Quotes from the Wise

I have to share this passage out of Rabbi Rami Shapiro's excellent book, The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness (p. 39):

"Why are we so rarely in a state of grace? Because we rarely have the courage to expend ourselves fully in the moment. We want to know that there will be manna tomorrow, and we imagine that the best way to know this is to hoard some away.....
The dancer holds nothing back. Each movement is full, complete, with nothing left over. This is living in grace. To live in grace you must use up each moment and become empty again. If you accept the fullness of each moment and engage it without hesitation and restraint, if you use it up and leave nothing in its wake, you will be empty again and ready for the next moment.
The problem is that narrow mind is not comfortable with grace. It doesn't trust God to provide. It is by nature a worrier and a hoarder. Narrow mind prefers to engage the world based on merit. According to this paradigm, there are winners and losers, leaders and followers, the successful and the unsuccessful.
God says, 'I deal with each person according to merits, but to the person without merit I give grace' (Deuteronomy Rabbah, Va-Etchanan, 2:1)
The person of merit is the person trapped in narrow mind, preferring to operate on merit and seeing the world as a zero-sum game of winners and losers. The person without merit is the person at home in spacious mind, seeing each moment filled and full to capacity. There are no winners and losers in the world of spacious mind: there are only dancers at one with the Dance that is God."

I'm standing here in my kitchen making a savory bowl of curried hummus for my children to enjoy with a hodge podge of veggies and crackers, thinking, as I work, of a poem that has recently come to mind.

BECAUSE HE GAVE BIRTH
So
precious
is a person's faith in God
so precious;

never should we
harm that.

Because He gave birth
to all

religions.

~St. Francis of Assisi~
Translation by Daniel Ladinsky
in
Love Poems from God:
Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

Hmmmn. I love St. Francis...his words are rich and insightful, springing from a life of contemplation and compassion. That doesn't make him infallible, but his words merit thought. At first read, I embraced this poem for it's lovely ideal. And yet, the more that I contemplate it, the more I have this uneasy feeling.

I want to say "Yes!" but my heart is only half way there. I do not believe that religion was birthed from God in a pure sense. I believe religion was birthed out of man's longing and seeking after God. Humankind reaches out to God and God reaches back, opening our hearts to truth and wisdom. What Aldous Huxley called the perennial philosophy are the eternal truths found at the core of most religions. Sacred writings for thousands of years have reflected man's longing to know God and understand the universe and are laced throughout with these eternal truths coming straight from the heart of God. However, they also reflect the belief systems and traditions different groups of people have attached to these eternal truths in their attempt to explain the nature of God. Some of these traditions have been beneficial to mankind's journey, some have not.

Over time, religion has been used to put God's approval on any number of atrocities and to control masses of people with fear and indoctrination to the point of brainwashing. I know from personal experience the power that fear of eternal punishment and discouragement of thoughtful questioning can have over a person. Not only that, but the exclusive mindset that creates an "us" and "them" division. "Us" being the saved or the chosen, "them" being lost, sinners, the world. Anytime a belief system controls the way people act and think, overshadowing perennial truths, it has reached cultic magnitude.

This is why I say that God has birthed in our hearts eternal truths. Mankind, in his longing, wakens to these truths within himself, permeating creation, so we find this very philosophy throughout sacred texts, from the Bible to the Tao Te Ching, the Dhammapadda, the Upanishads and Gita and other ancient texts. In my studies, I've found that the mystics of every faith-tradition, even in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have become awake to the eternal truth and risen above the boundries of religion.

I have to quote the Holy Rascal Rabbi Rami Shapiro again:

"A Jew cannot meet God; nor can a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian or Taoist. No labeled person can meet the Unlabeled and the Unlabelable. Each religious tradition must be self-transcending. Each must lead it's students to a point of departure and help them make the leap from tradition to Truth, God, the nondual reality that is the Source and the Substance of all things."

love love love this quote...I can't think of a better way to sum it up.

Anyway, that's what I think about in my kitchen.

A Point of Departure

Reading in my well-loved copy of Wayne Teasdale's devotional book, The Mystic Hours, I came across this quote by Rabbi Rami Shapiro:

A Jew cannot meet God; nor can a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian or Taoist. No labeled person can meet the Unlabeled and the Unlabelable. Each religious tradition must be self-transcending. Each must lead it's students to a point of departure and help them make the leap from tradition to Truth, God, the nondual reality that is the Source and the Substance of all things.

I know I'm stepping out here, but this quote stirred my heart deeply this morning and confirmed so well my own point of departure. The journey here has been long, arduous, at times painful, but finally so rich and full of grace. Sometimes the path felt overgrown and lonely, but looking closely revealed the ruts of other travelers along the way who had made a trail and left markers for weary souls like myself...travelers like Wayne Teasdale and Rabbi Shapiro and so many other seekers who have offered words of wisdom and inspiration to me on this path.