Turning My Back on You

. . . notes on salvation, relationship and a cat

I

In my experience A Course in Miracles is about relationship. More specifically, it is about the transition from special to holy relationship.

That transition is less about how we evaluate the relationship (as healed, improving, dysfunctional et cetera) or how we label it (friend, stranger, enemy et cetera) and more about our willingness to give attention to the relationship, to be present to it without judging it.

This means allowing the relationship to reflect for us and for the other the God-created self we share, which it can only do when we withdraw from it our own ideas and plans and goals. The suggestion is that only in relationship can we remember our holiness. We are not, in any meaningful way, separate.

Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you . . . This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural (T-7.XI.5:4-6, 8).

I want to focus on the last three adjectives - "immediate," "clear" and "natural." They point to a practice, a way of living-in-Christ, that gently and non-dramatically restores for us a life of sustainable peace and happiness.

But first a story.

II

When I was twenty-three I was abruptly and through no credit of my own removed from certain personal and ancestral patterns of self-destruction and addiction. When my head cleared enough to try and figure out how and why this had happened I was told that God had saved me and all He asked in return was gratitude.

I was fine with that explanation. I was grateful to God. I understood perfectly the bullet I'd dodged and had zero desire to face it again. I prayed constantly, went to daily mass and weekly confesssion. Images of Jesus were on hand at all times.

One morning, after mass and before my work shift began, I sat on the porch to write. It was a beautiful morning - breeze off Lake Champlain, blue sky close enough to touch. Earlier, during the eucharist, I had seen with perfect clarity how we are saved together-as-one and I was suffused with love accordingly. I actually wrote those words - "suffused with love." I was literally savoring holiness; it was exquisite.

And then an old lady asked if I'd seen her missing cat.

III

Right now, outside the window, the sideyard maple tree has begun to turn. Its deep green leaves are flushing orange and yellow, like a soft fire in early autumn sunlight.

My contribution to this shift is nothing. It happens; it is happening. I don't have to remind the tree to turn, don't have to monitor the turning. I don't even need to notice the turning.

The maple tree turning is "immediate, clear and natural" (T-7.XI.5:8). Without any effort or intention of my own, it is. It's here, now. It's given.

"Recognizing the Majesty of God" (T-7.XI.5:4) in and as our brothers and sisters is also immediate, clear and natural (T-7.XI.5:8). God has no secrets and appoints no gatekeepers. The altar is everywhere in all time and worship is effortless.

The suggestion is that the practice implied by "immediate, clear and natural" is to give (not pay but give) attention to what is given. But not the object so much - the friend over tea, the dog on the trail, the tree outside the window - but rather to the relationship that joins us with the object. If we seek the relationship, then the other - be it a friend, a dog or a tree - cannot help but reflect holiness.

The spark of holiness must be safe, however hidden it may be, in every relationship. For the Creator of the one relationship has left no part of it without Himself (T-17.III.7:4-5).

It is not a crime against God or nature to find the maple tree beautiful. But "beautiful" is a judgment! It's an assessment of value. Therefore, implicitly, it rejects what it finds not beautiful. In this way, ego becomes the arbiter of reality, endlessly separating us from the cosmos via the sword of judgment.

Thus, noticing what is given - what exists before we judge it - must also include noticing everything that would obstruct our noticing. Why do I call the tree beautiful? What is the function of that judgment? Who or what benefits? Who or what is forgotten or displaced or expelled?

Another thing about A Course in Miracles: those big questions - all metaphysical and abstract, fun and interesting as they are - are meaningless if they don't sugar out in application.

Which brings us back to the old woman and her missing cat.

IV

You have to understand that I was desperate in those days. My old life - violent, lonely, chaotic - was still close at hand. Every day the thread by which I clung to the world seemed as if it would snap. Writing was a way to keep the thread intact. If God gave me an insight - as that day He had, about relationship - writing it down was an act of fidelity and service.

So when that old woman came along and asked if I'd seen her cat, I ignored her. I pretended not to hear.

When she asked a second time, I ignored that too.

When she asked a third time, I exhaled angrily, dropped my notebook, and told her no. I had not seen her cat.

She was chatty. She told me the cat's name - Frankie, after Frank Sinatra. She asked if I'd been living on North Street long. Did I go to school in the area? Frankie wore a bell - had I heard a bell?

I wish I could tell you I rose to the occasion - invited her in for coffee or went with her to find her cat. That would be a nice ending to this story. But I didn't. I was annoyed and frustrated the whole time. And eventually she got the message. I don't know if she ever found the cat.

It took me years to see what you all have already seen: God gave me the answer to suffering - relationship is the answer to suffering - and then gave me a perfect opportunity to apply it.

And I - forgive me - fucked it up.

V

In my experience, you have to really see separation in order to undo it. Partly this is because when we really and truly see how much pain and suffering separation causes, we are naturally motivated to undo it.

But also, seeing separation clearly means seeing how we are the one doing it, which in turn means realizing that we can undo it. We are the author of the dream (e.g., T-27.VIII.10:6) that obscures our inheritance as Children of God; we are not the author of Life Itself, which our inheritance is given (e.g., T-3.VI.8:1-2). Our work is to transform the dream to a happy dream in which God - not Sean or Jim or Cheryl - will take the last step (e.g., T-5.I.6:6).

We transform the dream - we undo its pernicious effects - by giving attention to each relationship - to each moment of each relationship - with the intention to see it as God sees it, and to not see it as God would not see it. To do this is to insist on remembering our own self.

The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation (T-7.XI.7:10-11).

For a long time I told the story of the old woman and the cat as a form of self-criticism. Later I used it as a baseline to measure my spiritual progress. I would never do that today!

But remember: our personal evaluation of any situation is never the best or correct or only one. Only by letting go of judgment can we begin to truly see the relationship by which the memory of God is restored to our fractured mind.

Put yourself not in charge of [the happy dream], for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success (T-18.V.1:5-6).

It's true that I wish I could go back and replay that scene. But the truth is, that scene appeared and reappeared - and still appears and reappears - in every relationship I can find: there is a cry for love, and there is a response to that cry. Sometime I’m the crier and sometimes the responder. My ACIM practice is to let my cry and my response be “immediate, clear and natural.”

You could say I let that woman down, but you could also say - given how I've held that moment and used it as a learning device - that she was my teacher and did her job perfectly. I was clumsy and inept, sure. But I did not fail to learn. And the lesson I learned - because it is the only lesson - is that we are not saved alone.

It is God's Will you share His Love for you, and look upon yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world began, and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him. Your brother is as He created him. And it is this that saves you from a world that He created not (T-24.VI.3:4-7).

Nothing in the universe is ever truly lost to us (T-24.VI.3:1).

Christ is a collective - not a person but a relationship, endlessly calling us from isolation to communion, from sorrow to joy, and from conflict to peace and creativity. We stumble together, and we rise together. We learn to be Christ by teaching one another how to be Christ together.

The happy dream emerges as we show up for each other in the very simple and obvious way Love asks of us. It couldn’t be easier which, yes, we only learn after making it as complex and difficult as we possibly can. But in the end, how hard is it for the maple tree to turn? How hard is it to notice the turning?

How many times have you held my hand, refusing to let me fall off the trail? How many times have you waited while I fumble and complain? How many times have you forgiven me for turning my back when you needed a friend?

Too many to count! But enough that I remember now the cause for gratitude, and see in you the glimmers of salvation, suffusing us both with love. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

~ Sean