Recently someone did this with me – it wasn’t as much what they were saying as much as it was something I felt they were projecting – giving me ‘credit’ (of sorts) for thinking something I wasn’t even thinking. And so the more I thought about what I wasn’t thinking about…well, the more offensive to me it became. And as this person has been a friend for some time, there was ample baggage I could heap on the issue. I wanted to tell this person, as a roommate of mine in college used to say, ‘Hey, don’t throw your muck in my backyard!’ I wanted to say ‘deal with your own stuff but leave me out of it.’

Subsequently, I was offended. Royally offended!

But then I began to own something someone told me a long time ago when they said, “Nobody can offend you; you can choose to take offense, but they cannot offend you.”

In a lot of ways, that is a good reminder. It jibes with many of the teachings of Jesus that would enable us to even consider responding to our enemy by ‘turning the other cheek’ or ‘carrying their load’ or perhaps going beyond the call of duty in not just giving someone the shirt off our back, but in ‘giving them our coat’ too.

At play in all of this is the egoic self versus the true one. The ego always tries to separate us, to make us strive for equality if not superiority. And any challenge to what we say, do or think is often internalized and, well, taken personally.

When our children were young and one of them would come crying because they were called a name, we always used to ask them: If someone called you purple would that make you purple? This usually brought a smile to their faces pretty quickly. And so it was, as I contemplated what I felt had been done to me, it also (slowly… v-e-r-y slowly) began to put a smile on my face as well.

I had to pause and ask myself what it was within me that would cause me to take offense? I had to ask why I would give someone such power over me – I mean, I disagreed with their version of who I am and what I was ‘really’ getting at, so why not just drop it and move on?

The ego (and I’m using this in the sense of a false, versus true, self) is most often in protect-and-defend mode and resentful of anything slightly resembling a personal attack upon our thinking, our actions or intentions… so much so that should we ever find ourselves having the power and being faced with a dare, our egoic-self just might turn rocks into bread or jump from the highest part of the Temple just to prove our point.

All of this makes me even more in awe of Jesus and the way he carried himself in the midst of what was, perhaps more times than not, a hostile environment. He didn’t often take ‘personal offense.’ Why should he give power to others when he rightly realized the One who had ultimate power?

So, have you been offended lately? If so, why did you choose to take offense? Or better yet, if we have chosen to take offense, can we see the peace that would come from choosing to revoke that choice?

That is a power from on high.

For one thing, this opens the door for all of us to become great teachers of humanity. Each of us, in our own ways (and within our own ‘gardens’) always has the option of being such a stream. The people who cross our paths are often in need of love – the ultimate ‘water of life’ for those parched souls not quite sure how best to find refreshment and quench their thirst.

If we carry with us the idea of being such streams, I think we’ll be surprised at how often opportunities to love present themselves. After all, when love is the solution, are not the problems requiring it everywhere before us?

As a follower of the Jesus story I can see this being the case with his life and his giving of love. There’s a verse in the gospel of John that simply states that the things Jesus did were so varied, so multiple, that ‘I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written’ regarding them.

Hyperbole? Certainly. But it makes its point – the outreach of Jesus was Love personified – and therein we’re still talking about him some 2,000 years later. His life, his work, his message all serve as a conduit of the great universal power of love.

If ever there were a great teacher who embodied the idea of becoming a stream of love, for me, Jesus would be the one. And, of course, if YOU so choose, well then of course you also come to mind!

Enjoy the weekend… flow baby, flow.

For those of us who tend to first think and respond via the ego, the false-self, I think there is true irony in living for today; the one place the ego doesn’t do well is in the present moment. It takes a past and a future for the ego to really sow its self-centered seeds of fear, anxiety and displacement.

Loss, for the ego, is equal to death. It’s as if its entire modus operandi is to convince us that we’ll live forever, our way is the right way, our values are the correct ones, ad infinitum. And this is a problem, at least for me, because I tend to react more often than I respond, which is surely the way of the false-self. It’s just the way I seem to be hardwired. Perhaps you can relate.

In light of this, I found the following quote helpful: “…contemplating impermanence cuts through our attachments without leading to detachment; recognizing life’s fragility can wake us up, inspiring us to let go of petty desires and to give each moment wholly over to what’s most essential. The ego defends against awareness of impermanence; cultivating such awareness can lead us beyond the ego’s boundaries and defenses to a deeper and more satisfying level of connection with life and with others” (Dr. Lorne Ladner, The Lost Art of Compassion).

Ego and the idea of impermanence are like oil and water – they don’t mix. And so we resist contemplating our own deaths or the death of others – even the dog! We go about our days willingly wearing blinders to all things ‘impermanent.’ Yet as we do this, we may just be failing to live deeply into all that we truly love and value.

For instance, when we not only contemplate but embrace the impermanence of all that we believe ourselves to be (along with all that surrounds us) we come to appreciate them so much more. In this the ego’s fears and desires are released. Facing loss, we find love. We find LIFE.

By embracing the reality of impermanence, on the worst of days we can find peace, compassion and appreciation for ourselves and others and even the day-to-day struggles we sometimes feel are unbearable. By embracing impermanence we make peace with ‘what is’ – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Look in the mirror. What you see will die, it’s just a matter of time and it will be gone. Now look around you – the same fate awaits all that you see. By using the ‘eye of the Spirit’ to view these things, what you’ll actually discover is not an increased detachment from them, but an increased awareness of their beauty, giftedness and enormous worth in the present moment. Subsequently you’ll find yourself loving others more deeply and intentionally. And you might just find that you see yourself differently as well… even to the extent that you begin to invest yourself more intentionally in all things ‘life.’ As we make this a daily practice we might be surprised at how much inner space is created for us to love and to be a part of Love.

Yep, it’s a paradox but, facing loss, we find Love.

At any rate, his focus was often on helping others see how he and the one he called ‘father’ were one. His famous prayer in John 17 was that all of his followers and even all who would come after his time here on earth would know that they were also one with the father. This was his revelatory message. Oneness was the revelation of Jesus the Christ.

But to see it – to live it – a certain ethic was required. Not so much an ethic as a certain way of ‘acting’ (as in some puritanical view of ethics) but a course of action(s) that sprung forth from a way of ‘being.’ And this way of being was perhaps one of the strongest parts of what Jesus taught, for it was a way immersed in paradox.

Jesus said that if you wanted to sit at the head of the table, then always sit at the end and wait to be called forward. In other words, don’t allow the false-self to convince you of your importance over others – it’s a mirage, an illusion. Instead, allow others to determine where you should be seated and be fully content with that. Jesus believed that true strength was found in weakness, not in some outward display of discipline or professed righteousness before (or even worse, over) others.

And maybe most of all, Jesus believed in the paradox of instructing others by filling them up, not tearing them down. Actually, the words he used were closer to ‘don’t judge, because by the harshness of your judging others, you will be judged.’ The entire act of judgment is an illusory manifestation of an internal belief that the one judging is separate from the one being judged. For Jesus, this was not the way of the kingdom. It was not the way of humility.

Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan taught that, ‘As life unfolds itself to man, the first lesson he learns is humility.’ Khan, elaborating further, says ‘Every moment of our life, if we can see wisely, contains some fault or error, and asking pardon is just like purifying the heart and washing it white. Only think of the joy of humbling yourself before God… of humbling yourself before that Spirit, that Ideal, who is the true Father and Mother, on Whose love you can always depend. To humble your limited self before His Perfection, that is to deny yourself. Self denial is not renouncing things, it is denying the self, and it is the first lesson of humility.’

In both instances the teaching builds on the great paradox of our common humanity – humility, weakness, mercy and denial of the judgmental voices of the false-self. Love is that one, singular energy of the Universe. It is the singular energy from which we come and to which we will return. And it is the singular energy in which we live, and breathe, and have our being during our short duration on this earth. And don’t ever sacrifice that Love, that Oneness in the name of any thought or action that seeks to separate you from another – it is an illusion.

The present moment is filled with eternal life when we chose to vest it with the paradox of the kingdom. Now is not the time to be strong. It is not the time to seek righteousness through the false-self. Now is the time for humility. It is the time to bask in the oneness of all humankind.

For, as Jesus said, “May they, Father, be one as you and I are one.”

In this season of celebrating the birth of Jesus, it seems to me that the real question we should be asking is not ‘Why did Jesus die,’ but ‘Why did Jesus live?’ This, for me, is the issue at hand. It is the real question because it provides me (and you too I think!) with the real reason for why we live.

This story called ‘gospel’ or ‘good news’ is about much more than just under-populating a place called ‘hell’ so that we might over-populate a place called ‘heaven.’ Even contemplating such a wager produces the very fear that the Bible tells us God, as Love, drives out.

No, the good-news-story of the celebrated one in this holiday season is about issues of life – life in all of its fullness, which in essence means (to me, anyway), love.

The way of love is the baby in a manger. This, I think, is because the real power of love is found in its vulnerability. It’s the apostle Paul telling us that to be strong we must be weak so that the strength of God might be made manifest rather than our own.

The way of love is also the way of honoring the law of gestation. Through Jesus we see many years of preparation and time for growth in wisdom and stature. His is a full-life of work and play and family. It is a life of learning and study and the gathering of spiritual insight.

The way of love is also about a process of coming to know one’s true-self or real identity. And then, once this realization comes (the realization that we have been made in the image and likeness of God – that we have been made partakers of God’s divine nature) then we, like Jesus, extend God’s love to a world in waiting. As Jesus told Thomas, ‘if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father,’ i.e., Love.

Jesus lived because love never dies.

Jesus lived because love never ends.

Jesus lived because love is present and active and transformative and healing.

Love seeks out those on the margins to make them the center – it embraces the unembraceable, forgives the unforgiveable and gives us a safe place to live.

I think in this way it is the life of Jesus that provides for us ‘true North’ on our spiritual compass. His life points the way for us to enter into relationship with God and each other; to ‘understand’ by ‘standing under.’

We learn that by serving, others are lifted up. By loving, they are comforted. By touching, they are healed. By embracing, they find the acceptance and embrace of a heavenly Father.

And because Jesus lived, these eternal truths put on flesh and give us hope, joy and peace in this holiday season.