The intersection of the "Pain War" plea and the teachings of Yeshua

The "Pain War" victim's desperate plea:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most oppressed, most disenfranchised, most marginalized, group of people of them all and/or which intersections of oppression, disenfranchisement, and marginalization is the  most horrible set of intersections to ever, ever conceivably walk the earth? Please, mirror answer me, for I am certain of and need reassurance that it is the group or the intersection that I am a perfect representation  of that certainly is the most egregiously oppressed one of them all! So please Dear mirror answer me and satisfy my curiosity. Is it women, black men, black women, different groups of people of color and people of color combinations, various First Nations peoples and/or indigenous peoples? Is it members of the LGBTQI community or communities? Is it people living with disabilities, people living with terminal illnesses and all kinds of other illnesses and diseases? Is it people living with chronic mental illness? Is it homeless people? Is it people who are the survivors of all kinds of horrifying and protracted abuse and trauma in childhood, adulthood, or both? Or have we now gotten to a place in the world where the only real contestant capable of winning The coveted Pain War sash and crown is necessarily someone who has a powerful combo like a black lesbian heroin addict schizophrenic double amputee who is homeless? Please beloved mirror answer me. Please assure me that since it is completely inconceivable that I could win any contest for being the most Blessed of anything, please then give me something by letting me know that I am at least the most non-Bleessed among all of God's creation and the one most destined to suffer the most. Please, answer me!

Yeshua's response:

Come to me all who labor and are heavy burdened,
and I shall give you rest.
Take up my yoke and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart,
and you’ll find rest for your souls.
Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

I AM

This is what seems like it wants to be expressed through me today...

It feels/seems as if I lapsed into a coma of sorts sometime in mid-2013 and lasting until just a few months ago. This is how it seems to me. It seems like sometime in mid-2013 I lapsed into a coma in Oakland, California and two years later I somewhat magically regained consciousness and awoke here in Bremerton, Washington. This is in fact something of a quasi-dramatic overstatement being used mostly for effect. Obviously, I was not really in a coma during this period of time. However, it does somewhat realistically seem as if it did sort of happen.

I am also very cognizant of and have absolutely full consciousness and awareness about what has most likely triggered all of this.

Between February and May of 2013 I experienced two significant medical emergencies at my place of work in downtown San Francisco, CA. During the first event, I walked into my supervisor’s office very early in the morning and informed him of very concerning physical sensations I was experiencing. He subsequently called 911. Paramedics arrived, took some initial readings, and the decision was fairly quickly made by the paramedics to transport me by ambulance to Kaiser Hospital/San Francisco. I stayed at Kaiser for most of the day. Many tests were taken. I was eventually released several hours later. I went to Japantown and treated myself to dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant there. The food was great, as usual. I then traveled back to Oakland to my partner and our apartment.

The second medical event occurred almost exactly 3 months later. I experienced very similar and equally concerning physical sensations. One again I walked into my supervisor’s office and explained to him that I was having the same symptoms I had experienced 3 months earlier. This time one of the physicians who was employed at my place of work was available and was called into my supervisor’s office for consultation. After a brief consultation with this person a decision was made once again to transport me via ambulance to Kaiser Hospital/San Francisco. Being carried through my place of work, however, on a gurney three months earlier, in front of co-workers and clients had been stress inducing for me. So this time I asked my supervisor if he would drive me to the hospital instead. He agreed. His car was parked several blocks away from the building. He informed me it would likely take him 15-20 minutes to come back and pick me up. I stayed outside and awaited his return. By the time he arrived back to take me to the hospital, some twenty minutes later, all my symptoms had abated and I felt oddly refreshed and very renewed. Given this, I requested that my supervisor drop me off at the San Francisco Transbay Bus Terminal instead of taking me to the hospital. He did this. I took a bus back home to Oakland and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Even though I had some very real physical symptoms during both of these medical encounters, like blood pressure readings of around 200/110 during both events, I slowly began to believe both events had essentially been rather intense panic attacks brought on by what I viewed as my extremely stressful life at that time. This, among other things, was significantly characterized by my job, which I experienced as both highly stressful and almost completely unrewarding in most ways. I also had other highly stressful aspects of my personal life at that time as well.

After the second medical “event” at my place of work, this place of work required that I get a release from my physician in order to return to work as a glorified wage slave there. Patrick, my Kaiser physician, was completely prepared to write me such a letter and told me so. However, I asked him not to do so. I was beginning to see certain clear writing on the wall in terms of my life, my life’s journey, and my future life’s vocation. This decision of mine to not get a work clearance from Patrick for all intents and purposes served as my resignation letter from my place of work. It also was the first conscious step toward what would eventually become a fourteen month stretch of homelessness for my partner, our two dogs, and myself, on the mean, somewhat unforgiving streets of Oakland, living in our twelve year old Buick Crossover. And it would also eventually be the decision that I would ultimately see as a lifesaving decision both physically and spiritually. But first, before I went to hell in order to save my life, we had enough saved from my wage slavery to pay for 6 months’ rent at our overpriced Cleveland Heights neighborhood Oakland apartment. And then we were graciously “put up” by a very supportive and loving Buddhist friend in Oakland for two more additional months before we hit the streets of Oakland living in our vehicle. Thirteen months later this same vehicle would transport us to our new home in Bremerton, WA.

Most of the things I experienced in my life before mid-2013 are relatively clear to me and feel very real, just like all of the life memories you have, unless, of course, you have dementia or some kind of chronic dissociative thing going on in your life. Things that happened in my life between mid-2013 and mid-2015 however, mostly feel like a somewhat shadowy dream or nightmare, (depending on different factors). I did experience many traumatic events during that thirteen months of living in the vehicle and of being homeless. Not all of that trauma had to do with living in the vehicle nor being homeless. My main point however, is that most of these events and even the people of that timeframe don’t feel completely real to me anymore. Events and people who are strongly connected to that 2-year period specifically and not to any previous period in my life feel the most abstract and unreal to me now. Each and every day many of these people feel less and less real and are pretty much on the periphery of my life at this point anyway. I experience relatively little sense of loss or grief around that. While at the same time I also have this sense that loss and grief are significant factors in why all of this is happening. However, it also feels like this entire experience has also been brought about by divine grace or will or some kind of weird destiny. This feels much more present and real than the grief and loss aspects do at this point. I experience this sense of divine grace and destiny as being very reassuring and as ultimately being very positive.

I know that trauma plays some role in what I am experiencing or have experienced in the last two years. It however, in no way has the starring role. I don’t believe I am in denial about that. Now that I feel relatively safe—and around what feel like authentically loving, caring, and supportive people—many of whom, in reality, feel much more like angels than mere mortals, I do not really have the motivation to lie to nor kid myself in such ways.

I believe I experienced a Dark Night of the Soul spiritual event, and a significant series of traumatic events simultaneously between 2013-2015. There were periods where the trauma was likely the most prominent. I believe I am now in a period where the Dark Night of the Soul experience is the most prominent. I believe my “coma” experience is due to the process of coming out of the Dark Night and experiencing a sort of “rebirth” that has come about as a direct result of it. I do not believe I think this simply because believing such is “sexier” than believing that everything I am experiencing is the sole purview of trauma or depression or some similar such thing. I am continuously consulting with both helping professionals and “spiritual friends” all of whom have my very best interests at heart and whom I believe would not in any way lead me astray. Each of these individuals concur with my assessment of things. 

My sense of now being awakened from my “coma” is marked by several current experiences. Some things feel almost completely foreign now--things that use to be very important in my life. Now it is as if they were never really a part of my real life at all. I will, for example, sometimes go to the social media pages of strident progressive social justice activists friends whose views I use to 99% agree with and I will read these people's last forty or fifty posts. Sometimes I’ll spend more than an hour just reading his or her posts. Or I will read an entire progressive social justice periodical or newsletter from cover to cover—one that used to be a favorite of mine. In each instance, I will have the sense while engaging in this activity and will also come away feeling as if I just read something in an exotic foreign language that I have absolutely no facility nor skill for understanding. I don’t experience anger nor frustration about what I have read. I used to when I would engage in this same activity a couple of months ago, but not now. I also don’t laugh sarcastically at what is being said and expressed. I don’t feel superior nor wiser. I don’t really feel anything. I just have this odd sensation that I simply do not really understand anything that is being expressed—that almost everything that is being expressed is something that simply no longer computes for me. I have the awareness that I used to hold the exact same beliefs as the ones I just read. Sometimes that feels somewhat odd. It no longer however, really makes any sense to me now.

My Beautiful Life with Christ Yeshua, Part II

After my experience at the Superdome during the 1987 visit of John Paul II to the USA, I was reaffirmed in my being able to have a very meaningful relationship with Yeshua (Jesus) that could exist quite substantially and quite exquisitely outside the strictures of organizational religious structures.

Earlier in that same year I had taken up a Buddhist practice, in the Vajrayana tradition—The Shambhala expression as envisioned by ChögyamTrungpa Rinpoche, to be more exact. And I also still saw myself as being a very strong and rather devout member of The Holy Roman Catholic Church as well. I saw nor experienced no conflict between my new Buddhist practice and my Christian/Catholic faith. I experienced them as two buckets dipping from the same deep, plentiful, and nourishing well.

In the ensuing years however, I saw two distinct movements occurring in my spiritual life.

On the one hand I underwent what felt like a natural and copacetic movement away from The Catholic Church. During this movement I never referred to nor saw myself as a lapsed nor a recovering catholic. This remains to be true even to this day. And still, this natural movement was taking place. And I really saw no need to alter nor interfere with its course. The other significant movement that was occurring was an explosive and very exciting investigation of a large number of other spiritual expressions and wisdom traditions.

This was in the very late 1980s and this explosive investigation period lasted until my move to California in late 1999. This investigation was during a time that coincided with what is popularly referred to as the heyday of “The New Age” era in American spiritual and cultural life. Because of this, it was exceptionally easy for me to find books, other types of supports and information, and a cornucopia of supportive communities for these investigations.

During this time I joined a Sufi group, a Cherokee prayer and moon circle, The Dances of Universal Peace, started attending both a Unity Church and a Unitarian Universalist Church on a somewhat regular basis, joined a peace organization that had strong ties to The American Friends Service Committee (The Quakers), started going to High Holiday services with a couple of Jewish friends, joined a mastermind group—all while steadily continuing with my Buddhist practice which by the early 1990s had now become a Zen practice rooted in the teachings of Venerable Thích Nhất Hạnh instead of a Vajrayana practice started by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. And all of this occurred while my never relinquishing my relationship with Yeshua, nor my identity as a Catholic/Christian man. I became a Reiki Master near the end of this period as well. I also attended my first Rainbow Family national gathering which for me had strong spiritual overtones. This was also the same period when I began to identify as a radical faerie.

Once I moved to California, there were some casualties and some survivors from that lengthy list. There were also some connections that appeared to be casualties though later reasserted themselves as very strong and vigorous survivors.

I moved to California ostensibly in order to co-found a lay Buddhist intentional community in the Grand Lake area of Oakland. This community was formed in 2000 and still exists today. I however, left it in 2007. Since this community had Buddhist practice as its overarching connective tissue, my own personal Buddhist practice was strengthened and buoyed tremendously by living in the community.

I tried very valiantly to continue my Sufi practice. However, it really just mostly collapsed under the weight of everything else I was focusing on now that I was living in The San Francisco Bay Area which included a full-time job at The University of California, San Francisco that required a great deal of my time and attention.

Attendance at Jewish High Holiday services vanished as well which I experienced as a great loss. The Jewish High Holiday services, among the great number of diverse spiritual services I have attended, remain for me the most spiritual and moving of them all, especially the Kol Nidre declaration that occurs as part of the Yom Kippur services. There is also the fact that many Jewish services have a very strong community element to them and there is often an incredible feast that occurs either before, during, or after the major holiday. Jews, like Hindus, have had many thousands of years to perfect religious services, and it shows. 

The other reluctant casualty was The Dances of Universal Peace. I kept telling myself I would find a circle somewhere in The Bay Area. There were plenty around. I simply never took the time to introduce myself to one. I had been introduced to The Dances of Universal Peace by a coworker in Kentucky, while I was still living there. I knew several of the people in the circle. So it was extremely easy for me to join the circle and feel comfortable. It was also a very new circle. So we all were learning the songs and the dances at essentially the same time. I probably simply didn’t look forward to being a new person in a very established circle nor being the probable sole person in the room trying to learn the songs and the dances. This was probably part of why I never seriously searched for one. The other part is that I really was very busy for most of the time I lived in California. I definitely gave in to the disease of “busyness” that is so prevalent in many cultures today and that is definitely very alive and well in The San Francisco Bay Area. In many ways it was a horrible, superficial, and depressing existence. I simply didn’t know it while I was immersed in it.

Eventually however, I found myself at The East Bay Church ofReligious Science and I instantly knew I had stumbled onto something very sublime and quite amazing as well. A significant amount of this sublime quality and amazing-ness was to be found in the founding pastor, Rev. Eloise Oliver. However, it didn’t stop there.

Here, in EBCRS was a New Thought church similar to Unity Church, which I had been introduced to more than a decade earlier. However, EBCRS had a very dynamic black female pastor. There was also a large black community that was vibrant, spiritually sound, and that was made up of many black people who could loosely be said to be members of the black intelligentsia. All of this was extremely attractive to me. There was also an extensive amount of diversity in this church that crossed many different definitions of diversity. I felt very uplifted every time I left the building after services, even if in her sermon, Rev E. had posed some very pointed and non-sugar coated questions in it. This was definitely not for everyone. Many people are not interested in looking at their shadow or doing really deep self-investigative work. People at EBCRS however, are well prepared for this. They do deep spiritual work. Being afraid of deep shadow and investigative work also does not describe me. My years in the seminary studying for the priesthood had made it necessary that I learn to be very comfortable with this. So I not only welcomed this from Rev E., I absolutely cherished her for it. I adored EBCRS and its community and I still do.

Still, for all the time and energy I put into EBCRS, I never officially joined the church. I never made that commitment. I knew there were lots of people there who were even more involved than I was who had also never officially joined the church. I never asked any of them why this was so. It however, was odd for me to feel so connected to a spiritual center and community and to not join it. I’m a joiner when it comes to things such as this. Until very recently I didn’t know why I never joined East Bay Church of Religious Science. Now I believe I know why. Still, if and when I ever visit Oakland, visiting The East Bay Church of Religious Science will be near the top of my list of "must do" things.

When I left Oakland in order to move to Bremerton, Washington, in February of 2015, I had a serious Zen practice that I had been nourishing and deepening for right at twenty-five years. That’s a long time. Whew! It doesn’t seem that long. I had to go back and count the years on my fingers just now because I didn’t think it had been that long. But it has been. Wow!

My Zen practice, when I moved, was clearly the most stable and outwardly appearing important spiritual practice in my life. One of the principal reasons I had moved to Washington State and the Seattle Area specifically was to connect with Genjo Marinello, Osho, a very well respected Rinzai Zen Dharma Heir and teacher who had been recommended to me by Kobutsu Malone Osho, when in 2014, I had discussed with Kobutsu Osho, the possibility of studying with him (Kobutsu). Ultimately Kobutsu, who lives in Maine, felt the distance between us (him in Maine and me in California) was just too great. He then recommended Genjo Osho to me. I contacted Genjo Osho immediately and we began a correspondence. During our correspondence I gained a great intuitive sense that Genjo Osho was someone I very much wanted to study with. There is a saying in these type of endeavor’s that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I believe this thoroughly. Plus, it has also been my personal experience. Just in my Buddhist practice alone I have had one system (Shambhala) and three teachers. Each of them have shown up in my life at precisely the correct moment in my life.

My relationship with the Catholic Church was mostly a distant memory by this time, though I still did not view myself as a lapsed nor recovering catholic. There continued to be a handful of catholic saints who were important to me and I suppose it could be said I engaged in some sort of veneration although that word really doesn't capture my relationship with them at all. Among these were, Saint Martin dePorres, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint John of The Cross, Saint Theresa of Avila, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. I also continued to learn and be endlessly inspired by The Desert Fathers. And my relationship with Yeshua remained intact and unchanged, all these years later. We continued to have a very mutually loving union although it was rarely expressed publicly.

And also as of 2015 it has been thirty-nine years since I had that initial, powerful, and very memorable spiritual awakening/kensho/samadhi experience in my life—an experience that had led me directly to the seminary to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. And now it has been thirty-seven years since I had entered the seminary. Oh my! I just broke down and sobbed at the realization of the many years I have been on this journey, aware of all the twists and sometimes extremely violent turns I have had along the way, all the horrible challenges and struggles and somehow, somehow I have remained a very deeply committed man of faith. I just can’t believe it. All I can do is sob. All I can do is cry. And Praise God. And surrender to it all. And have deep, deep gratitude. And cry some more. And praise God more!

But the story doesn’t end there.

When my partner John and I and our two absolutely adorable Chihuahuas, Layla and Lulu moved to Bremerton, we were submerged deeply into poverty. We still are. That is another story in itself and for another time, perhaps.

Anyway, thankfully, Bremerton has many places that offer free meals to the homeless and poor people. Oakland is more than ten times larger, population wise, than Bremerton, and yet that city doesn’t have half the free hot meal options as Bremerton does—at least that don’t also come with constant over-the-top drama and servers who treat you like you are the scum of the earth. This was absolutely stunning to me and John when we first arrived in Bremerton. We thought we had magically been transported to Shangri-La. There are only two days in the week when one cannot get three very well prepared, hot meals in Bremerton. If you go just one town over, that number is reduced to one. Sunday is the only day of the week where one cannot get at least one hot meal in Bremerton served by gracious, friendly, and loving people.

One of the places that serves free meals in Bremerton is St.Paul’s Episcopal Church. They serve a Saturday meal at 2:30 pm every week. It is always very delicious, very well prepared, and served by various local area civic and religious organizations, including a local Girl Scout troop, Led by Marty Stennett, a delightful and spirit filled woman, who is also a member of St. Paul's, whom John and I have gotten to know better. And when the Girl Scouts serve the meal, they often bring Girl Scout cookies for desert! Can it get any better than that? No, I don’t think so.

We had been going to this Saturday afternoon meal at St Paul’s for several months when one Saturday, unbeknownst to us, the meal was being served my members of the St. Paul’s parish community itself. At some point during the meal, one of the servers, a tall, handsome gentleman, roughly in me and John’s age range, came by the table when John and I were talking about New Mexico (I lived in New Mexico for a short period of time in the late 1990s). This gentle man overheard us and his ears perked up because, it turns out, he too had lived in New Mexico for a time. So he sat down at the table with us and we all continued to talk together. He introduced himself as John Kingslight. Eventually he revealed to us that his wife was the rector of the parish—Mother Kathleen Kingslight—and then he invited us to come to a church service there sometime.

John and I used to really love and really enjoy going to East Bay Church of Religious Science in Oakland. And before that we really loved and enjoyed going to San Xavier Mission Church in Tucson, AZ (despite its very problematic history) during the nearly two years we lived in Tucson between 2010 and 2012. Since those two experiences, we had never really gone to a regular church and we hadn’t really gone to EBCRS for nearly the whole last year we were in Oakland.

So we talked about John Kingslight’s offer and decided we would go to service there the very next day (Sunday June 14, 2015). So we did.

The instant I walked into the church for the 10:15 service, that next day, I immediately became aware of an intensely loving presence that I felt completely pervaded the entire church. I was completely taken aback by this and didn’t know what to think of it. However, it was so powerful and so beautiful and loving I simply couldn’t intellectualize it. Let me tell you, that’s some mighty powerful energy if it keeps me from being able to go into analysis mode, OK! It was simply too beautiful and felt just too loving.

Once the service began this loving energy just continued to intensify. It kept intensifying exponentially throughout every segment of the service. I became overwhelmed, in a very good way. I thought I was going to pass out. I literally thought I was going to pass out. And I didn’t even care. I didn’t even care about falling and even hitting my head. This must be what is meant by a charismatic experience. I was filled with so much joy and love I absolutely didn’t care. I was in pure ecstasy. The only thing I cared about was being able to have the privilege of having and enjoying this experience. I was in a state of pure gratitude.

About a third of the way through the service I had to sit down (there is lots of sitting and rising in this Episcopal service, very similar to that in the Roman rite) in the pew and simply bawl over the overwhelming joy and love I was feeling. I just focused on the huge wooden cross above the altar to stabilize me. I don’t believe I have ever felt anything like this in my whole life. It was just so beautiful. It was just so incredibly loving. This service was in June. Mother Kathleen’s sermon was her “LGBTQI positive sermon.” It was so supportive and so uplifting to all LGBTQI people. This just added to the whole experience.

After mass, I made a beeline to Mother Kathleen while we were both still in the sanctuary. I told her about my experience during the service. And once again I started bawling when I told her of it. She instinctively hugged me and matter-of-factly said, “It was the Holy Spirit.” I absolutely knew she was right. I am having just a slightly less powerful feeling of overwhelming love right now just writing about this experience. Hallelujah!

John and I are now proud members of St. Paul’s Episcopal. I’m exploring ways to become more involved in church life there. I will be officially received into The Episcopal Church by the Bishop of The Diocese of Olympia, Greg Rickel, in Seattle, next April. For the first time in my entire life I feel like I am accepted by a Christian faith community and a Christian religious denomination, as a fully embraced part of The Body of Christ. Hallelujah! Amen! Hallelujah! Thank you Jesus! I was never lost. And yet I have been truly found!

And so the story continues.

Thank you Genjo, Osho.

Thank you Mother Kathleen.

Thank you Buddha.

Thank you Jesus.

Thank you for all the teachers and for all the teachings.

I know I am in very good hands and hearts.

Photo by Rags Kanyi Photography