Every once in a while our Zen group gets an email from someone, often a younger someone, expressing great enthusiasm and wanting to know how to dive deep with us. They’re hot to get enlightened and save all beings. I’ve had similar experiences at church, where someone has had an encounter, heard a sermon or attended an event, and has felt, this is “it!” They see how this liberal church is the place where they can grow in depth, become better parents and people, and do something in the world that expresses their deepest spiritual values.
As an old fart long experienced in both my Zen and church lives, and all too aware of many institutional shortcomings as well as many profound and great gifts crowding up together, I’m both charmed by this enthusiasm, and feel a wave of the weight of the world washing over me.
And it sets me to thinking…
These encounters remind me of that Buddhist scripture which alludes to the “ideal and the actual, like a box and its lid,” and the fact the lid and the box rarely actually fit completely snugly…
For me the spiritual way has three elements, great doubt, great faith and great energy…
Doubt is so important.
And in my life it opens faith.
Two lovely terms, worth considerable unpacking…
But, for me, at this moment, it’s that third thing, great energy that I find myself considering.
At the moment Jan and auntie and I are in the midst of settling into our Rhode Island lives and we’re caught in a small space/time vortex where we’re having trouble getting going on the next step of fixing up the house we’ve found in Pawtucket.
Our energy is bottled up, I’m not sure if it’s “rest energy” or “potential energy,” but it sure is energy, bubbling and alive.
Even in an old fart, who likes to wallow in the weight of the world…
For me my doubt and my faith rely upon this energy, whether found at rest or expressed in motion.
It is the dance of the cosmos.
And it reveals how good it is to be alive…
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