FYI. ILY. SYWN?  JTW.

>===== Original Message From ordinarylife-owner@yahoogroups.com =====
ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

======================================

       Summary of October 21, 2001

======================================

Dear Folks ?

   This week's gathering focused on how, in light of our present
circumstances, can we learn to practice a true present and enjoy the
good that is all around us?

   We must develop
   Wisdom about the way life works,
   Skill in making life work for us, and
   Faith that will sustain us in all times.

   The blackest, bleakest day in Christian history was essential for
the brightest.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Full text of the presentation

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

   Noticing and Enjoying Strawberries

   In the e-mail preview of our time together today I told the
following story. It is a very famous story from the Buddhist tradition:

   The story is of a monk who was fleeing a tiger. He ran to the edge
of a cliff and, being unable to stop himself, went over the edge. On
the way down he caught the branch of a tree. He had been saved. He
looked down and, way below on the ground, was another tiger. He must
hang on with all his might. No way to go back up and certain death
below. As he was hanging there, he glanced aside and saw a strawberry
on a bush growing from the edge of the cliff beside him. He let go of
the limb with one hand, picked the strawberry and savored it.

   This story, of course, is a parable. It is told to illustrate the
importance of developing the ability to enjoy a true present.

   Our present circumstances are certainly chaotic are they not? How
are we to develop the ability to enjoy the delicious strawberry that is
just within reach? Indeed, how can we develop the ability even to
notice that the strawberry is there? That's what our time together is
going to be about today - developing the ability to notice and enjoy
strawberries even when things fall apart.

   Let me begin with some preliminary observations just to make sure we
are all on the same page.

   In the last fourteen years, I have given almost 700 different talks.
That's a lot. Does anyone have that much to say?

   The answer to that is, "No!" Twenty years or so ago, working with my
teacher/mentor Carlyle Marney, I came up with something of a creed. I
could put the entire Christian faith in less than fifty words. Here
they are:

   God is in our history with a searching love.
   Jesus Christ is central.
   The cross is unavoidable.
   Church is a community of believers and there is no salvation by
one's self. That is to say, faith is relational.
   Discipline is required.
   We can live an assured hope. That is to say, there is a saving
possibility in every situation.

   That, from a Christian perspective, is what we have to talk about.
What changes is
   our understanding of it,
   our circumstances and
   us.

   One of the things that has changed, of course, is that on 9/11 we
began to be forced to notice what is going on around us. Mostly,
however, we have seen just tigers chasing us and a huge abyss below us
with more tigers. You don't hear much talk about delicious
strawberries. Indeed, we are frantically looking for the branch to hold
on to. I hope that you get at least that much here.

   I was working out at my athletic club on Wednesday and was
struggling away reading about Methodist Polity while doing the stair-
master. On a recumbent bike in front of me was a man - I admire him for
his spunk; 82 and still working out daily - who was pontificating about
how to deal with our nation's current crisis. He went on and on about
how "the only way to fight terrorism is with terrorism."

   Like you, I have seen the newspapers, magazines and listened to the
programs on radio and television. I found it funny as all get-out that
on one of the television news magazine programs this past week they
were talking about how we were becoming a nation of terrorized people.
Hello! They are the ones who are stirring up the fear. "What should you
have in your survival kit? Stay tuned for the news that follows." Give
me a break.

   Yet the fact is that our government officials are saying more
terrorist attacks are likely to take place in this country. How do we
live with that?

   I do not want to ignore or deny the tigers chasing us or the abyss.
I do want what my teaching is about to help us notice and enjoy the
strawberries.

   This circumstance that we find ourselves in can be the perfect
teaching moment for us.

   We don't like this because we have come in our culture to value
comfort so much. But the feelings of loss and fear that we have
experienced since 9/11 can show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly
what our spiritual work needs to be.

   Not only has an emphasis on comfort seduced us away from reality but
also so has the need for each of us to appear to the other that we've
got it all together.

   Let me be very clear: spiritual practice isn't about being good; it
is about waking up.

   One day Gabriel was walking about in the heavenly realm. He came
upon God and it was apparent that God was very depressed. Gabriel said
to God, "What's the matter?" God said, pointing to the earth, "Look at
what a mess they have made of everything. Nothing is going like I had
hoped it would. I'm going to destroy the lot of them."
   "But you can't do that," Gabriel said.
   "And why not? I'm God, the Almighty. I can do whatever I wish."
   "Because," said Gabriel, "you promised."
   "I did?"
   "Yes. At the time of the great flood."
   "Well, then, I'm going to get rid of most of them. Send someone to
go over all the earth and find the truly righteous. Give to each of the
righteous a small brass plaque so that when I send the angel of death
to destroy, the angel of death will be able to distinguish the
righteous from those who are not."
   So Gabriel did as he was instructed. And, do you know what the brass
plaque said? No? You didn't get one either?

   Our eyes have been opened by the events of 9/11 and following. We
hate it. We want to run.

   In the past we have run. We have used all sorts of things to escape
the way life is.

   One of the things we've used is humor. I don't think I heard one
single joke about the Oklahoma City bombing, did you? I'm beginning to
hear some about aspects of our current crisis.

   Conan O'Brien said, "It was reported today that Osama Bin Laden has
50 brothers and sisters. Which absolutely shocked me because I had no
idea he was Catholic"

   Jay Leno said this: "You read about all these terrorists, most of
them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas,
some for as long as 10-15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you
are two days late with a video and these people are all over you. Let's
put Blockbuster in charge of immigration."

   Here are some more Leno lines:

   "The U.S. Government has said they are now going to go after the
terrorist's electronic banking system. You know what they should do?
They should transfer Bin Laden's funds to my bank. They'd mess up his
deposits, screw up his statement and nickel and dime him to death with
service charges."

   "More and more facts coming out about Osama bin Laden. You know, he
never sleeps in the same place two nights in a row, just like Clinton."

   We have other ways of protecting ourselves from "what is." Each and
every one of us has wanted to be able - and this is the first principle
of Ordinary Life - to be an exception to the way life is. We have
wanted to get a leg up on life and in the process we only cause
ourselves more suffering. So we protect ourselves from the pain by all
sorts of addictions. We work furiously to get those things we have been
taught will make us happy - when we finally have them. We are committed
to happy endings and trying to make them become realities robs us of
the very life we say we want.

   If we can't manipulate the situation, what can we do?

   Three things:
   we must develop wisdom about the way life is,
   skill in making life work for us, and
   a faith that can sustain us at all times, especially during the
times when there seems to be no rational reason to believe at all.

   To do any of this takes creative imagination, the ability to see
things out of our usual way of seeing them. I will stoop to almost any
means whatever to get you to think "outside the box" in spiritual
terms.

   If we are going to experience and participate in the abundant life,
- if we are going to notice and appreciate the strawberries - we have
to use our minds. And our spirits.

   Last Sunday in our dialogue time together I reminded you that the
central facet of the Christian faith if a belief in the resurrection.
There are, as you might imagine, many different views and
interpretations of the resurrection from very conservative folks who
believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus to those very liberal
Christian who see it as a metaphor of a new life that is possible in
the now moment, made available by faith. Some folks get caught up in
fights about which of these positions is correct. I'm not interested in
that. I want to offer you and me insights and methods that will assist
us in living as fully and freely and bravely and beautifully as we
possibly can.

   One of the teachings we can get out of 9/11 is that none of us knows
how much longer we have to live. We have hopes and assumptions but not
real knowledge. What do you want to do with that time you have left?

   What I want to do with that period of time is create life-enhancing
events and experiences for myself and you. That isn't the only thing I
want to do but it is the main thing. With that in mind let's take a
step in that direction.

   In order for there to be a resurrection in Christian theology, there
first had to be - crucifixion. The crucifixion was the early church's
version of September 11. Now, I know this is a very imperfect analogy.
But bear with me a moment.

   The crucifixion of Jesus took place on a day that soon began to be
called "Good Friday." Why call it good? I know, "good Friday" is a
corruption of "God's Friday."  But the phrase "good Friday" has stuck
for a reason.  After all, it would be just as easy to say "God's
Friday."  Why is it called good? What could be good about it?  What
could be good about it for us? Because when you look at it, it seems to
most assuredly a holy mess.

   One of Jesus' disciples deals with his disappointment and
frustration by betraying his teacher. He careens out of control,
eventually committing suicide.

   The politicians of the day dealt with the events of the day in a way
that foreshadows quandaries that we see in things like the some of the
decisions in the Middle East we are paying such a price for now. They
arrest Jesus, then attempt to release him, then hear his case, then
consider the religious opposition to him.

   The religious community fares no better as they function in a
dither. They orchestrate a way to honor the letter of their law but
slaughter the spirit of it. Then they completely lose control as the
man they most want to abolish is labeled their king.

   The climate is emotionally explosive. Nerves are set on edge. Peter
takes it out on an innocent bystander by cutting his ear off.

   Pilate has second thoughts but is afraid to trust his better
judgment when he sees how vicious the crowd has become. And the crowd
is unruly, uneasy, in that volatile state that precedes bedlam.

   The evening news reports that nature itself is out of kilter, torn
by violent storms; darkness comes at mid-day.

   There is confusion and chaos about this so-called Good Friday.

   We have trouble with confusion and chaos. We are creatures of order.
Control is most important to us. Our ideal person is one who has it all
together, as we put it: one who has everything under control. To lose
control, in our view of things, is a form of sickness. One of the
things we hope and pray for is that as we get older we won't lose
control of our bodies or fall victim to some disease where we lose
control. We would rather die. Certainly we don't want anyone else
controlling us either sick or well.

   Good Friday is chaotic. The day is nonsensical. But maybe, just
maybe that is precisely what the day is about - a kind of confusion and
chaos that our minds, to say nothing about our hearts, can't organize.

   Chaos comes and we are in panic. Our need to make sense out of it
goes into overdrive. When we ourselves lose control and go outside our
values, and we do, the complex mixture of pain and shame is
overwhelming.

   A few years ago as I was leaving the house to go to work, the phone
rang with the news that during the night a drug crazed kid had,
apparently at random selection, broken into the home of two friends of
ours and bludgeoned them to death while they slept. Just two weekends
before they had gone on a retreat with this Sunday School class. The
event made me crazy trying to make sense of it. You just never know who
or when or where things might suddenly stop happening.

   Jesus is brutally murdered by truly good people just doing their
jobs. And we look at that and it makes no sense to us. We want to
organize it and explain it with some political or psychological or
theological premise. We always end up exasperated.

   One of the problems with the story of the crucifixion of Jesus is
that we who do so love to be in control are comforted because we
already know the end of this story.

   Yet I will assert that we who do so love to be in control really do
not know what to do with this day.

   It is for that very reason that we call this day good. It is good in
the sense that it is good for us. It is good for us to be made to stare
into this mess which is so far beyond our control. It is good for us
because it reminds us of what happens when our design runs amuck. It is
good for us because it reminds us that we are not in absolute control
even when we think we are. It is good for us also because it reminds us
of our origins and our ends.

   Now pay attention: There is theological construction under way here.
Put on your hard hats and thinking caps.

   The only other place in the scriptural tradition that invites us to
contemplate such a formless, chaotic, and unfathomably dark mystery is
the Genesis story which tells us that in the beginning "the earth was
without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." We
are reminded that we are children of chaos, born of its confusion and
fashioned out of its corruptible elements, called by the spirit of God
from the tumult and shaped by God into whatever order we shall ever
know. The great discomfort of Good Friday then is not the pain we
inflicted upon Jesus, not even the sorrow of his death but the reality
of the chaos it reveals. It is, most assuredly a holy mess. But notice
that our tradition sees within Jesus what they called the "new Adam."
If Jesus be the new Adam, then Good Friday, so filled with chaos is
also the first day of the new creation. The crucifixion and the turmoil
and the confusion surrounding it constitute the raw mass of chaos from
which a new order is made. And the humble, humiliating lesson that
awaits us is that this new order, like the chaos, is beyond our
control. Admitting this has never been easy, especially in our culture,
and especially for those whose lives are built upon making sense out of
things and staying in control.

   So I invite you to take your place in the midst of the chaos, to pay
homage to the nonsense. If we could just let go of those instinctive
inclinations to probe the chaos or grasp it, we might find ourselves in
all of it. And if we could go through life and come before God in this
manner, we might know the wisdom that would set us free. We might
actually be strengthened to face, in humility, the overwhelming chaos
and the numbing nonsense of our own time.

   I heard someone say the other day, and this is so typical of us when
things don't go to our liking, "I don't see how a God of love and
justice could allow the events of September 11 to happen. I can't
believe in God anymore."

   Folks, it is not God who is put to the test here any more than God
was put to a test on Good Friday. It is we ourselves who are put to the
test. And when we have seen this truth and made it ours, when we have
given up our vain attempts to undo history, to guarantee the present,
or to predetermine the future, we might see more clearly that we are
the creatures and God is the creator.

   Maybe that would make each day a new creation for us. Maybe we could
even be quiet enough to hear what God says after every act of creation,
creation out of the chaos, "It is good."

   So there it hangs: a beautiful delicious strawberry. Got the faith
to reach out and taste it? God, let's pray that we do.

   No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember
this: You are carrying precious cargo. Watch your step.

======================================

Ordinary Life is a gathering that provides an opportunity to develop an
enlightened heart and an awakened mind to the reality of the present
moment.

The gathering meets on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am in Fondren Hall at
St. Paul's UMC - 5501 South Main, Houston, Texas and is taught by Dr.
Bill Kerley. If you would like more information -

Contact

Bill Kerley -

E-Mail - Bill@bkspeaks.com
Web - www.bkspeaks.com
Voice - 713-663-7771
Fax - 713-663-6418
Mail - 6300 West Loop South, Suite 480 Bellaire, TX  77401
==============================
You can access the archives of these newsletters by going to

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ordinarylife

You can add someone you know would be interested in receiving these on-
line newsletters by sending that information to -

Bill@bkspeaks.com

I'll make sure they are added immediately!

Or, they can subscribe themselves by sending an e-mail directly to

Ordinarylife-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

You can unsubscribe to this newsletter by sending an e-mail to

ordinarylife-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
================================
The material in this on-line newsletter is copyrighted. It may be
reproduced and printed elsewhere as long as it is not changed in any
way and credit is given to this source.





Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/