The God of Homely Mugs

. . . notes on sharing

In a sense, separation is synonymous with resistance. When we resist life in all its glorious complexity and nuance, we effectively separate from life. We want the bliss but not the boredom, the happiness but not the sorrow. We want grace, not a grind.

We adopt the perspective of the body, and from that perspective judge the world, keeping what we think we want and rejecting what we think we don't.

Which, fine. Freud's pleasure principle - the instinctual drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain - is accurate as far as it goes. It just doesn't go that far. Pain and pleasure are bodies-doing-body-things. But we are not bodies.

It’s important to remember that "I am not a body" is not a rejection of the body. Nor does it justify rejection. If I say, "I am not a pine tree," it's not an insult to pine trees. If I say, "I am not a turtle," I don't suddenly hate turtles. I don't need them to stop existing.

All of us from time to time hear "I am not a body" and start invalidating the body's experiences, as if they are somehow beneath - somehow separate from - us. We repress perfectly ordinary (and from the perspective the body, healthy) desires for food, sex, shelter, prayer, exercise and play. We try to control life and boss it around.

When turtles retreat into their shells, I don't lecture them that fear is not real. When pine trees fall in a hard wind I don't say "well, I hope you learned an important lesson about conflict."

Why is my body any different?

II

As I write this morning, I sip coffee from a little mug I bought years ago at a craft fair.

If I investigate the mug carefully, I find memories of the Christmas when I unwrapped it, memories of the gallery where I first admired it, and even memories of the place we stopped for coffee driving home that afternoon.

I find gratitude simply for the mug’s existence. I find the economy by which the transaction was completed. I even find critiques of that economy, and the possibility of other economies.

I keep going. The mug is made of clay, which is made of silica, potassium and other chemicals. I find the isotopes that make up the chemicals, and the neutrons and protons that make up the isotopes. I find quarks and dark matter.

I find the history of human beings learning how to manipulate clay into functional forms, and using fire to harden and conserve them. I find the ancestors of those humans going all the way back billions of of years to the single-cell organism from which all life emerged.

I find the oceans in which that life first appeared, and the earth on which those oceans flow. I find the solar system and the galaxy. I find the cosmos and the Big Bang, the Planck Epoch and the Big Rip.

Of course, it is just a mug! And yet, if I see it rightly - if, in ACIM terms, I forgive it - then it becomes a site in which everything without exception - from quark to cosmos, from capitalism to romantic love - is joined. Critically, the joining - the unity - includes what I refer to as the self who holds in “clear awareness" the "changeless in the heart of change" and "the light of truth behind appearances" (W-122.13:4).

And if I can do that with a little mug, then why not do it with a body?

III

A Course in Miracles asks a helpful rhetorical question: "if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself?" (T-12.VIII.1:5).

The mug dissolves in the nearly endless web of relationships of which it is comprised. The endless web of relationships dissolves in clear and changeless Love - the “light of truth behind appearances” - that makes all relationship possible.

Is it clear?

You see the mug. Then you see relationship.

Then you see Love.

Then the work changes. That is my sense of it. Once we see Love, the work becomes submitting to that Love. Not as a form of obedience but acceptance. It flows from from devotion and gratitude, not fear. We don't resist; we accept.

And life goes on. Elections happen, wars happen, holidays happen. We fall in love, we get a dog, we go on vacation. And as the appearances shift and change, we let them, and focus instead on the changeless, forever just beyond the body's limited range of perception but always present. Always present.

This is not supernatural. Nor is it the domain of the spiritually gifted or disciplined. It's not mystical because God does not play favorites. It's not a mystery because God does not play games.

It's a thing that's hard to see because we are scared. But if we can join together as friends - as fellow travelers committed to sharing everything in order not to leave anyone alone on the trail - then that will be enough. We have seen in another person the same interests as our own (M-2.5:9).

It is the recognition of our shared interest in remembering our identity as Love that allows us to let go of our ideas about Love, our opinions about Love, and our beliefs about Love. We no longer have to substitute fantasy for reality. We don’t have to buy into illusions any more.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that fragmentation is an effect of substituting our ideas, opinions and beliefs about Love for Love Itself (T-18.I.1:3-5). When we substitute, we act from fear. We judge against ourselves and against God, and against all our brothers and sisters, all because we are scared. We are scared that we can't hold all of them, and all of life - all those relationships, all that entanglement - not because it includes scary shit like cancer, murder and dying alone on park benches but because we cannot possibly control it.

I am saying it's okay. Open up to all of it. Resist nothing, refuse nothing. Become intentionally nonviolent unto the whole welter of the world and your life. If you're scared, be scared. If you're hurt and angry, be hurt and angry.

. . . it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the mind’s power, one is also denying the power itself (T-2.IV.3:12-13).

Let it all happen. Judge none of it.

Most of us think this is something we have to do. You know, do this to stop protecting the mind, and do that to stop denying the mind's power. But what we really have to do is see that we can’t protect the mind; we can’t deny its power.

Right now, everything is okay. It is more than okay. We need do nothing except not interfere (T-16.I.3:12).

IV

I know, I know. It's hard to not interfere. We really are doers. We love to fix a tool and solve a problem and tell stories about it later over dinner at the fire.

And yet.

I saw that mug at a place called Snow Farm over a Thanksgiving holiday twenty some odd years ago. We were pretty poor. We weren't there to buy.

There was a lot of spectacular art - paintings, glass sculptures, jewelry, ceramics. We saw a lot of beautiful stuff! But the mug especially called to me. In that environment, it seemed homely and alone. I went back to it a couple times. I thought about buying it even though it was pricy and we already had mugs. But Lord in Heaven did I feel connected to it!

When I opted not to buy the mug, was I accepting or interfering with Love?

Love calls to us every moment of every day in this life. Sometimes obscurely, sometimes so clearly it seems we are made of light. In our human frame - in a troubled and troubling world - Love invites us to co-create with it. The form this co-creation takes will differ; all that really matters is our willingness, our yes.

I do know that sharing this life - awkwardly, humbly, mercifully, intentionally - is what this life is, because it is what Love is. Thus this post. Thus this relationship, for which, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

~ Sean