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  I was twenty. My assistant was my mother’s age. I had a staff and a choir and a company vehicle. One Easter Sunday, Pastor Duane showed a graphic of Earth that showed its geological layers: crust, mantle, core, and hell. Duane may not have been a sophisticated theologian or a geologist, but he and his wife, Jeannie, were authentically kind people. Duane was a good ol’ country boy. He was from Michigan, but he somehow spoke with a southern accent. It was once reported to me that his schedule was exactly the same every day. Reportedly, he gets up every morning at 5 a.m., shoots his bow and arrow for an hour, comes back inside to have sex with Jeannie, runs ten miles and is at work by 8 a.m. sharp. Even if that’s not entirely accurate, it is absolutely accurate. That’s just Pastor Duane. Pastor Duane would go to fine steak restaurants and make them bring him a full bottle of Heinz ketchup from the back, and he’d use most or all of that bottle. One time, a Heinz salesman saw how much ketchup he was eating and bought his meal for him. As a lover of ketchup, I must say that I respect the hell out of Duane for that.

  I had spoken to Duane occasionally of how the church in Tulsa had treated my parents after my dad’s affair. He responded by showing more grace to my parents than any other pastor on planet Earth. Eventually, he even invited my dad to speak at the church in Michigan. My parents had been in counseling, and it had been a couple years since the affair, and Duane said that he would love to be the first to extend such an offer to them. My parents were moved with gratitude beyond words by the kindness that church showed them. This meant a lot to Lisa and me as well. We had seen my dad leveled. He had become a shell of the man he once was. As much as I or anyone else had hated him in the aftermath of the affair, he had hated himself more. I had forgiven him and wanted him to heal. We ended up staying at that church for several years, largely because of the kindness there. But in the long run, the theology and dress code of the Michigan Dutch were a bit too restrictive for the free, hippie spirits of my wife and me.

  We had also grown weary of the whole megachurch scene. As a young married couple with a burgeoning music brand, we had sort of become celebrities at the church. We would spend a lot of Sunday afternoons signing autographs outside the church coffee shop. We grew tired of this, and eventually we left Michigan to tour our music and start a church in Colorado where we could practice our faith more authentically. (Translation: Maybe I could finally become the kind of person I thought I was supposed to be, and finally be okay.)

  Then came Bloom. Our dream. Our baby. Duane had offered to send us off with some money to start the church if we could wait a little while, but we didn’t feel right about that. We didn’t want to have any strings attached to anybody. By this point, we had largely given up hope for any sort of organized religious expression, but Bloom was our last-ditch effort to see if there was a way to organize without becoming corrupt. We didn’t want there to be anybody but ourselves to blame for any hypocrisy, so we kept it clean and simple. We met in homes at first, and then upstairs at an old community center. Only a few people would come. It was basically a handful of twenty-somethings and a beautiful, old man named Chuck with a wizard-like gray mustache that eventually grew its way all the way down to his nipples. Bloom was a weird place. There was a kid named Cody who played the piano while his pet rat rested on his shoulder. There was a well-endowed homeless girl who kept her cell phone in her cleavage and was more than happy to take her calls in the middle of service. It was fantastic.

  We didn’t really have official church things like “staff” or “membership.” Everyone was welcome and part of us if they wanted to be. We gave away any money in the offerings that was left after paying the rent for the theater. We would do things like go downtown and hand out watermelon slices at the gay pride parade while wearing T-shirts that said, “God loves everyone.” Lisa and I would fly in on our own dime every Sunday from wherever our band was touring because we loved Bloom. We also needed it.

  The road can be a rough place for a Christian musician. Churches, conferences, festivals, and radio appearances . . . all of which use the name of Jesus to justify their own existence, and most of them exist in the world in a way that has very little to do with the teachings of Jesus. Jesus is so often used as a marketing ploy for the advancement of power-hungry men. And for someone who genuinely loves Jesus, this can be off-putting to say the least. Bloom was our shelter. Our sanctuary. Our home. But it wasn’t enough. The Christian world we had seen made me wonder if our religion was true. Were these corrupt, selfish, manipulative people really the one, true, chosen people of God simply because they believed some bizarre and magical claims about a guy rising from the dead? Also, if this was true, wouldn’t the people who were supposed to be the “Body of Christ” have more in common with the teachings of the Christ than this? This was a disturbing thought because it jeopardized not only my beliefs, but my very identity and sense of worth.

  The Altar (2009)

  Iknelt at the altar in the front of the dimly lit chapel. No one else was in there. Not even God.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Please . . .”

  My words fell from my lips into an infinite, uncaring abyss of nothingness. There was no one to hear them. No one to care.

  “Please, Jesus . . . I need your help. I don’t have the strength to keep believing. I need you.”

  The abandoned chapel was in a basement of a church where our band was playing. I had seen too many churches like this one. Churches with American flags on their stages. Pastors who treated their ministries like egoic phalluses. Behind the scenes, they would show me ornate swords in their offices or pictures of majestic animals they had slaughtered on their hunting trips to Africa. Why were all these pastors men? And what was it about testosterone that makes so many men feel like their only life options are kill, fuck, or pastor?

  I was so tired of religious hypocrisy. I was tired of the sexism, racism, and religiously powered bigotry. I was so tired of the pointless and embarrassing game of chasing Christian celebrity. Sure, we had Bloom, but after a couple years of such fervent idealism, I had begun to grow weary. We had hoped that our love would change the world, but it hadn’t. The church was small and poor and all of our effort felt like a drop of futility in an ocean of pain. The Christianity we had dreamed about seemed to be nothing but that—a dream.

  As I knelt in the lonely, silent chapel that night, I watched my faith slipping away from me, and it was terrifying. To lose God would have been worse than losing my life. God was the reason for my life. My faith in and love of God was the only reason I had any worth as a human being. I could not lose that.

  WALKING MY DOG IN THE RAIN

  A Parable (Part 1)

  Hi, my name is Fred, and I’ve been trying desperately not to walk my dog in the rain. What kind of lunatic, after all, would walk his dog while it’s raining? Not me, that’s for sure! I mean, I’m not perfect. I mess up from time to time—I am only human, but I really have been trying hard. Some people are confused by my constant vigilance against such a filthy and irresponsible behavior as walking my dog in the rain.

  “Lighten up, Fred!” they say, when they see me beginning to panic as the storm clouds roll in. “It’s just rain.”

  “Fred, why are you pacing? What are you muttering about?” they ask.

  Well, I’ll tell you what I’m muttering about! I’m praying that God will help me to not walk my dog in the rain! “God, help me this time,” I’ll say. “I promise you I’m not going to do it this time. As much as I may want to, I know the consequences just aren’t worth it. Who, after all, wants to smell a wet dog or a person who smells like a wet dog? Also, what about my clothes? My shoes? They could be ruined! No, walking dogs in the rain is not good. It’s financially and socially irresponsible, and I know that it’s against my truest nature. Please, God, give me the grace to not walk my dog in the rain again today.”

  I’ve had several long streaks of not walking my dog in the rain in the past, but lately I’ve had a harder time making my successes stick.
Every time I see that the weather forecast includes a high chance of precipitation, I get that familiar pit in my stomach. I know it’s coming. I know myself.

  At some point, I will panic. I’ll go outside with my dog and watch the dark rain clouds roll in, praying and hoping that it’s all just a mirage or that maybe this time the clouds will pass overhead and spare us yet another potential humiliation.

  Occasionally they do. Occasionally my dog and I wait long enough for a blue sky to appear again, and then we can either go back inside or go for a stroll with that sense of pride and accomplishment. And I’ll think to myself, “Perhaps, by the grace of God, I can finally stop walking my dog in the rain once and for all.”

  Meaningless

  It’s white people.

  Well, and patriarchy.

  Oh, and capitalism.

  And, of course, those racist Republicans.

  Or you’re looking at it from a different story—it’s those gosh-darn, bleeding heart, snowflake liberals who want to take away our guns, take away our freedom of speech, and kill all the unborn babies. All the godless coastal elites constantly pumping their Hollywood propaganda, scientific mumbo jumbo, and pornography into the minds of our young!

  It’s religion.

  Or maybe it’s the Devil.

  Or maybe it’s people who walk their dogs in the rain.

  Whatever it is, it’s what’s wrong with this world. It’s these damned young people and their lack of respect for authority. Or it’s the old farts who just need to die and free up some seats on the bench. It’s if I only:

  had a better job . . .

  had a boyfriend . . .

  had more money . . .

  lost some weight . . .

  could just quit smoking . . .

  were more spiritual . . .

  Then I'd be okay.

  But is that true?

  Think about it—if all of your candidates of choice were elected, and they passed all of the bills you wanted them to, do you really think all of humanity would just be entirely okay at that point? Even if every person on Earth finally got access to clean water, education, housing, and a basic income, if all militaries were scrapped and everyone became vegan and there was no more war, famine, racism, or homophobia, would suffering cease to exist? Or from the other side of the culture wars—if everybody on Earth said the sinner’s prayer, read their Bible every day, got a job and a haircut and stopped all that goddamned kneeling when people sing the national anthem, would humans finally and completely be at peace in their souls? Of course not. We would find something else to fight about, a different scapegoat to crucify, another group to feel superior to.

  Even if you got that dream job and the perfect body and the life partner and the best friend and that harem of porn stars to feed you grapes and fulfill your every whim and desire, you could still find a reason to suffer. You could still be afraid of losing it all. Or you’d start getting suspicious that your friends just loved you for your money. Or all the public attention would make you feel like you were losing yourself. Or maybe you would just find all of the wealth, power, and pleasure empty.

  “Meaningless! Meaningless!”

  says the Teacher.

  “Utterly meaningless!

  Everything is meaningless.”8

  The truth is that most of us are playing a game that can’t be won. We are hamsters thinking that we can break out of this cage if we just run fast enough on this wheel.

  This is the futility of desiring that rather than loving THIS.

  And that, as Buddha’s second Noble Truth reveals, is the root of all suffering.

  ___________

  1. A negative (saying what ultimate reality is not) term like “nondual” is often preferred to a positive (saying what ultimate reality is) term like “Oneness” in many spiritual traditions that speak of the interconnectedness of all things. We will explore the usefulness of negative language later in the book.

  2. She did not ever say this, but I thought my first “f-word” in the book might be more tolerable for people if I blamed it on my grandmother, who was a lovely woman. May she rest in peace.

  3. As Einstein showed us in the theory of special relativity, even space and time are not separate from each other.

  4. Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017).

  5. I feel like I should offer my apologies to my teenage self who hoped those desperate pleas would accomplish something. He would not have been thrilled to hear that his future self would share that journal entry with the world in a book. Oh well.

  6. A singularity in physics is an infinitely small, one-dimensional point that could contain all of the mass and space-time in the universe in which all of the laws of physics break down.

  7. Ed Gungor, Supernatural Relationships: How to Get Closer to the People You Care For (Ministry Research Foundation, 1992).

  8. Ecclesiastes 1.

  5. Taming the Ox

  THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH

  Suffering Is the Attachment to Desire

  Suffering

  THE SPA

  Part 2 (2012)

  When God Is THIS

  WALKING MY DOG IN THE RAIN

  A Parable (Part 2)

  To Catch the Fly

  Suffering

  “The raindrops patter on the basho leaf, but these are not tears of grief; this is only the anguish of him who is listening to them.”

  —ZEN SAYING

  Here are two short stories to help elucidate this second Noble Truth.

  SHORT SUFFERING STORY 1

  Whether it’s steam rooms, hot tubs, hot springs, or just a good old-fashioned long, hot shower, I’m usually a fan of anything that involves hot water and minimal clothing, but one of my all-time favorite ways of nudely submerging into a soup of kinetically active dihydrogen monoxide is by floating in sensory deprivation tanks. If you don’t know what that is, it is a completely dark and silent tank filled with body temperature salt water that allows your relaxed, supine body to simply float within. Normally our brains are taking in an incredible amount of sensory information from the world around us that we aren’t even consciously aware of—the hum of the air conditioner, the color of that lady’s purse, all the beeps, coughs, and scents of the office, etc. When you get into an environment like a float tank and shut all of that sensation and noise off, it’s amazing what your mind will do with all of that freed-up RAM. It’s like meditation on steroids. So yes, I’m a regular member at my local float establishment.

  As a spiritual explorer, I once tried creating a sort of mega-float in order to, you know . . . see what would happen. I booked a two-and-a-half-hour time slot. I had done several of those long sessions before and had always come out feeling pretty trippy. I tended to lose any sense of ego separateness pretty drastically in there, and after that long, I would usually come out sort of forgetting that I’m supposed to be a “someone.” Well, this particular time, I thought it would be interesting to try to “enhance” the long floating experience with some natural California “medicine.” While I do prefer sobriety as my go-to state of consciousness, I have found the occasional jaunt into other ways of experiencing reality to be enjoyable and even helpful. But this. . . . The hundred-and-fifty-minute float combined with the enhancements was a bit too much. I wouldn’t recommend it. (And they don’t either. Sorry, float place.) My normal ego loss of a long float was so extreme that in leaving, I walked face-first right into a glass wall.

  Strangely, there wasn’t enough of an ego in the experience to feel any desire or aversion, and therefore there was no suffering. There was pain. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there was a lot of sensation. It was like an explosion of sensation happened, but it didn’t happen to “me,” as there was no me for it to happen to. I just remember looking at the sensation of what I wondered might be a broken nose, fascinated with how vivid the sensation was. But absolutely zero suffering.

  SHORT S
UFFERING STORY 2

  My doctor had spotted a small bit of blood in a urine sample and told me that they would have to get in there and take a look to make sure it wasn’t cancer or anything. I nodded my head, wondering how exactly they planned on doing that.

  “So we should just go ahead and do that now,” he said.

  “Okay.” He still had not explained how this would be done. I understood human anatomy well enough to know that there is a passageway from the external world to the bladder, but I really did not want anything going in there. That’s a strict one-way road down there for me. I felt foolish for having to ask for clarification, but I really needed to know what I was in for.

  “So, is this like an X-ray thing or . . . ?” I asked, holding out hope.

  “No, we’ll have to put a scope up there to see in your bladder.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “Put a scope . . .”

  “Into your penis, yes.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, you really think we need to do this today . . . ?”

  “Yeah, we need to make sure everything is okay down there. Let’s get you over to the nurse so she can wash you up.”

  And so she did. And as she did, I tried to breathe and calm myself down. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, with what our technology is these days, it would probably be like a fishing line or something that I wouldn’t even be able to feel. I still didn’t like the idea of something going up that way, but it probably was going to be fine. Then the doctor brought in the device that would be inserted into my urethra, and I nearly passed out just looking at the size of that thing. To my eyes, it might as well have been a freaking garden hose. That thing was thick, and the camera on the top was THICKER! It looked like it was probably state-of-the-art technology in 1976.