The World Will Not End But We May Change

Awaken to the sounds of apocalypse: Quiet house. Distant traffic. Water boiling once the kettle is switched on. The striking of a match. The hiss of candle lighting. And my prayers…

I am sure in other places Apocalypse sounds different.

Children petulant from lack of food. Fighting over money or who gets to use the car, Who takes the bus. The concussion of a bomb From silent skies.

Apocalypses don’t come sudden. They can sound like day to day.

We run after each other Arms upraised to catch a falling world. They keep telling us the sky Is firm above, But it is slippery as their lies, That tell us nothing we don’t know.

This world is ending. Every sound announces so.

Some day we will waken to the sounds Of a new world. What will that sound like? A woman rolling over to make love. A kettle hissing. A match striking. And a child eating his breakfast.

Beginning or ending, The ordinary things are what we have.

#change #thesetimes

Hold Fast: Some Thoughts on Fire

Coming home on the train, I read the news: a man had doused himself in gasoline and self-immolated on the Washington Mall. I smelled smoke and wondered, is it my imagination, or is something on the train burning? No one else seemed to notice. By the time we got off the train, however, it was clear: a major fire burned close. Smoke filled the whole East Bay, brought by strange winds. Our noses scorched. The October day was hot.

I sent out a small message:

“Sometimes I think we are all on fire. Sometimes I see us quietly burning.”

Saturday I heard the news the man had died. I also heard something that deepened my disturbance: across the country, in Houston, another man had doused himself with gasoline and prepared to set himself alight. People got to him before he could strike the fire.

Two men. Different parts of the country. Doused in gasoline, ready to burn.

Unrelated events, except all events are somehow related. There are threads that catch and join us, one to another. Those threads are everywhere. And so we burn. We feel the heat rising.

We feel the heat rising from a confused young mother, driving into a barricade, surrounded by police, shot dead as her one year old baby sits in a car seat, watching. We feel the heat rising from the police who pulled the triggers.

We feel the heat rising from Capitol Hill, from a government ground to a halt. We feel the heat rising from the houseless and the unemployed, wondering what they will eat.

Sometimes I think we are all on fire. This is one of those times.

The heat is rising.

Sparks are catching, everywhere. I can only hope this fire will burn us clean, so we can plant anew. I can only hope that things we value are not too badly burned along with the dross that must be cleared.

All fires are naturally occurring phemomena. Sometimes the nature that starts fires is human nature: a match, a word, a spark. Sometimes fire is wanton in destruction. Sometimes fire is necessary. Something is coming. I do not know what it is. But things are changed by fire. Things are always changed by fire.

In these days, let us remember: all events are connected. In these days, let us remember to be kind. In these days, let us challenge the old order:

When lightning strikes the Tower, we come tumbling through the air into the arms of God. And by God, I mean, each other.

Hold fast. 

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note: I edited my original which incorrectly stated the man in Houston had doused himself the same day as the man in D.C. The events were a week apart.

After I posted this piece, I happened upon an excellent article on self-immolations around the globe, all tied to desperation about the economic and political crisis. Written by Sarah Kendzior, it puts these events into a helpful – heartbreaking – frame. 

Edit October 8, 2013: the man who self-immolated on the Washington Mall was John Constantino of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. Age 64. What is remembered, lives.

#fire #governmentshutdown #immolation #TheTower

God Hirself: a Theology

The Star Goddess breathes out and everything rises. The Star Goddess breathes in, and all things contract. Her breath, the breath of the Limitless, infuses and connects every living thing. We can connect with this breath. We can dance the dance of all creation, with her, for we are reflections of her beauty.

God Hirself is beyond gender. She is all gender and no gender. She is the great Zero, the limitless, holder of the Cosmic Egg from which all life flows and to which all life returns. We cannot think of God Hirself as One, because that separates her out from all else. Rather, thinking of her as Zero, the circumference that includes everything and the center point around which everything else revolves, is closer to the experienced reality. Nuit and Hadit, yesh and ayin, form and emptiness, there is nothing that is not part of the fabric of God Hirself. Another name for this fabric is love.

She caught sight of her reflection in the black bowl of space. Seeing that beauty, she began to make love to herself. From her union with herself, the Divine Twins were born. Brother and brother, sister and sister, brother and sister – known and unknown, earth and air, fire and ice – they struggled, they fought, and they kissed. From their great love, came something entirely new, a creation not yet seen. From this possibility, a multitude of worlds were born.

The essence of God is that there is no essence of God, for God is all and nothing, here, now and forever. – Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael

Monotheists were pointing to a truth in speaking of the unity of love, but they did not yet have the number zero, the cipher, the void. By naming something one, they were trying to get at its unity. What they were not able to realize at the time, is that naming something one, instead of all, is a first separation out, it is a distancing that makes the All the Other. And therein lies trouble. Therein lies alienation. One, rather than remaining a unifying force, becomes a separate being. And that separation opens a deep wound.

Mystics of all religions and cultures have experienced the truth of the wholeness of God Hirself as zero and all, regardless of the name their religion assigns to this concept of deity. Those that are not mystics have not always felt this unity, and have waged many bloody wars over the separation and disconnection they have felt.

We sometimes fight these wars inside of ourselves, whether we believe in many Gods, no Gods, one God or a limitless Divinity that is all. We can feel separate from God Hirself. We can disconnect from the pattern of love. We can enter back into connection and the flow of the Limitless. In that flow we can become the center to her circumference and we can learn to include all. The limitless is beyond duality, beyond black and white, dark and light, anger and hope, though she is within all of these and expressed through all of these. The limitless is zero and many, nothing and all.

Emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness. – The Heart Sutra

We ourselves are whole, a unified being. Yet our parts can act as though they are separate. Our mind and emotions can fight, each insisting that it, and it alone, is “I”. This is the lie that causes conflict and dissolution within. However, there are ways to remember that we are Her reflections, and reflect the universe in turn. Just as all possibility abides in love, all possibility rests within us.

The Divine Twins struggle. The Divine Twins kiss. What is it we are bringing now, to form? The Twins are figures of the duality we parse emptiness back into. This new being – be it Melek Taus, Ardhanarisvara, Ometeotl, Baphomet, Ymir, Hoor-paar-kraat or something as of yet unnamed – is the synthesis back to wholeness, a glorious reflection in the edge of space.

There is wholeness. There is separation. There is coming back together again.

There is no self without unity and no unity without self. This is all metaphor. This is reality. Step through the door.

In the dust of Her feet are the hosts of heaven/ and Her star sequined hair/ Is crowned with a coven of six and seven/ Blue suns burning there. – Victor H. Anderson

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A version of this piece appears in my book Kissing the Limitless. This post is part of today’s “Queer Theology Synchroblog 2013”

#DivineTwins #GodHerself