Divine Thoughts in Passing

I have been blessed with travel to see family in the last couple of weeks: blessed with the family, and glad for the time with them; and blessed with the sort of time that travel gives one, to read, and reflect on what one has read. It is sort of like having seeds injection-planted into the fallow field of one's thoughts, and then watching whether anything bearing something edible manages to grow amid the weeds.

Here's what I've harvested so far, and am chewing on:

--Ram Dass in his gentle Ram-Dass-ian meditation on aging and dying, Still Here, talks about how important his Maharajji became to him after his stroke. He writes: "My link to Maharajji is very strong. He's the very context of my experience. He's my friend, my constant imaginary playmate. He's an imaginary playmate who's wise, loving, understanding, rascally-- all the things I like in a playmate. What's wonderful is that that kind of playmate is available to each of us, because its inside."

Ram Dass says lots of other things about Maharajji, but this notion of "play" and "playmate" at the center of his spiritual life simply sprouted in me. What if I were to think of God as my "playmate?" What if the living of this life were to be more about "inter-play" with the Divine, than obedience and rule-following-- or even "playing" by the rules? What if God were making up new rules as we went along-- and I could, too? (Just like we did when we were very young children, before we got all growed up, and got victimized when rules were broken, or punished when we were the ones breaking them....) What if my life were, indeed, more this "divine comedy" than the human tragedy I too often take it to be? What if spirituality were more about developing a sense of humor instead of a determination to take everything very seriously? Wouldn't we all be having a lot more genuine fun?

I know, it's an outrageous line of thought. It makes people angry, just as Sam Keen's article in Playboy did back in the late '60's-- the one that was accompanied with a picture of a laughing Jesus. True, no one read the article; in Playboy everyone just looks at the pictures! Still the image of Jesus laughing was a bit too sacrilegious for some-- even more than the nudity! Now that tells us something about where the heads are of the religiously minded!

--Henri Nouwen has also been with my on my travels, and I find myself fertilized by his fecund writing, especially his meditations on the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

(First, a little background: I have always found that parable to be anong Jesus' most profound. I identify with all three of the men, the father and both sons. Having lived the role of the prodigal, in spite of my being the older son in my family of origin, I identify with what it's like to be in a "far off" place ("far out," in my case!), and being afraid about how one will be received at home. But I also am the elder, so I know the lure of being well-behaved and being well-thought of, and wanting to please one's father. And I am a father, whose sons are their own persons; but through them I wrestle with how to love, especially when love can connote approval instead of acceptance, and the whole way a father's own hopes and dreams can come to be lived out in his sons, in spite of them, in spite of him. Although, in the parable, the father is often taken to denote God, I see God as being "in the midst" of this triangle of men and their emotions. God is in how the whole parable plays out, how it is enacted, how it is brought into being. The meaning is about God-- and ourselves... .)

Well, anyway... Back to Nouwen: In one of his startlingly frank reflections, he speaks to his indentification with the elder son. He says he has "harbored a strange curiousity for the disobedient life that I myself didn't dare live...". He's "envious" of the "wayward son." He observes: "There is so much resentment among the 'just' and the 'righteous.' There is so much judgment, condemnation, and prejudice among the 'saints.' There is so much frozen anger among the people who are so concerned about avoiding 'sin.'" Then he asks: "which does more damage, lust or resentment?"

As someone who has struggled with his own lust(s), and with his own resentment(s), I came to have new words to describe the younger and the older son in me. And while I have felt my measure of both guilt and shame for my lusts, I wonder if I've sufficiently appreciated how my resentments have inhibited my coming into the abundant life God has intended for me. My lusts and my resentments have both betrayed me-- or rather, have been ways I have betrayed my self. But while a plethora of Others have arisen to remind me that I should indeed feel both ashamed and guilty for the ways my lust has betrayed me, almost none have extended the mercy, forgiveness, understanding and acceptance that might have kept me from resenting their being judgmental! Thus I find myself on this pendulum, from lust to resentment and back again. Unpleasant. Not good.

I suppose that this "swing" could be halted on the lust side-- but Nouwen does not suggest how. He does, however, make a connection that would halt the swing on the resentment side. He says: "There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude," and it is of one or the other, because "resentment and gratitude cannot coexist." Ah... So the resentments of those whose "frozen anger" leads to the denial of their own sinfulness, which thus results in their judgments of me-- they might free themselves for gratitude, and more gentleness and mercy toward me and others, if they would just make that choice. And I, in turn, can choose not to harbor resentment of them, if I choose to be grateful, if I find in myself a grateful heart for all of my life experience-- including others' reactions, and resentments.

How do I do this? How do I find my own way to freedom from resentment, toward gratitude and grace?

--Well, maybe the answer has something to do with finding the father of the parable in me. Maybe that father is more like Ram Dass' Maharajji than like the Father God of most Christian preaching. Because, what does the father of the parable want most to do when the prodigal son returns? He wants to play! He wants to party! He wants to step into that relational space beyond resentment; he wants to choose gratitude.

I think we are always surprised by that father-- and often disbelieving. Or else, we say to ourselves: That's OK for God-- but it wouldn't work in "real" life! But Jesus does not say that the parable is an allegory, and that the father in it stands in for God. He is really saying that we experience God in our lives whenever this dynamic occurs-- whenever play triumphs over judgment; whenever grace and gratitude triumph over resentment.

Whether this happens in the "real" world, among persons, is another matter. But the thing is, these triumphs can be experienced within me, in my own reality, within my own self-- just by my choosing to let my father play with my prodigal, and enjoin my elder to get with the program!

Just like Ram Dass' Maharajji, the father of the parable is "inside" me-- along with that elder son, and the prodigal one. There's a Life of manifest gratitude, grace-- and playfulness-- waiting for me, if I just choose to live it.