Metacentricities

I have been reading a blog written by a friend from PSR, who is currently doing his CPE. And in writing him an email, I was thinking about this odd place I find myself in. Two years ago, I was an excited new seminarian, having heard “the call” and soaking in all that seminary had to offer me. I dove in head first, and even helped spearhead a contemplative spiritual practice group at PSR (which I hear is still going strong.)

And, two years later I am neck-deep in what is a secular vocation - even if I named my work blog “Zen and the art of Nonprofit Technology.” And the question seems right in front of me: what happened to my calling, really?

Of course, I have many answers to that question - and, ultimately, the calling never left me. I keep looking for ways to balance all of who I am - and bring my full presence to everything I do, whether it be my work, my writing, my life with my partner, or any other endeavor that I take up. I guess that’s really it - my full self includes that part of me that felt so deeply called to manifest my highest self, that self that is in alignment with all of Being.

Even when I decided, about 2 years ago now, to call myself a Christian, I couldn’t accept the “Jesus as Savior” perspective. It just never worked for me - this idea of substitutionary atonement - that Jesus died on the cross because we are such sinful beings, and there had to be some sacrifice to God on our behalf. And the “Jesus as example” (or, in the words of a good friend, “moral teacher” - the “what would Jesus do?” kind of way of looking at him) worked, but felt, well flat, and not really expressing how I felt, or the depth of what I thought. But, I felt kinda stuck in that place. A place of having to reject one perspective, and take on one that felt inadequate.

A few days ago I thought about another way of looking at Jesus, one that Christians basically don’t: as a spiritual teacher. A spiritual teacher in a more Eastern sense - an incredibly wise, fully enlightened being that points to the truth in many different ways, because it’s not really possible to state the truth - the truth is unknowable except in our own experience. Pointing to the truths we already deeply know, but need to be woken up to.

This perspective kind of woke me up, in a sense. When I started studying Bible in seminary a couple of years ago, I felt that the approach of progressive Christian theologians and bible scholars to the bible was, in a sense, unfortunate, because it was a series of subtractions from the text. I had liked the Jewish tradition better - which felt additive. The text could mean this, or this, or that, or maybe even this …

And, of course, the approach to think of Jesus as a spiritual teacher leads to a much more additive/interpretive approach to his words - because if he’s not speaking “the truth”, but, instead pointing to the truth that we already  know inside us (which is what all true spiritual teachers do), then exactly what he meant is basically up to each of us to decide.  And, in a sense, it doesn’t even matter so much whether we think or know he actually said something - whatever can bring us closer to our own understanding of truth is what matters.

Of course, to some people, this sounds problematic - because they want there to be something that is the truth - an unchangeable, unshakable thing they can depend on - and they search for that in the Bible. But that kind of truth can’t be found there. It can’t because it doesn’t exist.  The truth really is in each of us, in our own experience - we deeply know it, but often aren’t willing or able to acknowledge it.

There is an interesting paradox that I have been thinking a lot about lately. It’s one that I’ve been exposed to in many different spheres - personal growth, social activism, and organizational dynamics. It’s the paradox that it’s necessary to hold two apparently opposing views about a difficult situation: a deep and complete acceptance that a situation exists as it is in the present moment, as well as a passion to change it.

Often times, especially in activist circles, "accept" feels like "condone." If we accept that, for instance, innocent people are being killed in Iraq today by the US, isn’t that condoning it? But, acceptance of something is totally possible without condoning something. We have no real choice but to accept that this is happening now, or that people don’t have what they need to survive, or that we’re in environmental peril. It doesn’t mean we are codoning it - it just means that we deeply know they are happening, and accept that it is happening now.

And the passion for change - I’ve found that, in many personal situations, the way to change something comes from acceptance. Once I fully accept a situation for how it is, the way to change it becomes much more apparent to me, than when I just wanted it to go away.

Wanting a situation to go away is neither accepting it, nor, really, a passion to change it. It’s a kind of magical wishful thinking, that, in my experience, doesn’t really get anywhere, and, in a Buddhist paradigm, leads to suffering.

Paradoxes have always been of interest to me, because I think it is within paradoxes that we often find truth. This is another one of them.