I want to begin with this excerpt from the poem “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and tweak it a bit to make it a prayer.

“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only those who see take off their shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

We are blind. Help us to see.

It is always good to be with you in person. I feel that I can get pretty intense and opinionated in my messages, especially if they are about controversial subjects such as my recent message about hell. If you disagreed we could get into an argument. If it was several hundred years ago, as the sad history of Christianity shows, we might want to kill each other. Over the centuries it has been Catholics killing Lutherans, Lutherans killing Catholics, Puritans killing Quakers and on and on. It was evil. Not once did Jesus say, “Thou shalt be right.” Not once did Jesus say “Thou shalt have correct beliefs with creeds supported by sound theological principles.” Not once did Jesus even say, “Worship me.” However he said, “Follow me” thirteen times. Have whatever beliefs and worship in whatever manner that helps you do the follow. The belief and worship don’t ask much of us. The follow does. If you have two coats, give one away. Try to be last instead of first. Lose your life to gain it. Love those that are hard to love, the corrupt politicians and CEO’s, the white supremacists.

I want to start by talking about a subject that has come up frequently, dogs. One of the cool things about dogs is that they are satisfied living in their “doggness”. Dogs aren’t trying to be something they aren’t. They know exactly what they are and are content. Recently I came across the transcript of an interview done with a dog. The dog’s name is Ruff and Ruff could speak.

Interviewer: Ruff, what do you like most about yourself?

Ruff: I like being a dog.

Interviewer: What do you do?

Ruff: I do being a dog.

Interviewer: What are your future career aspirations?

Ruff: Being a dog.

Interviewer: If you could be anything in the world what would you want to be?

Ruff: Duh! A dog. Grrrr!

Interviewer: Ruff, you are 4 years old in human years which is 28 in dog years, correct?

Ruff: No. Dogs do not age linearly with a slope of 7 and y intercept of 0. It is more exponential. Didn’t they teach you anything in math?

Back to us. We are beloved children of God. Always will be, but we start to forget. We go on to spend the rest of our lives building a persona that is measuring, evaluating, calculating, dualistic, judging, fragile and easily offended. It is our ego self, the false self. Engineers need to be calculating, judging and evaluating if they are building a bridge. The false self is not the bad self. It just isn’t the true self. Right now I have my “give the message” hat on. However, as we go about our day we need to frequently stop, step out of whatever role we are playing and be who we really are, beloved sons and daughters of the divine. Thomas Merton said something like, “When you get to heaven you will find that there won’t be much of what you thought was you there.” All of what a dog is will be there. Dogs have a leg up on us . . which reminds me of my dog Asa’s recent odd marking behavior.

When I had Asa out for a walk he was double marking his favorite pole meaning he would pee this way then turn around and pee the other way and mark as high up as possible. Usually he eats his food in 20 seconds — he started leaving most of it for days. He never howls. Recently I heard him give out a howl that was low and filled with longing. He is on a run line and instead of being by his house, he sat at the end of the line looking down the road with anticipation. I finally figured it out. Within a 4 mile radius a female dog was in heat. Asa was in love and what a romantic. Not eating all his food was an invitation to dinner. His howling was a heartfelt love song and the double markings were fervent love letters written in bold with numerous exclamation points.

You just experienced history in the making. Never has and never again will anyone witness a cradle Catholic science/math teacher give a message in a Friends meeting house talking about the height of dog pee on a pole.

Years from now you will be sitting in your living room and a grandchild will say, “Grandpa and grandma, I just read in the “This Day in History” section of the newspaper that on August 13, 2023, a man gave a message at the Spokane Friends meeting house and he talked about dog pee. Were you there? Is that true? Was he crazy?” You will respond, “Yes, I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It is something I want to forget but can’t. Was he crazy? That is a bit harsh. Let’s just say he only had one oar in the water.”

If only for a fleeting moment we all just experienced heaven right here, right now. How so? We laughed together. We were happy. Heaven is a state of consciousness as much as it is anything else.

Misconceptions about heaven:

1. Heaven is up there. That made sense to our ancient ancestors because up there was a mystery. We now know better. The universe is up there and its wonders are an awesome manifestation of the spirits’ immense creativity. Recently released images from the James Webb telescope are spectacular. Creation did not stop on the seventh day in a garden between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The Spirit continues to dance as new stars are born. If heaven were only up there, then God would be distant, aloof, disengaged. God is right here, right now.

2. Heaven is after I die. Yes and no. The first heaven should be right now. In fact we were taught to pray for it to be now. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To which God replies, “You are my body. Get with it. Start making it happen. That is why I sent the Holy Spirit to help you.” Mark 1:15 “The kingdom of God is at hand.” St. Catherine of Siena said, “It is heaven all the way to heaven.”

If heaven is all about something later, then it can become my personal salvation plan and consequently I don’t give a rip about what is happening here and now because, “I’m gonna be out of this dump.”

3. Heaven is about worthiness. No, thank God. It is about accepting an invitation. It is a choice. Matt 22: 1-14. “‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner . . . and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business”.

4. Who is included? I just alluded to that in Matthew, but it is worth hitting again.

Luke 14: 18-23: When the time for the banquet came, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come along: everything is ready now.” But all alike started to make excuses. The first said, “I have bought a piece of land and must go and see it. Please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out. Please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have just got married and so am unable to come.” The servant returned and reported this to his master. Then the householder, in a rage, said to his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” “Sir,” said the servant, “your orders have been carried out and there is still room.” Then the master said to his servant, “Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and press people to come in, to make sure my house is full.

Thank God again.

5. Press people to come in?” If that isn’t talking about total inclusiveness I don’t know what is. Apparently the only people that won’t be there are the ones that refuse to be there.

6. What is the here and now heaven supposed to be? The most frequent metaphor that Jesus uses for heaven is a banquet. I would say the defining thing about a banquet is everyone having enough. Maybe enoughness is what we are supposed to make happen. Everyone having enough to eat and drink. Everyone being happy enough. Everyone feeling safe, secure and special enough. Everyone knowing they are loved enough. Could that really happen across the entire world? I doubt it so we have to do what we can in our little corner

6. Heaven is just about me and my quest. No. Heaven is about us. We are more joined than we are separate. John 17:20-23: “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”

You in me and me in you and God in us and we are all one and perfect unity. It is very hard for me to grasp that. I don’t sense it. I am surrounded by voices screaming me, me, me and I, I, I. I have not experienced it but many have. Thomas Merton did. Lori Erickson’s writes this about Merton in her Spiritual Travels site.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who was instrumental in bringing back contemplative prayer to the Catholic tradition. On March 18, 1958, he was running errands in downtown Louisville when he had an experience that would change his life and influence countless others. The spot is marked with a historical marker, the only known one in the United States that marks a mystical experience.

Merton described it this way.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and understood by a peculiar gift.”

— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

I pray with all my heart that one day all of us will be given that peculiar gift.

Query: When have you experienced heaven?

This message was given to Spokane Friends by John Kinney during Sunday worship service on August 13, 2023.

Notes: I did not include the following in my message. It is similar to what Merton experienced. Richard Rohr writes:

The twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander (1901–1954) describes how an ordinary underground train journey in London transformed into a vision that changed her life. I share Houselander’s description of this startling experience because it poignantly demonstrates what I call the Christ Mystery, the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time as we know it:

All sorts of people jostled together, sitting and strap-hanging—workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them—but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too . . . all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.

I came out into the street and walked for a long time in the crowds. It was the same here, on every side, in every passer-by, everywhere—Christ.

I had long been haunted by the Russian conception of the humiliated Christ, the lame Christ limping through Russia, begging His bread; the Christ who, all through the ages, might return to the earth and come even to sinners to win their compassion by His need. Now, in the flash of a second, I knew that this dream is a fact . . . Christ in [humankind]. . . .

I saw too the reverence that everyone must have for a sinner; instead of condoning his [or her] sin, which is in reality [their] utmost sorrow, one must comfort Christ who is suffering in [them]. And this reverence must be paid even to those sinners whose souls seem to be dead, because it is Christ, who is the life of the soul, who is dead in them; they are His tombs, and Christ in the tomb is potentially the risen Christ. . . .

Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life. . . . Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life.