Meditations by Ian White Maher: Praise | Gratitude | Joy | Transformation

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker’s Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: join.theseekerstable.com at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find a good number to use https://www.theseekerstable.com/seekers-sunday If you are new to spiritual discernment, consider taking my free 5-day course called How to Add Meaning to Your Life. It is a good introduction to some of the values and paths we explore as seekers. https://www.theseekerstable.com/how-to-add-meaning-to-your-life And explore our Instagram page. Several times a week, I answer questions about how to explore the spiritual life. And if you have a question, please reach out. I love to engage with people. https://www.instagram.com/theseekerstable/  

The mediation was recorded live at The Seeker's Table Sunday gathering at. If you would like to join us click: at 6 PM Eastern. This link will bring you to our ZOOM room. All are welcome. If you would like to call in click on our info page to find...

The older white man sitting next to me leaned in as the talk came to a close to ask if I was okay. “Am I okay,” I thought? No, no, I am not. I am broken. And I live in a world of brokenness. And I feel trapped by all of this brokenness. And I go through my day shutting the brokenness out, perhaps allowing myself to look at it in little doses like I might look through the crack in the door, worried that if I looked at it any more directly I would be washed away in all the brokenness. I appreciated the question coming from my neighbor, but I was struck by it at the same time. Had we not just listened to the same talk? What kind of response did he really want to hear from me? Was he ready to be responsible for the tears that covered my face and turned it red? Was I ready to share my brokenness with this stranger? And why was he not crying? How could he have listened to these stories and ask me if I was okay? I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but that seemed flip. How can any of us claim to be okay?

Healing the wound of our collective brokenness requires a collective responsibility

If we want to become seekers of liberation we must dive into the practices that bring us back into communion. In addition to our personal disciplines of meditation and prayer we would be wise to explore spiritual companioning—the path of walking with others—as essential to our liberation. What would our houses of worship look like if, instead of treating them like sanctuaries where we hide out from the world, we used them to see ourselves as companions for other people seeking collective liberation where my salvation is dependent on your salvation? Conflict does not become death but a path into greater life, because in it we learn how to hold the wholeness of creation. As my friend and I forgave each other, as we hugged one another, as we said the words “I love you,” we came back into communion. We did more than just leave our suffering behind. We committed ourselves to a practice of living the path out of isolation, out of separateness and into the salvation. How different would our world be if, instead of individual salvation, our churches and temples promised salvation through the hard and messy work of intimacy. Living in community is complex. I also believe it is one of the greatest acts of resistance we can do in a world full of alienation.

Salvation is a shared experience

A day later I remembered the famous verse from the Bhagavad Gita. We only have a right to our workWe do not have a right to the fruitsThe fruits should not be the motivation for your actionsAnd do not shirk your work (Chapter 2 Verse 47) This gave me comfort. I do not have a right to any particular outcome. All I can do is offer my work to the best of my ability. It is the work that is valuable, not the special feelings or the dramatic spiritual encounters I desired so much. No ancestor spoke to me. No epiphany occurred. There are no great stories to share with you about my trip to Stone Mountain. Nothing sexy. But neither do I have regrets. My life is my work and I am blessed by that simple truth. Next year, I will return to pray for the ancestors, not for any prize but because that is what I am called to do. Maybe some of you will come with me. We may never see the end of white supremacy in our lifetimes, but we do our work anyway. For the work gives the world hope, and in the hope lies the holy.

The work gives the world hope, and in the hope lies the holy.

The transition from Michelle and Barack to Donald and Melania has been more than just a change of individuals. I miss the affection they modeled for us so well. As lovers they inspired me. For eight years we lived with a couple who loved each other, completed each other, desired each other, and now we have something very different, something very ugly. And we often understand God through the process of mimesis , through mimicry, through symbol. The First Family models for us a way of being in relationship with each other and also, perhaps, with something more transcendent, with God. We have shifted from an affectionate, playful model to a coercive, commodity model. We have watched Eros die. And we are angry about it.

Who is modeling the sacred relationship for you?

On November 25th, 1915, a small, group men, robbed and hooded, climbed Stone Mountain in Georgia, to resuscitate the Ku Klux Klan. In the darkness of that cold night, the terrorist nightriders of the fallen Confederacy were brought back to life like some Frankenstein monster. The Klan has lived within us ever since, like a shadow in the American psyche. This year as I watched torches carried again into public, I heard the voices of our ancestors reified in the world through the open-throated screams of angry men. I watched in horror, wanting to separate myself, wanting to be anything but family. But we are family, related through the great delusion of race. We are white, together. This fabricated identity that we collectively just agree is real, when it is not. The ancestors of terror prayed to the God of separation. I cannot, also, pray to this God if I want to find relief. If I want to find liberation. But I am not entirely sure how to reclaim me, which means reclaiming us, from night creation was torn open, from the night evil was chosen. I want to sing songs of love and union, songs of praise and gratitude. But first I must sing songs of atonement. But where are these sacred hymns of recovery and redemption? Where are the prayers of reparation? How do I prostrate myself and ask for Grace to take the terrors from my body, from our bodies? How do I help these ancestors down from the mountain? I feel like I am fumbling in the dark for relief.

Praying and singing for redemption in an effort to sew Creation together again

Marcus Aurelius famously said, “That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees.” (Sometimes this is rephrased as, “What is good for the bee is good for the hive,” which is not at all what Marcus Aurelius was saying but not a surprising reduction within the cultural dynamic that wants to put the individual first.) Human beings are relational, not because of our behavior or our programming, but because we all share the same source. In our overvaluation of the individual we must reject the commonality of our source. We have masked selfishness and even exploitation with the cry, “These are my rights. They were given to me by God.” And by splintering Creation into tiny, owned fragments we lost the ability to witness the whole. In this crisis moment, and on this historic anniversary, we are in need of another spiritual reformation. The beehive is in terrible shape because we have chosen to live by the idea that whatever the bee wants to do is what is most important. And that is simply not true.

We need another spiritual reformation that helps us bridge the individual and communal experiences

Our spiritual origins rest in this silent mystery. We cannot know God until we are ready to say yes to the dark. It is in the dark soil that the seed first begins to sprout. It is in the dark womb that the child is created. And it is in the dark mystery that our souls release our ideas of God, our ideas of ourselves in relationship to God so that we might just be.

There is something beautiful in the dark waiting to be found

The God of my youth was a tortured figure forced to walk a high wire over dangerous beasts of prey who snapped their jaws below waiting for the tortured God to make mistake and fall into their pit. This God was a mockery, a buffoon, a clown I stuck high up on that wire. At the time, I did not live with a God of my own, but with the pale referents of the God of other people, with the shadows of their love and distrust. I lived entirely within the experience of others. I had no idea how to look for myself. I didn’t even know that was possible.

I spoke about letting go all the while clinging to control like a man holding onto a life preserver.

I could hear my spiritual director lean into the phone as she asked, And how many people do you think Gabriel visited before Mary said ‘Yes’? Such an idea had never even crossed my mind. The story of Mary, for me anyway, always held a quality of predetermination, like she was chosen for this particular role. It had never dawned on me that there might have been others who had been invited to that sacred relationship, others who, for whatever reason, said no. Of course, my spiritual director wasn’t really asking about Mary, but rather she was asking about my sense of call and what would happen if I said no. The story of Mary is one of the great calls in religious history. Out of her womb is born one of the great spiritual teachers, God to many. I had always understood this story as leading to an inevitable outcome. Of course Mary was going to say yes. But is that really true? As someone who does not believe in fate, as someone who believes we must have free will in our spiritual lives if they are to have meaning, it seems that people must not only have the option to ignore their sacred calling, but often do. We must have the opportunity to say no if we are really going to say yes.

What are the consequences of saying no to the spiritual call?

I don’t know if every spiritual experience requires suffering, but I would guess that it does, at least on some level. For the ego to collapse, for us to leave behind the story of who we think we are in order to step into the beloved darkness where there are no boundaries we have to say goodbye to something we have known, maybe even something we have treasured. And in every goodbye there is grief. But there is also solace that comes when we are ready to be honest with who we are, with our brokenness, because in it we find the healing in other people. This is the meaning of a spiritual community. As bad as we might believe we are individually no one is going to turn away, rather there is a turning towards one another. You are suffering. Mmm, I, too, know suffering.

There is redemption in holding another's face. And in being held.

I don’t believe in fate nor in an interfering God. But I do believe that creation is always calling out to us, always inviting us into a deeper relationship, which is made visible in the world by a greater desire for health, and empathy, and connection. The call that comes through us is as much an enticement as anything. A beckoning into a larger experience of companionship, into that experience Thomas Berry speaks of, where we understand ourselves as a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects. This experience of greater companionship winds its way into belief statements we call morality, but not with any particular agenda. The encounter with interconnection simply leaves us responsible, binds our lives to the lives of others we might previously have denied, awakens us the inability to escape the suffering of those we are now bound to.

The encounter with interconnection binds our lives to the lives of others we might previously have denied

Our lives are not consolation prizes with our fantasies being the lottery ticket we missed out on, which is not to say we shouldn’t examine “be here now.” We should. We should examine it precisely because it seems to be so important to us, not just individually but culturally. The question is, Can we examine this fantasy without regret? Because a fantasy is not attainable, it is more like a finger indicating a direction of what we would like, which, so often, is just to be happy, to know we are loved, to realize we have enough for everyone. When we can understand what our fantasies are saying to us we can begin to think about what it is we are willing to risk. When I know what I really want, then I know what I am called to do in life.

When I know what I want, then I know what I am called to do in life.

What is our call as spiritually motivated people? As people who believe in the transformative power of faith? Is it a question of living out our character, of upholding and promoting a set of community values that is larger than our own egos? Or a belief in God that gives us the courage to walk through the darkness even if we are not certain in our own strength? Or perhaps both? I believe we are called to the purpose of resanctifying the world, of resacralizing community and our relationship to one another. We are the people who believe in a more beautiful world. Our eschatology is not judgment and apocalypse, but empathy and companionship.

We are called to resanctify the world

The anger that lives in us comes both from our personal lives, pain and slights we have experienced, and from the larger community of which we are a part. We cannot fully resolve to be without anger if we are unwilling to address the suffering that exists around us. And we cannot address the suffering of the culture if we choose to see ourselves as separate from it. But when I am in community I don’t have to carry it all on my own. It is also carried by others and it is also carried by God, for I truly am not separate. The redemption of the world comes through us more than we do the actual redeeming. I don’t know how to make a lotus bloom. But I do know how to prepare the ground so the lotus might choose to bloom. I am sad for my nation right now. This self-righteousness, this judgment, this anger is no place to live. But I also believe the suffering allows us to find a deeper understanding and compassion. So for that I am grateful as it gives me the opportunity to love more and more powerfully. What we nurture becomes the future. Let us starve anger and nurture love so we might be the transformation our culture so desperately longs for.

Anger is also a state of complete isolation because I don't have to be responsible for the emotion that brought me there or for the situation in general.

There seems to be a whisper from beyond. A whisper we don’t quite hear so clearly, but we know it’s there. The whisper is so powerful because it calls out to us constantly, like the stream that wears away a rock. And the whisper is the call to beauty.   There is a call from beauty, a sacred call, to bring to life, even if only for a few moments, something that takes our breath away. There are people who feel so compelled by this whispering they spend their whole lives in the pursuit of it. Some achieve great results and others less o, but it is a life given over to the call.

There is a whisper from beyond. A call from the sacred inspiring us to bring more beauty into the world

Anaïs Nin is famously quoted as saying “We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Which leaves a particular indictment of beauty on the table. The grasping for beautiful things, be they people or objects, often makes us look and seem quite ugly. But for those of us who seek the spiritual experience, who seek the sacred, beauty can also be a great guide. Today is not just another day in your life. Everyone you meet, everyone your eyes bless, everyone you experience as a presence is a gift to you. And you are to them. The beauty of these encounters is the feeling of the sacred. And the only real response is gratitude. Beauty is calling out to you, from all around you, it is part of you. If we do nothing but cultivate our ability to see the beauty of our very existence we will have lived amazing lives. And it begins with today. Go out and see the beauty. Go out and see what happens when we don’t see the beauty and then try to add a little in that space. It is healing to bring the sacred into all of our acts. And maybe at some point we will see things as they are because they will be as we are.

The experience of beauty can be sacred. It comes to us as a gift from some other place. Given to us, and we, more often than not, respond with a silent thank you.

We are not here by accident. We have been called to honor the Sacred of the earth. We have been called to choose enlightened compassion over self-centered and socially conditioned power. We have been called to prayer as we move from dominating and controlling power to the power of love and empathy and connection. We have been called into a communion of subjects. The forest is sacred. The sky is sacred. The creek is sacred. You are sacred.

There is a creative energy, a mythic, mystic imagination that is available as a balm to our spiritual estrangement from one another

All around us we see people living divided lives because they think they need to protect themselves from the planet and either wall it off or stand above it. But on this sacred day, this day of changing light, even as division lives all around us, may we pray to know that wholeness is always a choice. It would be easy to condemn humanity, but not today. Today we choose not the divided path of good and bad, but of unity. May we come together to pray and sing and praise the beauty and wonder of Creation. May we come to bow at our spiritual estrangement from the earth. Not to wallow in melancholy nor to lament our actions because we did not do this to ourselves. This is the culture we were born into. This is our inheritance. But neither do we blame the ancestors. They did not know what they were doing when the separated themselves from the living earth. They had our best intentions in mind when they separated their consciousness. They could not have known what the consequences would be, but now we stand at the brink of an ecological collapse and the consequences of our separation from the earth have never been more apparent. But this is not the end of the story.

The change in light also marks a change of season in our bodies and our spirits

We live in an era marked by a fleeing from darkness, a fleeing from the reality of mortality and that which we cannot control. We try to illuminate everything, because perhaps if we cast a light everywhere no darkness will remain, but the darkness is so much greater than anything we can even imagine. And so we race around shining our lights in a desperate hope to avoid the pain, which, ironically, only leads to our lives being run and determined by that very same pain because all of our actions exist in response to it.   Suffering is profoundly social and when we privatize our pain and cover it up we lock ourselves away from compassion and understanding. Which is why the suffering of each of us is so important. We all have the opportunity to experience transformation and it is our own wounding that calls out to us as a path to serve others. It is our own wounds that create the opportunity for us to explore sensitivity, compassion, and love. It is our ability to say “I understand” that creates the opportunity to be present for another human being, for another species even. Not to solve their problems as much as just to see them. Taking time with our own experience of suffering allows us to dive down like a pearl diver into the wound and find a gift that becomes available to others.

Most of us fail constantly to claim the truth of who we are—the beloved children of God

We suffer from a crisis of grace. We suffer from the belief that there is just not enough love for us, for all of us, like there is some sort of grace scarcity. So we hoard and act selfishly believing we will starve tomorrow if we feed those who are starving today. And the tighter we grow and the harder we grow the more suffering we see and the scarcer love appears. This, in turn, leads to a scarcity of praise because when grace is scarce so is joy. But there is no shortage of grace, there is no shortage of love. It is like going to the beach and worrying that there won’t be enough sun for everyone.   Rilke writes “walk your walk of lament on a path of praise.” My great hope is that we become known as a people who stand in the world witnessing for justice but doing so from a place of praise. The world is in such terrible trouble, but if we allow the song of creation to come through us we will be changed by it and others will be changed by it. It is through acts of witness that we will grow ever closer to the understanding of ourselves as Gaia, the understanding that grace flows through every atom of our being.