The Game of Life

During this hectic shopping season, we’ve been bombarded with ads for video games, board games, interactive games like Foosball—as well as nonstop TV sports. They recalled for me the inscription on playwright John Gay’s tombstone:

Life is a game and all things show it.

I thought so once and now I know it.

Our lives, in fact, do spin out through a series of games, each with its own language, rules, conditions, uniforms and goals. Some obvious examples are the student game (pursuit of knowledge), the Wall-Street game (wealth), war games (domination), political games (power), the married-with-children game (family)—and yes, we seekers must include the contemplative journey game (enlightenment or mystical union).

This last insight in particular underscores our absolute need for surrender in the spiritual quest, for until we finally release the journey itself, we will never glimpse the ultimate reality hiding behind it. Until that happens, of course, we play our hands as well and respectfully as we can, but we must remember always that the ego is a participant through most of the game’s twists and turns. It would happily announce to all and sundry (albeit humbly) that it has at last achieved the empty state of nirvana. No, we must in the end let go of all these encumbrances, of the small self, the journey and the wish for union itself, and yield to Love on Its own terms.

Truly, this pilgrimage is the game of life, and why Divinity requires us to play, who knows? Apart from any speculation, however, this trek across the terrestrial globe is the reality of our existence. If nothing else, it’s a marvelous adventure. The quest for the homeland literally gives meaning and purpose and enjoyment to our time here.

“From where do you come?” someone asked the holy Rabia.

“From the other world,” she replied.

“And where are you going?”

“To the other world”

“What are you doing in this world?”

“I am making a game of it.”

Laughter, or at least bemusement, seems after all to be the healthiest response to life’s serious pretensions, oddness and absurdities.

—Adapted from Mystic Mountain: The Ascent to Love

-John R. Sack

The Other Genealogy of Jesus

A Guest writer provides the other genealogy of Jesus, on the women’s side. Here it is:

A genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of Miriam,
the daughter of Anna:
Sarah was the mother of Isaac,
And Rebekah was the mother of Jacob,
Leah was the mother of Judah,
Tamar was the mother of Perez.
The names of the mothers of Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon
and Salmon have been lost.
Rahab was the mother of Boaz,
and Ruth was the mother of Obed.
Obed’s wife, whose name is unknown, bore Jesse.
The wife of Jesse was the mother of David.
Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon,
Naamah, the Ammonite, was the mother of Rehoboam.
Maacah was the mother of Abijam and the grandmother of Asa.
Azubah was the mother of Jehoshaphat.
The name of Jehoram’s mother is unknown.
Athaliah was the mother of Ahaziah,
Zibiah of Beersheba, the mother of Joash.
Jecoliah of Jerusalem bore Uzziah,
Jerusha bore Jotham; Ahaz’s mother is unknown.
Abi was the mother of Hezekiah,
Hephzibah was the mother of Manasseh,
Meshullemeth was the mother of Amon,
Jedidah was the mother of Josiah.
Zebidah was the mother of Jehoiahim,
Nehushta was the mother of Jehiachinm
Hamutal was the mother of Zedekiaj.
Then the deportation to Babylon
the names of the mothers go unrecorded.
These are their sons:
Jechoniah, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel,
Abiud, Eliakim, Azor and Zadok,
Achim, Eliud, Eleazar,
Matthan, Jacob and Joseph, the husband of Miriam.
Of her was born Jesus who is called Christ.
The sum of generations is therefore:
fourteen from Sarah to David’s mother;
fourteen from Bathsheba to the Babylonian deportation;
and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation
to Miriam, the mother of Christ.

Compiled by Ann Patrick Ware
of the Women’s Liturgy Group of New York

A Death In The Family

If you follow Christin’s Facebook posts, you’ve seen pictures these last two days of the fawn who come onto our porch and stared through the window as if to say “I need help.” She proceeded down past the benches and through the railing began gorging on a bush and berries that we’d seen no deer touch before. Whether she was trying to purge or downing the equivalent of Socrates’ hemlock, we couldn’t guess. Then she curled up against the warm wall of the house to await the inevitable.

 I thought of the old man Silas in Robert Frost’s poem “The Death of the Hired Man” who came “home” to Mary and Warren’s house for his final hours. 

“Euthanize her,” said the biologist when we called Fish and Wildlife. “It’s the right thing to do.” But which of us could pull the trigger? We’d admired and loved this fawn and her brother since they were spotted newborns. We decided instead to keep her as comfortable as possible and talk her through her passing. She finally let go in subfreezing temperatures about 3 am the next morning. 

We took her down the hill to our lower woods at daybreak and settled her remains at the base of a sturdy double-trunked oak. She half disappeared into the fallen leaves, disguising herself as a broken limb in her dark grey coat. 

That afternoon, the mother and her other fawn (the one-spiked unicorn) froze for a moment on our lawn staring down the hill as if they’d caught a whiff of the body. They’d had a death in their family, as had we, for we feel a true kinship with all the wild things who share “our” land. 

Rest in peace, little girl.

                                             -John

                                                                   

Mystic Mountain

We interrupt this blog for a brief commercial. I’ve just published Mystic Mountain: the Ascent to Love. 

 The book’s basic premise is that the current elder explosion has opened the door to unparalleled soul work, the wisdom that comes with age. I’ve tried to use clear, nonacademic language to stir the boundless spirit, the miracle of transformation, dormant in each of us. For those fast upon their wisdom years, yearning to live as closet or cloistered contemplatives, I light the mystic path as it shines through the larger journey from birth to return. General readers will gain a profound introduction to the mystic way. Those already en route as beginners or proficients will find here a practical guide through rising levels of awareness. In keeping with our new era of interspirituality, I draw on wisdom traditions worldwide, from Sufi to Sikh, Shaman to Christian, Buddhist to Hindu, Jewish to Jain, striving to piece into one the fragmented shards held by each while leading readers through a spectrum of spiritual masters. I write as well from my own experience as a Trappist monk and a student of Hindu/Buddhist philosophy.

The print version of Mystic Mountain (grey cover) can be ordered for $9 (plus S&H) from Amazon or from http://www.createspace.com/4435707 The Kindle version (Mystic Mountain Nebula on cover) sells for about $5 on Amazon. Amazon also has free apps called “Kindle for PC” (and Apple) that let you read Kindle books on your computer. If you’re short of cash, but would like to read the book, you can email me at cyberscribe2@hotmail.com and I’ll send you a free copy as an email attachment. Just let me know whether you’d prefer the Word or PDF version.

Thanks for your patience. I’ll also be excerpting from the book in future blogs now that it’s finally finished.

                                                                                                            John

On the Pacific at Brookings, OR

A glimmer of something more this day, the sun at my back, the surf washing thought away, washing the soul clean of sadness and of soil. Intake of breath. That we are part of this; that we are of this; that we are this. 

MY PEOPLE

These are my people. They turn out to be master-teachers, as I discovered when I visited them recently where they live in Minnesota. They are Varrah Claire, Savina Elise, Avari Isabella, Kaleesi May, and David Keegan. They teach not in words so much as by experience. Probably you who are mothers and fathers already know this, but I--not having lived the day-to-day with children of my own--could speak words derived from experience, but seldom did I experience purely, wordlessly.

What makes these children such powerful teachers is that nothing stands between them and the experience of being. Varrah awakened me to my own distances. Looking into her eyes and listening to her talk to me I was suddenly aware that I didn't need to protect myself from anything at all. She wouldn't, couldn't hurt me; she had no thought of it at all. Surprise filled me--I didn't know I'd set a barrier between myself and probably everything and everyone. And the barrier is thought itself. I'm a writer. It's how my mind works -- giving experience form in words. But Varrah and I, we don't need words or barriers.

And little Savina merged with me, falling asleep with her ear above my heart. My tears fell because as I kissed the top of her head I felt the presence in her of my sister, Liz--her grandmother whom I held and kissed the same way when I was nine years old. With Savi I experienced the connections beyond time and space.

Avari and I walked hand in hand. She showed me paradox of which I've written so often. But in her the paradox is real in a person who knows nothing of it that she could put into words. The paradox is pure. I suppose that I could finally 'see' it as it is.

Kali is as her name suggests. Those big eyes of hers can communicate the full range of human emotion. At the Renaissance Fair she sat, a queen, on the Throne of Swords as two knights bent their knees and offered her their obeisance. In the child the beginning and ending is pure, creation and destruction can be accepted as the great round they are.

David is a mystic. Time and again he set a little walking toy on a ramp. Once he could make it walk he entered what seemed a complete ecstasy. Arms straight and stiff, hands clenched into fists, his body trembling with the awe of it. Or maybe he's a scientist. Or maybe an artist. He's what I seem to reach for. And he IS it.

This morning during contemplation the words "My people, my people..." repeated on my breath. The faces of the children, but not only the children, really every person who has wandered through my life and by some grace remains an occupant of my soul. And it came to me that each human being is given a people. It is this People that makes up our individual world. It came to me that though I might have done many things in my life, the most crucial must always have been and continue to be the choice of love for the people I've been given, the choice to serve the People, the choice to honor them and remember them and learn from them. And if I would need to choose one focus to occupy what remains of my life, it would have to be that. The People I've been given.  

Guest Writer: Abraham Joshua Heschel

Yesterday John was reading Hecshel's book, A Passion for Truth, and came across this:

"The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince--that he has royal power. All worlds are in need of exaltation, and everyone is charged to life what is low, to unite what lies apart, to advance what is left behind. It is as if all world, above and below, are full of expectancy, of sacred goals to be reached, so that consummation can come to pass. And man is called upon to bring about the climax slowly but decisively.

Nothing, therefore is accidental. Even an intruding thought does not come at random. A thought is like a person. It arrives because it needs to be restored. A thought severed, abused, seeks to be reunited with its root. Furthermore, it may be a message sent to remind a man of a task, a task he was born to carry out.

All facts are parables; their object is God. All things are tales the Teacher relates in order to render intelligible issues too difficult to comprehend literally, directly. Through things seen, God accommodates Himself to our level of understanding. What a shame it is that people do not comprehend the greatness of things on earth. They act as if life were trivial, not realizing that every trifle is filled with Divinity. No one makes a move that does not stir the highest Heaven."

(Please forgive brother Abraham's use of non-inclusive language. I seriously doubt that he intended to exclude those of us who are "She" and also part of humanity--holding up, as they say, half the sky.)