At any rate, from the New Beginnings website, this is what we believe (not an exhaustive list):

We believe in a divine being-the First Cause and Creator of all reality.

We believe the Creator is known by many names: Brahman, Yahweh, Jesus Christ, Allah, Wakantanka and countless more

We believe that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine and we believe this truth in no way conflicts with the beliefs of other religions and spiritual traditions.

We believe that the Christian theology of the Trinity helps to communicate the truth of the Godhead.

We believe the the Divine has communicated its Self to all cultures in all times according to the images and language of each culture in each
culture’s time.

We believe science and religion can inform each other about the nature of reality.

The Bible tells why God created all Reality, not literally how Reality came to be.

God inspired human authors to write what we know as the Bible.

The divisions in Christianity over Bible versions is unnecessary and deeply damaging to the people of God.

At its core, the Bible will always be Mystery for it points to the Mystery of God.

The Bible is a living record of the human struggle to awaken to the truth that God is . . . “I Am.”

What we do not know far exceeds what we think we know.

We do not know if God has chosen to or will choose to reveal more about the nature of the Divine Self and/or the nature of reality.

It is time for human beings to hear the Truth in language we are ready to comprehend . . . We must listen quietly and carefully.

Every person owns the dignity to believe what she or he believes about ultimate matters. People need not agree with each other’s beliefs.

Clashing ideas too often take precedent over human beings, creatures and creation.

I can disagree with an idea or an ideology. I cannot disagree with a person.

Personhood is not an idea. It is being.

Differences in ideas cannot change the nature and purpose of Divine Truth.

Some honored spiritual leaders like His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama have cautioned against spiritual supermarket shopping and I understand the concern. Individuals want to devote time and prayerful reflection to the worship forms we take into our lives. The world’s religious traditions are vessels filled with sacred gifts straight from the Divine Heart. We must honor those gifts.

Once I settle on a practice, which resonates within me, that resonance is an internal pressure from the Spirit of the Universe to follow the path down which that practice leads my floundering, silent footfalls. I will not give any institution the privilege and responsibility to prescribe or proscribe the contents contained in my prayer and worship kit.

So, I say, read and practice what you will. Find what works for you. You know your truth, or you will in time. Always proceed respectfully, but, if you meet the Buddha on the road to Enlightenment, kill him.

I have the theological credentials to write about and to teach systematic theology, which includes Catholic Church history, Scripture interpretation and theological systems. I specialize in spirituality, interfaith dialogue and mysticism. I don’t support one religious tradition or school over another. I do not believe that any Christian denomination or any other religious or spiritual tradition holds the one key to unlock a soul’s journey home. For that reason, I probably can never teach in a Catholic school again. The RCC likes to keep its teachers on a short leash. I don’t do spiritual leashes because I don’t believe that God does leashes-at least not the way human religions do leashes.

In the following days, weeks and months, I will post about a new path I call New Beginnings. I hope it gives readers cause to pause and ponder their private spiritual truth.

Namaste

Rev. Blue Gaia, M.A.

Sometimes people say, as if so wise, laden with deep thoughts, ”Grief is for those left behind.” I say, certainly. Who else is there to carry the tender memories for those who have have crossed into the unknown, to the “other side?” I think people mean that grief is self-centered. If that’s true, I say, “Nonsense!” What is the alternative? To do as some who clearly fear strong feelings and say, “Life is for the living?”  Then go on, dead as stone and smug in their empty superiority. These platitudes are so ridiculous and so empty. Tautologies really. “Those who die are no longer living.”

But, grief is not about me in the most important way. I might wonder what will I do now? But, my concern is in reference to my lost darling one. My hopes and prayers are for her and those she loved well and who loved her well. I am human and I try to find a place for my love and to keep her love alive inside me. I hold Lorie’s life up to the light and let God‘s radiant love pour through–as light is transformed through a prism.

I wish that her passing was not too painful. I look for and share how her love continues. I am aware, as I know others are, of moments that are uniquely Lorie. She infuses her goodness and spirit into conversations and in the ways we are coming together. Without any need to prove I love her, I am at peace. Our love continues. Death cannot slay that. So, my days go on. I weep and laugh and wonder.

Lorie is an angel who has flown beyond our physical grasp. But, if I sit still enough, I feel the flutter of her wings. Do you feel that? That spirited flutter in your heart and in your memories? She is alive in a way she never was. No pain. No struggle. Free and awake! This is for you, girl:

“Did an angel whisper in your ear?

And hold you close and take away your fears,

In those long, last moments?”

“Lake Charles“, Lucinda Williams from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

“For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.” Jeremiah 29:11-12

Finding Despair and Love at My Father’s Side

Grief is deeply personal, entirely unique and wholly encompassing to the one who experiences it. Loss to the mystery of Death is attended by bewilderment and a sense of peering into the “other side” of this existence.—to an unknown realm toward which we all journey. Along with mystery, those who grieve can experience many feelings or feel nothing at all. While the mind casts about for answers, possibly for that impossible way to undo this dreadful thing, the body responds with its own litany of objections, all of which are signals that radiate from the center of one’s being. Some people sleep around the clock; others may not be able to sleep at all. Sometimes people fall prey to illness and feelings of being overwhelmed. Often people are unable to eat and feel as if they are trapped on an emotional roller coaster. If the one who has passed and the grieving person had a difficult relationship, grieving can be especially hard. Anger or guilt and shame may follow and will need to be addressed and somehow resolve—in time. Regardless of the dark emotional, mental and physical symphony that attends one’s loss, there is no denying that life and death are opposites on the spectrum of life’s experiences. There is no map, no GPS. All that remains is to listen to the inner voice and follow it until, one day, some day, one can glimpse the sun on the Eastern horizon of hope. Until then, find support, lower expectations and pass each day, each minute as best as possible. You are not alone.

Honor Thy Father:

My father was so ill. He had bladder cancer and elected to have his bladder removed. My dad was nearly 78 years old and elected the surgery as a quality of life decision. Amazingly, he came through the surgery with strength. The doctors were pleased. However, the night of the operation, my father suffered a stroke.  My husband and I had driven to Montana to be there for the surgery. There are only my brother and I left and my brother could not be there. At 12:50 a.m., the motel phone rang and a doctor told me the bad news. We rushed to my father’s side. Since then, there was a great deal of activity, including end-of-life conversations, many prayers from around the world and tears. I have cried many tears.

My dad and I had a rough relationship. In retrospect, I carry the weight for that. You see, I have always thought he took more than his share. When we did not have enough food, I blamed him. I resented that he got a free lunch at his job. I thought that he could have, should have done more for our little family. I always reacted to him, in the little ways and the big ways, in anger. When my mom died in 1983, I wrote off my family. I called my dad out of guilt and resented him for the way I felt. I harbored the most dreadful thoughts about him, thoughts I can never bring to light. When Dad moved to Montana from Denver, I felt well-rid of him. I let my brother become the one who took care of all my dad’s life details. My brother did so and never blamed me. Now I comprehend the enormity of such love. I comprehend the scope of my father’s love. I experience the terrible depth of my own selfishness and shame.

Honor thy father.

When I learned about my father’s illness, before I went to his bedside in Montana, a great glacier around my heart crashed and dissolved. It happened in an instant. I recognize that kind of radical shift in consciousness and I know the Author. This is what God can and will do. “Now you shall see what I will do,” whispers the Father of us all, deep in the center of my soul. This is what God did. My anger vaporized. Replaced was a love that has filled the dark and empty caverns of my spirit. When I saw my dad for the first time in years, lying on that hospital bed, my heart filled with sorrow. He looked so small and so alone. I love him so much. Now I know I always did. My fixation on imagined misdeeds could not have sustained the decades if I did not, in fact, love him. I love you, Daddy. But, such a waste. I feel crucified by the time I have lost. He deserved so much better. So, I struggled to give him anything that I could to show him that he was/is loved. Nothing, though, seemed enough to compensate. I arranged for a harpist to play for him. I had to return to Colorado. I called several times a day. I sent a package. Someone from the Pastoral Center visited him as well. So little, so late.

Honor thy father. I hear the whisper deep within. It is God. I strain to believe that I can be forgiven. Honor thy father.

My father is gone now. He did not improve from the stroke. Toward the end, those last few weeks, he rarely opened his eyes and was usually fed by a feeding tube. He recovered enough, for a few days, and took food by mouth. Believe me when I say that I no longer resent the food he received. I would have eaten for him. I do not think he took an unfair share, depriving me. I am not thinking about me at all. A voice in my head screamed, “Give it all to him!” He never came to swallow in any remarkable way. My brother was committed to follow the wishes our dad voiced to him, which was not to be fed by tube in an effort to only keep him alive. I would call the hospital and later the nursing home and ask a nurse put a phone to his ear so he could hear my voice again. There were a couple of nights he said he did not want to do that. I struggled to let everything except what he wanted go, left to be examined at a later time.

The night before we left Missoula he looked at me and said, “Are you OK?” These were his first words to anyone. It was such a joy to hear him and I laughed in pure joy as tears filled my eyes. His love was so great that he found the strength to ask about me. Who was the selfish one? Who has that been for the whole of my life? I see my dad as beautiful and funny and selfless. That is a complete and radical reversal of my thoughts about him before.

Honor thy father.

I think I believed that I had the power to raise him up from his bed. That’s probably grandiose, but I thought I brought him something I had denied him my entire life. My unconditional love and the power to heal that come with such love. I did not care about bringing myself relief. I do not deserve that. I do not need or want that. I only wanted him to have and experience all that is good, and true and loving. I wanted him to bask in his daughter’s love and enjoy how that felt. I could only accomplish so much. I pray that Christ and God, the Father of us all, and the Blessed Mother cradled my father and guided him along this journey that we shared and, yet, seemed so alone. I know this: Dad suffered no pain during those last months. He just slept and, once in a while, when I called, he grinned and then cried too.

I have experienced that life and death do not abide by my expectations and desires. I have been immersed in a renewal at my core and I am shaken and terrified by the enormity of the love and the desolation I feel. I cannot imagine that I will ever feel forgiven in this life for the things I have done and those I have failed to do.

In a dream, long ago, I sat beside our Lord, our Brother and Friend, weeping in desolation, disconsolate. Christ smiled at me. I knew in that instant that He knew everything about me, the good and the bad, the ugly. Do you know what He said? “It’s going to be OK.” As I write these words, I realize that was a foreshadowed answer to my father’s question, “Are you OK?” Even so, in my flawed and human self, I cannot believe I am forgivable, how can Christ smile at me at such a time as this?

My dear dad has been gone some months now. I returned to Montana one more time, with one final, late-night motel room phone call. This time Dad was slipping away. I was with him until the end. He never spoke to me again. He saw my son, my good and decent son, dressed in his Air Force blues for Grandpa. It worked that Dad crossed over a couple of nights before I left Montana. I did not go back to Montana to watch my daddy die. But, he waited for me and I love him so wide and true for the waiting. Such a time of love and power, those months. I watched in awe as my dad inhaled a rattling breath and felt the silent, raw end of his life force. It was finished. I arranged for military honors and I did what I refused to do for years. I brought my daddy home and he is with my mom, now.

As time has passed, I have come to realize that I no longer have parents and that adds to the sense of loss. I am facing my mortality. But, more than those obvious truths, I reflect on the time I had with my dad and I know that I was and am blessed to be his daughter. Not even mortality can take away that fact of my existence. I have experienced guilt, shame and deep sorrow. I am an adult dealing with the loss of the little girl’s daddy. When I cannot sleep, I work on Dad’s memorial DVD. I am obsessed by it. It has to be perfect. For a while, I had a lot of headaches. That has lightened lately. I pray. The other morning I looked at the Eastern sky and I thought I caught sight of the rising sun. It has been a dark night.

Honor thy father.

What does interfaith encounter look like? Interreligious dialogue has many faces. Two people can come together and share the aspects of their respective faiths and struggle to understand that which is foreign. Theologians can write papers, publish in journals, and convene to discuss the finer theological issues related to interreligious dialogue (and there are a multitude of theological issues). Perhaps members of one faith tradition can join with members of another religion to improve a neighborhood. Suppose the world’s political leaders met to investigate the other’s most basic assumptions about the world and what human beings are doing here?

Each of the above examples is a form of interreligious dialogue. What is most crucial in any such encounter is that the participants lay aside attempts to evangelize, which is always accompanied by an attitude of exclusive superiority. That is the spoken or unspoken belief that one’s own religion is to “true” way, the only way in the ultimate sense of the terms.

A commitment to openness is deeply difficult. For example, in Christianity, evangelizing and converting others to that faith system is a central tenet that is rooted in the Christian scriptures. Christians generally believe that one must be saved and that salvation is only possible in Christianity. On the other hand, the Hindu tradition maintains (generally speaking) that there are many paths to the Divine and each religion has similar and relative value to the others. These differing cosmologies can be obstacles that cannot be overcome or opportunities for release from enslaving assumptions.

The following are some guidelines for effective interreligious dialogue:

1. Participants in interreligious dialogue cannot use the encounter as opportunities to defend their own traditions.

2. Neither is interreligious dialogue a means to defend religion in general.

3. There is a risk of conversion. Participants may find themselves transformed by the interfaith encounter.

4. Dialogue participants must reveal the beliefs that they hold closest and that define their religious tradition.

5. Interreligious dialogue is not a philosophical, theological or intellectual exercise. It is an expression of the participants’ lived faith lives. Therefore, interfaith encounters form communities of awareness.

The World Council of Churches, various theologians and many other resources provide guidelines for interfaith dialogue. Those listed above are gleaned from different sources. Many items were omitted and others were expanded, according to this author’s interpretation of the dialogical process.

Finally, since peace is the goal of interreligious dialogue, the process must be peaceful. It is important to realize that peace is not easily achieved and maintained. The process may be peaceful, but it is somewhat like climbing Everest. Peace does not occur in a day and there are obstacles as intrepid travelers struggle up the path to heights where the human spirit may soar.

©Sandra Fults 2007

©Sandra Fults 2003

I see her there before me, in my religious imagination. In Ansel Adams black and white, she kneels in a rushing river. She clasps her aged hands in prayer, eyes closed, head slightly cocked. She wears a thin cotton garment, a sari, and a matching scarf. Both are soaked from the river’s spray. She is a vision of prayerful serenity. I want to know her; I want to experience her peace.

I do not know this woman. I think she must be in India, a Hindu.  Judging by her clothing and the river, I think she is immersed in the Ganges. Less consciously, I form other more spiritually intimate assumptions. For example, since I think she is Hindu, she may be praying to Krishna, Shiva, Kali or one of the multitudes of names by which Hindus know God. Yet, all this runs through my mind without benefit of knowing her, by approaching her and entering into her soul’s delight and her mind’s illumination.

His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama says, “Peace means genuine tranquility. I think genuine peace must come on the basis of mutual trust, mutual respect.” His sentiment does not conflict with Christ’s life as narrated in the gospels. I reflect on Christ’s compassion and values as he conversed with the woman at the well. She was an outsider to the Pharisees, yet Christ protected her from their anger. And she was moved in her soul.

I take a tentative first step from my secure bank of rational thought and slowly ease my way into the foreign currents of her faith. She is watching me, the hint of a smile and a glint of merriment in her eyes. I stand before her, not yet kneeling. “The water’s quite warm,” I say, surprised. She smiles and does not reply.

Imagine: She and I, sitting on a lotus blossom that is suspended above the swirling waters of wholeness (holiness), our hearts opening to one another, radiating the pure light of joyous understanding.

I need to know how to proceed so that she will not sense any threat or disrespect. The answer comes to me in a whisper of realization: Proceed with humility.

We begin to exchange our respective beliefs about God. At this point, what seemed to be parallel paths begin to diverge. It turns out that she is praying to Kali,

Hinduism’s Black Goddess. Although I am open to a new approach to prayer, my cultural conditioning is challenged. I try to describe Christian faith and monotheism; she begins to look somewhat mystified as well. Is there any common ground here? I say that the Christian belief in God is grounded in the notion of one God. One and three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Overwhelmingly, the Divine is personified as masculine.

My new friend wrinkles her brow, considers this, and shakes her head. No feminine deities? No, I reply. I do not understand, she tells me. The Goddess Kali, who is but one of the many faces of the nameless One. Kali is the mother of liberation.” My Hindu companion cannot understand how Christians can limit themselves to so few concepts of God’s infinite power.

Perhaps a simple Hindu woman in prayer and an inquisitive woman from the Christian world can achieve a glimmer of enlightenment in the river of our coming together. She listens to me with nothing more than acceptance and curiosity. I hope that I have done her the same courtesy. I sense I do not have to cast away all that my heritage has taught me about God. My ideas about God represent but one view of a multi-dimensional reality.

Final image: My Hindu friend and I have formed a community of two. We hold hands and help each other out of the river and up the riverbank, still part of the Hindu universe, still rotating on a Christian axis, yet open as the lotus and ready to spread our fragrance as we pass through our very different days. Where will we go from here?

As we part, she smiles.

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