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#2446 -
I'm gonna entitle this issue Spit
and Mud. The sensational Dorianne Laux opens and
pop culture boss Joss Whedon closes. In between are two
interesting people. I hope you are not too nondual to enjoy
them.
--Jerry
Regret nothing.
Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
Dorianne Laux
My search is over
Mary Ovenstone
“With the drawing of this love, and the voice of this
calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring will be to
arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
…” -- Four Quartets, TS Eliot
What can I say about a spiritual journey
that has taken such a long and windy road to end up pretty much
where it began?
What I can say with assurance is that the
journey has defined my life choices. I’ve lived a life eager
and expecting to encounter God. I’ve been willing to go
anywhere, do anything and open ever more deeply to that
experience, and to assist others to do the same.
And God has never stopped presenting himself
to me, no matter where I’ve gone or what I’ve done. It’s
been like the children’s game: “You’re getting
warmer.”
In brief, my journey has taken me from
liberal Catholic spiritual roots in 1960s Hollywood (California),
through a young married life in Cape Town involved in a
Christian/humanistic spiritual foundation, to nine years of
living in spiritual communities with my children in Cape Town,
British Colombia and Colorado. Then, after years in corporate
Toronto during which I studied psychotherapy, back to Southern
Africa, where I was initiated as a sangoma in Botswana in 2000.
Now I’ve come full circle to my
ancestral Christian roots. I feel reborn and yet it is the space
my ancestors prepared for me.
How do I frame this intercontinental,
inter-cultural, inter-religious experience?
I hope that for the most part, as keen as I
have been, I’ve been a “finder” rather than a
“searcher”. Because, what I know from experience is
that God has presented him/herself to me at each step of the way.
(From now on I’ll use the common “he”, if you’ll
understand that for me God is beyond gender.)
I only needed the eyes to see and the ears
to hear him in the many ways he presented himself to me through
teachers and wise people, the simple joys of love and parenthood,
the magnificent beauty of nature and directly through his voice
speaking within me.
I remember as a child being told by my
mother to expect to feel God’s presence and to hear his
voice in my heart.
I feel no desire to convince anyone about my
beliefs or experiences because what I also know is that when God
shows up in our life, he shows up as God -- not as the myriad
projections we impose on him. As Isaiah says, his ways are not
ours, yet mercifully he introduces himself to us wherever we are.
He invites us into an encounter with him and then shows us who
and what he actually is. We have no excuses for alienation, but
we can miss his calling by looking the other way.
What I’ve done right is to “find”
him as he is, to be open to him when he shows up. The biggest
mistake I’ve made is to respond to the restlessness and
impulsivity of contemporary life and “search” for a
version of God that I think will satisfy my current needs or
beliefs. He always comes all right, but in the best possible way
-- his way -- to meet my deepest needs. And it may be just to
say: “You’re getting colder.”
I remember, at 17 years old, being asked by
the great American psychologist Dr Carl Rogers what I wanted to
become as an adult. I told him then that I wanted to be like
Jesus; always able to speak right into the hearts and minds of
anyone he met, speaking in their “tongue” and healing
them on that basis. I’ve never deviated from that desire. I
am still inspired by how God speaks his healing and creative ways
but through our many languages.
I’ve spent my adult life learning ways
to heal, to counsel and, recently, to coach. All I’ve ever
wanted to do is to help remove blockages in others so they can
open their hearts to God’s presence in their lives.
I’ve studied many frameworks, from
modern theoretical physics to Jungian psychology and ancient
shamanic practices, looking for languages and healing tools. To
support our inevitable life changes, I’ve developed
contemporary rites of passage to replace those that have lost
their cultural currency in Western influenced society. All these
have been useful arenas for the Holy Spirit to work within
people.
Yet I am most inspired when the Bible shows
Jesus using spit and mud, simple stories and the bold challenges
of the Beatitudes. He performed immediate and profound healings,
he exemplified God’s ways for human beings, and he showed a
spectacular command of ritual pro-cesses as he gathered people
into encounters with his Holy Spirit. He promised and even
commanded that we do the same.
So in my journey, I’ve been led back
full circle to a simple relationship with Jesus. I indulge daily
in the childlike faith in the Holy Spirit with which my mother
raised me. And as singer Katie Melua says: “I’ve called
off the search.”
Mary Ovenstone is a corporate coach and
consultant
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Ten-Year-Old Spiritual Whiz Charuji
Amazes Devotees
By VIJI SUNDARAM
India-West Staff Reporter
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Don't let his size fool
you, or his age, or the occasional giggle that escapes him.
His name should give you a hint of what he
is all about: Shri Charu Chaitanyaji Maharaj. So should his
title: Bhagawat Alankar.
He is, to hear his father, Prem Achyutji,
say it, "an old soul in a child's body."
He has to be, asserts Achyutji, who is
himself a teacher of the Hindu scriptures and yoga in his
hometown in Solan district in Himachal Pradesh. How else could
Charuji, as he calls his 10-year-old son, have been able to
recite shlokas from the Hindu scriptural texts when he was barely
knee high?
"And he did it with perfect
(enunciation)," Achyutji, a self-described brahmarishi, told
India-West proudly during a recent interview at the home of his
host, while Charuji relaxed in an adjoining room watching
television.
"He knows all 12 skandas of the text by
heart," said his father. Not to mention scores of verses
from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as sootras from
Sanskrit grammar.
Achyutji has been the boy's teacher
throughout, although he maintained that the boy's mother, whom he
described as a tapasvin, passed all the knowledge on to the
youngster while he was still in her womb.
"She is his first teacher," he
asserted.
Father and son were in the San Francisco Bay
Area because Charuji was giving a series of talks for a week on
the Bhagavatam at the Sunnyvale Hindu temple. Daily attendance on
each of the seven days stood at around 500.
Wearing a white kurta and salwar, and a
shawl draped around his neck, each day Charuji first led the
audience in chanting and bhajans, and then plunged into the text,
chanting first the Sanskrit slokas and following it up with an
explanation in Hindi, with the words rolling off his tongue like
molasses.
"My favorite text is the
Bhagavatam," Charuji told India-West, speaking with a hint
of an American accent, when he was finally brought into the
living room for this interview in a white silk dhothi, an
embroidered white kurta and a red dupatta. A long red tilak
marked his forehead.
The boy and his father have been spending a
month or two each year in an ashram Achyutji owns near Toronto,
where Charuji last year delivered a series of talks at the
invitation of the Hindu Mission of Canada.
Asked if he prepares for his talks each day,
or whether he ever refers to notes while speaking, Charuji said
no.
"I don't need to look at notes and I
never forget anything," the slender lad said.
Looking a tad bored, Charuji kept his dreamy
eyes fixed on his father while answering questions. Achyutji
prompted him to include the word, please, in his responses.
Does he ever get nervous while facing an
audience?
"No, please," Charuji said.
Does he enjoy all the attention he gets from
the public?
"No, please," Charuji said.
And how does he feel when people garland him
and fall at his feet, or when he is received with poorna kumbha -
an honor reserved for spiritual leaders - wherever he goes.
"I just keep my eyes closed," he
said.
Although his father insisted that the boy's
lifestyle has in no way cut short his childhood, Charuji himself
acknowledged that his only playing companion back home in India
was his two-year-old brother. And playing on the computer was
something he never did, he said.
"I don't play on my computer, I learn
from it," he asserted.
The boy discontinued school after grade
three, even though he was good in his studies, said his father.
He is currently home-schooled and plans to take his eighth grade
exams in a couple of years.
"They won't allow him to take it before
that because of his age," Achyutji said.
Aside from his broad knowledge of many of
the scriptural texts, Charuji is adept in yoga. He sets aside
some time each morning for his yoga and pranayama practices, as
well as for his gayatri japa and other prayers. The boy picked up
yoga just by watching his father do it, Achyutji maintained.
At the talks in the
Sunnyvale temple co-founder and treasurer
Raj Bhanot told India-West that this was the most expensive
religious talk series organized by the temple. Charuji reportedly
came with a price tag of $21,000.
Remember to always be yourself. Unless you
suck.
Joss Whedon