Everyman's Journal 2011

Everyman's Journal 2011, #26

January 30

The mysteries of 'the law of attraction' led me yesterday (Sunday) off my more normal paths and into 'the world of fundamentalist Christianity'....

For several weeks I had been noticing a well painted simple sign at the entrance to a large RV park I drive by every time I go to town. It was announcing a 'non-denominational' church, with a 9 AM worship time. During my drive-by's, I'd often heard the thought from my 'inner assistant' that I should 'check it out'. So yesterday, I did, before going on afterwards to the new thought gathering I often attend at 11 AM.

Not knowing what to expect, I made sure I looked like I belonged in a church (as well as I can), and following the signs to the RV park community center, discovered this was no small gathering. I'd guess about 300 people (mostly winter snowbirds living in this large park, I think) were there ahead of me. An announcer up front was in action when I entered. An usher that had a smile that was also a question mark (as he looked at me) led me way over to the far side aisle, then up front pretty close, giving the whole church congregation a good view of the ponytailed longhaired gentleman who was suddenly among them. Hummmm, I breathed, and smiled at the people on either side of me as I sat down.

Music was starting to happen, and as it arrived I began to get a sense of where I was at. Everybody began singing about Jesus and his Blood, and being saved. It was all white folks, but for older white folks it was pretty juicy, and it was clear the music was loved and everybody was having fun. Then announcer led some talking about 'who needed prayers', because of being ill etc. It turned out that the announcer was not the pastor... and the pastor, a thin man who wasn't looking all that healthy, was one of those needing prayers (for some kind of throat/talking problem) and that he was in attendance for the first time in several weeks, along with a raspy throaty voice, which he admitted was quite sore. But because it was clear he loved his 'flock' and his flock loved him, he used it anyway to give everybody a little report on his condition and about his recent time receiving treatment at Mayo Clinic over in Phoenix, and to lead the prayer asking that everybody who was needed it be healed. Then a bunch more music which segued into turning around and shaking hands and saying hello to all the folks around you, then more music, and then 'the sermon', which they passed out Bibles for, for anyone who had forgotten their own, so that everybody could follow along.

For me, all of this was quite familiar from my long-past youth as a Protestant preachers kid, where I was raised to believe pretty much what everybody in this RV park winter-season make-shift church in the community center was still believing. I realized this was for me, an 'in-the-flesh check in' and review.... to the fact that this kind of 'believers reality' still existed, and still being filled by kind, normal-looking people. Other than appearing a bit strange looking, I was completely appropriate to the scene, listening attentively to the sermon, even raising my hand a little bit now and then when the preacher said 'raise your hand if you believe this or that' (if there was any private metaphysical interpretation that I knew that would allow for that). But sadly, what the sermon basically 'learned me' was that anybody not a Christian like them (i.e., all the 'Godless people' and all the 'Godless countries' that our 'Godless government' is in bed with...) is gonna have a pretty rough time of it 'at the end time', which the prophecies and signs they believe say is pretty close.

So you may say "What's the point?", "Why go?", stuff like that. What's a Sufi/Hindu/Buddhist monk/Rev/artist doing going to a holy roller church meeting on the side? It's a fair enough question. We/I also might ask Jesus Christ the same thing. Why did he incarnate among a pretty primitive warlike tribal people who egoically thought of themselves as 'the Chosen Ones' and let himself be killed to demonstrate that there is no such thing as 'death'. And doing it probably knowing that even after thousands of years, most people would still not get what he was really all about.

I think the real question is better phrased as: "How long-viewed is your compassion?" I mean, A Course in Miracles is, like Advaita, like core Buddhism, like indigenous traditions worldwide, and like Zen, a non-dual approach to embracing existence. And all of them are built on the foundation of deep compassion, and incredible mindfulness.... the kind that has only in the last century or so begun to have any equivalency inside Christianity, in the form of 'the new thought movement'. Currently, that equivalency exists like an enigma to orthodox Christian waters.... being like relatives that don't talk to each other or acknowledge any relatedness. And such is the reality of individual free will that all that is 'lawful'. Because we must individually choose to alter our course.... and we do not really grow until we individually are hungry enough to truly desire deeper knowledge.

Because I was raised by unenlightened but well-intentioned orthodox parents attempting to answer God's calling by serving in the Christian ministry, I know first-hand the goodness of most of the people in that particular religious world, and the blindnesses they mistake for sight. Of course that's my opinion, not their's. Yet loaded with mentally dualistic rhetoric, trapped in the sin-sinner judgement day box, there is little chance of any mass escape for most of my brothers therein. But individual escapes happen all the time, I being one of them.

I view now that only by the practice of Bodhisattva-like deep compassion, and being willing to embrace all beings as a brother human (which is in fact, Jesus' teachings), can the pollination occur that creates any authentic new possibility or breakthrough theologically for modern Christianity. And that pollination is always going to be a function of our ability (yours and mine) to non-judgementally offer to exemplify and demonstrate knowing a divine Love that supersedes the fearful believers mind.

So why did I go? Simply to cause myself to meditate upon how I might more fully be exactly that. For if 'the game is not finished' as long as anyone is asleep (because 'we are all one'), then there is no true 'leaving others behind'. What I see is that our most natural dharma then, is to return to exactly where we came from, just like spawning salmon, and once there, begin the work of creating a different human future. Who else is better prepared than the one born in the old way who leaves, and then returns with a new teaching on how to know Love?

As all teachers of Love know, our lives are only seeds that the Great Way is casting upon this world. To remember it is never about us, but that it is always about opening the way for others to more clearly discover and follow, just as we now follow the lights that lead us.... that is what will help us to dharmically stay true. To me, that is a valid 'compassionate long view'.

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

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Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

david@davidseacord.com

www.davidseacord.com

(my fine art website)

www.davidseacord-everymansjournal.blogspot.com

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

www.davidseacord-acimcommentaries.blogspot.com

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

www.everymansjournal2011.blogspot.com

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)