Low Attendance Sunday: Easter 2

This past Sunday (Easter 2 in the Western Christian calendar; 15 April 2012 in the Gregorian calendar), was, as one of the priests at our church noted, the traditional “Low Attendance Sunday.”

After all of the pageantry and emotion of Holy Week, with its daily services, palm frond waving, darkness, candles, cross veneration, late night holy vigils, foot washing, Psalm chanting, weeping, and rejoicing, it’s understandable that the average Christian is exhausted by the end of it.  Most of the clergy I know drop off the grid on Easter Monday, some of them probably thinking about how their parents wanted them to become bankers or engineers.

Yet with Holy Week and then the first week of Eastertide behind us, we found ourselves at Easter 2.  And it was time for church.  Again.  And so a few of us trooped in and did the work of the people once again, and dutifully celebrated the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist—because it was Sunday again.  In our parish, we had one of the lowest attendances on record.  Presumably, most of our folks were still exhausted from Easter.  Some, of course, were traveling or had family obligations.  And the flu has been going ‘round.  The fact that we had heavy rain here in Fort Worth all morning long on Sunday probably didn’t help matters.  Our service was, Eastertide notwithstanding, a rather subdued affair.

I don’t want to gainsay anyone’s choice to take the needed time for rest and restoration.  As a layperson, I know what it’s like to work all week and then try to work up the energy for Sunday (I don’t know how you courageous bi-vocational clergy do it).  And that’s to say nothing of Holy Week, which is a call for extraordinary commitment (and possibly committal afterwards).  My wife and I have done our share of begging off on Sunday mornings, choosing sleep or brunch over church attendance simply because the exhaustion of the week/month/year was too much.  Sometimes, one just needs deep rest.

Moreover, we Episcopalians don’t have Holy Days of Obligation, not like the Roman church.  We heed Jesus’ declaration, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” and thus Sundays for us are days for celebrating, not obligating.  Church, though not easy, shouldn’t be an impossible burden.

Having acknowledged the need for rest, and without laying guilt at the door of anyone who stayed home last Sunday, I still found our low attendance ironic, if understandable.  It was ironic because it was Easter 2.  Easter Sunday, of course, is the climax of the church year, but it is by no means the dénouement.  The whole point of the entire rest of the church year is that we Christians live post-Easter.  We are a resurrected people.

Easter 2, therefore, is the continuation of our new life gloriously begun Easter Sunday.  After the jaw-dropping, world-altering news of Easter, Easter 2 is a coming into our inheritance (though we don’t receive all of it at once).  Every Sunday then is a celebration, a wild party (no matter what worship style your church or denomination uses) that just can’t stop rejoicing over the hysterically wonderful, outlandish fact that we have been granted brand new lives.

That’s easy to forget when we do this church thing every Sunday, week in and week out.  Sometimes, we get weary, and life gets in the way of our rejoicing, reminding us that we have yet to receive the rest of our inheritance; the final resurrection is yet to come.  Sometimes, we find ourselves taking the Sacrament into our hands and mouths about as consciously as we go through the McDonald’s drive-through.  I myself, as I noted in my previous post, have not been feeling all that celebratory lately.  And with the murky traditions, occasional grandstanding, awful sinfulness, and just plain human error that are to be found in any church on any given Sunday, we don’t always feel the awesome power of the Spirit moving in us, reminding us to rejoice at our good fortune.

Nevertheless, the fact remains.  Our feelings come and go, but Christ is risen; he is risen indeed!  And if we die with him, we shall also live him.  If we endure; we shall reign with him.  Let’s celebrate together this Sunday!  There will be some rather decent wine.  Recognized or not, the Spirit will be there with us.  It will be Easter 3.

Fighting for Justice, Expecting Mercy

I have been deeply troubled, even angry about injustice lately.  Like many Americans, I have railed against the abuses of Wall Street, the greed that caused a recession, the outsized bonuses that followed on the heels of tax-payer bailouts even as ordinary people suffered foreclosures, deepening debts, bankruptcy.  I have heaped scorn on credit card issuers who use complex financial calculations to keep people in debt; I have verbally eviscerated insurance companies who build profits on the backs of the tragedies of illness; I have directed rage against oil companies who rape our environment and heap up enormous profits by doing so.  And all of this is only in the United States: there is untold injustice in many other countries far graver that I have not catalogued.  I have been angry at all these other people for the injustices they have perpetrated.

It is easy to bay for justice for others, when the perpetrators of injustice are “people out there,” faceless others it is easy to demonize.  This is especially true for us “spiritual people.”  We are good people, we tell ourselves.  We pay our taxes; we follow the rules.  We say prayers for others and dutifully drop money in the church offering.  We set good intentions for our yoga practices or meditations.  We use energy efficient light bulbs.  We talk endlessly about the need for compassion and our desires for peace in the world.  We may even give our spare change to the men holding cardboard signs at the side of the road.

And in all of this, we pat ourselves on the back, smiling because we are not like “those people,” the great purveyors of injustice, the evil robber-barons of Wall Street/the bloated bureaucrats of government/[insert your favorite target here].  We are the good people.  Wrongs have been committed against us.  We demand justice.  We deserve justice.

And because we are the good people, we will probably never get it.  I for one, will probably never receive justice for the calculator I stole in the sixth grade (it was just sitting there, abandoned—finders keepers, right?).  I will probably never receive justice for the kid I made fun of in the seventh grade.  And lest this become a litany of mere childhood indiscretions, let me add that I will probably never receive justice for the co-workers I’ve allowed to share blame for my own mistakes, nor for the annoying socially-inept man on whom I passed judgment, and especially not for the people who starved in Ethiopia while I bought myself new toys.

There will be no justice because I am one of the “good people,” and it is the conspiracy of the good people that we allow each other to escape injustice and accept each other’s flimsy excuses: “I was distracted at the time; I made an error in judgment; I didn’t fully understand the situation.”  Because we are of the right social, professional, cultural, racial, economic, educational, or whatever other status that makes us “good people,” we get away with it.  We perpetrate injustice all day long, give ourselves a pass—even smugly admire ourselves for being such good people—and then we demand that every injustice against us be accounted for.  That our injustices are so “petty” compared to the great damages we have endured makes no difference.  Even if the size of these injustices is in our favor, the differences are of degree and not of kind.  We are unjust people.  We have committed wrongs against others.  We have denied justice to enrich and protect ourselves. 

This kind of thinking is so automatic as to be instinctual.  Naturally we let the other person take the blame, bear the expense, assume the difficulty.  Naturally we seek to avoid the messy inconvenience of taking responsibility for our actions.  How easily the justifications for ourselves tumble out!

This is, as so many things are, all too evident in the Christian Church.  There are many who say that the Church is full of hypocrites, and they are absolutely right.  I should know.  I am one of them – one of the hypocrites.

The sad thing is that the Christian Church has at its disposal tools to deal with our own failings!  We do not have to be always hypocrites, if we actually examined ourselves and confessed our sins, as Scripture and the Church have taught for centuries.  Far too often, of course, confession and penitence have been used as weapons against the poor and the poor in spirit, burdening the already oppressed (more injustice!).  But that does not mean it has no place in the Church today.  Rather than judging everyone out there, all those bad people in the world, we ought to use confession as a light to shine into the murky world of our own darkest selves.

And the wonderful thing is that the God we claim to serve loves mercy more than he loves justice!  He freely pours out mercy, metes out forgiveness, covers over our sins.  His only condition for all of this is that we forgive others; something we conveniently take for granted or simply forget, depending on whether we are dealing with ourselves or other people.

No more.  I confess now that I am not one of the good people, and I have committed grave injustices against my fellow human beings.  I ask forgiveness from those I have wronged and continue to wrong.  And I offer forgiveness to the people of Goldman Sachs, BP, AIG, and all the nameless “others” who have wronged me and my country and world.  I ask your forgiveness further, because I know that my forgiveness will be a work in progress—but it is sincere. 

There is grave injustice in the world.  I must do what I can to fight it.  This is the beginning.

Making Wholes

One of the holistic personal growth disciplines I practice is Yoga.  The connection of body and breath and the clarity of mind brought on by the stretching of the body bring enormous psychological refreshment, and the flowing movements and stretching itself if of considerable physical benefit.

In the past few months, I have also been studying Yoga philosophy, of which there is a considerable body of work, though it is only now beginning to become widely available and easily accessible in the West.  One neatly packaged summary of both Yoga philosophy and Yoga practice (and many yogis would no doubt balk at that dichotomy) is Yoga for Depression, by Amy Weintraub (Broadway Books, 2004).  Weitraub, a Yoga teacher and fellow at the Kripalu Yoga center literally cured her own depression through Yoga practice.  I have not finished the book, and cannot yet comment on its merits, though so far it seems promising.

However, one comment early in the book caught by attention.  Speaking of Yoga philosophy, Weintraub writes, “There is no original sin in the system of Yoga.  There is only wholeness and separation.”  Weintraub is suggesting that we are separated from our identity, our unity with the rest of the universe, and this is the source of suffering and one of the causes of depression.

I think Weintraub is right.  We do not know who we are as human beings.  We do not recognize the fingerprints of the Divine Creator in us and on us.  We forget what glorious beings we were created to be. 

But Weintraub’s contrast between this Yogic notion of separation from our identity and the Christian theological construct called “original sin” is unfortunate.  The Christian Scriptures speak in terms of sin, and delineate particular moral offenses that are identified as sins (plural).  But the problem is that historically the church has focused more on the sins (plural) than the problem of sin (singular).  What is sin (singular) but separation from the Divine, a lack of wholeness, a failure to be all we were created to be?  We were born to be Divine conduits, regents of God on earth, and yet we have collectively chosen to separate ourselves from being who we are.

Misunderstandings like Weintraub’s should never have occurred—sin and separation from our divine identities are the same thing.  It is time for the church to stop being moral policemen, time to stop telling people how “naughty” they are.  Indeed, the church has too often taught about God as if he were more like Santa Claus, making lists of the naughty and nice boys and girls.  A much better and more accurate picture would be that of God inviting people to enter into their own identity, to recognize their divine place in the universe.  God wants to make people whole, reconciling our fractured identities and bringing us into union and communion with the great Unity in Diversity (which Christian doctrine calls the “Trinity”) him/her/itself.  (English gender pronouns are inadequate to express the fullness of who God is.)

Christian teaching has at various times been called “soulcraft,” suggesting that the God-ward life was one of working on our souls, with the goal of coming into the fullness of human existence, becoming all we were meant to be in union with the Divine.  This is a much better way of expressing Christian doctrine.  I might suggest, perhaps, that we coin a new term: “whole-craft.”  The goal of spirituality is not to make people good (although that will happen).  It is to make people whole.

For those who hold to the teachings of Christ, let us teach what he really taught—that there is an abundant, whole life available to all when we pursue union with God.  For those who would not identify with Christ, I apologize for our gross negligence.  We in the Church have for too long offered only shadows of the Divine life.  God is not making lists of the “good people,” and he did not appoint the Church to be the enforcer of his rules.  Rather, God offers nothing less than wholeness and life, unity with the Oneness.  You have only to accept the invitation to realize who you were meant to be.

Enlightenment’s Big PR Problem

Enlightenment (or spiritual maturity, or spiritual evolution, or union with the Divine, whatever you want to call it) has a major PR problem.

Or at least, it’s a potential PR problem, as it seems few people have addressed it as yet.  Perhaps it would be better to call it a dirty, dangerous secret that could become a scandal if people begin to think about it.

The dirty secret, the potentially disastrous PR problem, is that enlightenment is not really for everybody.  Many spiritual teachers nowadays will tell you otherwise (perhaps because they need masses of people to buy their books and attend their seminars).  Gone are the days of (truly) secret societies with mystery teachings only for a select few.  Gone are priestly cabal’s that mediate between earth and heaven.  Even in the Roman Catholic Church, whose radical separation between clergy and laity in the Middle Ages became one impetus for the Protestant Reformation, those distinctions are beginning to crack.  Monasteries have been flung open, and spiritual seekers can become oblates or associates, learning spiritual disciplines and moving on to enlightenment without even leaving their day jobs.  Books covering every conceivable path to enlightenment are available at every local bookstore.  As such, many spiritual teachers proudly proclaim that humanity is about to enter a new age, taking a great leap forward in our collective spiritual growth.  The doors to the world of spirit have been thrown open.  Enlightenment is for everybody!!

Except that it isn’t.  For two years I served as a sort of volunteer staff/lay leader for a church in a major American denomination in an economically challenged area of the United States.  The area was hard hit by an incredible gap between rich and poor, and most of the congregants I served were barely getting by.  Every year, the church lost some of its most involved members due to economic difficulties:  people could not afford to live in the area and were forced to move elsewhere. 

One of the major issues this church faced was a lack of spiritual growth/maturity.  We who were in leadership positions were attempting to find ways to get people more connected to the church and then into various study groups or others means of discipleship/spiritual growth.  Time and time again, what I heard from people was that they were too busy trying to make a living to make major commitments to spiritual growth.  Many of the congregants were working multiple jobs.  One woman put it succinctly:  “I get up at 5 am every morning.  I get my kids ready; I go to work; I come back; get my kids fed, bathed, and to bed, and then I’m ready to collapse into bed myself.  When do I have time to be involved with the church?”  Economic survival ate up so much of people’s lives in that area of the world that there was little time for much else; certainly not for the difficult disciplines required for spiritual growth.  I suspect it to be the same in many other regions of the country.

This fact does not seem to have become salient in the wider spiritual community.  A quick perusal of various spiritual/personal growth and enlightenment programs reveals a clear trend:  Bill Harris (Centerpointe Institute) charges approximately $1200-$1500 for its complete Holosync program.  Membership in Ken Wilber’s Integral+Life costs $14.95 per month (about 1/3 to 1/2 of the average phone bill).  Michael Beckwith’s Agape International Spiritual Center offers 5-week classes on a wide range of spiritual topics – for approximately $300 per class (including fees).  Enrollment in AMORC’s Mastery of Life program brings dues of $382 per year.  And Genpo Roshi of the “Big Mind, Big Heart” Zen-based enlightenment charges a whopping $1750 per retreat, and that does not include one’s travel costs to the retreat centers. 

Now, to be fair, I’ve included some of the most striking examples.  And I hasten to add that I do not begrudge these spiritual teachers their due rewards.  I think that what they have to offer is in some ways worth what they charge.  But the fact of the matter is that these kinds of charges are such a world away from where so many people live that it is almost laughable.  I certainly could never have gotten away with charging $1750 for a church retreat!  (Ironically, because of the scandals associated primarily with televangelism, Christian churches often cannot charge a fair price for their spiritual growth programs.  Indeed, the most basic engine of spiritual growth in the Christian church, that of the Sunday morning worship service, is essentially free – with only the plate passed for a voluntary donation.  That may have the unintended consequences of lulling people into a sense that Christian spiritual growth programs are not as worthwhile as those of other groups – but that is probably a topic for a later post.)

The point here is that it seems that enlightenment is largely the privilege of the economically well-off.  One must apparently have already “made it” in the material world to enjoy the necessary leisure time and high costs of growth in the spiritual world.  So enlightenment really isn’t for everyone.

And to say that current spiritual teachers and groups have simply moved away from the populism of their founders is not quite fair either.  In the Christian tradition, Jesus displays a cavalier attitude towards material needs, brushing off the feeding of the five thousand and four thousand as almost trivial, and blithely encouraging hard working peasants not to worry about food and shelter.  Even when it came to taxes, Jesus—dare I say, glibly, almost as if it were a lark—tells Simon Peter to find a coin in a fish’s mouth.  Siddharta Gautama the Buddha simply walked away from his family, leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves.  Among the teachers of the Secret/Law of Attraction/New Thought, one is told simply to “Think and Grow Rich” (to co-op the title of one of the founding books of the movement).  Making money is “the easiest thing in the world” says multi-millionaire Law of Attraction teacher Bob Proctor.  The carefree assumption of these teachers and groups is that one can simply think or wish wealth into existence, taking care of every possible need and even want.

I don’t know about you, but this is not where I live.  To be completely forthright, I am carrying significant debt, struggling to run a mediocre business, and fighting to cover monthly expenses.  It does no good to hear spiritual teachers imply that money will somehow appear out of thin air to cover my needs.  And I don’t know about you, but I am at an impasse.  I know that there is a numinous reality out there, and I long for unity with the One, but I am not sure if I can believe his/her/its teachers or Incarnation.  I find myself in the position of the religious leader who confronted Jesus, “I do believe; help my unbelief.”  As long as there are masses of people in this world whose lowly economic status means they will never have time for spirit (compare Maslow’s heirarchy of needs), spiritual growth has a PR problem. 

Can Enlightenment make good on its promises?  Is it really available to all, or are there a select chose few after all?  Can this PR problem be solved?