Day: December 27, 2017

 

I believe this year, after much searching and struggling, I am closer than ever to finding my idea of God, and it is transformative and it does feel especially wonderful and exciting.

Human beings seem to need a God, they have always sought God, worshipped God, justified horrific things in the name of God, killed for God, loved for God, died for God.

From the first conscious human, and  at every stage of human development, there was God in countless forms and incarnations and representations. We have always wanted and needed God.

Quite often, when people believe they have found God, they demand that everyone around them believe the same thing or be evil and despised, thus comes some of the worst misery in human history.

Even though we are the only creatures on the earth with a conscience, it only occasionally spares us from doing awful and immoral things, believing we are acting on behalf of our God.

A God I believe in would not tolerate that.

In our time, it is getting difficult to distinguish believers and God-worshippers from hateful politicians and political parties.

Increasingly, both hate the “others,” pity themselves. People who differ become enemies, not partners on the earth.

These kinds of worshippers teach me where to look for God, because I can’t believe he is the manifestation of them. So I know to look elsewhere.

In his book “God: A Human History,” the religious scholar Reza Aslan writes about the need to de-humanize God, to make him less human and more ethereal, even superhuman, more universal. If God is like us, then I can’t worship him, because human beings are quite often harming one another and cannibalizing the earth.

Why would I worship a God who is like humans?

This year, I’ve had a revelation, an experience in which God or any deity reveals himself to us.

The more we see God as a human with human emotions, the easier it is to justify our behaving in inhuman ways to one another.

Aslan is a pantheist, he worships God not through fear and trembling but through awe and wonder at the workings of the universe – for the universe, he says, is God.

Pantheists do not believe in a fierce and righteous God with a long white beard and flowing robes. They believe everyone and everything is God, and in a way, that idea is more manageable to me than most of the Gods people have come to worship over time.

“I pray to God not to ask for things but to become one with God,” writes Aslan. “I recognize that the knowledge of good and evil that the God of Genesis so feared humans might attain begins with the knowledge that good and evil are not metaphysical things but moral choices…I recognize the divinity of the world and every being in it and respond to everyone and everything as though they are God – because they are.”

I like this idea, it is similar to the Kabbalah’s idea that God is energy, is the light, the experience of making love, of joy, of compassion and empathy, of giving.

When I began working with the people I call the Army Of Good, I was responding to a new political reality that was upsetting to me, and I didn’t want to be angry and upset for a considerable part of my remaining life.

I looked instead for meaning and a kind of healing. And I found it in my work at the Mansion, and with the refugees in such great need all around me and the grounding and spiritual clarity those things brought me.

This morning, I launched the Refugee Grocery Project,  a new project for the Army Of Good, a plan to deliver $150 in groceries to a refugee family the first week of every month. This felt like God to me, it felt like a revelation, like a rebirth or resurrection. I felt great joy and excitement, I felt awake and alive, I felt as if my life had meaning or purpose. These are all things so many people describe as feeling when they discover their God or their own spiritual revelation.

God, to me, is the better part of us. It is the feeling of compassion and empathy, the special miracle of doing good. The Army Of Good feels this, we have been sharing this spiritual reward all year. God is color and light for me, the impulse to be better, do better, do good.

Like almost everyone reading this, I’ve spend many years and most of my spiritual life trying to bridge the vast space between me and the fearful idea of God as a vengeful and omnipotent figure, all knowing and all seeing and frightening.

I am drawn to the idea that there is really no distance between God and myself because I am essentially, God manifest. As are we all. This is what I am learning this year, and at long last.

God is in me this year, in my heart, soul and consciousness. He is with me because he is me.

God is a world of infinite spiritual Light. A realm of action rather than reaction. The love of a true partner. The desire to do good. To comfort the vulnerable and the poor.  In the hidden origins of the physical world of the universe, a world of fulfillment, infinite knowledge and change, and boundless and endless joy. God is the aspiration, the yearning, the dimension of positive, lasting change, the exercise of our unique gift to perform acts of kindness.

For me, these are not the acts of saints and angels, but of mortal people. Like me.

I become one with God by reaching out to others, by learning to listen, by seeing God everywhere, not just in one book or one Temple or one Mosque or one Church. God is everything good and hopeful to me. He is also everything else.

I don’t need to be a saint, just to be me. A New Year’s revelation for 2018.

God is giving a cold refugee a jacket or a meal. God is buying underwear for a poor woman who has none. God is bringing a dog so an elderly man can reach out and touch something loving and warm again.

God loves small things and small deeds, because he is small things and small deeds, he is all deeds.

What could be  holier?

New York State is vast, today, some  refugee children from Rochester, N.Y., came to Cambridge N.Y., hundreds of miles away, to meet one another, have lunch, play and talk. The meeting was the idea of the Rev. Dahn Gandell, a much loved Episcopal Minister in Rochester, and a part owner of the Pompanuck Farm Retreat.

She contacted me and I contacted Ali (Amjad Abdulla) and we set it up for today. We didn’t count on the cold, but it was powerful to see these kids work through their shyness and play in the snow and start talking to one another.

Working with these kids in the Albany area, I am struck again and again by how challenging their lives are, how hard their families have to struggle to adjust to life here, and how often they suffer the taunts and jibs of their American classmates. Few of them have American friends, and the hostility and suspicion they face these days drives them together and makes their friendship for one another critical.

I listened in as some of these kids spoke to one another today, and they share the same stories and experiences. It is not an easy thing to be a refugee in America in 2017, it is not easy to be a refugee family. I suppose it never was, but it seems more essential than ever that we stand with them and show them our true hearts and souls.

The work Ali does to keep their community together is critical, he is a saint and a hero. Ali keeps telling them that what they are seeing and hearing is not the real America, that will resurface. I hope so, but in the meantime, I am committed to helping these sweet and courteous and gentle boys and girls whenever I can.

They are an asset to their new country, and I always hope to show them the true heart and soul of America. They see it in Ali, they saw it in Dahn Gandell, and in Scott Carrino of Pompanuck Farm, they felt safe and welcome today.

I hope this support gives them the hope and sustenance to guide them through these hard times. And i need to get them some winter shoes and hats and jackets.

Ali came to Pompanuck Farm to bring the soccer team here to meet some refugee kids from Rochester. They are also from Asia. Earlier in the Fall, we came to Pompanuck with the carver Maulidi Diodone Majaliwa.

He also wanted to bring some wood back for Maulidi, the carver whose work Maria and I are selling on our blogs.

He picked out some wood he liked – white birch, and Scott and his farm maintenance person Wally chopped a tree down Ali loaded up his van with four big logs to bring back to Albany, so Maulidi can do some more carving.

I plan on meeting Maulidi in Albany next week, he has some good wood to work with.

Note: I have been using the wrong spelling for Maulidi’s name, it is not Mawulidi but Maulidi. He misspelled his name on a piece of paper he gave me, and since he has no computer (I plan to fix that) he didn’t see the misspelling.

I just happened to ask RISSE for the right spelling of his name, just a feeling.

His name is Maulidi Diodone Majaliwa. Sorry for that.

Gus never ceases to surprise me, he is up for anything anytime. I took him and Red over to Pompanuck Farm to see the refugee kids from Albany and Rochester, and they went outside in the bitter cold to play some soccer.

Gus jumped right in, chasing the ball back and forth, rushing out into the snow to block it, managing to keep from gettin kicked or stomped on. He was invited to join the RISSE soccer team (Red is already the mascot, but he was staying inside where it is warm.)

Gus had a blast out there. It was 8 degrees and windy, and the dog who is supposed to need sweaters and booties stated out there for a half an hour and then jumped in everybody’s lap. Gus is up for anything.

A month ago, Dahn Gandell, a friend and an Episcopal minister in Rochester, New York contacted me and said she was bringing some refugee kids from the Rochester area – soccer lovers and players – to Pompanuck Farms right after Christmas, she wanted to challenge the RISSE soccer team to a match.

I called Ali and we accepted, the Bedlam Farm Warriors planned to come and to win – Dahn and I had a lunch bet over it. Most of her soccer players got sick this week, so six or seven refugee kids came and Ali brought most of the RISSE soccer team – he only had a small van and had to leave some behind.

It turned out to be 8 degrees this afternoon and much snow on the ground. No soccer, but soup and cake.

It was touching to see the kids meet one another. The boys are painfully shy, so the boys and girls sat on opposite sides of the lunch table for an hour or so, and they everybody began to open up and talk about their lives and experiences.

A few brave souls went outside and sledded down a nearby hill, others played soccer outside until their feet froze.

I had to leave early, but I loved what I saw, these kids clearly relished being with one another, they talk all the time about the pressure and frequent insults and jabs from the American kids they go to school with (the kids are always teasing that they eat “dogs and cats” for lunch and dinner.)

And they can’t afford to keep up with American kids and their designer clothes and shoes and devices. It is an enormous adjustment to be a refugee child in America right now, it is hard to hear some of the things the other kids say to them. That’ s a major reason why these kids are so important to one another.

None of the refugee kids had winter clothes or boots or hats and scarves. We’re working on that.

Tomorrow Ali is taking the RISSE kids to see either “Jumanji” or “Star Wars” and Dahn – and the Rochester kids are staying overnight at Pompanuck – is bring her Rochester kids to meet them. The RISSE kids have also entered a soccer tournament which begins at 5:30 p.m near Albany, and I hope to be there.

The kids love Pompanuck, and Scott Carrino, the co-owner, suggested we plan a weekend retreat for them either in the winter or the Spring. They love the idea, we are working on it.