children near Bethlehem two years old or younger. Humanity’s failures to follow the spirit’s way of universal love can be excruciating to see.
Even beautiful epiphanies require courage to embrace, though, because they lead us into the unknown, which we fear. They change our consciousness, and they ask us to act in new ways that go against our cultural norms and comfort zones. Joseph was warned in a dream to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus to save themselves from Herod. Imagine that.
The epiphanies of ancient spiritual tradition and modern insight are aligning now like Jupiter and Saturn, like the star of Bethlehem. They offer hope that we might yet save the earth from the crises that humanity’s failure to follow the way of love has created.
We exist for a purpose.
Why did the spirit of the universe that orders the galaxies and created life on earth evolve human consciousness? The Hebrew wisdom teachers pondered this question thousands of years ago and recorded their epiphanies in the creation stories of Genesis.
God put us in this garden “to till it and keep it.”
We exist to serve life.
Over the millennia we have come to understand that this means our life, but not just our life. Our family, but not just our family. Our nation, but not just our nation.
The most urgent epiphany for the twenty-first century is that the creation is truly one, and we need to declare allegiance to all life, especially to the most vulnerable, including strangers and enemies and the ecosystems on which life depends. We need to think locally and act locally with love and care, but also with an awareness that humans are no longer residents of their local place alone.
This planet is our one and only garden, a small, fragile home we share with all life.
If you travel to the moon and look back at earth you see that it is a beautiful, lush oasis, and tiny compared to the vast desert of lifeless space. The nearest planet that has the potential to be a garden like earth is 4.2 light years away, which doesn’t sound that far until you do the math and realize that our fastest rocket traveling 20,000 miles per hour would take around 140,000 years to get there.
This planet holds our only chance to survive. If we wreck it, we have nowhere to go. If we cannot learn to get along, if we cannot live ethically, if we cannot love and have compassion for one another here, we won’t do it anywhere. If we cannot change in this generation, humanity may not exist for another generation to try again to get it right.
Every one of us contributes to a cumulative human impact that now literally outweighs all other life on this planet combined. An estimated fifty-one trillion microplastic particles pollute the waters of the oceans, and they have been found in the waters of the womb as well, and in the air of our cities and the air of our lungs.
Our impact on the earth in one place can lead to a pandemic that infects all places. The deterioration of the climate from our way of living threatens every species.
Our allegiance to all life as one makes it the urgent responsibility of us each to act in ways corresponding to the emergency we are in—arguably the greatest emergency humanity has ever faced.
The most urgent thing we are called by the universe to learn now is how to manage a planet.
I was thinking the other day about how the “eco” in economy or ecology comes from a Greek word meaning house. That night I had a dream that I was trying to sell my home. An authority—a realtor or banker—kept telling me bad news about my house’s value. First it was devalued because of racism—it had been built partly by enslaved people. Then it was devalued because of economic inequity—the paid workers brought home a tiny fraction of the what the bosses received. Then it was devalued because of environmental exploitation—it both wasted and used too many resources. The list went on until the value was less than nothing—I would have to pay the next owner of my house to take it off my hands.
To manage a planet we first need to manage our own egos—our selfish ambitions, our fear and greed. We need to learn how to have a wise, mature level of consciousness that is capable of loving all creation as one inextricably united self.
If we can evolve to that new level of consciousness as a culture, then we will naturally learn how to manage our lives as individuals and as societies in such a way that we nurture the life-sustaining health of every ecosystem. We will naturally live by the Golden Rule and love of neighbor with compassion for the vulnerable and oppressed. Racial, economic and environmental justice will naturally happen.
Epiphanies pave the path to a new consciousness.
This leads us back to the need to be like the Hubble telescope, with our heart’s Golden Room wide open to the epiphanies that the spirit of love and life and light is trying to help us see. We need to expand the vision of our hearts and minds, what the ancient Christian tradition calls metanoia, and we need to share widely and compellingly the epiphanies that our expanded vision sees.
Part of what we need is a new story, based on a new understanding of who we are and what our place is in the universe. Below is the trailer for another remarkable film, this time using words for its narrative. If you have not experienced it, prepare yourself for more epiphanies and another step on the journey toward the new consciousness humanity needs.
Click here to find your way to the full film and other related resources.
“The feast of Christmas is the celebration of divine light breaking into human consciousness…. The joy of Christmas is the intuition that all limitations to growth into higher states of consciousness have been overcome. The divine light cuts across all darkness, prejudice, preconceived ideas, prepackaged values, false expectations, phoniness and hypocrisy…. The kairos, ‘the appointed time’ is now.… Now is the time to risk further growth. To go on growing is to be at the cutting edge of human evolution.…” Thomas Keating, The Mystery of Christ
This is the calling of every human. To paraphrase the popular wisdom of Richard Bach: Here is a test of whether your consciousness is done evolving: if you’re alive, it isn’t.
The quote above by Thomas Keating was from one of his early books. Late in his life he spoke at a conference as if continuing the thought:
“Jesus goes on to say…, ‘Everybody who’s a human being is a candidate for this and has the resources to do it, if they will take the trouble to learn how to…let God be God in us.’ And so he says, ‘Anyone at all who brings himself or herself to nothing will find out who they are….’ Who are we at the deepest level? Have we a self at all, or are we really the manifestation of the Divine…? So, the plan is to be God in the humblest kinds of ways. That seems to be the program for this life, so why not…put everything into it that you have?” Incarnation Continua, from the 2015 Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness Conference, Boulder, Colorado
We need to put all we have into the transformation of our consciousness right now. It is a matter of life or death for our nation, our species and all life on earth.
The reason why is that “Transformed people transform people,” as Richard Rohr says. Transforming ourselves is the place to start in our efforts to transform the world.
World transformation is of the utmost urgency. We need human civilization to evolve to fulfill the wisdom of all the spiritual traditions that agree on certain fundamental principles that make life ethical and sustainable like the Golden Rule, love of neighbor and universal compassion.
We need to evolve to a new collective consciousness that sees the oneness of all people, creatures and ecosystems on this planet and that recognizes our need for justice, equity and a sustainable harmony between all people and between humans and the earth, as the Earth Charter describes.
Therefore we need to evolve to that consciousness ourselves as individuals.
The seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany in the Christian calendar are all about that evolution.
The secular celebration each December 31st includes the ritual of making resolutions. The most important resolution we can make right now is to dedicate ourselves to the process of personal and world transformation. In other words:
Resolve to evolve.
The wisest have been calling for this since the days of the Hebrew Prophets, Greek philosophers and spiritual teachers in Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist and Indigenous traditions.
Gus says, “What these authors and many others are saying is that today’s challenges require a rapid evolution to a new consciousness. That is a profound conclusion. It suggests that today’s problems cannot be solved with today’s mind.”
So how can we evolve as quickly as we must, both as individuals and as a global culture? Continue reading →
Do not fret. Peace. Let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid. Here is why these scriptural commandments are so important today and for the future world.
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15
The soul of the nation had fallen into rampant self-interest, materialism and greed. It neglected and oppressed the poor. It strayed from the sacred way of love of neighbor and love of the ways of spiritual wisdom. Its politics had become corrupt, its alliances unholy.
The prophet Isaiah warned the nation, because “you put your trust in oppression and deceit, and rely on them…this iniquity shall become for you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant.”
Isaiah’s words have spoken to many nations over the past 2,500 years, not just because of their warning but even more importantly because they show that there is a path out of that imminent destruction.
The sacred way of the Spirit that created the earth and all life is merciful. It is infinitely forgiving of those who turn back to its ways while there is still hope of recovery.
This proved true for Isaiah’s society and for others throughout the ages. We need to listen and follow its wisdom today: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quiet and in trust shall be your strength.”
The path back begins in returning to where the Spirit lives within us all, the golden room of the heart’s true core, and resting there. Strength comes in quieting the ego’s selfish, agitated human thoughts and listening instead for the wisdom that arises from the Spirit through our silence and deep trust.
As I write this, America is voting for its President and the composition of Congress and state governments. The outcome will shape our future in many ways.
But whatever the outcome, we still will have the same enormous challenges that threaten our democracy and the survival of the human race and all living species. We still will have brutal social, economic and environmental injustices that must be changed and healing that must be undertaken.
The wisdom of Isaiah says that we need more than just the right politicians in office. No matter who is in these positions of power, we need a shift of cultural consciousness, a change of heart and mind that can come only one way—in returning and rest, in quietness and trust.
We need to break the obsessive, compulsive, white-knuckled, gut-clenched mode of being that many of us have developed over the past several years of political turmoil and several months of intense election anxiety.
We need to break the addictions of the ego to anything less than the Spirit’s ways of right living.
Whoever is in power, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world from our deepest heart outward, starting today. We can live from that calm refuge even here in the agony of fearful uncertainty.
We have a new world to create, the fulfillment of the ancient prophets’ dream. We need rested, strong and quiet souls that are trusting in the Spirit’s guidance and power in order to fulfill that hope.
So take a deep breath. Take a break from the news. Go outside and notice the beauty. Connect with a dear friend. Read some eternal spiritual wisdom. Listen to music that connects you to your depths. Best of all, meditate or pray. Return. Rest. Quiet. Trust. That is where the path begins to the strength we need to save and renew our world.
William Sloane Coffin was a hero with a great soul, which is one definition of a saint. His courage, hope and faith led him to risk his life as a Freedom Rider. They led him to jail in protests for justice and peace. They engaged him in one struggle after another in his “lover’s quarrel” with his nation.
This photograph shows him being a hero of another kind. It was taken in the year after his son, Alex, died in a car accident. Bill described coming into the United Church of Strafford in paralyzing grief and playing music until he had subdued the inner struggle enough to return to his outer struggles.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a similar hero with a great soul. He wrote in his book The Strength to Love, “A positive religious faith does not offer an illusion that we shall be exempt from pain and suffering, nor does it imbue us with the idea that life is a drama of unalloyed comfort and untroubled ease. Rather, it instills us with the inner equilibrium needed to face strains, burdens, and fears that inevitably come.” (from Chapter IV)
We need that inner equilibrium today because we are living in a fearful time that asks us all to be heroes with great souls. Human greed has raged out of control while human technology has gained planet-destroying power. Social injustice, economic inequity and environmental destruction have brought us to the brink of an inevitable revolution.
On the one hand, the side of greed with its ego-driven fight for its self-interest cannot continue without a revolution against democracy and nature. On the other hand, it will take what King called “a revolution of values,” a change of cultural consciousness, in order to reverse humanity’s self-destructive direction.
It will take heroes with great souls to change our consciousness, not only because we are up against the most powerful corporate and media empires the earth has ever seen, but also because the source of the problem—the fearful, selfish ego—is in us all.
We all are tempted by self-interest. It takes a hero to win that inner struggle enough to love a neighbor as our self.
It takes a hero to follow the Golden Rule and to care for the earth as our common home.
It takes a hero with a great soul to live as an altruistic citizen of a democratic republic, which is why John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He said unregulated avarice and ambition “would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.” As we are seeing every day.
How can we be the heroes and great souls that America and the earth require?
Bill Coffin said in a Riverside sermon, “Human unity is not something we are called on to create — only something we are called on to recognize.”
This contains the key wisdom we need. King put it this way: “The Holy Spirit is the continuing community creating reality that moves through history. He who works against community is working against the whole of creation.”
The Holy Spirit is the name we give to the impulse that moved the first single cells of life on earth to form communities with other cells. Four billion years later, that same Spirit is at work trying to overcome the ego-driven forces that divide human from human.
We do not have to create our unity with one another and with the earth, we have only to look deeply into the reality of nature and our own heart and find there the Spirit that created the universe, and align our values with its values, and take its will as our will, and use its power as our power.
This is why Mahatma Gandhi led his followers to spend two hours in meditation, prayer and the singing of hymns every day. They were emptying themselves of the ego’s control and opening to the Spirit’s guidance.
It is what made them the heroes, great souls and saints they had to be in order to change the consciousness of their culture and create a nonviolent movement that could overcome the most powerful Empire in the world.
Which is exactly what we need to do today.
We need to free ourselves from whatever paralyzes us or keeps us stuck. We need to open to the Spirit’s inner transformation so we can transform the world.
That is what the photographer Jon Gilbert Fox caught William Sloane Coffin doing at the piano in the Strafford sanctuary that summer day.
It is what we each are doing when we play music or meditate or pray or walk in nature or have a deep heart to heart conversation with a wise friend. We are listening, changing our consciousness, recognizing more clearly the sacred way, connecting more deeply to the Spirit’s guidance and power. We are becoming the heroes, great souls and saints this time requires.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV)
“He has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. concluding his final speech, April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee
Visions of a goal ahead guide us when we are lost. They encourage us with the hope we need when we are ready to give up.
Our dreams and visions are not for ourselves alone. King received multiple death threats every day for years. He had been stabbed and his house had been bombed. Yet he kept going because he knew that the Spirit that gave him dreams and visions needed them to be shared.
King explained why when he said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”
Jesus shared the same vision of oneness. He saw that his real enemy was not Caesar or the Pharisees. His enemy was the selfish fear and greed of the individualistic ego that is incapable of seeing our true oneness. It was the life of the ego that Jesus meant when he said we have to lose our life to save our life.
Jesus said that the source of all evil is in our heart, but so is the source of all good. He saw that humanity could grow beyond the ego’s immature level of consciousness to have a heart and mind led by the Spirit within us.
This is the evolution we need to undergo now if we are to survive the crises humanity faces. The Spirit within us sees what the ego cannot—the oneness of all people and all life on earth. The Spirit leads us to have compassion and serve the common good.
Martin Luther King Jr. had an ego, but we revere him because he was willing to lose that life, he was willing to lay it down out of a greater love. Dozens of leaders made the same sacrifice, and hundreds of thousands followed them. The Spirit rose to ascendency over the ego in the 1960s nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. Individual lives were transformed and they transformed the world.
Jesus said, “You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Teacher, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:4-5)
You know the way. You know the way to the place that Jesus was trying to help humanity reach, the realm of God on earth, a society that lives by the Golden Rule, love of neighbor and compassion for the vulnerable and oppressed.
Maybe you can’t envision how our current society could possibly get there, how big business and the super-wealthy and the governments they try to control could be transformed, or even how individual hearts could rise above the base selfishness that too often drives our thoughts, words and actions.
But Jesus is right, you do know the way, and the secret of how our society can get there is waiting within you.
The 2016 film Arrival imagines [Spoiler Alert!] that an advanced civilization visits earth with spacecraft scattered around the globe. They have the ability to see the future and realize that they are going to need human assistance in 3000 years. They have come to help humanity move to a new level of consciousness and oneness so that life on earth will survive.
An American linguist is trying to understand their message. The turning point comes when the higher beings say essentially the same thing that Jesus told his followers: you know the way. (You can watch the scene below.) Like Jesus, they have taught her a new way to see and think, a consciousness that enables her to solve intuitively the problems that are keeping humanity from evolving and becoming one.
The film reflects reality. A higher being is trying to help us do the same things. Our higher being is the Spirit of life that has taught the human race many times before how to evolve and work together as one. That Spirit desperately wants the life it has created to learn how to live sustainably and harmoniously, without hurting other lives and without destroying the life-support systems of earth.
This higher being is the Spirit that Jesus had in him, and the Spirit he said we each have in our depths. Jesus listened to the Spirit in his heart and it led him to his vocation, which was in part to teach the rest of us how to find the Spirit in our own hearts, and how to live by the guidance and power we find there.
Humanity has brought itself to the brink of its own extinction, but at the same time it has arrived at the brink of the evolutionary shift it needs in order to survive. We are learning to listen to the Spirit. Cynthia Bourgeault says in her book, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice, that we are now making a transition to a new level of consciousness, traveling an ancient path by means of an abundance of new methods in a “sudden awakening to…interiority.”
She writes, “Whether through psychotherapy, men’s work, AA, yoga, mindfulness for stress reduction, enneagram work, dream work, soul work, or a host of other modalities, contemporary men and women are awakening to the realization that life is indeed an inner journey as well as an outer one.” (p. 173)
The Life Planning movement is another in the long list of ways that we are learning to hear the higher being’s voice in our hearts. A trained Life Planner acts like a spiritual director or friend who listens empathically to help us explore and discover what the spirit is calling us to do with our life. The end result is a vision of our calling spelled out in detail. Life Planning calls that vision statement a “torch.”
We each have a place within us where we find the presence and gifts of the Spirit, a “Golden Room.” We each have a torch in that golden room that shows us the path that the Spirit is calling us to take in the next stage of our life to contribute our part to a healthy, harmonious earth.
The future of the world depends on us each turning to the light of the torch in our golden room and following where it leads.
The Spirit in Jesus speaks for the Spirit in us. It says, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) If you know that Spirit, you know the way.
Below are two videos. The first is the scene toward the end of the film Arrival where the linguist, Louise Banks, finds her torch in her golden room with the help of a “heptapod” higher being. The second is a fascinating analysis of the film’s deeper meaning.
Notes on the first video (more spoilers alert!): Louise has entered for the first time the place where the heptapods live. Their twelve spacecraft are about to be attacked by fearful human armies, and in fact one heptapod is dying because of an unauthorized attack in which it saved Louise’s life. Louise alone understands that the heptapod word translated “weapon” actually means tool or process and is not a threat. Louise has come to ask the higher beings to send a message to the humans at all twelve sites around the world telling them that the heptapods are on earth to help, and that humanity needs to work together.
The “weapon” turns out to be a new consciousness, a new way of being. Louise gains the heart and mind of a heptapod the way the Apostle Paul calls us to have the heart and mind of Christ. The scriptures and ancient teachings of the Christian tradition accept that our intended destiny is to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” into higher beings who create the realm of God’s love on earth, a society of oneness, justice and peace. That is our great hope and our great task.
Staying in the light feels harder than ever right now. How can we do it? This reflection is grounded in ancient wisdom but its main metaphor comes from modern literature. J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are about the struggle between darkness and light, between hate and love. In the scene below that struggle is between “patronus” and “dementor.”
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Ancient myths portray the struggle between forces of darkness and light. The metaphor has always represented the conflict between the way of hate and the way of love, the way of oppression and the way of freedom, the way of destruction and the way of harmony—the choice between what sucks the life out of our soul and what fills us with meaning and purpose.
Of course real darkness is full of blessings, and is an integral part of a whole and healthy life, and darkness and light are bound together in a beautiful way as the Taoist symbol so brilliantly portrays. We need to recognize that the classic metaphor is as limited and incomplete as it is useful and true.
The metaphor also includes some irony: the crusade of white supremacy for domination has been a force of soul-crushing darkness, and the great dark-skinned leaders for freedom like Gandhi, King and Mandela, or Diane Nash, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer—or Jesus, the Buddha and Mohammed—have been among the most light-filled humans in all history. And yet many white Christians act with hate toward people simply because of their dark skin.
The same dominant, oppressive culture has treated nature as a threatening darkness. Instead of lovingly tending and stewarding earth as a gift of light and the source of all life, it has subdued, exploited and destroyed it, sending all species including our own to the brink of eternal darkness in extinction.
We need to see that we are part of the same struggle for light and love as those who created the earliest myths and all the liberation movements of the past.
We have tremendous diversity of roles to play, but we each need a way to keep in the light when the darkness threatens to overcome us. I find this metaphor useful, so I share it in the hope you may as well:
The Dementors We Face
Dementors are instruments of darkness that block us from the light or suck the light out of us.
J. K. Rowling describes dementors in The Prisoner of Azkaban saying, “They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them…. Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soul-less and evil.” (page 187)
We can find dementors lurking in the news, on social media, in certain relationships or recurring situations, at home, at school, at work, in our community—they can appear anywhere and will be different for different people.
Our dementors are not external, though, they are internal. They reside in the response we have to the world. They breed in our darkest thoughts and feelings. The Nazi death camps were designed to suck the soul out of people and render them hopeless and turn them evil, but as Viktor Frankl shows in Man’s Search for Meaning, the dementors were inside each death camp inmate, which made heroic those inmates who found within them an even greater power of light.
The Patronus: The Defense against the Dementors
J.K. Rowling defines the “patronus” as “a kind of anti-dementor—a guardian that acts as a shield between you and the dementor…. The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon—hope, happiness, the desire to survive.” (p 237)
A patronus harnesses the life-force of light and makes it available to humans who are trained and practiced in its magic. It comforts and guides as well as empowers—three of the qualities attributed to the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John.
A patronus is what it looks like when we are instruments of the Spirit of light flowing through us.
The Patronus Charm is the way people learn to work with this force of light and let it flow. The charm is made up of two parts—first, tools and practices; and second, the focus of our intention and attention on the light.
The equivalent for us of Harry’s wand, word and motion includes a vast array of inner resources that help people who are struggling with anxiety or depression, like Cognitive Behavior Therapy or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, each with its own set of inner tools and practices. These are more elaborate than a flick of a wand and the words, “Expecto Patronum,” but their effect is comparable.
For example, if something in the news fills you with darkness and despair, you can go into nature or sit in your most comfortable chair and look around you and notice in detail the beauty and feel the relaxation of that moment of peace, or you can examine your thinking to clear cognitive distortions that are feeding the dementor, distortions like ignoring the positive or blowing the negative out of proportion and “catastrophizing.”
Talking with a good friend or counselor can also help, or feeling solidarity with others who are with you in the light. There are many different tools and practices, and different ones work for different people.
The most important part of the Patronus Charm, though, is the focus of attention on, or complete immersion in, the light. This focus has two steps.
First, we need to turn down the volume on the dementorish thoughts and feelings. Skills like mindfulness and meditation give us the ability to keep our attention focused on the light when dementors attack. In the Christian contemplative tradition these practices include heartfulness, Centering Prayer and the Welcoming Practice among others—they are all ways to self-empty and open ourselves to transformation by a higher power of light.
The second step in J. K. Rowling’s formula is the specific light that we invoke. It is not enough to be nice or fun, it has to be a heart’s core connection to a central part of the meaning, purpose and hope of our lives. We need to focus until that light fills our heart, mind, soul and body with its power. In the film clip above it is a memory of Harry’s parents.
In Centering Prayer and the Christian mystical tradition this has a fascinating twist. The way to focus on the most powerful light is to unfocus. It is to enter into the darkness of “a cloud of forgetting and a cloud of unknowing” leaving our awareness simply open to the unseen presence of the light that shines in the darkness, the light of God. We cannot access that highest power except through our deepest, unfocused openness.
We cannot do any of this without the discipline of study and practice, but the more we master our inner patronus, the more powerful a force of light we become in the world, and the more our own life is characterized by light.
Thomas Cary Kinder 