The Nature of Forgiveness, Part 2

Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it. Proverbs 4:23

Laurence Freeman, in good company with many other spiritual leaders past and present, suggests that the secret of life is forgiveness.  Not very exotic, but extremely challenging.

Think over the course of your life and try to discern where the hardness of heart has set in, where you have been and remain unhappy, what has a hold on you that keeps you from inner freedom and peace? Has the refusal or inability to forgive played a role perhaps?

Hang on to resentment for too long and you will find a cancer growing in you, eating a way at peace and one’s ability to love. When we allow negativity to take root in our minds, we find they lock into our hearts, minds and soul like cement which is almost impossible to break free.

In meditation and prayer one learns the work of attention–and that attention is Love. Silence is the work of meditation. Catching those negative thoughts before they cement themselves in us is tackled in meditation and they are sent away as we guard our hearts.

We are careless with our thoughts, we are careless with our hearts. Individually we allow negativity to take root and then we carry this into our communities. We wrap God in our group identity making our group identity an idol. God is not a puppet in our arsenals, Freeman reminds us, and yet we brandish God like a gun. We can see in our own times, as well as the past, that we continually succumb to God wars, making God in our own images.  When those images don’t all look the same, then someone has to have the best God, and so history repeats itself.

Jesus the Christ taught forgiveness, but often we take the banner of religion to justify revenge. It’s downright primitive when we use God to justify the sacrifice of our enemies. Yet, forgiveness is the highest of all human ideals in all the wisdom traditions and Jesus makes it an absolute commandment. But, I again remind the reader, that without prayer, meditation and the true grace of God, forgiveness will be a fleeting ideal.

In fact, it is so difficult for we humans to let go of our hurt, anger, frustration, resentment, and fear–and often these are natural and reasonable responses to the harm we have experienced–that to suggest anything less than divine assistance is naive. In meditation we detach from these fears and our selves and let Love begin the process. It is a difficult, scary undertaking and requires the courage and the desire to let Love win.

Following are some suggested steps to forgiveness, also presented as stages of the heart. I hope you will find them helpful and will think about them before dismissing them after one skim through.

1. Acknowledge feelings of hate and revenge.
2. Become aware that this state of mind is like a poison likely to spread.
3. Ask if you really want to stop it and detoxify or do you want to hang on to it?
4. If you really want to stop it spreading–call the enemy to mind.
5. Ask yourself–what led the person to do what they did? Don’t expect an answer.
6. Meditate–take attention off self and the situation.
7. Reality check–how do you feel?
8. Persevere with practice (now one could blog for weeks just on this step!)
9. You will find, over time, that anger and hurt and pain and desire for revenge has been replaced by compassion.
10. You will eventually find you are free from imprisonment.

I ask you to meditate for 20 minutes, 2 times a day, for two weeks before you dismiss this idea. Forgiveness is not so much about letting the other person off the hook, but about setting yourself free.

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The Minor Orders–Office of Doorkeeper

The Office of Doorkeeper was a very practical office in the Church, initially. The duties were to ring the church bells, open the book for the preacher, open the church at the appointed times, but close it to the unbelievers. I didn’t much like the sound of closing the church doors to anyone, but one only need to take a brief look at medieval history to realize what brutal and desperate times they were.  Even today churches have to lock their doors more often than not.  The appointed task of also keeping a watchful eye on the church furniture lest it be stolen makes me think of doorkeepers as church bouncers!

But, these mundane tasks, which are no longer needed, have a deeper meaning when one is admitted into this office. The keys to the door of the church are also the keys to the door of one’s own heart. To open one’s heart in the service of the church is to open it for all time to express that which is good and noble, but also developing the spiritual discipline of discernment so that one may be able to guard the heart, and therefore the church, against evil and all that works against the Light of the World.

It is our duty as servants of Christ and the Church to keep our own hearts well-tended, but also to live outside ourselves and touch the hearts of others so that we cultivate seeds of beauty–with or without words. Our lives should be a well written sentence that is written on the hearts of those we serve.

Where we learn to master our physical nature as Clerics, in this Order of Doorkeeper we are to master the emotional nature–our passions. I am grateful that we are instructed to not see the emotions as evil within us that we must obliterate, but rather to see our emotions as another nature God has bestowed upon us. As the physical body is not to be treated harshly being the Temple of the Holy Spirit, neither is the emotional to be feared and fought.

“God has given us the power to feel emotion, and it, too, is a power which can become mighty in [God’s] service.” Rather than suppressing our emotions, we are to learn that they can be useful tools, when one learns how to control them, for our own spiritual development. They represent the Divine nature, masculine AND feminine, within us. Emotions are not to be suppressed, as our Western culture too often trains us to do, but to be “raised and consecrated to the service of God”.

In my early experience, I learned that my feelings often lied to me–and I based my conceptions of God and the Spirit at work in my life on my own fickle emotions. However, once I made a decisive step toward being a Light Worker in the hands of the Almighty, and a definitive “YES!” had been spoken from my heart, I began to learn to be still and listen. In the listening I could hear something deeper than the chatter I was used to hearing, and heard that still small voice of God within.

The Master Jesus and the help of Sophia, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, along with angels and guides I have come to recognize, have given me the “strong aid of their compassion.” I have fought emotions, have had quite a struggle, and yet I can see that fighting against emotions is like trying to cut the telephone line while yearning to communicate with friends. Part of the commissioning states, “At whatever stage our emotions may be, they represent the working of the divine power within us…” What joy!

Even if, and I will be bold enough to say that it is most likely the case in everyone, our emotions become self-centered, it is till not our duty to eradicate them. They are to be purified and raised up to God. My own Spiritual Director would tell me, “Sit with it. Hold it, feel where it lies, and just allow yourself to feel. Then allow Christ to wrap around those emotions and hold it with you.”

We are instructed in the Order to “substitute for devotion our own pleasure devotion to God and Humanity; to put aside, as far as may be, affection for the self for the affection that gives, caring for nothing in return; not to ask love, but to give love.”  I could not restate that any more beautifully than it has already been written.

I know in my own profession of non-profit work for the marginalized, that one begins to heal one’s emotions when one gets outside one’s self and gives to another out of his or her own poverty of spirit.

“Hence, it is [our] task as doorkeeper[s] to train [our] emotions, laying them as a gift on Christ’s Holy Altar, that they, too, may be used in [God’s] service.” This, my friends, is the true way to a holy life. It is the path of humility.

Our daily call, for all, even Bishops, are still doorkeepers, is to “bear the key to throw open the church for the use of all”, and likewise, throw open the doors of our hearts for the service of our sisters and brothers. We are to also “ring the bell [which] summons us to divine worship, [and] so by the force of good example” shall the doorkeeper summon us all to the service of God.

Amen!

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Celtic Ways are Ancient ways for ALL

I’ve spent a good part of my life with Native People’s in North America, traveled frequently to Central and South America and spent time with indigenous peoples in the mountains of Guatemala and Ecuador.

When I read and study about the Celtic peoples, and traipse through the Welsh mountains and visit Gaelic sacred places, and ancient thin places, I sense a continuous thread of sacred, holy living.

Institutionalized religion can, and has, served a good purpose for many who are looking for their sacred path. Unfortunately, in many cases throughout history, the institution of religion has shed  horrific amounts of human blood around the world in the name of “God” (or whatever word one would use for God).

The ancient ways, kept alive by simple people, people who don’t fit in to the religious status quo, by those that have allowed themselves to be spurred on by that inner fire blazing, are resurfacing and calling to all who will listen, “This Holy Ones are still among us and the world now needs us to bring the Light in through the remaining thin places before they are gone.”

Those that hear this call unite with others despite religious association, acknowledging a deeper understanding of the One who we have chosen to serve. We have fellow travelers in The Way, guides, angels, and Spirit that teach, nurture, and help us in our work.

We live and work in the hidden corners of our respective religious institutions, realizing that there is still Diving Energy present in our rituals, sacraments, and prayers, but we are not limited there. We send out the Light, the Energy, and the forces of Beauty and Love to meet with those working on the other side of the veil, doing the same. We must keep the thin places open, we must keep the sacred in the land, in our hearts and minds, and in our activity.

All of Creation asks us to coöperate in the healing of the world. The work we do will not make us famous, but is urgent and extremely necessary for our evolution. Let us peacefully carry out our calling to follow the way of Beauty and Love.

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