Beginning with Jesus

. . . notes on undoing the blocks to love and service

This way of being in the world - studying A Course in Miracles, giving attention to holiness, practicing Catholic Worker virtues - begins with Jesus. For me it does.

And it is not easy. Jesus is like a lover I can neither leave nor live with, an elder brother I cannot protect, forever going further ahead. I'm always a step behind, always pushing up through another layer of doubt.

Sustained relationship with Jesus is destructive - or, better, deconstructive. It is "creative" in the sense that it undoes everything that prohibits our shared rebirth as Christ in which we know and share "the world anew" (W-pI.189.1:6-7).

That is a way to measure the authenticity of our relationship with Jesus - by the depths of the undoing it works in us and the way the world changes accordingly.

This undoing - both initially and sometimes for a long while after - appears as (i.e., feels like) ruin. And so we despair. Who wants to be ruined? We cling harder, we refuse to listen. We argue and complain. We look for alternatives - other churches, other healers, other paths.

This resistance can become bitter and stifling. Our mind narrows and our heart closes tight.

And yet.

Despair is a nontrivial aspect of this spiritual journey we share. We aren't called to wallow in it; we aren't called to idolize it or brag about it. It doesn't help to compare it to our perception of the suffering of others. Nor is there anything to fix.

Rather, we are called to pass through despair patiently and without drama - with indifference almost - , the way that driving to Boston sometimes includes traffic jams or detours. What are you going to do? You'll get there eventually. Might as well enjoy the scenery or the company or the music.

Despair is personal but the undoing against which it pits itself is not. Despair is fundamentally an illusion, an egoic performance designed to distract us from a simple truth: we want this relationship with Jesus because of what it undoes in us. We want to say yes, we want to let it all go.

The invitation Jesus makes from the cross is "join with me." His body is naked and broken; he is totally alone. He has nothing. That is a way to see the crucifixion: Jesus gives himself totally, without condition, at the very depths of our shared primordial terror - that we will be left alone, that we will be destroyed by strong men, that we will suffer exquisite pain and grievous indignity and - at the peak moment of humiliation - die forsaken. We won't even have a grave.

So of course we get scared. Of course we look for another way. I'll run a soup kitchen or pray in the hayloft. I'll join the local Zendo. I'll write essays and poems.

Anything but that fucking cross, right?

And still he hangs there, and still he offers himself unconditionally. Still he bears my rejection and unwillingness.

This goes on for years - lifetimes, even.

One day - let's say I was out back with the horses, star-gazing, listening to the river - I realized that, for me, Jesus is the way. There is no other way, for me. I have to face the cross; I have to climb that dark and bloody hill. I have to be willing to be nailed to it and die. I have to be willing to atone for having driven the nails.

Really, really, I have to become responsible for ignoring the cross - for passing by it day after day, year after year, without answering the question it poses.

Will you join me?

That is when the despair entered. For me, it was. When I realized this is the way, which means that I have to confront - not intellectually but with my body, in a lived way, here and now - my fear. But what am I scared of? Pain? I've known pain. Loss? I've lost. I've lost.

No. What I fear is the undoing - the end of - my self. This is the fear I want to see clearly, without trying to justify, explain or fix it - my attachment to this consciousness, this identity, this life.

A Course in Miracles calls this attachment ego and urges us to go all the way to its "cruel hate, the need for vengeance and the cries of pain, the fear of dying and the urge to kill, the brotherless illusion and the self that seemed alone in all the universe" (C-2.8:1).

I took that literally. I don’t know another way.

The course was very helpful to me in that sense. It taught me that my attachment to the personal was the problem (not the personal itself, the attachment to it). It was the cause of the very suffering that I wanted Jesus to help me heal. The cross was actually asking if I wouldn't rather give all that up?

The course allowed me to consider the possibility that the invitation was not to join in suffering but in healing. It was a good thing, not a bad thing.

And so I took a few faltering steps towards the relationship, fully expecting to be destroyed, fully expecting to be ruined and abandoned.

But something else happened.

See the shadows fade away in gentleness; the thorns fall softly from the bleeding brow of him who is the holy Son of God. How lovely are you, child of Holiness! How like to Me . . . How dear is every gift to Me that you have made, who healed My Son and took him from the cross (S-3.IV.9:3-5,7).

Relationship with Jesus is the foundation of my practice. He is the satguru whose teaching reveals the Spirit in and through which the miracle of forgiveness is both offered and accepted. Projection and denial are gently undone, and we reclaim the peace and creativity that are our inheritance in Creation. We can be of service; we can get out of our own way.

The holy light you saw outside yourself, in every miracle you offered to your brothers, will be returned to you. And knowing that the light is in you, your creations will be there with you, as you are in your Father (T-13.VIII.8:4-5).

There is no separation anywhere.

I brought my fear of the cross to Jesus and asked him to deconstruct that fear - to show me a new way of thinking and living in which the cause of fear was realized as unjustified and thus unhelpful. It was Jesus who taught me how silly fear is and how shallow. It is Jesus with whom I can at last laugh at what caused me so much grief and loneliness over the years.

The annhilation the cross symbolizes is merely the undoing of the personal self - the special self opposing holiness, the isolated self worshipping a sterile self-concept, the ignorant self unwilling to engage with my brothers and sisters in the gentle play - the happy service - of release and liberation.

This is how we begin. This is who we begin with.

~ Sean