Praying with My Father in the Kingdom

. . . in praise of chipmunks in church

A decade or so ago my father and I visited two Catholic shrines in rural New York. Dad's post-stroke aphasia was severe. We were mostly quiet on that trip. I remember it happily; it was light in a relationship that was always complex and often painful, for both of us.

At the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, chipmunks scampered between curved pews in the circular outdoor church. I watched them while Dad knelt to pray. He was a Catholic deacon, both devout and deeply intelligent. I wondered what he was praying about, what prayer was even like in a mind in which language had become so unreliable.

The chipmunks made me happy, took some of the weight off the moment - my grief at the lost relationship with my father, his own suffering inside the walls of the stroke, the nearness of his death, which we all knew then was coming. The chipmunks scrounging for food were little trespassers, reminding me that in Creation Love can be neither walled in nor out. The church, so to speak, is everywhere.

At the shrine for Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda, somebody had nailed one of these optical illusions to a tree:

I'd seen it before, of course. I'd played the game: a scramble of lines that when looked at just so suddenly become "Jesus." I understood the underlying logic: this is how he appears. You’re looking at him right now, you just don’t recognize him. It’s the Road to Emmaus all over again.

But what it really is - what an optical illusion is - is an error in perception that suddenly corrects itself. We think we’re looking at random lines but it’s a name. It’s cautionary, right? We think we know what we’re seeing - we think we know what’s real - but we’re often mistaken.

A Course in Miracles invites us to become aware of how unreliable perception is and not to rely on it. Instead, we give perception to the Holy Spirit, and let it teach us what is error and what is truth. It is fundamentally a process of self-recognition.

Do not make [error] real. Select the loving and forgive the sin by choosing in its place the Face of Christ . . . for as you see the Son you see yourself and as you see yourself so is God to you (S-2.I.3:4-5, 10).

Of course, there is a difference between understanding this as an idea (we’re all pretty good at that) and actually living the understanding. I can be intellectually versatile about swimming, know all the strokes, the physics et cetera but if I’ve never actually been in the water then . . . what good is the understanding?

I am not saying that seeing that sign in that moment was the end of separation, moksha, whatever. Instead, I simply remembered that "Christ has forgiven you and in His sight the world becomes as holy as Himself" (S-2.I.7:5).

In other words, I saw clearly how the mechanics of the Course worked. Perception is unreliable and obscures Truth. It’s not about seeing Jesus, but about understanding better what it means to see with Jesus, to offer up the body’s perception in favor of Christ’s, and to accept whatever transformation occurs thusly.

Wanting to see Jesus literally - or wanting to attain moksha - or to become an awakened being - is fine. It’s not a crime against God or nature. But it’s also just a spiritualized form of the familiar error. It’s just Sean pretending he’s special again. A Course in Miracles invites us to go past all of that in order to undo the error at its source. "What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God" (S-I.in.2:3).

When I looked at the illusion at Kateri Tekakwitha's shrine, it went from incoherence to coherence. From meaninglessness to Christ. And once you've figured it out, then you can move back and forth readily. Meaninglessness to Christ, Christ to meaninglessness. When you can move back and forth, then the whole thing is coherent because even when you're gazing at "just" lines, “just” meaninglessness, you know what they are in truth. Jesus is there, but the lines are there, too. What changes is how your mind holds them, and how your mind now guides your body's perception.

There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God (S-3.III.6:6).

One makes contact with "the great deception of the world" and with their self as "the great deceiver” of their own self (S-2.I.5:1). By using words and making a logical argument, e.g., by making distinctions, I unfortunately gloss over the clear and luminous experience of seeing as Christ, in which experience everything is gently enfolded in the pure harmony of "I Am."

Briefly, sweetly, we know Christ. And then we come back to the world of separation, a little lighter and a little happier - a little less confused. Rinse and repeat. We are learners, after all.

This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you and learn what it should be to set you free (S-2.I.10:1-4).

If we look with Christ's vision then we will see not meaninglessness or Jesus but rather Christ. In Christ, the opposites are undone by being made equal. Each brings the other forth; each is the other. So the grounds for conflict are dissolved. We don't have to choose between this or that, because this and that are the same. This is why we say that there is no loss in Christ, only gain.

The decision to which A Course in Miracles bring us is the choice to realize the mechanistic nature of perception rather than to linger at the level of opposites perception brings forth. When we see the process, then we no longer need to judge the various effects of the process (meaninglessness is bad, Jesus is good). We no longer need to choose between them based on values we impose.

There is another way.

Most of this essay is about a sign on a tree at Kateri Tekakwitha's shrine. That was a profound moment of learning in my life, a true blessing.

Yet before that blessing was another: my father at the end of his life painfully lowering himself to his knees in an outdoor cathedral filled with chipmunks in order to be present to God.

Tell me: was the insight around the sign possible without my father’s devotion in a church full of chipmunks? Was Dad’s devotion and faith possible without the insight around the sign?

Is any moment of our lives possible without all the others?

I did not ask Dad what his prayer was that morning. Not then and not in the months that remained to us. We did laugh together a few times about the chipmunks, though. Was it not - is it not - clear?

Love,
Sean