In my reflections, if a bona fide member of the academy comments that my reflection contains either an original thought or argument, I will note it in that reflection. Also, if it is brought to my attention that what I have said is also mentioned in another source, I will also note it. My intention in these reflections is to stimulate inquiry, imagination, and broadening of horizons.- JP

Note: The most recent reflection is at the top and my first is at the bottom. You can either start at the bottom of the well and swim up or start at the top and dive in, your choice. – JP

13 Hours           

Lux Sit 11/01/13

The motto for my alma mater is “Lux Sit”, Let there be light. For the Latin scholars there are several articles at www.uw.edu which delve into whether this is correct or incorrect Latin. The correctness, for me, is not so much the issue as to how the motto leads to an ambiguity of the source of light. Is it created or is it just in existence without creation?

At the conclusion of reading Chapter 5 of Peter Russell’s book From Science to God I had two thoughts: Where was this guy when I needed him in high school physics, and maybe light is not something that is made, it just is. Could it be that when we turn on a light bulb or light a match, we are not creating light, we are in fact altering the vibrations of existence that allow us to perceive light? And, if Consciousness is the source of all that is, and therefore pervades all that is, when Lux Sit was spoken, light is also that all pervading characteristic of Consciousness and there is no light barrier of speed or darkness. Could it be that light is darkness waiting for its vibration to be changed so it will be visible and because it is in all, no matter how “fast” you travel, you can’t out run what continually surrounds you? Maybe Frank Herbert was right in his novel Dune: “We fold space to travel great distances.”

Since I had my epiphany that “Light IS” (and it felt like an original thought) I have read more and am gratified to know that this concept, in one form or another, has been around for centuries expressed in both spiritual and scientific terms. I shall always enjoy the feeling of having an original thought even if it wasn’t the first time someone expressed it. So what do I do with it now?

Maybe this is the concept that is the lynch pin for the Unified Field Theory and if I was fluent in math, I could complete it. Einstein was leery of completing it and Stephen Hawking stated that if we do, we will know the mind of God. In my first interview for a parish position I said Hawking is wrong, we can’t know the mind of God. From a duality perspective, that’s correct. However, from a unity perspective, because consciousness is all pervading, why shouldn’t I want to know what I am thinking? God’s consciousness is in me and my consciousness is in God and we are not separate. For me, that is the basis for Jesus’ proclamation that we have nothing to fear because nothing is lost, nothing is destroyed, God, Consciousness, IS.

My metaphor for our existence has been that we are all in one big pot of chicken soup. I am going to change the metaphor to say that we are in a bowl of consciousness soup. A soup which needs no bowl. A soup which is not made up of pieces and parts, fused (who knew that ad had theological implications!). A soup in which you will not drown, but always swim. A soup that does not limit how you will swim and allows you to swim anywhere.

A soup that is Light.

Lick the Bowl 09/08/13

Which appeared first, the chicken or the egg? That is one of those seemingly ridiculous questions at the heart of who gets to write text books on science or religion for elementary and secondary schools. How you answer will put you into a camp that is viewed as wrong by the camp of the opposite answer. Well, duh you say, that’s just the way it is, so what’s the big deal? The big deal for me, is how I see that you don’t have to be in the chicken camp or egg camp and still answer the question.

Until recently, although it was staring me in the face for a long time, I had not felt it necessary to deal with the question of the source of God. God Is, it’s a holy mystery and all I need to deal with is why am I here? However, as I hear more and more about the knowledge we have and don’t have about the universe, one characteristic keeps being mentioned. What holds it all together? If we are expanding faster and faster, eventually everything will float off into nothingness, and if gravity is constant we should not be expanding and eventually collapse into a singularity (scientific term for it all gets smooshed together). And in either case, what intelligence would create something that would cease to exist (pretty damn fickle and uncaring if you ask me) or continually collapse only to bang back into what we have now which just keeps going and repeats the questions, pain, discoveries we have experienced never getting to the final answer (pretty damn fickle and uncaring if you ask me)? The scientific community took a deep breath and answered, Dark Matter!

OK, fine, what is Dark Matter?

Well, we really don’t know. It could be pure energy or have some characteristic that creates mass.

Or it could be (spoken in a quiet voice from the back of the room) neither. It may be something that is neither mass or energy, which we could define as consciousness.

So as I am about to drink the kool aid, I remember my Spirituality professor in seminary saying that we are the product of the conscious thought of God. So is my existence the product of a supreme being who woke up one day, threw back the covers and said, I want to know who I am and what I can do, or, was consciousness already existing and is our source which we have cleverly personified? Either way, we are back to the chicken and the egg and it doesn’t matter, or does it? Or maybe the chicken and the egg are the same, totally unified. Which gets me closer to my answer.

Consciousness exists. If it didn’t, then the life after death, resurrection, multiple incarnation and this is all there is, theologies don’t work. Whether you believe what is, is tangible reality or illusion, macroscopic or microscopic, it is conscious in some form. And that consciousness is in everything and is everything which means you and I are, if not the same, at the very least, comfortably or uncomfortably inseparably connected.

Consciousness existed so the words, Let there be light, could be expressed. And light, by the way, is either energy or matter or both, depending on your scientific perspective, which says to me that conscious unity is the founding characteristic of our existence. Which means (hang in there) the consciousness that is Source is also my consciousness which is also yours which means you, I and Source are not only inextricably connected, we are all the same. So what’s the practical application for this other than the obvious stop killing, live in peace, enjoy each manifestation of Source, put flowers in your hair? Try this.

The next time you are dining out, order a bowl of your favorite ice cream. When you have finished, pick up the bowl, lick it clean and then look directly into the eyes of your appalled, flabbergasted, befuddled, outraged, embarrassed (you pick an adjective) diner partner, friend, spouse, and say with conviction, Thank you God!

Survivor Guilt 07/22/2013

I have experienced survivor guilt. My experiences have been in events that encompass both what might be considered dramatic and some almost mundane because of their frequency among many people.

Without going into excruciating detail, while in the Air Force, I was part of a flight of two aircraft on this particular day when we experienced a lightning strike. While returning to the airfield, one airplane lost control and the crew ejected. Their system malfunctioned and they died in the resulting impact. When our plane was inspected, the same situation existed with our ejection system, and had we used it, we would have also died.

I have also been that driver of a car at the intersection who thought they were paying attention and either slammed on the brakes to avoid or drove past the people crossing the street.

In both situations, survivor guilt was part and parcel of my retrospection. Why didn’t I call for the flight to do a controllability check? Why didn’t I look to the right one more time? In one situation, others might have been saved, in the other, all were unhurt except for the adrenaline withdrawal which is not something you want to go through voluntarily.

No matter the situation, be it the person who was next to the shooting victim or in the surviving house next door to the one swept away in the tornado or the last person off the escalator before it stopped running, we all ask at some level, why them and not me?

There is a plethora of cliché answers which we have all heard ad nauseum and they all have one common characteristic. THEY DON’T WORK. Why?

They don’t work because they all try to make the mysterious and intangible responsible and avoid dealing with even the possibility that we had a tangible part in the sequence of events.

My take on it, for your consideration, is do not ascribe to the mysterious and intangible a persona of any degree because then you become subject to the fickle proclivities of a force you consider to be more powerful than you and survivor guilt will be with you forever. Rather, consider that the consciousness which holds this (this being all that we experience and know) all together, is not fickle, we are all treated equally and what happens, happens because of our choices and we are not only allowed, but have as an integral part of our being the necessity to choose.

We are all survivors of something, so rather than wipe the sweat off our brow and declare I’m glad it wasn’t me, lets wipe the sweat off our brow and say, because it wasn’t me, what am I going to do with that?

Survive productively!

Welcome Back? 03/08/2013

In conversation with colleagues about the Bible readings for this Sunday in Lent, we concentrated on the familiar parable of the prodigal son. What was new for me was the take on this that one of the group relayed from a book one of his professors wrote.

When the question was asked, “What is the presenting issue in this parable?”, the answer given by a majority in America was, “He squandered all his money”. The answer given by a majority in Africa was, “He was hungry and no one gave him food”. The answer given by a majority in Russia was, “There was a famine”. Each answer is factually correct and obviously different. It seems that not only the context of the story matters, but as equally valid is the context of the culture that hears the story. I submit, however, that they all missed the point of the story and missing the point is the real presenting problem.

The point of the story is that the father treated both of his sons with unconditional love, even though they were coming from opposite approaches as to how to use their inheritance. For me, this is the big take away, unconditional love trumps selfish stewardship, winning and losing competition and not thinking outside of ourselves.

There really isn’t any blame to go around in this story. Each sons’ situation resulted from choices. A choice to be self-centered and a choice to make assumptions and not realize that famine, like mercy, happens.

If you don’t know the parable of the prodigal son, Bing or Google it and read the several Bible translations and commentaries which will be presented. We are all one big pot of chicken soup.

Easter 2013

This reflection is before Easter because I feel it is more advantageous to focus on Easter during Lent than on how to make yourself miserable for forty days. Do I have a bias about Lent? Yes, and I’ll own it, so on to Easter.

I am writing this in the form of a homily/sermon, so read it as if you were speaking it or hearing it.

We come to our places of sanctuary on Easter for many reasons. Those reasons cannot be categorized because we can’t really be categorized. Even if this is your first time for spending time with Easter, no matter your age, I am offering to you today, for your consideration, a way to approach Easter that could seem strange or resonate with your feelings. Either way, as with any sermon, you have a choice to either blow it off or spend time considering what I say. And being true to my background in English Lit., I am going to start, as any good epic does, in media res, in the middle of the story.

I am now in the moment, after many years of hearing the Easter story, of embracing that who I am, as a product of the conscious thought of God, is consciousness. That is, when everything is stripped away, what is left is a consciousness that is me that does not cease to exist. I also embrace that as a product of the conscious though of God, I am inextricably connected to God and cannot be lost or destroyed. Take a moment to think and feel what this does to you when you hear it. To destroy you, to cast you into the lake of fire, God would have to destroy a part of God’s self. Do you feel that this is possible, for the God of unconditional love to eliminate from existence any part of creation which exists because God had a thought and brought it into being? On a recent segment of Fresh Air on NPR, they examined an answer to this question.

Now, a friendly note. If you believe NPR to be either evil, deleterious to society, or both, stop reading now, change to another web site, get a beer or if you are imagining yourself listening, zone out and save yourself some time, otherwise you will just hear stuff that will get you agitated and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.

Fresh Air interviewed a doctor who is working with the concept of resurrection medicine. His approach is to examine not only actual people but also cases of people who have been clinically dead for up to several hours and have been revived. What interested me was what these people had to say about their experience. They had conscious experiences from traveling, to watching and hearing everything that was going on with the doctors. They could repeat conversations word for word, discuss procedures that only a person with medical training would know, talk of concepts that would have interested Einstein, and even tell where to find shoes that had been lost. The bottom line for the doctor being interviewed was that he feels there is an unquantifiable, intangible, not recordable part of us that does not cease to exist even when our body quits functioning. The Hebrew word for this is nephish. It cannot be translated in one word into any other language and carries with it the multivalent concept of being. Which gets us to Easter.

Jesus of Nazareth was a Hebrew rabbi, healer and mystic. I embrace him as Creator, Source, the One, incarnated as a human who had several important things to say to us. The most salient of those sayings for me is, fear not, you are not lost. So if we are not lost, what are we to be saved from? I offer for your consideration, the answer to that question is your self. Jesus went to great lengths to get his listeners to be about getting in right relationship with themselves and their fellow conscious beings. Jesus, as a good Hebrew, would have embraced the belief that there is only one sin, turning away from God. When you turn away, separate yourself from that to which you are inextricably connected, then you are in the most dire state of being possible and that is what Hebrew hell is, acting as if you and God are separate. So how do you get saved? Simple, turn around and face God, or as John the Baptist would say, repent! Coming face to face with God is more than staring at a cross or an empty tomb.

Jesus understood when people embrace that they have nothing to fear, those who would control them get unsettled, unsettled to the point that they see the only way to regain control is to eliminate the persons who do not fear and anyone who is espousing that approach to living. Jesus also understood that to demonstrate there is nothing to fear he would have to encounter the most fearful way those in control had at their disposal to enforce control, fear and it’s attendant visual aid, crucifixion.

What I “see” when I look at the cross is not someone who came to do it to us or do it for us, but to do it with us and that “it” is live life. God doesn’t grab you by the collar and drag you into heaven nor does God surround you in protective Jell-O so you will get into heaven without effort. God, as exampled in incarnation, does it with us so we will live in the way God intended, as one unified creation existing in unconditional love. I know that may sound really sappy, but when you unpack it, I believe you will get to the heart of Easter. We do not cease to exist. Our being, our conscious entity continues no matter what. Even if that “what” is physically dying on a cross. And that gets us to the consideration of Easter and eternity.

If you feel the need to say that Jesus died so we can live in eternity, I can agree. Please note that taken literally that phrase does not say “wait” to live in eternity. If I don’t cease to exist, I am eternal and don’t have to wait for it. And that gets me to what I feel is most important about Easter. Jesus let us see transition, not death.

When a person physically ceases, we mourn. When we believe that the person continues to exist we can cry for happy. It may seem to some as callous for a person to smile when someone dies, but consider that if that person believes the deceased’s consciousness is still “alive”, why shouldn’t they smile?

So if this Easter be for you tears, smiles, music, poetry, the smell of fresh cut grass dotted with golf balls, snow blowing in your face from the tip of skis, salt water on a surf board, squealing tires on a race track, flowers in a sanctuary, or any of the other multitude of smells and pictures of life, know that you are eternal and have nothing to fear.