Meditations By Ian White Maher: Praise | Gratitude | Joy | Transformation

There seems to be a whisper from beyond. A whisper we don’t quite hear so clearly, but we know it’s there. The whisper is so powerful because it calls out to us constantly, like the stream that wears away a rock. And the whisper is the call to beauty. There is a call from beauty, a sacred call, to bring to life, even if only for a few moments, something that takes our breath away. There are people who feel so compelled by this whispering they spend their whole lives in the pursuit of it. Some achieve great results and others less o, but it is a life given over to the call.

Anaïs Nin is famously quoted as saying “We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Which leaves a particular indictment of beauty on the table. The grasping for beautiful things, be they people or objects, often makes us look and seem quite ugly. But for those of us who seek the spiritual experience, who seek the sacred, beauty can also be a great guide. Today is not just another day in your life. Everyone you meet, everyone your eyes bless, everyone you experience as a presence is a gift to you. And you are to them. The beauty of these encounters is the feeling of the sacred. And the only real response is gratitude. Beauty is calling out to you, from all around you, it is part of you. If we do nothing but cultivate our ability to see the beauty of our very existence we will have lived amazing lives. And it begins with today. Go out and see the beauty. Go out and see what happens when we don’t see the beauty and then try to add a little in that space. It is healing to bring the sacred into all of

We are not here by accident. We have been called to honor the Sacred of the earth. We have been called to choose enlightened compassion over self-centered and socially conditioned power. We have been called to prayer as we move from dominating and controlling power to the power of love and empathy and connection. We have been called into a communion of subjects. The forest is sacred. The sky is sacred. The creek is sacred. You are sacred.

All around us we see people living divided lives because they think they need to protect themselves from the planet and either wall it off or stand above it. But on this sacred day, this day of changing light, even as division lives all around us, may we pray to know that wholeness is always a choice. It would be easy to condemn humanity, but not today. Today, we choose not the divided path of good and bad, but of unity. May we come together to pray and sing and praise the beauty and wonder of Creation. May we come to bow at our spiritual estrangement from the earth. Not to wallow in melancholy nor to lament our actions because we did not do this to ourselves. This is the culture we were born into. This is our inheritance. But neither do we blame the ancestors. They did not know what they were doing when the separated themselves from the living earth. They had our best intentions in mind when they separated their consciousness. They could not have known what the consequences would be, but now we stand at th

We live in an era marked by a fleeing from darkness, a fleeing from the reality of mortality and that which we cannot control. We try to illuminate everything, because perhaps if we cast a light everywhere no darkness will remain, but the darkness is so much greater than anything we can even imagine. And so we race around shining our lights in a desperate hope to avoid the pain, which, ironically, only leads to our lives being run and determined by that very same pain because all of our actions exist in response to it. Suffering is profoundly social and when we privatize our pain and cover it up we lock ourselves away from compassion and understanding. Which is why the suffering of each of us is so important. We all have the opportunity to experience transformation and it is our own wounding that calls out to us as a path to serve others. It is our own wounds that create the opportunity for us to explore sensitivity, compassion, and love. It is our ability to say “I understand” that creates the opportunity

We suffer from a crisis of grace. We suffer from the belief that there is just not enough love for us, for all of us, like there is some sort of grace scarcity. So we hoard and act selfishly believing we will starve tomorrow if we feed those who are starving today. And the tighter we grow and the harder we grow the more suffering we see and the scarcer love appears. This, in turn, leads to a scarcity of praise because when grace is scarce so is joy. But there is no shortage of grace, there is no shortage of love. It is like going to the beach and worrying that there won’t be enough sun for everyone. Rilke writes “walk your walk of lament on a path of praise.” My great hope is that we become known as a people who stand in the world witnessing for justice but doing so from a place of praise. The world is in such terrible trouble, but if we allow the song of creation to come through us we will be changed by it and others will be changed by it. It is through acts of witness that we will grow ever closer to the

Where is the intentionality to be in deep relationship with the Beloved, with the Divine, with the Holy? It is not just enough to walk away from the structures that don’t feed us; the kings and the creeds and the castes. There must also be an intentional picking up of something, of a sacred life, a community of sacred livers and lovers because the world is not going to heal itself with secular culture either. There are no words or policies or laws to lead us into transformation. Transformation is a spiritual act. It is a counter-cultural act of resistance that demands we take a stand for the living, for life, for the sacred, for the Beloved, for God. We are being called into a time of spiritual renovation. People are starving for a new way of being. We are not called to cause the spiritual renovation. We are called to participate in it. We become it as others become it.

Lovers of love, we are not condemned to being condemned. Our purpose is adoration. But the adoration goes both ways. Just as we lay flowers on the altar, flowers are laid on our altar as well. Just as we light the worship candles, a flame is lit within us as well. We adore this mutilated world and we praise the Beloved. So put away the begging bowl. It is not appropriate. Instead, mount Loves’ stallion. This is the stallion we ride. This is the stallion that will carry us home. You are the richest person in the world because you are desired. And in that holy gaze we can face anything.

Martin Buber wrote, “The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter.” The encounters we have with one another are constant, our faith practice is to engage in them. Most often we don’t. The unhappiness of the world is a result of our refusal to acknowledge the encounters we have everyday. We have a hard time looking at each other in the eyes, especially when we argue. Stories call out to us from people living around the world, around our city, from the seat next to us. Stories call out from people carrying something so heavy but they don’t know how to share it. See me, hear me, respect me, love me. Will we be that mooring in the world for those who are adrift? Will we be available for those who seek to be seen?

The body is a sacred instrument. It is powerful, it is full of possibility, it is beautiful. And yet most of the time we live disconnected, disembodied from this sacredness. This miracle of existence that has come from the stars, which pulses with life, is so often overlooked, undervalued, disparaged, criticized, even blamed for some of our so-called baser behaviors. Lean into your body and listen for the ancient secrets that live in your cells and in your soul. Walt Whitman once wrote, “If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.” And perhaps my favorite line by Mary Oliver reads, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” What you seek is seeking you. Let it come through you. Love the world with your body. Be present for creation, not just with your mind and your heart, but with your temple. You are beautiful, you are full of possibility, and most importantly you are sacred.

Shaking ourselves free from our moral conditioning is perhaps the hardest spiritual task we can take on. It is difficult because we are so adamant in our moral convictions. We would never say, “We know all there is to know about science.” Many of us would readily admit that perhaps 20% of what we now consider scientific fact will be disproven within a couple decades if not sooner. We are constantly learning. But rarely will you hear someone say something like, “At least twenty percent of what I consider acceptable or tolerable today, I will find completely immoral within a couple decades, if not sooner. Acts of violence are only possible in a moral framework. I believe, as a religious position, there is an innate sympathy within human beings, within life. And that it is the moral conditioning, the moral framework, that we live in that allows us to experience or inflict violence. We must demonize the other—humans, the planet—for this violence to be acceptable. To change the world we must become aware of our

What you think about God really says more about you than it says about God. God is not a what. God is not a thing. There is no “this is” that can be called God. God is immaterial. But the water we swim in, that which we don’t even recognize all around us, is material. We objectify everything. We objectify ourselves. We objectify God. And we become prisoners of our own thinking. Our purpose is to live in concert with creation. It is to stand in the sunshine of our true self and to witness our true face in the waterfall and the flower and the bird song and in the person next to us. The hidden treasure that lives within you has no material expression. That treasure is simply a lived life. It is curious as to why it is so hard to listen to our own lives and why it seems so desirable to want to live someone else’s life or a life defined for us by TV, but the spiritual path is to let go of that material and to see what magic is waiting for us. This is worship not of some external God, separate and distant, but ra

We often speak of joy as if it is a synonym for happiness, but happiness and joy are different. Happiness is an intimately personal sensation. Joy is about connection...Joy is about feeling a part of something larger than yourself. It is the sensation that overwhelms the shell of the individual and opens us into a sense of belonging and being with. Very often we connect joy with happiness because we feel happy when the sense of belonging overwhelms us. Somewhere along the way we got it into our heads that religion and God is not sensual, not joyful. And somewhere along the way we learned or were taught that loving life is going to get us in trouble, because maybe we won’t be as efficient at work. There is this mistrust of enjoyment, of really savoring this life we have…and taking the time to savor it. And I believe that [Barbara] Ehernreich is right, we are starved for joy.

There is something incredibly beautiful about your soul. Something that draws others in, that draws God to you. What is it? What is it that God desires in you? I think it is not enough for us to try to be good. I think there needs to be some seduction in our spiritual discipline as well. It is important to show God that we are interested in being desired. Just as we might put on that good perfume or the shirt that goes so well with our eyes for the humans we are attracted to, we should also put on display the parts of ourselves that will draw the God of our desire to us. Prayer doesn’t have to be about stripping away burdens, it can also be sweet, like honey. What does Psyche, what does your soul, have to cause Love to fall in love? Find this and you won’t have to chase God. God will chase you.

Whether we like it or not, whether we think it is just or not, the world is now in the care of human beings. Our actions dictate and determine the life of every other animals now living on the planet. All so-called free space is circumscribed by human behavior. The most destructive behaviors are easy to see. The consequences exist right in front of our eyes. Calamity is now staring us in the face as we look up from our hands wondering how it got to this. As someone who believes in the transforming powers of God and as someone who views the prospect of humans rescuing ourselves through material progress cautiously, I believe a successful environmental movement must incorporate a spiritual component.

I don’t want to move on from this grief just yet. All around me I hear the clamor of advocates demanding some action and I, too, want action, but I don’t want it just so I can avoid sitting with this grief. Our cup of meaning, the cup from which we drink our lives, has been broken. It is a mended cup so we knew that it has been broken in the past and we have healed. But today I want to hold the brokenness in my hands and not rush away from it. I want to stare at it directly with open eyes. This beloved world has been shattered. I want to see the faces and know the names of those beautiful beings who died this week in Orlando. I want to sit and witness what has been lost. We will act. Of this I am sure, but today let us just grieve. Let us feel the sadness, the sorrow, the betrayal. Let us hold the brokenness in our fingers, running our touch over the rough edges, bringing home how much it is worth to us. We will mend and engage once more in our call to love the hell out of this world where arms stretch out to

Altars are the sacred sites on which we place both our gifts and our sacrifices. But the intention behind the act is the same — this I give to you, this precious part of me I give to you. Just because there is something in us to overcome, something in us that no longer serves, that needs to be put down does not mean that it is not precious. Every sacrifice is precious. And still, more than souvenirs in our lives what we seek is the crucial link with the eternal. The coming transformation of humanity is going to be a death and rebirth on a community level, a world-wide level. But it begins with you. It begins with you being the hero of your own life, looking at the attachment that is keeping you from the more expansive life you know is possible, and then going forward, placing it on your altar, and letting it go.

What has to die in your life for you to be reborn? What sits between you and the more expansive life you know is possible? What has to die in your life to allow you to become part of the great awakening of humanity? If we are lucky, we will face the great challenge, the one the small and large character-defining moments have led us to, the one that asks us to die entirely so that we might be reborn. This is what makes the hero. This is why we cheer for Luke and for Neo and for Jesus and for the Buddha. In them, in their stories, we witness not only their death but also their rebirth as new beings. And in their example we are inspired to look at the great challenge of our own lives. In this way we live in a mythic world.

Last summer I went to the desert with friends to watch some art burn. There were massive, intricate, ornate temples and pagodas created solely to be enjoyed for a few days after which they were set alight; offerings to the Gods of impermanence. The night of the great fire was a spectacle unlike any I have ever seen. Tens of thousands gathered around a human image standing hundreds of feet over our heads, the product of months of sophisticated engineering and hundreds of hours of labor, and we stared waiting for it to return to dust and ash; just as we too will one day return to dust and ash. That night as the great wooden man burned, Grace burned away the small image of my ego allowing me to stand humbly in the company of other men, a grateful elder with trembling hands and another marked with the willingness to say yes, and for a few moments I lived beyond the walls of wrongdoing and rightdoing in that field of companionship the poets write about. And I felt free.

We are facing a changing time. The effects of the isolated self are coming home to roost. We can no longer plunder the Earth with impunity. We have come to understand that we are a nested, complex organism that has been thrown out of balance because we thought we were individual actors who didn’t impact the collective world. The coming collapse of the environment is asking us to take our collective identity seriously. The shift we are being asked to make in our understanding of ourselves is not one that amplifies the isolated individual, the rampant self-improving person, but rather the healing of the body we as beings are a part of. The healing of the larger body will also heal us. But we need a spiritual practice that has depth. That holds us accountable, that supports us in the giving of our gift to the world, that allows us to practice a transformation we can experience as a group of people rather than on our own. I understand that it is easier to say there is something spiritual about life than to sa