~Justin

When the sadness hits, I think of it as I do my allergies. I just have to ride this out and I’ll feel better again soon.

I see the world around me filled with opportunities to numb myself to the pain. I reject this.

I will not be numb. I will not self-medicate by purchasing a new Thing, watching TV or drinking myself into a stupor. I won’t seek the emotional high of a praise service nor will I wallow in the depths of my feelings of hopelessness.

I will continue to do what I do. I will do the work. I have Things to make. There are books to write. There are shows to create.

AND a house to clean. No procrastinating. Time to get to work.

Killing the Buddha is the idea that if I think I have things figured out, I must immediately reject that idea. I do not have things figured out. I do not know as much as I think I do. I still have room to grow.

If one encounters the Buddha and does not kill him, stagnation tends to be the result. Dogma and strict adherence, if not worship, of my “total” knowledge holds me back. I cannot grow. I cannot fill Life with my being.

There is always more. The apprentice might not understand this. The master does.

It won’t work.

Death is. Death comes to everyone. Some see it as an enemy. The ultimate uncontrollable thing. It is a goad, a mocker, a cynic.

What if Death’s a coach?

What if Death walks beside us, daily, asking if what we’re up to is really what we want to be up to? And are we working our passions as hard as they deserve?

This is my new image of Death. Death is a coach. He roots me on. He’s urging me to be myself, fully, totally. To not spend any moment on that which isn’t worthy of me.

My fortieth birthday is two months off, so Death is not likely to come for me just yet. But that he is nearer now than he was is evident in so many subtle ways.

My legs and back respond completely differently to any use at all exercise. What I choose to eat changes my body more unavoidably than it did. My relationships with those who are just entering adulthood have changed. These kids are completely in my lawn. Love ‘em, but seriously, what they think is important is just so…

So reminiscent of what I thought was important…

wait for it…

when I was their age.

There. I said it. I’m officially old.

Death isn’t right around the corner, I don’t think. But he’s there.

And he’s rooting for me. Cheering me on. When he comes, he wants me. He wants the real me. Not some poorly constructed mash-up of me plus everyone I want to please.

He wants me. Pure me.

And I intend for that to be exactly what he gets.

Or that feeling when you’re on the way to work but you know you ought to be working on something else – something more meaningful?

Or that feeling even as you’re doing the laundry that there’s something you ought to be doing and you know specifically what it is but you’re not doing it?

Yeah. That.

I’m a writer and a performer. I experience and share the human experience through those things. The training I’ve received as an improviser is the most spiritual and humanizing stuff I’ve ever experienced.

My teacher is amazing. I have not been able to study with him for years, specifically because I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He lives in LA and often teaches in NYC.

I feel a real pull to go study with him. To become more fully a channel for the transcendent in a way that is only accessible when doing something like improv.

I can’t explain this. I account justify it in any monetary terms. I have no idea how, exactly, I’d pull it off.

But I want to. I want to study with a master of my craft and grow from that.

And I feel terror.

This terror is the feeling anyone feels when desire runs wild and the sense we have of self-control goes away. I cannot exert my will over this. I am therefore afraid of it.

In my experience, that’s a sign that I have to follow. If you’re afraid, you have to do it. Fear is the great direction-finder. It’s what tell us what we’re supposed to do next.

More on this as it unfolds. But there’s a change in the air. It’s terrifying, but it’s also exciting.

There are two things to understand about this question.

One is that in the time of Abraham (and really up to the time of Moses) the Israelites believed in a whole pantheon of gods. Gods were regional and tribal. We see this continuing through the Kingdom period and into the Exile. When the Israeliste nation is finally destroyed, the idea is that the God of the Israelites has abandoned them, allowing the God of the Babylonians to run wild all up in Jehovah’s yard. This happens to the Babylonians, too. They are conqured by the Assyrians, proving that the Assyrian gods are more powerful than the Babylonian gods.

And so on.

Totally reasonable for Moses to say, “Ok, sure, I get it, you’re a god. Which one?” That’s part of what he’s asking.

He’s being a little sly about it, though, don’t you think? He’s like a secretary asking, “Who should I say is calling?” He’s saying, “So, who’m I talkin’ to, here?” But in a back door kind of way.

This makes sense, too. In ancient spirituality to know the name of a spiritual being gave power over it. If you’re a spirit being and your name is Bob, and I know how you say your name, then I can say your name and have some control over you. If Moses can get God to say his name, then Moses will be able to control God, to an extent.

Then comes one of the most famous sentences in all of history.

Moses says, “When the folks back home ask what your name is, what do I tell them?”

God says, “I am who I am.”

This isn’t a name. It’s a self-description.

If you look in your Bible you’ll probably find this in all caps. Like: I AM WHO I AM. ‘Cause God needs to yell to get his point across.

Well, not really. God’s not yelling. The caps are more indicative of the “name” being a sort of title, like “King” is a title.

Then again the verb there, ehyeh, is in an emphatic tense. So in a way, God is yelling, but the emphasis comes more in tone than volume.

Or maybe he yelled. How would I know? I wasn’t there. Why are you pressuring me?

The actor in me thinks he didn’t yell. The actor in me knows that this line is more powerful if said emphatically but softly. Firmly. With great confidence.

“I am who I am.”

Other translations say it in other ways:

“I will be that I will be.”
“I will be there howsoever I will be there.”
“I am that I am.” (“That” as opposed to “who.”)

The ideas overlap. God makes clear that he cannot be controlled. That his nature isn’t dependent on anyone else. He simply is. And he is who he is. Arguements have been made that this is also a reference to his timeless nature, his eternal presence, etc.

Maybe let’s keep it simple?

“I am who I am.”

What a great goal.

The nature of God is to simply be who he is. He cannot be controlled. He cannot be manipulated or coerced. He is who he is.

What else would it mean, then, to be godly, than that we are who we are, too? I’m not talking about usurping power from a deity. (We take God seriously here, but not literally. In terms of this blog God is a metaphor and more powerful, I think, as a result.) I’m talking about being able to say at all times, “I’m just me.”

So often Justin is not who Justin is. There’s the real me, buried deep inside, yearning to be free. Then there’s the me I let out. Pretty often I am who someone else wants me to be. I am who I think my boss wants me to be. I am who I think my partner wants me to be. I am who I think my family wants me to be. I am everything but me.

Does this make sense?

If God’s nature is that he is who he is, then this is definitively ungodly on my part.

God’s nature is to be who he is. There’s no belligerence. A belligerent attitude by it’s very nature admits to someone else being in control. God’s nature is. He just Is. No apologies. No excuses. This is me. Here’s who I am. I am not controlled by anyone. Say what you will and try to intimidate me all you want, I’m still me. Unshakably me.

This kind of centeredness requires a good deal of self-awareness and a lot of deliberate action. It means being mindful every moment of what we’re doing and how we’re behaving. What we say and what we do ought to be consistent regardless of context.

The idea of “I am who I am” resonates with the Tao as well. The Hebrew for “I am” is “ehyeh” which means, among other things, “existence.” It’s the word for existence itself.

Take the word “run.” Imagine a kick-ass runner, marathons all the time, always out there with the skin-tight bodysuit and the fancy running shoes, rain, snow, wind, tornado… nothing stops her. And she sits at the table across from you saying, “I am running.” Not like “what are you doing?” “Oh, I’m running.” Like “I AM the ESSENCE of running. I am running personified. If you’re running, you’re basically trying to be me.”

God says “I am” in this fashion. He’s not saying, “I exist.” He’s saying “I am Existence.”

Here’s some fun: In the Tao te Ching we read of this sort of concept. A thing exists which is the root of all existence. It’s the source of existence. It is. As in, IT IS. One translation calls the Tao “the Great Integrity.” It is what it is. Here’s what the Tao te Ching says about it:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
(tr. S. Mitchell)

Notice the same idea. If I can describe it, if I can name it, it’s not real. The Tao, too, is what it is. It cannot be named. It simply is.

And again, what a great goal.

We will revisit this. For now, I simply want to add to my daily meditations a reminder to be who I am. Not belligerently. No apologies, either. Simply and straightforwardly, with a matter-of-fact tone, I strive to be godly in that one day I can say “I am who I am.”

The molecular vehicle of morality, and the best way to make sure we’ve got plenty of it.

Any exploration of the God idea is ultimately an exploration of oneself. Even given a literal deity, there is no unambiguous message from God which we can compare notes with to correct our misapprehensions. So the only thing we are really talking about when we talk about God is ourselves.

When we hear someone talking about the world God wants us to live in, we’re hearing that person’s ideals about life.

When we hear someone speak about what God is calling them to, we’re hearing the deep desires of that person’s heart.

When we hear someone speak of how God judges us, or how God refrains from judging us, again, we’re hearing the true voice of that person.

I learn nothing about God when you speak of him. I learn volumes about you.

So we reflect: what do our spoken and unspoken statements about God communicate? Sometimes I talk of God with words. Sometimes I talk of God with my actions. What am I saying? What goals am I claiming for myself? What am I revealing, however inadvertently, about my own prejudices and biases?

And if I’m not communicating accurately, what do I need to change to begin to do so?

“I’m doing this wrong.”
“I’m no good at speaking.”
“I’m no good at singing.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, here I am, doing this thing I was told to do. Don’t know why.”
“I’m sorry, I did that wrong.”

And so on.

When this happens, my teacher, Gary, will say, “Don’t talk about the exercise.

In order to talk about the exercise, we stop actually doing the exercise. We cannot do both. We cannot examine what we’re doing, comment on it or assess it while we’re doing it. So our task, while we’re doing the exercise, is simply to do it. To finish it. To reserve any comment on it for a post-exercise debriefing.

As we contemplate Who We Are and What We’re Meant To Do the talking gets in the way, too. There is a way in which we feel a pull to serve. There is something we know we are good at, something we know we’ve served others successfully while doing. This is the thing to focus on. It’s why we’re here.

So… how to not talk about the exercise:

One, we need to shut up and just let the work speak for itself. If we’re constantly talking about what we’re going to do and what we’re going to achieve, we’re delaying that achievement. Why stop to talk about where we’re going when we’re in the middle of our work?

Let’s just get it finished and then shout from the rooftops what we accomplished.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t share our goals with someone. It’s good to have that mastermind group. Nothing worthwhile is ever done alone. Nothing is done without a community being involved, even if that community is small to begin with. Once we’ve taken a specific time to lay out those plans, though, we must shut up and get moving. That is, until the specifically planned meeting to assess progress.

Which brings us to two, we cannot assess our progress while we’re doing a thing. If we see that what we’re doing is obviously headed for a train wreck, we stop. We take a deep breath. Then we assess. If we continue working while assessing our progress we’re just distracting ourselves.

And, finally, three, usually the talking just increases our stress level. If we have a task to perform and we know how to do it, the thing to do is finish. If we have a task we don’t know how to do, the thing to do is to learn to do it. Which, of course, we can. (It’s ’cause we’re brilliant.)

To sum up, like my girlfriend used to say, “Less talk. More action.” That’s how things get done.

The theme this weekend is prayer. KCC uses a theistic image of God. One can pray to God, confess sins, make requests and expect a response. The goal for the service is to explore the idea of prayer and help the guests have a more practical approach to prayer as part of their lifestyle.

As might be expected given the (as I mentioned before) very sensible approach to weekends as an introduction to the religion, there are a lot of points which could easily be expanded into their own hour.

One very cool part of the service is a high-quality video of interviews with locals from other area churches. A rabbi, an evangelical preacher, an imam, a nun and a native american tribal leader give their opinions on prayer. Most interesting are a couple of statements by the rabbi and the nun.

The rabbi talks of prayer happening often to increase the probability of the “God experience” happening. Speaking of God as an experience rather than a person is intriguing.

The nun says that the point of Christianity is to make a person more human. This, too, resonates with me, though I found it amusing coming from a person who does not have sex.

More on those ideas in a later post.

During the lesson, which is punctuated very well with vignettes performed  by local actors, the Pastor gives a very basic outline of prayer. He relates four steps: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. The acronym “ACTS” abbreviates this. There are meditative analogs for these ideas which don’t involve a theistic God. I want to look at these ideas from non-religious perspective, but that’ll happen in another post.

The highlight of the morning was a conversation with Danny Cox – one of the leaders of KCC – about God. Danny journeyed through an exploratory period of life, investigating many paths including Buddhism and several other “-isms.” We talked about his transition into Christianity and then being a leader in the church.

We discussed the nature of God, the relationships between people in a community of faith, and the meaning of the Bible. Danny was honest about his doubts and fears related to the church as well as happy to share his convictions as a believer. We spent a good chunk of time talking about the balance between the life of the believer as an individual and then as a part of the community. There is a tension in that. That’s true of any organization.

I do plan to return to Detroit and KCC before too long. Next time I’ll bring my fancy mic and record a conversation with him. Interesting guy, that Danny.

What’s fascinating is exploring just what the natural, human experience is that provokes the invention of God. I really dig that sort of exploration.

I’ll also hope to record some other conversations with my friend Sandi, who hosted me this weekend and also works at the church, plus some of the other artists working here.

There’ll be posts up this week about the prayer, God experience and the idea of Christianity being a path to increased humanity. So many thought provoking ideas to wade through over this weekend. Good times.

Talk to you soon.