The Promised Land

Joining our voices with angels and archangels 

and all the company of Heaven

Beloved children of Patriarch Abraham, whose very seed has filled this beautiful earth, you who were once called out of the wilderness, out of that place called Ur, who once gathered in tents to hear our One God's call, now hear again to what the spirit is saying to all of us.

Our God, the One whose being is all being, whose self is the all in the all, who is both creator and lover of us all, who made us for communion with each other and himself, is asking us to listen again to His ancient call to us.  He made us as vessels into which His great wisdom and spirit would flow to continue His great on-going, ever-living, ever-new creation. He, by whom we sing ourselves into being, is inviting us again onto the journey to that long ago Promised Land.

We were first called out of the wilderness, out of the vast desert of unknowing, to gather as one people. At that first calling, we were gathered into one great communion, but that union was broken by fratricide and jealousy which caused us to fall into slavery.  For 500 years, we staggered under the heavy burden of slavery until another was sent to guide us out of slavery, back into the desert and on the way toward a Promised Land.

We grew in wisdom over those two generations in the desert, listening again to words which would inform and form our hearts and minds for the next leg of our journey. Finally, we were ready. Together, as a nation of people, we crossed the River Jordan. Once a sacred river, yet now a terrible divide, we crossed over with the hope we were entering a land "flowing with milk and honey," rather than the place of terror it is today, with bullets and bombs shattering throughout this once holy land. We didn't understand that it was always meant to be a mythic journey and the beautiful River Jordan, a symbol of the river of life, was a place of new birth into wholeness and union, not a great dividing line.

Later, after several thousand years of on-going fighting in the name of our One God, we sought and were led to another promised land, again a place of hope and promise of freedom from oppression. Yet, soon after stepping onto that new soil we again found ourselves fighting over many issues, religious and political, under the banner of "One nation under God," again slaughtering those who lived there in order to found a place of peace and prosperity.

But, the Promised Land is not a country, a parcel of real estate. Rather, it is a magnificent kingdom within us. It is a place of peace, compassion, hope manifested in radiant technicolor out into our collective life together.  Unless we understand this ancient truth, now, we will always be people seeking and never finding.

While Abraham led us out of the wilderness and Moses led us back into the wilderness and on the way into the promised land, it was Jesus who led us on the way to the real promised land and taught us how to enter it. This is a real and authentic inner spiritual realm of perfection, a realm of light and love and hope and ever-living creation, energy, power and joy. It is all that is real.

It was always supposed to be a spiritual journey, but back then our young spiritual eyes and ears were closed.  We could not hear nor see what the Spirit was saying to us through Abraham or Moses and sadly not even through Jesus who was killed for this message.

In fact, Jesus' own baptism in the River Jordan is a powerful iconic image of this message:  the sacred river of life, which this river symbolizes, unifies all people as Jesus' own message calls for - the love of neighbor - even enemy - as we love God. To Jesus, the river of life calls us all together: Jew and Palestinian - all people - because all people are made in God's image, all people have within them the kingdom - the universe within, the universal mind -  which is visibly within them.  Clearly, this ancient and sacred River Jordan was never meant to serve as a boundary, a dividing line separating brother peoples.

Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."  It is not a place out there somewhere on our Earth.  It is beyond the river of this world, beyond the River Jordan.  It is in us - it is the whole universe with us and that entire universe is for all time, all dimensions, all that is, and it is within our minds and hearts.

Love is the key that gently opens the door into that inner kingdom, that very real Promised Land. It is in that soft place of your heart which has the strength and courage of an entire army, more power than an arsenal of weapons. To love your enemy, to hold the dying man in your arms who was killed by your own weapon, and weep at the sad realization of ages, of the madness accumulated into that one moment, is the kind of courage that opens that door.

Today, we can understand what God was saying to us all those years ago. We are Jews, we are Christians, we are Muslims, we are the people of the land and people of the heart, we are all chosen because all human beings are chosen. We have all been called to participate in this great adventure and listen to the Spirit and join our voices together to lift up this great creation and experience this great encounter. 

We can join our voices today with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven circling that great tree of life that rises up out of the Garden of Eden, watered by the river of life. We can do this.  I know we can.

The Fugitive's Eyes

Ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane

... more on The Middle East: A New Design:

"I agree about getting them all to sit down together to work out a plan.  Some of the most promising work along those lines has been groups of bereaved parents of children lost to a conflict coming together with love  and empathy. The core of all that I do that I most prize is bringing people together so they can and have to look into each others eyes.  They touch and are touched that way without hesitation or  shame.  And wounds can start to heal and divides can be crossed.  It brings to mind one of my favorite pieces of Henry Nouwen: Looking into the Fugitive's Eyes." 
                                                       - James O. Whitlock

Looking into the Fugitive's Eyes

One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man were handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words: "It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost."

Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him, and asked, "What have you done?" He said: "I handed over the fugitive to the enemy." Then the angel said: "But don't you know that you have handed over the Messiah?" "How could I know?" the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said: "If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his' eyes, you would have known."

  

From the introduction to Chapter II of:

The Wounded Healer

By Henri J. M. Nouwen

*above photo:  http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17985&p=114448&hilit=olive

Soulful Presence

Bethlehem, Palestine

Photograph and article by James O. Whitlock

This ancient olive tree in Palestine has seen a lot. It speaks of strong hope and faith, of tenacity and persistence, of enduring
struggle and acceptance, and of an indomitable will to survive and live as fully as possible regardless of circumstances. 

I met this tree on one of my lunchtime walks, near the new checkpoint terminal on the Hebron Road from Bethlehem
to Jerusalem and not far from Caritas Baby Hospital where I spent so much time that year. The Israeli security fence is immediately behind it and the Har Homa settlement is on the hilltop in the background. I felt a soulful presence in this tree and had no doubt at all that it has wept equally for all the disputants in the tragic conflict that surrounds it.

Presented to Riverside-Salem UCC, February 17, 2008

Middle East: A New Design

They lived there peacefully for thousands of years, surviving despite the harshness of an arid climate and centuries of foreign invasions and cruel oppression. 

In their pastoral homeland, flourishing with thousand-year-old ancient olive groves, the people of Palestine, who typically  passed their homes down through generations, have grown their food, raised their children, buried their dead, married, and prayed solemnly since antiquity. 

This idyllic, yet hard, life of theirs, challenged by all that typically challenges human life, was terribly ripped away from them, usually at gunpoint, when their native lands were subdivided to make separate nations to accomodate the World War II war-weary Jews. Victims of Hitler's genocidal holocaust, they sought a return to their own ancient homeland to heal from centuries of prejudice and discrimination in Europe.

Like today's Palestinians, they had once been oppressed, subjugated until they were exterminated by Roman persecution at Masada circa AD 70. Those Jews who survived Rome's fleecing fled east into less hostile lands. They became, once again in their history, strangers in strange lands.

During the 1940s, political decisions made by a powerful multi-national leadership who would never be personally impacted by their dividing up of families, tribes and homelands like cards in a poker game, stirred up a hornet's nest in the whole Arab world.

The people of this ancient land did not go quietly into this new boundary design of their sacred homelands when the British Empire sliced up the Arabian penninsula after World War II.

It wasn't just that the "most agonizing aspect in the history of the Middle East (for the Palestinians) is the establishment of the Jewish State Israel in Palestine," according to Sahih Iman, but it came with a sense of betrayal by Jordan's King Abdullah I who "played a key role along with British and Jews in its formation." The king supported the Peel Commission (1937) which proposed Palestine be split for the Jewish state Israel. When that happened, Palestine was subdivided between Israel and Jordan.  Since, that separation, there has been continual unrest among the Palestinians in the West Bank, the region of land sandwiched between Israel and Jordan.

It seems, given the current waring between Palestinians and Israelis, the region might do with another redesign.

First point:  Nationalize the West Bank and Gaza and any other strong Palestinian lands or change Jordan's borders to include the Palestinian lands.

Second point:  Currently the population of Jordan, which is approximately 6.5 million and includes 1 million Iraqi refugees and 2 million Palestinians, staggers under an unemployment rate close to 22 percent, plunging the country into terrible poverty.  About 40 percent of the poplulation lives in poverty earning about $300 - 400 per month. Recent uprisings in Amman reflect a collective frustration from decades of an increasingly intolerable situation - politically, economically and culturally. King Abdullah II, who's net asset value is not known publically but is estimated to be among the world's highest at close to (if not exceeding) $18 billion, would be wise to lighten the load the people are bearing.      

When the recent gas prices tripled, the king did nothing to soften that blow to his already struggling people.  He would be wise to realize that a collective population, oppressed by poverty, will rise up against such a heavy burden.  If he fails to respond sensitively to this escalating mood among his people, he could face a dire situation.

Perhaps he would consider sending out treasury checks from his immense wealth to his people.  If he is worth $18 billion, why not issue treasury checks to his suffering 6 million people to stimulate the economy, relieve tensions and prove that his heart is with his people.

It seems a redesign of Israel's national boundaries to allow for an independent Palestinian nation or include the Palestinian lands in Jordan in combination with King Abdullah-II's outreaching financial support could help his suffering people. These two actions might be a wise, compassionate and reasonable response to a potentially explosive situation.  This might offer an alternate outcome than any of the other countries in the Middle East have experienced thus far in their transitions into freedom and justice.

Background:
     In 1946 - 48, Abdullah-I participated in the partition of Palestine. Before Arab Israeli conflict, the British had essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the leaders of the neighboring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not finalized, and they could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide of the war.
     The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan's King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state, since he wanted to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine as he could.
     He was in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League. He met with the Jewish Agency (future Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was among the delegates to these meetings) that came to a mutually agreed partition plan independently of the United Nations in November 1947.
Result:
     A part of Palestine was occupied by Israel and the remaining part was occupied by Jordon when Israel was formally created by the United Nations in 1948. Today, 60 years later, the entire region is bristling violently while Jordan absorbs a rapidly growing population of refugees from the West Bank and Syria.

Allowing life to happen

The secret of attraction is to love yourself. Attractive people judge neither themselves nor others. They are open to gestures of love. They think about love, and express their love in every action.They know that love is not a mere sentiment, but the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe.”
                                                                                         - Deepak Chopra

God is life, in life, and creator of life. The essence of that life, is love.  Life is love, as God is love, and both are actualized in trusting and allowing the on-going happening of everything.  Life is not just a random continum of actions on a lateral timeline.  It is a mysterious awesome intelligent design. 

And, if, when, we do just let it be, allow life to flow, to happen, we experience that intelligent design, which is designed by the greatest love there is. When we allow life to happen, without our fear getting in the way and blocking through judging, we can and will experience the most wonderful life. We can trust that life is good and can be trusted. 

If we stop judging ourselves, each other and everything down to the tiniest minutae of life and open our hearts, minds and lives to allow, embrace and choose to be open to what each encounter is saying to us, we will find our lives will move in a radically new direction. 

We can trust and embrace the greatest adventure of our lives.  If we take our hands off the steering wheel of our lives and allow life itself, which has a more profound intelligence than we, to lead us, it will steer us into the greatest joy, the most awesomeness that we can't even imagine right now.   

The only thing that prevents us from experiencing this greatest of adventures is our blockage of it through our fear and judgment.  If we in our fear, judge and attempt to control what is happening to us, we alter the paths of our lives. We do this - and I mean, we all do this, because we think we can make our lives somehow better than that which God - or life itself - would design.  I honestly think we do this innocently because most of us don't realize that God is really there in all the many big and little ways of life. 

If we listen to our own truth, to our own sense of joy or despair, we will find our way back onto the path that leads us into this perfect life, this awesome design.  We are part of it in a most remarkable, awesome way.  We just have to trust in faith and there's no judgment in trust.

Perhaps we do it because we were taught how to "discern" or judge any given thought, motive, happening and are also taught how we SHOULD respond.  All of this assumes a negative outlook on life.  It distrusts life.  It distrusts God.  In fact, it downright writes God out of the storyline.  Our ideas of God are very ancient and need some significant updating in order to experience this greatest adventure called life.

If we judge, we block life.  So, it is wiser not to judge. I think one of the most fundamental questions we can ask ourselves is, "Do we see God as lover or God as judge?"  Do we believe and trust life to be good or do we fear that it is dangerous, punitive, cruel.  Do we believe life is about creation, about being alive and do we see freedom as a part of that "aliveness?"  Or, do we believe in spiritual slavery.  Is God our lover, our friend, or a cruel taskmaster, slave master, judge?

We are happier because God will make our lives happy because, quite simply, God is love and love feels good and is good.  Life is good.  Life is sweet.  Life is the ultimate adventure, the ultimate experience.  It is what we came here to experience.  If we judge every single little thought or deed, blocking some and allowing others all because we were taught this or that is good or bad, then we aren't living an authentic or real life. We are living to a script written by someone else or an entire hierarchy of power brokers a long time ago for another time, another place, another occasion.

So, today, just for the fun of it consider how you are judging in this moment.  What are you judging against, what are you allowing to happen?  You may see even just a glimmer of how much life you are blocking.  Release all the life you are holding captive by your fearful judgment of it. What are you afraid of? What would happen if you did this that you are afraid of? Then, consider what would happen if you allowed life to happen. 

Certainly, as you allow life to happen, your life will bloom, come alive. It may become more challenging. Yes, and maybe even terrifyingly new and different, unpredictable, but alive in so many ways.  Life will steer you where you are meant to go.  It's not an intellectual endeavor.  It is a faith journey - faith in the goodness of life itself, faith in the love God has for you and wants you to experience, faith in joy, in love, and in the greatest adventure of all:  Life itself.

A dream for Peace

"Hush the noise, ye men of strife,

 and let the angels sing."

On this Thankgiving Day we - as a whole world standing together - offer gratitude to you, our God who is in everything, is everywhere and whispers deep into our hearts your great love song to us.  We thank you for all the blessings in our world today, especially the peace between Israel and Gaza. 

I have a dream of peace for all everywhere and am so very grateful to all those brave ones who have given so much to help build that great peace for our earth.

May this wonderful, blessed peace last and may it be the door that opens into an even more beautiful golden age and a renewed life for all on the Earth including the Earth herself.

Listen now as the angels sing open the timeless gate to the future ...

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

- Edmund Sears, 1849

(Original five-stanza hymn)

Love never dies

The following has been graciously shared with Tiger Lilies by Thaddeus who gave his homily Sunday, Nov. 18 in St. Joseph University Parish, Buffalo, NY. 

"Heaven and earth shall pass away

but my words will never pass away."

(Matt 24:35)

What are those words?

Jesus said all the law, prophets and writings are based upon the Great Commandment: love God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.

Love is what we are called to search for in our hearts. The classic stories of the season highlight that, whether Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Horace P. Bogardus in The Bells of St. Mary or George Bailey, an ordinary person who discovers that this is truly a Wonderful Life!!!

Augustine said, "If you see love, you see the Trinity." Blake wrote, "I sought my soul, a soul I could not see; I sought my God, but my God eluded me; I sought my neighbor and there found all three."

And so I end with this little poetic reflection:

Our cars will rust and fall apart,
condos crumble to the ground,
and even our football team will every year

miss the playoffs.
Everything will go: investments,
worries, honors, pains.
Yet,
“My words will not pass away,”
you say to us.
Jesus, please fill us with your words

which will never pass away.

You are love and love never dies.

A New Earth?

... from Space.com:

HD 85512b is another super Earth, one that's thought to be 3.6 times as massive as our planet. The alien world is found about 35 light-years from us, in the direction of the constellation Vela (The Sail).

Astronomers announced the discovery of HD 85512b in September 2011. The planet's estimated surface temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius).

This artist’s impression shows the planet HD 85512b orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 about 35 light-years from Earth. This planet is about 3.6 times as massive as the Earth is at the edge of the habitable zone around the star, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, could potentially exist. 
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser




Is it really a surprise that astronomers have found Earth-like planets throughout the Galaxy and even into the far reaches of the universe?  Are we alone out there?  The chances are highly unlikely.  

As I look at the artist's rendition of what another (one of five on Space.com) Earth would look like - continents and all - oceans and mountains I can't help wondering about the possibility of life on it? 

Would there be animals, bugs and hippopotamuses, people?  What would their people be like, if there were people?  Would they have solved humanity's war problem that threatens our own Earth today - even this minute in the Middle East?

What would they say to us, if we would listen?  

If they had the technology to find their way across these 33 light-years to visit us, surely they would have found a way to live peacefully together.  Would their science and technology outgrow a stunted spiritual evolution with political, social and even economic consequences as ours seems to have done.

As I look at this image of another Earth somewhere out there, my imagination sees it as clean, peaceful, habitable with doves and fish, and lions and bears, and people living in love with each other, creatively using their spiritual mindfulness to travel, communicate, and build planet-friendly homes.  

I imagine them living in peace, spending much more of their time singing, dancing, praying, and living lives of unconditional love, honoring their differences - even more than accepting - not trying to change or control another's views and ideas but honoring, valuing their differences, and knowing that the collective growth is in that honoring.  The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Would they have a religion?  I wonder.  If they are spiritually mature, they might have accessed the power of the divine unity which is a power beyond that which we have globally accessed thus far.

There is so much more for us.  There is so much potential in each of us, so much yet to discover and build upon.  We could reach out to each other and try to renew our Earth, clean up our global act here, before company arrives from a neighboring planet.  

And then, if we were able to get there - using a technology that is yet to be discovered - it would take thousands of years, unless we could travel at the speed of light. Then, one wonders might it be possible to transcend our material natures in order to vibrate off the planet, so to speak, to raise our vibrational density at will so that we could "fax" ourselves there.  

Then I thought of Jesus walking on the water, and of Buddhist monks levitating.  So maybe we can do this, afterall.  But, there is one thing I know for sure.  We can't elevate our physical vibration if we're immersed in the saddest, most horrific terrors that our media and world is currently drowning in.

We need to stop everything right now - turn off the television and choose to change.  We need laughter, again, we need love, again.  We need to hold each other under a beautiful full moon, or play in the snow, throwing ourselves onto snow banks and laughing until it hurts. We all need to be like children at play again.  We need to step outside under the night sky and see with awe what we are all part of - this vast mysterious other who is out there.  It is staggering and beautiful, ineffably awesome.  It is there, waiting for us, to come alive, again. 

Then, just for fun, take a peek at this:

or, get carried even further away ...

Science admits Heaven exists

For ages science and theology have butted heads over their respective claims about the authenticity of the spiritual world.  Karl Marx once claimed religion was the "opiate of the people" while Charles Darwin disputed the Bible's creation myth as either irrelevant or incorrect in his evolutionary thesis of life on Earth.  Meanwhile, the Church herself has been guilty of discrimination against scientists in the past.  

As we as a global species have grappled with the greatest question of all time - what happens when we die? - we may have found the question was circular, the answer illusive.  We sought the answer with our intellect but found it in our heart - our soul and mind - which so far exceed the consciousness of our limited intellect. Attempting to answer this age old question with science - as Darwin and others have attempted - is like looking for the Garden of Eden or Noah's Ark on the map.

Myth probes the far reaches of our limitless singular human soul beyond the telescope or microscope. The realm of the spirit is best explained and understood through myth. Science still may not yet comprehend it at this point of our collective awareness. So, it must be - as it always was -  experiential.  

Today there seems to be a considerable agreement among physicists in the new quantum understanding of the universe as well as the marvelous power potential in the human being's ability to affect materiality through focused, intentional thought.

And, yet, even with all that commonality among scientists and theologians, there has been a strong reluctance for medicine to admit the existence of "heaven" or a realm of spiritual reality beyond our mortal / material lives. 

Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, once held a reductionist view about life after death, claiming that it was caused by an electrical firing of the brain at the time of death.  However, when he came down with meningitis and himself entered into a coma with a brain dead diagnosis, his own experience was so pervasive that he couldn't deny what others have experienced spiritually.  When he came out of the coma, with a fully functioning brain, he reported a life changing experience so profound, so beautiful and breaktaking. 

Last Monday, I ran a video about Jeff's life after death experience. Jeff was already a religious person, but Dr. Alexander was not.  His story is awesome. 

Maybe we need a new storyline

This short, powerful, two-minute video was shared with me by a friend.  It is powerful history - worth reviewing as is.  Sadly, the plot in this film - our earth story - doesn't change. Only the faces and places and circumstances have changed. It's the same old story - century after century. the same old violence.  Why are we able to develop space age technology but still act like cavemen?  

When will we learn?  What will it take?  Unlike Katrina, the news of how some people treated each other during Sandy - with the obvious exception of the many kind and loving neighbors and firefighters who faced incredible danger to put out fires and help people - there are some sad stories of people's loveless actions to each other.  

I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I am struck by a story reported on CNN that pierced my heart.  A mother with two young boys got her car stuck and when she was able to finally get herself and her two sons out of it, they found themselves caught in Sandy's full gale 90 mph winds.  She fled to a nearby house, knocked to ask if they could wait out the storm. She was turned away by the homeowner.  Her two little boys were consequently blown away and drowned.  Their little bodies were found later.  I know there are other stories of great heroism, compassion and selflessness, but that one brought me to tears.  

Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these your brothers (and sisters) you do to me.  We have been told time after time. The human race is only as strong as the weakest link, only as good and noble as the least noble and most heinous.  Everything - every single thought, word or action - we think or do is not done in private.  It is done to the whole world.  If we want a better world, we need to practice mindfulness, think about what we're thinking about, eliminate our fear and open our hearts to compassion and be very, exceedingly, careful and intentional about our actions.  Are they actions based on fear and cowardice or on love and generosity.  Are we masters of magnanimity or servants of selfishness?  

Another nor'easter is poised to hit in the wake of sandy.  I pray we'll be better prepared and have our lights on and front doors unlocked to welcome the stranger.