Reflections on the Gospel of Thomas

Yeshua says… See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes. Gospel of Thomas, Logion 10

Sermon given by Alison Hine on August 3rd 2014 at The Episcopal Church of Incarnation, Ann Arbor Michigan


I would like to dedicate these words in memory of Karl and Jane and to Brian.

The Aramaic word Maranatha means Our Lord Come. It appears scattered through the Bible. We can use it as a mantra. Maranatha whispered in heart over and over invites us to open into deep listening. Maranatha, Maranatha, Maranatha. Our Lord Come.

When the first atomic bomb was tested in the desert of New Mexico in July 1945, Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project, later reflected. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, Vishnu takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’

The second atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6th 1945. 140,000 people was killed in the initial firestorm.

We celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration by remembering  when Jesus and three of his apostles go up  Mount Tabor. At the top of the mountain, Jesus begins to shine with bright rays of light. Then the prophets Moses and Elijah appear next to him and he speaks with them. The voice of God calls out to Jesus: “You are my son”.  In this moment Jesus reveals to his disciples his origin and also the complete transfiguration of his body into divine light. Body, soul, divinity into one, in Jesus, as Jesus, through Jesus. This was and is the great evolutionary leap from a God in the heavens, far away, remote  to God in human flesh. And a possibility for all humans.

In Hiroshima a different light exploded. One that brought utter destruction and the final death of our innocence. We now had the power for complete annihilation .

Several months later another explosion took place. It did not ignite right away. In December 1945 in a cave in Northern Egypt, thirteen codices containing  over 50 texts were discovered. They seem to have been compiled from the second  to the fourth century. Some, including the Gospel of Thomas, may date back even earlier than the  gospels of the New Testament. After many delays, and much scholastic infighting Elaine Pagels published her best selling book, The Gnostic Gospels, in 1979. I still have my marked up copy. I remember my atheist heart  chuckling with a kind of perverse delight: “this will surely upset the apple cart”. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a long journey of my own.

Over the last few years I have been drawn over and over into these Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Thomas.

It begins: I who write this am Thomas- the double, the twin. Yeshua (the Aramaic name for Jesus), the Living Master spoke, and his secret sayings I have written down. I assure you, whoever grasps their meaning will not know death.

Today in honor of the Feast of Transfiguration I will try to unpack some of these sayings. This is a different atomic explosion.

In Logion 10 Yeshua says… See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.

In logion 71. Yeshua says… I will destroy this house and no one will ever be able to rebuild it.

In logion 82 Yeshua says… Whoever comes to me dwells near the fire. Whoever moves away from me remains far from the kingdom.

What is he talking about? What is this fire? What is this destruction?

But first let me say something about this Gospel and the others discovered at Nag Hammadi. There are no stories about the life of Jesus, his ministry as a healer, his miracles, his Virgin birth, his divinity, his crucifixion or his resurrection. These sayings seem to be have been written down during life of Jesus and are the wild wisdom teachings of an enlightened Jewish mystic. It is tantalizing to think that these might be the words of Jesus. Sometimes there are echoes of these sayings  in the official Gospels. These are the words that Jesus gave to those “who have ears to hear and eyes to see.” Can we hear two thousand years later

When I first read these sayings they seemed shocking and incomprehensible.

In logion 2 Yeshua says.. If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty  will be your rest.

So to understand we must search. In my case this went on for a very long time. I mean decades. And at first we may not even  know what we are searching for. The only tool we have for our search is our own ego, our own dualistic mind, which knows through linear discursive  thinking. This is a world— a wondrous and important world— that knows through collecting knowledge, by comparing and contrasting, by judging, evaluating. And  by dividing reality into multiple parts: inside and out; real and not real: right and wrong; more or less. And over the centuries we have learned much this way.

 So to go back to Logion 2. “you must not stop until you find”. Find what? Is it mystical experiences, exalted states? Yes, but that is not enough. More important is that we find a new capacity within. A capacity to hear and see. Not with the egoic mind, but with what is now being called the unitive mind, the non dual mind. And this is not the intellect but an alchemical transformation of the mind into the heart. This is the heart of wisdom. And the alchemical transformation is called  inner work.

In our tradition we know this heart of wisdom as Sophia or as the Word.  Her beauty is proclaimed in Proverbs 8: 22

“The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works,
    before his deeds of old;
 I was formed long ages ago,
    at the very beginning, when the world came to be.
 When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,
    when there were no springs overflowing with water;
 before the mountains were settled in place,
    before the hills, I was given birth,
 before he made the world or its fields
    or any of the dust of the earth.
 I was there when he set the heavens in place,
    when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
 when he established the clouds above
    and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
 when he gave the sea its boundary
    so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was constantly at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
 rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world
    and delighting in mankind.

We live in profoundly psychological times. Many of us have embarked on this journey of inner work. But there is a profound difference between most psychological work and the inner work of transformation. Psychotherapy ultimately is about supporting, healing and creating a more functional, flexible, mature ego. And this is crucial work. Spiritual work goes beyond this. The journey begins with a healthy enough and resilient— in my case stubborn and determined— ego.  But ultimately it is about the transformation of the ego into a soul of living presence capable of  hearing and seeing through the wisdom of the heart. So in a sense the ego gets displaced from being in the driver’s seat and becomes the bystander and the servant of living presence. The alchemy is the  burning away of what blocks, obscures our capacity for the wisdom of the heart.

In logion 71. Yeshua says… I will destroy this house and no one will ever be able to rebuild it.
He may be speaking about many kinds of houses: the temple of religious corruption, the domination system, but at a personal level my sense is that he is talking about the house of ego.

And he goes on to say: in logion 82 “Whoever comes to me dwells near the fire. Whoever moves away from me remains far from the kingdom.” So who ever invites the fire of the Cosmic Christ, the fire of love into the house of ego will come closer to the kingdom. What a paradox. This is a fire of ego burning. And it is a fire that liberates and  clears the way for the kingdom of living presence. Our minds, hearts and bodies are jammed pack with thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, positions, convictions, ideologies, which we believe completely is the sum total of what and who we are. There is no room for God.

So it takes a fire. And for me it is an ongoing fire. A never ending fire. Sometimes it blazes and I am angry, hurt, frustrated. And sometimes the fire burns with blessings. In either case the ego is there —the devil of temptation— to give into despair and give up or to  turn the blessing of grace into self importance. So the fire not only burns away much of what we hold true, but it also tests us. Will we give up, will we turn away, will we create an idol of our self importance, turn the grace of wisdom into dead religious carcasses?

So back to Logion 2.” And when you find you will become troubled.” How true. You finally have the capacity to see and know that you have carefully built a up a house of cards and called this me, my ego.  For me this was more than troubling. It was a deep sense of complete failure and  hopelessness. This is called the Dark Night.

A few months after I entered this church I asked Joe about the people who sang out the Psalms. He lent me The Songs of Israel by Guthrie. I was electrified. One day, I was on the phone with two of my spiritual friends. We were exploring our experience in the present moment— the practice of presence. Suddenly I knew without a doubt that “I AM that I AM”. And in the same moment I could feel as though I was traveling through time back to those prophetic voices in the desert proclaiming the very same truth. In a flash I was connected through deep time to a very ancient lineage. And as soon as I struggled to say these words out loud I could hear the voice of the superego accusing me of being presumptuous, too big for my britches and making the whole thing up. Somehow I managed to escape most of the tongue lashing. But then over the months I became troubled. In fact was I so disheartened, so dead, so tired of this whole spiritual enterprise that I was ready to give up. The superego had me completely, and I was convinced of my complete sense of failure. I seemed to be crawling through life.

So what did I do? I kept up my daily spiritual practice in the midst of whining and railing at God. As best as I could I kept coming back to the present moment. I forgave my lengthy lapses. I walked outside with my morning cup of coffee. I tried, often fruitlessly, to push away the superego. I slept a lot. I complained a lot to my friends. I went to church and prayed. My life line was my daily meditation practice.

Six months after my mystical experience  I entered a spiritual retreat ready to give notice. To my utter surprise I was met with the grace of loving kindness. I lived in a cloud of bliss for days. Somehow in this hell, by not quite giving up—thank you stubbornness!—, grace carried me, Jesus carried me, truth carried me until enough of me burned up. You could say that the recognition of the truth of my identity, my birthright as I AM, challenged and exposed my historical identity, my personal sense of meaninglessness, and my deeply rooted despair and alienation— in short my atheist heart. This had to be traversed. In the past this journey had led to breakdown. This time the center held in some mysterious way.

But “then your confusion will give way to wonder. In your wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty will be your rest.”

After the surrender of the ego to the much larger truth of who you are,  Jesus then says  “you will reign over all things”. And this does happen. Not just for Jesus but for you and I as well. “you will reign and your sovereignty will be your rest.” If you let these words wash over you, perhaps you can feel that you are no longer this contracted fearful tiny self.  You have discovered that through this journey of fire  your identity has become vast and is at peace. This is the kingdom of heaven on earth and in human beings.

So when Jesus says in Logion 10… “See, I have sown fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes”,  we can be assured that in this fire of transfiguration, in this fire of the Christ consciousness we will not be abandoned. Even if we fail over and over, if we forget, and if we are deeply troubled Jesus will guard this fire until we blaze in glory.

Two explosions happened in 1945: one of utter destruction, the other of love.

Marnatha, maranatha, maranath. Our Lord come.

Reflections on a three year journey and one that continues. 

Our circle dedicated to the practice of presence started in the fall of 2011. For several years we focused on meditation and how to settle into an sense of the embodied now. We kept coming back to our arms and legs, fingers and toes. We explored how the superego, or the inner critic, attacks us, judges us and insists that we cannot and should not expand beyond the confines of our contracted familiar ego self. We faced the need to dismiss and reject this shaming, debilitating voice. We are not children in need of continual scolding and punishment. We are beings of presence capable and desiring to grow and expand into the spaciousness and love.

Many people have come over these years,  and some have stayed. There is a sense of presence as we take our seats together. The sincerity, openness, trust and depth has slowly grown over the seasons of our work together. We hold the fullness, confusion, despair in the lightness  of our collective presence. And through this grace these moods shift and the presence clarifies and deepens. 

As the facilitator and co host with Joe I have learned to trust this movement of moods. I seem to have less need to know where this is going, or try to make it all alright and more trust in the generosity and intelligence of the field of  presence we cultivate together week after week.  I am learning, along with you, to be an open vulnerable instrument, so that presence can teach me. So I can see my own  shadows, my fixed ideas and my own superego. I am humbled by what is emerging. It is mysterious. It reveals itself slowly with little nudges,  in moments of inspiration and in warm hearted generosity. 

As we ended our time together for the summer I have been looking back. Where have we come from and what is pulling me and maybe you forward?

We have spent the last year reclaiming sacred words. Words that are so overused, or so debased by secular or fundamentalist certainty, that some of us almost gag when we hear them. Or we simply walk away. And why not? Our instinctive recoil points to the savagery, misogyny and persecution  of religious practice over the centuries. But are we loosing something precious?

So let me take a big view. We live in what is being called the post modern world which in this is a world deeply suspicious of authority, tradition, hierarchy. We embrace relationship, the personal narrative, freedom, individuality and creativity. 

So  it is not surprising that our circle of pilgrims is called to a contemporary, even interfaith  spiritual understanding. We meet in a circle, we share together in a circle, we listen to all the voices, not just mine or Joe's. We use psychological understanding help us navigate through the lens of ego to living presence. And yet both Joe and I have felt a powerful pull to reclaim the sacred and ancientness  of the Word of Wisdom. Why this mix? 

You may be familiar with the writings of the philosopher Ken Wilber. His significant contribution is that consciousness and in turn culture evolves. What is striking is that this evolution mirrors our own evolution from childhood to adulthood. I won't go into great detail but simply say that we live in times of a great evolutionary pressure. These times are being called the Second Axial Age. Our post modern relational view is a reaction to the modern, rational scientific paradigm that began in the West during the Enlightenment. Each new level of consciousness reacts to the previous level by rejecting it as naive, dangerous, simplistic, and not inclusive enough. 

These paradigm shifts are always times of turmoil and even bloodshed as the new challenges the status quo. During the first Axial Age, the monotheistic religions, the mythic level, rejected the pagan view as superstitious and heretical. And now the post modern view rejects the hyper rationality of the enlightenment, and the authoritarian hierarchy of the mythic feudal religion--now called fundamentalism-- of the Middle Ages. And so it goes. Well not quite. What is emerging now  as we are increasingly immersed  in the   global village is  what Wilber calls the Integral view. This  view does not  simply reject the preceding evolutionary stage. The Integral perspective recognizes that there is precious wisdom in all the previous stages of evolution of consciousness and culture. The integral view attempts to recover what is precious from the past and bring the treasures  forward into the present.

Without realizing it this  is how our circle seems to be evolving. We are peeling away the misunderstandings, limitations and ignorance of earlier wisdom streams without throwing out the mystical essence of the Word. Can we reclaim words like God, the Father, worship, sin, prayer and through our contemplation in presence feel the living presence. Do they come alive, take us deeper. Do they align us with the countless humans who have prayed these words for generations before us? Do they take us across theological divides, wars even, to the deepest core of love?

I hope some of you feel this. I have discovered-thanks to the internet- that many other small circles like ours are undertaking similar journeys.  I sense we are tapping into an awakening. It is happening in small circles on the edges of, or outside, religious institutions. This is the way of the post modern ethos! Even though it seems that our numbers dwindle at times, we are part of something larger. This is the mystery of collective prayer and practice. What a blessing to be part of this unfolding. And it can’t happen alone.

Rocky Mountain Tsunami and the Mother Goddess Chamundra

Rocky Mountain Tsunami and the Mother Goddess Chamundra.   September 19th 2013

Back at the Benedictine monastery in Three Rivers, Michigan. Perfect fall weather. Yesterday there was a large flock of sleeping Canada Geese perched on the mud flats filling up the edges of Monks Pond. Today they have vanished. The skies have covered over. Only sprinkles of rain here. 

A few days ago a tsunami tore through the front range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. A twenty foot wave was the first sign that the five year drought was about to end. Years of drought and forest fires have stripped the mountainous terrain of anchoring  and stabilizing vegetation and  provided the perfect chute for this violent wave to tear through dirt roads, trailer parks, homes, water treatment facilities, telephone poles, oil fields, dams, sheering away the cement off paved roads.  An area the size of Connecticut has been flooded. Rotting carpet, moldy couches pile up on sidewalks. Owners are desperately trying to keep mold at bay by throwing out anything damp from basements. Six have died and over a thousand are unaccounted for. Emergency vehicles can't get to remote areas of the front range of the Eastern Rockies. 

A friend lives in Lyon, high enough to have been spared from the violence of the river water below. But the town of a few thousand inhabitants has been decimated. The rescue authorities are attempting to force residents to leave by suspending supplies of water and food. Many are determined to stay. My friend is living off of rainwater collecting in a rain barrel.  She is staying in touch with the outside world on her smartphone. As long as she has gas in her car she can charge up her phone and stay in touch.  

Every March and October for the last fourteen years I have been driving through Lyons on my way up to the Estes Park YMCA to go on spiritual retreat.  Lyons sits  on the edge of the  steep  foothills of the Rockies,  ten miles north of Boulder. It's a sleepy town going through a bit of a tourist renewal it seems. Art galleries with western and native art, coffee shops, decent eateries, have sprung over the last few years. Now it is destroyed. Does it have chance at a recovery or will it simply be a rest stop for spiritual seekers and tourists heading up to 8500 ft to Rocky Mountain National Park. Judging by the refusal of many of the towns folk to evacuate, I am betting on recovery. 

Last week here in Michigan we went from over 90*F to 40*F in 24 hours. When the weather broke there were tornado funnels over Lake Michigan west of us.  The weather is wild. 

This is a mad world. And yet I feel the pristine smile of hope. She sparkles in the waves of silence in this woodland beauty. Fall is in the air. Off to see if the geese have returned or moved southward. 

The geese are gone. As I walked up to  Monk's Pond frogs startled by my approach leapt away squeaking loudly. Earlier this summer there were hundreds of tiny frogs. Now there are only a dozen or so, large, fleshy green frogs. I spent time discovering their hiding places among decaying pond greenery. Suddenly I would catch a pair of eyes and a body hanging below the surface of the water, legs and webbed feet splayed out. They just hung there perfectly still.  If only my unbroken concentration at spotting them could arise during meditation!

I picked up “The Deep River” by  Shusaku Endo, the contemporary Japanese writer from the Monastery library. He was raised as a Christian in Japan. Christianity in the 16th century Japan suffered a  period of intense persecution  and now lives as a distinct minority in an overwhelmingly Buddhist and secular country. Endo’s Christianity is distinctly Asian, a far cry from the scholastic approach of Western Christianity. Deep River is a tale of four Japanese visiting the sacred ground of the River Ganges in India. Each is drawn on this pilgrimage for different reasons: the grief of man who ignored his wife during her life; the death walk through Burma by the Japanese during World War II, the inner  emptiness of modern Japanese secular life, and the life of a failed Christian seminarian. Endo writes beautifully. Each of these characters find surprising and simple healing in the midst of the Hindu funeral pyres on the banks of the Ganges.

At one point in the tale, the tourist guide takes his travelers into his favorite Hindu temple. They descend into the underbelly of the temple. It is dark and suffocatingly hot and humid. He shows them the wall painting of Chamunda. She is the goddess of charnel grounds and fig trees. She is a haunting figure, the daughter of Devi, the Mother Goddess. There is no flesh left on her, only bones and bulging eyes. She is suckling the lepers, the dying, the deformed. Even though she appears to have no milk left to give, she keeps feeding. She is quite different from Mary, the western Mother Goddess, who sits serenely on a crescent moon  holding her son in her lap. Nothing tidy or detached about Chamundra.  It seems that the fig and its taste of sweet sexuality is the fire that kindles the outpouring of Chamundra's nourishment to all in desperate need. She is present in all the killing fields, especially Syria.

The Russians and the Americans  have brokered a deal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. Apparently Obama has lost face. Perhaps losing face to win the peace takes a kind of courage and risk taking that we need much more of. And those cruise missiles are not far off. Maybe he deserves his Nobel after all. We will see. And the self immolation in Washington continues. This time Obama will not negotiate with Republican hostage takers. We are in for a ride. 

News from Colorado gets worse. More rain. More digging out.

A week later. My friend now has electricity, but no water and cell phone connectivity is hopeless from her home. I sense the doldrums are settling in. It will take months, years to rebuild the roads, bridges, the sewers. There are reports of oil leaking from ruptured pipelines and storage facilities. The mosquitoes are intense and it is a bad season for West Nike virus. 

Here in Ann Arbor fall has arrived. Murray, my dear partner, is stumbling around with a very bad back, friends are getting sick, and my son Ben and his fiancée are stuck in Istanbul waiting for the visa paperwork to make its way through the embassy in Ankara. 

And yet beneath all this turmoil and suffering  there is a quiet holding. If only we could listen to the call. 

Postscript to Istanbul and toenails

I was touched by the many responses to my homily-- my first, no less!

First off for those you concerned about my feet they have healed. The former baby toe nails have been replaced by perhaps a temporary version. Curiously they are distinctly wavy! Perhaps they will return to their former smoothness or maybe I will be left with a reminder of a potent shearing away.

It is easy to get caught up in the suffering of others, in this case mine. To feel bad or sorry for them, to identify with the storyline, to try to fix something and thereby miss something very important.

Shearing away of my spiritual sentimentality was an opening. Any shearing away is painful. But the question is whether we fall prey to turning the shearing away of ego layers into a story of suffering, something to be told and retold and something which engenders sympathy. This is all too human. But something vital is missed. The question is whether the shearing away opens into greater freedom, greater spaciousness, greater realness or whether it becomes another in the storehouse of good stories to tell.

In my recent reflections (my previous post) I ended with my sensing an opening to the 'yes' of the heart. This 'yes' is a deep and growingly unconditional love of the truth, as difficult as that may be. But the fruits are so sweet, so tender, so empty and ultimately so mysterious. In this journey of inner transformation it is possible that the grist of suffering becomes the fuel-- literally-- for an alchemical combustion. In the heating up, in the friction of the shearing away, the story line of suffering, the self pity of the victimhood, the drama of it all, is burned away. And when the ash blows away, space begins to breathe and wake up. The heart begins its quiet song of 'yes', 'yes', 'yes'. I have noticed this subtle arching back in my chest as though my heart wants to offer herself up in surrender, in sacrifice to this burning fire of love, masquerading as suffering. 

I visited the Shrine to Julian of Norwich during my recent visit. She lived during the Black Death. She reports saying God spoke to her these famous words: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. 

There is such deep hope in these words. I carried her spirit with my during my travels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich

Homily 6/30/13, Facing Jerusalem

Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.  When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them.56 Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”  Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

I would like to dedicate these reflections to my dear friend Karl Pohrt.

The words from Luke  today are known as tough teachings of Jesus.  'No you cannot say goodbye or bury your dead. And by the way you won’t have a place to lay your head if you want to follow me.' To make matters worse Jesus chooses to walk through Samaria rather than the safer and welcoming eastern side of Galilee. He chooses to walk through the territory of the ancient enemies of the Jews. And as we heard today he is not welcomed by the villagers. Jesus rebukes James and John when they suggest, “shall we call down fire on them. 

We see a shift in Jesus, “when the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem”. He knows where he is going. Maybe the time of miracles is over. In these words today you sense that the crowd of followers might be thinning. Certainly they are challenged. “To follow me you too must turn your face to Jerusalem and you must give every up consolation, every attachment to your former life, your family, every idea of safety. And you must choose the difficult path, that path through Samaria, through the land of your familiar enemies.” 

What does it mean to turn our faces to Jerusalem? Let us looking at the act of turning and what Jerusalem means in our lives.

I read these words before I embarked on three long trip to England and  Turkey. I was expecting a tranquil  spring walk over the rolling South Downs. These are chalk hills running south of London  from the ancient city of Winchester to the Seven Sisters, the massive white cliffs at Eastborne on the south coast. My walking partner and I planned a pilgrimage  through classic English countryside.

After two days and 30 miles up and down steep hills my feet were in agony, on fire. When I finally unpacked my feet in the B&B there were blisters the size of grapes despite moleskins. I thought I would pass out. 

Turning towards my pilgrimage, towards Jerusalem stripped me of my romantic desires for a communion with my home country, England. I communed with my feet. I felt betrayed by the goodness of being. No saving Jesus or God that I could feel. I was alone during that night of crisis, of disappointment and fear. Would my feet get infected, would I loose my toes to gangrene? And what about my walking partner? I was letting him down. I felt angry at God, betrayed both by God and my body. And mostly I felt so very vulnerable. I was far from home, my feet were so messed up that I could no longer feel the ground. It must have been the early hours that I noticed I was sliding into a kind of despair. In this space the view becomes narrow. “To hell with the practice of presence. It is all useless. It didn’t protect me and it doesn't give me what I want".

 It was at this moment of fitful sleep that I could feel I was turning away from Jerusalem. “What the hell Jesus, grace you are not saving me, so to I am done with you.” Something awoke in me. A quiet no. “Not going there. Yes I am despairing, yes I am suffering, yes I feel I am failing, yes I am deeply vulnerable, yes I am angry. But I will not walk away from my faith, my practice.” It was as though I was being ruddered back towards Jerusalem. I realized that turning towards Jerusalem means turning towards reality, one breath at a time, on footstep at a time. This is the practice of presence. 

So we made our way to Suffolk and stayed with my family. I nursed my feet for a week. What kind of pilgrimage was this? I was mostly stationary with short excursions along the English coastline at Dunich. Salt water and lots of ibuprofin did wonders. But I was still fragile.

So by the time I got onto the plane for Istanbul I thought I was ready to take the next step of this pilgrimage into an ancient culture. I imagined the homeland of Rumi, the birthplace of Constantinople and the daily calls to prayer and most of  all the mosque Hagia Sophia.  But the pilgrimage took a sharp turn from the very beginning. In the taxi I started coughing. ‘Oh God am I getting sick?’ But when we saw throngs of people wearing masks and scarves we realized it was tear gas. We had landed in the middle of Occupy Gezi Park. Over the next few days the protest spiraled into a mass movement. The police action was violent.  We received warnings from the State Department to stay away from demonstrations. This was not the bliss of Rumi or the wisdom of Sophia. This was the atmosphere of uprising, repression, hatred, and the groaning of rebirth. Any sentimental notions of Turkey were out the window. What I wanted was not to be. Turning to Jerusalem was more stripping away.

Jesus knew he was going to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. And most likely he knew the fate awaiting him. He was following in the foot steps of prophets who came before him. So his direction and maybe his destiny were clear. All I knew was that I was gingerly heading from England to Turkey. It seems that turning towards Jerusalem ought to mean, like Jesus, that you know where you are going. That there are no doubts, nothing in the way. Destiny lit up like a kind of runway. But it seemed that for me my destiny was  humbling vulnerability. And most importantly it meant not turning away   even though presence, grace seemed  a million miles away. Presence  can never be destroyed by external circumstances, whether it is the despair of wounded feet, or the turmoil of uprising. It means  turnings towards what is real and away from sentimentality and away from romantic spiritual fantasies. Walking through Samaria is not for the faint hearted. All is stripped away. All that is left is turning and walking towards Jerusalem. Mostly we feel bereft and lost.

Our desire for spiritual guidance runs deep. I have been getting up before dawn since I returned home. I am been reading a 100 day journal by my former Buddhist lama. A friend dropped it off this book during my absence. The words are penetrating in ways they never did while I was his devotee. The familiar pull to rush over and throw myself at his feet, to show myself in all my specialness, the prodigal daughter coming home and to be seen and welcomed is powerful. But this time it is not about rejecting him or rushing to find him again, but to let pierce these living words. This is not about recreating the personality dance of finding the perfect, super special daddy, but letting the mystery pervade the morning silence, trusting that no seeking or rejecting is needed.

 Fifteen years ago after 4 years of intense Tibetan spiritual practice I hit the wall. Alone in my room I heard my own voice-- no booming voice of the Lord-- insisting that I take down the beautiful altar that lay before me. Down came the icons, the mandala covered with rice, the image of Vajrasattva. All that was left was a blank wall and a small statue of a Black Madonna. Turning to Jerusalem then meant taking down a whole life, a whole spiritual path. For three years, I called them my desert years, I meditated, but there was no teacher, no path, no formal practice, no community. There seemed to be no destination, no Jerusalem. And then one day I asked. Two weeks later a book showed up and  new life began to surge. So a book arrived in this last week. It is tempting to make it into something. Something really big, a terrific turn towards Jerusalem. It is so easy for the desires of ego, of attachment to become Jerusalem. To become the idea of pilgrimage.  

So what are we to do. We are pulled in so many directions. Towards our addictions, to the market place of spiritual paths, to our fantasies, to our unexamined desires.. We want to know the way of Jesus, the true way. If only it were simple and clear. Thomas Merton writes. 

 "My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I 'think' I am following Your Will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please You

does in fact please You.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this,

You will lead me by the right road---

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore, I will trust You always, though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for You are ever with me,

and will never leave me to face my perils alone."

So I come back to the simple practice of sensing into my body. That is all I know. This is my kind of prayer. It is silent, distracted, welcoming, boring and totally necessary. What matters are not the dead ends, or mistakes but remembering what holds all struggle, all dangers. Presence lives whether I feel it or not. Faith is the umbilical cord to this presence. 

 And as we stumble towards Jerusalem sometimes we walk through the gentle hills along side the Sea of Galilee. The hills drop gently down to the edge of the Sea and all is well.  And sometimes we must go through Samaria these lands of familiar rejection. My Samaria was physical suffering, uncertainty, danger and the temptation to loose faith. And we  will  be rebuked for whining about no place to rest, no place to put our weary heads. And we are told we can't go home to pack a suitcase with the right gear, and say farewell to our loved ones. No comfort, simply the harsh reality of pilgrimage. And along the way we are told to love each other as we love ourselves. To be kind in the face of rejection and to turn towards a destiny that we don't know. This is tough spiritual practice and the tough teaching of Jesus.

Pilgrimage, this life of spirit is about dying before we die. Sometimes we are worn down layer by layer and sometimes grace tears into us like a jack hammer.

Hafiz writes:

 Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

-If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,

He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

-Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

-That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

-Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

-God wants to manhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

-The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

-Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

-But when we hear

He is in such a "playful drunken mood"

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.

This pilgrimage  to reality shook a lot of nonsense out of me. 

Yesterday a second toenail fell off painlessly. This was a vivid reminder of the walking pilgrimage. It is weird to hold a whole toenail in your hand that used to be such a part of your body. A small dead shell of former protection exposing skin that has never felt air before. The skin is pink, like primordial skin, like the skin before we are born. This is like the dying ego shell that was once such a cherished part of us. It is torn away, falls away, dissolves away, revealing the pink, fleshy receptivity of the soul. Open and vulnerable we open to the mystery of Jerusalem, to death and rebirth. 

The creeping daylight of dawn and the symphony  of birds draws me into quiet contemplation and knowing that I am being opened. The joy of a heart yes has returned. 

May we remember to turn our face to Jerusalem, may our turning be merciful, may we be bear being lost, for we are never abandoned and never forgotten.  Amen

Nighttime protests 6/1/13

Something is happening here. Istanbul June 2013

“Something is happening here”. With these words I began posting on my blog. But quickly turned to Facebook. I have now collected these posts in one document. I decided to leave this unedited. The bad grammar and spelling are a reflection of the stress and tiredness. 

5/30 Today the English landscape and tomorrow Istanbul.

5/31 Istanbul.  First signs of trouble was my coughing. Turns out there was tear gas in the air. In the taxi we noticed people wearing scarves over their faces. The taxi driver took to the back streets to avoid the chaos on the streets. My son B's fiancée, Y, was waiting frightened that we might be caught up in street police violence. We arrived safely and all seemed quiet.

And then in the middle of night I was woken with persistent clapping, cheering. The neighborhood was alive with people banging saucepans, cars honking, house lights being flickered on and off. It seemed like the entire neighborhood was awake at their windows cheering on the street protestors.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cC8pSetzyg

Only one station on television is reporting what is happening. News is coming via twitter. Otherwise there is a news black out.

This started as a peaceful protest against the government's decision to shut down Gezi Park, one of the few green spaces in Istanbul. After four days the police moved in, burned tents down, tear gassed the protestors and violence exploded. This has now spread to Ankara.

There is growing opposition to the government. Recent laws banning kissing in public and recently a ban on Alcohol after 10am to 6am. So this is now much more than the initial environmental protest.

According to twitter the army has announced that it will not support police action. Again according to twitter police and their managers are resigning.

No sleep possible tonight.

6/2 It seemed a quieter night. The neighborhood did wake us up with banging and chanting. It rained overnight and that has cleared the air of gas. Nice to open the window. 

Curious dynamic in the surrounding courtyard of apartments. The epicenter of the violence moved into our general area last evening. You could hear crowds cheering and horns blaring. So women began leaning out of their windows bagging on saucepan lids in support. Quite a cacophony! After a few minutes a shouting conflict developed between two women. Some wanted the noise to stop. And so it escalated. And now the banging was a response to the other women in the courtyard. Insults were hurled. This was no longer a protest against the government but the intimations of civil war that could break out here.

Half the population supports this government and half hates him. 

The next morning all was quiet in the courtyard. The air was clear again, free from tear gas, the clamor of the night erased by the squawking of sea gulls. Feral cats live in on the tin roof below.  

This all started with the government threatening to cut down the trees in Gezi Park and replace the park with army barracks and a shopping mall! This appeared in yesterday's Istanbul newspaper. Quite sweet!

This all started with the government threatening to cut down the trees in Gezi Park and replace the park with army barracks and a shopping mall! 

6/2 Istanbul. Avery long day: Hagia Sophia, the catacombs, then lovely Turkish lunch and coffee. 

                                                                       






The city seemed quiet. Peace came with whirling dervishes. Then off to a boat to get to the Asian side for dinner with Y's father. And then the tension started. Very loud chanting: anti government, anti American, anti fascist. Incredibly loud, piercing. Scary and Numbing. Following dinner we took a boat back home. The vibe began to feel not good. We landed within 200 yards of big crowds and exploding tear gas. No way for us to get home so off in the opposite direction to stay with K. et al. Sitting on the balcony Skyping a friend and I smelt gas. This is a surprisingly stressful. According to the BBC this protest is an afternoon and evening affair.

Quite spent and exhausted! But safe and place to sleep. Off tomorrow before it gets ugly again. Prayers please for this city, this country, and this traveling posse!

6/3 Waking up to a glorious view of Istanbul. A jewel. 

                                                                        

Yesterday protestors cleaned up Tehsin Square. That seemed like such a hopeful sign. Walking away from the violence last night we encountered young people walking towards the protests dressed ready for violence. Some of them carrying gas masks, others with medical masks. Apparently if you smear a mixture of antacid over your face it helps with tear gas. So they were coming prepared. 

The Prime Minister continues to issue bellicose statements. Yesterday it was the evil of social media. The only 'news' we have is a twitter feed from people that Yaprak respects and trusts. No much to go on. No free press. Only one TV station is not state owned. And they are clearly operating an a shoe string showing old footage over and over. 

So here am I looking at the early dawn not knowing whether B, Y and I can get home by taxi. Most likely we can. The BBC reports fighting between protestors and police late into the night in Yaprak's neighborhood. Seems to imply that after 'late into the night' people went home to sleep. 

But living with this uncertainty and the rage and fear that is in the air is challenging. Most us live with such an assumption of basic security. When this becomes a question it is deeply disturbing at many levels. And somewhere the stillness holds all of this. Yaprak's father, a military man, has lived through three revolutions. None of them good he says. We don't know if this qualifies as a revolution. For sure if this is a revolution it is not being televised!

....Morning tweets are calling for a change of tactics. Strikes, perhaps a national strike, but an end to street violence. But I fear the genie is out of the bottle.

.....Still Later: You are in luck! One more post. Made it back. It took two taxis. The first did not want to enter last night's battle ground so we started walking through the residuals of last night's violence. Garbage everywhere, the street torn up, makeshift barricades, a dozen or so riot police cleaning up. We picked up a second taxi driver who navigated around barricades, going up a one way street the wrong way. No gas in the air, but in the ground. Eyes stinging. Then all of sudden we are in the clear. All is peaceful. We are home. This is a beautiful sunny morning. 

Apparently the PM is leaving the country to going to Morocco. Crazy. 

Time to meditate and settle before we venture out the airport. Love to you all.

....We attended a wonderful service with the dervishes yesterday afternoon. 

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex02Vm-WiTs

And then this appeared on Facebook! Seems iconic and so very sad.

                                                                           

             
                                                                               

 6/3 This sets out the context of the violence, the uprising.

This sets out the context of the violence, the uprising,the revolution, depending on your mood. NYTimes June 2 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/europe/development-spurs-larger-fight-over-turkish-identity.html

....We are eating a wonderful Turkish meal in on the way to marmaris. The plan is to sleep in tomorrow. The tension has dissipated. But it will take time for this traveling posse to unwind. Did I mention we are a pose of eight adults plus a 20 month old. It was so touching on the streets of istanbul. Young people heading to the front lines would stop and point the way to safety. They seemed very concerned about the baby. We were too. 

Thank you for all your love and prayers.

6/3 I was woken by the call to prayer at 4am. The voice calling to Allah was rich, deep and touched me. It is a live voice, not a recording. The residual worries about returning to Istanbul returned. How does one hold an celebration of an engagement between the flurries of gas and violence?

Last night we arrived after following short flight in the dark. We drove up a windy road, ended in a bumpy driveway. The stars were brilliant and seemed closer than usual. And the silence was all around. As we gathered with our hosts for glass of Turkish wine I could feel the layers of tension begin to ease. 

The only noises are the quiet murmurings of the baby and the crowing cockerels. The view is breathtaking. We are surrounded by hills, the last house in a small valley a few miles outside of Orhaniye. it is green here with pine trees. The contrast with the warren of windy, steep, narrow lanes in Istanbul could not be greater. The air is clean and still this morning.

6/4. There seem to be two hot spots in Istanbul. Since the clean up, Tahsmir Square has been a peaceful occupation. Yoga is now happening in the square. Besiktas is a major intersection of streets alongside the landing for many of the boats that criss cross the Bosporus between the two sides of Istanbul. This is the second hot spot and is the site of daily violence. This seems more like a mix of vandalism, young men out for a good fight, anarchists, and provocateurs. Apparently the police wait to take the offensive until the evening when protestors are tired and on their way home. And there are grave worries that the violence will be used as a pretext for much draconian measures by the government. Apparently the police retreat from Tahsmir square was the first sigh of weakness by the prime minister. No backing down until now. Yesterday the deputy prime minister issued an apology. Probably too late. Public sector workers went out on a general strike. Should be over by the time we fly back to Istanbul. 

Our problem is that we can't get back to Y's mother's apartment. Taxi drivers won't enter protests areas. I can't count the number of times we have failed to cross through this zone. So moving about takes planning and stress. 

Which brings me to taxis. They are the life blood of the city. They navigate with centimeters of clearing space. Here the rule of thumb is you launch into the direction you want to go and then deal with the squeeze of oncoming traffic. Taxis drivers are hated here, or at least it seems so. They will scam tourists into what is called the city tour! And you pay! One of our posse fell victim to 'magic tricks', a sleight of hand during the money exchange. Sixty lire mysteriously disappeared and retrieval was impossible in Turkish! Not sure if taxi drivers are despised more than politicians.

6/5 Yesterday we received an emergency email from the US State Department warning us to stay away from protests. We received the news after a blissful swim in the almost turquoise Mediterranean. The beachfront restaurant had wifi. Almost surreal. Fears coursed through the group. The posse is organizing itself to minimize our risks so we can actually enjoy Istanbul and most important, B and Y's engagement party on Sunday.

.... A report from a neighbor in Istanbul says the situation is quieter. We also hear that international news organizations are paying for photographs of injured protestors. So folks are now looking for injured people now. So the news continues to be totally unreliable. 

Another day of Turkish meals, swimming and sunshine. 

.....It is an interesting experience posting personally on Facebook. Usually my posts come from websites that strike my fancy. For the first time I am sensing the power of social media. How much do I write; how personal; how reliable am I? When I was closer to events I could feel that I was navigating around my own fears? I knew that loved ones were worried? Would this frighten or would the posts offer something of a picture of the situation. And then there were all your comments, the love and concerns. What kept me going was your interest about what was happening on the ground. 

Ending the day at a cafe with free wifi and a beer. The Mediterranean is 50 yds away. It is hot. We are safe, and having a peaceful time. Love to you all.

....This captures the difficulty of this nascent movement. There is a general feeling of surprise that young people care. Since the massive repression of the seventies getting involved in political action has been small scale and met with violent police repression. Even a taxi driver was singing praises of the young people protesting. The street graffiti is great. 'Have sex tonight', Fuck the sistim'...

 From NYTimes June4 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/world/europe/istanbul-protests-started-over-trees.html

June 7th. An American blogging from Taskin Square:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/world/europe/istanbul-protests-started-over-trees.html

What is Happenning in Istanbul?www.globalresearch.caby İnsanlik Hali To my friends who live outside of Turkey: I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the medi...

June 8th We arrived back to Istanbul yesterday. And all seemed normal. The traffic moved in its usual chaotic manner, but it moved and the air seemed clear of gas. But this is not over. The prime minister returned to Istanbul yesterday and was greeted by tens of thousands of supporters. He is not backing down. So the fault lines are visible and so far aside for an apology for the police violence there seems no way for the sides to even begin a conversation. The occupation of Taksin continues. See the article below. The only sign of disturbance was the daily, evening chorus of banging, honking around the neighborhood. Quiet returned about 30minutes later. The good news is that we are all safe. Half the party including baby took off for Rhodes and will bypass the city entirely. And the engagement party is on! We have recaptured a spirit of love and celebration!

From the NYTimes June 7th http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/world/europe/in-istanbuls-taksim-square-an-achilles-heel.html?smid=fb-share

6/8 Yesterday we contemplated going to Taksim Square, but the local florist was very clear that it was not safe. Since the Prime Minister returned from Morocco on Thursday tensions have been rising. The protestors in the square are preparing for police violence. They have been stockpiling food and water, medical supplies in including vinegar-- for tear gas! They are building barricades in the midst of a peaceful occupation. Everyone I talk to is worried about provocateurs hidden among the protestors. 

Last night there were street protests in our neighborhood. We were on the Anatolia side of Istanbul enjoying a lovely evening with Yaprak's father's side of the family. Amazing Turkish food!! 
                                                                

Then on Y's twitter feed a photo of thousands of protestors marching through Besiktas was posted. We all looked at each other wondering whether we were going to encounter gas again on our way home. By the time we got home all was quiet. The protestors had moved onto Taksin square. 

It turns out the nightly chorus of protest banging happens on both sides of the Bosphorus. Y's family joining in.

There is something surreal about being with my future daughter in law and my son while they get haircuts in the midst of a serious moment in history. 

We are safe and the beat goes on!

Please forgive my spelling and grammar. It's a combination of tiredness and the weird ways this iPad spell checks. Maybe I have finally managed the correct spelling of Taksin square.

6/9 The propaganda war continues! This is a photo of the crowds greeting the prime minister in Thursday. But actually it is a poorly photo shopped photo, doubling the size of the crowd. 

I keep thinking of Orwell, especially in the light of the recent NSA revelations in the States.

http://listelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sms-ataturk-havalimani-tayyip-erdogan-gezi-parki.jpglistelist.comhttp://listelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sms-ataturk-havalimani-tayyip-erdogan-gezi-parki.jpg

Rumors today that there will be trouble in Istanbul. The photographer for the party is not coming. She does not want to drive through Istanbul with her car and all the photographic equipment. So much letting go in preparing this party. The scrutiny of international media will be crucial in the next while.

Last night violence was in Ankara, the capital of turkey. Amazing footage on the only television channel (Halk TV) showing what is actually happening. Protestors standing in front of water cannons, staring down the police. Such courage. It seems that the young people have woken up from the sleep of entertainment, video games and the Internet. All in the space of a week!

HalK Tv cannot advertise but they can show infomercials. They are poorly made. Last week it was about hoses that can unwind themselves when they get into a tangle. Now it is about Ataturk, the first president of this country who brought the first breath of democracy to the Turkey. He is a symbol of the uprising.

This is a report about life in Gezi Park, adjacent to Taksim Square before the police moved in later on Monday June 10th. So just as there was hope of talks between the PM and the leaders of the protest, the violence starts up again. Not very promising.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22848115

6/11 I am home after delays in JFK, pouring rain and mobs of tired travelers. Once above the clouds I was greeted with a sliver of a crescent moon. Such beauty above all the turmoil. 

Last night violence erupted again in Istanbul. Ben is staying on with his fiancee until her visa comes through. We all hope sometime in the fall. In the meantime they are heading south where life is calmer and safer. It is very hard to leave them behind.

I am tired and so glad to be home. All is quiet and peaceful. I am connected to this struggle and this new family. Love to you all. And may peace find its way into the hearts of all beings.

6/12 It is with a heavy heart that I read the news from Istanbul this morning. The violent action of the government will harden hearts. But the conversation cannot be stopped now. A generation of young people have woken up from their slumbers. The PM support comes from the marginalization of half the population in the previous regimes. So the fault lines run deep. The government is offering a curious mix of offering endless shopping malls and religion, state controlled television--the new form of Roman bread and circuses. This phrase originates from Rome in Satire X of the Roman satirist and poet Juvenal (circa 100 A.D.). In context, the Latin metaphor panem et circenses (bread and circuses) identifies the only remaining cares of a new Roman populace which cares not for its historical birthright of political involvement. Here Juvenal displays his contempt for the declining heroism of his contemporary Romans.[5] Roman politicians devised a plan in 140 B.C. to win the votes of these new citizens: giving out cheap food and entertainment, "bread and circuses", would be the most effective way to rise to power.

It was touching to listen to a young man speak of the awakening of his generation. Not all of course. Most likely the clamp down will be successful. But as I began this blogging something is happening. And it can't be put back in the bottle.

It is curious to be writing on Facebook as we learn that the NSA is spying on our communications. They are calling it big data. So big that they can predict with some certainty what our future actions might be. But I must say the democratic instinct in this country has deep roots, deeper than Turkey. Turkey has extraordinary history, tradition, invasions, conquests. It is beginning the messy journey into more consensual consciousness. And how messy, hurtful, frustrating it is, but until we can love our neighbors as ourselves, and relearn that over and over, we are stuck and in jeopardy. I wonder if this is my last post on this uprising. 

I am still very jet lagged and landing back into a very different life. So strange.

Photos of yesterday’s violence as the police retook Taksim Square.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22853007

And lest we forget these are some of the voices support the government. All must be included.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22861286

And yes the Turkish engagement celebration happened!!

Signing off with love, Alison