Invent a Church

Look deeply into your soul, into your imagination, and give yourself permission and encouragement to envision the church of your fondest dreams. What would it look like? What would it feel like? That’s what this is all about—creating a real church that looks and feels like the collective dream where every soul has voice. What would you create?

For me it would be a place that was totally authentic. You could come as you are and be as you are. You would not have to put on your “church face.”

The church would be a vortex of unconditional love.

It would be a place where real people could come and share their real selves, which includes the ugly parts as well as the mighty and lofty. That is, it would be a healing place. People could come and say, “I feel empty. I feel bewildered. I feel lost. I feel overwhelmed. I feel angry. I feel repulsed.” Whatever it is they could come with their true feelings and place their feelings and themselves in the love vortex.

Church would also be a place where you could “come as you are” if you were in a state of bliss and wanted to celebrate and share that bliss.

Or it would be a place where you could just come to be and not feel as if you have to do anything. You would not be forced or coerced to participate. At the same time, while it would be more than okay to just be, church would also provide a stimulating and encouraging atmosphere for stepping outside your comfort zone. Church would be a place where you could accept the challenge of stepping beyond fear.

I have heard ministers use the expression “thank you God” a lot. Sometimes that expression still triggers in me the response that someone is telling me to thank an entity who is outside of myself. (I grew up learning that God is a judgmental being, a personality.) I want a church where I know that I thank God by all that I do there, whether it is meditating, gazing into someone’s eyes, hugging, singing, chanting, whatever else it is. I want a church where I enact “thank you God” by moving among people and interacting with them, by being love, by being light, by being God.

I want a church where people can discuss things openly and honestly. That includes a bunch of real world problems and experiences. Did you just lose someone important to you and are dealing with grief? Are you bored in your marriage and are contemplating an affair or divorce or are anxiously searching for more meaning in your relationship? Are you single and filled with the ache of loneliness or starved for human touch? Have you had a paranormal experience, such as a near-death experience, seen a vision, heard a voice, been visited by a spirit entity? Are you ill and are afraid of death or dealing with isolation or rejection? Are you down on your luck or mired in depression? Are you plagued by a stalker or an arch-rival? Whatever it is, I would like to see church (or by extension the spiritual community) be a place where I could find answers and contribute to others finding answers to life’s challenges through sharing, discussion, listening.

To that end, I would like to see church having a fluid structure. The flow of the day could move as it had to move. People could come and go as they needed. Seating would be circular to facilitate more of a feeling of community. If the flow got into some “heavy stuff,” the structure could be fluid enough to assist healing. If the flow got into “lightness of being,” it could drift into that direction without clock-watching. There would be lots of hugging and music and dance and other energy-enhancing activities.

Church would walk the talk of love thy neighbor, of unconditional love. This would not be a façade; it would be real. This kind of love welcomes diversity and supports total inclusion. The spiritual community would be a safe harbor as well as a means to generate love; it would be a love power plant. It would be a place to blast through pain. It would be a place to share joy in all its forms.

The Day We Reinvented Church

When I was about 7 years old, I had my first big beef with God. Despite all my protests and tears, He decided to separate me from my inseparable friend and send us off sobbing to different Sunday school classes. If that weren’t evil enough, He demanded (through my mother) that bow ties be worn in church. God did not earn brownie points with me.

Church—yuck! That’s pretty much what I thought for the next 45 years. I reached a point in my 20s where I decided that God was not to blame for the state of churches. God created magnificence in nature. Humans locked God inside the Church Box and hid the key. God spoke to me much more inside waterfalls and sunsets and meadows than inside a sterile church building. I felt more alive, more inspired, more completely turned on by strolling through nature than by enduring a traditional church service.

I also found God more in my personal relationships with friends and lovers than I did in church. Ministers talked bunches about love but what I felt in church was superficial if not downright phony. Having intimate conversations with people about what really mattered to each of us was far more fulfilling than listening to the drone of canned sermons.

My last attempt at church came in 2000 when I attended Unity of Corvallis in Oregon. My initial response to church was ”not too yucky.” Nothing really grossed me out but I was not wildly inspired, either. My mind wasn’t being especially stimulated and my soul wasn’t being stirred. I had pretty mediocre expectations, and they were being fulfilled.

I had entered the Church Box and was trying to find soul stimulation amid the rules and structures and traditions. Yawn. My past experiences of church were recreating themselves because my mind was stuck. I made a few new friends to buoy my spirits. In very slow and awkward steps, I built a spiritual community. I found, though, that I preferred the occasional labyrinth walk or discussion group far more than Sunday services because those events offered more intimacy and meaning, whether it was me going inward or sharing deeper feelings with others.

Then Wham! In July, 2001 an urban shaman came to town. The church was in the middle of an internal rift; apparently I was not alone in being bored. The shaman was hired to facilitate a workshop to help heal the congregation of its woes. The workshop was made of the stuff I wished in my fantasies that “ordinary church” could be like. Many people had come to the same conclusion—including the reverend. We collectively decided to take Church out of the Box and to redesign it to be more meaningful and relevant.

So that’s what happened during the church service on July 29, 2001. We had Church for the Heart. We arranged chairs in circles instead of rows. The rev set her prepared sermon aside. It became somewhat chaotic in the way that a creative explosion is chaotic. People made newspaper hats or played musical instruments or danced or sang or chanted or hugged or meditated or listened or watched or laughed or wept. You could participate or not participate. There was no schedule. It all flowed within the rhythm of the hearts of those gathered. The service lasted two hours, and around 30 people were present and participating for over four hours.

At one point those of us who’d attended the three-day workshop that led to this transformation spoke about our feelings. When I was moved to speak I took the microphone planning to launch into a very small speech about how the workshop helped me reconnect with God—how I learned that I truly wanted to walk beyond fear into a world of unconditional love. Then a bolt of emotional lightning fried me. I could barely talk through the spontaneous sobs. I was trying to say that I had written in fiction before what a world ruled by unconditional love would be like. I was literally choked realizing that we were actually co-creating that world in “real life.”

The people who really loved what was going on had attended the workshop. Others appeared to be in various states of stun. I felt compassion for those who walked in expecting normal church, only to find that spiritual anarchists had overrun the place. It’s like being in a serious earthquake. Structures tumble. Surprise, everything has changed! Yet it all happened so fast because birth needed to happen right then, right now. No waiting, no rationalizing, no mind, only heart. Go with God.

Ultimately, it was not to be. This was too new even for a New Thought church. Those who had not attended the workshop complained to the board about the changes, and the reverend rescinded her forward progress and went back to tradition. After that, attendance dwindled as member bailed left and right.

But at least I had one great day. That day the environment encouraged everyone to create what he or she wanted and needed for spiritual well being. That Sunday was an adventure in consciousness where no one knew ahead of time the totality of what the day would bring. We went to be surprised. We went to create what we wanted. We could just be there to soak up the energy or we could actively participate. Sing. Dance. Hug. Feel. We could speak our heart, both shadows and light. Church was finally a place where we could be real, authentic, and genuine—until it ended.

Jesus and the 21st Century

Someone forwarded me an email chain letter that contained seven pencil drawings of Jesus. That’s one thrill of being on the Internet—you never know what someone will send you.

Unusual about these drawings was that they depicted Jesus smiling, holding babies, and hugging teenage girls. Jesus looked instantly recognizable with long hair, beard, white robe, and sandals. The people he hugged sported modern dress and hairstyles.

This Jesus resembled a hippie at a be-in during the Summer of Love in San Francisco, 1967. It’s still an enigma to me how most men who worship Jesus wouldn’t be caught dead grooming like him, but that’s another story.

Someone in the chain of email recipients commented, “Christ laughing! That’s a concept I hadn't seen before.”

That was a strange one to me. Why shouldn’t Christ laugh? Just because he suffered for all our sins--made even more hellacious in Mel Gibson’s sadistic commercial, "So You Wanna Be a Masochist and Save the World?"--doesn’t mean Jesus couldn’t have any fun at all, ever.

My argument isn’t with Jesus. It’s how the religious media portray him.

I always say that I am a spiritual but not religious person. To me, religion means doctrine, dogma, and putting too much faith in a human organization to define my relationship with God. I am spiritual because I search my own soul for God.

I believe in a direct connection with God much more than finding God in a stuffy old church. I suppose there’s a chance that I could get to Heaven’s Induction Center and be informed that I got it wrong; the religious right was right after all; “God loves you, but He doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

But if I am supposed to follow my heart for answers, my heart says that God is a lot more current, present, and accounted for than the guy in the book.

Seeing those pencil drawings piqued my curiosity about what would happen if Jesus made a return visit. In my heart of hearts, I believe if Jesus came back he would not be wildly pleased with what has been perpetrated in his name.

Beyond that, if he popped into earth life one day, I imagine a media circus. Who do you suppose would get him on a talk show first? Larry King? Oprah? Charlie Rose? Rush Limbaugh? Howard Stern?

Dan Rather really needs a boost right about now. Imagine him authenticating Christ for 60 Minutes.

One of the great advantages of having Jesus appear on talk shows is that he can finally speak for himself. I’m tired of people pontificating on what Jesus says, what Jesus means.

Reverend Jerry Falwell proclaims, “Well, Jesus says--“

“--No, I don’t,” Jesus retorts. “That’s nothing like what I had in mind?”

Wouldn’t that be a riot?

The way things are done here on this planet in this time zone, the really big names in cosmic woo-woo get a lot of marketing help when they spread the word. Some celebrity psychics charge the price of a new car for their seminars. It’s expensive enough to hang out with Neale Donald Walsch, “the Conversations with God” guy. Makes me woozy thinking of the fees the bona fide Son of God could charge if he acted like some of these folks.

Would Jesus wear designer labels? Would he get corporate endorsements? Would Jesus return with a slogan? “Got God?” “M’m, m’m, God!” “Just say yes!”

Would Jesus pay attention to opinion polls? If the critical masses didn’t like how he groomed or dressed, would he flip-flop and conform to the focus group standard?

Would Jesus be welcome in the White House if he didn’t concur with right-wing philosophies? What would happen if Jesus opined that a preemptive strike on Iraq wasn’t a great idea? Indeed, what if he thought it was a really bad idea?

What if Jesus announced that same-sex marriages were fine with the Higher Authority, the Big HA? What if he came out and blessed any kind of consensual sex as a wonderland of spiritual opportunity?

Truly, in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that many religious leaders speak for me or the God I want to believe in. God blessed me (or cursed me) with creativity, and with that gift I do not see the universe as a paradise just for anal retentive fundamentalists. I believe that the God who created (and is) everything had a bigger idea in mind.

Death by Appointment

To me one of the most fascinating aspects of bona fide near-death experiences is the emergence of the idea that we die at a chosen time. It’s literally in the cosmic appointment book.

Some of this comes logically from what some NDErs hear on the other side. “No, it’s not your time yet. You have to go back.” Metaphorically, they look at their watches and say, “I’m early? But I’m having a stroke. I don’t want to go back into that ol’ thing.”

“Nope, it’s not your time. Back you go. No whining!”

Some of this comes from what some NDErs get on their tours of the heavens. They are shown visions of their future deaths. This would of course presume that the event was planned at some other time. (Suspend for the moment the idea that time and space may not exist in the bigger picture!)

Other NDErs are told that their souls before incarnating pick and choose a time of birth and a time and manner of death. It’s as if we don’t make the trip to mortal life without an itinerary.

On the one hand, this sounds pretty crazy. We in our culture spend so much time and money trying to deal with our unknown death dates. We buy life insurance to protect our families. We try to eat right and exercise to prolong life. We worry about being safe against crime and violence.

There is nothing in science that says we die by appointment. Our entertainment media continuously feed us stories about death and dying, making us quiver on our sofas wondering about our own impending doom. When will we go? How will we go?

On the other hand, as a creative writer, I can see a tremendous logic in this system. If I were to write a novel or a movie that involved a death, part of my artistic chore would be to give my character a date with death. I would choose the time and place to produce the highest possible impact, either for that character or for the audience.

Designing the plot of a novel, I imagine, is a lot like designing a life as a soul. I might sit there thinking, “Well, if I kill off Mary Lou around page 40, it will sink her husband Earl into a deep grief, forcing him to question the meaning of life and eventually opening his heart to new possibilities.”

It makes sense to me that if we are put on this planet to do something, part of that plan could be designed and instituted before we are born. It could be that some of the major good guys and the major bad guys of our lives are cast ahead of time.

It could be that some of the major events in our lives are as choreographed and orchestrated as in the creation of a movie. We’ve got a script. We act our parts.

When I ask NDErs about their take on this death by appointment idea, they often reply with, “Yeah, but you’ve also got free will. You may come in with a plan but through free will you can change it.”

What I like to do with “weird ideas” is try them on for size. Rather than instantaneously pooh-poohing them, I imagine what my life would be like if they were true. What would it mean to you if you knew for a fact that many deaths were actually part of an orderly plan, and not just any plan, but a plan you designed as a soul?

What if those “tragic deaths” so frequently lobbed at us like propaganda grenades on the News You Can Lose were actually plot points in some soul’s autobiography? Would those deaths be so tragic if they were part of the story designed by that person?

The pain of losing someone can be horrendous, but for me it can be very comforting to think that death is often planned and life for the so-called dead goes on and on.

Before I Got Here

Not all that long ago it was Art Linkletter sharing all the darndest things kids say. Now the kids are getting mystical. Here is some "project in progress" verbiage on 'Before I Got Here,' a meditation on the birth of the soul.

'When my oldest son was 4, he said to me, 'Last night, I had a dream, and last night is a double entendre. Last night, means the night two nights ago, and also the last night before there are no more mornings and no more nights. That's when people are going up to heaven.'

The site appears to have a Christian slant, just so you know, and it is more of a solicitation for input. I think they're saving the real sharing for the book.

Life Reviews--The New Reality TV

At the Seattle IANDS pre-meeting event, about a dozen people gathered to listen to an audio tape recorded at the national IANDS convention. A man shared the story of his near-death experience, which included a massive life review.

More and more I hear the NDErs who experience life reviews (not all of them do) talk about how they not only relived at warp speed everything they did or thought during their life, but they literally felt other people’s responses to whatever they did or said!

So, if you messed big time with someone’s mind and got your short-term gain from being a jerk, you not only get to see it during your life review, but you get to feel everything your victim felt. What goes around comes around.

Owie!

For those scientists and skeptics who postulate that the human brain makes all this NDE stuff up, you’ve just gotta wonder. Why would the human brain create a life review at the point of imminent death but not do this at any other time during waking consciousness--such as while watching FEAR FACTOR?

“Tonight on FEAR FACTOR you’re going to have a life review…”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Noooooooooo!!

“Can you face what you’ve done with your thoughts and deeds toward humanity? We’re all one, you know…”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Noooooooooo!!

The speaker on the tape was not so glib about it as I am. He found himself in a hellish state as he felt all the pain he had caused.

Of course, not having had an NDE, I can only experience this with my creative mind, imagining what it would be like. But it makes me think that if we all get similar life reviews, then our whole media culture--inclusive of organized religion--has got a long way to go. After all, we’re mostly taught to skewer people, aren’t we?

Talk about reality TV!

Friends of IANDS

I will be writing a lot about the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in this blog. I attend both the Seattle and the Portland groups when I can.

IANDS is a great resource for anyone who wants to probe this topic. Check out the national website for great overviews of current research including the Lancet Study on NDEs.

If you're in or around Seattle, you'll want to visit the Seattle IANDS Home Page.

If you're in or around Portland, Oregon, you'll want to visit the Portland Oregon Friends of IANDS Meeting page.

And follow this link to a veritable Alice's Restaurant (you can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant) of goodies about NDEs and other paranormal events not reported on News You Can Lose.

Tragedy

Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ...

You get the idea.

Over and over again we hear on the News You Can Lose the word "tragedy" and the word "tragic." And almost always these words are associated with death. Here are a few headlines I googled:

Youth League Suffers Second Tragic Loss--Cheerleader Dies Just Weeks After Football Player

Friends Pay Tribue to Tragic Farmer John, 40

Mom's Tragic Mistake

I am becoming more convinced that this news as soap opera institution we have going on here is quite literally up to no good, in a very real sense hypnotizing readers, viewers, and listeners to believe in the equation death = tragedy.

To go back to that classic film Network, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore! I am going to start speaking out about this. Well, blogging out, at least.

Here's the deal: I have heard enough people talk about their near-death experiences to believe that there is a real possibility (how's that for being suggestive without being firmly committal) that dead people are having a blast.

Tragedy is just not a word NDErs use to describe their out-of-body experience. It's a word many of them use to describe having to come back.

To use the words George Bush so eloquently employed in the Bush-Kerry debates, coming back to material Earth "is hard work." (Granted, Bush was talking about Iraq.)

I will continue to drone on this theme: we as a society spend billions of dollars to explore outer space for clues about the origins of life and our place in the universe. But we comparatively spend diddly to explore what happens after death despite mounting anecdotal evidence that we don't just fade to black, Jack.

So what's the deal with tragedy?

I understand personal grief. But grief is for those left behind. It's not grief for those transported to the next chapter in their autobiography of life.

I understand that much of science and society demand that if we are to believe that we don't die, we need factual evidence to support it. But in the face of mounting anecdotal evidence that suggests that life is much grander than we ever thought, why do we continue to perpetuate this tragedy myth?

I think the much greater and infinitely more interesting quest is to discover what's going on here with all these accounts of out-of-body epiphanies.

After the Woo-Woo, Then What?

I am one of those people who reads books about near-death experiences and thinks woo-hoo for woo-woo. I love these stories (I should say accounts, because they're allegedly not made up) of people who enter incredible worlds.

Tunnels to adventure. Awesome gardens with singing plants. All-pervasive light. Woo-hoo!

While I consider myself to be very creative and a social visionary, I still haven't experienced much in-your-face woo-woo. To my knowledge, I have not stepped away from my body. I have not seen (or been) a "dead" person. I have not been invited aboard a UFO.

This isn't to say that I haven't experienced cool stuff. It's just that none of it seems beyond normal for a creative personality.

So I look at NDErs with awe. It's tempting for me to think that they're lucky, the ones fate picked to savor the adventure of a lifetime.

I think of them as I imagine people in the 19th Century thought of Mark Twain. That guy got around! As a young man he crossed the country by stagecoach. He explored Europe. He explored Hawaii. I imagine that his readers longed to walk in his shoes to see what he saw, to experience the exotic lands he wrote about.

So hearing about people who step out of their bodies and visit the wonders of the universe gets my creative juices gushing.

But not so fast.

I'm coming to learn that having a bona fide NDE is no trip to Disneyland. In the first place, there's pain involved. Lots and lots of physical pain. When you are electrocuted or smashed in a crash or suffer a massive coronary or [pick your method of dying by surprise], it's painful. And recovery is no picnic either.

So there's that. And then there's having to deal with another kind of pain--the disbelief of others. There are a whole bunch of people out in Realityland who are simply 99.9% invested in keeping the status quoa. They do not want to hear about woo-woo. So people who have these incredible experiences are told that their brains are making this stuff up.

While the realists are in their politicaly correct way telling these people they're bats, many NDErs are suffering a profound sense of disappointment that they are stuck back in their bodies. It's like wandering into the best party you've ever imagined only to be told, "Sorry, this is for invited guests only. You'll have to leave."

So there's a price for this experience, and it's essentially having to deal with this material world, all the while knowing that there's another world, another reality somewhere else.

There's a perception some people have that people who write books about NDEs are just out to make a quick buck; that they're looking to cash in on people's gullibility and intense desire to escape the horrors of this troubled world. Even if it were true that some authors of NDE books have made a good living sharing their experiences (I don't know for a fact if any have), thousands of other people have "been there, done that" and didn't write a book.

The experience is so profound for many of these people that they attend support groups, seminars, and conventions to deal with it. They come to find answers to the question, "After the woo-woo, then what?"

What's News with You?

More than once I have been accused of being a current affairs dunce when I suggested that passing on the nightly news might improve a person’s mental health.

Supposedly, the news we watch and read is about real life. It’s puffed up to be the truth, just the facts. We’re supposed to be more informed as a result of our exposure to it. But then I ask, what’s the definition of news? What do we need to know?

For example, the news recently has been spiced with stories about teenage girls skipping town with adult male lovers. Despite the angst of those directly involved, especially the girls’ parents, I wonder what purpose it serves the viewing community to showcase stories like these.

Why are these stories news? What social value did airing these stories contribute? Granted, it’s a plus if media exposure brings reunions and happy endings, but I fear the price for that is cluttering the airwaves with a circus full of tabloid fodder.

Do you ever wonder what stories don’t make the news because they don’t fit how our news appetites have been conditioned? Death, violence, crime, scandal, and gossip make news. Stories lacking blood-chilling drama or celebrity— or are too mystical for “just the facts”—don’t make news. Here are some examples:

News: Teenage boy is killed when the van he is driving blows a tire causing a fatal roll-over—and ties up traffic for hours.

Not News: Teenage boy dies quietly of kidney failure in a hospital.

News: Unemployed man robs convenience store and flees into local neighborhood, scaring everyone on Pleasant Street.

Not news: Man with Ph.D. is laid off from his job and doesn’t kill or hurt anybody. He’s judged overqualified for most jobs and is unemployed for 6 months.

News: Car crash kills three on Oregon highway.

Not news: Medical patient flatlines during surgery, is revived, and later tells skeptical doctors that he saw a world of light and is now convinced there is no death.

News: Taxi driver brutally murdered in his cab.

Not News: Grieving widow is startled to see her late husband standing in the hallway smiling peacefully at her.

News: Threat of terrorism heightens security at Portland International Airport.

Not News: Threat of chronic loneliness heightens despair level for thousands of local residents.

News: Teenage girl runs away to play with older man in a love tryst.

Not News: Teenage girl runs away from communicating with her parents because they don’t pay attention to who she really is.

The more I experience life, the more I see the news as less about real life and more about factual titillation? The way I see it, the theme song for many news broadcasts should be “Let Me Entertain You.”