Lotus and Lily Field Notes

For some obscure reason (as my colleague Karl-Heinz Finken used to say) I have been tripping on classic English literature lately. First it was Dickens’ Oliver Twist (which I just adored); now it’s on to an even nuttier chestnut, Ivanhoe.  Something about the leisurely periods and formal set-pieces just completely knocks me out.  Probably the same twisted gene that makes me love Gregorian chant and medieval saints’ tales.

But there may be more to it than that.  In the wonderful scene between Ivanhoe and Rebecca that I just read, the debate is about the merit of glorious chivalric endeavor.  Translate that set of issues to contemporary struggles we all face about ambition versus heart, and it’s really quite relevant.  She says,

“Glory?” continued Rebecca; “alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion’s dim and mouldering tomb — is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim — are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?”

I ponder this as I witness the explosion of increasingly amped up plugged-in-ness that surrounds me every day.  Technology is the new glory.  “Kindly affection, peace and happiness” seem entirely quaint, entirely old-fashioned, and yet I think we are starving to death together without them.

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Some time ago I read someplace that medieval monks imagined that the angels were singing with them when they chanted the divine office.  Recently reading Bernard of Clairvaux‘s sermons on the Song of Songs, I found at least one primary source for this lovely idea, in his seventh sermon:

That the holy angels do condescend to mingle with us when we praise God in psalmody is very clearly stated by the Psalmist: “The princes went before, joined with the singers, in the midst of young damsels playing on timbrels. (Psalm 68:26)  He also said, “I will sing praise to you in the sight of the angels. (Psalm 138:1) … Joined therefore as you are in songs of praise with heaven’s own singers, since you too are citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household, sing wisely.”

I had a remarkable and wholly unexpected experience of singing with the angels last weekend.  I had made my way to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, looking for a meeting of the Contemplative Wisdom Community.  I inadvertently stumbled into the church’s Sunday evening service instead.  It is a contemplative Eucharist service, so it had the right feel to it, but after sitting a few minutes with the 30 or so people gathered there I began to notice that something was quite different.  Many of the participants–certainly more than half of them–were challenged with some sort of developmental disability or other (I regret that I don’t know the correct terms to describe these things–one man shook very badly, others seemed to have mental disabilities or other forms of non-standard behavior or demeanor).  Here I was, expecting to connect with the super-cool, super-high-functioning mystics, and I found myself instead in the presence of a very different kind of energy: very beautiful, as it happened, and devoted, simple and clear.  The service included a segment for hands-on healing–very beautiful.  The music was simple and sung with gusto–very beautiful.  The responsory portions, the Eucharist passed from person to person (sometimes with shaking hands or the assistance of others)–very beautiful indeed.  My heart cracked open with wonder and joy, my habits of resistance and resentment, my deconstruction of the theology of the texts were washed away, almost miraculously.

There were angels there that day, and I felt privileged to be among them.  Doubtless I am romanticizing what was after all a brief encounter, but in the presence of this heartful childlike clarity I felt convicted (old-fashioned religious term, entirely appropriate) of all the addictions to sophistication and cerebral complications I indulge in.  There’s an Orthodox saying, “the road from the head to the heart is the longest journey.”  That evening I made a couple of steps down that path.  May I have the grace to continue walking!

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Listening right now to “Illinoise” by Sufjan Stephens.  There is something special about this guy.  I just heard “Casimir Pulaski Day” and the sweetness of the banjo and quirky delightful horn arrangements and lines like “and He takes and He takes and He takes” in reference to a friend with bone cancer–not quite pissed off at the Almighty, but not covering over the difficulties either.  I find Stephens’ story fascinating: his parents gave him his unusual name because they were followers of Subud at the time; he has since converted to Christianity.  I know little about the details of his faith, but what comes across in his music is a warm open sensitivity to the quirky possibilities of life that makes the oft-maligned old faith look pretty good.
Listen to this music makes me glad to be alive, open to creative possibilities for myself, and less stuck on issues of names and forms, allegiances or resistances for or against any particular tribes.  What a nice gift!

One other personal note: a huge relief today, as a workplace complication I had been dreading was suddenly smoothed out very nicely.  I am hoping, hoping, this will free up some emotional energy and enable me to focus more of my time and attention on this blog and the creative projects of various kinds that inspire me to write it.  What shapes those will take–not known yet.  Electronic fantasies on chant, or barbarian kings and their Psalms, or the mystical garden of the Song of Songs, or more adorations of the divine mother, or some combination thereof.  Although you wouldn’t think so from the title, Sufjan Stephens’ “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us” fuels all these musings and helps generate a beautiful sphere of hope.

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It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that in terms of worldview and philosophy Buddhism really can’t be beat.  But I was born and will remain a “cultural Christian,” from my evangelical roots (not as intense as Jesus Camp, but not completely unrecognizable either) to  my current immersion in the contemplative liturgical scripture-infused world of chant.”Cultural Christian” is a riff on the “cultural Judaism” I learned about from hanging out with Hebrew students at UC Berkeley as an undergrad.  (See some manifestations here and here.)  I know that Christian identity is different from Jewish identity, but I feel some kinship with these good souls who recognize the incredible richness of their tradition, don’t want to abandon it entirely, but don’t subscribe to its philosophical or religious tenets.

There is one lone Wikipedia entry, a brief stub, on Cultural Christianity, which succinctly states, “The term usually is used pejoratively by other Christians to describe these individuals, whose spiritual understanding or practice they see as underdeveloped or superficial.”  Pooh.  Just when I thought I had a good thing going .  Yet another reputation to salvage?  (Peter Brown’s The Rise of Western Christendom makes clear that name-calling has been an excellent Christian strategy for millenia: from “pagan” (the equivalent of “hick” or “rube”) to “Arian” to “Nestorian”, it’s a classic technique.  OK, not just Christians enage in this, but we’ve been pretty good at it.
Still, the concept fits me pretty well: it describes my reliable passion for certain “classical Christian “artefacts and my very tenuous and unstable relationship its core concepts (Buddhism just says it better for me, almost all the time).  Something to keep playing with in the endless identity game.
As always when we have a really good Peregrine rehearsal: I’m in love with Gregorian chant all over again.  This evening it came at a particularly rich time, after several nights hearing the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche expound on Buddhist wisdom (and somehow I snuck in there a viewing of Jesus Camp, which stirs up a whole host of its own personal issues about which more later, if all the conceptual planes circling my airport ever manage to land).

But into this maelstrom comes that inimitable, unforgettable, aesthetic spiritual transformative musical experience of singing chant really well with people I’ve been singing with for years.  It just all opened up and was sublimely perfect.  At moments like this, I really don’t care what identity I have.  It just feels great to be alive.

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This week the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, the source of most of my insights about Buddhism, is giving a series of talks at Nalanda West about analytical meditation.  I have been taking classes at his center and reading his books for almost two years now; this week is the first time I’ve actually heard him teach in person.  It has been moving and quite wonderful.  There is an ease and naturalness to his presentation that is thoroughly disarming–he presents himself as totally uninterested in glamour, and laces his talks with self-deprecating humor and earthy examples–tonight it was the story of him listening to the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue in a monastery in Sikkim in the 70s (“I guess we were hoping to be rescued from the monastery”).
But underneath all that is a deep and pervasive wisdom.  And inspiration as well: when he said, tonight, “we keep telling ourselves same lies over and over and over again until we actually believe them: that we will last forever, that our experience is solid and permanent, that our concepts really exist.” In the midst of a somewhat tangled set of life circumstances just now, these words were deeply meaningful.

I have to give myself a modest pat on the back for showing up for these teachings, and not running screaming from the room.  To sit still and listen with an open heart and genuine pleasure to any spiritual teacher takes some doing (this has been a good year–Cynthia Bourgeault is another success story for the mystical Christian side of my brain).

The occasion for Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s talks is Nitartha Institute, a lovely and in-depth exploration of Buddhist philosophy that is now most conveniently being offered a few blocks from my house.  This is not the year for me to attend but I hope to do so another time.  I’m really amazed by the Nitartha Institute’s vision: to provide a context for traditional Tibetan Buddhist scholastic philosophy to be taught in a Western context, in a way that makes sense to Westerners.  This vision will take time to unfold (it’s been going for eleven years already), but as the DPR said the other night, “I’m a conversative”.

Sometimes my quixotic pursuit of the spirituality of Gregorian chant seems foolish and pointless.  But maybe there is a way in which this work can sprout its own roots and grow, just like these beautiful Buddhist projects springing up all over.

Anyway, I just keep studying and growing and listening (most recently also to Peter Brown’s fantastic Rise of Western Christendom, which is opening up huge new vistas of understanding about the context of Gregorian chant–more on this later, I hope).

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I’m feeling especially proud of having tracked down, through interlibrary loan at Seattle Public Library, a copy of the Antiphonale Romano-Seraphicum, a 1928 edition of Gregorian chant, Franciscan style.  We decided a couple of months ago to focus our chant retreat this summer (July 20-22) on St. Francis and St. Clare.  I had been planning to use some generic chants for “confessors” (saints who aren’t martyrs)–that’s what was used for St. Francis in many of the chant books I have.  But this lovely volume has many wonderful chants specifically about both Francis and Clare, including texts that speak of his preaching to the birds–really quite delightful!

As always, I feel very happy when I am able to connect with a little bit of medieval history in this way: Francis the person, and the Franciscans as an order, have always felt special to me somehow, so to be able read and sing these beautiful chants (and, this summer, to share them with others) is a rare treat!  The breadth and scale of medieval music is always breathtaking to me, and here is yet another treasure trove to explore.  Wowie!

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A few days ago the hard drive on my relatively ancient laptop (4 years: how technology underscores the notion of impermance!) started making disturbing buzzing noises; the sounds have become so alarming that I am putting the poor machine out of commission.  On a related note of identity-challenging experiences, I just returned from 4 days with my parents in California.  No one, but no one, is better equipped to totally dismantle the frameworks of one’s sense of adult competence than one’s parents, and mine play their role with great skill, for which a grateful gassho and metta-bow.

Anyway, these two events have put a damper on my blogging activity for the last week or so.  Hope to get back to it soon.

I am musing on the role of evangelism in religions; both Christianity and Buddhism has healthy components of this activity.  Where does one draw the line between a healthy commpassionate desire that all beings obtain liberation, and an arrogant presumption as to what that liberation ought to consist of?

Of course, these thoughts are completely random and have absolutely nothing to do with certain recent experiences in certain Sunday morning evangelical church services attended in fulfillment of certain filial obligations…

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Inspired by Cynthia Bourgeault’s reference to it when I met her a few weeks ago (OK, and a couple of bouts of insomnia), I have at long last started digging into Meditations on the Tarot, which I’ve owned for years but never read.  I’m on the second letter, which explores the notion of Love as the ultimate objective of the spiritual quest.  The writer contrasts this Western (Jewish/Christian/Muslim) aim with the Eastern aim of unity with Being.  Relationship/twoness on one side, being/oneness on the other.

I know this is a bit like that old saw: “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”

Nevertheless I think this is an important, maybe a fundamental, distinction between the spiritual journeys of west and east.  And yet: in conversation with my Nalanda West mentor today, we talked about these as two poles of a wonderfully unstable dynamic compound: “not one, not two”.   It’s all one…and yet we continue to exist and be in relationship.
The Meditations author speaks most compellingly of the power of preserving personality on the Christian path.  I think he sells Buddhism short, surely, and misses some of the nuances of Buddha-nature.  But when he says things like “those on the path of unity no longer have the ability to shed tears” there’s something valid there.

After working through a number of books that play softball with the distinctions between West and East, it’s utterly refreshing to hear this potent articulation of what’s *unique* about the Christian journey, not in a triumphalist sense, but in a deeply reflective, careful, and respectful way.  What a treasure!

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I’m very happy to point to a new blog in our little Buddhist-Christian community: Son-Christianity.  I mentioned the writer, In-Myoung Won (Don Erickson’s dharma name), a couple of days ago.  Within hours of our exchange he’d launched this blog, and it will be great fun to watch his most fascinating vision for a new community, informed by the Jesus sutras, unfold.

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I just posted a wonderful set of links to Buddhist-Christian resources compiled by the intrepid Victoria Scarlett of Seattle’s Lotus & Lily group.  Really great stuff there, well worth digging into.  It includes practice groups, ideas, research, and much, much more.  Thanks Victoria!

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I got a very nice email today from Don Erickson in Tampa:

Dear Joseph,
Doing some surfing, I found the Lotus and Lily group and was excited to see it. I am a chaplain at Tampa General Hospital and in the ordination process with the United Church of Christ. I am a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (2004). When asked, I often call myself a Buddhist-slanted Christian. I have a vision of building a church – with a brand new ecclesiology and liturgy – using the vehicle of the Jesus Sutras, ancient Chinese Christian texts dating back to the 7th century which are written through the lens of Taoism and Buddhism. The closest thing it seems to such a church is your group in Seattle. I am interested in the operation and structure of your group. I see that you discuss, meditate, and chant, but I wonder if there is any liturgy involved? How much interest is there? In other words, how many come to your meetings?
Anyway, I thank you for your time. I appreciate any feedback you can give me.
Metta,
Don Erickson

I shared with Don some thoughts about Lotus & Lily; since it’s a good update on where we’re at, I thought I’d share it here as well:

Hi Don,

This is very exciting! It’s wonderful to connect with you–I’m so glad you found us. Your idea is fascinating, and I hope you continue to share your work. Maybe you should start a blog–I’m finding that a great way to record the group’s process as well as my own. Plus we need to get more Buddhist-Christian bloggers out there!

Lotus and Lily definitely does have a structure, and it’s been very interesting to watch it evolve. Our sessions currently include both Buddhist and Christian (quasi-Gregorian) chanting, 20 minutes of silent meditation pretty much in the Buddhist style, and “prayers of the people”; following a short break we have a discussion about a text we’re reading and close with a Quaker-style silent circle and a gassho bow.
We are in fact just on the point of a group conversation about what we do and why, as we continue to get more intentional about our practice. Personally I’m very interested in liturgy (I sing Gregorian chant with a local group and we just released our second CD) but we have not incorporated much in the way of “high church” liturgical activities. We’ll see where our most recent conversations go–I think there may be further interest in that sort of thing.

We are pretty small right now, about seven regular members. We’ve lost a number of people recently who left the area for work-related reasons, but part of our plan is to more actively promote what we’re doing in the community. We’re confident that there’s a lot of interest–we just need to get more intentional about our outreach, and that’s what we’re preparing for now.

I’d be delighted to share more with you about what we’re up to, and would also love to hear more about your own plans.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to post your note and my response to my own blog at www.lotuslily.net, just to let people know what you’re up to. Would you mind my doing that?

Many blessings on your work–sounds totally cool!

Joseph

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I had a nice comment on my post about the Blogisattva Awards from Tom at Blogisattva:

1. The blog I contribute to at work is part of the ferociously interbloggish “biblioblogosphere” (librarian bloggers).  I find myself intermittently getting pulled into the “chattering classes” mentality (honestly, at times it feels just exactly like high school)–but at the same time the conversations there are often wonderfully rich and powerful.  Honestly I think it helps that librarians write about issues related to running libraries–profound issues of information and its uses in a free society, but perhaps not quite as fraught, or divisive, or insular as religion and spirituality can be.  In librarianship, collaboration is the Name of the Game.  As in any online community, the library blog world goes through predictable patterns of extremely valuable interchange and silly emotional turf wars.  Hmm, sort of like any congregation.  Although perhaps peculiarly like a congregation composed entirely of the quasi-narcissistic, emotional and expressive people who write blogs (I should know, I’m one of them).  On balance, though, the reach and potency of the library blogging community is quite extraordinary, and in my opinion something to aspire to (to dip your toe in this pool, I suggest starting with Librarian in Black, one of my favorites–she will lead you into many wonderful lands).
2. I started working on that blog before I launched this one.  When I started here, I assumed I would, fairly easily, connect up with what Tom nicely describes as a “blogging congregation” (blog-gregation?)  For a variety of reasons this critical mass has not yet formed in my particular space.  The Buddhist-Christian dual-practice nature of this blog seems to me to have a lot to do with it: it’s just not that comfortable for a lot of people to hang out in the spaces in-between.  A good blog-gregation has a commonality of purpose and perspective that allows for connections to multiply.  It may be that there aren’t quite enough explicitly Buddhist-Christian bloggers, or maybe not enough Buddhist-Christians, to sustain such a social network of people who communicate in this way.  There are a lot of good Christian blogs and a lot of good Buddhist blogs (some are listed on the side-bar here): and just as in real life being a Buddhist-Christian doesn’t necessarily make you all that welcome in either community.
3. I think it’s hard to predict what a critical mass of mutually-referential Buddhist bloggers (never mind Buddhist-Christian bloggers) might accomplish.  It’s an odd and unpredictable medium.  I think a lot of blogging (good blogging and not-so-good) is driven by ego: the drive for recognition, the need to build up one’s traffic and one’s reputation.  So what would happen in a community of bloggers who are very explicitly exploring liberation from the bounds of the ego?  Does the whole thing collapse (sort of like many past Buddhist empires, which mostly fell apart in the face of the obvious self-contradiction of such a notion)?  Or does some lovely, graceful and totally unique dance of collaboration begin to emerge?  Can we model the working of the dharma, and the building of a healthy sangha, in this space?
4. One meta-comment on these thoughts: this is a longer post than I’ve written in some time.  When a blogger says to another blogger: “I’d love to hear your comments on X”, it’s sure to stimulate more thinking, more writing, and more sharing.  Thanks Tom!  And I can’t close this without acknowledging the terrific and dedicated Wulfila, who behaves just like a good blog-friend should (he’s a much more faithful reader of my blog than I am of his).  May more connections of this kind develop!

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My friend John Malcomson commented on my one year anniversary post:

I just thought of a great event title:
Christian-Buddhist? Buddhist-Christian?
A Spirituality Beyond Labels

What do you think?I love the “beyond labels” idea (especially juicy in this marketing-saturated age!).

But it makes me wonder: then why use “Buddhist” or “Christian” at all? I see a lot of advantages in being “two, not one”, but maybe we need to get to “not one, not two”.

In any case, the topic seems like as good a reason as any to get an event together….

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I’ve been chanting Psalms, and teaching about chanting Psalms, for years now.  But ever since connecting up a few weeks ago with Cynthia Bourgeault’s Chanting the Psalms, and its vivid and compelling case for the contemplative depths of this ancient practice, I have renewed my own personal engagement in this practice.  What Cynthia has helped me see is that there is a non-verbal , non-conceptual profundity to the Psalm texts.  This has nothing to do with theology or even semantics.  It has to do with engaging the words, chewing on them, letting them speak in deep ways beyond reason or linguistic meaning.

I am so grateful for this new persective, since on any given encounter with the Psalms I am more likely than not to get very ticked off by the surface layers of meaning: the dualism, the baby-smashing, enemy-cursing, self-indulgent whining that are so often present there.  But no: there’s a way to see these texts as bearing a meaning beyond the meaning, not entirely independent of it, to be sure–but purified, perfected, wise in ways I can’t quite grasp.

It’s as though there is a sweet wisdom contained somewhere in there, that may require a great deal of maturity to grasp but *certainly* requires an open-hearted willingness to embrace what’s there without any conditions at all.  That takes trust, it takes patience, it takes a willingness to suspend judgment.  All by themselves, those are good qualities to cultivate.  But as my recent experiments seem to suggest, taking the Psalms as they are might just open up something deeper as well.  I’m curious to see what that might be.

This reminds, too, of the Buddhist teaching about how to relate to one’s thoughts in meditation, which is not a rejection, not an attachment, but a willingness to just *be fully present* with one’s thoughts as they are happening and let them emerge in simplicity and clarity–almost an attitude of welcoming.

So maybe the Psalms are just a particular form of thought, a playground within which the qualities above can be cultivated in a focused way.  Shamata (calm abiding) meditation is taught with focus on a seashell, a leaf or image of the Buddha.  So maybe the Psalms can function as exactly that same sort of support: not as an end in themselves but as a framework within which consciousness can be explored.

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I have been getting all riled up the last week or so, thinking about the first anniversary of this blog, when in fact it’s been almost 13 months.  Innocuous beginnings captured here.  However, time being a construct within the context of relative reality, it’s still worth an about-this-blog muse.  There are a few things I’ve learned since I started, about blogging and about myself:

1. It’s fun!  There have been many times in the last year+ when it’s been just wonderful to sit down and confide in, share thoughts with, spin ideas to, and occasionally whine at this little box on my screen.
2. It is certainly hard to keep up, especially in a meaningful way, especially when the carefully nurtured balance of my multi-faceted life is challenged by one or another form of intensity.  Looking at that list of Blogisattva award candidates (and other excellent blogs I read, including those on this blog’s list of links) I’m struck by how many are authored by academics or students or others who have full-time religion-spirituality oriented gigs.  Don’t get me wrong, I am generally very happy not to be embroiled in “the life,” as we might as well call it.  But one of the consequences of being a tiller-of-the-soil as well as a spouter-off-about-the-inner-life is that there is often just less in the well at the end of the day than I’d like there to be.
3. I thought this medium was somehow going to start providing seeds for lengthier and more thoughtful pieces of writing (you know, articles, books, encyclopedias…).   In part because of #2 above, in part because of the way I’m blogging, and in part because of the nature of the medium, this has proven less true than I’d hoped.  I am a little frustrated about this, a little resigned, but fortunately still curious and open to whatever possibilities might yet unfold.  The plain truth, so far, is that thoughtful sustained writing takes even more time than I have to devote to the fragmentary sketches I post here.
4. I am also puzzled by the question of audience and readership.  For a long time I paid absolutely no attention to who and how many my readers are; a few months ago I took the plunge and enabled Google Analytics.  That gave me some information that I have acted on to some extent, and ignored to some extent.  I can’t say thinking about this doesn’t make a difference, but as yet I don’t believe it’s pushed me in any particular direction.  Nor has my resolution to “blog better.”  This has, like most resolutions, built up a certain back pressure of expectation without any particular tangible results.

The upshot is that I am very much still finding my way, hoping to find a useful music here, but meanwhile just continuing to bang away on randomly chosen pots and pans, hating the cacophony much of the time, thinking sometimes that maybe it sounds a bit like music, and hoping that at least those who stumble across this venue will at least think I’m attempting to cook up something worth eating.

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I just stumbled across the candidates for the Blogisattva Awards (maybe not the most felicitous name)–a good list of Buddhist blogs, only some of which I have seen before.  Good stuff.

In particular this interview with Jeff Wilson of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship was a nice discovery.  Kinda-sorta Buddhist-Christian, but not really.  It sounds like a really good group, but…maybe just a hair too post-Christian to scratch my own itch.

Anyway, it’s great to see the blogosphere, Buddhist-style, is really heating up.  Critical mass in these matters can make a huge difference, and it looks like the community is starting to get there.

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Last night I saw the outstanding film about Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man.  In addition to many other delights in this combination documentary/tribute concert (the inimitable Antony Hegarty’s version of “If It Be Your Will” for one, and the incredible Rufus Wainwright and his equally incredible sister Martha on several numbers, including the almost-but-not-quite overdone “Hallelujah”), there was a beautiful excursion into Buddhist territory, with Cohen saying of his zen roshi (I’m paraphrasing), “He cares for me.  No, that’s not it: he *doesn’t* care for me.”  A brilliant description of what the teacher is for: not to take care of our limited conception of ourself, but to help us see beyond it.

I have never had much of a handle on Leonard Cohen or his music or his poetry; after watching this film I am dazzled by the grace and wit and clarity he projects in his work and his person.  Very, very pleasing stuff.  Sometimes you witness a genius at work and you just want to give up; Cohen seems to inspire the opposite feeling: I really can write, I really can find a way to express the churning yearning–even in pop songs, if it comes to that.  Thank you Leonard!  And thank you Lian Lunson for making this gorgeous and inspiring film!

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A couple of weeks ago, I almost acquired a Blackberry.  My jet-setting library world colleagues (believe me, before I had this job I had no idea library-world jet-setters exist.  They do.) all carry them, and they are all plugged in all the time.  I was able to overcome the temptation this time around, and just a few days ago I was reminded why I am glad I made that choice.

Stuck in O’Hare airport with one of the afore-mentioned jet-setters, I watched her tap away on her Blackberry to fill in the spare moments of our conversation.   She’s a smart person, a good person, someone I really respect.  But as she jokingly said at one point “more communication is better communication!”

I’ve been thinking about that comment, and about Blackberries.  Sitting in meditation a day or so later, this thought popped into my head: “Is what I am doing communication?  Or something different?”  In one sense, meditation is a vertical communication, or maybe a communion.  On another level it is a communication with the self.  But it is also something different, something outside the domain of communication (language, concepts, intention, ego).  Something wholly other than communication, wholly other than information.  To my day-job, web-enabled, information-professional self, that’s just utterly shocking!
A few years ago I heard a prediction: “Someday there will only be two kinds of businesses: web businesses and anti-web businesses”–meaning, I think, businesses that make money off of what people do when they’re not online.  While there may not be much money in it–at least for me–maybe meditation is the anti-Blackberry.

And maybe that’s why I’m glad I don’t carry one of those seductive little fruits.  At least not yet…

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Here are my wife Victoria’s notes on the first of a series of Lotus & Lily meetings on how we organize ourselves for the future.  Politics *is* spirituality, and the organizational aspects of religious life are fascinating and revealing: the perfect dance of incarnation as finite human beings attempt to embody their visions in the context of social interaction and group dynamics.

There are lots of interesting nuggets in the following; I present it here for whatever spiritual merit it might offer, but also to provide an insight into the ways one group is exploring what it means to be together.  Pretty wonderful, actually.

(Parenthetically, I am just back from a good week working in Ohio.  It was very, VERY COLD (-1) and snowy; I am deeply grateful for 45 and rainy in Seattle.  It feels just like Hawaii.  But my workgroup feels more and more like a sangha–precious precious to see new people joining us and to feel the energy start to coalesce.  Not clear how stable it will be, but I welcome the pleasant sensation of growth and health there as well.  Is it something in the stars?)

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Yesterday marked the beginning of our self-examination and rethinking of Lotus and Lily as a group.  This discussion is happening through a series of Lotus and Lily Steering Council meetings scheduled for Spring 2007.  We started the series by dedicating this first session to looking at the big picture–the purpose and vision of Lotus and Lily.

I volunteered to take notes on the conversation, which you’ll  find below

May the compassionate beings of Buddhism and Christianity smile upon and bless our efforts,
Victoria

We started promptly at 6pm and by staying on schedule we had enough time for all our regular activities, besides a planning meeting from 7:15-8pm.

We started the discussion by reviewing the written statement that appears on the opening page of the Lotus and Lily Yahoo Group website.  Then we each took turns commenting on the statement and describing our hoped for vision of Lotus and Lily.

The idea of Lotus and Lily being a group that equally embraces Buddhism and Christianity was affirmed.  A number of people—but not everyone–even went further and said that they would like to have a greater integration of Christian and Buddhist practices, rather than keeping them equal but separate. 

There were calls for us to use time at our gatherings more efficiently, energetically, and creatively.  If we’re not always having Steering Council meetings at future gatherings, then there could be some time available for additional activities.

Clearly, members want Lotus and Lily to be a place for their own Buddhist-Christian spiritual practice, and for support of that within a group setting.  But mention was also made of several ways in which the group can be a resource and offer service to the larger community.  We can contribute to peacemaking and societal healing by simply letting the larger community know of our existence.   With so much of the contemporary world being affected by inter-religious polarization and conflict, we can raise society’s consciousness about greater possibilities for interfaith harmony.  By offering a welcoming and open environment we can help make Buddhist practices (especially meditation) more accessible to the Christian community.  Also, we can contribute to the healing of American ex-Christians who have become Buddhists.

Several people said they’d like to see the group’s prayer practice become more intentional and focused in terms of growing the varieties of prayer practices, and clearly invoking sacred Christian and Buddhist presences during the course of prayer.

Three areas of general agreement clearly emerged from the discussion:

1)      We’d like our mission statement to more clearly state that people can elect to be members of Lotus and Lily and still maintain membership(s) in other churches and places of worship.  We invite people to creatively explore how to fit Lotus and Lily into their lives.  Participation in Lotus and Lily is not necessarily to the exclusion of other religious/spiritual affiliations.  It’s up to the individual.

2)      We’d like to grow the group and to have more members.  This would bring more energy to the group, allow the work of running it to be more fairly distributed, and to keep it afloat when some members are sick, traveling, or are otherwise unable to attend or participate.

3)      The group does not currently miss or feel the need for a spiritual teacher or leader.  We are happy to define Lotus and Lily on our own terms, rather than having the shape of the group be defined by, and be a function of, the character of a specific teacher.

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