There are many different ideas as to what recovery looks like in our nation right now. Economic recovery, healthcare recovery, energy recovery, recovery of the planet itself. We often feel gridlocked, confused about how to respond to chaotic leadership. Many feel simply trapped in an endless loop of verbal warfare about issues of social justice and more divided than ever before on our core beliefs.
But rather than protest or support a political agenda, let me suggest a third way, a different type of recovery, recovery from dysfunctional systems. This is the not the way of cranking down on control or running away, rather, it is the way of letting go.
The greatest threat to our world is not a chaotic leader, this too shall pass, or even the extreme lack of unity in our country, we’ve been here before, but the core issue is dysfunction itself. Whatever threatens the soul threatens the world. If we want to live in a better world with clarity and purpose, it often begins with our own recovery. Healing is an act of revolution.
In this election season, we have been exposed to leadership styles that mirror dysfunction, in which we see our own worst selves. The creation of chaos and confusion, using insults as a form of communication, shaming, blaming, compulsive behavior, greed, bullying, sexual harassment, acting out on racist beliefs, deception, perfectionism, anger, etc. These behaviors, when practiced in organizations and families, create mistrust, confusion, dishonesty, instability, denial and a deathliness of spirit. Even when one seeks to do the right thing, to help others, to be a good citizen, one often feels trapped, as if there is no way out, in dysfunctional systems, it often feels as if a heavy blanket of despair covers the world. More dysfunction is always needed to make things appear successful, dysfunction is a progressive disease and grows worse with time if untreated.
It may appear to be a recipe for success but to the millions upon millions of people in recovery programs, we have learned to see dysfunction for what it is. We know that productivity does not equal wholeness, and chaotic attempts at the management of dysfunctional behavior is not the same thing as sanity. We are discovering a new way to live. Coming out of denial as we realize that our own behaviors are often driven by the chaotic spiral of the dysfunctional trap.
But there is a force that is greater than dysfunction, and we connect with this as an act of recovery. God within. The same power that has pulsed in every living thing for over four billion years is the power that brings sanity out of chaos in our lives, in our hearts. A new kind of stability awaits us. It is as if we begin to live from heart center instead of chaos center. We let go of control over the unmanageable disease of dysfunction and we come to realize that only a Higher Power, God, can restore us to sanity.
Witnessing dysfunction as a leadership strategy on the world stage can often be daunting. However, it can be viewed as a positive development because it no longer remains a hidden thing. Wherever dysfunction is hidden, it becomes more powerful. Because it is a progressive disease, it creates a sense of learned helplessness, in dysfunctional environments, we feel a sense of abandonment, maybe even a sense that there is no God. Or, in the other extreme, we create our own versions of God that make us feel that we are in control. This is how dysfunction works, while convincing you that you must control a chaotic environment, it traps you in despair, loneliness, toxic shame, isolation and anger. At the same time, it drives you into the exercise of will power to gain control, gain the upper hand over the chaos and confusion that seems to have stolen your identity and taken over your life. On the one hand we become way to weak, on the other, way to powerful, we vacillate wildly between the two extremes.
The truth is we are simply powerless over dysfunctional behavior, and it makes our lives unmanageable.
As we learn to name it, we recognize that there is a greater force at work in us, greater than world leaders, political systems or the stock market. There is a force in us that can create sanity and bring stability and manageability to our lives. God. Not some gray bearded man in the sky or some action hero savior that is going to punish everyone in an eternal hell who fails to obey all the rules. We haven’t always painted the most appealing image of God in religious environments. Dysfunction is pervasive. As we become a new creation by letting go of our own control and asking God to be the creator of sanity in our lives, we come to know the God of the universe, the God of creation, who has created and is creating. We come to know the God that Jesus spoke of as love. There are no contradictions in Divine love, there is just love.
We begin to heal. Healing is a radical act, it is one’s own individual revolution that begins to infect the whole world with a new kind of freedom. Jesus knew this.. It makes way for a Divine power to order the world through us. Healing and the proclamation of freedom were intricately linked in Jesus’ ministry. To heal from dysfunctional systems is to claim that your body is not property and you are not at the mercy of chaos. You come to know yourself, body, mind and soul as sacred, created by God. It is to claim that you were created for love. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.
We cannot control dysfunction, but we can let go of it. It seems counter intuitive, but strangely,as we allow God to bring us to sanity, this is how we move towards healing the world, one heart , one soul at a time. This is the constant source of energy that motivates us to serve others, to love with all of our hearts. Finally, because we have access to the source of love within.
We live in a dysfunctional world, can I get an witness? We seem to swim in a stew of wrong and right, bubbling in the shame, blame and guilt that are the end result of the failure to meet impossible standards. Out of this human predicament, we have created a lethal brew known as perfectionism.
Our culture is built around an unattainable ideal of perfectionism, what is morally right and wrong. The extreme pressure to live up to these standards seems to rule us more than the spirit behind them. Even though no one seems to be able to live up to the impossible standards, we still crank down even harder, it usually comes out as hateful words or actions, shaming, blaming and guilting everywhere. But there is an alternative way to live.
As far back as the 13th century (and even long before that) humans have been obsessed with perfectionism as a method for keeping anxiety at bay. One of my favorite poets from this period, Rumi, a theologian and scholar, made this statement in response:
“There is a field out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, I will meet you there.”
Ahh, what a relief, there is a space for love to flourish somewhere. He is talking about love, of course, as a revolutionary alternative to perfectionism. Not necessarily romantic love, but Divine, unconditional love, what we call Agape. It is the kind of love we are learning in our spiritual process as we meet the God within, as Christ has said, “the kingdom of Heaven (is) within you.” We go within to find the love we need to flourish in difficult times.
Religion is supposed to be a container for this process of love and loving, but these days, it seems some of our religious environment is functioning out of rigid perfectionism. And this “some” has the loudest voice in the world. But that is not the Way, at least, of true faith.
Perfectionism is simply another attempt at control. Making religion and God into something we can control and bend to our own will is classically known as idolatry. The odd thing is that when we engage in trying to control God or love or anything, or the reverse, trying to keep God out of the equation of life, we are the ones that become frozen! It is as if we are trying to freeze time or stop the madness, control the chaos. This always makes for craziness in the world and it seems to happen most when things become unstable.
In uncertain times, people crank down hard on control. But it is not just religious communities that are prone to this, we all do it, it is part of the human condition. As Paul Tillich said, “we are anxious unto our death.” And we all look for ways to manage the anxiety.
But faith interjects a different way, surrender. Surrendering to a higher Love causes us to let go of all the other ways. As Paul said, “in my weakness is my strength.” He was talking about surrender. Over time, in this faith process, as we surrender our control, we become stabilized by our true power, our soul life within, our true nature. Love teaches us how to be natural in an artificial culture.
Rumi’s statement gets at the core of the human condition. It is an invitation to let go of control, let go of rigid moralism and perfectionism and surrender to Love.
The field out beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing is a place where we meet ourselves out beyond the shame, blame and guilt of wrongdoing, beyond trying so hard to get it “right.” We try to get at the exact nature of our harmful actions rather than focusing on controlling the actions themselves. We do not try and get “right,” or stop being “wrong,” rather, we become attuned with the Sacred in us and surrender to its work in us. We focus on Love itself and the nature of love and we allow God to do the work in us.
Love, our tradition states, “keeps no record of wrong and does not insist on its own way.” For the early church, the focus was transforming from a litigious religious practice into the heart of relationship with the Divine, the God within, whom Jesus represented and left as the special presence of God on earth, the Holy Spirit. This is the basic root of all Christian theology.
Becoming attuned to Love re-routes us on a new path. Instead of choosing to live in the stew of shame, blame and guilt, we choose other methods for dealing with the pain of living in a dysfunctional world. We surrender to God in us. We walk in the woods, getting re-grounded with creation; or write or paint or do yoga or volunteer for service. We learn that there are many alternatives for dealing with pain and that we have the power to choose them because we are giving up control over our pain and we are letting go of perfectionist behavior.This is the moment when we begin to take true responsibility for our own lives and become actors rather than reactors in the world.
Control is an illusion. Control of fear, behavior, others, the world. When you give up control, what you are really giving up is living life from the artificial energy of your illusions. When you give this up, pain doesn’t stick around as long, it simply doesn’t have much to attach itself to anymore.
For some, religious experience has become a painful place and religion simply is not an alternative. But a loving community is not the same thing. Religion is a system, a container, a loving community is working out faith together. I encourage you to ask God to help you find a loving and safe community for you to practice your true faith.
Here are some helpful questions you might use as criteria:
Am I a part of a religious or faith experience that sees Love as its highest goal? If so, am I learning that true love seeks to be unconditional? How do I feel about unconditional love? Does my community make me feel unworthy? Less than?
Is the community I am a part of confused about love? Do they confuse love with perfectionism? Do they confuse love with pity? How do I feel about love?
Do I feel empowered by my community to pursue what I feel are the dreams God has given to me as the story written on the walls of my soul? Does my community talk about the soul’s life in some way?
Does my community teach me to take responsibility for my own life, empowering and educating me to make my own decisions about my faith journey?
True faith is coming to the field, coming aside to the feet of the great Healer and taking some deep breaths of unconditional love. In the field, we learn to love more deeply than we ever thought we could, because we are learning to love from our souls, where God lives.
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During joys and concerns on Sunday, a man shared he could hardly contain his excitement as this would be his first time to vote as a new American citizen. He came here from war, hunger and turmoil and now feels that he can finally begin living the story written on the walls of his soul. A story he was cut off from most of his adult life due to simply having to survive day to day.
This election season, there’s been a huge debate over what makes us great. We often think it’s something or someone in the outside world that can make us great, that greatness is a thing waiting for us on the horizon somewhere, if only we could pull the right levers, meet the right people, get the right education, etc. But we are confused about greatness. It is not something we can do for ourselves, rather, greatness is something planted in us by a Divine hand, it is love.
We are all born with greatness in our hearts, it is just part of our DNA, our innate ability to love and receive love. But we are also cut off from it in many, many ways in our world. Our ability to access this deep love already within us and connect with it is what makes greatness grow.
As we exercise our freedom today to choose a new leader for our nation, let’s remember what makes us truly great. It is connecting with our deep reserves of love within and building bridges with others. We make a refuge for one another in our hearts as great love grows in us.
I’ve shared a few thoughts here and a song from the old hymn book that was co-written by one of my heroes, theologian and poet, Georgia Harkness.
…the kind of imagination it will take to re-invent the world.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes said that the words “wild” and “woman” create a fairytale knock on the door of heart. Theologian Paul Ricoeur convinced us that words create worlds. “Deplorables” as a word used to describe a group of people with heartbeats who pay taxes and love their children is unacceptable, too.
Words create worlds and we are all wondering what kind of world we will wake up to on Nov. 9th. Whatever that world looks like, the reality is, it will be up to us to re-invent it and it will require a great deal of imagination and care for the words we choose.
The truth is, as much as I am reluctant to admit it, one whose very profession is studying the nature of God in the world,much of our impoverished imagination comes directly from the ways in which we have interpreted Bible.
Depth Psychologist C.G. Jung said that in order to understand the American psyche, one must read the Bible. And what he meant by that was that America was built largely through an early partnership between politics and church. My own denomination, Methodism, was the largest Protestant sect in early America, forming towns, cities, schools, hospitals and was the a great center of the civilizing force of our country. Ulysses S. Grant said that there were three great political parties in America: Republicans, Democrats and Methodists. The best selling book in the world, the Bible, still has major game and influence when it comes to worldview.
The wake up call for us is that the Bible’s social and political framework for a delivery system for the Word of God was patriarchy, and not necessarily the benevolent kind. The stories that narrate our faith world and have formed the psyche of a nation, the stories that make up the best selling book ever in the world, the stories that tell us who we are as a people are often hostile to over half of our national population. That said, even this realization hasn’t hindered individuals and faith communities from practicing the Bible’s mandate of unconditional love, it just doesn’t seem to make the daily news.
What we realize, faith communities who choose to re-imagine faith in the 21st Century, is that just because the Word of God came to us in the framework of a social and political system beginning over three thousand years ago known as patriarchy, doesn’t mean faith communities are confined to a system that is oppressive for many people. In fact, even Jesus challenged to reform by saying to his followers “you will do greater things than me.” And we all know he was a liberator of those oppressed by the system, particularly women.
And just because the candidates for leaders of the free world (one of them Methodist) may lack imagination in the words they use to describe one another doesn’t mean we have to go and do likewise. In fact, we can do better.
Our world will only be as good as we can imagine it to be. Because imagination is actually our built in communication system with God, we can even re-imagine our interpretations of Bible. Because there are also stories that tell of a counter-narrative, hidden in the Bible’s unexplored territories in which women rise above their status as property and become leaders: warriors, prophets and military heroes.
We don’t have to throw out our old traditions in order to grow to a place that creates an environment of flourishing for everyone. In fact, that would be tragic. We hold on to the traditions that help us move forward even as we let go of the ones that hold us back. Tradition pulls one way, progress pulls the other, and we arrive at a third way forward. That is how we grow. Because love is always preferenced as the way of God in the end and to love is to allow people to grow. Too much emphasis on either tradition or progress causes stagnancy or deterioration. We learn to grow best in the tension. Our democratic system is actually built for positive movement forward, that is, if we can only imagine it.
On November 9th, we will all have a new reality no matter who is elected and the truth is, we will all have a big job on our hands, the re-imagination of our world. Perhaps the true leadership is in our hands and our hearts and yes, even and especially in our faith communities.
Near a remote monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky called Gethsemani, I sat in the living room of the nun who managed the guest house down the road as she read me this poem. I had no idea what it meant at the time. In what I refer to as my mass Exodus moment, I had just left a life of being a rock star and the marriage that came with it. I had exchanged a role in which I got to play a goddess with crunchy guitars, with a private wind machine and spotlights, for a life of waiting tables at a pasta restaurant in downtown Nashville. Only four blocks away from where I had played to 15,000 people on the river at a summer festival and just four months later I was asking people on a nightly basis whether they wanted ranch, blue cheese, thousand island or balsamic vinaigrette with their endless salad and butter soaked rolls. Yet, somehow, I felt safe. When the nun asked me what I wanted, I simply said, “I want to be clean.” That’s when she read me this poem.
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice‚ Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!” Each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried With its stingers At the very foundations‚
Though their melancholy Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice,
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do‚
Determined to save The only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver, The Journey
A wild night had fallen upon me that lasted eleven years. My mentor tells me that God works in the form of a four letter word: S-L-O-W. There simply are no shortcuts on the path of the soul’s journey and that is okay. The soul’s calling may be urgent, but it is not in a hurry.
She read another poem, as if to say, read this anytime you have trouble locating your navigation point. and I suppose I have navigated between these two poems and a spiritual journey as I have sought to claim the truth within me and live it out in the world, that thing in my spirit that keeps tugging at me, saying, “let me live.”
We have not come here to take prisoners But to surrender ever more deeply To freedom and joy. We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run my dear, From anything That may not strengthen Your precious budding wings, Run like hell, my dear, From anyone likely to put a sharp knife Into the sacred, tender vision Of your beautiful heart. We have a duty to befriend Those aspects of obedience of our house And shout to our reason “Oh please, oh please come out and play.” For we have not come here to take prisoners, Or to confine our wondrous spirits But to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and Light! -Hafiz
I studied theology and got my M.Div. during those eleven years and became an ordained minister, drawn to the mysteries of the sacred life, I am a pastor who seeks out creative expressions of the soul’s life in the world. A theology professor, after spending years training us up in the technical aspects of the church, God, Jesus and the history of how it all got to where it is today, finally said, with a sigh, “after everything is done, the most important thing is poetry.”
To quote a line from one of my songs based on the life of one courageous woman prophet warrior, Deborah, from the hidden pages of the Bible, “Your life is poetry and every time you love, you set the hurt of the world free.”
What sacred and tender vision is calling out to you today? What is keeping you from answering it?
One day you finally knew what you had to do….
May you have the courage to live it out, just for today, your soul’s love sonnet to the world.
