On God and Storms and that Kirk Cameron rant

(This is post is a combination of ideas I have floating in my head from reading a ton of different authors. It is a rant so rather than citing my sources I gave you a reading list at the end. Thing about being UU is you read all the good books)

So I’ve got a lot running around in my mind with the hurricane and all the 9/11 posts. What triggered this blog is an article I saw on Facebook that Kirk Cameron was quoted as saying “god sent the hurricane in order for us to learn to be humble.”This elicits a knee jerk response from me for many reasons.  I read “A Paradise Built in Hell” By Rebecca Solnit earlier in the year and so I sort of see the thought processes. That book has many a case study of how communities come together thru natural disasters and how people can be transformed by them.  However, saying that "storms were sent by a god who seeks to punish people and make us humble" can be toxic thinking. It gives God too much of a human quality. I don’t believe in a "capital G male pronoun bearded dude God.”  I believe that God is the essence of creativity and peace. Because God is the essence of creativity we can only describe God in poetry. God's true pronoun is love and we are most connected with God when we are connected to each other.

Rather than saying “everything happens for a reason.” Or everything is “planned by God.” I think that everything that happens was meant to happen because it happened. You can look at the literal physical cause and effect for the why. (i.e. climate change and meteorology and all that jazz). After the event occurs, we make meaning from how these events impact our lives. So everything happens...and we make up the reason. We choose how to respond to it and when we respond with positive action, gratitude, and presence in the moment, we are operating from that higher self that is attributed to God.  So OK Kirk I agree with you that for some disasters can be a kick in the pants to remind us of our own humanity but the storm wasn’t a punishment for sins. Petty punishment is an entirely too human quality to ascribe to a superior being and in fact I’m pretty sure that sort of behavior is the essence of original sin. Also take a look at science please ktnx.

I’ve been juggling a lot of Richard Rohr (Catholic mystic) and Tara Brach (Buddhist author/ lecturer) and a common theme that comes thru is the idea that original sin is our “fight or flight.” “To Sin” means to miss the mark. When we “miss the mark” we lose our connections with our fellow humans. We get caught in a survival mode and look out for ourselves rather than others. In moments of grace and humility or in moments when we are helping each other survive, we approach a state of “attend and befriend.” People begin to work together as a team. It brings out the helpers.

I don’t believe that God causes the storm, but I do think that moments of great destruction often result in a mass connection with that higher self. These are moments when people work together to pull themselves out of the rubble.  When we realize that we are all humans and life is fragile, when we work together to help others, when we act from a place of love rather than fear, we can reach a connection with that love that connects us all. So yes inner paradise, humility, and grace can come from going thru a personal hell but it's extremely bad form to wish that hell upon others or say they deserved it.

Reading list of things that inspired this:

“A Paradise Built in Hell” by Rebecca Solnit

So many Tara Brach lectures

So many Richard Rohr meditations

Forgiveness, Writers Block, and Just Doing The Thing

As a birthday gift for myself I signed up for the DailyOm Course “A Year to Clear What’s Holding You Back.” It give you a quick daily reading to help you clear your mind of negative patterns and get in touch with your higher self. All that good stuff. One of the lessons earlier in the week is really sitting with me. It was called the "4 action steps of clearing." It can be used with any task where you may experience internal resistance. Those action steps are:

Intention

Action

Non-Identification

Compassion

Intention- This is the thing I want to do and why it’s important that it gets done

Action- I am doing the thing

Non-Identification- I observe any negative whiny nonsense that happens in my mind but I don’t attach to it or even label it as whiny nonsense just observe it and keep doing the action

Compassion- I hold love for myself as I power thru something that might be hard. I complete the action and find a sense of peace

So I read this lesson and went about my day. Immediately applied it to chores and doing dishes and continued to apply it while going about my busy day. What I love about these four steps is that it allows me to observe the chatter that’s going on but also acknowledge that chatter as a separate thing rather than getting overwhelmed.

The same day that I encountered these four steps I also read a quote by Richard Rohr about forgiveness that stuck with me-  “to accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is.” I connected this passage to the non-identification/ compassion steps: when I observe but don’t attach to the chatter and hold compassion for myself I am forgiving myself for the negative thoughts or mistakes I make and work to find that peaceful sense of flow and focus. I also find again and again that when I complete the task the more difficult I had perceived it to be, the more excitement there is at the end.

Now I get super meta about this- as I go thru the task of writing my (mostly) weekly blog I am following these 4 steps:

Intention- I am writing this blog. I have some nifty stuff to say.

Action- Writing the blog

Non-identification- in the back of my mind I notice the voices that create writer’s block building tension. “This is dumb. I don’t want to do this right now. Yada yada yada” I hear y’all but look at me I’m still typing, suckas!

Compassion- I create a peaceful space inside. I am super proud of myself as I write and I also know that I have so much more to grow and that is awesome.

What I’m learning is that the key is to show up. To commit to the intention and the action and let the rest flow. It’s a lesson that I continue to learn. I feel like I lost momentum in my various creative projects and having these four steps helps me to power thru. Funny how building a spiritual practice is...a practice.