Jesus has a way about him.
Lose it. Forget it. Whatever you do for any one of these, you do for me. And then 'you' stop doing. What is done is done by the one doing it, not you.
At this point in the dialogue many are thinking about chopped liver. As in, 'What am I, ...."
Then to all he said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it.’
(--Luke 9:18-24)
Renounce, not announce. Announcing has become the dominant activity of our culture. 'I'm here, I'm important, I own this, I did this, Here is my autograph, More money for me, I'm indispensable, Listen to me!'
To renounce seems awkward. It means to formally declare one's abandonment of a claim, right, or possession. The dictionary goes on to add, to "renounce the world [is to] completely withdraw from society or material affairs in order to lead a life considered to be more spiritually fulfilling." (Apple Dict.)
The lines about renouncing and losing follow the Gospel dialogue:
One day when Jesus was praying alone in the presence of his disciples he put this question to them, ‘Who do the crowds say I am?’ And they answered, ‘John the Baptist; others Elijah; and others say one of the ancient prophets come back to life.’ ‘But you,’ he said ‘who do you say I am?’ It was Peter who spoke up. ‘The Christ of God’ he said. But he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone anything about this.
‘The Son of Man’ he said ‘is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day.’
(-Ibid)
The Christ of God. That rang a bell. The next line is curious, about strict orders not to tell anyone about this. Don't ask, don't tell; only listen, only act.
These days I feel I am stepping sideways and taking half-steps back. I withdraw from a world that seems foreign and itself a mirage. Suddenly any foray into populated arena feels like a netherworld, a hidden underworld or ill-defined area. Everyone there is just fine -- regular, ordinarily cheerful, purposeful, and productive -- accomplishing the demands of everyday life with resolve and good will. My half-step back and away, at first disconcerting, finds a template within a context that temporarily holds it from falling into the common parlance of psychology and online social network breeziness.
The template used as pattern for processes of solitude, silence, renunciation, stillness, hiddenness, and prayerfulness -- a pattern once known as contemplative life or mystical life --
seeks a new name.
Let's call it mere gazing silence, or mere present prayer.
Mysticism, a forgotten and often suspect term, comes with two parts to its definition:
1. belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.
2. belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, esp. when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.
Like the old song, you might not easily have one without the other.
Peter said Jesus was the Christ of God. We associate that unexpected blurt with the shrunken belief that all it was about was being a human sacrifice for divine ends. Price paid, here's the receipt, announce your purchase, have a nice day! This Christ, for me these days, is less and less a being bowing on center stage; more a way of being that needs no telling.
Good friends, my teaching
Of the Dharma takes
Meditation and wisdom
As its basis.
Never under any
Circumstances say that
Meditation and wisdom
Are different;
They are one unity,
Not two things.
Meditation itself is the
Substance of wisdom;
Wisdom itself is the
Function of meditation.
- Hui-neng
I'm learning to look at things. At people. At words.
I'm learning to be here in a muted and not quite visible way. The half-step back feels right. The sideways stance that inches toward invisibility seems sufficient for now.
I ponder what "lose your life" means. There's no looking at God. It is, I suspect, the gaze of God flowing through each of us as we make way through the day.
The cat or dog (or human being?) chasing tail is the exercise of frantic defragmentation. We try to reconstitute the broken-apart. Is the Christ of God recognizing with healing renunciation that the life we've thought was ours -- separate and fragmented, is not the truth, not the case, not the fact of things?
There's another way to see this.
Another way to realize "not to tell anyone anything about this."
For me, it is being stupid. For me it is to recognize my stupidity. (Latin
stupidus, from
stupere ‘be amazed or stunned.’)
Let's call it mere gazing silence, or mere present prayer.
For now.
To revere the way about Jesus.
To revere the way about the Christ of God.
To revere the way about each and every one of us.
