Monday Meditation

God of all Space and Time,
we celebrate the explosion of your consciousness
that formed the stars, the planets,
the skies and oceans,
the plants and animals,
and every single human
on this precious, fragile planet.
 
The birth of the Christ child
reminds us that we are very physically
One with your consciousness,
formed from you.
The Christ reminds us that
we are more than physical.
We are metaphysical,
experiencing a briefly glorious moment of time
in an eternal lightness of being.
We praise you
and give thanks
for the opportunity to serve.
 
We pray that we don’t squander this gift of life.
Guide us through all our days, Lord.
Help us make decisions that reflect
your compassion,
your beauty,
and your love for all living things.
 
We confess that this physical existence distracts us.
We look around and see limited resources
rather than unlimited love.
We hoard,
rather than share.
We make decisions about people’s worth
based on the color of their skin,
the perceived and subjective beauty of their features,
and the amount of money in their checking accounts.
We judge,
all the time,
and we judge harshly,
even when we judge ourselves.
Forgive us, Tender One,
for our judgmental,
temperamental,
high-strung,
neurotic ways.
 
Change our hearts, dear God.
We give up and give in.
We give ourselves to your power.
Remind us from where we came.
Reminds us from whom we came.
Remind us we are all brothers and sisters.
Show us that the truth of this physical reality
is that it all began as a dream—
a thought,
an imperceptible moment
of conscious self-realization
as you exploded
in a life-giving bang of reality.
 
We pray that remembering and rediscovering this truth
will help us love each other more deeply,
respect each other more honestly,
and support each other more completely.
As our global economies collapse,
as the world reinvents itself,
as we once again find ourselves thrown into global wars
fought over false perceptions of difference,
lack, and limitation,
lead us out of the darkness.
Show us we are One,
through you,
with each other.
 
As the Christ child lit the way so many years ago,
ignite the Christ within us,
all your children,
so we too may light the way forward
out of this long night’s journey into day.
 
We pray for everyone around the world
suffering at the hands of evil people.
We pray for the loved ones in our families,
our congregations,
our mosques,
and our synagogues.
We pray for family members and friends
who are suffering from the effects of disease,
which torments us and our loved ones,
physically and spiritually.
 
Be with us now and forever,
God, who never deserts us,
God who cannot desert us,
for you are us,
and we are you,
infinite being created and recreated,
cleansed and nourished,
born from and ever returning to
the stuff of the stars.
 
We pray to you in the manner Jesus taught his disciples:
 
Our Creator,
who is everything,
honored be your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
throughout our being,
as it is throughout the universe.
 
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For you are the truth, the way and the light,
forever.
Amen.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.
—Herman Hesse

Thought for the Day: We live in a world that leads us to believe we must fight, claw and scratch our way to the top of the heap (Just ask Frank Sinatra). The problem is the heap has no top. As soon as we think we’re king of the hill, we look down and all we see is a pile of hurt feelings, dishonest dealings, half-truths, and lies—mostly to ourselves. Such is the nature of materialism. Such is the affect of this false reality we have created.

The stories about Jesus’ birth are very much parables designed to awaken us all to a greater reality. They are meant to break the spell of the material world and help us transcend materialism by letting God burst forth from within us. Like Jesus, we too are destined to become agents of change, acting from God’s space rather than running around between spaces at the shopping mall.

There is deep meaning in the Christmas story about an explosion of spiritual consciousness into the world. The Christ child is a symbol of that awakening within every human being and the transformative power spiritual awareness has on our concept of reality.

The greatest present I can imagine this year is a Christmas where humans all over the world begin to transcend this reality that burdens us with material dissatisfaction. I hope we all receive the present of open minds and realization of Oneness.

Prayer: Transcendent God, unwrap the ties that trap my mind and reveal your gracious presence within my soul. Awaken the world to a greater sense of purpose and unity. Amen.

Scripture: 2 Chronicles 24:13
So those who were engaged in the work labored, and the repairing went forward at their hands, and they restored the house of God to its proper condition and strengthened it.
 
Thought for the Day: Around 200 BCE, Judea became a province of the Seleucid (Syrian) Empire. King Antiochus III treated the Jewish kingdom with respect and allowed the people living there to practice their traditions. As long as Judea paid taxes, everything was fine.
 
One of the problems with empires though is they tend to have hereditary lines of succession. While historical accounts from the era portray Antiochus III as a wise and fairly even-handed ruler, the same cannot be said for his son, Antiochus IV. Shortly after inheriting the empire, Antiochus invaded Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands, and looted the Temple. He outlawed Judaism and banned circumcision. In 167 BCE he erected an altar to Zeus and began sacrificing pigs in the Temple. This caused a large-scale revolt led by Mattathias the Hasmonean. His son, Judah Maccabee (Judah the Hammer), would eventually drive the Seleucids out of Judah.
 
The Maccabees undertook a massive effort to clean and purify the Temple. After the Temple had been rededicated to God, the priests discovered there was only enough “unadulterated and undefiled pure olive oil” to light the Temple menorah for one night. The Talmud stated that the Temple Menorah was to be lit and burn throughout the night every evening as a symbol of God always lighting the way in the darkness. Miraculously, the oil lasted eight nights, giving the priests enough time to prepare a new supply of holy oil. Hanukkah is the celebration of this miracle. It is a time to remember the sacrifices our Jewish ancestors made to preserve their religion, their way of life, and their deep and abiding faith in God’s ultimate deliverance from the evils of the world.
 
Had the Seleucids succeeded in eliminating Judaism from history, there would be no Christmas today. In fact, there would be no Christianity, no Islam. Hanukkah is an important holiday for all three Abrahamic religions. It’s no coincidence that the Christian season preceding Christmas is Advent, when we light candles in anticipation of the birth of Jesus—the light of the world. Advent, like all Christian holidays (and Christianity itself) is deeply entwined with Jewish holidays and Judaism. After all, Christians follow a Jewish teacher, a revolutionary in his own right. Like the Maccabees before him, Jesus stood up to the imperial presence of his time as the ultimate act of faith to God. He too would rededicate and cleanse the temple, kicking out the bankers and lawyers who fed on the blood of their people.
 
In Christian churches around the world this week, we continue to light the Advent candles. It's an opportunity to remember our Jewish roots, which remind us that our faith must always be in God and that it must be as deep and hopeful as that of our Jewish ancestors--including Jesus.
 
Prayer: Remind me, God of Abraham, Israel, and Jesus, that by calling myself a Christian, I claim to be part of the long history of Christianity, which begins and ends with a poor rabbinical Jew named Jesus. Amen.

Monday Meditation

Monday Meditation: 
Holy God of Love,
we lift our voices in song and praise to your glory.
We give thanks for the presence of the Christ,
God with us,
now and forever.
 
We are grateful for your unconditional love,
which transforms our lives
and energizes us
with the passion of Jesus.
 
We pray to know you more deeply, dearest Lord.
We pray to feel you in our lives,
lighting our way,
leading us to lives of faithful service, t
he way Jesus served,
and the way the Christ continues to serve
all humankind.
 
Help us to be a people who make a difference—
not only through our prayers,
our votes
and our hopes,
but also by our witness to the world.
Teach us to
treat others as we would be treated.
 
Keep us from depersonalizing those we
don't know
and treating them as statistics.
Help us to remember that
each
person has feeling and hope
and no one is so foreign
that he or she deserves
to be forgotten.

 
We know we often fail
to live up to our human potential,
the potential Jesus exemplified
throughout his human life.
We are sometimes petty,
sometimes fearful;
sometimes greedy,
 too often intolerant.
 
We pray
from the depths of our souls
to find within us
all the compassion that Jesus so freely shared
with everyone he ever met.
We pray you also grant us
the ability to share our compassion with others.
 
You are with us,
now and forever,
Holiest of all.
We pray that
your healing presence
will be with all those we love,
and with those we will never meet,
who suffer at the hands
of global injustice and oppression.
 
With all praise and adoration,
we ask these things in the name of the One
whose birth and rebirth
we celebrate and always
impatiently await,
Jesus Christ.
Amen.

The Cave, Part 4
 
Once ascended into the light, returning to people still living in darkness and convincing them their reality is but a shadow of reality, becomes a difficult, perhaps impossible sell. We have lived in darkness for so long that we refuse to believe there is anything else. Even when we accept there is a deeper reality, it takes a long time for us to adjust to the world beyond the shadows.
 
Jesus showed us that the power and capacity of knowing the truth exists within us already, and the process of becoming is not simply like turning over of a clamshell to reveal a pearl, but is rather the complete and utter turning around of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night, into the true day of being and always becoming the light itself.
 
The ascent into the light is difficult, and it’s easy to lose hope that we’re making any progress in a world that seems to relish darkness. Our world has a way of snuffing out the light of change. But hope is always in the advent of things to come. Hope is in the realization that God is quietly and persistently turning every single one of us into a beacon, and that one by one, we are leading each other out of the dark night of our soul, into God’s new, loving, peaceful, wise society.
 
The event horizon is coming, and once upon us, a united human race will begin to explore the heavens in earnest. We will develop technologies that feed, clothe, and house every man, woman and child. We will, finally, claim our birthright as children of light.
 
The End

The Cave, Part 3
 
We will then proceed to argue that the person who rescued us is the one who gives the seasons and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which we and our brothers and sisters have been accustomed to behold. We reason that our savior is the cause of everything, for he has shown us a new reality, and when we first perceive this reality, we’re like newborns again, still blinded by the greatness of our savior and unable to imagine that same greatness lies within us all, now freed of the baggage and illusion of the shadows.
 
And when we remember our old habitation, and the wisdom of the cave and our fellow-prisoners, we begin to congratulate ourselves on our change, and pity those still stuck in the cave.
 
So some of us who have now seen the light return to the cave, and our eyes are once more filled with darkness. We return to bring the light to our brothers and sisters still imprisoned in the cave, to become saviors ourselves.
 
But you know what happens? Once back in the cave it takes time for our eyes to adjust again. Compared to those who had never moved out of the cave, our sight is weak and has to become steady. We appear ridiculous. People say of us that up we went and down we came without our eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending. And if any one tried to free another and lead him or her up to the light, the offender should be caught and immediately put to death.
 
Darkness does not appreciate insurrection.
 
To be concluded…

The Cave, Part 2
 
Now, let’s imagine that we the prisoners are released and our error is revealed—someone sets us free and shows us we’ve been seeing only a shadow world. At first, when any of us is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn our neck and walk and look towards the light, we suffer sharp pains. Our eyes ache. Our bodies ache. Our heads feel like nails are being pounded into our skulls, for the light is intense.
 
The glare will distress us, and we will be unable to see the realities of which in our former state we had seen only the shadows. We’ve been in the dark so long, we can’t even conceive of a different reality. It takes time to adjust.
 
As we’re adjusting, perhaps after some considerable amount of time has passed, the person releasing us says, “Friend, what you saw before was an illusion, but now, you are free.” And our savior begins pointing to the real objects that had been casting shadows, the shadows we thought were real. For a time, we are completely confused, insisting that the shadows we formerly saw are more real than the objects which are now shown to us. Far more real, in fact.
 
Yet our rescuer doesn’t give up. We are compelled to look straight at the light, which gives us a pain in our eyes that makes us turn away from it.
 
Perhaps a little reluctantly at first, we make a steep and rugged ascent, into the presence of the sun itself. This dazzling light irritates us both physically and mentally. When we approach the light our eyes are dazzled, and we are not able to see anything at all of what are now told is reality.
 
We are blinded by the true light of reality.
 
Over time though, we grow accustomed to the sight of the world outside the cave. At first we see the shadows best, next the reflections of people and other objects in water, and then the objects themselves. Eventually we gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heavens, and we see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day.
 
Finally, we be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of it in the water, but we see it in its own proper place, and we contemplate it as it is.
 
Now that we have seen the light, we can begin to adjust to the new reality it reveals.
 
To be continued…

Plato wrote “The Republic” about 400 years before Jesus was born. 
 
Plato’s story is about the way intellect and learning help us make wise decisions, and it was intended as a parable that would create smart leaders who would always work for the good of the entire republic. Plato had government in mind, but his analogy also works as a parable about spiritual awakening and how we each become more Christlike as our minds are opened to a new reality, as our eyes see a deeper truth.
 
This is my four-part adaptation of Plato’s story, “The Cave”, for Advent.
 
The Cave, Part 1
 
Imagine that we live in a cave, and that we’ve lived in this cave since childhood, being held prisoner therein. We’ve never known anything other than this cave, so we don’t even realize we’re captives. Our legs and necks are chained so that we cannot move. We can only see in front of us, being prevented by the chains from turning our heads.
 
The cave has a mouth open towards the light, which reaches all along the cave. Above and behind us a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and we, the prisoners, there is a raised way.
 
On that raised way, people pass along carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various other materials. Some of these people are talking, others are silent.
 
Even though all this activity is taking place, we, the prisoners, see only our own shadows, or the shadows of one another, or the shadows of the objects the people are carrying, projected on the wall of the cave in front of us like a movie.
 
If we could talk to each other, we would name these shadows as though they were the actual objects projecting them. How could we know any better? We know nothing but the shadows. For us, the projection of objects on the wall is the reality.
 
Now, suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side. Would we not be sure to presume when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which we heard came from the passing shadow?
 
For us, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
 
To be continued…

Monday Meditation:
Compassionate God,
in this time of darkness,
we wait with hope for the One
who will come and show us your light.
 
As we revel
in the merriment of the season
and the sparkle of decorations,
remind us there are also many
for whom the holiday season
is not one of joy and good cheer.
 
We pray for those
who cannot see Your light in the darkness.
Show them that hope lays, Holy One,
not in the commercialism of Christmas,
but in the concept of the Christ child.
 
We pray for those
who grieve this Advent season,
facing the first Christmas after losing a loved one.
Shroud them in Your comfort.
Through the story of the Christ child,
let them touch the eternal.
 
We pray for those
who struggle to feel joy
because they’re mired in mounting bills,
and in despair for lack of employment.
We pray for the greedy,
that they will loosen their iron-fisted grip
on the world’s resources.
Let both the oppressed and the oppressor
see the light, Lord.
Let us all see the light.
 
We pray for those
whose family dynamics make holidays
not a time of festive joy,
but instead a time of stress and anger.
We pray that through your grace,
hearts might be softened,
old hurts might be released,
and a door to reconciliation might be opened.
 
We lift our joys and give our concerns
to your tender care
for those in our congregation,
in our cities,
in nations around the world,
and for people enslaved everywhere.
 
Burst forth into the now, God,
as you do in the story of Jesus’ birth.
Let your consciousness bloom into our world,
changing our reality forever.
Help us all see beyond the physical.
Help us believe in the metaphysical.
 
For it’s in the seams
between reality and imagination
that a new consciousness blossoms,
that a new world vision takes root,
that the Light of the World
finally shines brightly on,
in and through
each of us.
Amen.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thought for the Day: Humans can be extremely disappointing. We’re very often petty, greedy little creatures intent on maintaining our little piece of the pie, rather than daring to give the pie away and bake a new one. For thousands of years, we have lived under the false impression that our resources should be controlled by the powerful few. From the clan leader to the Pharaoh, from the King to the Parliament, we have allowed the Earth’s abundance to be controlled by the wealthy elite. Well, maybe we haven’t allowed it as much as we have had that model forced on us.

Things will only change—and change permanently if we the people take back control of our lives. The peaceful protests happening around the United States are a good start, but if we want to change our world, we have to elect leaders without deep pockets and connections to corporations. The ISIS model of revolution is doomed to fail. The system can only be changed from the inside, and to get people on the inside means finding and supporting candidates who aren’t beholden to the corrupt political system that is endemic to the entire Western World.

The possibilities are infinite. We are taught to believe that our world is finite, but the truth is that our observable universe and the natural resources of this planet are just a single pixel in a multi-dimensional reality. We are infinite beings in an infinite universe. And that means there are infinite possibilities, as long as we never lose hope.

Scripture: Hebrews 4:13
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of God, to whom we must give account.
 
Thought for the Day: Growing up Jewish in the Deep South was no walk in the park. I was often called names, including “Christ killer,” and condemned to an eternity in Hell on a daily basis. Still, I’m a white male, and I’ve largely been able to enjoy the privileges that come from being accidentally born into the planet’s most ruthless and powerful ethnicity and gender. And today, I am more ashamed and angry about that accident of fate than I have ever been in my life.
 
I have never once had to worry about being shot by the police when I’m walking around late at night with a candy bar in my hands. I’ve never once had to worry that if I sold a cigarette to someone, a cop would strangle me to death. I’ve never had to worry that my son, playing in the park with his Nerf guns would be murdered in cold blood by a police officer. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed, pay much attention to the speed limit because I’m worried about being pulled over, or be careful if I get lost and find myself in the wealthiest neighborhood of my city. I've never had to worry about justice being served if a loved one is brutally and unfairly slain by those who have sworn to uphold the very justice their actions mock. On camera.
 
I understand that I can never, ever understand what my brothers and sisters of color—African American, Hispanic American, Asian, Native and Haitian American, go through on a daily basis. But as someone trying to be a merely decent human being, my heart is broken, my spirit is broken, and I wail in agony with everyone whose lives have been destroyed by a racist America with no sense of justice or duty. #blacklivesmatter, #hispaniclivesmatter, #alllivesmatter
 
Prayer: Lead us out of this dark night of the soul, God who is our only hope.  Amen.

Scripture: 1 John 3:1-3
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
 
Thought for the Day: This passage is not about Jesus’ return at the end of the world. Like everything written in John’s name (likely by an Elder of one of the early churches), this is a deeply mystical, Jewish text. The author correctly understands the hope that lies at the center of Jesus’ message to his people. We are all God’s children—not in some ethereal, unsubstantial way, but literally, at the core of our being, we are created from the stuff of God.
 
For the early Christians the author was writing to, the world was a very harsh place. People thought followers of Jesus were cultish. A mixture of Jews and Gentiles, they had a difficult time explaining themselves to the Roman Pagans and the orthodox Jews. Early followers of Jesus were expelled from their Synagogues and tortured by Romans—much like Jesus.
 
They understood, perhaps more than most modern Christians, that Jesus taught and lived a relationship with God nobody before ever imagined possible. Where both Romans and Jews imagined their gods as powerful, external beings, Jesus taught that God is within. He shows us that God is intrinsic to our nature, and that being one with God is, in fact, our true nature. This lesson remains difficult to understand today as can be seen by going into almost any Christian church in the United States. Few pastors preach unity with God; many preach worship of Jesus as an idol.
 
Jesus preached a message of hope—a message about God who is with us all the time, through the best and worst events of our lives. God for Jesus was not some old man in heaven. Rather, heaven was coming to the realization that God is within us. His is a message of awakening to a higher state of consciousness. The hope in Jesus’ message is not that God acts from somewhere beyond the sky, but that God awakens us to a higher state of being in God’s presence—from within.
 
Prayer: Wake me from this long, dark night of my soul, God of light, God of hope, God of freedom! Amen.

Scripture: Job 5:19
From six calamities he will rescue you;
in seven no harm will touch you.
 
Thought for the Day: I recently wrote about the importance of the number seven in the ancient world. It symbolized perfection or completion. The Hebrew word for seven, shevah, is from the root savah, which means “full” or “satisfied.” Six is associated with humans—created on the sixth day. Six is also the number of labor, and when considered as 4 + 2 or 5+1, six is symbolic of the human world either versus God’s world, or the corruption of God’s world by humans.
 
When six and seven are paired together though, as they are in this passage from Job, the author intends to contrast what is human from what is spiritual. Eliphaz’s lesson seems to be that when we attempt to do things from a purely human perspective, we’ll mess them up—no matter how altruistic our intentions. The only way to truly be an effective change agent in the world is to let God do the work through us. Six plus one is symbolic of human nature plus the work of God within us, which brings us to perfection.
 
Throughout Scripture, and indeed in every great spiritual revelation throughout history, we are reminded that we are more than we currently perceive. We are on a journey to Oneness with God. It is a spiritual evolution, a constant pull toward love. And no matter how terrible the world looks, we must always find hope in the fact that God is constantly pulling us closer to God’s own being, turning our imperfect six into a perfect seven.
 
Prayer: God of all being, make me realize You make me everything I am, and that everything I am is part of everything that is. Amen.

Monday Meditation for World Aids Day 2014

Loving energy that flows throughout the universe,
fill my soul with hope.
I fall more deeply into despair
as the hours of every day pass.
I look around our world and see hatred,
greed and envy,
selfishness and hate.
I see a world of people unwilling,
perhaps even unable,
to accept each other as brothers and sisters
of the same parent:
You, our eternally loving God.
 
Our world is full of dis-ease,
and while our great minds
have discovered many ways
to provide relief,
too many of us still suffer
from the deadly sting of poverty,
which unfairly withholds treatment
from those most desperately in need.
 
This world is unacceptable.
This situation must change.
We who believe in You
must be the agents of change.
 
On this day,
designed to bring about awareness
of the dis-ease of the world,
our prayer is for hearts and pocketbooks to be opened,
so that no person,
anywhere in the world,
of any ethnicity, age or gender,
need suffer in dis-ease.
 
Deep within,
trapped somewhere in a soul
we long ago sold to the purveyors of lies,
there remains a spark of love.
 
Deep within,
our hearts reveal a memory that
we are all One:
One race of humans,
one species,
related through the stuff of stars
that pervades every bit of matter in the universe
 
Deep within,
our DNA remembers
that we all matter—
deeply, powerfully, compassionately.
 
Remind us of our connection through You,
the creative elemental of all elements,
so that we will remember our connection to each other.
Eternal God,
remind us that without each other,
we will surely all perish from the face of this Earth.
Soften our hearts and motivate us
to share our wealth
not with the captains of industry,
who never have enough,
but rather with our sick and our dying,
who never have enough.
Amen.