As I watch King Arthur: Legend of The Sword; I am struck by the magical qualities of good versus evil, or if you prefer right action versus wrong action. In this movie, as well as most movies where evil prevails and periods of darkness ascend onto the earth, there are legends of magical beings; in this case the sword of the true king (Arthur). The prevailing king killed his brother in order to obtain power; this king chose to use the powers of the underworld in order to achieve his dream of power.

It stuck me that legends and mythologies are created in order to explain opposing viewpoints, and the powers that drive these power centers. It is important to note that there are few morally acceptable actions on either side of the argument. For instance, in this particular movie, Arthur is raised in a brothel and builds his own fortune by taking from those who appear to be less moral than he. When Arthur finally takes action against a Viking who is in the coffers of the king, the story is allowed to take hold.
These legends personify good versus evil by creating characters in which the reader or viewer can become emotionally attached to. Although Arthur is himself a thief he is a beloved character; a character that creates a visceral reaction to the reader, a reaction that causes the viewer to cheer for Arthur to prevail. All legends and mythologies follow the same story line; Jesus, Mohammed, The Buddha, and all such religious leaders are part of these story lines. Each of these stories contains the Magic of other worldly sources in order to allow the protagonist to reach his or her full potential; whether in dream or through suffering of some sort; usually through both, in order to allow the growth necessary to prevail.

These stories, whether legend or mythology, should remind us to continue to believe in magic. Legends create magical swords or any number of other such things in order to bring about better times for all of the land; mythologies tell stories of prophets and leaders past who have caused humanity to remember who we are. Of course there are different paths to this remembrance, the Abrahamic religions tell the story of a God who directly intervened in humanity; Buddha laid down a path where one can become his own protagonist through self discovery; whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or simply a non-religion-practicing human on a journey of life, we are all called to find right versus wrong in our own way. It is the legends and the mythologies that remind us to tap into the magic that is greater than the day to day doing-ness of human existence; these stories reminds us to tab into the greater story of humanity as the whole.

There is a yin and yang of existence; it would be impossible in this physical universe for it to be otherwise. We are all part of the physicality that is existence. Legends and mythologies remind us that we are also part of the magic that is the driving force of life; this is yin and yang. Storytellers throughout history have passed down stories; are we listening; do we remain capable of tapping into the magic that defines our purpose? I invite you to read the legends and mythologies and believe; believe in the magic that allows humanity to remember its vastness; not in wealth but in our personal affinity with the magic of creation; we are yin and yang and we are all capable of magic.

Peace All!

In March of 1987 I was sitting in a bathroom in Longmont Colorado with a knife in my hand deciding if I would have the guts to ram it into my throat and end my life. I had reached the end of my usefulness as a human being. This is not drama; this is instead what my bottom looked like as an untreated alcoholic. I was not quite 26 years old and I had drunk myself into a state of total failure. For some months I had been living with friends of mine who gave me a place to live after I had been asked to leave my job, because of my addiction. Kevin and Donna didn’t allow me to be homeless; Kevin and I were friends because of our addictions, and my way of saying thank you was to start sleeping with Donna.

On that March day Kevin and Donna were out of the apartment and I was falling apart; I didn’t chicken out on killing myself; I did see a vision of Donna coming home and finding me, blood pooled around me and flowing into the attached kitchen, and I didn’t want to make Donna and their daughter have to live with that memory; that vision kept me from taking such an action. Instead I formed a plan; I would drive my car off of Peak-to-Peak highway between Nederland and Allen’s Park; it would look like an accident and everyone, including my own family in Illinois, would believe that I was probably drunk when the accident happened. Luckily I was so financially broken that there was no way to buy the gasoline to get the car to Nederland.

I stayed at that bottom until April 6 of that same year when I came to with one thought in my head “if you drink today you are going to die, if you should chose to stop I will be with you always.” I haven’t let go of that thought in these 30 years and I continue to experience new heights of experiencing life since. However, it was not an easy transition from that bottom; I made it clear to Donna that I was going to get clean, from alcohol and drugs; I also made it clear that I was not going to do any of that AA shit! By April 9 my detox had become so hard that I threatened to kill Donna and her child; the same people that I did not want to damage by allowing them to find me in a pool of blood just 1 month before; I told Donna my plan, I also told her that when Kevin came home I was going to kill him as well; “I just want someone to feel as broken as I do” I said.

Donna very calmly asked me if I would allow them to contact the Alcohol Recovery Center (ARC) in Boulder and she asked if I would go there to finish detoxing; I told her that it was probably a good idea; she did and I began the process of rising up. There was a policy with Boulder County that I would need to have a blood alcohol content in order for them to accept me; I begged them to make an allowance, I was so convinced that one more drink would be my last and that I would not, I could not, drink in order to be accepted; they took me in and for the next 6 months things became worse. For a second time I was introduced to AA; the people in the rooms took me in and taught me how to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t pick up a drink, and slowly I was able to put multiple one-day-at-a-times in a row until I had put together some time.

In the beginning not drinking and realizing that my life was completely unmanageable were the only two things I did correctly; even these 30 years and a few months later, I believe that my first year of sobriety had to be hard, and sometimes miserable, so that I would continue to have the resolve to continue. I have often stated “I stayed sober for the first 5 to 7 years because I didn’t want to suffer through getting sober again.” It is deeper than that, I stayed sober then, and I stay sober now, because I believe with all of my heart and soul that I don’t have one more drunk in me; I truly believe two things; 1) I turned that part of my brokenness over to God and God and I both know that the next drunk will kill me, and 2) God loves this broken ass drunk enough not to allow me the freedom to test my theory.

The only thing I have been perfect in doing in these past 30+ years is not picking up a drink; I have had to learn, through other life lessons that God is all or God is nothing. Today, July 23, 2017 I am sitting on my patio feeling humble, happy, joyous, and free; not because I have adhered to all of the 12 steps of AA in a perfect manner; but because life is a beautiful and profoundly real experience that I am blessed to continue to experience and grow from. My successes in these sober years have been successes of allowing myself to live, even when I don’t understand what is happening, and to get up, suit up, and show up for the day in front of me.

Peace All.

“Anti” is As Harmful as “Only”

Before I begin this musing, please accept the knowledge that this is merely a musing; I am not attempting to be academic; however, this musing is heartfelt and necessary in today’s politically charged religious climate. I have been compelled to write this because of my reaction to a sampling of postings on Facebook.

I have argued in more than one academic essay “the American public is becoming less churched, and as this happens that same public is receiving ‘spiritual’ teaching from the religion of politics instead of theology.” Anti religious rants need to be directed toward the correct source, religion in politics, and not those who profess their faith outside of politics.

I was raised in a typical Christian home; we did not attend church, we did not study Christian scriptures, and yet we were called to live up to an ideology based on the mythology of religion passed to us from our societal influences. As I grew into a religious slumber I began to receive my understanding of God through the attitudes of those around me not from religious scholars or theologians. In my adulthood I have chosen to study religion in academia; studying the history of religions and the impact that society has had on that history causes me to discern the difference between theological religious teachings and the current political attempt to affect religious understanding.

While it is true that I am becoming less confined to Christian ideology in my beliefs, it is not true that I am becoming “anti” Christian; I feel that “Anti Christian” or “anti anything” is as harmful to my well being as “Only Christian”. I also find that as I move out of the box of mythology around Christianity I am becoming encompassed by the vastness of God through the teachings of all world religions; I am also profoundly aware that all world religions, including Christianity, are historically defined by society; although it seems as if in the modern world this is true for Christianity more so than other religions (possibly more on that in a future musing).   But suffice it to say that there are fundamental reasons that the term Christianity is a huge umbrella that includes everything from the Orthodox Catholic religions to the storefront churches that can be found in any-town USA.

When I read posting on Facebook discrediting Christianity I am saddened; not by the attack on Christianity but on the falsehood about Christianity that compelled the writer to react. It is disheartening to experience the opening and closing of a mind within a single moment; most of the anti Christian postings are based on pseudo Christian based rants that are anti something, be it anti-abortion, anti-same-sex-marriage, anti-Muslim, or anti-any-number-of -things. The loving and healthy approach to these statements of concrete anti… is not another concrete anti statement; we cannot remove the blinders of limitation by inflicting yet more limitations.

As I become less boxed into my religiosity I am becoming freer in my religious beliefs. As I become freer in my beliefs I am more able to allow others to disagree with me simply because I too have been at that stage of religiosity at some point in time. In other words, I am becoming more able to allow others to grow and discern in the timing that their soul calls for, not in the timing that makes me comfortable. And so I reach an end of this musing, or rant if you prefer, and in the end I ask all who read this to please meet resistance with positive pressure by meeting anger with love, and to give understanding when you receive no understanding. The fight is political not spiritual; however, our spiritual well being, both personally and societal, depends on freeing the spirits of our neighbors; negative energy expended will create negative energy in return; if you don’t’ agree simply watch your own reaction to those who do not agree with you; how readily do you meet that disagreement with loving understanding?

Peace All

Ken

In the past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to visit with two men who are homeless.  One of the men, Matt is in his mid to late forties, the second, Robbie, is in his early twenties.  Both of these encounters allowed me to exercise my greatest freedom, to feed the poor and to listen to their stories.

After meeting Robbie, I drove through a neighborhood with a number of churches and I wondered “what would have to change in our society for churches to be opened to the homeless?”  That question was followed by the thought “opening churches would just enable people to stay in their current condition, it would not help them to make better choices.”

Recovery groups, counselors, and self help books seem to advise against enabling; I get that, I understand that helping someone should be about helping that person to rise up and walk, as one of the stories in the Christian scriptures puts it.  However, who determines when someone is healed enough to make that ultimate change in direction?

In my early sobriety I was unable to function; I was unable to produce a coherent thought; how then was I supposed to hold a job? The people who rescued me, those people who enabled me had no way of knowing that I earnestly wanted to survive and later thrive; they only knew that I needed shelter and food. Just as I was in those early days, there or those who are down in life, the hungry, the homeless, the broken, who need what I was given, the time to heal and become strong enough to walk upright.  I was able to provide sustenance for both Matt and Robbie, and believe me  they both needed to be fed; however, I was not able to be a part of either of their lives long enough to provide them time to heal; but our churches can be and should be.

One of the greatest spiritual tragedies of humanity is enabling a church to act like a charity; what I mean by that is, giving tax free dollars to the business of churches and in return the churches using those funds merely to pay its overhead.  If we want to feed the poor and provide healing time to the broken we must start by fixing our churches.

One simple way to restore churches to their purpose is to tax their income; the churches in turn can receive tax credits for the charity that is given; in the current tax free world churches are not held accountable to charity, and yet they are building structures that are functional a few hours out of the week from the moneys that they collect.  What could happen if people such as myself in early sobriety, or Matt and Robbie were given the opportunity to survive and then to thrive?  You may say that the answer is up to them; but is it?  No matter where a person is in their life, if they are contemplating a career change or trying to get off of the streets, the truth remains the same, all decisions and changes need time to come to fruition.  If people such as Matt and Robbie were given time to heal and not merely the breakfast sandwiches that I could provide, they would have a better chance of thriving.  If churches were in the business of enabling people to heal all of humanity could begin to thrive.

I have worked within the Catholic Church organization a couple of different times, and I always had the same argument with the priest that I worked for; I proposed “give the people what they need and the people will provide for the needs of the Church.” Unfortunately the reality is opposite and the churches, just like a household, pay their overhead first and let charity be damned.  I continue to ask “when did the church become the charity that receives instead of the charity that gives?”  When the church is called upon to provide for those most in need it is rarely able to do so, instead the congregants who have already provided for the overhead and salaries of the business of the church are called upon again to dig deeper and provide charity; not because they, the congregants are not charitable, but because the church has become a poor excuse for a charitable organization.

We must help the structure to change, we must stop enabling our churches to operate as a poor  business model; because like all businesses, if the church is not doing its job well, it should fail, and its job is charity. Remove the tax free status of all religious organizations and force churches to be accountable for who they profess to be, charitable organizations, if churches want tax breaks make the churches earn the tax break.  If churches are truly in the business of charity and not in existence merely as a business they should agree with no reservations what-so-ever.