You Have Heard it Said

So, recently took a class that was focused on the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, the lilies of the field, pray in your closet and all that. Matthew’s chapters 5, 6, and 7.

And I’m not a religious scholar and I haven’t really looked back into the New Testament I used to read so deeply in early adolescence to negotiate living in batshit and traumatizing households. I do occasionally look up a quote here and there, but I haven’t sat down to contemplatively read the Christian scriptures because I was just too allergic to them.

Huge chunks of the Bible were just burned in my memory anyway, for good and ill. Branded.

Lectio Divina is supposed to be, in its purest definition, a contemplative reading practice that is focused on Christian scripture.  I love contemplative reading – but I stubbornly choose my own texts, and rarely cracked open a Christian Bible.

So, it was interesting for me to sit with a close reading again. To listen to scholars offering their translations from Aramaic, Syriac, Greek and Hebrew.

Now that the trauma is no longer inflamed.

Now that I am old enough to hear more deeply.

I hear prescriptions for healthy communities and healthy economies, and how it is possible to live justly and in balance on this earth, with the earth, and with each other.

I don’t hear moral injunctions about how individuals will secure salvation. I hear hacks and tips for a better life as a community of creatures living together on the planet that we’ve emerged from. I hear instructions for best collective practices.

I hear how we could all live better more balanced lives together if we would just follow some elemental norms and agreements. So elemental, so simple that they haven’t been taken seriously then or now, because they are so utopian, so impossible, so extreme.

I hear the sermon on the side of that mountain as a call for a paradigm shift, not a set of instructions for individuals to secure a cushy afterlife for themselves, but as prescriptions to whole communities. A call to the clustered local crowds that had accumulated along the way on the long tour, groups from Galilee, from Judea, and beyond the Jordan River

This is what my ears hear now:

Notice what the poor, the humble, the vulnerable and those who are grieving and traumatized understand that too many others do not: We need each other.

That lesson is the blessing. It is what will carry us through.  

Pay attention to those who are kind, who share, who settle conflicts. They are living out the truth that we need each other.

Here are some good things to pray for together:

Remember our communities are dependent on the earth particularly and that we are offspring of the entire cosmos and that we should honor that and be grateful for it. When we live fairly and gently on the earth we can live together as though in a blessed kingdom.

Mana in the desert only lasted one day and couldn’t be stockpiled before it turned. Remember that. If we all harvest, prepare and share what we can each day all of us will get what we need each day.

Protect all of us, and let us protect each other from cruelty and indifference, and from confusion and error.  Help us set up systems of reconciliation so we learn how to forgive each other and restore those who have been harmed.

Because this the healthiest and the most joyful, the most sustainable and the most balanced way to live on this earth.

May we all work together toward a more just world.

We are all mendicants. We will all fall into need at some point. We will all have something to share. When you have the chance share as freely as you can. And ask freely too.

Live like you need each other. Understand that you live interdependently with everyone you encounter even if you hate them or they bug the crap out of you. We are all tangled in the same net.

We cannot escape each other, not really.

We can’t pretend that we can live without each other.  We don’t have to like each other, but we have to learn to settle our disputes quickly so we can live cooperatively.  We need to share resources, pray for each other, and starve Empire by not internalizing its values.

Enlightened self-interest isn’t the way and will not sustain us. The further we are from a sharing economy and a sharing culture, the more we will live in imbalance, error, and injustice.

Divest. Defund. We can undermine our occupiers by how we choose to live together.  To do that we must lift up what they devalue. We must try to even things out. The wealthy must live with less and all of us will happier, even if the wealthy aren’t so happy about it. They’ll be fine, better off actually, if they live life more fairly and compassionately.

If we live out of an awareness of our interdependence, and care for those in need, those that ask, those that receive, and  those that share will all be blessed, all will live better.

We must change our vision of how to live; we must commit to enhancing  the quality of life for everyone. Hold up healthy humility as a cultural value, and it will  engender a culture of sharing.

 The prophets have warned us over and over – especially when we all fly like a flock of birds in the wrong direction, that when our communities fall into injustice and imbalance that can can collapse and disappear off the face of the earth

Empires too can collapse in a flash. And new eras, new paradigms can emerge from the ashes.

Every move we make does something unto others. Think about that. Every move others make does something unto me. We are entangled and are one even in all our individuality and creativity.

When you live without hoarding, you live closest to God, and in alignment with the environment. It just works better that way.

Do not treat any one as though they are worthless. When groups start doing that they are trapped in a cycle of endless scapegoating, projection and marginalization.

We should all be conscious of our susceptibility to miss the mark and get turned around. We should place a high value on telling the truth as best we can.

Our lives together should not be organized around accumulating money.  It doesn’t work, it will create needless suffering and is unsustainable. Just keep sharing your resources.

To go all in on a money-based economy -  as our oppressors have -  is a dangerously imbalanced way to live. It is unsustainable, and destructive. If you start hoarding out of anxiety or fear it’s all going to rot out from under you anyway, and it will hurt everyone.

Really, all this worry and anxiety just drives us into materialistic consumption. Don’t let it posses you. It’s worthless. If we just keep sharing the bounty that this earth produces, and sharing it fairly, we won’t need to worry and we will all have what we need.

Don’t keep going back to dirty wells looking for clean water. Don’t play the dominance game with those who try to dominate you. Dominance begets dominance and it will just bring everyone down. Yes, you probably will still have to guard your vulnerabilities from those who are still lost in schemas of dominance and possessed by power-hunger, they are too likely to exploit what is most sacred to you.

Speak simply, clearly and directly.

Revenge never restores balance to communities. Practiced compassion does.

Bad systems, imbalanced communities just aren’t fruitful. Healthy communities engender creative possibilities for everyone. The systems and norms that promote hoarding will collapse and burn without producing anything worthwhile.

Set up your community practices so that they will be an example of fairness and justice, like a lamp in the night, shining out to others.

Justice, balance, fairness, sharing, creates solid bedrock for a city to live on, and frankly, without it, our communities will just collapse and disperse when storms and challenge come.

These are all active and collective practices. So don’t just listen with your ears. Enact them. Put them in place, live them out together. This is how we were meant to live.

It just works better this way.