In reading about kundalini energy, the most critical point that emerges is the idea of blockage - that is, that the most pernicious or uncomfortable, or even dangerous aspects of its full activation concern the emotional scares that we each carry in our body- memory.  For the energy to ascend to the highest level, where we find self-actualization, or our true self, it must first move through the chakras of the various aspects of ourselves - from ego birth through sexuality, to social ego, and on to the spiritual.  

As author Phillip St Romain puts it, this energy and the chakras are not the territory,as they say, but the map - they are to be seen as personal movements towards a more integrated self. Put in this light, the psychology of psychic energy becomes much more understandable to the modern mind.  We all know the basics of Freudian psychology - that we must find the buried traumas in our selves and expose them before we can move beyond neurosis.  This is just another way to look at psychic blockages to an improved life.  The energy Freud dealt with was largely sexual, and the goal, a livable life, were pretty small potatoes compared to the grander spiritual model, but based on the same idea the ancients had of cleansing the spirit.  Whether they be emotional or spiritual/evolutionary, we have blockages that must be superseded to live a better life.  

I'll take the spiritual model any day, for it promises unlimited potential and explains our situation in the cosmos much more thoroughly, but it is to the blockages that a question has occurred to me: if becoming "clear" (a word used by Scientologists for much the same thing, although the organization leaves a lot to be desired) leads us to our true selves, what do we have, the vast majority of us, when we live lives at lower levels; or, put another way, with serious psychological blocks?  A false self?  And if so, do we then have a destiny, an ordained path, within the framework of this partial self?

Again, if looked at in a more mundane sense, we can see that trauma determines much of what we do.  Had a bossy and demanding mother?  Then you are either steered towards someone like your mother as a spouse, or someone very much the opposite, depending on whether one has become dependent on or rebellious of that force. Either one may be said to be a blockage and control part of your fate.  There are an infinite number of variations. A person of another race or religion or nation been nasty to you?  Then you avoid them or actively dislike them.  Nasty teacher in 3rd grade?  Maybe you come to hate and fear basic math and cannot move forward with that subject (hello, liberal arts or social science majors?)  In any case, we all, or mostly all, have them, these scars that herd us towards or away from certain things in our lives, which have great consequences for our overall destinies.  Are these, then, the only things that determine our destinies, or is the "true self" still at work?

We have probably all heard of the analogy of humans to a tree (or other similar things).  An elm is an elm, but it grows to its fullest under certain conditions.  It can be frustrated by the blockage of other trees, or of light, or the constraints of the soil conditions, but it will still work to become an elm.  In the analogy, we usually picture the young would-be Einstein who grows up as a rag-picker in Manila, whose potential is forever buried in poor circumstances.  Thus, many have worked for social justice, so that all might have the same opportunities to develop their gifts. But this only works in the social atmosphere, and then only partially so; the rich kid might have a bully for a father, or fall into decadence - and so might the poor kid.  Or the rich kid might have an egomaniac for a father, and become a tyrant; but the same can be said of the poor kid.  

What is missing is the spiritual element, the lack of which also makes Freud's work and goals so limited.  The true self is not only about work performed in the human social atmosphere; in fact, many of the great sages advise against focusing on this kind of success. Rather, we are advised to find ourselves in the infinite.  This is where our true self lies.  And it is this struggle that determines our fate in both our normal lived selves and in society. It is this movement towards full integration with God - along with our confrontation of the blockages that our spiritual energy encounters - that makes the stories of our lives.  They may only involve overcoming a blockage in a "lower" realm - for instance, overcoming the antipathy one has towards that overpowering mother - or concern passages to other realms that exceed the social.  

However it may be, it seems that our fully realized selves are a-historical.  Such a perfectly realized being might become involved in human history, as the stories of the religions show, but for most of us, history is made through our attempts to overcome. We are all elms, in a way, but with will, a will that can move us to a brighter and more fertile place for full growth.  I suppose that understanding this is the first step towards a better place - where we can begin to will consciously towards something beyond our blockages.  But know it or not, it is this path, seen by the Hindus as a voyage up the base of the spine, that defines us.  This, in a greater sense, is who we are as individuals. To see our lives as such makes all the difference, as least to me.  To see it so makes each life a pilgrimage that is infinitely meaningful and potentially blessed.   FK        

In the years since his experience with kundalini energy, Philip St Romain (in Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality) has sought to understand the phenomena through every avenue he could - finding that only the Hindu religion has explored it in depth.  Even here, he finds some fault, for the Hindus believe that the "Brahman is in the Atman," or that God is in the individual, meaning that opening all the energy loci (chakras) will necessarily make the person and God one.  Not so, he says.  In Christianity, the soul is the essence of God, but it is not God.  In it, with us, there still remains choice.  We can, then, become thoroughly energized, obtaining great powers from the "ground" of being, but still decide to do evil - that is, do things that are solely considered from the egoistic viewpoint.  There is some lack of clarity here, for the Hindus also know that power can lead to evil, and thus usually train the acolyte first in great moral principles. 

There are fascinating possibilities embedded in this observation, including one of the most relevant, concerning the evolution of consciousness. We are no longer "group mind" but individualistic, and in that St Romain sees a progression from cultural infancy to an adulthood that lies closer to the precipice of self-realization. He is right - there has been a fundamental change in greater world consciousness, and it might, indeed, be evolutionary.  But he is also right in showing us that greater "spiritual", or non-material energy does not always lead to holiness, regardless.  At one point, he quotes an (Indian) expert on kundalini energy with this warning: such people as Napoleon Bonaparte or Hitler, who he (the Indian) considers geniuses, might also have experienced the thorough power of kundalini.  It is not as far fetched as it sounds.  

For years, I had subscribed to Quest magazine, the official publication of the Theosophical Society.  When I first encountered it, it was with great joy.  I was writing my thesis at the time, a thoroughly materialistic piece, when a sense of the spiritual began to creep in.  It was a breath of fresh air, but no one I knew was familiar with the very real presence of  spirit in daily reality.  But there in the Quest, it was taken for granted. Finally, I had found a large group of people who knew.  

Since then, I have found many others, but I had read a book years before on Hitler's spirituality.  Surprisingly, I found that he had been a member of the Theosophical Society, and had even attended a meeting in London.  It is fairly well known that, in the midst of the war, he sent out submarines to the Antarctic region looking for the portal to an underground civilization that he believed controlled history (it was believed to actually exist by many in the 19th century, including Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote a very odd book about it).  Even the Hollywood extravaganza of Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail was partially accurate: Hitler did look for ancient sources of mystical power that he was convinced existed. He was, strictly speaking, a mystic. 

He also had extraordinary powers.  For decades, people have written of him disparagingly, as a wall-paperer (an unnecessary bit of snobbery, I think) and a third-rate artist (which I think is also overdone.  The one always shown, of a city street, seems pretty good to me).  Overall, the impression has always been given that he was a small man of little talent who tried, Freudian-like, to make his "power" bigger.  

But how can that be?  He was, it is hardly ever noted, a decorated war hero of WWI, an extremely brave man. He went without fear to prison after the extraordinary Beer Hall Putsch, where he wrote his brilliantly cynical best-seller, Mein Kampf. And the rest is history.  This little man of no importance magically captured the German volkgeist, conquered nearly all of Europe, and had he had a little more time for his scientists, would have had the A-bomb and perhaps conquered the world.  Not bad for a paper-hanger of no particular talent.  Given the contradictory views on him, most always with a negative bias (understandable but not objective), the power of Hitler has always been an enigma to historians.  To this day, they often say, how could it be?  How could a decent-enough people like the Germans have allowed this?  

The confusion would be cleared if it were known that he did experience the continual flow of kundalini energy, which would have put him as an adult over children in personal power and perception. And we would also have to conclude that such "holy" powers are not necessarily holy.  In the past, in a time and place with an older form of consciousness, the possibility of kundalini energy being used for evil purposes would have been nipped by the stringent rules of the disciple-guru relationship. Now, it must be tempered by personal morality.  It seems to me that this personal morality, in the face of such power, must be based not on humanistic considerations, but on spiritual grounds, on grounds given us by the Ultimate, for the merely personal here might not be enough.  That is, we must have a deep spiritual grounding to guide our choice, if we are to develop into a world of fully-realized beings.  For evolution to unfold, then, we need the presence of the true spirit more than ever.  

As a youth, when I first read of such mystical powers, I wanted them, big time.  Now, I am very, very glad they were not given to me.  Perhaps it is best that they are never given me.  St Romain's trials were synonymous with the trials of the saints.  We might all pray not to be confronted with that power.  And yet- there is a calling, isn't there?  Perhaps we who would rather not are like children on the cusp of adolescence - like Peter Pans - who do not want to give up the blissful ignorance and lack of responsibility of the child.  Some like Hitler were given this power before they grew up with what they had.  Maybe there are now many of us who are ready but don't want it.  But St Romain tells us it was more than worth it.  I remain humbly undecided and will concentrate on turkey for now.  FK                   


     

There is a new priest at our church who, somehow, often happens to speak about what I am reading.  The fact that I often read about religion mitigates these circumstances somewhat, but still, there are a lot of religious issues out there.  This Sunday was no different, with one exception: while his talk mirrored what I had read at the cabin last week, it wandered into another area that caused me to choose another book.  That is, that the present now has led to the future through him.  On the face of it, that is meaningless, but this is how I picked out the book, Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality, by Philip St.Romain:

The priest, a foreigner with very conservative views, slipped from discussing 'making God be part of all of our lives' to discussing the evils of chakras, kundalini and yoga, pronouncing without exception that these ideas and practices would lead us to Satan.  I could hear the murmur of confusion as he said it, which mirrored my own thoughts.  I have read several priests, both living and dead, who have praised many aspects of Eastern religion in the last century, including Thomas Merton, Fr Bede, and Fr. Keating, all well-known writers in good standing with the Catholic Church.  But I did not think of Fr. Keating at the time of my choice of book.  Rather, I was looking for something on the holy that was not hide-bound, and saw Keating in my Kindle library.  Clicking on him, I saw the "what readers bought who also bought Keating," blurb and there was St. Romain's book.  Ah, just what the doctor ordered!  

So it was that I was brought back into the confusing realm of ecumenicism, where even the priests of the Church disagree on what passes for "holy."  

And back to Eastern religion.  Regarding chakras and kundalini and the like, I had gotten very interested in such things after, in my glorious youth, I had taken a tab of real, nearly pure LSD and was literally knocked off my socks by a blast of energy that traveled up my spine and exploded in a white light in my head (described in my book Dream Weaver).  It was then, for a while, that I thought I knew everything, as revelation after revelation poured in.  However, such enlightenment did not hold - as I found was most likely, after reading about this power.  It has to be nurtured, and the body (ideally) strengthened by yoga exercises. That is what yoga is really for.  

This energy is not to be toyed with.  It happened that Fr Keating gave an introduction to this book, written by a man - St. Romain- who was (and is) a model Catholic, and who had no intention of awakening, or even any knowledge of, kundalini energy.  It happened gradually through his standard prayer routines.  Says Keating: this energy is a higher body energy, not the work of the Holy Spirit, but something like the added strength that occurs to males at adolescence: it grants great power which can be used for both good and evil.  The spiritual teachers of the East know this, says Keating, and so prepare the disciple first both physically and morally before helping to stir this energy.  He notes how infamous gurus "somehow" can use this energy to control disciples for their own selfish means.  It may, then, indeed help the work of the devil (of evil) - but it may also do the work of God.  It is power, simply put, that has to be controlled. 

So, as bigoted as the local priest may seem, he has a point, but that only goes so far.  This is the conundrum of ecumenicism for the modern religious leader: before he can condemn or extol another religion, he must first understand it.  To do that requires an open mind.  Lacking that, bias will rule out.  Good religions were inspired by holy people, but were formed by society at large.  Societies necessarily prefer their own truth over others; prejudice then forms, and is often validated by a slanted or incomplete view.  But the antithesis, which we now see happening at an alarming rate in our own society, is also dangerous: because it is foreign does NOT make it good, or at least does not make it immediately applicable to our society.  It must first be understood in the context from which it came, and then appraised for its applicability here (the Aztec sacrifices would probably never be applicable here, or at least I hope so). 

So much for religion and culture.  The fact is that kundalini energy is real, and that, when it happens here, it may well be misunderstood as insanity (or the devil).  Like many other things of the body, it often just happens.  But, unlike acid indigestion, it is a power that can bring one to the portals of the ultimate.  St. Romain's account so far is fascinating.  There will be much more of it in the next blog.  It is a frightening account, and we find that this great energy creates no easy path - but then again, the path to enlightenment has never been portrayed as easy by any priests, be they Christian, Hindu, or Siberian shamans.  FK      

Before I left for the UP last Monday, I thought of Friday the 13th blog - of bad luck mentioned, and even of terrorists killing in the name of God.  That evening, while driving back from our son's college, we heard the news of the Paris attacks.  It was with the same kind of shock that I got while driving back from my son's grammar school that beautiful September morning on 9/II, when it just could not possibly be: so much was perfect, the town and country bathed in the mild warmth of the changing season.  I do not see the former in any kind of prescient light - I did not have a "feeling" that something bad was going to happen.  Yet, it is eerie none-the-less.

The time spent at the cabin in the UP was bleak - warm, but very windy and cloudy.  Lake Superior threw up its waves onto a beach that a few months before held tourists in bathing suits. One wash from one of those waves could have meant death.  It is all around us, this threat, from man and nature.  And it is this potential suffering that draws so many people away from religions that offer good news, that offer a release from suffering and a gateway to wonder and joy.  

So it was in the bleak, rainy pine barrens that I finished Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy, with these things on my mind.  On the terrorists, it hit a nerve: these are the very same type of people that many of the Israelites were at the time of Jesus. They did not have bombs and guns then, but they had the will to kill the Romans (who, it is easy to say, deserved it), and the knives, or sicarri, to carry it out.  And they did, often times walking up to Roman guards and stabbing them, knowing full well that this would be met by their own death.  They were, if not the first suicide "bombers", then the first well-known ones.  The Romans considered the Jews lunatic fanatics, and it was considered a punishment for a civil service member to be sent there.  Nuts, crazies, these people, all in the name of a curious god.  

The Muslim killers today see themselves as singularly blessed by God, Allah, and thus promised a Caliphate to be run from His holy book, the Koran - just as the Jews sought a Messiah to return temporal power to the Jews, run on, in part, (what we call now) the Old Testament.  We know this well from the Gospels. Jesus is asked again and again about his kingdom, and he answered again and again, "not what you think."  It was, he said, both a "kingdom not of this world," and "the kingdom within you." They are, we are to understand, one and the same, which is, as Willard continually points out, THE message of the Gospels: that God meant us to have a life of beauty both in eternity, and in this world - and both were continuous.  If we could only see.  

How could we come to see?  After finishing the book, I was struck with another vision of the Gospels, and surprised by how much my thoughts of them came from a culture that is, frankly, sick of them. They have become for us a dreaded moralistic nagging that has been pounded on us as a people for centuries, much of it intended for our oppression.  It is a moralism that denies us fun, denies us living well with what little time we have on Earth.  It is the moralism that tells us to (for some) not drink alcohol, have sex only in a certain manner, to never go outside certain prescribed boundaries.  No wonder that when Enlightenment philosophers and scientists gave us a blind path out of a god-made universe - that is, gave us enough information of a certain kind  to see the world as a purely natural phenomena - that we jumped at it.  Off to the races!  Now for fun!

Of course, it has not led to fun; and the idea that spirituality kills fun was, we see through Willard, not the intention, not the point.  It was never the point of Jesus, who drank wine, got tipsy or at least allowed others to do so without reprimand, and, for all we know, danced at weddings.  No, we have gotten it all wrong.  The Gospels, instead, were a guidebook to ecstasy, not only for the afterlife, but for life here and now.  So much so, that by coming into the Kingdom that is God's on earth, we will find that even the horrors of suffering and painful death are well worth it.  

It is an entirely different view, this other understanding, both from the moralistic standpoint and from the standard modern reality. Jesus taught lessons in the only way they could be taught at that time and place - within the context of the law-giving Yahweh.  But, recall: those who practiced the letter of the law, the scribes and pharisees, took the brunt of Jesus's wrath.  Following the law on the outside and not on the inside was hypocrisy at its worst, a distortion of the meaning of the law, as distorted as moralistic law is to most of us today.  It was never meant to condemn us because we were (are) a fallen people.  Rather, we are a fallen people because we don't understand the intent of the law.  It was meant to bring forth God from within us by placing our emphasis there, rather than on the external things that society covets.  And in focusing on our real being, on our inner connection with God who dwells in all, it was meant for us to become more and more like God- which is joy and love.  

And that is it - that is the point of the Gospels.  Not to make us feel so guilty we wish to chuck the whole thing, but to make us look to where we SHOULD look, where God resides - and there find real and lasting happiness, both here and in eternity.  It truly was an act of love on Jesus's part.

And there is the thing - as a young man, I looked to the East for  wisdom, for I hated the dead moralism of Christianity that I had grown up with.  And it is only in recent years that I have seen a greater truth - that not only does the East offer us a technology for enlightenment within its own cultural frames of reference, but so does Christianity.  Exactly the same thing.  It is based not on yoga postures and spinal rigidity (no small things), but on meditation on the reality of our situation.  And in this meditation, we find that we are God stuff, worthy and made for it, and in finding this God stuff, life takes on beauty and meaning and the same ecstasy promised by Indian gurus.  The same.  

On suffering, the East says we must get rid of attachments - which is exactly what Jesus said (thus his misunderstood quote, "hate your spouse and your family" etc.  Meaning, do not have final attachment to even them).   And in that, suffering does not defile this mortal life.  In finding God within, mortal life shares with the eternal.  Which it does, as both East and West have always said if we could hear, because it is already here.  

For the East, it is said that life is a dream; for the West, that it is sin; but what both mean is, we see it all wrong, as if it were a dream or a meaningless life of suffering.  It is neither.  And we have been given the technologies to discover this, even right here in the now self-hating West.  Even is Islam, where many continue to look to God to give them back their earthly Caliphate, just as the Jews looked for an earthly king; so wrong now and then that we might as well call it a sin.  FK                         

Today is Friday the 13th, and although I've walked under ladders and had black cats cross my path and have lived to tell about it, the belief in evil times or omens still stirs something remote and uncomfortable.  I think I know why this is: so much of life comes about without any foresight or planning that we come to believe, in our core, that something beyond us is pulling our strings.  Especially with bad things.  While superstition is often seen as confining, it might also be a little liberating: putting a name or date or action onto bad things in our lives takes away a little of the mystery. Just don't do anything dangerous or important on Friday the 13th.  There.  Problem solved.

Of course it is not.  In my last published essay, "Hell House," I wrote of the good and the bad of the loopy decision I made to buy a wreck of a house.  This caused a cascade of events that could not be foreseen by anything but hindsight, and even then, much was left to an irascible fate. As said, it worked out, in the long run, for the better.  Then again, maybe not, but it worked out and life has been fairly good - after the steep price I paid for the obsession with fixing that house.  A steep price that was charged with great disappointment.  

Life is what happens while making plans for something else; the best laid plans of mice and men; the irony of tragedy and the folly of comedy.  We have sayings and plays for life as it actually is, not as we hope it will be.  Even the essay about odd fate was, at first, a disappointment.  I had wanted an "oomph" at the end, a crowning insight into the whole affair.  It did not come. Instead came a subtle hint that life works out if you let it, regardless.  A week later, I went back to it to correct it.but couldn't.  Like life, the essay wasn't what I had planned, but it worked out right, somehow.  I had to leave it as it was.  A disappointment, but then again, not; rather, the way it is.

Disappointment - it is a driving force in the world.  For some it results in anger and violent actions; for others, fatalistic defeat and ennui.  The first is like a child stomping his feet to get what he wants; the second, like the abused child who simply disappears into himself to avoid getting hurt again.  If one wants to be far, to give the truth to the human condition, one can hardly blame those responses.  We all feel them at times ourselves.  Worse, some disappointments are so grave that it is hard to see that there could ever be a good side.  The mass killers of the 20th century were children who were stomping their feet.  For their victims, was there a bright side?  This has always haunted me, and probably will continue to do so.  Such outrageous suffering of so many innocents is beyond any reasoning, or any normal human conciliation.  Not for all, though.  Many of those others have been chronicled here, and I add another: the Dali Lama.  Even with the mass murder, rape and ethnocide of his country by China,he remains confident, as if he knows a secret we don't. But to me, this is hard to reconcile with the suffering and the dead.  I am no Dali Lama.

Still, in most circumstances, things DO seem to work out even as our plans are thwarted.  To reiterate a personal note, the most bitter disappointment in my life was not receiving a permanent professional appointment for the years spent in graduate school.  Yet I knew then, and know even better now, that that time was the lest spiritual and the most flawed (by frantic striving, envy, and stark competition) in my life.  My failure, my great disappointment, was probably for the better.  

Even if not, it is what has come to pass.  If I were to believe in vindictive Fates who pulled our strings, I could be left bitter about my thwarted plans.  But if I believed that I was part of a bigger whole, one that, in totality, was the only good, I could not justify wallowing in bitterness.  What a waste that would be in my life, for it is overall very good, at least for now.  Logically, this might seem to put the horse before the cart - if evil shows itself, doesn't that mean that life is evil, or at least under its sway? But it is not, not if we let life be; not if we keep our disappointment from entering our greater depths.  For then, when the bad is over, it is good again.  And maybe even better.  On that, we will never know, but we can know that willed darkness creates more darkness, and light more light.  Disappointment goes, and life moves on, if we let it.  And in that, instead of defiance or defeat, we find growth and a little more of our soul.  FK  

          

"You already know.  The Spirit is with you and the Spirit is in you."  John, 14:17

"Do not plunder the Mystery with concepts."  Zen masters

"...Can we begin to attain the mystical gaze Rahner suggests we must?  I think we are on the very edge of history - and about to be edged over - by the depth of the need and from the depths of our own desire."  Richard Rohr.  (all quotes taken from The Naked Now, by Richard Rohr)

For me, reading The Naked Now brings me back to the future, in more ways than one.  For one, I have speculated on the future of deep truth, of a reignited spiritual world, several times before. For another, much of our speculation - both mine and others such as Rohr - is based on a return to a way of thinking that we now consider archaic and, frankly, superstitious.  Try as I might, I cannot believe in the myths of traditional groups.  I must see in them something archetypal, as if that could convince the world of a 'something else,' of a greater reality, of a great mystery, in the midst of our humdrum world.  But it cannot.  Perhaps for a few old hippies and mystics like me, but for the rest of the world?  It doesn't seem possible.

The above quote from the Zen masters is absolutely on target - do not plunder the Mystery with concepts, for that reduces the mystery to the understood, similar to trying to discover the essence of life by dissecting a corpse.  And yet, without talk, without an attempt at some coherence, will people become aware of the Mystery?  Will people even care?  What we see in the news is about money and power - who has it and who is hording it - which is behind much of the strife in the world, including those groups who claim they are killing for God. Where, in this, is the Mystery?  Where in the emerging one-world consciousness is this, the sublime, the essence?  

And so, in trying to decide the future of the Mystery in humans, when we look to the world stage, we cannot help but become pessimistic.   Except - except when we consider what John said, above: "You already know.  The Spirit is with you and the Spirit in in you."  Yes, it is; we already know, but have been distracted. But Rohr says it will show itself, this Spirit, out of need and desire.  

WilI it? Do we have a cause to be optimistic?  This Spirit is within us and it is essential.  It is what we are missing and, if it is within us already, we know it is missing.  Part of the mystery, though, is how and why this profound base, or essence, of humans has been hidden.  Here, too, we can look to myth and perhaps begin to see a clearer pattern, something that begins to make sense out of a Garden or a Flood, or Grandmother Spider, but they lead us back to mystery.  The "why" is still largely unanswered, as anyone knows who has questioned the reasoning behind the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.  

None of that, these "concepts," are enough.  But it might be enough, as John said, to know that we "know." It seems likely, then, that (as Rohr said) this inner knowledge would stir such desire and need that we will turn back, to see more clearly as the primitive mind had, to find that which is our quintessential birthright.  We are part of the beauty, the solitude, the magnificence of the Mystery, which is the All. That we have forgotten this is true, but somehow it is also true that we still know this, too.  So I think Rohr is right: the need and desire will bring us back to ourselves.  

The only question that remains, then, is something that has also been addressed here before; will this re-awakening happen through evolution, or through the dark night of the soul? Suffering in every tradition I know of is the prerequisite for deep knowledge.  Will our suffering be enough as it is now, as we struggle in our world of quiet desperation, trapped in our objective, this- or- that mind?  Or will we have to go down the road to the bloody end, until our vision of a reality absent Spirit has bled us dry? Could we, instead, learn to trust the sages and know that the Spirit is within us now? With that, we will know what to do and where to go, and so avoid all the drama.  But that possibility lies in the future, and the future, as always, is part of the Mystery.  FK        

On the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today is a picture of a huge freighter being christened for its first sail out of Detroit on June 7, 1958.  At 729 feet, it was then the biggest ship on the Great Lakes.  17 years later later, loaded with 26,116 tons of taconite (iron) pellets, she would encounter gale winds of 70 knots and waves of 25 feet or more in the extreme eastern end of Lake Superior.  At about 7 PM on November 10th, 1975, she would disappear from radar off the coast from Whitefish Point. She was named after the primary investment owner,  Edmund Fitzgerald, president of Northwestern Mutual Life in Milwaukee.

The questions are not quite answered, and probably never will be.  Did it hit underwater shoals?  Did water seep into the hull, slowly and undetected? Was the main hatchway improperly secured, allowing the water to pour in and sink the ship quickly? The latter was Gordon Lightfoot's explanation, taken from the Coast Guard, but later changed.  In any case, no man was found, and the wreckage lies undisturbed in Canadian waters, now protected legally from scavengers by the Ontario Heritage Act.  It is a graveyard, like so many others on the lake, made famous by Lightfoot and the fact that it was the last sinking of its kind on the Lakes.  We all know of it from the eerie, timeless song.  Stand on the shores of Lake Superior in November, as I do every year and am about to again, and you understand the music.  It, this lake, is mysterious, dangerous, vast - in a word, cosmic.  I both fear it and love it, for the grandeur that produces the fear.  

No song or poetry could ever hold it fully.  The companion piece to the article, then, is just what one might expect but could never predict.  Written by Stephen Kalmon, he talks of the last night he saw his brother Allen.  He was visiting Milwaukee from up north where he lived, now as a new cook for a maritime company.  Steven describes the visit: "Finally, he said, 'It's time to go, Stevie.'  We  walked out together, shook hands and said our goodbyes.  He headed to our mother's home, where he would stay the night.  I headed back to my family, making a mental note of his unusual behavior.....It was the last time I would see him." 

We find, over all, that Allen was unusually affectionate that night, tinted by a warm melancholy, as if he knew something.  A month later, he would get a call from his employer telling him that the main cook was sick and that he would have to take his place the next day.  Allen was, his wife said, excited about the job.  He had had trouble with alcohol all his life, and on ship, none was allowed.  He felt that he had found a safe niche.  He was, of course, the cook on the Edmund Fitzgerald who in the song said, "fellas, its been good to know ya."  

Do we get premonitions before we die?  If so, how?  We know of no science that could adequately explain this, for it creates mountains of problems, both for science and for philosophers. For the later, we would have to ask, "if so, what of  free will?"  Yet we know, if we are candid with ourselves, that we believe it, and many of us have seen it, seen a change before death.  Most are of old people whose deaths are expected, but some are not - like Allen.  This possibility, never to be decidedly proven, points to something in us that knows far more than the future; it points to mystery, to a depth in ourselves that is beyond the selves we know.  We know the secret is hidden in us, waiting to unfold. That unfolding comes at death, but sometimes before, sometimes just before we die.  It, this mystery, is not "out there," an alien interloper, but us, somehow at the core of us that we cannot grasp in this world.  It is such that, were we to think of it enough, there could be no long-term despair, for nothing is ever settled or over and done in the mystery.  It goes on and on, to an infinitude that terrifies us, but should also give us limitless hope.  For it does never end; it is never over.  There is always hope of new possibilities, not just for some, but for everyone, because this hope is based on something far more real than what we consider real.  It is based on this mystery, this terror that is also our salvation.  

And we know it.  When we look out at a cold storm and listen to Gordon Lightfoot's "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," we feel the terror of the storm and waves and coming death, but we love the song for the mystery of it - the far-off sounds that remind us of our own Edmund, our own fate and destiny.  Stand at the edge of Lake Superior in November and you will feel small - and large, like the astronaut on the moon looking at earth.  We are small, but this lake, this terrifying grandeur, is not in the lake itself, but in us; the lake is water, thoughtless water.  It is our soul that dresses it with this awe, for that is where it resides.  The lake is, in this way, our reflection, a mirror into something deeper that puts us all on the deck of the sinking ship,, and that song in us.  

The 200 lb. bell from the wreck was recovered in 1995 and placed in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, MI.  Since then, it is rung 30 times on the anniversary of the wreck - one for each crew member, and one for all the others who have died on the lakes.  But that last could be for all.  "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee" is not only a poetic allusion to shared loss, but to our mutually shared mystery in life, and beyond.  We know this, too.  To live this mystery is not to live in fear, but in wonder and awe; to live it is to live in the age of miracles. It is possible, and one day, we will see that it is our birthright.  The storms will rage and the waves collide, and we will be among it all, fully alive, boredom and despair as unimaginable as it was on the deck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 40 years ago, but with a difference; then, we will know, or begin to know, that those icy depths that hold our fears are really our greatest gift.  It is our eternal mystery, our calling, the path to our home in the cosmos.  FK         
      

How do we 'get better?' How do we stop f-ing up?  These are questions, I bet, that we ask ourselves more often than "how do I get to heaven" or "become perfect" and I think they offer a very good start.  We know of which we speak: the snippy remark that turns a nice Saturday afternoon with the spouse into quiet hostility; the arrogant or boastful conversation with an acquaintance that makes us wince afterword; the dismissive look we give to a bunch of low-rider juveniles on the sidewalk, which lumps them into a stereotype that makes us realize our own exclusive group - think.  All cringe-worthy, all short of what we know is the better way.

We don't want to cringe, to realize our shortcomings, and so we often avoid what has been in front of most of us all our lives: the image of our most revered people.  For Christians, of course, that image is of Jesus, and we often dispel the discomfort we get from the Gospels by saying, "sure, easy to say in a  perfect world.  If I did that (turn the other cheek, give an extra cloak when one is asked for, live for the day) I would be bloodied and poor and living by the dumpster."  But some careful examinations of perfection don't let us off the hook so easily.  Some, like Dallas Willard's The God Conspiracy, force us to understand that being Christ-like is do-able, and that, in the end, leads to a better life, for others as well as the self.  

Willard starts from the notion that Jesus was brilliant, not just "good," and spoke in the manner of genius, where all things were related in a seamless whole.  Discussing the Beatitudes - the Sermon on the Mount - he finds for us the common theme: do not live for other's approval, but for the approval of God; to do this, forsake anger, contempt and arrogance.  And we find that he is right - that anger produces a never-ending chain of misery, and that social approval produces contempt and arrogance, those on the bottom vs. those on the top.  In such a system, the Law becomes the bulwark that sustains the system, even if this law came from Moses himself, for the law is practiced only for external reasons - for social approval.  Thus Jesus rips the Pharisees, those guardians of external law, and shows them how to LIVE the law - to extend oneself outside of one's hierarchy; to eat and communicate with those we believe to be beneath us.

All tied into one theme: treat others as you would have yourself be treated, and you do away with exclusive hierarchy, which breeds contempt, which breeds anger, which breeds hatred - which breeds misery.  Do away with social approval, which causes need for certain things and behaviors, which produces anxiety and fear and greed, to guard and maintain those things and behaviors.  In the end, live for the day alone, live for God and His law, and trust - for His kingdom is greater than all that human social nonsense.         

This summary of (the first half of) Willard's long and insightful book is inadequate, but perhaps the reader has formed the same question in his or her mind from this that I did: sure, great, Willis, but how the hell do you do that?  What kind of mind-police would I need to never get angry, to never become snobby or self-righteous? The first is build into our animal DNA, while the second is built into our social system. I assumed, as is often the case, that we would have to rely on that old catch-all, grace - which cannot be achieved, but must be bestowed.  But it dawned on me last night that this not necessarily the case.  

Willard shows very clearly how our ordinary behavior creates misery for both the world and ourselves, and how clearly Jesus understood this. What Jesus was trying to do was to convince us through concrete parables that our ordinary way of thinking made our lives more insecure, more miserable, quite apart from an abstract notion of God.  This is why Willard reminds us that Jesus was not only good, but a genius.  

That is: If we understood what Jesus was saying, we would follow his advice out of our own interest.  Like the middle child in the argumentative family, we would be the peacemakers, because peace makes for a better overall life.  Like the oddball in high school - and we all are at some point - we would help ourselves by seeing others as ourselves.  We can, then, begin to achieve this more perfect way by deciding to - by seeing the logic in it, and how it would, without question, make our lives better.  Lose your job and have to move to a smaller house or apartment? Flunk a test?  Get a homely girlfriend or dorky boyfriend that you like?  No big deal.  As for anger - yes, it is unavoidable, but one can let it go.  Teased by the kids in Junior High?  Punched in the nose by the local bully?  Snubbed by the cool kids at the lunch table?  What to do - get into fights or let it gnaw and turn into bitterness - or let it go?  The answers are obvious.  For a better life, at least when one is not threatened with immediate great harm, turn the other cheek - and don't mind the kids at the other table.  They are only kids, and if they behave like that when older, are still only kids.

In the end, though, it is best to know that God is with us through it all - that there is a moral basis as well as a practical basis for behavior.  But to become better  - to stop f-ing up - is also a mind thing, something we can think our way into.  Amazing.  And we thought the great holy men were only well - meaning cherubs.  FK                 

This last week we had to drive down to Mississippi to move my mother-in-law into a retirement community, which was trouble enough.  The move itself was the easiest, in weight and carry, that I have ever done, with no flights of stars anywhere, with no stairwell walls to poke holes into.  Emotionally, however, it was one of the toughest.  She had spent the last 40 years in her house, with all the memories of her now deceased husband, her grown-up grand children, a wedding (ours), and countless barbecues being left behind for what she knew was the beginning of her final journey.  As she is only 21 years older than I, it caused me some pause for reflection as well.  But worst of all, or so I thought, would be the drive down and back.

I have described the Mississippi valley area a few times before, in my book Dream Weaver (yes, still available), and in the essay, "Elvis Goes Electric" (which did NOT win a prize this year in the Writer's Digest contest.  Philistines!), and have had few good things to say.  Boring.  Flat corn country.  Bad food.  Dismal towns with dismal gas stations and people obviously blanched by the boredom, or so it has seemed.  But not this time.  For some reason, the drive was beautiful.  I am not sure why.  The muted colors of late fall, the bright blue cow ponds in the stripped fields of tan and earth-red, the patches of trees sprouting, now nearly naked, by small towns with water towers and names like Peru and Effingham, whose near-miss name on obscenity is doubled by the presence of a massive steel cross by the roadside. Beautiful, and I don't really know why.

Or maybe I do.  This time, we listened to books on CD, both down and back, and on the way down, got to finish the one started on our last trip to the UP of Michigan.  Titled Rocket Men (sorry I do not have the CD with me or the author's name).  A sprawling book about the US space program that culminated in the Apollo 11 landing on the moon, it delved into the lives of rocket scientists, WW11 espionage, the missile race, politics, and, of course, the engineers and astronauts of our greatest national project, the 60's space program.  A bit wonky at times for me, still it thrilled.  No more did it thrill than towards the end, where the astronauts own words were used to describe space and the moon, what it was like.  It reads (or, in our case,was read) like an epiphany, for that is what it was.

We learn, for instance, that even those who merely circled Earth were changed.  Perfect, stoic marine John Glenn - for months after his historic flight could not help but look to the sky, always, stumbling as he walked.  So common was it among the astronauts that they had a phrase for this stumbling walk (which I forget).  For these orbiters, the solitude and vision from near space left them bereft of words and constantly longing to return.  Not to a tiny capsule with "This is Houston" coming over the intercom, but to the look- out and the feeling of infinite immensity and perfect peace.

This was doubled, or quadrupled, or however one can measure, by those who walked or circled the moon.  Although the moon looked a frightening place when in shadow, its over-all impact was one of stark beauty.  Again, and more, it was a place of infinite solitude and peace.  Deadly, hostile to anyone outside a suit, but open to the cosmos; open to what we all, I believe, carry inside us, just waiting for our attention, so quickly catured by space.  Infinite space.

What really brought the experience home was a conversation with one of the Apollo crew who walked on the moon.  He said that, at one point, he held up his thumb to earth, and with that thumb, was able to block it out.  One might think this would give one a feeling of insignificance, but its affects were the exact opposite.  Said the astronaut (I paraphrase from memory here), "it did not make me think life on earth was insignificant.  Instead, I was filled with the wonder of this bright blue and white moon-like sphere where all my life, all my love, everything that I was, existed. And I saw it as incredibly beautiful but fragile, like the shell of an iridescent egg, precious beyond words, floating quietly in the infinitude of space; I thought of how special and precious we all were."

Of the Apollo 11 crew, two of the three had extremely difficult transitions back to earth side.  Armstrong became more withdrawn, his wife eventually leaving him.  She couldn't take the loneliness.  He managed, though, unlike Buzz Aldrin, who not only lost his wife to divorce, but also became an alcoholic. Nothing could match the high of going to the moon - not the fanfare, not the praise, but the moon itself, the space, the infinite. To all, it was like the first heroin high, never to be reached again.  For Aldrin, he tried to reach it again through other means, and failed.  Only Collins, who had stayed in orbit on the mother ship Columbia, fared well.  Said he (paraphrase again), "I was all alone, more alone than anyone had ever been, but I was not lonely. I was elated.  I seemed to fill the emptiness, to expand."  But we know he, too, would and will always look to the sky.

The Hindus call it the "Brahman in the Atman" , the cosmos in the individual.  It can be found here on Earth with difficulty, but apparently, it can be found by anyone 'out there.'  It, space, is the mother of our identity.  Called in the Bible the "Pearl of Great Price," this realization is actually priceless, and what we were bound for, born for.  After reading this book, more than ever I am convinced that, at almost any price, we must get back to space.  As Jesus said, sadly, "the poor will always be amongst us."  Yes, but even the poor are infinitely rich when confronted with their true being.  It is in space where it is always met.  Let's go back, farther, further.  FK