Starbucks' Sexy Mermaid

Have you heard about this? The religious right is upset about Starbucks' new logo. Frankly, I never noticed their old logo until this nonsense started. The old logo was a mermaid whose hair covered her breasts not unlike Lady Godiva. It was a line drawing - almost cartoon like. The new logo, which is brown (the old one was green) has a mermaid holding her fins in the air, one in each hand, with her (cartoon) breasts exposed. Apparently, the religious right finds this overtly sexual. If you want to see the images, you can Google them. Take a moment and do so if you haven't seen them. I'll wait...

I suppose you are all worked up, huh? No? Neither am I. In fact, I'm wondering just what kind of a sick pig you have to be to see something sexual in that logo. Apparently, little Johnny Religiousfanatic didn't know that mermaids (much less human women) had breasts before now. Apparently, these sick whack jobs see in this picture a human female with her legs spread and are all offended.

Folks, please, you need treatment and you need it badly. Go to the nearest emergency room immediately, because you are not in contact with reality and are most likely a danger to yourselves and others.

Now do you see why I say that we need a new sexual ethic in this country?

God save us all.

Fear

Fear diminishes us. Most of us would readily agree that fear that seems to be imposed from outside of us diminishes us - that seems terribly obvious. What may be less obvious, and in fact even more damaging, is fear from within.

How many times have we stood in the face of opportunity and allowed fear of what might happen stop us from moving forward? I'm not arguing in favor of taking silly chances against all odds. What I am talking about it stepping out in faith - and if you don't like the "f" word, then stepping out in trust. So many times it seems like the situation we are in is completely unsatisfactory and still we are afraid of making a change. Maybe that speaks to the truth of the old adage that the devil you know is better than the angel you don't. I think it speaks more to the nature of fear that, even when we have nothing to lose, we still hesitate to make a change.

What's the alternative to that fear? The alternative is fullness of life. The alternative is living into our evolving identity - and that is what scares us. We may be miserable, but at least we know who we are. If we were to change our circumstances, who would we be? There is no good way to know ahead of time, so making a change means that we decide to step into a new identity. When we hold back what we fail to see is that the identity we are currently living in is a lie! Granted it is a well known lie, but it is a lie nevertheless. We were never intended to be miserable, we were never intended to be diminished, we were never intended to be half humans who mail life in from a remote location rather than live it. In fact, you might say that the identity we hold onto is not only dead, it is a stinking, rotting corpse.

Now where is the fear?

Conquest or Union?

Why do relationships, whether between individuals or groups, seem to fail so often? Surely there must be a commonality beneath our struggles to get along for any significant length of time. Many people decry the divorce rate without having the first clue what causes marriages to fail. Organizations come together with the best intentions of working together in common cause yet they break apart just as quickly. Is it that we are constitutionally incapable of coexisting for any length of time, or is something else at work?

I believe that the problem is best understood the difference between conquest and union. I believe that most individuals and organizations view relationship in terms of conquest and competition. In doing so, the essential question is, "What am I getting from this?" I become concerned about walking away from the relationship having gained more than I have given away. I evaluate the success of the relationship in terms of my victory over the other, which implies an adversarial relationship. Is it any wonder that relationships of all types are such a struggle?

On the other hand, union is a much more cooperative approach. With union, my focus is on what I can bring to the relationship and on how we can cooperate to our mutual advantage. That sounds really easy in theory, but in practice it is more difficult because it requires me to put aside my inherent narcissism for a while and consider your needs to be at least as important as mine. If you think that is easy, take a look at what happens in relationship.

Any time we enter into relationship (on any level) we raise concerns about our identity. Who will we be after we enter into this relationship? We act as if we will actually cease to exist once we are in relationship - largely because we view the whole thing as a conquest that must have a winner (who gets to retain his or her identity) and a loser (who loses his or her identity). Is it any wonder we struggle to coexist?

Imagine the possibilities if we were able to surrender our ego's stranglehold on our identities. Imagine if we could enter into relationship without this irrational fear of losing ourselves and so focus our attention instead on how we might grow together into what we are about to become. That attitude would better reflect reality, and be a much more positive basis on which to build lasting relationships - between individuals and groups.

Unconditional Love

Most of what passes for unconditional love is really very conditional - conditional upon the fact that the person being offered unconditional love agrees never to change.

Back in my undergraduate days I took a personality theory class. The major task of the class was to decide whether we believed that life is a constant attempt to re-establish equilibrium or that life is constant growth. In truth, only a few of the very early personality theorists believed the answer was equilibrium. I found myself firmly on the side of the growth folks, and would further maintain that any living thing that doesn't grow is bound to die. In living organisms, there is no such thing as equilibrium.

That being the case, how in the world can you make anything conditional upon failure to grow? Isn't that tantamount to making something condition on its death? How in the world can I purport to love someone and then wish for their death? Of course, the more obvious question is how can I claim to unconditionally love someone and then hold conditions upon that love?

You might think that people struggle with understanding what "unconditional" means. While I think there is certainly an argument to be made for that, I think the larger problem is that people fail to understand what "love" means.

Love doesn't mean gratitude. Just because you do nice things for me and I like that doesn't mean that I love you - or, for that matter, that you love me. It might mean that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. Maybe I am just a nice guy, or (and this is unfortunately more likely) maybe I want something from you and am trying to manipulate you to get it.

Love doesn't mean that you do what I want all the time. That's called slavery, and it was abolished in 1863 (although it still flourishes in many relationships). Nor does it mean that I do what you want me to do all the time.

Love doesn't mean lust, although people in love can (and hopefully do) have lusty moments. Lust is a physiological response to another person, and can be present completely absent anything that has any chance of being even remotely enduring.

Love doesn't mean you meet all my needs, for no one person can possibly meet all the needs of another person (refer to "slavery" above). Hopefully, people in love choose to meet each others' needs much of the time.

So what is love? True love is a mystical experience, and as such defies verbal description. The best we can hope to do is make attempts at describing something of love. Of this much we can be certain - unconditional love means that I have made a decision and a choice to care about you and your needs even more than I do mine, that I really want what is best for you even if what's best for you isn't what's best for me.

That's powerful stuff, and it's rare, and it's a conscious choice - not something we blindly fall into. It's also not something to be bandied about lightly or without thought, because if I really love you unconditionally that means I am prepared to put the entirety of my being on the line - and not take it back.

Not for the faint of heart, and not something that you can really do for everyone you meet.

Toward A Wholistic Spirituality

What is the function of a Church – and by Church I mean not only a local worshipping community, but denominations and other networks or alliances of local faith communities. Stated more directly, my question is, “What is the role of a faith community regarding the spiritual journeys of its members?”

For example, is it right for a faith community to say to its members, “Don’t see this movie, it’s dangerous!”, or “Don’t read this book, it’s dangerous!”? When ever I hear that kind of a statement the first thing I do is to go see the movie or buy the book, because I want to find out what all the excitement is about. Usually people don’t want you to go to a movie, read a book, or see a play because of the ideas presented therein. I don’t understand how you can be afraid of an idea, or how and idea can be dangerous – unless you are afraid that the people exposed to the new idea will realize that you have been feeding them a lot of nonsense once they see this new way of looking at things. In fact, you can safely bet that anyone who is trying to get you to avoid being exposed to new ideas is trying to control your thoughts. Since when does a healthy spirituality have anything to do with thought control?

The constant message of Jesus Christ – and, in fact, of every great spiritual teacher – is freedom. Some church types believe that freedom is a problem, because there is no fear in freedom and they believe that if you aren’t afraid you won’t come to worship and put money in the collection plate. Even if that idea did have merit (personally, I suspect people would be much more willing to support a message of freedom and liberation than one of fear) it wouldn’t justify corrupting the message of the system one claims to be living by (freedom) in to a message of fear!

When you examine the writings and speaking of those who hold themselves up as spiritual teachers, watch to see what they are trying to do. If they are Christians and are preaching a message based in the Old Testament Law, recognize that is inappropriate for a people who claim Jesus as the fulfillment of that Law to then attempt to resurrect it. We simply must look to Jesus - specifically his life, teachings, and actions – and if he didn’t condemn something then neither should we. The news flash here is that about the only thing Jesus ever did condemn were the religious and civil authorities of his day who tried to oppress others.

Free yourself from externally imposed guilt – and from the internally imposed guilt too, while you are at it. Explore spiritual practices that appeal to you no matter the tradition they come from. Read books, see movies, join “dangerous” mailing lists, stretch yourself, draw closer to the Holy, and do so without fear!

Images of God

This kind of thinking has a lot to do with how we image God. Isn’t it interesting that the words “image” an “imagine” share a common root?

As we expand our thinking and allow ourselves to really honestly engage who and what God is, we are bound to discover a few realities. The first is that God is not, in any physical sense, a person. You cannot introduce God to someone like you would introduce them to your Uncle Fred. The second is that God is that which underlies, sustains, and upholds everything – which means that God is energy, spirit, creativity, art, music, sexuality, and an endless number of other things. THAT means that no matter how we understand or try to talk about that which is the Source of all that is, we are ALL talking about the same thing – and we are all falling short! I don’t care whether you call it God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or understand it in the context of Buddha, or Krishna, or refer to it as the Universe, the

Transcendent, the Holy, the Ultimate, or (even) Fred – you are right…and at the same time we all fall short of describing or understanding Fred completely.

That means that whether we pray, or meditate, or get in touch with our psychic abilities, or use astrology, or use a system of divination, or reiki, or if we experience astral projection, or hypnosis, or any of a host of other options we all want the same thing and are all looking for it in legitimate ways! We search for that which is beyond and in the context of which we can make sense of our lives.

A good friend of mine sent me a copy of a horoscope reading based on my date of birth, time of birth, and location of birth. I was amazed that the description fit me with about 90% accuracy – and would have been a 100% accurate description of who I was in my twenties. You can’t tell me that there isn’t some validity to astrology any more. Similarly, how much do we miss when we listen to those who tell us things are dangerous and so we don’t explore them?

I hope to begin exploring with you over the next several months what the late Br. Wayne Teasdale called “Interspirituality”. It represents my personal perspective as a priest and bishop, and I think it also will become a significant trend in spirituality in the next one hundred years! Enjoy the ride, and be not afraid!

Wide Awake and Dreaming

Dreams - not the kind you have while you sleep, but those that are manifestations of the longings of our hearts and souls - are both blessing and curse rolled into one.

On the blessing side, they serve as great motivators, a vision of what might be and of what in our deepest selves we long to become. As such they reflect our values, our desires, and more often than not our pathologies. I love to ask people a couple of questions that provide some insight into their dreams. The first one is, what makes you happy? The second follows from the first, what makes you sad? The third is what makes you angry? The fourth, and potentially most revealing, is if you could have anything you wanted, what would it be? If they answer the fourth question, "world peace" I put a tiara on their head and send them packing. I want to know the real, honest answers to these questions because within them lies a clue to a person's dreams.

On the curse side, our dreams can easily be the source of our greatest disappointments and miseries. It's easy to see that unrealistic dreams would lead to disappointment, but it's much harder to see why something that seems so realistic and achievable - for example, "wanting to love and be loved for who I am" - seems so difficult for many people to achieve that they come to believe it is as unrealistic as dreaming of leaping a tall building in a single bound.

I believe that the reason we struggle with our dreams is that we aren't willing to invest in them fully. Sally wants to be loved for who she is, but she will settle for less out of fear that true love will never come. Isn't that a lot like going to your favorite steakhouse and settling for a peanut better and jelly sandwich because the steak takes longer to make? Maybe Bob is looking for his dream career (which is a multi-step dream) but allows himself to become complacent and comfortable in his current position and stops searching for more. I guarantee one day Bob will look back on his life during the "mid-life reassessment" (see an earlier blog on this topic) and be perplexed about "how all this happened" to him.

When I was younger I played a fair amount of softball. I've never been an outstanding athlete, but I never embarrassed myself either. I learned early on that when athletes hold back, when they don't give their all, when they play it safe to avoid injury, they get hurt. It seems counter intuitive, but it's true. When you play all out, throw yourself into the game with all you are and all you have, it's much less likely that you will be injured. I think our dreams are a lot like that. I also think they reflect where we are meant to be, where we are called to be.

If you go after something half way, you will never get it. If you take the safe way out, you create your own disappointment. If you settle for less, you will never be happy. If security is more important to you than your dreams, please remember that most often security is only an illusion because everything changes - everything.

The good news is that it's never too late to go for it. Of course, people will try to stop you because when you go for it they are reminded that they don't have the courage to do the same. Don't take the new job, they will say, because you might lose it and have to sell your house. Don't leave your neglectful and abusive spouse, because in the divorce your credit rating might be damaged. Don't move to a new town, because you don't know anyone there. Don't change your religion, because you might go to hell. What these people are really saying to you is, "don't change anything in your life because it points out to me that I am afraid of my own dreams." That isn't the kind of advice a friend gives, that's the kind of advice someone who is using you gives.

Don't sell out. Don't run away. Don't exchange one prison for another. Dream your dream, and trust that the universe will not disappoint you. Surround yourself with people who will support your dream and remove yourself from those who would imprison you or use you as a anesthetic for their pain.

Your time is now!

A Rose by Any Other Name

Have you ever noticed how, in the spiritual world at least, changing the name of something can make it acceptable? For example.....

The basis of much of Christian psychology is based on Jungian psychology. I myself am not much of a Jungian, but that leaves me in the minority. Carl Jung did a lot of work in the field of dream analysis, which is a fascinating field in which I have very little expertise. Despite that, there are a whole lot of Christian types who accept Jungian psychology while rejecting dream analysis as bizarre and somehow not spiritual.

We have all had the feeling of deja vu, where we feel as if something that is happening to us has happened before. I have read a number of scientific theories about this phenomenon, none of which are very convincing to me. It seems to me very likely that we experience the feeling of deja vu because we have a momentary glimpse of the future. That is a kind of clairvoyance, but many Christian types would reject the possibility of clairvoyance despite having experienced deja vu.

Many of us are skeptical about a lot of everyday phenomenon based solely upon the label applied to them. We are fine with "trusting our gut" or "following our instincts" and recognize the importance of first impressions, but many of us balk at the notion that someone can know something about a person whom they have just met - or that someone might be gifted in a way that allows them to feel another person's spirit.

If there is any hope for the Christian Church to continue to exist into the next century, I believe it lies in being able to openly discuss any issue from any perspective. We need to allow that we don't have all the answers and stop rejecting things from traditions outside our own - most especially when there are parallels to what we are rejecting within our own tradition!