Thursday March 31, 2022

In her semi-memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes being taught Balinese meditation. She had just spent four months in India learning -- sometimes painfully -- Yoga meditation. It involved physical postures that had to be practiced. And memorized texts that must be repeated precisely. Over and over.

            But her guru in Bali simply said, “Smile.”

            It was the Balinese attitude -- Smile. Always smile. Always face the world cheerfully. 

            It seems to me there’s an underlying truth there. We receive what we’re tuned to. 

            In music and audio terms, a tuning fork will vibrate spontaneously, if you play its note on a violin nearby. Or on a piano. Or even a trombone. 

            When you scroll across a radio dial -- even using those terms dates me! -- you tune the inner harmonics of the electronic equipment so that it matches specific incoming frequencies. The frequencies have been there all along, but you couldn’t hear them. 

            I remember lying in my darkened bedroom as a teen, slowly scrolling the tuning knob on the short-wave bands to pick up broadcasts. Perhaps the Voice of America, shilling the American way of life to the rest of the world. Or its opposite sibling in Moscow, the Voice of Russia. Sometimes, when atmospheric conditions were just right,  a station in New Zealand or Australia. Or perhaps a foreign language broadcast in Hindi, German, or Hungarian... 

            The whole point was to adjust the resonance of a capacitor inside the radio to match the frequency of the incoming broadcast. 

Matching your mood

            Perhaps the Balinese smile is a way of matching a personal mood to a mood that is already present out there. 

            We know that the universe is filled with energy frequencies. They range from gamma waves, to X-rays, to visible light, to the frequencies used for cell phones. 

            We can’t hear them. We can’t see them. But they’re there.

            We don’t know what other kinds of energy, that we can’t see or measure, may also be out there,. 

            But sometimes we can feel those energies. 

            That’s why people gather for vigils, for prayer, for directed meditation. No one actually expects that lighting candles in Kelowna will make a difference to Ukrainian teen trying to blow up an oncoming tank. 

            And yet…. 

            And yet somehow we believe that the energy we focus on those embattled Ukrainians, can somehow strengthen their strength, their resolve, their commitment to keep fighting. 

            I’m sure there are all kinds of energies out there. Some are cheerful. Some are gloomy. 

            Which ones  I resonate with will depend on the way I tune my receiver -- my body, my mind, my habits.

            A chronic frown can’t see the smiles intended at me. 

            If I concentrate on my pain, I will receive echoes of universal pain. 

            If I want peace, I have to foster peace to receive it. If I want healing, I have to be open to healing energy.  

            If we do live in a sea of invisible energies – and I admit that’s a big “if” – then we need  to tune ourselves to resonate with the energies  we most need. 

            In that sense, smiles are an important  tool in our tuning kit.

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Last week I strung together a simple tale of my own misadventures with the story of Job in the Bible. Isabel Gibson thought I might have been too hard on myself “Well, I expect it did feel good to holler at God.

            “On the other hand, if I remember correctly, you're 80+, which is reason enough to be grateful, no?  (Playing with house money, as we say in our house.) Never mind that you can still ride a bike and have the energy to go out and get into trouble.

            “Take my advice. I'm not using it.”

Nenke Jongkind remembered “Two very different occasions when I too yelled at God. 

            “I cannot remember the cause for the first time. I think I was at a Roman Catholic Centre at Mission looking over the Fraser River valley. I screamed and screamed. 

            “The other time was on Friday, 13 March 2020, walking home via the U of T campus in central Toronto, and no one was around to think that I was being hurt or victimized. I was walking home from a memorial service of both parents of a congregant, and at the reception we agreed to cancel Sunday worship as covid-19 had just been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. I felt as though I was in an eerie movie and not real life. 

            “Last Sunday we attended church in real life for the first time…  The most awesome moment for me was the murmurs of a baby present during a moment of silence. It was symbolic of all we have missed in the meantime.”

Tom Watson took the parallel with Hob’s story to heart: “If God was the author of your getting off the trail and ending up mired in that muck, what would God's reasons be, and what lessons did you learn from the experience? The other possibility is that God had nothing to do with it at all, and you were therefore just yelling into Job's thin air.”

James West reflected on the biblical story: “It still bothers me that the Almighty never leveled with Job that it was all just a wager between God and Satan. I am glad that yelling at God was cathartic for you.”

            JT: As I hope it was cathartic for Job, too.

Lesley Clare had her own reflection on Job: “I'm guessing a soft-hearted editor meddled with the biblical ending of Job's story. How did it really end?”

            JT: The Job story does seem to have a happy ending crafted by Hollywood, doesn’t it?

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Psalm paraphrase

I dedicate this paraphrase of Psalm 126 to the refugees streaming out of Ukraine. And, indeed, to any who have to leave their homes and homelands because of wars they didn’t start.

1    When the gates at the borders opened, we could not believe it.

2    Bombed buildings and abandoned hopes sank behind us; 
the sky opened above us; 
we felt like doing cartwheels for joy. 
Those who gathered to celebrate our release said to themselves, 
"God has been good to them, after all." 

3    Indeed, we could not have set ourselves free; 
God must have had a hand in it. 

4    Now we must rebuild our broken lives, 
like piecing together shards of shattered pottery. 

5    May we find as much joy in putting the pieces together 
as we had sorrow in their shattering. 

6    These new lives are being born in pain and suffering; 
with God's help, they can blossom into a second spring. 

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

                  I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)