Today is Good Friday, the commemoration of Jesus’ Crucifixion, the second day of the Triduum. This special time is auspicious for me to begin a new chapter in life: to die to an old, though wonderful stage of growth, and in the residue and humus of this life, plant a new seed. I want to share my planting, my fertilizing, my watering, and my tending. It is a risky thing to do in this public way but feel the vulnerability is necessary to bear fruit that can be of service. One of the fruits I hope will be a book and this blog, I think, can be a place to explore ideas and potential expressions. Your sincere and compassionate comments are welcome. I feel, somehow, within the context of this Covid 19 Pandemic, I am freer to do this, supported by a shared, globally shared experience of helplessness and hopelessness that brings us all together in one boat.
I have been thoughtful about my spiritual journey from Jesus to other masters, most notably Meher Baba and his Sufi Murshids, as well as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. (Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, Nisargadatta, Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda are among a few others who are expanding my spiritual family as well). The passage from Jesus to these beautiful Friends has been a twenty-year journey that is now culminating in a way that propels me to return to Jesus and my Catholic formation from their vantage.
The need to do this was most fully awoken this past July with my dad’s death after a battle with cancer. His funeral mass and my worshiping with my family since then has flooded the river of my childhood religion with an ocean of love. I have decided that I will write a book about this process as it relates to a theology of the God-Man across spiritual paths, to channel my creativity in this way to help myself process grief, to integrate faith traditions, and possibly to help others who find themselves in between life stages and in between religions that feed their soul in different ways. I find myself living in what scholars call a “third space” where one can find support to see one’s home tradition more fully in light of another. This third space is also, I have discovered, a setting that hosts a very high form of love that floods all other spaces.. In fact, this third space can become a home in and of itself. My childhood home of Catholicism has been expanded by my adventures of finding a home in Meher Baba and his spiritual school of Sufism Reoriented, as well as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I want to explore the potentials of sharing this journey through this media to see how it strikes others, how it might name or not their reality.
For my Christian brothers and sisters, I wish you a blessed Good Friday. May our contemplation of the cross awoken a deeper commitment to share His suffering as we seek to alleviate it in others. If we cannot alleviate, may we stand in it silently with others so they know and feel that they are not alone. I have found that sometimes a smile will do.