All Spirituality is Local
Dear Friends,
Tip O'Neill, the late great Congressman from Massachusetts, famously coined or repeated the adage that "all politics is local." By that he meant that even national and international elections, decisions and initiatives are swayed by issues people face and care about right where they are, in their immediate homes and workplaces and communities. These motivate them to participate in projects of larger scale.
You might also say that all spirituality is local. We suffer and delight and learn and apply what we learn with the people and environments right near us. These may turn out to have universal implications. We can think of Tennyson's "flower in the crannied wall" or Therese of Lisieux's scrap of paper. Tennyson said that if he could understand that single wildflower thoroughly, he would "know what God and man is." And Therese said that if she picked up even a piece of scrap paper in the right way, she would save a soul. Not far from the Zen saying, "I lift my finger and cover Mount Sumeru."
We'll get simple and practical with this today in our shared practice. After the initial bells and whistles of arrival, we'll settle into appreciation, love, and blessing for the immediate place in which we find ourselves. This immediacy can be thought of in several ways. We are close to our bodies. We are close to the man-made environment within range of our senses. Perhaps we are closest of all to our own minds, our attentiveness, the very awareness by which we know and experience the other close elements of experience.
So we'll notice and come into appreciative relationship to each of these, and see how far they reach into the past, present and future. The man-made environment, after all, is continuous with its sources in nature and in the human labor of fabrication, commerce and transportation. Our bodies are continuous with the natural environment (think air, gravity) and with our ancestry. Our immediate consciousness is continuous with its sources too, but what are those?
with love,
Michael
