Seane Corn YouthAIDS Blog fascinated me as she described teaching Yoga in India to peer educators for YouthAIDS who are commercial sex workers. While the description may sound like a Monty Python skit, her compassionate account touched my heart as she reaches across this vast cultural divide. The desire by these women to hug her was a beautiful vignette.

I read about spiritual practices and beliefs of these women and Seane. I felt less judgemental than I have in the past. Maybe without realizing it, I tried to dismiss the beliefs of others that were quite different than my own since I was not truly comfortable with my own faith system. Now if someone told me I was going to hell, I would not have the slightest concern that that might be true. Previously I might have to defend my position but I feel totally comfortable. I know there is a loving God but not in the form of some judgemental being. While there might be suffering in the process of some fatal disease or accident, I am confident that the other side is wonderful. I may join the oneness of the cosmos or completely disappear but there is no possibility of any type of Hell. There is enough suffering here in this life.

In both yoga and Buddhism, the ocean of suffering we encounter in life--both our own and that which surrounds us--is seen as a tremendous opportunity to awaken our compassion, or karuna, a Pali word that literally means "a quivering of the heart in response to a being's pain." In Buddhist philosophy, karuna is the second of the four brahmaviharas--the "divine abodes" of friendliness, compassion, gladness, and equanimity that are every human being's true nature.

and

In Buddhist cosmology, the realm of the gods--a mythical world free of death, pain, and loss--is not the best place to become incarnate. It is our human realm, with all of its suffering, that is the ideal place for awakening our hearts.

And when our hearts awaken, even small gestures can have an immense effect. As (Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat) Hanh explains, "One word can give comfort and confidence, destroy doubt, help someone avoid a mistake, reconcile a conflict, or open the door to liberation. One action can save a person's life or help him take advantage of a rare opportunity. One thought can do the same, because thoughts always lead to words and actions. With compassion in our heart, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle." Compassion in Action
Breathe in the world's pain, breathe out love, and let karuna (compassion) blossom in your life.
By Anne Cushman in Yoga Journal

I am not trying to become a Buddhist and I know many Christian writers would agree with the practice and conclusion as stated here. Most of our Christian friends would agree also. Maybe I am trying to discard some of the baggage as I become more fluent about my faith. Looking at another religion, I'm getting a fresh perspective on my faith.

First Love, Then Action (1/9/2004) Catherine Ingram - the last post was about my discovery of dharma dialogues by Catherine Ingram. I feel a little bit like I have been on retreat this weekend as I listened to these talks several times. This is the type of inspiring talk I have experienced in the past and felt like it was a good experience. I am often a slow learner and sometimes I will take away one idea from a retreat. I am hungry as I haven't been to one in quite awhile. I used to count on La Casa de Maria to have some really inspiring people lead retreats but several years ago, those programs ended at least in the quantity they were having them before.

Interestingly enough, I was not very inspired in preparing for the Lenten Study. The texts did not excite me nor did the questions in the study book. I gathered some materials and we had a fine session. After listening to Catherine Ingram, it was hard for me to form a study around traditional Christian beliefs. I think Jesus is great, I just can't figure out the part about God sending everyone to hell if they don't believe in Jesus.

Coexisting Awareness - I discovered dharma dialogues with Catherine Ingram and listened to the hour session entitled Coexisting Awareness. After a short talk, she answered questions. Her wisdom reminds me of some folks in the past that I have heard and felt a real sense of truth in what they say (Rev. Clarence Lui is one). I see in myself what she calls the mystical impulse. She talks about how everyone will realize it at some point. Sickness or tragedy may be the trigger; she quotes another dharma teacher, "they all end up with us."

The mystical impulse is just the feeling that there "is something else." There is a celebration of the sacred where we don't try to improve ourselves, just be. A celebration of ourselves in awakened awareness in which we are not trying to get anywhere. And when we stop trying to improve ourselves, we stop trying to improve others. We read sacred texts to be reminded of what we already know. Doing nothing becomes the biggest laugh as we realize the folly of our search.

This feels so right compared to the "Believe in Jesus and you'll go to heaven." I want to reread Christian authors such as Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan to see how my current views fit into these writings that I found so valuable and inspiring.

An interesting post on Internetmonk.com by Michael Spencer Marcus Borg: Attempting Faith Between “Either” and “Or”

Primarily, however, I am fascinated by Borg’s journey from orthodox Lutheran Christian to one who rejects the standard orthodox meanings of much of the Christian story, yet remains in the church. Borg is never a ranting, carping scholar looking down his nose at fundamentalists. He calmly recites his loss of one kind of faith as the birth of another kind. In the process, he seldom does more than say “I simply could no longer believe the orthodox version of the story.”

Borg believes that he represents millions of people who will never be able to believe what orthodox Christians routinely believe. For him, everything in the New Testament is a metaphor of the New Age, scholarly heralded message of a God who does not discriminate on versions of truth, is immediately available to all, and who is mostly concerned with a social and political renewal familiar to anyone who listens to NPR.

Borg’s version of Christianity is, in its way, rather compelling and attractive in this contentious day and age of postmodern Christianity. He is a Don Quixote to a world of evangelical Apologists and outspoken defenders of the faith. He can still say the Apostle’s Creed, sing the great hymns, worship in the ancient Christian liturgy…all without pangs of conscience, and all the time meaning almost nothing that traditional Christian believers mean when they say or sing these same things.

Borg, and many other scholars and writers like him, believe they are saving the Christian faith from a kind of fundamentalism that will most certainly doom it to irrelevance in coming generations. They perceive, I believe correctly, that fundamentalism’s popularity is a house of cards, ready to collapse. Evangelical sociologists have been telling us this for years in surveys about the particular and general beliefs of the people who call themselves “Christians.”

The line that most resonated is Marcus Borg seldom does more than say, "I simply could no longer believe the orthodox version of the story." That sounds like why I find meaning in Marcus Borg's writing.

Reconciling my Faith with Scholarly Findings

I seem to have a new readiness and comfort level in reconciling my faith with scholarly findings that I have been aware of since my college days. As I read and think about what makes sense to me, I am finding a real excitement, hunger, and joy. As I have been preparing for the Lenten Study though, I wanted something to have something to look at that made sense to me already. I didn't want to present something that I didn't believe but I didn't want to shake them up as that was not what they signed up for. It has been helpful to have printed out a cheat sheet of excerpts from Marcus Borg's article, Me & Jesus - the Journey Home. The Lenten book and facilitator's materials are excellent and having Borg's article helped me feel I would to be able to lead the discussion without feeling conflicted within myself. I didn't want them to have to be where I am to find value in the class. I also figured this Adult Sunday School class would be somewhat like the "average churchgoer" Lloyd Geering describes in this article How Did Jesus Become God — and Why.

Indeed one suspects that if one were to ask the average churchgoer to spell out what they meant by saying that Jesus is divine, they would probably align themselves, without realizing it, with one of the ancient heresies, rather than with orthodoxy.

but I knew none of them were ready for learning that:

The time was overdue for the process of deconstructing the affirmation of Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God. . . . Most recently the process of deconstructing the glorification of Jesus and of recovering the historical human figure behind the process has been undertaken by the Jesus Seminar.

I was especially interested in resources on the resurrection story but appreciated going back to basics such as with this first excerpt from the Marcus Borg article:

I realized that the image of Jesus from my childhood—the popular image of Jesus as the divine savior who knew himself to be the Son of God and who offered up his life for the sins of the world—was not historically true. Moreover, I learned that scholars had been saying this for almost two hundred years.

As I am rereading the entire article as I write this, I also found this:

By the end of childhood, the ingredients of what I now call "the popular image of Jesus" were in place. I saw Jesus as the divinely begotten Son of God who died for the sins of the world, whose message was about himself, his saving purpose, and the importance of believing in him. John 3.16, that verse memorized as a preschooler, expressed it perfectly. "Believe in Jesus and you'll go to heaven" was my childhood understanding of the Christian gospel.

The Lenten Class is going very well. I was concerned when I first agreed but I have become comfortable with the material than my first reaction. So far I have not been uncomfortable with answering any questions. The class has consisted of reading the lectionary passages and discussing questions suggested by the materials. There has not really been dialogue or questions for me; mostly folks are sharing there own experiences. At one point I shared how I did not think Jesus wanted to be crucified but rather he could not stop teaching and healing in a way that challenged both the religious and secular authorities. As I was saying it, I realized that someone earlier had said something about Jesus wanting to fulfill the prophesies and die for our sins. At that time, I had not commented but just gone on. Often I would follow-up with some folks to draw them out a bit or to relate a confirming or complementary comment. I let that one drop because it reminded me of how Marcus Borg describes that type of faith.

My spouse has had good things to say about the way I have been leading the class.