And with that the seekers took leave of the priests, turned hand in hand, and began what would become the most wonderful of journeys.
In a classic Indian parable, three blind men have the opportunity, one by one, to encounter a majestic elephant. The first blind man, passing his hands up and down the beast’s mighty leg, returns from the experience convinced that an elephant’s nature is that of a tree trunk, stout and solid. The next blind man, feeling the sharp tusk protruding from the beast, concludes that an elephant’s nature is that of a warrior carrying a spear. The last blind man, grasping only the bristled tail, is certain that an elephant’s nature is that of a length of rope. Afterwards, they contend with one another over the true nature of the elephant each claims to have encountered. Satisfied that they have correctly understood this magnificent beast, they return to their respective homes and each founds a new religion.
Here ends the classic parable.
But let us imagine what might happen next:
In one part of the village, the first man’s encounter has prompted him to plant groves of date palms. He eagerly instructs his throngs how to pat their hands appreciatively up and down the smooth trunks of the palms. “This,” he teaches them, “is the proper way to experience what I have experienced.”
In another part of the village, the second man’s encounter has convinced him that his followers should be properly armed at all times with a sharpened spear. “Only in this way,” he tells them, “can we emulate the nature of an elephant.”
And in another part of the village, the third man’s encounter has inspired him to reveal the proper way to worship the elephant. He instructs his believers to carefully gather jute fibers and to braid them into coils of sturdy rope. “Entwining these fibers into rope like this,” he explains to his followers, “has been ordained by the elephant as the proper form of worship.”
And so it goes.
Generations pass, and the blind men—each a beloved seer and revelator to his people—live on only in hallowed memory. Priests now carefully preserve correct beliefs about the elephant and regulate the proper forms of worship.
From time to time some of the adherents—often the most sincere and devout—seek further light and knowledge about the elephant.
Is it possible, they ask, that there is more to the elephant than we have understood?
“Nonsense,” the priests reply.
Some of us are imagining a creature so vast that neither a spear nor a rope nor the trunk of a tree can adequately describe it.
“Your imagination will only deceive you,” the priests warn, “and distract you from what has been revealed.”
Then will you yourselves seek out the elephant that our founders encountered, and report to us if there is more that can be known?
“How dare you dictate to us what ought to be done,” they snap.
But the seekers were not to be dissuaded. Then we ourselves will seek out this magnificent creature.
And with that the seekers took leave of the priests, turned hand in hand, and began what would become the most wonderful of journeys.
In a world where religious differences divide, how refreshing to encounter people like Steven Kapp Perry who hosts conversations that build bridges of understanding. Through Steve’s radio show and podcast, In Good Faith, I’ve been introduced to insights on living well and wisely from people of every imaginable background and faith tradition. It’s rare and wonderful to be in conversation with someone whose generosity opens up a space for talking about the the deepest part of who we are.
In this half-hour conversation, I open up about . . .
– How I understand my Mormon upbringing – How Buddhism helps me be a Christian – How my two religions are NOT basically the same, and why that’s good! – How contemplative approaches to spirituality allow for growth and change – How Einstein says we can be free from our prison – How recognizing the Light of Christ or Buddha Nature in ourselves and others moves us from a spirituality of addition and anxiety to a spirituality of subtraction and surrender.
Religions define their boundaries. They establish orthodoxies, prescribe acceptable discourse and conduct, and assert claims about what makes their patch of real estate holy ground. While I understand this tendency, it seems sun-blind to the grace and abundance blossoming beyond our own borders.
Ten years ago a roofing shingle came loose and began flapping in the wind like an injured pigeon. I propped a ladder against the house, climbed up to the second story with some roofing sealant, and patched things up.
But before I climbed back down, I stood and looked out over the neighborhood. The tidy backyard fences divided the neighborhood into a sprawling patchwork quilt. It was spring, and every backyard splashed with color. My neighbor Pam was out, kneeling in the bright daffodils with a trowel. A neighbor to the west had planted a crabapple tree and now its profusion of buds appeared to hover like hot-pink bees. Some yards had dormant lawns greening again. Others were mostly bare except for yellow sprays of forsythia or the waxy leaves of laurel or emerald euonymus. Inside my own fence, delicate pink peach blossoms brightened the yard. Looking out over the neighborhood that morning, I was struck how each backyard hosted its own kind of beauty.
The realization that morning ten years ago came when I had just finished serving as an LDS bishop. The neighborhood, of course, was largely made up of the families I’d come to love and I knew many of the stories that made their lives distinct and special. This was also the time I became more and more convinced that the sacred experiences I’d enjoyed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were more freely available than I’d supposed. Friends who sincerely engaged in other wisdom traditions were also cultivating what Paul describes as the “fruits of the Spirit,” such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and generosity.
So this image of bright backyards, each a distinct field of beauty, has stayed with me. It reflects how I was beginning to view the rich diversity of faith traditions. But it also reminded me that our faith traditions insist on fences, too.
Religions define their boundaries. They establish orthodoxies, prescribe acceptable discourse and conduct, and assert claims about what makes their patch of real estate holy ground. While I understand this tendency, it seems sun-blind to the grace and abundance blossoming beyond our own borders. It’s as if we think Divine Goodness could be confined to the tidy lines we’ve drawn, holding our crayons like children trying to circumscribe the Infinite.
Whenever I fall into this constricted view, I think back to that expansive morning ten years ago. The birds flitted in and out of backyards, heedless of those fences. And the sun rose over it all, spilling light without discrimination into every yard. Every neighbor who cultivated the ground under her own feet witnessed growth and loveliness; no one’s yard, no matter how lush, stopped the sun from shining in someone else’s yard, too.
Of course, we can’t live on our roofs. That day ten years ago I had to climb back down to earth, and lovingly tend my own backyard. And the roots of my Christian faith continue to nourish my spiritual life. But I’ve never forgotten that in every culture and in every wisdom tradition, the conditions are present for beauty to manifest.
Over the next few months I’d like to share what I find fruitful about following Jesus and what I find fruitful about my Buddhist practice. Please subscribe (it’s free!) if you’d like to notified whenever I share new posts.
Stop. Stop perpetuating this idolatrous belief that human leaders, by virtue of their calling, will never lead us astray. Stop defending the indefensible. Stop distorting our vision of Heavenly Parents for whom prejudice and racism and misogyny and religious bigotry are wounds they are calling us to heal, not perpetuate.
I believe Brother Wilcox is a fundamentally good person. I believe his recent apology is sincere, however limited in its scope. I also sympathize with those calling for his release as a general officer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a religion professor at BYU. This is heartbreaking, given how so much of his influence has been positive. Yet he has repeatedly used his popular, professional, and ecclesiastical status to perpetuate assumptions and biases that harm youth and undermine Christian discipleship.
But here’s the thing: removing Brother Wilcox from positions of influence will do absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem.
You see, Brother Wilcox doesn’t “believe in” the priesthood ban. He didn’t defend the Priesthood Ban because he’s a vile racist. He defended the Priesthood Ban because he doesn’t want the youth to think that past prophets were racist.
I get it. Fundamental among the Church’s truth claims is that we—and we alone—are led by a prophet who speaks for God. In precisely the way some other Christians ground their faith in the Holy Bible, which they regard as “without error fault in all its teachings,” most Latter-day Saints place their trust in past and current prophets as unerring guides. We’re taught this claim while we’re young, and we risk excommunication if we challenge it.
Joseph Smith even delivered a revelation in God’s voice in which his followers were told that “What I the Lord have spoken I have spoken . . . whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.” (D&C 1:38)
But youth leaders find themselves in a difficult position. Particular policies and historical teachings are so egregious to the rising generation’s sensibilities that dismissive answers, deflection, and gaslighting no longer cut the mustard. In the past when legitimate concerns arose, youth leaders and seminary teachers patiently guided the questioner through their doubt in a predictable sequence like this:
Prophets tell us what God wants us to know and do.
The prophets told us “X”
Therefore, “X” = what God wants us to know and do.
I know this pattern because I was trained to use it as a young missionary and have seen it modeled again and again in countless situations. And guess what? It works for everything!
Why are children being denied baptism if one of their parents is legally married to a spouse of the same sex? “Dear brother, this new policy was revealed to the prophet. Therefore we know it comes from God.”
Why did Joseph Smith marry other men’s wives? “Dear Sister, these early saints had enough faith to accept Joseph Smith’s plural marriage proposals. They knew he was a prophet of God. If you have enough faith that Joseph was a prophet, you too can feel peace and know this came from God.”
But hold on! When it comes to banning worthy black men from priesthood ordination and depriving black women and men from temple blessings, we can no longer pretend that this policy was not rooted in racism. We know it was.
Perhaps what ought to offend us most about Brother Wilcox’s sneering responses to sincere questions is this: When faced with the choice of souring a young person’s relationship with God, or a relationship with our prophets, Wilcox is willing to sour their relationship to God. He has repeated this corrosive message to thousands of youth. After mocking their questions, he tells them, again and again, that it’sGod who deprived black men and women from forming eternal families; it’s God who thought they shouldn’t have the priesthood because of some inscrutable timeline. Do you not see how this distorts their notion of the goodness of God? Do you not see how throwing God under the bus when it was mortals who messed up is not only wrong-headed but perverse?
Stop. Stop perpetuating this idolatrous belief that human leaders, by virtue of their calling, will never lead us astray. Stop defending the indefensible. Stop distorting our vision of Heavenly Parents for whom prejudice and racism and misogyny and religious bigotry are wounds they are calling us to heal, not perpetuate.
Stop. Stop perpetuating this idolatrous belief that human leaders, by virtue of their calling, will never lead us astray. Stop defending the indefensible. Stop distorting our vision of Heavenly Parents for whom prejudice and racism and misogyny and religious bigotry are wounds they are calling us to heal, not perpetuate.
Buddha in the Beehive
Change is possible. More and more leaders are listening with their heart. More and more are acknowledging they don’t know how to make sense of some of our history. More and more are sitting with the discomfort that comes to moral persons and ethical institutions who acknowledge that we have sometimes failed to live up to our deepest values.
Before long, some other foot-in-mouth moment will embroil another basically good person in controversy. They will be pilloried. If they aren’t too high on the pecking order BYU might decide it’s expedient to cut them loose, as they did Randy Bott a decade ago. But the problem will persist. Until we center our worship and teachings around relationships of love—you know, love of God and our neighbor—our children will have no reason to engage. Only when they see our history (there’s no more hiding it) and hear us doing the honest work of truth and reconciliation will they want anything to do with our future.
When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
I offered the following scriptural reflection (homily) today at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Provo. The lectionary’s assigned epistle featured Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.
In this week’s assigned epistle, Paul reminds the Corinthians that they don’t see themselves or each other with enough clarity and enough compassion. “For now,” he says, “we see through a glass darkly,” or as our modern translation puts it, “we see in a mirror, dimly.” (1 Corinthians 13:12, New Revised Standard Version)
In Paul’s day, mirrors were made of polished metal. In fact, Corinth, the rich Greek port city, was noted for manufacturing these mirrors of hammered brass or copper – so the Corinthians’ ears probably perked up when they heard Paul use this analogy in his letter.
Let’s pass this mirror around so you can take a good look at yourself. [I passed a crude homemade mirror around.] Go ahead, take a look at your reflection. Have you all had a turn? Okay, can you understand now why Paul would say that our image of ourselves isn’t quite right? And consider that this hazy, warped perception of ourselves—glimpsed at only in distorted mirrors and mud puddles—has been shaping our sense of self all our lives.
The Bible tells us we are created in the image of God, but how rarely we see ourselves in that divine light. So much obscures the reflection. I learned that in Roman times they would attach to their mirrors a sponge with some abrasive grit from a pumice-stone so they could frequently rub away any dust or film or oxidation clouding up that image.
Where is the sponge to clear away the corrosive layers under which our true identity hides?
And what happens when we do get a glimpse of who we really are? What visions might be ours if our eyes were unveiled, like the blind man’s under Jesus’ touch, and we could see truly and well. And what if we knew that someone else could see us with that clarity and could hold us in their gaze—not with flinching and disgust, but with unfeigned acceptance and love?
What visions might be ours if our eyes were unveiled, like the blind man’s under Jesus’ touch, and we could see truly and well.
Buddha in the Beehive
The Franciscan contemplative Richard Rohr says that “being totally received as we truly are is what we wait and long for all our lives.” What if we believed that’s how God saw us? Not with disgust or disappointment at our inadequacy, but with loving clarity? Rohr continues:
Like a true mirror, the gaze of God receives us exactly as we are, without judgment or distortion, subtraction or addition. Such perfect receiving is what transforms us . . . The One who knows all has no trouble including, accepting, and forgiving all. Soon we who are gazed upon so perfectly can pass on the same accepting gaze to all others who need it.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
(And after this wonderful simile, I must beg our C. S. Lewis fans to forgive me for entitling today’s homily “Mirror Christianity.” It seemed apropos for this, um, reflection. And we’ll hear from Lewis himself in a minute.)
Are we hearing then what Paul is saying to the Corinthians? “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It’s both an admission and a reassurance: I admit I don’t comprehend my intrinsic goodness and my divine potential, Paul is confessing. I don’t fully see it in myself and I don’t fully see it in you. But someday I will. And so will you. We will know, even as we are known.
Now hear what C. S. Lewis says:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities . . . that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Little wonder Paul shares this insight in the context of his sublime hymn about love. Love awakens in us a sense of our own worth. When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
When others love us unconditionally—especially those who see, as God sees, our warts and wrinkles in high-def resolution—then the seeds of our divine goodness are watered. We want to more fully become what they have already perceived is possible.
Buddha in the Beehive
That kind of love, that pair of charitable glasses through which Christians are called to view the world and everyone in it, “is patient, is kind, is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.” It “bears all things” –including others’ imperfections – and “believes all things”–including the foundational truth that we are all created in the image of God. That kind of love holds out hope that we ourselves, and everyone else around us, are Divine masterpieces even if our Creator hasn’t yet finished her work.
As we read in John’s first epistle,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when Jesus is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is”
(1 John 3:2)
We won’t need mirrors in that day, for as Paul said, we will see face to face. We will recognize the imago dei, the divine image, in one another.
But why not start seeing that way today? Why not recognize that this is already how God sees us?
This week many Buddhists have been reflecting on the loss of Thich Nhat Nhan, the Vietnamese Zen Master who passed away one week ago. In the Plum Village tradition he founded (and of which I’m a part) there is a custom when we greet someone of bringing our hands together at our heart to form a lotus bud. Then we say, “A lotus for you, a buddha to be.”
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Living Buddha, Living Christ
To recognize the buddha nature of another person is to recognize their capacity for awakening, for blossoming like a lotus into perfect wisdom and perfect compassion. The hands form a lotus bud because this is a process of becoming what it is already our nature to become; when we recognize this in one another, and show reverence for the goodness in one another, we nourish the conditions that help that divine seed grow and blossom.
The hands form a lotus bud because this is a process of becoming what it is already our nature to become; when we recognize this in one another, and show reverence for the goodness in one another, we nourish the conditions that help that divine seed grow and blossom.
Buddha in the Beehive
As a parish of all-too-human brothers and sisters, may we come “to know and to be known.” May we acknowledge that we don’t know the full storyor the full glory of ourselves or of each other. May we practice seeing with the pure love of Christ, which never fails, until we behold everything and everyone – wondrous and warty – with the eyes of “faith, hope, and charity.”
For truly, each step is a step on holy ground; and to be in the presence of the least of God’s children is to be in the presence of God.
The following scriptural reflection was offered on August 30th, 2020 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Provo. The Old Testament reading for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost was Exodus 3:1-15.
He looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”
When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:2a-5)
Good Morning. Our readings this morning offered much to consider. I found myself especially drawn to this line from Moses: I must turn aside and look at this great sight.
Imagine if he hadn’t. If he’d glanced up from his FaceScroll feed only long enough to note the flames, and then continued on his way. It takes a lot to stop us in our tracks. Burning bush? Meh.
At our last place, Rebecca and I planted some burning bushes. It’s a variety of euonymus and every fall its rather unremarkable foliage erupts into flame. It’s quite spectacular. In a light breeze, it’s like a backyard full of bonfires. That first fall, when we’d step out our backdoor and find rows of bushes ablaze, we could almost hear a divine command issuing from those tongues of flame: Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.
Each Autumn they turned. But we stopped turning. Of course, we mentally registered the phenomenon, but it was as if each September a certain constellation of synapses flickered in my brain, simply confirming this feature of Euonymus alatus. I envy children the blessing of seeing everything in the world for the first time.
But back to our story. Moses turns aside to see this sight. Then we’re told, “When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him.” It seems as if our Creator plants surprises along our path, just waiting to take our breath away. There’s beauty here, God is saying. And now that I have your attention…
Remember that line from Alice Walker’s novel? One of the characters remarks, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.”
Well, Moses doesn’t walk by. He accepts the invitation. “Here I am,” he says. I think it’s interesting to stick a little comma in there— “Here, I Am.”— since that’s about to become God’s new handle. “Here, I AM.” In other words, “I’m here, God. I’m showing up. I’m making myself as ready as I can be for you to reveal yourself.” God then let’s Moses know this is to be a sacred encounter: Take off your sandals. This space between us is holy.
Mother Teresa was criticized for not wearing protective gloves when she ministered to the diseased and dying poor of Calcutta. Her reply was always the same: if she were permitted to touch her Lord and Savior, would she want gloves coming between them? For Mother Teresa, to stand before the poor was to stand in the presence of God.
I personally knew a woman in India, Dr. Susan, who worked with us in leprosy-affected communities. She was a devout Christian. We always prayed before making plans or beginning the work at hand. Just as we closed our eyes, I noticed she would quietly slip her feet out of her shoes. After Amen she would slip her feet back in again. I asked her about it once. Her explanation was astonishingly simple: to pray was to be in God’s presence.
Surely we don’t need to climb Mt. Sinai to be on holy ground. God’s presence is not limited to mountains or temples or grand cathedrals. If we had the good sense to recognize that all of creation is holy ground, we would spend a good deal of our day barefoot.
Some of you know I practice mindfulness in the Zen Buddhist tradition. This capacity for reverence is at the very heart of mindfulness. My teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches walking meditation, slowly placing one foot on the earth and then the other. The practice is not to get somewhere else, but to learn to truly arrive in each step. He says this about holy ground:
“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”
People like Moses and Dr. Susan and Thich Nhat Hanh spend a good deal of their day barefoot. Imagine if we ourselves could live more and more moments of our lives feeling truly alive. This is the heart of reverence.
For truly, each step is a step on holy ground; and to be in the presence of the least of God’s children is to be in the presence of God.
Amen.
Photograph of Buddhist bhikkhus from Myanmar by Eric Lafforgue
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. (Luke 24: 10-11)
I’m so heartsick to learn of another case of sexual abuse in our community. Foremost, I mourn for the victims. In their vulnerability, they were manipulated and sexually exploited by the people they most trusted. With the deepest part of my heart, I wish them healing and peace.
I’m also troubled by how rarely these women—and women like them—have been believed. For 3 decades, this woman’s allegations were dismissed. The first leader she told did not nothing because, as he recently told a reporter, he “wasn’t going to risk sullying the reputation of someone based on that kind of report.”
This pattern is all too common. Men in power control the narrative—usually in ways that preserve the institutional structures from which they derive their power.
What happens when a disempowered woman dares to challenge that narrative? When she accuses a good man of doing something bad?
Just last month, when now-disgraced White House Press Secretary (and fellow Mormon) Rob Porter was first accused of emotionally and physically abusing his ex-wives, Senator Hatch (R) lashed out at anyone who’d raise such charges as “morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name.” Only when the photographs of a blackened eye surfaced did Hatch give credence to what the wives had been saying–and understood he’d most certainly lose power if he continued defending the man.
And now, after 30 years of being disbelieved or ignored, a woman has recorded her perpetrator admitting to sexually exploiting young women like her while serving as the President of the Missionary Training Center. Until now, it was easier to disbelieve that woman than to believe her.
Men protecting men, because they can’t risk “sullying the reputation of someone.”
Men silencing women so they won’t “sully a good man’s name.”
In the same decade that President Joseph Bishop has admitted to exploiting vulnerable young women, two Mormon scholars were silenced after writing Mormon Enigma, a historically-responsible book about Emma Smith that included uncomfortable details about her husband, Mormon founder Joseph Smith. These women were banned from speaking about the book to Mormon audiences. When challenged, the apostle Elder Oaks explained “if Mormon Enigma reveals information that is detrimental to the reputation of Joseph Smith, then it is necessary to try to limit its influence and that of its authors.”
A man’s good name.
Sometimes even when apostles believe the women, they make sure no one else does.
As a boy, my father’s mastery of the woods enchanted me. He could outwit coyotes and fox, track a wounded deer with nothing to go on but a streak of blood and a hoof-slot stamped into a patch of moss. My dad could read the woods the way a scholar deciphers ancient texts.
One week ago, at age ninety, my father passed away. Several years ago, while pursuing a graduate degree, I flew out to see him. It was fall and fur-trapping season was in full swing. I left him a poem and when I returned to school, I wrote this piece.
MY DAD’S PLACE IN THE WOODS could pass for an 18th century fur trapper’s lodge. Pelts of coyote, fox, and coon hang like laundry above the wood stove. Against the paneled wall a few fleshing-boards lean, taut with the pale undersides of hides waiting for a final rubbing of salt. Rifles and shotguns and pistols are crammed in every nook and cranny of his single-wide. The only things out of character in this trailer deep in the heart of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are my red suitcase and me.
I’ve come to see my dad. It’s not a good time really, not with the crush of deadlines in my first year of grad school at USU. But when summer passed and I couldn’t visit, I promised I’d get here in the fall. Besides, he’s getting older. His buzz of white hair is familiar enough–he was in his mid-sixties when I left for college the first time–but now, a decade later, his leathery skin has changed to a transparent tissue.
He’s still tramping through the woods, though. Early last spring he fell through the ice, setting beaver traps. He clawed his way out, stripped down, and spent the afternoon buck naked before a fire of twigs and marsh grass waiting for his clothes to dry. He tells me this one evening when we’ve settled into easy chairs. “Pa,” I say, “one of these days you’re not going to be so lucky.”
In my mind I conjure the scene I’ve always imagined for his death: He’ll be deep in a cedar swamp tracking the faint smears of blood from a buck he’s shot, when he’ll stop mid-stride, clutch his chest, then slowly crumple to the ground. The shifting snow folds over him. Whenever my dad talks about dying, he says, You won’t find my bones till spring.
I look at him resting. He’s strong. Always will be, I assure myself. Doesn’t even catch colds like normal folk.
Lately, his death takes on an unsettling twist. As I imagine it, Dad’s hemorrhaging under an old white pine, praying one of his sons will find him in the pathless woods. My brothers, drawing on the woodsmanship they learned over the years from our father, rescue him. But when it’s on my shoulders, I’m not so lucky. I try to follow his steps, but I just can’t.
***
OF MY FATHER’S FOUR SONS, I’m the only one who didn’t become the hunter and trapper he’d raised us to be.
“Dad,” I said when I was 14, “I don’t want to get my buck permit.” He looked confused, as if I’d turned down a driver’s license. “And I don’t want to go trapping anymore, either.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they had left like arrows. The rift had come. His face turned ash, and he said nothing for a long time.
That was that. I’d taken the one thing he consciously passed on to his sons, the one thing that embodied his values and heritage, the one way he knew to raise boys, and said thanks, but no thanks. If trapping and hunting were my birthright, I’d just spat and turned away.
At the time, I applauded my decision for its moral courage. By refusing to kill, I had defied the traditions of my father and chosen the lonely path of enlightenment. The idea resonated, but it wasn’t an honest assessment, as I look back. The truth is, my dad had become repugnant to me.
It was a new feeling. As a boy, my father’s mastery of the woods enchanted me. He could outwit coyotes and fox, track a wounded deer with nothing to go on but a streak of blood and a hoof-slot stamped into a patch of moss. My dad could read the woods the way a scholar deciphers ancient texts.
But my dad was no scholar. In fact, he scoffed at book smarts, and held a bitter contempt for college types. Educated idiots, he called them, with the same venom he reserved for liberals and bunny-huggers. As my own interest in books and erudition flowered, quite unaccountably, at about 12 or 13, I found myself wincing. I was becoming one of them.
I suppose I come out the hero if I put the classic spin on this . . . Boy Raised by Savage Teaches Himself to Read Greek, Goes to College! . . . but that’s not how I feel now, sitting next to my father in the sway of the evening.
Sitting next to him now, I sense how needlessly I’d breached that apprenticeship so many years ago. I let my pretensions repel me from a man who had mastered something. Blind to so much of what he knew, I only acknowledged his crude grammar, his utter lack of sophistication. My father lacked any of the Athenian grace I sought for myself. Beauty and truth? The man wiped his butt with ferns.
***
I DON’T REGRET my college degree, but I understand what little value it holds in my dad’s world. I think of the Indian chiefs declining an offer by the government to teach their sons. Those who’d returned from universities in the past, the chiefs noted, couldn’t build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy – they were totally good for nothing. The chiefs countered, Give us your sons, and we will make men of them. I don’t know what I’m good for yet, and I wonder what I could do if I’d given my dad a shot at raising me.
On my last night, I give my dad a poem I’d worked on in my graduate- level poetry class. I read it aloud. It’s about a fur-trapper, maybe more. I’m certain he won’t understand it. Every line is a kind of deception, a trap waiting to be stepped in. He shifts kind of awkwardly, then says, “That’s real nice, son. Real nice.” I tried to reach out somehow. This was all I had.
In the morning, as I’m leaving for the airport, I see the poem mounted on his wall. I guess he understood it well enough. We both understood well enough. I stop in my tracks and take a good long look before saying goodbye.
This piece originally appeared in Utah State Magazine, summer 2005.
THE PRIEST SMEARS ASH PASTE across my forehead with his finger. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I think of Adam. That prelapsarian promise of power, of godhood, still hissing in his postlapsarian ears. And now God says, “Chew on this. You came from the mud and that’s where you end up. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
I’ve been Adam. In another lifetime I was tapped to represent the man Adam in the temple. I knelt at the altar while we, fledgling gods, winged our way to exaltation and glory. And thus the mud dreams of immortality.
Two distinct destinies: Intimations of immortality or a worm’s next lunch.
I return to the pew while the other parishioners present themselves to Father Peter. One by one he daubs their heads with the oily cinder of last year’s palms. A parishioner in his eighties shuffles into place. Remember that you are dust.A mother presents the bobbling heads of her three little girls—one on her hip wriggling to get free. Remember that you are dust. The well-dressed and the well-heeled, the homeless man coming in from the cold. Remember that you are dust.
I sense a deepening kinship, a more elemental connection with everyone here. We sprang up, each of us, from Mother Earth. Some day she will take us back. And in that consummation, surely our notions of being significant or insignificant, of mattering more or mattering less than anyone else, will dissolve. Just a drop of water in an endless sea, to quote from a song I’m hoping against hope will be included in today’s service.
For many Buddhists, meditating on our own eventual decay is a key practice.I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to get sick. I am of the nature to die. Some say this is a bleak and pessimistic point of view. But here, on Ash Wednesday, my fellow Christians have come together to be reminded that we are mortal. Remember, Father Peter intones, remember.
In Pali (the language preserving the Buddha’s teachings) the word “remember”—sati—is often translated as “mindfulness.” As I hear Father Peter repeating this mantra, Remember, Remember, I hear an invitation to life, to a sacred awakening. Like Mary Oliver, I’m no longer sure what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention, how to kneel in the grass or to kneel here, now, beside a wooden pew at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, refuge of outcasts, sacred pile of compost.
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
from “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver
We kneel and receive the bread and wine. When we stand again, it’s to offer thanks, “for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son.” Communion with the Cosmic Christ, our indivisible Buddha nature, empty of a separate self. Saints and sinners, snails and slugs, wombats and wildebeests. The whole of life. As in Adam we die, so in Christ we live.
Ashes to ashes, we all fall down. Ashes to ashes we rise again.
The following essay was written one week into the presidency of Donald J. Trump–in the wake of the controversial travel ban and ensuing protests. The essay appeared in Sunstone, Spring 2017.
photo credit: Amy Goalen
Morning Sequence
By Lon Young
Tree Pose
For a minute or two, we’ve created our own sacred grove—twenty of us swaying in the sweaty breeze of the gym fan, arms drawn heavenward. Our left legs are lifted off the floor, knees swung wide, heels propped against the inner thigh of our standing legs. I feel a slow burn in my foot and ankle; sense the hum of a thousand gyroscopes steadying me.
We are practicing the art of staying centered, of remaining rooted yet supple, yielding to the gusts of life, trusting in the strength of our core. When a woman two rows up starts to topple, I hear my thoughts reassuring her: Don’t panic. Find your drishti—your focusing point.
This was my posture just after the presidential election. Equipoise. Balance and counterbalance. I consoled myself by trusting in the core values we share as Americans. Surely our commitments and traditions ran too deep to be uprooted, no matter who occupied the White House. Certain protections were enshrined in our Constitution, weren’t they? And a safeguard of checks and balances? The new president’s bluster and bravado were simply that, and would be drowned out by swelling choruses of Kumbaya. We who are committed to peace and justice comprise a vast forest: we breathe in what is noxious and breathe out what sustains.
And then came the inauguration. As I write this, it is the sixth day of the first week. The sixth day of smashing things, breaking things, uprooting things. A tornado full of chainsaws. And God saw everything he had unmade, and behold, he declared it was very very very good. The best ever.
And how can I stand now, safely planted in my privilege as a straight, white, non-Muslim male, humming hymns in arboreal bliss while chainsaws are buzzing in the borderland?
The Warrior
I move into Virabhadrasana, Warrior Pose. My stance is charged: thighs taut like crouched panthers, arms extended, hands blades. Once, when his beloved Sati was persecuted, Lord Shiva tore a lock of his hair and threw it to the ground. A moment later, Virabhadra sprang up from the earth—the incarnation of Shiva’s wrath—and hacked his wife’s tormentors into pieces.
For much of my life I didn’t allow myself to feel anger. It was an emotion unworthy of the narrative I was writing for myself. I would begin each day with the prayer of St. Francis in my heart: Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. But it’s getting harder and harder to know what peace should look like. And this warrior posture feels . . . well, it feels kind of right.
photo credit: Amy Goalen
Pema Chodron says we should be bodhisattva warriors: warriors of wisdom and compassion who do battle against ignorance and hatred. And Paul says the struggle isn’t with flesh and blood but against rulers of darkness, against wickedness in high places. But these metaphors make me wary. I know our history, both as Mormons and as Christians: we sing strike for Zion, flash the sword above the foe, but whenever we have too zealously wielded the “Sword of the Spirit,” it has become stained with real blood. And I know my own heart. I know how readily the kindling of righteous indignation flares into the searing heat of hatred.
But what would it say about our moral conscience as Mormons if we were not angry, not roused to action? What if we sat upon the throne of our privilege, to use Captain Moroni’s blistering phrase, in a state of thoughtless stupor? I hear him now in my head. Yea, will ye sit in idleness . . . while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye suppose that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things?
When I shift into Warrior II, I remember the bodhisattva warriors and the apostle Paul and Captain Moroni, who did not delight in bloodshed. And I think also of Virabhadra, and a mountain meadow in southern Utah, and the oath of vengeance that our Mormon progenitors swore in the Temple of the Lord. I catch myself in the mirror, arms locking into a horizontal plane as bright as a spear.
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
The Corpse
We are led through what seems a lifetime of asanas: forward bends, backbends, chest openers, twists, up-dogs and down-dogs, poses for balancing, poses for binding. It’s a sequence of battles in a campaign we seem to be losing. There’s no way to flush out the lactic acid fast enough. Our muscles stiffen from the onslaught until we are unable to deflect the next attack—to decry, denounce, or defend; unable to uphold truths we mistook to be self-evident.
We ease our backs onto our mats as if they were stretchers.
Our yoga teacher says Savasana is our chance to relax, to pamper ourselves with a few minutes of peace and quiet. We go along with this fiction because we prefer it to the truth: this is the part where we are supposed to die.
Closing my eyes, I stretch out my arms and wait for it, following the rise and fall of my breath.
My first attempt at dying was at age eight in a makeshift baptismal font of stacked cinder blocks lined with sheets of clear plastic. It failed, of course. As a Mormon, I have been taught to strive, to multiply and increase, to rise through the ranks, to seek the validations of worthiness that qualify me for thrones, kingdoms, and exaltations. But I have not been taught how to let go, how to subtract myself, descend below, forfeit status and standing. Teach me how to die like a god—how to stretch out my arms in profound love and say Father, forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
You must reduce yourself to zero, Gandhi said many times and in many ways. He lived in India, of course, where the only number that can hold infinite emptiness was invented. This surrender, this annihilation of the ego, became the source of his spiritual victory, but it also generated the energy—the soul force—that sustained his courage, his resilience, and his unfailing faith as a satyagrahi, or truth warrior. As I lay here in the darkened room on my mat, body splayed out in defeat, I wonder if I can reduce myself to zero.
A voice in the darkness says, “Turn your wrists to the sky.”
We are left in corpse pose for I don’t know how long. I congratulate myself on surrendering my own ego—not my will, but thine be done—even as I’m listening for the flutter of dove’s wings and the rending of the temple veil. (Shouldn’t there be some kind of fireworks?) But when our teacher tells us to wake our fingers and toes, to regain a seated position, I suspect it’s still the same old me rising from the mat.
Half Lotus with Anjali Mudra
The lotus flower blossoms where there is mud. It rises up from the muck, through the murky water, until its flower, floating on the surface of the pond, blooms with such sublime beauty that religions throughout the East have adopted it as a symbol of purity, enlightenment, and the transcendence of suffering.
Last night we took our children to “Meet the Muslims.” The imam spoke of his congregation’s anxiety-ridden decision to hire security guards to protect them as they gather to pray. But then he gestured to the room of non-Muslims—mostly Mormons—who had come. He said that because of the election, because of the attempted Muslim ban, hundreds of us have been coming each week to express our support. I remembered the Utah March for Refugees and how State Street leading up to Capitol Hill had become a river of solidarity. Love flowing uphill. Lotuses rising from the mud.
We end in a seated posture. I’m in half lotus because I’m still not flexible enough for full lotus . . . and my head still hasn’t cleared the mud. (Someday.) My left foot is cradled in the fold of my right hip; my right foot is supporting my left knee. Everything embraces and sustains its opposite and the result is a balanced, upright posture.
I am trying to listen to people whose perspectives are different than mine. I am trying to remind myself that we are not separate, that our well-being is not separate. If I have learned anything as an unorthodox Mormon over the last few years, it is to be aware of the harm we do when we reject one another, when we deem some people acceptable of our fellowship and others not.
As we join our hands together in anjali mudra—prayer gesture—I think of Jesus inviting us into a relationship of wholeness, teaching us that the space we create in our hearts must include the whole human family. No one excluded. I have room for the downtrodden, but do I have space for the bully stomping on them? And is there room for the 63 million voters who handed him the boots?
Until our hearts can stretch that wide, we sit half lotus. We pray for the supple grace of a tree, the fearlessness of a warrior, and the pure heart of a flower that blooms in the mud. We lay our pride and self-interest on the altar and practice dying a little more each day. And when we rise from our mats, morning after morning, our sacred work awaits.
Buddha in the Beehive 