October 04, 2024 – A

All of my seminary professors 
were brilliant people.
They talked about God loving us unconditionally
against the backdrop of the Vietnam war
and the assassination of Martin Luther King
the the bit about being sent to hell for not believing
the bit about God's unconditional love.

As though there were no contradictions, 
discrepancies,
inconsistencies within the mix of the times.

They were brilliant without awareness
of the dichotomies at work in their lives.

A ten year-old Sunday School student
asked me,
"When am I going to understand
what's going on around here?"
I don't remember what I told her,
but I wish it had been,
"If you are looking for things to make sense,
you have to throw something out."

That's what I would tell her now,
for sure.

We have to throw out the nonsense
and see what we can do with what remains.

No God, no theology, no doctrines, no dogma,
no dharma, no creeds, no catechisms...
just you and me
and our original nature,
our innate virtues--
the things we do best and enjoy doing most--
and our intrinsic intuition.

Our virtues include our creativity,
the arts, literature, poetry, music...
all the good stuff humans are capable of producing.

The good stuff holds it together
when the bad stuff threatens to destroy it entirely.

With the good stuff at the heart of our life,
and living to serve our intuition
and do what is called for in each situation as it arises,
for the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it alone--
with nothing in it for us
but the wonder of being who we are.

The old Taoists built the spiritual foundation
of their existence out of no more than that--
doing what needed to be done
when, where and how it needed to be done
all their life long.
Because that is who we are.
That is what we do.

There doesn't need to be any more to it than that.