Sacred Matters

Check Out Troy's New Blog

2011-10-03T20:51:00.004-05:00

Troy's been writing over at WholenessEthics.org, the blog for Troy's relationship-based approach to ethics for everyday living, and for news about his new book. Meet up with us over there!

—Maryann

First Book!

2011-08-30T19:11:00.002-05:00

Hello to all the Friends of Troy,

I know it's been quite some time since you've heard from us. While Troy has not updated this blog since his last commutation application was denied by Michigan's governor almost a year ago, he has been hard at work on a book, advance copies of which are now available for purchase!

It's called "Stepping Up: Wholeness Ethics for Prisoners and Those Who Care About Them" and is published by my imprint, The Whole Way Press. The book will also soon be available at Amazon.com. Whether you know someone in prison or are seeking wholeness yourself, we think you'll find this book valuable.

This has truly been a labor of love. As many of you know, Troy has been teaching an ethics class at his prison, Kinross Correctional Facility, for several years. But he has been doing more than simply teaching about existing ethical systems. The Kinross Ethics Project is based on an ethical system for everyday living that Troy has developed himself from years of self-education and seeking. I'll let the back-of-book blurb speak for itself:

"Men and women in prison are seen by society as problems and burdens. This book begins with a different premise: that you can be a solution, not only in the world but in your own life as well. It's about a way of living called wholeness ethics and it's based on the simple truth that we find our own wholeness only in right relationship with the world.

"From the perspective of his 30 years behind bars, author Troy Chapman offers a roadmap for living this truth and moving toward soundness, well-being and the realization of one's larger purpose. Distilling experience to four essential relationships - with yourself, others, the transcendent and nature - Chapman shows how to consider each in the light of ethical thinking and restore wholeness to each one.

"With down-to-earth examples and language, compassion and good humor, this book will help you 'step up' to your true purpose, transform your life and your relationships, and help create a better world in the process."

We have also created a new blog to accompany the book: The Wholeness Ethics Blog. Bookmark us there for posts about the practice of wholeness ethics!

Troy and I are infinitely grateful to all of you who have been such wonderful friends to us. Without you, this book would not have been possible.

Peace,
Maryann

"Like" us on Facebook!
Troy Chapman author page
Stepping Up book page

My Last Freedom

2010-09-20T18:16:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Well, as Maryann has already posted, our bid for commutation has been denied by both the Michigan Parole Board and the governor. As I’ve spent the past few days pondering this decision I keep coming back to a few things.

We don’t know why this decision was made instead of a more positive one. Perhaps we’ll find that out eventually. Whatever we may find out I’m fairly certain that I’ve done all that I can in the matter. There’s some comfort in this because I know I have done my part. On the other hand, there’s some frustration in it as well because I’m not sure what’s required of me at this point. Needless to say, it’s a sad time.

I have, throughout the process, been thinking about Scott Chandler and his family. Whatever the past 26 years have been for me, he hasn’t had them at all, nor has his family had them with him due to my actions. I think also about my own family, who were hurt as well by my actions.

Last night in the ethics group, we talked about the central premise of the group: that we should at all times do only what increases wholeness in ourselves and in the world. We talked about what that means and I spoke of how my crime tore up the wholeness of so many people. During this conversation, another of the central ideas of my life came up — that is what Viktor Frankl, Nazi death camp survivor, called “man’s last freedom.” He said we can’t always determine what happens to us in life or what our circumstances are but we can always choose how we will respond to those circumstances.

This outcome of continued incarceration is certainly not what I would have chosen if I had a choice. But I didn’t. What I do have a choice in is how I respond to it now. And so my question is, with all things being as they are, what response will increase wholeness in myself and in the world?

I don’t know the answer yet, but I think part of it is simply asking the question. If I can do nothing else or know nothing else, I know this: Turning my mind and spirit to this question rather than to the million other places it wants to run like water right now is in itself a wholistic act.

So I have my question. I think it’s not just the question for this situation but the question for all of life: What response will increase wholeness? I will continue asking it as I process and adjust to this.

I’ve said before but not for awhile how much all of you who call yourselves my friends mean to both Maryann and me. Your support and encouragement mean more than we can tell you.

Troy's Commutation Application Denied

2010-09-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

Note from Maryann:

I'm extremely sad to announce that Troy's commutation application was denied by the Michigan Parole Board and Governor Jennifer Granholm last week. You can see a little more information at our Friends of Troy blog.

I have a new essay from Troy that I got a week or two ago; I'll be posting that soon.

Peace,

Maryann

The Balancing Act

2010-04-03T07:59:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Prison is a place of imbalance, so living holistically here is a matter of striving always to maintain your balance.

It’s almost a cliché to say that people get assaulted or stabbed here for two-dollar debts or misplaced words and it’s a cliché because it’s true. This is one aspect of the imbalance I was talking about in my last post — the granting of too much importance to relatively unimportant things.

This afflicts staff as well as prisoners. I’ve seen men and women come to work here and literally give themselves heart attacks by waging various wars with prisoners and other staff. While one staff person, seeing someone standing in a doorway (a minor violation) will saunter by and say, “Don’t loiter too long there,” another will begin screaming, take the prisoner’s ID and write a ticket. If the prisoner gets angry and they argue, the staff person will come and tear up his cell in a shakedown or send him to the hole in handcuffs for “threatening behavior.” It’s an unbalanced response to someone stopping in a doorway, but it happens routinely here.

We often internalize these things, worrying obsessively about a look someone gave us or the fact that someone didn’t speak to us when we spoke to them. Or about which officer will be working and whether we’ll have to tiptoe around to avoid a ticket.

These are all imbalances. They’re magnified and concentrated here but I think the same general thing happens outside of prison. Indeed, these imbalances are the result of people being imbalanced, so we see them everywhere.

But I’m curious about framing our problems this way — as imbalances — because it changes the nature of “solutions.” It’s a lot easier, for instance, to begin balancing my thought processes than to “stop worrying.” For me, it’s a virtue to wonder if something I said hurt someone’s feelings, so I don’t want to “get rid” of this habit (even if I could, which I can’t). But after a certain point this virtue becomes a vice. The point at which it does is the same point at which it becomes imbalanced and we’re obsessing about it.

One of the images we’ve used in the Ethics Project for a long time to illustrate well-being is a wheel with our various relationships balanced around the outside rim. There are a couple of ways to create imbalance. One is to pay lopsided attention to relationships — to spend hours a day with a parent and five minutes with a child, for instance. Another way to throw things out of balance, however, is to move the hub of the wheel. This to me represents stepping away from our true center — of the truth or of our own values (which ideally ought to be the same thing).

There are infinite ways to “move the hub.” Religious people who think it’s more important to convert you than to actually relate with you are people with an off-center hub. As are those who believe control of the world outside themselves is important and ultimately good. We’ve all, at one point or another, thought that revenge was more important than forgiveness, that being right was more important than being loving, that proving something to someone was more important than respecting them.

I get my hub off-center pretty much every day but, as a friend pointed out to me once, balance is actually a matter of constantly moving away from and then returning to the center. Our body doesn’t rigidly grab hold of the center of balance and cling to it. Rather, we are constantly swaying minutely around the center. Translated into spiritual and psychological terms, this means I don’t have to be perfect, I simply need to be conscious — to develop the habit of living in reference to the truth and good and keep my eye on these true centers as a traveler watches a landmark. I need to remember what’s important. But with the world screaming at us on full volume and our own impulses tugging at us from every side, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. It’s a balancing act akin to riding a unicycle on stilts.

Caution: Mind Pits Ahead

2010-03-07T20:06:00.004-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I walk up to the hot water dispenser looking forward to a good, hot cup of coffee. There’s someone there but that’s no problem, I can wait. Then, as I stand there with my empty cup the man proceeds to fill his very large mug to the brim. He then dumps it out and fills it again. When he finally walks off and I check the water, it’s cold, as I knew it would be. As I watch this scene my own temperature rises as the water temperature drops.

Then I take a breath and see myself standing on a trail in the woods. I’ve stopped, and I’m looking down at what I know to be a deep pit despite the fact that it’s been cleverly covered with grass and branches. It’s a trap and I’m smiling because I saw it before I stepped in it.

I walk away from the water dispenser and my mind has already returned to the piece of writing I’m working on. I don’t give another thought to the water-hog. I’ve just avoided a mind pit.

Mind pits come in an endless variety of disguises, but they all have this in common: they have the capacity to drop your level ofconsciousness down to pit-bottom level and trap it there. These holes are everywhere: something as small as a sink full of hair left in the community bathroom after someone shaved that drives you crazy or as serious as rising crime that threatens your life and/or your quality of life. Theft, cruelty, stupidity, games people play, violence, and fear are some others. We know we’ve fallen into a mind pit when we find our consciousness being consumed by what we hate and fear rather than by what we love or hope for.

Mind pits are doubly deceptive because we generally think that railing against what we hate and fear is evidence of our enlightenment. The greater our outrage at some injustice or stupidity, the more superior we feel. This is because we’ve misidentified the object of the game, as if we’re playing Monopoly and think the point is to get around the board as many times as possible.

Many of us get it into our heads that we’re here to fight evil, injustice and stupidity wherever we encounter it. The truth is that the moment we begin to fight these things they’ve already won, because the real object of the game isn’t to fight evil but to keep our mind from being trapped by it. Life isn’t a battlefield, it’s a winding path with lots of these mind pits littering the way.

The bait over each pit is our strong desire to solve or at least be free of problems, aggravations and in justices. We fall (or jump) into these pits again and again thinking we’re dealing with whatever problem we’ve encountered, but once we’re in the pit with the problem, every move we make only perpetuates and makes it stronger. As Einstein said, no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.

The problems and issues we’re talking about here — rudeness, stupidity, violence, cruelty, etc. — are all created by bottom-of-the-pit consciousness. Thus, if we really want to solve the problem or improve our situation in any way we must recognize that it can’t be done from the bottom of the pit.

This doesn’t mean we can never get angry, annoyed and so on. Those are passing energies; we’re talking about a habitual way of responding to the world. Consciousness has a tendency to slip into grooves and that’s what we’re talking about here — the general groove of our consciousness. Is your groove anger, worry, anxiety, despair? Then you’re probably falling into mind pits pretty regularly. Or is your groove hopefulness, joy and a sense of connection? Then you’ve probably learned to avoid them (or at least to carry a grappling hook with you in your travels).

Neither does it mean that we can’t respond to and deal with issues. This isn’t about ignoring things and floating around on a pink cloud. It’s about responding from a level of consciousness that reflects who we’re trying to be.

If I can just remember that higher consciousness is really the only remedy for all the evil and dysfunction I see around me in this world, I’ll keep my eyes open for these many mind pits that try to drag me down to lower levels. Every time I avoid a mind pit I avoid becoming what I think I’m fighting. I’ll be able to put into practice Paul’s advice to keep your mind on things above and not on things below.

Sensational Shallowness and the Ongoing Conversation

2010-03-01T17:51:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

This week, two more guys from my floor go to the hole (i.e., segregation).

One man cheats another out of two bags of coffee.

Another is angry at his cellmate for making noise. Angry words are exchanged. Physical violence is averted but non-physical violence hangs in the silence between them as it hung in the nasty words spoken earlier.

Another man is sure there are rats and snitches plying their trade with impunity. The threat of violence lingers in his words as he talks about this possibility. Others think about the possibility of false accusations and start to monitor their own actions; they begin lashing out verbally at these unidentified traitors to send a message: “It’s not me.”

There are many ways to lose our lives, but to have them eaten up by meaningless manufactured dramas and false causes like these must be one of the most tragic. As serious as these examples sound, they are the prison version of 24-hour cable news coverage of Tiger Woods’ sex life or the political fights between liberals and conservatives. The prison version is magnified, but they’re really the same thing: pointless things occupying our consciousness as if they were life and death matters. Indeed, once we believe they are life and death matters, we turn them into exactly that. (And I use the word “occupy” in the military sense of seizing and possessing.)

Yet there’s an epidemic of this kind of dying in our culture. I understand it, as I am constantly being sucked into it here and am called to extricate myself again and again.

If we care about integrity, this is a skill we all must keep sharply honed — the ability to recognize sensational shallowness and maintain our depth. There’s some force in our culture that sucks us toward shallowness and makes us think that the most meaningless of things are of paramount importance. Since integrity is based on connection, this force is completely disintegrative.

Just being aware of the constant pull of this in our lives is a step toward freedom from it. Another is getting into what we in the Kinross Ethics Project call “the ongoing conversation.” The ongoing conversation is a lifestyle of dialog within ourselves, with others, and with life about living meaningfully. This kind of conversation runs counter to our culture so we have to constantly find creative ways to stay engaged in it, especially with those who are not consciously trying to do it. The most creative way I’ve found to do this is to keep the ongoing conversation question-based, that is, more about asking the right questions than finding or selling the right answers. Sometimes the right question is as simple as “Is this (whatever it might be) making my life more meaningful?” If it isn’t then we’re being sucked into the shallows again. Time to swim back toward the deeper waters.

The Principle of Interconnection

2010-01-17T21:21:00.004-05:00

by Troy Chapman

One of the principles of the Ethics Project I run at Kinross Correctional Facility is the Principle of Interconnection. Simply stated, this principle states that all things are connected on both the physical and metaphysical levels.

One way we're all familiar with physical interconnection is the environment. The entire modern environmental or "green" movement is built on an awareness of this interconnection. In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, we learned the hard lesson that no matter where we dump toxins in the environment they always find their way back to us. We couldn't see exactly how each thing was connected to something else but diseases and various other consequences of our actions assured us there was some connection.
We've learned a lot more about ecosystems since then but we still can't trace every connection. It's just too complex a system. In order to live in a balanced way with the environment, to be "green," we assume this connection even when we can't actually see it. We act as if dumping something "over there" is the same as dumping it in our own backyard — because in the long run it is.

Just as we've acknowledged interconnection in the physical environment we need now to acknowledge it in the metaphysical. Our thoughts, beliefs and mental energies, as well as other metaphysical things such as truth, beauty, goodness and integrity are all part of the same web in which the physical world exists. This is a whole other layer to the interconnected world.

Continuing the ecological metaphor, we can think of certain types of thought and action as harmful pollutants that we dump into the environment. We know what's harmful or helpful by asking what decreases or increases integrity and wholeness — that is, soundness, health and well being — in the world. This is the basis of holistic
ethical thinking.

If we accept the principle of interconnection, we know that dumping toxins into the metaphysical environment is every bit as self-destructive as dumping them into the physical environment. And, as in the physical environment, it may seem that we can get ahead personally by disregarding this truth — say, by making a profit from dumping industrial waste into a river — but this is an illusion. If I steal from you for example, it may seem that I come out ahead but in truth I have reduced integrity in the world and now have to live in that same world.

We may tell ourselves, "My little piece of litter or my little bit of pollution won't make any difference," but this is the thinking that has created the polluted world we live in. All other polluters are saying the same thing — my little bit won't matter. But of course it does matter.

Furthermore, by stealing from you I not only reduce your integrity and that of the community we share but, in order to do the deed, I have had to reduce my own integrity as well. It's as if I've carried toxic waste out to dump on your property but along the way I’ve spilled it in our community as well as all over myself. This spillover is unavoidable.

This is bad news if I’m dumping toxins but it’s actually quite good news if I decide to “go green” metaphysically. As a friend once told me, the hose that waters the garden always gets soaked. If I bring wholeness into the world with my thoughts, actions and life energy, I will inevitably be more whole and vice versa.

So the principle of interconnection stands not only as a warning to avoid harmfulness but also as an invitation to actively embrace helpfulness. We heal our own lives by becoming healers; we become fulfilled by contributing to the fulfillment of others; we find the way to freedom by guiding others to it.

So, what’s the take-away?

We all live in two environments, the physical and the metaphysical and all things are interconnected within and between these two environments.
Nonphysical pollution is as real and as toxic as physical pollution.
All metaphysical pollution (i.e., harmfulness) comes with spillover and always poisons the polluter first.
All helpfulness also comes with spillover and this spillover is the surest way to “get our share.” We should become vessels of what we desire for ourselves.

How Do We Know What’s Right or Wrong?

2010-01-09T11:13:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The other day, after I had been waiting in line for about 20 minutes to pick up my cholesterol medication, a man walked up and cut the line in front of me. He went to the window and engaged in a leisurely conversation with the nurse, asking her several questions until even she was annoyed, then went about his business as if the rest of us didn’t exist.

I felt wronged by his actions as I’m sure the 20 or so men in line behind me did. But was my feeling just that, a subjective reaction to the situation, or is there some objective basis to call what he did “wrong?”

Such questions appear in a continuous stream in our public and personal lives. Not only whether something is right or wrong, but why. What reasoning do we use to determine whether something is right or wrong, good or bad? And is this reasoning reasonable?

I began consciously thinking about such things 25 years ago when I was sentenced to 60 to 90 years in prison for killing a man in a bar fight. Obviously I knew what I did was wrong but this still left countless other questions open: Was my sentence right and good? Did my motives matter? Did what I did from there on out matter? Did I have any role to play in administering justice in my own case? Or was my role to be simply a passive receiver of whatever was decided by others? The answer to all these questions depends on what we believe justice is. In turn, this question is part of the larger question of what we believe makes things right and wrong, good and bad in general.

There are several theories at work in our culture. Two of the most prominent of these are utilitarianism and libertarianism. Utilitarianism, articulated by English philosopher and legal reformer Jeremy Bentham, basically argues that maximizing happiness is the ultimate good and therefore the highest principle of morality. He referred to pleasure and happiness, and the avoidance of pain and suffering, as “utility.” If you want to know what is right and good simply ask what creates the most utility, i.e., the most pleasure and happiness and the least pain and suffering.

There are several objections to this thinking but chief among them is that it dismisses individual rights. According to Michael J. Sandel in his book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, “For the utilitarian, individuals matter, but only in the sense that each person’s preferences should be counted along with everyone else’s. But this means that the utilitarian logic, if consistently applied, could sanction ways of treating persons that violate what we think of as fundamental norms of decency and respect.” He goes on to give the example of throwing Christians to lions in ancient Rome and asks, “If enough Romans derive enough pleasure from the violent spectacle, are there any grounds on which a utilitarian can object?” We can ask the same thing about Sandel’s next example, the modern debate about torturing terrorists. If it increases the “utility” of the majority, what’s wrong with it?

In both cases utilitarians might argue that feeding Christians to lions or torturing terrorists may not in the long run increase the maximum happiness of the rest of us. It might coarsen habits and breed more violence in the streets of Rome, which over time could decrease happiness, for instance; or it might provide bad information from terrorists as well as subject our soldiers to harsher treatment, thus inflicting pain while not effectively increasing maximum happiness. In this way the logic of utilitarianism remains intact according to its defenders. But there would still be no consideration of individual rights. Indeed, utilitarianism is in this sense, very socialistic; it puts the happiness of the group over that of the individual. This fact makes it rather strange that some of its strongest proponents in America are on the political right. Dick Cheney, for example, in his support of torture, is advocating a complete disregard for the individual’s human rights in the interest of maximizing utility among the majority.

At any rate, this giving precedence to the happiness of the group over the rights of the individual is one of the primary objections to utilitarian thinking. On the other side of the spectrum is libertarianism, which like utilitarianism is also widespread in American culture. Libertarianism holds individual liberty up as the standard of what’s good and bad, right and wrong. In this way of thinking individuals have a fundamental right to liberty — the right, quoting Sandel again, to do whatever we want with what we own, provided we respect other people’s right to do the same.

Libertarianism emerged as an intellectual doctrine in opposition to the welfare state. In Friedrich A. Hayek’s book The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (1962), the basic tenets of the anti-government pro-market philosophy later adopted and popularized by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were presented. Their thinking is based on the logic that we own ourselves and can therefore dispense with our lives, labors, and even physical bodies in any way we please. The only moral check on this liberty is, as noted above, the equal right of others to do the same. “My rights end where yours begin.”

This view sounds good until we follow it to some of its logical conclusions. Then people on both sides of the political spectrum begin to abandon it. Conservatives who favor it in the economic sphere don’t like the fact that it supports abortion rights, the right to produce and disseminate pornography, the right to practice homosexuality and separation of church and state. Liberals who generally support these positions object to the social and economic Darwinism suggested by the logic of libertarianism.

Both of these philosophies would have counted my line-cutter wrong, but for different reasons. One would say he was wrong for violating my rights as an individual. The other would say he was wrong for violating the maximum happiness of the community. These are both correct but neither is the primary point. A third way of thinking would say he was wrong for violating integrity — first his own and then that of the community.

This way of thinking can be called holism and I believe it speaks to the weaknesses of both utilitarianism and libertarianism. The first of these holds happiness to be the highest principle of morality or the ultimate good. The second gives this high honor to individual liberty. In holism the highest principle of morality, the ultimate good, is neither happiness nor liberty but integrity.

Integrity is the soundness, well being, and health of a thing. Just as bridges have structural integrity, so too do communities and individuals. Further, just as the structural integrity of a bridge can be increased or decreased by certain actions (say, cutting out struts to save money) so too can the integrity of communities and individuals be increased or decreased by certain actions. Indeed, every action either increases or decreases integrity in oneself and in the world. This is the basic logic of holism.

Holists would argue that feeding Christians to lions or torturing terrorists is wrong on several fronts, but the most important reason it’s wrong is that it decreases the integrity of the person who does it as well as the integrity of the person against whom it is done. Why is this decrease or increase in integrity a better measuring stick than individual liberty or maximum happiness? Because the value of both happiness and liberty rests on the level of integrity in any given situation. In other words, liberty and happiness are both devalued when integrity is decreased.

We see this all around us in our time. America is one of the freest nations on earth and is deeply devoted to maximizing pleasure, yet as integrity is decreased in more and more areas, both pleasure and liberty become not only not beneficial but also harmful and toxic.

Liberty and happiness depend upon integrity for their value the way an arm depends upon the body for its value. Just as we count our lives to be worth more than an individual limb (because what good is a limb without life?) we should also count integrity to be more valuable than liberty or happiness, and for this reason it is a better measure of what is good and bad or right and wrong.

So, in future installments we’ll look at the role of integrity in our lives and at the idea of using it as a measure of what’s good and bad, right and wrong. We’ll look at the broader idea of holism and its application in our personal as well as our social lives.

Until then, happy new year and many blessings to all of you.

Belonging Where We Are

2009-12-02T17:18:00.004-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Do you belong in the life you’re living? Do you feel that you belong? These may seem like odd questions but I think many of us often do not feel a sense of belonging where we are. If I’m not careful, I can easily lose this sense here in prison, where the place is designed to be somebody else’s world.

But this isn’t unique to prison. Belongingness isn’t something that’s nurtured in commercial culture. For one thing, it’s often easily misunderstood for fitting in and conforming. But these are by no means the same things. Indeed, the level of fitting in and conforming seen in any group of people is an inverse indicator of the level of genuine belonging. People who feel a genuine sense of belonging feel free to engage in self expression. Where the sense of belonging is absent, people feel pushed more toward the extremes of conformity and rebellion, the latter of which is often mistaken for self-expression, but is really just reverse conformity.

So what is belonging if it’s not fitting in?

It seems to me there are different answers to this question. Belonging is in part a sense of “rightness,” right now. When I’m belonging, things may not be perfect but I feel that my life is happening right now, as opposed to feeling I’m in some strange waiting room, tapping my foot, waiting for my life to begin.

There’s also belonging to our own time and place. I have at times felt like I should have been born a century ago — that I belong to a different time and place. This might seem harmless enough, but I’ve realized it brings on a sense of not belonging where I am and not respecting my life by being present in my time and culture as it is. So another part of belonging is feeling like we are living not only here but now.

Right next to this is a sense that our station in life is right, as well. This doesn’t mean locking ourselves into our current station forever, but simply acknowledging that it’s not some cosmic error that we are a bus driver, teacher, cop, nurse, stay-at-home mom, prisoner/writer and so on. We may well belong somewhere else in the future, but right now, in this moment, we belong where we are. To embrace this is to give ourselves fully to our own lives — i.e., to belong to our own lives.

The same can be said about our chronological ages. Our culture works incessantly to tell us it’s infinitely preferable to be 20 years old with perfect bodies and all our choices still laid out before us. If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is. But we often feel that this head of gray hair, this bad eyesight, the aches in our joints are an accident of some sort and we spend endless resources of time, money and mental energy trying to correct them. But again, these changes are no mistake. Whether we are young, middle-aged or old, we are precisely where we’re supposed to be.

Another aspect of belonging is having a sense that our take on life is necessary and legitimate. One of the things we teach in our weekly ethics group here is that each of us sits on a slightly different location around the wheel of life. As a result, we all see things from a slightly different perspective and every perspective is necessary for humankind to know the “truth.” Thus to delegitimize, or allow someone to delegitimize, another’s perspective is an act of violence to the truth. So too is giving up our own perspective and adopting someone else’s. We should never apologize for nor be ashamed of our truth but rather we should give ourselves to it and belong to it as it belongs to us. (And owning our truth in this way means not holding fast to it as a rigid and unchanging thing, but being in dialogue with it, being open to its unfolding and evolution.)

And I guess this is the last thing I’ll say about belonging for now: it’s something we have to choose to do. Others can invite us to belong, they can make a place for us, but they can’t give us a sense of belonging, which means of course that they can’t take it away, either. They can and will try to displace us in various ways and for various reasons but when we decide that we belong where we are, there’s not really much anyone can do about it.

It does take an effort — again and again — to claim and maintain belonging, but the alternative is to live our lives always in the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong age and so on. It is to be refugees in our own lives and that’s a lot more work than the effort demanded to belong.

Dear Friends,

2009-06-02T17:27:00.002-05:00

Maryann has been sending me all the wonderful letters you’ve been writing to Governor Granholm and the Parole and Commutations Board on my behalf. I must say, you have convinced me — I really am amazing.

OK, I resort to humor because I’m embarrassed by the riches of your friendship and can’t find words to say how thankful and humbled I am by the fact that you are willing to speak out for me as you have and by the unfailing eloquence of every letter I’ve read. So thank you once again for your support — both moral and actual.

In other news, the ethics group here has been approved as an official Department of Corrections group. Up to this point, we have functioned with local approval as basically a class/workshop on ethics. This was amazingly fruitful but now we’re able to have more meeting space — twice a week — and a cabinet to keep our books, records, etc. We’re using our second weekly meeting as a video discussion group so if any of you see any videos you think will suit us, send us the name and where we can find them.

I also want to say that if anyone wants to send a message to the group to encourage the men in it, we would love to hear from you. You can email it via Maryann or send it to me via snail mail and I’ll read it to the group. Many of the men have no contact outside prison and would appreciate any word.

Lately this has been my full-time job — working to organize things here, to create a starter kit for other prisons (or anyone) to use to start an ethics group, and deciding how to best spend the extra meeting time. We already have one request from a prison in Minnesota and I’m working directly with a prisoner there to start a project. I will keep you posted on this.

Well, thank you again for your letters, your love and your support. You are all invaluable to me and to Maryann. You’re true Friends.

Troy

The Cloth of Wholeness

2009-05-28T17:18:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

There is a curtain that stands between me and any violence I might do to others. This curtain is my own integrity and in order to violate any lifeform I must first tear a hole in the fabric of my own wholeness. There is no other way to accomplish violence. One cannot go under, over or around the curtain, but only through it.

We know that violence done to us tears the fabric of our integrity, but we haven’t yet come to the other side of this truth: that violence done by us has the same effect.

I’m not talking about karma or anything like that here, where eventually our actions will come back around to us. The harm done to our own integrity must be done before we can do violence to others, because all violence in the world is done through the curtain of our own integrity. If we understand that violence is “any assault on or violation of integrity in the world around us,” we begin to see the seriousness of what I’m saying here.

Is vicious gossip an assault on someone’s integrity? If so, it is violence and if it’s violence I must tear a hole in the fabric of my own integrity in order to do it. This is true also of ill-will, apathy, mean-spiritedness. Of any act of belittlement or slighting of another, of any disrespect. Something as seemingly insignificant as littering is an assault on the integrity of the ecosystem. As such it is a form of violence. So we not only have to roll down our car window to throw out garbage, we also have to punch a hole in our own integrity.

Integrity is all around us. There’s personal integrity, community integrity, ecological or natural integrity, and the integrity of life itself. Our common definition of violence covers only assaults on the physical integrity of people. But if we ever want to get out of the cycles of violence and sickness that we’re caught in, we must expand this definition as I’ve done above to include any assault on integrity in our world.

One part of us knows this already. To tell a child he or she is stupid and won’t amount to anything is an act of violence, though no physical harm is done. It’s violence to treat people with contempt or to abuse those over whom we have power; to reduce people economically, to impoverish them so we can take more than we need.

By this standard our world is saturated in violence and we may be tempted to say the standard is too high, but is it? Or is our current woefully inadequate definition of violence just a game we’re playing with the truth so we don’t have to look at this truth head-on?

If so, it’s a game we’re playing with our own lives and with our own well-being. It’s a game based on the utterly self-destructive falsehood that we can do violence without harming ourselves. Once we understand the truth that all violence shreds our own integrity, we want out of this game. We want to identify all violence clearly and step away from it.

Wholeness is one cloth. Integrity in us and integrity in the world around us are two folds in this single cloth. There’s no such thing as “my wholeness” and “your wholeness,” “my soundness and well-being” as distinct from “your soundness and well-being.” These things are bound up together and when we serve one we serve the other one. Undermine one and we undermine the other.

And all things fall into these two categories: they either serve integrity or they undermine it. If I want to be well and a light in the world, I must remember that the curtain of my own integrity stands between me and the world, and only that which serves integrity can pass through this curtain without tearing it. I must remember that all things done by the self are done first to the self.

Where the Temple Is

2009-05-24T09:19:00.005-05:00

by Troy Chapman

A woman went looking for God. Instead she met a man and fell in love. They spent their lives together, raised and loved their children, suffered together, shared joy and sorrow, prosperity and want, good times and bad. Through the years they built community, served the poor, the elderly, and the downtrodden with open hearts.

In old age, the woman said to herself, “I’ve led a good life. My only regret is that I abandoned my search for God — that I had to choose between that life and the one I eventually led.”

When she died and her spirit arrived in heaven, she confessed this regret to God. God said, “What are you talking about? You went looking for me and found love. Don’t you know that this is my face? What you thought was a distraction from me — the mundane and ordinary details of your life — has always been your temple. Did you honor this temple?”

A Letter-Writing Campaign

2009-05-04T19:49:00.003-05:00

I have posted information at Friends of Troy about a letter-writing campaign I am starting to protest the Michigan Parole Board and Governor Jennifer Granholm's decision to deny Troy's request for commutation of his sentence.

Thanks,
Maryann

4-22-09

2009-04-22T06:47:00.003-05:00

I received a letter from the governor’s office reading:

The parole board has completed its review of your self-initiated application for pardon or commutation of sentence and forwarded its determination to the governor. Based on the parole board’s recommendation the governor has denied your application.

I’m not sure what they’d want me to do to increase my chances. I thought about writing the governor’s office with this question, but will run it by our lawyer John first.

As to how I feel? Well, certainly disappointed. Dispirited is probably a more accurate description. Determined also, though, to keep living to what I hold true.

We will file again with them once the legal time limit has passed. Meanwhile, I will try to rubberize myself so I can bounce. We’ll discuss where to go next. I need to do the same with my personal work as I’ve been sort of floating on that as I’ve been awaiting the decision.

I want to thank you all for your prayers and support. Never underestimate what that means to me and Maryann and know that it makes a world of difference.

Other than that, it’s rainy and cold here today and for the next few days. Weather to match this mood, I guess. Of course, to continue this metaphor, it is spring, and after the rain, sun and warmer days and renewal will come. Are coming, even now. More later.

—Troy

Journal Entries

2009-04-19T21:19:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

4/19/09
It’s a Sunday morning and the prison is quiet. Even the gulls, which are usually staging riots outside my window at this time of day, seem to be off somewhere else — seagull church, maybe. It’s rare to hear nothing here, even for short periods of time.

Me and my bunkie Steve just had BBQ tuna crackers for breakfast. This is a recipe from our neighbor, Scott. A pouch of tuna, salad dressing, BBQ sauce, crushed BBQ corn chips (which are so hot you can’t eat them any other way) and maybe some pickle all chopped up in a bowl together and served on crackers. Mmm, mmm, as Grandpa Jones would say. Actually, it’s not too bad and the whole thing only costs about two dollars and feeds two (lightly).

Seagulls are probably not the first thing you think of when you think about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan but, at least in this area, we have tons of them. They’re ringbills from the nearby lakes. During the spring/summer/fall months we have huge flocks of them here at the prison. They come for the garbage (and the guys who can’t resist feeding them even though it’s against the rules). They’re loud and obnoxious but I don’t mind them. Some people hate them because they’re so loud, which always makes me smile, considering how much a group of them squawking sounds like one of our overcrowded dayrooms, especially on sports night.

Anyway, they disappear in winter but I think I read that they don’t migrate south. They just go to islands in the lakes — although I don’t know why that would be better than here. Maybe it’s just too much trouble to fly to the prison in winter because most of the food is buried in snow. I need to read up on them to find out what they’re up to. They might be plotting to overthrow the human government for all I know and probably ought to be looked into.

4/15/09
“It is every man’s duty to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.” —Albert Einstein.

What a powerful sentiment. At first, it looks like a simple calculation — instead of thinking solely about what we can get, we ought to think about giving something back. But that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying we have the duty to put back at least the equivalent of what we take.

What have I taken from the world? Here’s another way to ask that question: What did I bring here with me? Since that answer to that is “nothing,” the answer to the question of what I’ve taken out must be “everything.”

The very flesh and bone that comprises my body belongs not to me but to the earth. The web of my thoughts and my consciousness is woven by electrical impulses that I have “taken from the world.” The electricity doesn’t belong to me. In fact, if I want to so much as scratch my own foot, I have to draw on this same electricity to send a signal from my brain to my arm. Did I bring this electricity with me into the world?

When we really get a handle on how little we own or have truly earned here, we get a sense of how much we really owe back for the gift of being here. We see that the duty Einstein speaks of is a duty to put all of ourselves back into the world. The only real question is whether we’re willing to accept this duty.

I’m trying to understand that I owe my self to the world.

The 4-to-1 Rule

2009-04-11T20:44:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Have you ever noticed that evil seems to have more influence on us than good does? Not only that, but we focus more on it as well. If 100 guys get out of prison and 99 of them go on to become paragons of decency and integrity and one of them commits a new crime, it will be the re-offender you hear about on the evening news. We know the news is negative, but it’s not just the news that’s negative. The same thing happens inside our own heads. In fact, the news is just a reflection of our mental process on this point. Someone can tell me half a dozen good things about myself and one bad thing, and it’s the bad thing that will stick with me, thumping around in my head like a bowling ball in a clothes dryer while the praise makes about as much noise as a silk stocking.

Another manifestation of this is that things fall apart more easily than they stay together. It takes work to keep things together whereas all it takes to make them fall apart is to do nothing. This is true whether we’re talking about our own bodies or our relationships and social well-being. This can be frustrating for anyone trying to build, well, pretty much anything.

Enter the 4-to-1 Rule. I’m loosely calculating that rottenness and evil has roughly four times as much influence on us as does good. In other words, we pay four times as much attention to it and it’s about four times as easy to do, or to allow to happen, in our lives than is goodness. If this is true, there’s only one thing to do: Increase the energy we expend on goodness by at least a factor of four. This is the 4-to-1 Rule.

Every time I hear something bad about someone, I’m going to come up with at least four good things about them and repeat them to myself and others. Or I will comb my mind for negative thoughts and beliefs and whenever I locate one I will stack four positive beliefs or observations around it — splash it with some good news like a priest at an exorcism and watch it hiss. I will demand four times as much evidence for evil in the future as I demand for good. If someone does me wrong I will assume it to be an aberration. If they do it again, I’ll assume it again. And again. And again. After four times I’ll think about getting cynical.

Henceforth I will go through life assuming that goodness needs four times as much attention and maintenance as evil. And once I assume that, I won’t be upset when it proves to be true. I won’t feel cheated if I already know and agree to the price. I’ll simply acknowledge that — as with growing a garden — if I want the fruit I have to put in the work. If I want a weed patch, I can just sit on the porch.

The Bible tells us to “overcome evil with good,” and I’ve always wondered, if that’s how it’s supposed to be, then why is good so, well, wimpy? Then I realized it’s not good that’s wimpy, it’s my application of it. And when I’m called to get off my bottom and do more work, I cry like a baby. “Why is life so hard? Why can’t I just sort of think a good thought and have that be enough to change the world?” So for me, the 4-to-1 Rule is an Anti-Whining Ordinance. I’m going to make a serious effort to stop complaining (even inwardly) and to be optimistic (i.e., have faith that the arc of the universe bends toward justice, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said) and simply accept that this is the way things are. Goodness takes work — like anything else worth pursuing. With the 4-to-1 Rule, I know exactly how much, so I can’t cry and claim I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.

Journal Entries

2009-04-04T08:24:00.005-05:00

Note from Maryann: I visited Troy last week and he gave me a couple of journal entries to post. They’re a little outdated now, but we’re going to catch up. He’d like to start posting short reflections in a journal sort of style, coming out of his daily life.

Troy is doing very well and we had a very nice visit. On the way up to see him, I stopped in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan. The university has a prison creative arts program which last year solicited prisoner creative writing. Troy submitted three poems that made it into the first “On Words: Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing.” I went to the university on March 26 because they were hosting an event featuring the editors and formerly incarcerated writers reading selections from the book. The guest editor, Joseph Bathanti, named Troy’s poem “The Knitting Birds” as first honorable mention. Two of Troy’s poems were read, “The Knitting Birds” and “The Prodigal.” (The third that was published, “Awakening,” was first published here.) There were about 1,000 entries and only 30+ writers made it into the book. As Bathanti said in naming his choices for winning entries and honorable mentions, when you get to the level of the writing published in the book, they are all winners, and that is so true, but I have to admit I was proud as a mama bear to be there and see the little extra attention Troy’s poetry got.

Here are the journal entries. More to come.

3-20-09
First day of spring — which I didn’t know until one of my cell mates mentioned it this morning. Of course, actual spring starts when it feels like starting so I pay more attention to that than to the official date. That hasn’t happened here yet in any real way. Still lots of snow on the ground but it’s slowly melting and some brown patches are starting to show up like old friends who’ve been away too long. The birds love these patches as much as I do. To them they’re like a buffet and they’re down there with their little heads bobbing happily, snatching up morsels of food.

I feel like I’ve been drifting for awhile, but I know that this feeling is partly due to cabin fever and wanting winter to end. Hopefully, as days get warmer I’ll experience a thawing of energy to match the outer thaw. I’m sure I will. I wish I would just remember the cyclical nature of these things — of all things, really — and not get so tense when I’m in the down cycle.

3-22-09
9:30 Sunday morning: I’m sitting here thinking I should do something useful, which I haven’t done for a few days. Had our ethics group meeting last night. The topic was our map of reality and how this affects our values. Good discussion. I’m advocating just being aware that we have a map of reality and that all kinds of things get written on it by all kinds of people. It’s good to ask ourselves regularly whether we want a certain piece of information on our map or not. To set up some kind of filter. Because if we don’t even know we have a map, or if we never think about it, there’s basically no filter. Everyone’s writing on our map of reality all the time and we end up with a confused bunch of mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t represent the world very well. The essence of “unconsciousness” is to not filter the content and process of our own mind and worldview.

I lived that way the first half of my life. It’s like getting in a car, putting it in gear, then closing your eyes and pushing the accelerator to the floor and hoping you don’t crash. We had a good talk about it in the class.

I guess I’m busy now erasing some errors off my map of reality, such as: I need to figure it all out or nothing else I do matters. Who wrote that on my map? Gimme the WhiteOut.

—Troy Chapman

Effort, Energy, and Life Block

2009-02-18T05:39:00.006-05:00

By Troy Chapman

You’ve heard about writer’s block, that mysterious condition
that paralyses writers and renders wordsmiths wordless. I
thought I had it once but when I looked more closely I realized it wasn’t just my writing that had come to a stop, it was my whole life. I didn’t have writer’s block, I had life block. Maybe you’re familiar with it.

It’s that frustrating state where all the various rivers of energy running through your life just suddenly begin to dry up and you’re out there in your little rowboat, scraping bottom, and rocking back and forth to get over one sand bar after another. You lose your momentum, your mojo.

That’s where I’ve been lately — trying to row my boat through puddles and hoping for rain. That gets old quick so I did what any self-respecting shade-tree philosopher would do: I dragged my boat up on the grass, parked my butt on the bank, and began to ponder the process.

I wondered where the water went. How come one minute I’m engaged, planning, taking action, and the next I’m sitting slack-jawed and mush-minded and unable to care about anything except what’s up next on TV? And, more pertinently, what can I do about it?

I read once that effort creates energy. I took it to mean that when I sit around saying, “I would do X, Y, and Z if I had the energy,” I should be saying, “I would have the energy if I did X, Y, and Z.” Energy doesn’t precede action, but follows it. Start going for walks when you have no energy and pretty soon you’ll start having the energy to go for walks. Sit around waiting until you “feel like it” and you’ll wait forever.

We think of sitting still as non-action, but it’s actually an action in itself. It demands effort and that effort creates energy. It’s only after the sitting-still energy gets created that sitting still becomes easy. I think of this as the momentum of inertia. The longer I sit still the more momentum my doing nothing gains, until after a while it seems to take enormous energy to get moving again. Yet, as soon as I make an effort to act (even if it doesn’t amount to action) I begin creating energy in that direction. Eventually that energy floats my boat, so to speak.

So, the last few days I’ve made an effort to write and get some other things done in my life. I couldn’t write but I still sat for a while every day with my paper and pen. Then I rearranged my bulletin board, cleaned house, and took a walk, knowing that if I could break up my life block my writer’s block would soon follow. Then today I wrote on my to-do list: Write blog entry.

I made an effort and it didn’t work. I made another and with the energy left over from the first effort, here I am. I’m still dragging my boat from one puddle to the next but I can hear the low rumble of thunder in the distance and feel the electricity in the air. I think the rain’s coming if I can continue my little dance of effort. Meanwhile, you’ll have to excuse me while I go mark “Write blog entry” off my list.

Laughing, Gas, and “The Big One”

2008-12-09T17:12:00.004-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I thought I had a heart attack today. All day my left arm had been going numb, so I had to sit up on my bunk and shake it out or massage it as I walked. Then toward the afternoon I got a sharp bolt of pain up the middle left side of my chest. I dropped my book and sat up like there was a spider on my pillow. Checked my pulse. It was racing.

I panicked.

Wait a damn minute. I just thought, “I’m having a heart attack,” which shot a bolt of adrenaline through my system like a pack of hounds after an escaped criminal. Of course my heart is racing. I take a metaphorical look in my chest and see my startled heart, murmuring and beating out of time, looking like a friend who’s just run into the room after hearing me scream like a girl at the top of my lungs. “What? What’s going on?!?” It’s beating hard, thumping, heart-eyes bulging.

“Maybe it’s gas,” I say tentatively.

That’s true, but you do have a murmur and an irregular heartbeat, so the thought of a heart attack at 45 isn’t completely crazy.

Burp. I push in on my belly. Slightly distended, a little painful. Probably gas. I feel a moment of pure happiness, as if I’d opened my door expecting a Mafia hitman and instead found my mother bringing me soup. I’m glad I have gas. When did this start happening? I used to curse gas. Until I started worrying about heart attacks.

This has been going on for awhile — worrying about heart attacks. And yes, I know it’s neurotic. That knowledge, however, has absolutely no effect on the fear. There’s the fear, then there’s me saying, “This is neurotic.”

And neurotic fear laughs in my face. What, you think identifying me is some kind of antidote — like a wooden stake in the heart? Ha ha ha. Try a garlic garland, why don’t you? Hee hee hee.

I listen to the laughter. And an idea begins lurking in the shadows of my mind. If it were a light bulb it would be about 15 watts. Or maybe larger, but not screwed in tightly. It flickers a couple of times and I think, “Why not?”

I try it. I laugh back — at the fear, at myself, at the absurdity of my own mind scaring itself then trying to calm itself down while simultaneously mocking the attempt. Think about it: this is all going on inside my head. I just look at it all and laugh.

Fear gets offended. Stop it! This isn’t funny. It’s scary. I’m fear! You’re going to die. There’s the chest pain again! Feel it?

I do. I rub my belly again. Burp. More laughter. Just a chuckle, but it sends fear into a huff, storming out of the room.

You can’t laugh forever. I’ll be back.

“I’ll be bah-ck,” I say in my best impression of Arnold in The Terminator. I rub my belly, lay back down and pick up my book.

The Birds of Well-Being

2008-10-13T18:15:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Maryann recently sent me an article about crows and ravens having the remarkable ability to recognize and remember individual human faces. Researchers began suspecting this after they trapped certain birds to tag and study. When the researchers returned, the birds would scold them thoroughly and wouldn’t come close enough to be caught again. Yet if the researchers put on a disguise, the birds ceased scolding them and came to get the food they offered.

So they set up an experiment and had a group of people wear one kind of mask and another group a different mask. They had a person from one group trap a bird and someone from the other group give them food, thus identifying one face as being “up to no good” from the bird’s perspective, the other as friendly. Sure enough, whenever anyone showed up wearing the same mask as the trapper, the birds would let him or her have it and wouldn’t go near them. Conversely, if someone showed up with a “friendly” mask, the birds treated them hospitably.

This got me to thinking about peace, joy, connection and other such things. Why? Because, like some of the researchers, whenever peace, joy and other spiritual birds fly in and land close to me, perch on one of the lines of my heart, as it were, my first thought is to trap it. I want to study it or keep it or put a band on its leg.

Yet when I do it acts very much like these smart crows and ravens. It marks me as an “unfriendly” and keeps away from me. It tells the other birds “watch out for that one,” and together they all scold me from a distance.

Then I made this connection: They’re staying away because I keep trying to trap them. I want to possess them rather than be in relationship with them.

The other day I was in this place of having been abandoned by peace, joy, connection and all the other birds of well-being. I was reaching, trying to grab one and drag it into myself when I stopped and focused on putting peace into the room and the world around me. In a few moments I started feeling more peaceful. I did the same with joy and got the same result.

As long as I was allowing the birds to fly through me, I received their gifts. As soon as I tried to stop and keep them, they avoided me. I’m trying now to just watch these birds of well-being come and go, to shoo them out into the world rather than trying to keep them, and to simply bless them on the way by.

Markings

2008-10-06T15:02:00.005-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Markings — from the images of human hands, animals and geometric shapes on cave walls to a convict’s name gouged into the wall of a prison cell — demonstrate the powerful human urge to leave some evidence of our presence on earth. It’s why we alone in nature create images. We all want to say in some way, “I was here.”

The older I get the more time I spend thinking about a time when I won’t be here. And from these thoughts arise others about what I want to leave behind as evidence of my passing. I’ve boiled this down to the question: How do I want to say, “I was here”?

This isn’t just a question about lifelong legacy but also about the legacy of single days and even single moments. It’s morning as I write this but at the close of this day, what evidence do I want left of my having lived these 16 or so hours? How do I want to say “I was here” this October 6, 2008? Or even in this moment right now? In five minutes, what do I want to have left behind?

These questions make me ask another: How much of me leaves a mark on the world?

Certainly my actions do. If I mistreat people, discourage them, or in some other way bring them down, that will leave a tangible mark. Or vice versa: if I treat people kindly, encourage and lift them up, that will leave a tangible mark. But what about my thoughts, the energy of my consciousness? My beliefs and ways of perceiving? Do these leave a mark?

Psychiatrist Thomas Hora coined a phrase that I’ve found very useful in my life. He talked about being a “beneficial presence,” and for me the phrase resonates because it speaks to this energy level in our lives. Of course being a beneficial presence is partly about action, but it implies also that our mere presence — absent any outwardly directed action — can be beneficial (or detrimental, for that matter). We don’t only put tangible and measurable things into the world but also, by our very presence, constantly release something intangible, and I believe firmly that this energy of our presence leaves a real mark for good or for ill.

Like the convict carving his name into a cell wall or our ancestors leaving their marks on canyon walls, we are daily and momently carving our own marks into the invisible walls of the world.

Asking the question "How do I want to say, 'I was here'?" helps me remember this. It reminds me to ask what I want to honor with my markings. Do I want to leave angry, petty, or disparaging marks of my passing? Or thoughtful, inspiring and helpful marks? How do I want to say “I was here”?

Troy Chapman on National Public Radio

2008-09-23T16:39:00.001-05:00

We have some very exciting news... On Sunday, Sept. 28 somewhere around 9:30-10:00 a.m. ET, Troy Chapman can be heard reading his essay for the "This I Believe" radio series during Weekend Edition Sunday on National Public Radio.

"This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow." (—from the series Web site)

Troy joins others whose essays have been produced for radio, including authors, artists, musicians, statesmen and -women, academics, entertainers, and many more who are unknown outside their circle of family, friends and associates.

Click here for a list of local affiliates if you don't know where NPR is on your dial. If you miss Troy's piece or want to hear it again, after the broadcast date you'll find a page containing the essay and a link to listen here. You might want to take some time reading and listening to other essays — such meaningful and thoughtful statements from people in all walks of life are good for the soul.

Our sincerest thanks to series staff, especially senior editor Viki Merrick and curator Jay Allison, for choosing Troy's essay for broadcast and the extra work they did with the prison to record him. Also many thanks to administrators at Kinross Correctional Facility, who not only gave permission for Troy to participate in the series, but facilitated the timely recording of his essay.

Please leave a comment after you've listened... we'd love to hear what you think!

—Maryann Gorman

There Is No Solution

2008-06-10T18:25:00.004-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I don’t keep a very clean house. The ledge at the foot of my bed is piled up with things that I’ve tossed there randomly. Sunglasses, a bag of cough drops, pencils, erasers, tapes, unanswered letters, a pocket copy of Gideon’s New Testament. My locker’s in the same disarray. I also can’t manage to keep up with all the projects I have going. My cell is cluttered with half-finished book outlines, articles, paintings and scraps of paper with original but forever unsung song lyrics jotted on them.

The inside of my head looks the same. With dreams and plans and projects scattered about, some abandoned intentionally, others just accidentally misplaced. There’s a stack of intentions to write more letters and keep in better touch with family and friends. One whole room is filled with dreams of writing books and sending more articles out for publication. Another is piled high with ideas for straightening out all of the above.

That’s the “solution room,” and I can look at it now and smile. But there was a time when I took it very seriously, a time when I believed unquestioningly in solutions. I’ve since come to see that at least half my problems were caused by this very belief. I was frustrated and angry about not being able to find and work these solutions in my life. I didn’t have a very high opinion of myself because when I looked all I saw were my failures. My way of dealing with this was to project it out onto others. Of course, no one else lived up to my expectations, so I was angry and frustrated with people most of the time. I believed in punishment and took pleasure in seeing people “get their due.”

I find this same dynamic to be a strong current in our culture and I think that goes back to the same root: a belief in solutions. Our bulging prison system and our wars are monuments to this belief. So is the fact that we often elect authoritarian leaders who talk more like stern parents dealing with bratty kids than statesmen leading a nation of free people. Their disciplinarian talk and promises to straighten out the world appeal to us.

The same belief is running through our religions and has led to the concept of God as a cross between the ultimate problem solver and the ultimate disciplinarian.

The whole idea of solution — and all the anger and frustration that comes from it — is of course rooted in another belief: the belief that the world is supposed to be perfect. This belief almost destroyed me before I finally let it go and I’m convinced it will destroy us collectively if we don’t abandon it.

One reason we cling to it is that we believe the only alternative is to go fatalist and just passively accept everything. If that were the only alternative, I would probably go back to my war on the world because even war is preferable to spiritual passivity. But it’s not the only alternative. We can accept that the world isn’t perfect and still not throw our hands up in apathy and despair if we realize that movement toward perfection isn’t the only kind of progress out there. There’s another, much saner kind of progress and that is movement toward being more loving and human in an imperfect world. But commitment to this kind of progress demands an abandonment of the notion that the world is broken and needs to be fixed.

Awhile back we had a big discussion about this in our church under the heading of A Call to Holiness. And I saw that whole belief in perfection and solutions come to the fore. For some people holiness is synonymous with perfection, but for me it’s more about how we conduct ourselves in the face of imperfection than it is about becoming perfect. Holiness is about learning to love through imperfection — our own and that of others — not about fixing or straightening things out.

Imperfection is water and the point of life is to learn to swim and maybe even enjoy it a little. The belief in perfection blinds us to this point. It tells us that the point is just to get across the pond — preferably without getting wet. So we respond to our inability to swim by trying to drain the pond. Yet the more we try to drain it, the more water seeps up from the ground. So what now? Some people say, “Bring in the cement truck and turn the pond into a nice, dry parking lot. And if that doesn’t work, bring in the dynamite or the atomic bomb, by God.” I used to think that way until it occurred to me, “For God’s sake, just learn to swim.”

I believe that, to be a light in the world, we have to reach this point of understanding that imperfection isn’t going away — there’s no solution to it. It’s at this point that we shift focus to ourselves and understand that we’re responsible for trying to live, love and be happy in the world just as it is now. We can abandon our thinking that the world must be perfect before we can be happy or that people must be perfect before we can love them.

I’m learning to accept this about myself as well. I’m probably going to die with cluttered shelves and a cluttered mind and a million projects started and abandoned and a million other character flaws stubbornly hanging on to me like burrs on a dog’s coat. Sometimes this still bothers me, so I tell myself at least once a day: “There is no solution.” And in one of life’s lovely paradoxes, the moment I truly abandon the belief in solutions I become one — for myself and for the world.

Painting by Troy Chapman

The New Cat on the Yard

2008-05-17T10:51:00.005-05:00

by Troy Chapman

This new cat on the yard was causing quite a stir. No, this isn’t hep prison talk. I’m talking about a real cat. I met him this morning.

I had stepped outside and was talking to another man on the yard when the cat suddenly made his appearance and stood looking at us from about twenty feet away. He was about a small- to medium-sized model with long orange fur. When he popped out from behind the big green dumpster, I felt like I had just seen a baby born. The wonder of it.

“Come on, let’s go see him,” I said to my companion and we walked toward him, stopping several feet away for fear he’d get spooked and run off. It was wasted worry. As soon as I crouched down on my heels, he walked up bold as brass and when my hand touched his head, it was like hitting a switch that threw him into friendly-cat mode.

He began turning about, rubbing himself against my leg while at the same time getting the most out of the contact with my hand. He arched his head upward, walked on his tiptoes (or is it tipclaws?) so that my hand would trace his entire spine and run down his tail.

I could feel his ribs and bones and his fur was matted and completely missing in several large patches. He had a large sore on his back leg. It was obvious he hadn’t been living the best life lately.

As I continued to stroke him he threw all embarrassment to the wind, rolled over and wrapped his paws around my hand, pulling it toward his exposed belly. If he could have talked, he would have been saying “Ooh yeah, right there.”

I was grinning like the fences had just fallen down. My companion got in on the act and still there weren’t enough hands for the cat. Another guy walked up and stood watching. I said “Go ahead. I know you haven’t touched a cat in awhile.” He petted away for a few minutes. The cat kicked his back paw in ecstasy. He was giving perfect expression to what I was feeling inside. If my soul has a back paw, it was twitching away with the cat’s at that moment.

After about ten minutes I felt like we had better move along. The guards hadn’t said anything and maybe they wouldn’t, but this much simple pleasure made me feel like I was doing something wrong. I came back inside, got my soap dish and scrubbed my hands, feeling a slight twinge of guilt for needing to wash away the physical residue of a pure and perfect connection.

Mrs. Feller

2008-05-11T06:57:00.003-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I got a call to the chaplain’s office last month and learned through him that Marguerite Feller had died. When I first met Marguerite, she was a middle-aged school teacher and I was a third-grader who was having trouble reading. She took me into her special reading class and caught me up on my reading skills.

I met her again 15 or so years later when she showed up at the prison where I was being held at the time. She was retired by then and I wasn’t sure who she was. When she explained, I still wasn’t sure what she wanted or why she was there. She said she just wanted to “check up on me.” To see if I was all right.

She continued to come after that first visit. I sent her some of my paintings as gifts and after setting aside a few for herself she began showing the others to friends, selling them and sending me the money. This was a time when I didn’t have much of anything and not many friends in the world. I was extremely grateful.

She also began to encourage my writing by sharing things I’d sent her and encouraging those who read them to come and meet me. In fact, this was a fruit of her own labor. If it hadn’t been for her caring and patience in teaching me my vowels and letters, I would likely never have developed the writing skills that have so profoundly altered my life. When many had concluded that I wasn’t worth any extra trouble, Marguerite concluded the opposite.

More important even than this, she seemed intent on helping me remember who I am; on telling me a different story about myself than the one told by my crime and those bad years preceding it. She told me I was “always a good boy.” As evidence of this, she still had possession of a card I’d made her. It said: “Mrs. Feller, You taught me my vowels: A-E-I-O-U, I love you.”

I had no memory of this but she brought it back to me there in the prison those many years later and it was a sublime service to my spirit. I spoke earlier of not knowing who we affect, or how much we affect them, as we struggle to be lights in the world and I’m sure she couldn’t have known the effect she would have on my life, but it was enormous. I believed her when she told me I was more than my crime or anything else I’d done.

She wasn’t perfect or a saint or someone with all the spiritual answers. I know she was lonely and depressed in later life and she missed her husband Walt terribly after he died. Sometimes she felt that her life was pointless. In other words, she was an ordinary, real person.

When I think of her I often see her, in my mind’s eye, in one moment. It’s the moment when she saw me on the news, charged with murder. I wonder about the progression from that moment to the thought that she should come visit me. I think about the courage it took to follow through on that thought with no idea what it was like to visit a prison, what she would say to me, or what kind of person I was those many years later. I know as she continued to visit me she took a lot of criticism from friends who were worried about her and concerned about her judgment.

“Common sense,” it seems, would have dictated that she feel sad, say “what a shame,” and dismiss me from her life. That she did the opposite says a lot about who she was and stands as a powerful teaching to me about how to meet Creative Spirit when it calls and what it means to be a light in the world.

And in the end this is the truest and best thing I can say about Marguerite: She was a true teacher and a good one. May she travel well.

Gouache by Troy Chapman

The Power to Change Others

2008-04-01T18:19:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Not long ago, someone smashed the window in the cell next to mine and went in to steal from the prisoners who live there. When I saw what had happened I was angry, thinking about how this would affect my own behavior (having to lock things up in my locker instead of just locking my door), but also about how this tore at the integrity of the fragile sense of community we have here on our cell block. I thought too about how to change the behavior of the people who did this deed. This is something I think about often.

When I go down to the community bathroom here to brush my teeth and find a sink full of hair where someone shaved and simply walked away when they were done, or garbage on the floor, or urine on the toilet seat, I think about what can be done to make people clean up after themselves. When I see prisoners preying on one another for sex and money or stabbing each other over the pettiest things, I think about ways to make them stop. When I turn on the news and hear about some of the craziness outside prison again I think, “What would make them stop this craziness?”

I have an interesting perspective on this question because I was once one of the people I’m talking about. Others used to ask of me, “What can we do to make him stop this destructive behavior?” When we ask this question about others, there are all kinds of answers: Lock 'em up and throw away the key; execute them; inflict enough pain on them to make them think twice; wage war on them; medicate them; castrate them; take away everything they care about. But a quick look around the world leads to the conclusion that these things aren’t very effective — despite the fact that we’ve gotten very good at them. We know how to “make people pay” and yet they keep right on doing the things we don’t want them to do. Even if we kill them all, there’s another crop coming out of middle school before we get the bodies cleared away.

This plays out on every level of human experience, from the world scale where we deal with terrorists and others who are behaving destructively to our own families where our kids often take up their own version of this craziness. Figuring out how to address this effectively is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.

I think the answer lies in understanding two different kinds of power that I call controlling power and influential power. All the answers I listed above to the question of how to change people’s behavior are examples of controlling power. We’re big on this kind of power because it makes us feel like we’re doing something. Plus, it feels good to get out there and knock some heads. When I think back to my own experience on the other side of this equation, one thing that stands out is that a lot of controlling power was directed at me. I was threatened and whipped by teachers and parents and later beaten viciously by other men in countless fights after having done something they thought I shouldn’t have done. I was sent to prison once and then again on the sentence I’m now serving. In prison I was punished and beaten some more over the years, all in an effort to “teach me a lesson” and change my behavior. And I can honestly say that it had very little positive effect on me. In fact, the more controlling power was used against me, the more I felt justified in continuing my destructive behavior.

But while all this was going on there was another power being exerted on my life from many directions. It was influential power and while this kind of power was subtle and seemingly weak, it was the kind that ultimately transformed my life.

My pastors, Gary and Carol Maleport, often tell us that we have to earn the right to speak into someone’s life. When I first heard this I wondered, “How does one earn this right?” The answer was clear. We earn the right to be listened to only by listening; we earn the right to teach only by being willing to learn from our students; we earn the right to affect only by being affected — by being touched by the people we’re trying to influence. We earn the right to demand that others care only by caring about them. This is influential power. It’s power that unfolds in mutual relationship, when the person attempting to wield it cares about and is invested in the person over whom it’s being wielded.

Controlling power usually doesn’t care about those at whom it’s directed. It cares only about how their behavior affects us. It’s a clout upside the head and has no time for namby-pamby “listening” or “love.” Those who wield it aren’t willing to be changed in any way – they don’t need to change, you need to. This power works to some extent. If we can use enough force — such as a gun to the head — we can make people do what we tell them. The problem is that once we pull that gun we become a prisoner to the task of holding it there. As soon as we look away, the person we were controlling is going to go back to what they were doing. Not only that, but now they’re mad about us pulling a gun on them and determined not to let us pull that again. They go looking for a bigger gun or catch us sleeping and bust our fingers, or seek out a thousand million other “solutions” to the problem of us trying to control them.

Controlling power seems like the most direct route to get what we want, but actually it leads in the opposite direction. Influential power seems like the longest, most indirect route, yet it begins to take us steadily toward our goal and doesn’t quit — like the turtle in the race with the hare. The catch is that to influence people we have to care about them and we don’t want to care about them. We don’t want them bothering us and making our lives difficult, but beyond that, we couldn’t care less if they get hit by a bus. And this is really the crux of the matter. Ending violence and destructive behavior in our world isn’t an impossible task. We can do it any time we choose to.

The problem is that I have to love the people who smashed that window in the cell next to mine and made me start worrying about my own property. I have to love the guys who shave and leave their hair, who throw their toilet paper on the floor and piss on the toilet seat. And the truth is, that makes me grind my teeth. It raises my hackles; it irks me and rubs me wrong like fingernails on a chalkboard. I’m not talking about “loving” them in some abstract theological way. I’m talking about talking to them, laughing at their jokes and seeing them. And all this without trying to fix them, without being able to tell them what imbeciles they really are and how they ought to be more like me — which, as you know, is something we humans love to tell others. But if I can restrain myself from doing so, the need to do so disappears. They will become more like their own higher selves, which is infinitely preferable to becoming more like me. By loving them, I show them an example of someone acting from his higher self and we’re drawn irresistibly toward this. We can’t help it. And the ones who love us most are the ones we most fervently direct this urge toward. The ones who love us most are the ones who influence us most.

This is what happened to me. As I read the words of Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela and countless others, I sensed a deep compassion and love for people, especially people who weren’t measuring up to what they ought to be — i.e., me. It drew me in and I devoured everything they said like it was sweet honey. This was true even when they talked tough and spoke truths I didn’t want to hear from others. It was the same with countless people in my life — officers, prisoners and others outside. It didn’t matter who they were. If they loved me, I felt it and watched them closely, listened to their words, asked them questions, and actually heeded their advice.

People who preached at me and told me what a lousy human being I was found themselves talking to a stone wall. But people who loved me got my attention. I wanted to be like them. In fact, it was they who taught me about influential power. They taught me how to really change people.

There’s certainly a time for the exercise of controlling power. I reached a point in my life where those who used it on me were completely justified in doing so. I needed to be controlled and that’s what controlling power is good for. In fact, that’s all it’s good for. We should use it when we must, but we shouldn’t expect it to change people. It doesn’t and won’t. For that we must resort to influential power or turn ourselves into perpetual controllers, which is as sorry a way to live as being one of the controlled. Both sides of that relationship are dysfunctional when it goes on for any length of time.

If I want to be an effective light in the world, I need to remember this distinction between controlling power and influential power. I need to remember that influential power is an art and that I’m not naturally very good at it. I have to practice it. I will speak to people I normally might avoid. I’ll listen to them on as many levels as I can. I’ll set myself the challenge of loving them, knowing it’s the only power I have to positively and permanently change their behavior and knowing also that the world runs on this paradox: If I really want to change people, I have to forget about controlling them.

The Cloth of Wholeness

2008-03-15T05:27:00.003-05:00

The World Is Hungry for Light

2008-03-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I sometimes watch a program on Animal Planet called “Animal Cops.” The program follows ASPCA officers as they respond to reports of animal cruelty. Some of the cases are heartbreaking, but oddly it’s not the cruelty that makes the biggest impression on me. It’s the way the animals respond to kindness after they’re rescued.

It takes some time, but dogs who come out of a house in the beginning, slinking low to the ground, their tails tucked between their legs, can be seen later trotting about, licking hands and wagging their tails. It’s like their whole bodies are smiling. I love seeing this stark demonstration of the power of goodness.

When I think about the abusers I wonder why we don’t think of applying this same power to them. No doubt it would be more complicated, as humans are more complicated than dogs, but it seems clear they are as much in need of light as the animals they’ve abused.

I think of light as spiritual food. At one point in our history humans lived off the land and made no effort to cultivate their own food. Then, as human culture got more complex and more people were trying to live in less space, this hunter-gatherer lifestyle became insufficient to support our needs and we began to consciously cultivate our food.

In the same way, in simpler cultures and times, the pursuit of goodness can be, and has been, less conscious. We didn’t need to think about it as much because we seemed to have all we needed. But, as our culture has become more complicated, this unconscious attitude toward goodness is serving us less and less well. We are living in times that demand a higher degree of consciousness and light and we’re called, just as our ancestors were on the physical level, to begin consciously cultivating these things in our world. The world needs spiritual farmers the way it once needed, and still needs, physical farmers.

Yet, we tend to see the hunger in our world and the dysfunction and disease that arise from it as evil — something to be fought and destroyed. But if spiritual malnutrition is the cause of this behavior, this thinking is crazy. It’s like deciding to kill the people in our village who are exhibiting distended bellies and muddled thinking due to starvation. Such symptoms could easily be mistaken for “an evil spirit” by ignorant or superstitious people. But it’s not evil, it’s starvation. To see this is to understand our world from an entirely different place.

If people are evil they need to be fought. If they are hungry, they need to be fed. The bible speaks of a time when we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks — in other words, when we will stop fighting people and start feeding them. For me this passage speaks to the shift in consciousness when we realize that what we call evil is a symptom of spiritual hunger, when we begin to recognize this hunger throughout our world, even when the symptoms are violent.

As I struggle to be a light in the world, I must remember that I am a farmer, not a warrior. I must keep my eye on the hunger, even when some of the hungry snarl and snap and try to bite me. I may need to slide the food to them with a stick, but my purpose is still and always to feed them, not to fight or destroy them.

This Is My Calling

2008-03-02T20:16:00.002-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I saw an elderly man coming out of the cafeteria the other day with a styrofoam food tray in his hand. Sometimes when men go on medical transfers or miss a meal for some other reason not in their control, the food service workers will save a tray that they can take back to the cell. That was the case with this gentleman. I was walking by just as he was coming out. The sidewalks were icy and he held the tray in both hands and took small steps, obviously concerned about losing his footing.

I had a powerful urge to go, take the tray out of his hand and hang on to his elbow. I didn’t do so because in prison you’ve got to be careful about causing offense. If he had slipped that would have been different. But as he was managing, I left him alone.

But I thought about the urge to help him. I don’t present it here as evidence of any special virtue on my part. In fact, though it’s sometimes repressed by our culture, and damaged in some people, I think this urge to be helpful and show kindness is universal and part of our nature.

At the moment, however, I was looking at it personally in regard to myself. I was asking why I had this impulse and why I felt this slight sadness when I concluded that the best to do was walk on. I wasn’t only experiencing a sense that I “should” assist this man; I wanted to do so. It’s a philosophical question, but I wanted to know why.

Some might say such urges arise from a desire to prop up our self esteem, to tell ourselves we're good people. Perhaps that’s true, but I have a slightly more optimistic explanation. I believe we’re driven by a deep need to fulfill ourselves, a need for what some would call self-realization. When we ask “What can I do to realize myself?” we often get it wrong, especially when we approach the question entirely from the neck up. But I think the urge to kindness comes from a deep place in our spirit, from a place of wisdom.

I wanted to help the old guy because my spirit knows that to do so would objectively make me larger and move me along the path of my own realization. Self-realization is the soul’s agenda, and kindness is the true means of advancing this agenda.

We are called by our own spirit and by the great Creative Spirit to be the light of the world, because our own self-realization and unfolding is connected to our collective realization and unfolding. Each serves the other, and when we hear this calling over all the inner and outer noise of life, we do, in fact, expand.

It may be difficult to be a light in the world, but it’s made easier for me when I realize that this urge isn’t merely a “good idea.” It’s a calling on my life. More than that, it’s the fulfillment of my spiritual destiny.

It’s the thing I’m created to be, and when I align myself with my deepest purpose I open myself to energies that aren’t available when I’m pursuing something other than this purpose.

As I went about my business and the gentleman with the tray went his way in the opposite direction, I enjoyed the connection between us that was generated by the urge to help him, even though I didn’t act on this urge. Well actually I guess I did act on it in a way; I blessed him silently and wished him well. Maybe he felt it or maybe he didn’t, but something inside me nodded and was pleased by the rightness of it.

Letters to the Light of the World

2008-02-24T12:15:00.006-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Whoever you are, wherever you are on earth, right now, you are the light of the world — if you choose to be. If you have chosen to be the light of the world, I know this about you: You sometimes feel like your bulb is cracked, your batteries are dead or your lens is so caked with the mud of life there’s not much point in even trying to shine. Maybe you’ve given up or maybe you struggle on, but are no longer certain it actually matters.

If so, we have this in common. I made a commitment to be a light in the world after taking a man’s life almost 25 years ago. I came to this commitment with lots of good intentions and not much else. I’ve struggled and can’t count the times I thought I was defeated but for all the times I was sure that was the case, I was wrong. I’m still here. Still trying to be a light in the world.

The other day I was watching a TV program about astronauts and they were talking about how they never know what’s going to happen up there. And they can never bring along enough tools and parts for every contingency. They often have to make do and address even life threatening situations with jury-rigged parts and tools to keep going. In the same way, I have somehow managed to cobble together what I need over the years to keep going.

I’m surprised again and again by this but I also know that it’s not some unique talent I have. After all, you’re still here too, right? We’ve all somehow managed to keep the mission going no matter how often we feel like we’re failing. We’re still here.

But, the truth is, it’s not always easy. In fact, it’s very seldom easy. We struggle in the face of fatigue, rudeness and violence in our world and our own inner sufferings. Amidst all this, my biggest problem is I keep forgetting things I know about being a light. So I thought it might be helpful to write some of these things down — sort of a list of things to remember when your batteries are low.

One of the first things I want to remember is that a lot of people who probably thought they weren’t making much difference have profoundly affected my life. When I’ve looked around in my life for a light to remind me who I am, such people were there, shining quietly. Maybe you’re one of them, or maybe you’re doing the same for someone else, even as we speak.

I want to remember that and I want you to know it too.

(First in a brief series.)

Painting by Troy Chapman

Looking at the Whole

2008-02-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The way we understand things in western culture is by taking them apart — separating, isolating, then studying these parts. This method certainly has its value, as evidenced by our mastery of the physical world. But knowledge gained by taking things apart doesn’t rise to the level of wisdom. To find that we must put things back together in our thinking by placing them in an ever-growing context of wholeness. We must be integrators, who not only understand the parts, but also the relationship between the parts as well as the larger whole that they comprise.

One of the things we’ve taken apart is wisdom and goodness. I recently read about a group of scientists who are trying to put wisdom under the microscope to study it, quantify it and better understand it. Their work is fascinating but I was surprised to find no mention of ethics or values in the list of things they were using to measure wisdom. It’s as if wisdom and goodness were two different countries, and while the scientists sometimes drove along the border of ethics by talking about empathy and compassion they didn’t seem to have their visas and so turned back each time.

I understand why. Drawing borders is what scientists do, and it’s much more difficult to be “scientific” when one starts erasing these borders. Science doesn’t deal well with wholes.

We, on the other hand, must deal with wholes if we want to be wise rather than just know about wisdom. Wisdom and virtue are two wings of the same bird. The un-virtuous are not wise, nor are the unwise virtuous. These two cannot be separated.

With that said, let me say that virtue is more than a knowledge of good and bad, right and wrong. That’s virtue at its most fundamental level, but also its most simplistic level. On its higher levels, virtue is knowledge of what’s more or less important, what’s more or less valuable. The right-wrong question is usually pretty straightforward and most of us manage it fairly well. Where we stumble is when it comes time to assign value to two rights or two goods. In other words, to decide which is most important. And this is where wisdom and virtue merge.

A friend attacks me for something I didn’t do. Defending myself and setting him straight on the factual truth is certainly right and good; it’s also our first impulse. But is there another good that’s more important, more valuable than defending the factual truth? For me there is. It’s more important to tend to the spiritual truth, which is my friend’s hurt feelings and sense of betrayal.

Instead of, “That’s not true; I didn’t do anything to you, but try to be a friend, why are you falsely accusing me?” the conversation might go, “Listen, we can talk about what happened but, first of all, you need to know I care about you and I’m sorry if I did anything that hurt you.”

The second approach represents a prioritizing of these two goods, with spiritual truth being considered the more important of the two.

These prioritizing decisions are a constant in life. Knowing what’s right and wrong is certainly important, but if we then place all rights, all goods, on equal footing, we end up with a sort of bureaucratic ethics that leads us into behavior that is anything but ethical. It’s good to tell the factual truth, for instance, but when it’s the Nazis asking if we’ve hidden any Jews, serving spiritual truth is more important, and there’s no virtue in telling them, “Oh you got me; they’re in the basement.”

On a lighter note: men, when your wives ask you, “Do I look sexy in this dress?” always put love above factual truth, if there’s a difference between the two. Trust me, it’s the wise thing to do. It’s also the virtuous thing to do.

If we want to be wise, we need to ask not only what’s the right thing to do, but what’s most right in almost any given situation. As the founder of the school of situation ethics, Joseph Fletcher, says: “Calculate the most loving thing to do in any situation and consider it your duty.” I’ll leave you with that.

Drawing by Troy Chapman

The Wise Thing to Do

2008-01-23T17:50:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Inside each of us is a voice that whispers wisdom. It’s our own personal wise spirit and is constantly calling to us to step into our better selves and live from there.

Mine speaks most often not in intellectual or philosophical complexities, but in the simple impulse to do good, to make the world a little better with some small act of kindness.

I haven’t always recognized this as the voice of wisdom. I guess in looking for wisdom I was expecting something profound, something deep and, well, to be honest, something that didn’t sound so much like my own voice saying things as mundane as “you should send him a card.”

I hear stuff like that all the time. In fact, the other day I had several of these urgings in a row and I did what I usually do: I filed them away and went about my business, knowing I would forget most if not all of them by day’s end. Then something unusual happened. I chastised myself for simply filing these urgings. This is when it occurred to me that this is the voice of wisdom speaking and I asked myself why I so habitually brush it aside.

There are countless reasons: I’m busy; it’s too much effort; I’m doing more important things, etc. But I know that none of these are legit. So, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the three things that occurred to me that time, and I’ve done two of them — thanking people for anonymous services they provide and for which I know they seldom receive thanks.

I’ve also made a commitment to listen more closely to these leadings and to this leader within and to encourage others to seek and listen to this leader as well. It’s too easy to think these little things won’t make any difference, that they’re naïve. If they are, then so is wisdom, and I’m not buying that.

So the next time this voice speaks to you, listen and act on what it tells you, no matter how small a thing it might be. It’s the wise thing to do.

What Does It Mean to Be Wise?

2008-01-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Prison is a place where the lack of wisdom rules. It’s a place where people believe in violence as a way to solve problems — not just prisoners, but many staff as well. Many here believe they are victims and so live from their anger. Many honestly can’t see how their own thinking and behavior is creating their situation. They blame others and stew in their misery all the while recreating it day after day.

Some of this may sound familiar. It’s certainly not unique to prisons — concentrated here perhaps, but not unique. I know it sounds familiar to me. I used to live my life from this same place.

As I think about what it means to be wise, the first thing that occurs to me is that I didn’t lack intelligence at that time of my life. I had the same native intelligence I have today. Neither are the others I see living unwisely lacking intelligence. Contrary to popular images, prisons are, in fact, filled with intelligent people.

So being wise and being intelligent don’t necessarily go together. No, it seems being wise (to whatever degree) is something other than being intelligent. I think it’s what might be called life intelligence — intelligence about the inner workings of life. So, wisdom is a form of realism. It’s about understanding and submitting to what’s true, as opposed to living in conflict with, or even waging war against what’s true because we happen to wish it weren’t. Wisdom is a respect for reality.

This also implicitly includes taking a big-picture view as opposed to a small-picture view. Reality is a big picture and we can never understand the parts without pulling back first to get a sense of the bigger picture. I think of the story of the five blind men who went out from their African village to see what was tramping around out there. They followed the source of sound and when they reached it each one tried to determine by touch what it was.

One came back to report it was a pillar; another that it was a wall; another that it was a sail; another that it was a rope; the last said it was a python hanging down from a tree. In fact, they were each describing parts of an elephant. With no grasp of the whole, they misconstrued the parts.

I’ve seen men turn their short sentences into life in prison over a two-dollar pack of smokes. Someone who owed it to them wouldn’t or couldn’t pay, so they tried to kill the man. That’s small-picture thinking, but again, it’s not unique to prisons. We all get caught up in small thinking, personally and socially.

When we ask ourselves questions like “how does this serve humanity?” or “how important will this be in 100 years?” we move toward the big picture and toward being a little wiser.

Do you live from the big picture? Do you have life intelligence — an understanding of and respect for the inner workings of reality? Reality being so big it’s hard to say how much I have of either of these in any objective sense, but I know this: I have more than I used to. It might be a pittance, but it’s a slightly larger pittance than I’ve had in the past. That’s enough.

If I Had A Wish

2008-01-05T17:08:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

If I had one wish, I wouldn’t spend it on world peace, or ending poverty or ending violence or any of a long list of other things that come up when we think about how our world could be better. No, if I had just one wish that I knew would come true I would wish for more wisdom on Earth. Even if it couldn’t happen right away, I would wish that human beings everywhere would begin to seek wisdom, to value it above all else in life and to encourage each other at every turn to seek it diligently.

I would wish for wisdom instead of any of these other good things because I know that, without wisdom, no other good thing can last. If we could somehow end all violence on Earth right now, for example, how long do you think it would last? The same is true of all other like examples. What the world needs most at this moment in history and what each and every one of us needs personally is more wisdom in our world.

Thinking about this led me down a trail of questions about wisdom. What exactly is it? How do we think about it personally and culturally? Where does it come from and why isn’t there more of it in our culture and in the world? Above all, if we believe that more wisdom is needed in our world, what can ordinary people like you and me do to bring that about?

As to this last question, I think we can do a lot. The first thing we can do is begin a dialog, start talking to each other and trying to be more wise in our own lives. I want to do both of these things and I encourage you to join me. If we can increase the wisdom on Earth by so much as a smidgen, the effort will be worth it. And I think we can manage a smidgen, can’t we?

Gouache by Troy Chapman

Christmas in Prison

2007-12-22T16:39:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Well it’s three days from Christmas and I thought I would share a glimpse of the holidays here. The snow, first of all, isn’t white and pretty and probably won’t be until well after Christmas day according to the forecast. It’s been warm (there’s actually fog this morning) and with all the foot traffic, the snow in the yard is a light dirty brown. I went out yesterday and spent a couple of hours concentrating on keeping my feet under me and staying upright.

I’ve been working on a Christmas concert for the men here in which a group of us performed 18 Christmas songs in various styles. I safety-pinned a big white ball of cotton, saved from aspirin and vitamin bottles, to the top of my blue stocking cap and sang, played guitar and harmonica, and everyone seemed to like the show.

Then yesterday, my bunkie and I spent $6 each to buy a meal for our room. We had corned beef and chili sandwiches, nacho chips and cream soda. This also served as a birthday celebration for one of my other roomies; he’s 50 this year and besides the meal we got him a Little Debbie fruit pie and put a match in the top of it and sang happy birthday to him. I got the same treatment on my birthday at the beginning of the month.

Last night, we got our Christmas bag, a bag of candy and chips and cookies bought by the prisoners’ collective fund. We spent the evening munching and trading various items back and forth, then — high on high-fructose corn syrup — we played bluegrass music on our guitars and mandolin, the latter of which my bunkie plays and is pretty good at.

As to what was under my tree this year, Maryann bought me a new color television to replace my old 12-inch black-and-white, which rolls and has lines through the picture on most channels. I haven’t gotten it yet because we order them from catalogs, but it will be nice when it gets here. I gave her a painting of her knitting, which I did from a photo she sent. The photo seemed to say “peace on earth” because that’s how she looked, very peaceful, working away with her needles, so I tried to capture that and emphasize it in the painting.

So this is a glimpse of Christmas in prison. (Which, by the way, is the name of a John Prine song, which is worth pulling up and listening to. In fact all of Prine’s stuff is delicious. Check him out if you don’t already listen to him.)

Anyway, all in all I’m thankful for the many blessings I have and am well aware that my situation doesn’t represent the situation for most prisoners in our country and around the world. There are a lot of things that are sad for me, like separation from family and the general spiritual craziness of this place, but I know many people, both prisoners and others around here, are suffering all kinds of hardships. So let’s keep them in our thoughts, lift up the soldiers and others caught in wars and away from their families. Just keep praying and working for peace on earth and good will to all. Bless you, all of you, who make my life in this season more meaningful.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Taking and Receiving

2007-12-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

There are some things that are known by us all, things we’ve never been taught and which perhaps are impossible to teach. I think that what I’ve been calling communion in these posts is one of these things.

As I've explored the idea of communion mentally, I don’t feel like it’s a thing I’m discovering except in the literal sense of "dis-covering." That’s more what it’s like — remembering something already known.

And as I've written about communion, I feel that the most I can do is remind you or call you to seek what you already know about it, so I've talked about the times I’ve rediscovered it and tried to keep track of what was happening in and around me as I have had these “openings,” as Quakers call them. But what are the ingredients, the prerequisites, to communion?

Einstein said when he worked on problems, he’d work to the point of exhaustion then give up, and he thought that both the working and the giving up were necessary. He would keep a pad of paper and pencil on the stand by his bed and would often wake in the night with the solution he couldn’t find earlier. The same thing happens when I can’t remember a name. If I just give up it won’t come to me, but if I keep pushing… it won’t come either. If I try and try then move on to something else, it pops into my mind.

This seems to be Spirit's preferred rhythm of communicating with us in all matters, and it’s the rhythm by which I often enter into communion and remember what I know about this state.

Communion is a process that calls me to move beyond myself, to see beyond the frustration of not being able to force things to happen on my own timetable, the frustration of feeling like it’s all a waste of time. It also forces me to receive rather than take this gift. If I could make it happen, I wouldn’t recognize grace, so Spirit is wise in this way.

I guess what I want to say is this: You know about communion. You possess the knowledge of it in the deepest part of yourself. Don’t feel abandoned when you try to see it and nothing happens. And if it’s dark, don’t think “what’s the point of trying to see?” The trying is a knock on the door of God’s house. But also wait after knocking and let Spirit invite you in.

So often, Spirit brings me gifts and I try to take them. They always turn to smoke when I do, so I’ll try to remember that communion certainly must be received and not taken.

Sketch by Troy Chapman

Happy Giving Thanks Day

2007-11-22T11:31:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

No, I’m not dyslexic. It’s just that turning things around sometimes helps me see them in a new and more meaningful way. What if it were Giving Thanks Day rather than Thanksgiving Day? Might it then be a day for thinking of creative ways to show our gratitude to Spirit, the earth and one another? There’s nothing wrong with our traditional ways of celebrating Thanksgiving but maybe this aspect of giving thanks could be added to it. In the interest of that here are some suggestions for giving thanks.

We can give thanks for having enough to eat by helping feed those who don’t. This can be done by donating to a food bank or in other, less orthodox ways. Buy an extra turkey and hand it off to a stranger at the grocery store, or put some money in a Thanksgiving card, write a note and give it to a stranger or leave it on the table in a restaurant. Be creative and if it feels uncomfortable do it anonymously or through a third party.

Give thanks to the earth by walking or riding a bike rather than driving, by recycling or conserving energy or go to catalogchoice.org and take a few minutes to read about and stop the avalanche of catalogs that companies send out every year. Or just go somewhere quiet in nature and say thank you.

Give thanks to the people in your life by making a thanksgiving list and emailing, posting or reading it at your family gathering, church or work. There are countless things that can be done if we think of Thanksgiving as Giving Thanks Day.

You can think of your own because I’m going to shut up now, take my own advice and write out a thanksgiving list.

Troy’s Thanksgiving List

There are too many people to name individually in this list but I am truly grateful for everyone who’s touched my life with your light and goodness. I don’t say this as often as I should, so let me say it here.

Thank you:

• To Maryann, for your love, friendship, wisdom and laughter, for “yes” and a “Freedom Scarf,” for poetry, and for being a person in whom the believer always wins the argument.

• To my mother, for your good love, for life and for a deep and abiding suspicion of conformity.

• To all my family for being survivors and still claiming me after all we’ve been through.

• To Rick and Ro for being a light in the world and for refusing to ever stop believing in goodness.

• To Dan and Charlotte for being good and crazy, in that order, for laughing with me and threatening me with bodily harm if I didn’t read the Harry Potter series.

• To Michael and Sharon for kindness, friendship, faith and humor, and despite the fact that you're now “’Sota People.”

• To Hubert and Marie-Laure for loving the world, for flying across an ocean to come to prison and for being the kind of people who make me want to stand taller and reach farther.

• To Nina for being a true healer, wise woman and gift bearer and for your enormous generosity; to Per and her sons for supporting and giving a bit of her to the rest of the world.

• To Doug for your compassion, basic decency and for serving Christ without wearing him on your sleeve (and for forgiving me when I called your Studebaker a Rambler).

• To Ted for turning life into art and for living the gratitude I’m talking about.

• To John for being an honest lawyer, for telling us the truth at every stage of this process and for just caring.

• To Carla, Lesley, Joanne, Jack, Bob and Janice and all those who support Maryann with your love and friendship. You are lights to me through her.

And last, but certainly not least,

• To all the Friends of Troy, supporters and visitors of Sacred Matters for the ongoing blessing you are in my life and for being a beneficial presence in the world. I thank you for walking in communion and for struggling daily to weave your joys, sorrows, trials, triumphs, hopes and dreams into a web of life in countless unheralded and unnoticed ways. Thank you for being a light in the world.

The Sunrise I Almost Didn’t See

2007-11-17T06:38:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I can see the sunrise partially from my north-facing window and it’s my habit to check on it each morning as I drink my coffee. It comes this morning in peaceful pastel pink, lighting all the clouds until they seem to burn from within.

As I watch, I note an absence of connection between myself and this beauty. This is a common experience for me and I know it by the fact that at other times I look and am deeply moved by beauty. I am healed by it, renewed, given back to myself in some unutterable way. So there are these two ways of meeting the world (because this does apply to all experiences).

For many years I didn’t know what determined whether I would have one kind of meeting or the other and thought that it was random. But as I began to examine it and meditate on it, an obvious thing occurred to me: the world out there isn’t at all different during these two types of encounters; the difference is in me. It’s as if sometimes I see from a shallow place in myself and other times from a deeper and wiser place. And I did indeed wander between these two places in a random sort of way, in an unconscious way.

But that was just it: the randomness of it was a result of my unconsciousness, just as a random sort of wandering results from sleepwalking or even walking with one’s eyes closed.

I’ve talked about this in the past as “wrong-relationship” and its counterpart as “right relationship.” Lately I’ve been thinking of it as being in or out of communion. Whatever we call it, it seems to me the important thing is to clearly see these two distinct ways of being and to ask what we can do to be in deeper communion in our lives. Because this is highly preferable to life out of communion.

Communion is a place from which deep peace flows like a river. Creativity, gentleness, humor, love and goodwill grow like flowers and shrubs and trees along the banks of this river. Joy comes like sunlight and breeze to rattle the leaves and ripple the surface of the water so that life seems to dance and laugh and wave its arms in the air.

It’s also a place where suffering can be met like a family member whose inner process is a mystery to us. “Why are they the way they are?” we ask, sometimes in frustration, sometimes in sadness, but in the end we remember that they are family and that we belong to each other. In communion, we meet life with humility and gratitude and kindness, with open arms and hands.

But when we step out of communion, we find our hands clenching into fists, our arms closing over our chests and our selves removed and hidden, replaced by some mechanical shell that goes through all the right motions but isn’t really there, isn’t really alive except in the biological sense.

I still experience both of these states but I’m trying now to learn this art of being in communion. It seems to me to be the very essence of our spiritual task, for what good are salvation, enlightenment, prosperity, holiness or any other spiritual holy grail if in the end we are essentially absent? Or, as Jesus asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

So I’m called to this above all else — to simply live in true communion with God, myself, others and nature. I watch the sun rise higher, the pink shifting subtly to lilac, the clouds drifting and changing shape so slowly they seem not to be moving at all. I find that I can’t talk myself into communion or get there by any other form of positive effort. The more I try, the more firmly entrenched my disconnection becomes. Yet when I give this up, and begin exerting a sort of negative effort, what Buddhists might call “non-effort,” by simply pulling up a silence from within myself and stepping into it, I find myself suddenly in communion.

By the time I remember this, the sun has risen high enough that the clouds have cooled to a blue-grey; this morning gift has almost passed. But as I turn away and pick up my pen and paper, and pause for a drink of coffee, I find I can still hear the river running through that silence. Just a great shushing, but clear and unmistakable if I stand still and turn my head in the right direction.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Communion

2007-11-11T09:16:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(continued from this post)

This was a life-changing moment: when I realized that wholeness was what I hungered for and that this hunger drove me — on the spiritual level — as surely as physical hunger drives me on that level.

We can say “I’m looking for God. I’m seeking peace. I’m trying to find happiness.” But all of these are different ways of saying “I want to be whole.”

When I came to this I realized there was nothing wrong with my desire; my instincts were good. The error lay not in the “what,” but the “how.” I see this all around me. I know a man who believes he can fulfill his wholeness-hunger by gambling, and so his whole life revolves around gambling; another believes that power over others will do it, so he works as a CO and wields his power fanatically, actually loves wielding it and is addicted to it the way some are addicted to drugs; prisoners who believe the same thing spend their lives in the weight pit and surround themselves with other tough guys who extend their power over others. Others believe that knowledge will make them whole, or money or pleasure. The list goes on.

The world is comprised of six billion souls desperately trying to feed this hunger. But amidst all the killing and consumption and craziness, many people are waking up. This is what happened to me and perhaps to you.

I woke up and realized that there’s only one way to be more whole, and that is together. It’s such an elegant solution. We need each other to be whole, and finding each other is as simple as switching from consumption-mind to communion-mind. The difference is a tiny internal shift.

We can approach all things with either of these two minds, consumption or communion. So I ask myself as often as I can remember, am I consuming or communing? Consuming is about “what can I get?” Communing is about “what can we experience?”

I am looking at the ash trees outside my window and the starlings fly in to cover the whole tree, replacing lost leaves before leaving again themselves. And if I can just remember to say “thank you,” it is enough to switch me from consumption to communion. I meet people all day, say hello, talk a bit, and I will consume them as objects in my world unless I stay awake and remember to ask the question, remember to truly meet them. This is communion, asking “what can we experience?”

And this is the bottom line: communion makes me more whole, consumption less so. Communion feeds me, consumption famishes me.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Meaning and Meaningfulness

2007-11-07T18:15:00.000-05:00

(continued from this post)

by Troy Chapman

The Empty Room
When I couldn’t bring myself to eat for several days after my arrest I was moved from my regular maximum security cell to a suicide watch room. It was an empty room in the bowels of the Kent County Jail. My clothes were taken away and the room, with its steel door, rock floor and cement-block walls, was always cold.

I sat on the floor in a blue paper gown and listened to the angry buzz of the fluorescent lights that were never turned off. I was as empty inside as the room itself. Long stretches of emptiness were broken by weeping. I wept in remorse, self pity, helpless frustration, self hatred and simple grief. I believed there was nothing left for me in this life and felt that I stayed only because I was afraid of leaving.

I had lost myself, and every possible path forward stretched under endless skies of meaninglessness. So I went backward instead, through the short years of my life, until I stood back in that field behind our house, the last place I remembered being whole.

I sat there in the paper gown, looking at the field through memory. I saw the red house Uncle Wayne had built and rented to us, the junk cars in the yard. I saw the violence and chaos of my life in the intervening years, and I raced between the empty room in the jail and back again to the field.

The spirit-voice that I heard in the field as a boy, 15 years and 70 miles away, still whispered here in this jail cell. As I strained again to hear it, I heard things it would take me years to translate and unravel.

Listen.

God created me and put me down in this garden of wholeness. I lived here for awhile before eating the fruit of separation and in that moment…

I saw my child-self drop the red-purple sumac; I watched as the boy I was broke apart and began to disperse like those velvety seeds. My soul flew out of the garden, in every direction. I saw now what was invisible then: the pieces of my broken self went out into all creation and billions of broken pieces came racing back to me in a great exchange. These pieces weren’t me, but rather unfamiliar bits that didn’t belong to me nor even to each other.

Why, I cried. Why must we be broken, separated from ourselves and mixed up amongst one another? Out of the silence came this strange answer: You are broken and sent out into the world so you can meet yourself. You carry within yourself a missing part of everyone you will ever encounter. And they carry within themselves a missing part of you. Go and return what belongs to them; receive what belongs to you and re-member yourselves together.

***

So I took up my brokenness and came out of the empty room in the jail. As I went back to my maximum security cell to await my trial, my conviction and my transportation from there to prison, I had no clarity about what I’d heard there in that room. Nor did I leave with renewed hope or anything of the kind. But I knew I’d heard something that changed things fundamentally for me. I knew I was done with the empty room.

Meeting Myself
Over the years, the translation above has emerged with bright clarity and I have turned with more and more certainty to the task of finding and learning to see myself in my dispersed self’s many disguises. I have met myself angry and sick and hurt and twisted and lost and arrogant and violent and hungry and dreaming and scared. I’ve found myself hiding, fighting, old and young, black, brown, red, yellow and white. I’ve watched myself turn away or even lash out as I approached. But I’ve also found myself reaching out in kindness and with great courage, searching for me, longing for the very meeting I longed for.

I’ve met these others in countless sacred ceremonies that pass unnoticed because they look like ordinary life. We stand before each other and exchange these pieces of ourselves, each feeling deep gratitude to the other for the way they carried and cared for that part of us until it could be safely returned.

And here’s the meaning and meaningfulness of my life: It’s the everyday living of this strange mystery, this sacred knowledge. Pieces of me are hidden within everyone and everything I will ever encounter in life, and true love — i.e., returning to them a piece of themselves — is the only way to call forth the piece of myself that I need to be whole.

The art of learning to recognize these meetings and make the exchange is, for me, the sacred work. If I never figure out anything else, a life spent in commitment to this work will be enough.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Some Things I’ve Heard

2007-11-04T11:18:00.000-05:00

Notes on Living Meaningfully

by Troy Chapman

I have an image of myself standing in a Michigan field, the smell and stain of wild strawberries on my lips and fingers. I’ve moved on from the strawberries, which lay alongside the footpath that runs between our house and Uncle Wayne’s and Aunt Mable’s. I’m inspecting a plant with deep red-purple tops that feel like velvet when I crumble them in my hand. My bare feet are planted in the warm, sandy earth, the wind flows over my skin like warm water and spirit rises up from every atom of the world to speak my name.

I feel it there at the edge of consciousness, like someone watching me. I simply listen, not alarmed or even surprised, but only wanting to hear and learn this mysterious language, to step into the arms that are open in it.

Life, in that moment, was infinitely meaningful. Indeed, it was so full of profound meaning that it hurt me in my chest not to be able to draw it all into myself, or run forward and be completely absorbed by it.

This wasn’t an isolated experience. I grew up semi-wild in a rural area where open fields and large tracts of wooded areas were my backyard. And as I ran loose in those early years there was an almost constant sense of this presence. Then, over time, it began to fade, and with it the sense of meaningfulness and connection.

I entered into a long period of darkness and disconnection that left me untethered, orphaned. I began grasping for meaning in things like drugs and alcohol that ultimately took me further from it. Disconnection became desperation and finally despair as I spun further and further from the center I’d once known. Then it all ended one November night in a central Michigan tavern where I took a man’s life.

This happened when I was 20 years old. I’m nearly 44 now and writing these words from a prison cell in northern Michigan. It’s the beginning of November and nearing the 23rd anniversary of this crime.

I’ve spent these years trying to find my way back to the connection I somehow lost, to that sense of communion I felt in the early years. This hasn’t been a journey back to childhood, though the strong memory of what I experienced then has kept me going through the bleakest of times. But I learned early on that the way back was forward and I’ve sought an adult version of this communion rather than try to recreate something that belonged to an earlier time. I have changed and carry with me the knowledge of my own crime, of human cruelty in general and of suffering that makes the return to meaningfulness not more difficult but in ways more complex.

Yet, as I travel in search of it, I’m learning to listen again. This upcoming series of essays is a collection of “things I’ve heard.” It’s not a map or a secret formula for success, either material or spiritual. Every person’s journey is unique, so I don’t believe in formulas, or shortcuts for that matter. Nor do I know anything about arriving. What’s real to me is the journey and traveling well. The teachings and observations I want to share have served me on my journey, deepened my life, cast a little extra light on my path or helped me make it through some difficult bit of terrain.

They have come to me sometimes as arrows scratched on canyon walls that have helped me find my way back to higher ground. Other times I’ve been desperately searching for arrows and have found only mysterious painted outlines of human hands. When I come upon these outlines I reach up and put my own hand inside them and sense a message more important than which way to go: namely, that someone has passed this way before me.

The upcoming essays in this blog will be partly arrows and partly hands. May each serve you on your journey and, if we never meet along the way, I’ll see you when we get there.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Life Speaks

2007-10-28T07:43:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I believe “the truth is out there,” as they used to say on the old X Files series. Of course so is the beauty and the peace and the good and the right. For me, these things are real and they are present. Not somewhere else or sometime else. They are here now; they are “reality.”

Then there is our perception of reality. These are two different things. Reality is what it is, but our perception is always shifting. Sometimes it’s clear and accurate, often it’s not. When it’s not, we say, “The world is confusing. Things are not clear.” We say this because we mistake our perception of reality for reality itself.

Reality is perfectly clear. What we should say is, “My perception is unclear right now, I’m not seeing well.” That way we would focus on fixing our perception when “things are not clear,” rather than getting frustrated or angry with life.

This is why conscious listening is important. The problem, whatever it is, isn’t out there, it’s in here. Life never stops speaking peace to us, nor love, happiness, hope, humor and wisdom. It’s speaking but we have the TV or the headphones or our own constant inner babble drowning it out. “Speak up!” we scream, but life for the most part won’t shout about these things. It simply keeps speaking quietly and tells us, “If you want to hear, quiet down.”

This is the first thing we need to know about listening. It’s us that need to do it. It’s us that need to change our ways. In relationships with others, we argue and accuse the other of being in the wrong. This seems right when we listen only on one level, but when we begin to really listen we always find that they are speaking the truth on some level. They’re telling us something we need to hear. When we hear it, sometimes we have to tell it back to the other because they didn’t even know that is what they were saying. But they often recognize it when they hear it and healing occurs. Life speaks solutions when we listen.

Life also speaks our dreams. It remembers what we forget about ourselves and whispers it to us all the days of our lives. It tells us, “Remember? This is what you want to be. This is how you want to spend your life.” Mostly we don’t hear, and all the insanity of the world arises from this deafness. When we listen, we’re healed, made whole again, given back our power. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been deaf. Life never stops speaking these things. As soon as we listen we hear them.

It speaks our values too. This is what you care about, it says. When you stop listening to all the bells and whistles, all the experts telling you what you ought to care about to be cool or normal or well-thought-of. Life is smart about these things; it’s a wise old spirit. It knows some things, as they say.

And how do we know if we’re listening? There is a test. On this level, life begins every sentence with “compassion.” I know I’m listening when this word, this energy, washes over me and through me, wiping out fear and craziness like a wave wipes out footprints on a beach. When I hear this sound of compassion in my heart, I try to keep very still and listen closely because I know there are good things coming. Life is getting ready to speak.

So Say the Trees

2007-10-15T18:45:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

It’s my favorite time of year as the earth prepares for winter here in the north. The skies are grey, the pumpkins are out and the trees are talking in bright colors about circles and cycles. They tell me to look at my life and ask if it’s time to let go of anything.

This morning I woke with my old familiar free-floating shame and self-abusing dialog. It roved about my mind looking for some action or comment to attach itself to, anything to condemn me with. I thought about the work we’re doing to ask for my release from prison. Where does this self-condemnation fit into the journey ahead? Will it help me serve life? Will it help me be a more beneficial presence as I move forward?

The wind has been blowing and rattling the maples and bright orange leaves are jumping from the trees to ride the wind away, their purpose served. Rain has been falling on the white ash and in the morning they each have a big circle of slim yellow leaves at their base. They stand there skeletally, willing to be in between what they’ve been and what they’re becoming.

They tell me this takes courage, that we too often fail to grow because we’re afraid of being in between, and we hang on to old leaves.

And as they speak, the wind comes and the inner dialog of tearing myself down rides it away. The rain comes — good, cold autumn rain — and I find myself stepping out of a circle of stuff I no longer need, ready to be in between for awhile. In between who I’ve been and who I’ll be later. In between what worked for awhile or served its purpose but is no longer helpful. In between comforts, familiarities. It’s a good time for being in between, for getting ready to move to another place on the circle.

So say the trees and the squirrels agree. They’ve dropped their summer playfulness and have become very serious in their gathering and storing and watching the sky. So say the seagulls as they begin disappearing for long stretches, heading back to their islands and one of the big lakes where I think they spend their winters. Even the skunk that’s been squeezing under the fence and sniffing its way to the dumpster out behind the kitchen every morning concurs. Where do skunks go in the winter, by the way? I don’t remember seeing them and can’t imagine nature leaving that black target out on a blanket of white, despite the good defense of their spray.

Anyway, they’re all talking and I’m listening.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Listening

2007-10-07T06:58:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Well, this is the last month of our Year in Spirit conversation and I think I want to talk about listening. Everyone and everything in life has a story to tell, each in its own beautiful language, and listening is a call for service to life as well as to ourselves.

We can listen to nature and learn how to be more deeply connected and how to live in good ways with the earth. We can listen to animals and learn about simplicity and courage. We can listen to each other and learn that we’re not alone.

I’ve noticed in my busyness that I often send out the message, “Don’t bother me right now. I haven’t got time for it.” And sometimes it seems people are just aching to tell me things and I feel like I’m missing something important.

So I want to practice listening this month. I’ll say to the world, “Tell me something about yourself. A memory, a story, something you believe in, or something you love.” And I’ll share the stories I hear.

But I also want to direct this question to you: Tell me something about yourself or a story you heard from life.

The God Who Bows Before Us

2007-09-15T19:55:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

One way to appreciate anything more fully is to see it through God’s eyes. This is true of ourselves as well. The trouble is we’ve been told a lot of stuff about God that isn’t true. One of the most destructive of these untruths is that God is an angry, authoritarian perfectionist. This God sees our every flaw and sin. Not only does he see but he shakes his finger, hardens his heart against us and loves us less every time we mess up. He sees every imperfection and keeps an eternal record of it to condemn us with later. This isn’t only untrue, it’s 180 degrees from the truth and a slander of God.

The truth is, God loves you. I know, that’s a cliché. But stop for a minute and separate this fact from all the religious junk that’s been attached to it. God loves you. He adores you. The scripture tells us that love keeps no record of wrongs. If God is a police officer, as many would like us to think, then we’re talking about a kind and gentle officer who always gives us a break, not the kind that delights in catching us wrong and dragging us to jail.

God sees more good in you than you can even see in yourself. Human beings find it difficult to even imagine the kind of love I’m talking about here. This will shock some people, but I’m going to say it anyway: God worships the ground you walk on.

Imagine this: God, bowing before you in love as if you were lord and God your servant. Blasphemy? Read the beginning of John 13, where the story is told of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Simon Peter reacted to this as most of us do when God bows before us. We say, “No! No way, get up from there. You can’t wash my feet.” But Jesus insists, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” Not because the disciples were dirty and had to be cleansed before Jesus could accept them. He’d been walking all over the Holy Land with them, dirty feet and all. No, it was because the only thing that could separate them (and us) from the love of God is a refusal to accept that love.

To see ourselves through God’s eyes is to see ourselves as most of us never have in our lives. There’s so much fear in our world and many are afraid even of what I’m saying here. We believe thinking this highly of ourselves will lead to arrogance and make us blind to our own faults, our own evil. So we project our fears onto God and recreate God in our own image as an angry tyrant. But arrogance and evil don’t come from love or from seeing ourselves through the eyes of love as beautiful. No, arrogance and evil come from hiding ourselves from that kind of love, from refusing to accept or believe in it. Love is a light and it calls us into itself. We don’t need to be afraid of seeing ourselves as God sees us, and we don’t need to lie or believe the lies told about how God truly sees us.

We need more than anything else on earth to embrace this love, this truth about God and about ourselves. When we do we will begin to bow before one another as Jesus suggested after he washed the disciples' feet: “I set an example and you should do for each other what I have done for you.”

When we see who we truly are — who God thinks we are — we don’t become arrogant or egocentric. We become feet-washers. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Reject the lies you’ve been told about God. Understand that the creator of the universe loves you unconditionally; nothing you do, think, say or feel can reduce that love by so much as a microgram. Nothing. It’s there and it will be there for eternity. It kisses the ground behind you; it dances with joy in front of you; it rushes in between your head and your pillow as you lay down at night and adores you when you wake up in the morning. It is ever before you — embarrassingly so — warm, wet rag and dry towel in hand, asking “May I wash your feet, my beloved?”

To say yes is to have the universe turned upside down and to have everything we believe about ourselves broken up like spiritual congestion so suddenly we can breathe again — deeply, and all the way down in our belly, instead of those short, shallow breaths we’ve come to accept as normal. Just thinking about it is like looking over a cliff and feeling your stomach flip. Actually saying yes is like jumping off that cliff with your arms flung wide and learning you were made to fly.

So, how do you answer the God who wants to wash your feet? Do you have the faith to accept this God’s judgment of you as incomprehensibly beautiful?

Painting by Troy Chapman

Fault-Finders and Appreciators

2007-09-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

There are two kinds of seeing in the world, two modes of looking at everything. The first is fault-finding mode. When we’re in this mode, all we look for are the flaws, sins and imperfections of people, situations and the world. Our eyes are tuned to the “what’s-wrong frequency.” The second is appreciation mode. In this mode we see flaws and imperfections but we’re not obsessed with them; we’re looking for something to appreciate and keeping our eyes tuned to the “what’s-good frequency.”

I’ve had friends of both persuasions and I can tell you the appreciators are a lot easier to be around than the fault-finders. Fault-finders are generally not too happy — self-satisfied, often, but seldom truly happy. And joy doesn’t exactly follow them around either.

Appreciators, on the other hand, are generally happy — they feed on appreciation, after all — and joy follows them around like the scent of lilacs.

We’ve all met both kind of seers in the world. We deal with them every day in countless different roles. Think about your experience with these two kinds of people for a minute and ask yourself this question: what kind of friend do you want to be to yourself?

We know that fault-finding is toxic to the people who do it and those to whom it’s done. We know, just as well, that appreciation is nourishing to both the people who practice it and the people it’s directed at. So if we practice either one of these within ourselves, we get a double dose of the fruit. If we choose fault-finding, we make ourselves sick by being a fault-finder and being a victim of a fault-finder.

If we choose appreciation, we heal ourselves by its practice and by virtue of being appreciated. To appreciate is simply to be aware of, to value and be thankful for. Not that difficult, really. Practicing it, however, is a choice and habit. Make the choice and follow it through and the habit will follow.

Here’s what I’ve found as I’ve tried to practice this: If I’m in a funk, depressed, angry, wallowing, it’s a red flag telling me I’ve shifted to fault-finding mode. These are always connected just as appreciation and contentment are connected. Indeed, appreciation is key to contentment, to well-being.

Deciding how we want to look at ourselves — as appreciators or fault-finders — is the same as deciding to be well or ill. We need to be a friend to ourselves, and a good friend, not one who’s constantly pointing out flaws we already know about. It’s something I’ve been striving to accomplish for years and still struggle with daily. I guess I’m making progress though, because now, instead of pointing out to myself daily that I still haven’t mastered it, I get up most days with an appreciation for my effort and tenacity, if nothing else. I’m still here and so are you. That’s worth appreciating.

Sketch by Troy Chapman

Self Appreciation

2007-09-03T18:53:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

It’s taken me a long time to come around to anything near appreciation of myself. Even now, at 43, it comes and goes. There are times I see myself from a certain angle, when the light’s just right, and feel a sense of gratitude for who I am. Then I blink and all my flaws are not only visible, but magnified until they’re all I can see. And so it goes in this, our most intimate relationship in life.

We don’t often think of our inner process as relationship, of ourselves as being in relationship with ourselves. But this is how I’ve come to think about it. This is because there is never just one of me but always (at least) two. This is the nature of self — the ability to be the observer and the observed at the same time. The result is relationship.

And as we know there are two kinds of relationship: that which is healthy and that which is unhealthy. And as I’ve learned from other relationships, the healthy variety begins with appreciation. This applies as well to our relationship with ourselves.

So this month I want to talk about appreciating ourselves — what it is and how we can practice it without getting caught up in all of the silliness that’s come out of the pop psychology movement around this issue. I don’t want to talk about “self affirmation” or improving our “self image” but simply self appreciation. We’ll see where it goes.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Awakening

2007-08-31T20:39:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

A baby stares for hours at the mobile over his bed.
The movement color and flashing light entrance him
until suddenly
he sees the brace holding the mobile to the crib
he follows the brace traces the bars
to the leg of the bed and down the leg
to the floor around the room
round and round and out the door
down the stairs flying now through rooms
and space and light and smell and sound
then out
and up up up
to see hills fields rivers continents oceans
unfolding and receding
then round and round the earth
and up again through planets stars
black holes and quasars
galaxies and universes
until he stops

to look back and see himself
still staring at the mobile
reaching out smiling contentedly
and understands
we must leave ourselves to see ourselves clearly
we must come apart to become more whole
we must lose our life to find it.

Creative Reframing

2007-08-22T18:27:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

When we look at the world around us, we think that’s what we’re seeing: the world. In truth, we’re seeing little framed packets of the world because the human mind is like a frame shop and is constantly framing up pieces of reality and hanging them on its inner walls. We get so used to seeing these framed pictures that we eventually just accept them as reality. But if we remember they’re really framed pictures, we understand that we can reframe them any time we choose and in so doing open up a whole new way of seeing the world. We suddenly see something we’ve been looking at forever in an entirely new light.

Consider this statement by a scientist working on the Human Genome Project: “In one sense, genetic research is a gene’s way of looking at itself.”

Wow. That's like an explosion inside the mind. Genes have become self conscious by mutating until coming up with this thing we think of as "the brain.” This brain wants to know where it came from and investigates its origins all the way back to genes. Genes are now looking at themselves. That’s reframing.

Or consider a political science teacher I had many years ago who asked us on the first day of class what we thought caused the American Civil War. We gave all the usual answers — slavery, the dispute over federal authority vs. states’ rights, etc. And after awhile he wrote a single word on the board: glaciers. We all stared at it stupidly until he explained that glaciers once came all the way down to the Mason-Dixon Line, depositing rich topsoil that allowed the North to grow on an acre what took 10 in the South, making a huge labor force necessary in the South and leading to the practice of slavery. So, ultimately, glaciers caused the Civil War. We all got a lesson that day in the complexity of cause and effect.

We can reframe anything by shifting our perspective. The genetic researcher shifted perspective by looking at his work from the gene’s point of view; the political science teacher did it by looking at a bigger chunk of time. We can look at relationships, situations and ourselves from another’s perspective, from God’s perspective, from the past or the future perspective, or even from the perspective of plants, animals, genes and microorganisms. It’s one of the greatest gifts we possess and, strangely, probably one of the least used by most of us.

Look at life from the perspective of spirit and suddenly we see that we are spirit in human form. Trees are spirit in tree form. Mothers in law are spirit in mother-in-law form. And George Bush is spirit in George-Bush form. Maybe we’re all just God’s way of seeing himself from billions of different places and through billions of different eyes. We see this possibility by reframing.

All the great advancements and inventions of history have been the result of creative reframing. When Einstein saw time and space as one and the same thing, he revolutionized science. But it’s also a very practical thing. When I saw myself as a man in prison rather than a prisoner, it changed my life. When I had the thought that justice is giving people what they need rather than what they deserve, it transformed my relationship with the world.

So, ask yourself some creative questions. Questions that shake up what you think you know; turn things around, upside down and inside out, then put them back together in new ways. You might be surprised at how malleable the world really is and how willing we are to just accept what we’ve been told about it. It’s your wall, and you don’t have to hang mass-produced prints on it. With the coin of curiosity you can buy one-of-a-kind originals and life will be a hell of a lot more interesting for the purchase.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Preemptive Creativity

2007-08-14T17:43:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The world, as far as humans are concerned, is made up of categories and types, of large groupings and classes. This is how our minds work on one level. The work of creativity is to disrupt this process, to scramble our habitual categories and rearrange them differently — to put things together in new ways and thus see them in new ways.

One broad category we apply to the world, for example, is likes and dislikes. Most of us divide the world up this way: things I don’t like and things I like. There are a couple of ways to shake this up with creativity. The first is to simply make a list of 10 things we like and 10 things we don’t like, then switch them around and pretend the don’t-like list is the do-like list. I couldn’t care less about sports but I love playing music, so I would switch these two for a week and replace the time I would normally spend playing guitar with watching games and talking scores and yelling at the TV.

We can do this with food, people, activities or any number of things. The idea is to do 10 things (or even one thing for that matter) we would normally avoid to treat them as something we like doing. So we’re not doing them with a “this is stupid” attitude, but really trying to be like the people who love this thing, whatever it is.

Another way to shake up our like/dislike way of seeing the world is to get rid of it completely and come up with another way of categorizing the world. We can replace it, for example with “things that will teach me something new” and “things that won’t teach me something new.” Then instead of asking “do I like or dislike this or that” we ask “will it teach me anything?” Or we can organize the world in terms of “things that wake me up” and “things that put me to sleep,” spiritually speaking, and do only those things that wake us up. Or go with “familiar/unfamiliar” and focus on doing things that are unfamiliar. If you shower first thing in the morning then have coffee, switch it around, or take your coffee outside or turn on music instead of the news. Drive to work by a different route or go to a flea market instead of the opera. The possibilities are endless.

What’s the point of all this? Simply to keep our lives from becoming spiritual clichés. Clichés start out as meaningful truths, but after awhile the truth is lost and just the empty words are left. It’s the same with life. Things that start out as meaningful activities lose their meaning with repetition and become empty habits. If we’re not careful our whole lives can become empty habits, and taking some pre-emptive creative action disrupts that. Like finding a new way to phrase the truth of an old cliché, it gives us the access to the truth and meaning we might have lost.

Beyond that, creativity makes us more flexible, more pliable, which translates into spiritual resiliency. When we engage in creativity as a spiritual practice, it makes us quicker on our feet when life throws us one of its curveballs. It’s the reason for all practice: to be ready for the real thing. Life is creative, so practicing creativity makes us more adept at life.

Of course habit serves us too in the efficiency department. If we got rid of all our habitual behavior we probably wouldn’t get much done. It’s about balance, so I’m not suggesting we disrupt our whole lives here. If we just do one small thing a day in a creative way (i.e., in a way that we’re not used to doing it) we’ll feel more awake and alive as a result.

So, rearrange something. Shake yourself up a little. Your spirit will thank you.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Creativity and Spirituality

2007-08-06T19:08:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

We know that certain endeavors, such as painting, writing and other arts, demand creativity and we wouldn’t think much of an artist who didn’t possess and develop this faculty. Yet we often don’t think of creativity as essential to living a spiritual life. In my opinion it is doubly so.

I think it’s impossible to walk a true spiritual path and not be creative. It takes creativity to stand before the mystery and to practice reverence, but also to live our spirituality in the day-to-day world. The simple act of living up to our own spiritual values when the kids are screaming, when someone cuts us off in traffic or when a bureaucrat is rude to us demands creativity.

I’m committed, for instance, to nonviolence and respect and consider them spiritual values. But how do I practice respect and nonviolence (in thought as well as deed) when someone steals from me or mistreats me in some other way? What do I do with thoughts of vengeance and ill-wishing? If I’m not creative, I simply follow these thoughts because they are certainly the path of least resistance and I can pull out all the same old justifications, so I don’t need to think much there. But if I want to do something different than the same old thing, I need to be creative if I’m going to manage it.

The same is true internally. How do I find ways to stop shaming myself? To recognize my own value and stop undermining or beating myself up after the fact? Creativity is about breaking up rigid thinking, which is precisely what’s demanded for the above path.

Creativity is to spirituality what water is to a river: Take it away and you’ve got a giant rut. So this month I want to explore various aspects of creativity in relation to spirituality.

I’ll leave you with the words of one of the most creative thinkers I know of, Rumi:

A baby pigeon stands on the edge of a nest all day.
Then he hears a whistle, Come to me.
How could he not fly toward that?
Wings tear through the body's robe when
a letter arrives that says,
"You've flapped and fluttered against limits
long enough.

You've been a bird without wings
in a house without doors or windows.

Compassion builds a door.
Restlessness cuts a key.

Ask. Step off into air like a baby pigeon.
Strut proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.

Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup."

Painting by Troy Chapman

Pledging Allegiance

2007-07-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The other day I saw the doctor here. I’d had another 10-pound weight drop and when the nurse noted it she was concerned and made the appointment. When I talked to the doctor, however, he refused to discuss this or any other problems I was having. As far as he was concerned, I was there only for my “chronic care” appointment, which is a quarterly checkup they keep me on because I have a heart murmur and an irregular heartbeat. When I told him I thought the weight loss was connected to some chronic infection he said, “I’m not concerned about that.” When I told him I thought I had an ear infection as part of this systemic thing, he looked annoyed and said, “I’m not supposed to do this…” then picked up the little light, looked in my ears and said they had wax in them.

Thinking about this later, I understood that it was an expression of his allegiance. This man defines himself as a doctor, but certainly not as a healer. And even his definition of himself as a doctor is qualified. He is a corporate doctor, and by this definition his first allegiance is not to his patient, nor to healing as an art but to the corporate prison medical system and the profit margin.

We all have various roles that define us in life, but the clincher, the thing that locks it all into a certain pattern, is what we put first and swear our greatest allegiance to.

This doctor, for instance, is human, white, male, a doctor, an American, a corporate medical system employee, maybe a Christian or an atheist, etc. If he puts his whiteness first, all these other things lock into a certain pattern. We get different patterns if he puts his humanness, his maleness, his American-ness, or his religion first. In this case, from what I observed, he’s put his status as a corporate healthcare worker first and everything else comes second to that.

I’ve been a prisoner all of my adult life and this might seem like a big part of who I am. But in my mind, it’s not. Neither is the fact that I’m white, American, male, rural or Christian. None of these things come first on my list of allegiances because I’ve chosen to put “human” and “healer” up there at the top. This changes everything that comes after it. My Christianity, for example, is a path I follow as a human being and a healer. Neither am I a prisoner, but rather a human being and a healer who happens to reside in prison. My status as prisoner is defined by what I put first, what I give my first allegiance to.

The crazy thing about this is that no one can stop us from defining ourselves however we choose in spiritual terms. Many people want me to be a prisoner and a murderer above all else and they try hard to stick that label on me. Others want me to define myself as a Christian first, and some talk to me about how Islam and other religions are wrong and are “out to get” us. They talk about our obligation as Christians to advance Christianity. Racists want me to be white first; many Americans want me to be American first; many liberals want me to be liberal first. Mostly this isn’t because they care about me and other people but because they care about their cause and want to use me to increase their body count and their power. But all I have to do is say, “No thank you, I’m a human and a healer first.”

It’s a simple act that has radically transformed my life. It determines how I treat other people, how I think about the world, how I approach problems and conflicts, and how I choose to spend my time from day to day.

And this has nothing to do with competence or ability. There are many people who are better humans and better healers than I am if such comparisons make any sense in the first place. But that’s not the point. These things are not about external performance but internal focus. They’re about what I’m pursuing, the idea I’ve set up for myself.

I say this because some people might think I’m claiming some special ability or calling. Or they may look at themselves and say, “I have no ability as a healer so that must not be who I am.” But this isn’t right thinking. To me, saying, “I am a healer” means that I choose to stumble down a path where half the time I don’t have a clue. This definition of myself just tells me what questions to ask, what general direction to head in. After that, it’s about doing the best I can, figuring it out as I go. I only know that this is what I value and what I want more of in the world, so I am taking Rumi’s advice and trying to be what I love.

I look around and ask myself what if prison guards define themselves first as healers and second as correctional employees. What if prosecutors, prisoners, businessmen and -women, medical professionals, lawyers, judges, teachers, writers, musicians, TV producers and blue collar workers, Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Muslims, all did the same and put “healer” in front of whatever else they do and are?

I’ll leave you with that question. And this one: of all the roles in your life, what do you really put first? What do you swear first allegiance to and does this actively reflect your highest values?

Painting by Troy Chapman

Defining Ourselves as Healers

2007-07-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Nature hates a vacuum and this is true spiritually as well as physically. Suck the air out of a container and whatever happens to be around it will rush in to fill up the vacuum. Failing to actively define ourselves creates the same sort of vacuum with the same result: whatever happens to be around us will rush in to fill up the empty space.

I don’t believe most people consciously choose to be consumers or fashion addicts. Yet when they fail to consciously choose to be something else they often become these things because that’s what’s around them. We just came through a period when “gangsta culture” was the big in-thing. Gangs and inner city youth (and later, suburban wannabes) were suddenly walking around with their pants hanging below their buttocks, gaudy gold jewelry around their necks, their shoes untied and too often pistols hidden on their persons. This was no more a conscious choice than the preppie trend was. It was empty vessels, sucking in whatever happened to be around them.

When 9/11 occurred, George Bush easily defined millions of Americans as angry avengers. Why was it so easy? Has the propaganda industry gotten so good at what it does that no one can resist it? Or were we a nation of empty vessels? The people who rejected this definition were people who had already consciously chosen to define themselves in some other way.

In prison I see prisoners who allow themselves to be defined by the system as scammers and schemers. And their lives become a game to see if they can steal an extra pop from the chow line, sneak somewhere they’re not supposed to be or pull some scheme without getting caught. Or they allow the prisoner culture to define them and end up stabbing someone over a two dollar debt to prove they’re tough.

All of these examples convinced me of the enormous importance of consciously defining ourselves. It’s one of the fundamental duties of being human.

We’re not talking here about defining ourselves in physical or social terms — whether to be a CEO or a lawyer, etc. These things are what we do for a living. We’re talking here about defining ourselves spiritually. Whether we end up delivering pizzas or being president we still have to choose who we will be spiritually. And in this category, there are really only two choices: those who serve life and those who serve some lesser agenda. The lesser agendas are everything from one’s self to one’s religion, nation, ideology or race. They’re all ultimately some form of selfishness.

To serve life is to say the world and all people are my people and my first allegiance goes to them all. This is ultimately some form of setting aside self-service for life-service. These people take no side in any situation but the side of life. In the end they find themselves defined as healers, because in the end this is what life needs most right now. It doesn’t need one side or another to win; it doesn’t need Christians or Muslims to come out on top; white hats to stamp down black hats. It needs love to emerge as the victor on a global scale.

So here’s a question. Do you define yourself as a healer? Or are you playing some other role? What reflects your deepest values? And what is the truest reflection of what you love?

Next time we’ll talk about what this means on a day-to-day basis. Until then, peace.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Choose Your Label

2007-07-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Walking the yard today I heard one prisoner yelling at another, “Baby raper! Baby raper!” He was following the man across the yard and every so often he would call the prisoner’s name and shout out “Baby raper!” again. As I listened I thought about another prisoner I know who offers counseling to prisoners convicted of sex crimes, spending a couple of hours per prisoner several times each week on the yard.

I pondered the two roles fulfilled by these men and wondered what had brought them to these different places. It occurred to me that it was about how each had defined himself. The first man defined himself as an avenger, the second as a healer.

Later, as I continued to mull this over, I realized how life-changing it had been for me when I realized I have the power to define myself. I had lived the first 20 years of my life as a slave to inherited definitions of myself, labels others had stuck on me and I’d internalized. I was a victim, a villain, an activist, and even an extra at various times in my life. I had no idea that I could say yes or no to these labels. The moment I realized I possessed this power my life shifted into transformative mode and has remained in this mode for more than two decades. I had discovered one of the greatest powers possessed by any human being: the power to define myself.

If I had to guess, I would say the first man I mentioned above, the one who saw himself as an avenger and a punisher, hadn’t consciously chosen this role for himself. It’s likely a secondhand self image he’s picked up somewhere in life, probably from other righteous abusers, as I think of them. I would bet that, like me years ago, he is unaware of the power he possesses — the power to consciously choose his own role in life.

Sadly, this seems to be widely true of humanity, so I want to spend this month talking about this enormous power, about how to consciously choose to define ourselves in accordance with our own personal values.

Sketch by Troy Chapman

Sacred Matters Given a Thumbs Up

2007-06-26T16:24:00.000-05:00

by Maryann Gorman

I'm happy to tell you that Sacred Matters has been added to some pretty wonderful company on Sid Leavitt's blogroll at Readers and Writers Blog. Sid is a retired journalist and lover of good writing who lists well-written blogs and writes great essays about them. Thank you, Sid. Everybody who is interested in good writing would do well to check out the other blogs on Sid's list.

In other news, I just returned from visiting Troy with two dear friends who met him for the first time, and he is doing well. He is grateful to all of you who have offered to write letters of support for him. In case you missed it, there's a post over at Friends of Troy about the fact that now is the time to write letters of support to be sent to the Michigan Parole Board via our lawyer. Details on what you can write and where you can send your letter are here and here.

Three Keys to Suffering Well

2007-06-16T07:26:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

There are two kinds of suffering in life. The first is caused by life itself. This suffering is unavoidable, but life is a dance and whenever anything happens to us — including suffering — we’re called upon to respond. This is where the second kind of suffering comes in. It’s the suffering we cause ourselves by responding in destructive ways to the suffering of life. This suffering is completely avoidable.

I’ve learned this from my own life. As a young man I had a lot of problems and was hurting in many ways. I responded to my pain in very destructive ways that led to more and more suffering for me and others in the world. I was sent to prison, which was another source of suffering to which I was called to respond. Looking back, I decided I didn’t want to repeat the same process that had brought me here and began looking for ways to respond to the pain of prison that wouldn’t lead to yet more of the same. I’ve learned to respond to the suffering of prison in healthy rather than unhealthy ways and this is one of the most important skills I’ve acquired in life. Here are three of the ways I’ve learned to respond to suffering so as not to compound it.

1. Accept suffering as part of being human. We’ve been sold the idea that suffering “shouldn’t” happen. That it’s an injustice and an outrage. This idea has been one of my worst enemies as I’ve faced suffering in my life. It leads to a war mentality that unfolds in our internal dialogue, our thinking and our behavior in the world, and always causes more suffering.

Yet many of us have a problem with the idea of accepting suffering. I did for many years, then I drew a distinction between acceptance and resignation. I had been confusing these two. Acceptance simply means facing the reality of what is, and not getting into “shoulds” and “oughts” about it. We can accept a thing without resigning ourselves to it. When we accept something we are completely free to work at changing it if we feel we want it to be different in the future. Indeed, efforts to change things are always more effective when we accept them first as they are.

Resignation, on the other hand, is a refusal to accept combined with a belief that things will never change. It’s an abandonment of hope that creates perpetual anger at life and leads to more suffering as surely as waging war does. Acceptance stands between these two destructive poles, and when we accept suffering we regain our power to face and even be transformed by it.

2. See suffering as a fundamental point of connection. Every human being who’s ever walked the earth, all the way back to the misty beginnings of our species, has suffered. When we suffer today, there’s a point of connection with all our ancestors. Sometimes when I’m suffering I ponder this truth and draw strength from all those who have come before me. Not only that, but if I cast my mind outward concentrically in the present I find the same thing: everyone here has suffered. Countless numbers are in the midst of it right now even as I am.

And if I go forward in time, I know it will be true in the future as well. Suffering, which often makes us feel totally alone, is something we share with all human beings. To suffer is to be initiated into the human family. It’s an initiation into full personhood. A means by which we truly become our whole selves. We try in so many ways to be whole in isolation, but this is an oxymoron. Who we are is deeply connected to the fabric of humanity, and we can never be whole as single stitches connected only to a few other stitches closest to us. Suffering is the thread by which we connect to every other stitch in the fabric and thus find our whole selves.

One result of this is compassion — an opening of our heart to ourselves and others. Another is an awakening and deepening of our consciousness. Thinking of suffering in this way, as an invitation to join humanity more fully and to find ourselves, is something that has helped me immensely. Our choice is never between suffering or not-suffering; it’s between suffering meaningfully and suffering meaninglessly. To embrace it as a point of connection is to choose to suffer meaningfully.

3. See suffering as an invitation to examine ourselves. Sometimes suffering is caused by spiritually overstaying our welcome. I once pictured this as being like a boy who has a favorite pair of shoes. These shoes had served him well. They were like an old friend and were lucky, too. He always ran faster, hit balls harder and caught them surer when he had his lucky shoes on. Then his feet outgrew the shoes. Still, he refused to give them up. He continued to wear them even though doing so was painful. His toes were cramped up inside and he couldn’t run or plant his feet properly to hit a ball well or sprint to catch one.

The shoes for me represent habit, ways of thinking and being that worked in the past but no longer do. If we see life as a spiritual journey we know that there is a time for staying and a time for moving on. Change is often painful but it’s one of those unavoidable pains of life. If we don’t change, we don’t grow and if we don’t grow, we die. Yet, we often become attached to certain stages in our lives and don’t want to move on. We outgrow our spiritual shoes. And when that happens we have to choose between the pain of going forward or the greater pain of daily stuffing our feet into shoes that are too small.

Psychologists talk about “free floating anxiety” and other forms of inner suffering that seem to have no source. When I experience this kind of suffering where I can’t identify the source, I see it as a time to examine my life. I’ve found again and again that there is a source: I’ve spiritually outgrown my current place and I am experiencing the pain of trying to cram myself into that too-small space, day after day, out of habit. When I muster my courage, say my goodbyes and move on, this form of suffering immediately disappears.

Though we’re looking at individual suffering here, it’s worth noting that I believe this process of refusing to move forward when it’s time to do so accounts for a large percentage of the collective suffering of humanity. We are being called to a new and higher place spiritually yet we’re afraid and so resist this move. We stubbornly cling to obsolete ways of thinking and being and are causing ourselves a lot of unnecessary suffering. This fear of unfolding is visible everywhere and many are even trying to drag us further backward, they are so terrified of moving beyond where we are. But we will go forward — it’s just a matter of how much suffering we will cause ourselves resisting it.

At any rate, these three ways of seeing suffering have helped me process it in ever more healthy ways. I’ve had to grow into them, and this didn’t come without struggle, but I’ve learned not to turn my struggles into wars, to struggle toward greater connection rather than away from pain and to trust rather than fear life when it pushes me forward. As a result, my suffering has decreased, and that which remains is more meaningful.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Suffering from the Inside Out

2007-06-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I was talking to a young guy who had a short sentence and he was telling me about the various pains of his situation. I could tell he was frustrated and hurting; he’d lost contact with his kids and thought his wife may be seeing someone else in his absence. I listened because he just needed to talk about it. Eventually he asked about my situation — how long I’d been in and when I was getting out. I told him I had twenty-some years in and wasn’t sure when I might be released.

He was quiet for a minute and seemed to be embarrassed on hearing this. Finally he sort of chuckled and said, “Here I am crying about my problems and you’re doing a 60- to 90-year bit. You must be sick of hearing this stuff from short-timers.” I shook my head and told him no. “What you’re dealing with is as hard for you as what I’m dealing with is for me. It’s all real and it all hurts, right?”

He thought about this for a moment and seemed relieved to hear me say it. He knew what he was feeling was real and it hurt, yet because my situation was objectively worse he felt an impulse to dismiss his own inner voice that told him “I’m hurting.” Some external voice told him that what he was feeling wasn’t valid in the face of my “worse” situation.

We’re taught to think this way. If I’m suffering depression but have a relatively good life — I’m not homeless or starving — I’m encouraged to compare my own suffering to someone who has it worse, someone who has no home and doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from. The implication is that my suffering isn’t as valid as theirs. It’s the old saw about a guy complaining because he has no shoes and meeting a man who has no feet.

I suppose there’s something to be said for that thinking. We should be grateful and know that someone, somewhere is probably suffering more than we are. But we shouldn’t make the leap to conclude that because that’s true, our suffering is somehow invalid or trivial. Suffering isn’t an objective thing; it’s more about our inner response to external situations than it is about the situations themselves.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about suffering well is that all suffering — our own as well as that of others — needs to be seen from the inside out and never from the outside in. A child who thinks there are monsters under the bed is suffering terror no less real than a woman who’s afraid her abusive spouse may kill her. If we see these two situations from the outside in, we may dismiss the child’s suffering as “silly,” but I don’t believe that’s healthy.

We do the same thing to ourselves, rejecting and feeling guilty about suffering that isn’t “significant.” Obviously we need to use wisdom in responding to different situations. Some suffering calls for more attention and different action, but that’s not the same as this value judgment we make about it.

When I began seeing my own and all suffering as valid I began to develop deeper empathy for myself and others. And I found that suffering, when honored and respected in this way, flows more naturally. When we dishonor it by dismissing and trivializing it, it hides, turns into shame, anger and self-hatred — all things that will come out in some way in our lives and ultimately cause more suffering.

For me, all suffering is real and worthy of attention. If you’re suffering and don’t feel you have a right to feel the way you do, throw that thinking out in reference to yourself as well as others. Suffering just is, and there’s no such thing as legitimate or illegitimate suffering. When we validate all suffering, it doesn’t create a bunch of crybabies as we’ve been told. It actually helps people process their suffering in healthier ways and move through it, because to validate suffering is to validate the person who is experiencing it, just as to invalidate it is to invalidate the person. Sometimes it takes nothing more than for someone to say “I hear you and I’m listening” to empower another to make it through.

Sketch by Troy Chapman

Suffering Well

2007-06-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Americans have a strange view of suffering. Basically we see it as an injustice to be eradicated and when that fails, as it surely will, we have Plan B, which is to deny it. But these strategies create more, not less, suffering.

I know — I’ve tried them both. Alcohol and drugs were my weapons of choice in the war on personal suffering and I went to war with a scorched-earth policy. The result was disastrous, and years later I began considering a very different approach to the problems of suffering. I ran across the strange idea that suffering is just a natural part of life or, as the Buddha put it, life is suffering.

Obviously, if that’s true, then declaring war on suffering is just another way of declaring war on life, which is insane. Yet, the more I pondered suffering the more it did seem to be inextricably woven into life. It wasn’t an aberration, as I’d been taught to believe, but rather as normal and as pervasive as breathing. So my question changed, from how can I get rid of suffering to how can I learn to suffer well?

Looking back, I see the shifting of this question as one of the landmarks of my spiritual journey, because implicit in it is an embrace rather than a rejection of suffering. And again, for me that amounts to an embrace of life and truth itself because suffering cannot be separated from these two.

To live is to suffer, thus to live well is to somehow learn to suffer well. This month we’ll look at what it means to suffer well, to face suffering in ways that enrich rather than impoverish us and expand rather than constrict us.

Until next time, consider your own relationship to suffering. Do you see it as an enemy? As an aberration that needs to be “fixed” or as part of the mystery of life, perhaps even a passageway to compassion and greater self-realization?

Painting by Troy Chapman

Some Helpful Tips

2007-05-27T09:53:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Good will isn’t always easy to maintain. Mine tends to ebb when I feel like I’m being taken advantage of, or when I’m already having a lousy day and someone adds a kick or two of their own. Sometimes I just lose faith in it as the right thing. I said earlier this month that we’d talk about some techniques for generating and maintaining it so here are a few I use when my emotional winds are blowing away from good will.

1. Empathy: Good will often demands that I find some connection with the people I’m trying to generate it for. I look for some aspect of myself in them or try to imagine what makes them behave destructively. Our tendency is to demonize people who offend us, but by imagining myself in their shoes I’m more able to turn away from that course and maintain my good will.

2. Becoming an “ideal observer”: The ideal observer is a concept in ethics of an observer who is impartial, sees all sides and takes all sides (or none). I’ve talked about this as the “third side” position. Since we’re never ideal observers the idea is to try to imagine what an ideal observer would do or think and then do that ourselves. An ideal observer knows all the pain and struggles that we hide from each other. It also knows how temporary we all are, how quickly life will pass and how unimportant the little things are. From this position good will is easier, so I go there when I’m finding it difficult to maintain sometimes.

3. Premeditation: Another thing I do is plan ahead by cultivating good will so it’s strong when it needs to be. I do this by practicing it toward nature, toward people it’s easy with. I sort of store it up, knowing it’s not always easy so I will have some extra for people it’s hard to give it to. I think of it as an energy like solar energy and try to remember to charge my batteries when the sun is out because I know I’ll run into cloudy days.

4. The concept of duty: When all else fails, I simply practice good will as a duty. Joseph Fletcher’s maxim for living ethically is: Calculate the most loving thing to do in any situation and consider it your duty. We’re not big on duty in our culture, but I think it’s important. It means doing a thing whether we feel like it or not so it’s about telling our emotions that they’re not in charge of us. It’s a way to check ourselves and we need that sometimes. Good will is indeed a duty and sometimes we need to simply practice it for that reason: To maintain our own integrity.

These work for me at various times. Maybe they’ll be helpful to you.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Engage the Clutch

2007-05-14T19:46:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I have a picture in my mind of my older brother Wade sitting behind the wheel of his Olds Vista Cruiser. Wade loved fast cars, and the Vista Cruiser — with a 455, four-barrel and four-on-the-floor — was fast. Wade would sit behind the wheel and race the engine just to hear the sound of it. The heavy station wagon would rear up on its shocks with the torque of the big engine, but despite all that power the car wouldn’t go anywhere. That’s because Wade had the clutch disengaged. When he wanted to go he simply had to release the foot pedal and engage the clutch, which would convert all the power of the 455 into motion.

Good will is a lot like Wade’s Vista Cruiser in that it also has two modes: engaged and disengaged. No matter how powerful our good will is, if we don’t engage the clutch, it just sits there, racing and sounding good (and maybe annoying the neighbors). I used to think you either had good will or you didn’t, but in watching myself and others over the years this further distinction between engaged and disengaged good will has become a much more important question for me. I’ve found that people who have active ill will are really a small number in our world. There’s certainly not enough of them to create the kind of world we find ourselves living in. Far more in number are people — too often including myself — sitting around racing their good-will engines but never getting around to popping the clutch.

How many Americans want kids to go hungry and without basic medical care in this country? There are a few, I’m sure, but there are many more who just don’t think about it. But far bigger than both of these groups put together is the number of Americans who want every kid to have food and medical care. The reason it hasn’t happened is that our good will is disengaged. Imagine if every person who felt that way wrote one letter to their own representative and the president with the message: if you don’t fix this, I will vote against you in the next election.

Why don’t we? There are a number of reasons. We don’t believe anyone else will; we don’t believe it will matter if we do; we’re afraid of that kind of hope, that kind of engagement or we’re just tired and want to be left alone.

Whatever the reason, the cost is that our good will goes unexpressed in the world. And that robs not only the world but us as well. I believe good will is the calling and fulfillment as well as the song of our spirit. And when we don’t live that calling we slowly begin to separate from ourselves. The only way to bridge this separation is to begin facilitating the expression of our spirit. In other words, begin engaging our good will.

So how do we do this in a way that doesn’t feel like just another burden or obligation, adding to a life already swaybacked with burdens and obligations? The first thing is to find our own expression. We’re too quick to adopt other people’s expressions like second-hand clothes that we force our good will into. The result isn’t a true expression of our goodwill, but just another cause that drains us and makes us feel guilty when we abandon it. Find something you care about, something that thrills you just to think about it. You’ll know it by the fact that dealing with it doesn’t tire you out like so many things (even good things) do, but actually wakes you up and invigorates you. When you find it ask yourself how you can express your good will in a way that’s related to this thing.

We’re not talking “activism” here — although there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s actually yours, not someone else’s expression. Your expression might be something as simple as a love of birds that translates into painting them or writing about them. Or a special compassion for sick kids and a love of music that translates into performing at a local hospital. And if you can’t play or sing maybe you organize the musicians. It’s truly limited only by your imagination which, if you find your thing, will come alive and start feeding you more ideas than you’ll ever need.

I watched this happen recently with Maryann and knitting of all things. She and I have been engaged for several years in a partnership to express our passion for a better world through writing and trying to create dialog. But when she took up knitting, she started lighting up around it. She studied different types of yarn, learned new stitches, took a class and talked my ear off about it. Which I loved. But it wasn’t a replacement of her passion to be a beneficial presence in the world. It was just a more perfect expression of this passion for her. In fact, she slowly started — I can’t resist — knitting the two together. First she got involved with a project to knit caps for poor kids. Since then she’s connected with a network of engaged knitters and gotten into other projects that I want her to tell you about at some point.

The point is, she found an expression for her good will that fits her and, when we do that, it starts generating its own energy and all kinds of new connections start pouring out. The way letting out the clutch takes you to a thousand new roads and all you have to do is pick one and effortlessly turn the wheel when you see one that calls you.

Painting by Troy Chapman

Like Waking Up Our Heart

2007-05-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

As I sit here this morning with my paper in my lap and my pen at the ready, I feel like I’m looking at the world through gauze. I’ve had some kind of viral thing for several weeks, it’s an overcast day, I’m behind on my work and church last night felt like a visit to a mental institution. All the ingredients for an “I’m sick of it all” attitude.

The only problem is, I’ve assigned myself the task of writing about and meditating on good will this month. So I’m thinking about good will behind or beside all of the above. I spent some time chasing it around my brain and looking at it intellectually, but that bore no fruit. Then I stopped and just made an inner effort to bring it up in myself. I began thinking of different people and trying to generate good will toward them. I thought about my cellmates: Steve who sleeps under me, Donny who’s across on the other top bunk, and Wilford, who’s on the other bottom bunk. I silently wished them well and then rejected that because it came from my brain and forgot to bring my heart.

I dove a little deeper and finally felt it — good will from the heart. Just well-wishing from that place where we think without words. I cast my mind out further, toward other people, calling them to mind and directing that feeling toward them, as if throwing rose petals from a big basket. Petals that I’d gathered for this specific purpose and which would wilt and die if I didn’t throw them. So, why not?

I threw them by the handfuls, into surprised faces, that sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned and brushed at their clothes as if I was throwing batshit instead of rose petals. It made me smile. Then it made me laugh at our crazy humanness.

Then in the midst of this I realized that I’d forgotten myself. And it felt like exactly what I needed. My muscles, which I hadn’t even realized were slightly tensed, relaxed and some new chemical flowed in my veins. My feet felt good; I was glad I had them. My neck relaxed; I breathed a little deeper. And I remembered something I keep forgetting. I mean I forget it a few hundred times a week, but right then, I remembered it again: Good will is good for you. Good for your mind, your body and your soul. When we’re not feeling it, it feels like some kind of obligation, some kind of job that we “ought to do.” But when we’re in it, it feels like a favor to ourselves, like remembering who we are after forgetting for awhile, like waking up our heart.

The Practice of Good Will

2007-05-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

I have experienced plenty of ill will in my life but I’ve also experienced enormous good will. Ill will is a force that tries to tear me down; good will is a force that builds me up. Thinking about this in my younger days led me to the question: if it works like that on me why wouldn’t it work the same on the world, on everything?

Over the years, since asking that question, good will has become the center of my spiritual practice. There are, of course, many other dimensions of spirituality but if good will isn’t there it’s all just “a banging gong and a clanging cymbal” according to St. Paul.

Which leaves me with the question of how to consistently practice good will on the world. Of course, it’s easy when dealing with people who direct the same toward me but much more difficult in the face of ill will. Which is why I think of it as a “practice.”

This month we’ll talk about good will and see where it leads us. I’ll share some techniques I’ve learned for cultivating it, among which is prayer, at the top of the list. Thus we’ll start off with a prayer:

Lord help me remember that good will is the integrity of spirituality; grant me a spirit of kindness and compassion today in thought, word and deed.

Good Will and Good Sense

2007-04-28T06:31:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Jesus told a story, a little story, called the wise and foolish builders, that I’ve always liked. You probably know it. Two guys build houses, one of them on rock, the other on sand. The rains come along and hammer the two houses, and the guy on the sand gets washed away. He’s the foolish builder. The guy with his house on the rock is safe and sound. He’s the wise builder.

There isn’t much detail in the story as it’s recorded in the gospels, but presumably both houses were well-constructed. The problem wasn’t the integrity of either house but the integrity of one of the foundations. If the house represents our knowledge of the world — what we believe and how we think — the foundation represents our underlying spiritual attitude. Jesus identified a right underlying spiritual attitude as love, which for the sake of clarity I call unconditional good will.

So the story is telling us we can get all our ideas right and subscribe to the “right” philosophy or theology, but if we don’t have good will it will fall in the end. Thinking right isn’t enough to make a person wise.

But the other side is also true. What if both men in Jesus’ story had built junky houses? A rickety house won’t stand no matter how good the foundation so there are two aspects to wisdom — right and realistic thinking about ourselves, others and the world (the house), and a right spiritual attitude (the foundation).

The world is full of smart and clever people who don’t have good will. It’s also full of people who have an abundance of good will and a shortage of good sense. If I had to choose I’d say good will is the most important. But it’s a lousy choice.

Wisdom is about getting these two — good will and good sense — in balance. It’s about having realistic ideas about the world and at the same time maintaining unconditional good will.

That’s not always an easy balance to maintain. Good will is easier to pull off when we see the world through rose-colored glasses and avoid the harsh truth that people are often pretty rotten. By the same token, when we say squarely the true nature of reality, it’s a whole lot easier if we abandon our good will. But it’s a balance we can maintain if we remember that our good will ought to be unconditional, and our good sense unshakeable.

There’s never a good reason to withdraw our good will — even from the most malicious people. But neither is there ever a good reason to ignore malice in a person, or pretend they are something other than what they are.

Wolves are wolves and dogs are dogs and we ought to always remember that. We shouldn’t bring wolves into the house to play with the kids but neither should we hate them. They are what they are. In the same way, people — thought they are constantly changing for both better and worse — are what they are in the moment. We shouldn’t trust a thief with our valuables but neither should we have ill will toward him. It won’t change him for the better and it will change us for the worse.

If we manage to maintain this balance between good will and good sense, we’ll have both a solid house and a solid foundation, and will be in some measure the wise builders Jesus was calling us to be.

Listening for the Truth Behind the Truth

2007-04-21T18:21:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

George played a note on the piano and asked the singing students to repeat it. “You need to play it louder,” said one of the men, and several others voiced agreement. “Yeah, we can’t hear it.” George, a slim, animated man, sprang from behind the keyboard and, with his hands unconsciously conducting his words, told them, “No. You need to listen more closely. I’m intentionally playing the note softly so you’re not relying on it hitting you on the head. I want you sitting forward with your minds focused, not lounging in your chairs only half-here.”

He played the note again just as softly. But this time heads were slightly cocked and faces were set in concentration. The students immediately and accurately repeated the note, and seemed surprised by the power of their own ears.

In life, I often feel the way these singers did when George played the first note: As if life isn’t speaking loudly or clearly enough for me to quite catch what’s going on. People say things or behave in ways that leave me shaking my head. Many of us experienced this recently with the Virginia Tech rampage where 33 people died senselessly. We’re talking about wisdom this month, and I don’t feel wise enough to understand this.

But it’s not only the dramatic stuff; simple rudeness and pointless, petty cruelty leave me shaking my head in the same way. At such times I understand that being wise isn’t always about knowing or being able to explain things in a satisfactory way. Sometimes it’s about standing in uncertainty, in not-knowing.

The question of whether we’re wise or not at such times is answered by how we stand in this place. Do we jump to the safety of anger and self-righteousness? Do we engage in our act of pretending we know and try to distract ourselves and others from our ignorance? Or do we sit forward in our chairs like the singers on their second try, alert and listening for the soft-spoken truth of whatever it is we are faced with?

We listen with our ears, but there are things we can hear only by listening with our whole being, as if we’re literally “all ears.” Indeed, the deepest and truest parts of life consist of such things.

We can listen to everything this way: To the earth as it moves through its cycles, to trees growing, to animals going about their business, to children, wives, husbands, family, the angry and violent, the grieving, our enemies, and ourselves — both our minds and our bodies. And this kind of rapt listening, though it knows nothing, is the very essence of wisdom. It results in a wordless knowing of things that’s too big to fit in the head, but is more valid and relevant than most of what we know by normal means.

Picture yourself as one of my singers, straining to hear that soft note, being still so even the rustling of your clothing won’t interfere. Take a minute to feel the energy of this inner posture. Now imagine it as an attitude of life and directed toward the world, inside yourself and the world outside.

I’m sure you’ve had moments of this kind of rapt attention. We all have. It’s in these moments that we catch glimpses of the truth behind the truth. Knowing that other truth is there, and listening for it at times, will not only make us more wise, but is itself an aspect of wisdom.

Wisdom Begins with How We See the World

2007-04-06T20:12:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Some Christian people I know represent everything I value and consider wise. Others represent everything I stand against and consider unwise. I’ve often wondered, for example, how Jerry Falwell and Mother Theresa could come out of the same religious tradition, or the Puritans and the Quakers, or George W. Bush and Abe Lincoln.

This isn’t true only of Christianity. Osama bin Laden and the great spiritual poet Rumi are both Muslims. Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela both come from the political left, as Adolph Hitler and John McCain both come from the political right.

Indeed, if I drew a line between the wise and the unwise in our world, it would not cut between the various ideologies, philosophies and religions of the world. It would cut right down the middle of almost all of these ways of thinking. There are wise people and aggressively unwise people in almost every camp.

This got me to thinking about what exactly separates the wise from the unwise in our world. I define wisdom as the desire and ability to bring goodness, beauty, and love into the world. Let’s make a list according to this definition.

Column 1
Fox News
Bill O’Reilly
George W. Bush
Jerry Falwell
The Puritans
Louis Farrakhan
Osama bin Laden
Fidel Castro

Column 2
PBS’s “Now”
Bill Moyers
Abe Lincoln
The Dalai Lama
The Quakers
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bono
Gandhi

If wisdom is the desire and ability to bring goodness, beauty, and love into the world, those in the first column are unwise and those in the second are wise — or at least wiser. So what distinguishes the two groups? The answer is that each group sees life in a fundamentally different way. The first group sees life as war; the second sees life as a process of spiritual evolution. We can call the first way of thinking “at-war thinking,” and the second way “in-process thinking.”

Each of these ways of viewing the world produces specific and different characteristics, as apple and orange trees produce different kinds of fruit.

At-war thinking is suspicious and distrustful, while in-process thinking is open and trustful. I recently had a disagreement with some Christian brothers and was amazed at how quickly they assumed malice on my part. Because I disagreed with them, it was presumed that I had bad motives and was trying to harm or undermine them. For people who see life as war, everyone is a potential enemy and is treated as such. People who see life as spiritual evolution see everyone as trying to come further into awareness, and disagreement as nothing more than part of this process.

At-war thinking is also fearful and angry for the same reasons, while in-process thinking is less fearful and angry. Listen to Fox News for a clear example of this on one side and PBS or international news on the other side. Fox oozes fear and anger and encourages viewers to think the same.

At-war thinking is rooted in us vs. them and seeks win-lose solutions, whereas in-process thinking is inclusive and seeks win-win solutions. The most basic logic of war is: Identify the enemy and try to destroy him. The most basic logic of spiritual evolution is: Develop mutually beneficial relationships. Think of Osama bin Laden and Mahatma Gandhi.

At-war thinking is also inflexible and unforgiving. In-process thinking is more flexible and forgiving. At-war people are eager to punish. If they’re religious, they are preaching fire-and-brimstone and are quick to condemn. If they’re political, they are writing laws, building prisons and calling out the bombers. In-process people are more apt to preach love and kindness and to use their political power to help the weak and uplift the poor.

At-war thinking is likewise intolerant. This is partly due to self-righteousness and partly to the belief that people intentionally choose to do wrong. In-process thinking tends toward tolerance because it knows first that one’s own ideas of right and wrong may not be enlightened and second that when people do wrong, it’s a reflection of their level of consciousness. Where at-war thinking sees malicious evil, in-process thinking sees spiritual ignorance and struggle.

Another characteristic of at-war thinking is that it is closed to criticism. The political right in America labels all critics traitors. Again, this isn’t a left-right thing. Various left-wing dictators around the world do the same thing. People who see life as war see criticism as attack. People who see life as spiritual process may not enjoy being criticized but they accept it as valuable and potentially helpful to their own growth.

At-war thinking also produces cut-throat competition. This kind of competition has been adopted throughout our culture as at-war thinking has risen to power. It has changed everything from our economics to our domestic and foreign policy. It’s known as “social Darwinism,” despite the fact that it doesn’t facilitate true social evolution. True social evolution is facilitated by what I think of as cooperative competition, which is competition within the larger context of common interest. This is the kind of competition embraced by in-process thinking.

Lastly, at-war thinking seeks power over others, whereas in-process thinking seeks relationship with others. Relationship is about give-and-take, while power is about take-and-take. Again, one is the logic of war, the other is the logic of spiritual evolution.

The examples I’ve used here are pretty clear-cut as examples ought to be. But in reality, the line between at-war thinking and in-process thinking isn’t always this stark. Often we slip back and forth between them — especially when threatened. Which is why I think it’s an important topic to explore. The more clear we are about what each type of thinking represents the more we will be able to consciously choose how we want to see the world and maintain our commitment to this way of thinking more consistently.

By all means look at the world around us and try to identify at-war thinking and in-process thinking. But only do it for the purpose of applying what you learn to yourself. There’s no wisdom in an ain’t-it-good-to-be-wiser-than-them attitude. That’s just an inside-out version of the very thing we’re saying no to.

Wisdom is to be found in knowing how important our worldview is and in choosing, developing, and advocating a view that brings more goodness, beauty and love into the world. Ask yourself what it means to view the world as in-process, rather than at-war. How does it suggest we treat people who are acting wrongly? How does it suggest we deal with conflict? With our own inner demons and struggles? What attitude does it suggest toward technology, nature and God? How does it redefine words like “progress,” “success” and “justice”?

In the end, wisdom is more than just knowledge. It’s a whole way of seeing the world and it begins with an answer to the question: “Are we here to win or are we here to unfold?”

Wisdom

2007-04-03T18:42:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

These are times that demand wisdom. Those who see this are trying to answer for themselves what wisdom is. One definition that I’ve seen is that “wisdom is that faculty that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.” Funny, and true, but unfortunately not very helpful.

Perhaps more helpful is a distinction I make between wisdom and cleverness. Many people are clever in that they know the ways of the world and how to get things done. Politics, for example, is full of clever people. So is business. Yet they seem to function in an amoral world where everything is measured by whether it wins more power or money. Wisdom, it seems to me, has a moral and spiritual dimension. It’s about knowing and doing the right thing while still living in the real world.

As we face the situation in Iraq, the equally important struggle with terrorism, untold suffering and injustice here at home, a political system that’s inauthentic, and all the various consequences that ripple out from these things, we’re left with the question of how to keep our basic decency engaged and not fall into apathy or cynicism. Which is another way of saying: how to be wise, because that’s the essence of wisdom.

So this month we’ll explore this question. It’s one I struggle with constantly. Maybe you do too.

A Perfect Nutshell

2007-03-26T19:18:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

March comes to an end with spring breaking in upper Michigan. As I’ve spent this month thinking about imperfection I’ve become more aware of my penchant to reject and fight with life. This, in turn, has allowed me to question this impulse and be less judgmental and less arrogant.

There are still times to say “I don’t accept this,” but it’s a thing that ought not be said too quickly. We should all cultivate the ability to live contentedly with things we don’t like, whether these be aspects of nature, social conditions or other people’s idiosyncrasies.

I found what immediately became one of my favorite quotes this month, that sums up my views here. It’s from Pope John XXIII. He said, “See everything. Overlook much. Correct a little.”

That’s it, in a perfect nutshell.

P.S.

As for my anonymous correspondent…

What you seem to be pointing out in your comment on my last reply to you is that there is a real difference between the Dalai Lama and Jim Jones. And you’re right — there is. One man brought light into the world and the other darkness. You’re also right that I didn’t speak to this distinction in my last piece. But that’s only because it’s off the topic I was dealing with. I speak to this distinction a lot in many other pieces and I think we agree; it’s real and it has real consequences in the world.

I think the same about Jim Jones as most people: That he made the world a worse place by his actions at Jonestown. He was a sick and evil person, and no defense can be made for his behavior. Yet I still hold that no matter how evil a person is they are still as valuable intrinsically as any other person. This is because we must value people beyond what they’re able to do for us or we run into all the problems I spoke of earlier.

This doesn’t stop us from calling evil evil or from taking action to confront it. It simply stops us from dehumanizing people by denying their value as human beings. And this is good for us as well as them.

If we change our moral system according to how people act toward us where does that leave us? If we believe in the value of human life we must believe in it even when — no, let me correct that: especially when — dealing with those who least deserve to be valued. How or whether we value others is about who we are, not who they are.

Thank you for your good questions, anonymous. I’m open to direct correspondence if you want to get into an extended conversation on these or other questions. I can be reached at the address at the bottom of the left column, or email Maryann and she’ll act as go-between.

Arms Wide Open

2007-03-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The word “utopia” comes from two Greek words: “ou,” which means “no” and “topos,” which means “place.” Utopia is “no-place.” Yet, strangely we continue to search for it. Many now see the neoconservative ideology that led us into war with Iraq as essentially utopian, but after all the carnage there the utopianists are still unfazed, with even the most sober of them willing to admit only that the invasion was “mishandled.” If we’d gone in with more soldiers and not made mistake after mistake along the way, “no-place” would have magically popped into existence.

The same thinking multiplied the American prison system by a factor of five and made us among the world's leaders in per capita incarceration rates over the past two and a half decades. And even now as our schools and social infrastructure lay in shambles there are still those who insist if we just lock up more people for even longer periods, the perfect world they see in their mind will materialize.

It’s easy to look back and see the error of this thinking (for all but the diehards), and it’s easy to get self-righteous about the fact that we “get it” now that the damage is so obvious. But the truth is that many, if not most, Americans embraced both of these follies. Certainly the tough-on-crime mantra was chanted as loudly by liberals as it was by conservatives. Even Oprah, the icon of pop-enlightenment in America, found common ground with Bill O’Reilly in his crusade for harsher prison sentences when she had him on her show a couple of weeks ago.

The point being that “no-place-ism” is seductive not just to a few Americans but to most of us. We’re a people who believe in the perfection, or at least the vast improvement, of humankind. We have from our inception and it’s one of our greatest virtues. It’s also one of our greatest vices.

The virtue of believing we can be better turns into a vice when we decide that not being better — right now — is a sin; when “what we could be” takes over our mind to the exclusion of “what we are.” What’s needed is a balance wherein what we are in this moment is always as important and as right as what we could be in the future, and where both are honored equally.

Raising ourselves to what we could be is like raising a child in this respect. Children are not what they could be nor what they are, but rather something between these two poles. They are something “in-process,” neither this-nor-that but this-and-that. Children are raised well when they’re taught that they are both this and that; they are raised poorly when we have either no expectations (when we reject what they could be) or abusive expectations (when we reject what they are).

The same is true of ourselves and the world. We are in-process and true life unfolds in the space between what we are and what we could be. To ever truly see anyone we must see both of these truths about them. Utopianism is blind in one eye and doesn’t see the half of us that is what it is. Its counterpart is cynicism which is blind in the other eye and doesn’t see the half of us that is what it could be. Only love sees with both eyes, embracing the world as it is and simultaneously calling it to where it could be.

Only love can celebrate imperfection because it sees it as seed, soil, sunlight, and water from which we’re meant to rise and bear fruit. It’s not a rejection of possibility but an embrace of process. It demands humility and trust in God and the universe. It knows we have a role to play in our own unfolding but, just as importantly, that we aren’t the engine or the sole architect of this unfolding.

We’ve all thought at one time or another that the world would be a better place if there were no negative experiences or obstacles, but this thinking is contrary to love. The world has a wisdom of its own that can’t be understood from the individual/ego perspective. Someone once illustrated this with the image of a woven rug we only see the underside of. From where we stand it’s all pointless snags and knots, loose ends and imperfections. But on the top side there’s a pattern that emerges from these loose ends.

Love is believing in and seen this pattern with our spirit. On one side of love is utopianism, on the other, cynicism — a “no-place” and a “rotten-place.” In the middle is on “arms-wide-open” place and the only way to get there is to say yes to it all — yes to the snags, yes to the knots, yes to the loose ends, yes to the imperfections. Yes to life. I’m working on that yes.

The 99 and 1 Sheep...

2007-03-17T13:39:00.000-05:00

...or, The Value of (Even) the Vastly Imperfect

by Troy Chapman

Someone left a comment on this blog based on my previous post “What About Bob”: “How can it be moral to think the Dalai Lama and Jim Jones are of equal value to the universe?”

Thanks for your good question. It is indeed moral to think Jim Jones has the same intrinsic value as the Dalai Lama. Intrinsic value is built in, and cannot be reduced (or increased) by anything people do. Extrinsic value, on the other hand, is based entirely on what people do, on how useful they are. Both are real, but moral thinking is all about prioritizing, so the moral question here is: Which of these types of value (or ways of measuring value) takes precedence over the others?

If we elevate extrinsic value to the top spot in our thinking (and we often do) we measure the value of all things according to their usefulness. This is morally disastrous.

Extrinsically speaking, old people are less valuable than young people; people with severe brain damage are less valuable than healthy people; criminals are less valuable than law-abiding citizens; poor people are less valuable than wealthy people; the homeless, who don’t contribute to our society, are less valuable than those who do contribute; and animals and nature are valuable only insofar as they serve human interests.

Measuring value extrinsically is ultimately an egocentric way of thinking, because when we ask “How useful is a thing?” the very next question is “Useful to whom?” We all have different agendas, and if we measure value extrinsically then we’ll value everything according to how it serves our agenda. Thus, in America, people’s value would be determined by how economically useful they are. We couldn’t complain if Hitler decides to measure value according to how people serve the ideology of racial supremacy. We couldn’t complain if China decides that baby girls aren’t useful to the Communist social agenda and so disposes of them.

This thinking is morally repulsive when we bring it out into the light and examine it. Agendas and notions of usefulness change from place to place and time to time. And if we value things according to these notions we might as well define goodness as “That which serves me at the moment.”

The idea of intrinsic value says “no” to this thinking. Yes, we consider extrinsic value because we live in the physical world but it’s not the ultimate measure of value. Things have value whether they serve our agendas or not — they have spiritual value. The moment we deny that value for any one person, we deny it for all — including ourselves.

If you asked the Dalai Lama or Jesus if they were more valuable than any other person on earth they would tell you no. Indeed, Jesus taught this constantly — see the story of the prodigal son, the 99 and 1 sheep, his teaching that “whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me” — and the scriptures even recommend a sort of affirmative action to correct our tendency to measure things extrinsically. See Paul’s teaching that the unseemly parts of the “body” should not only be considered equal but especially honored, for example (I Corinthians chapter 12), and countless teachings about the poor and the weak being treated with special honor. To find them, go to any good concordance, and look up “poor” or “weak” and other similar words. These teachings are all about the value of “useless” people to God — i.e., about intrinsic value.

In the end, intrinsic value is based on our profound interconnection as a whole and our value as individual parts of this whole. It also arises from the idea of reverence — true reverence is impossible without the knowledge that things — all things — have a built-in value.

What do you think?

What About Bob?

2007-03-12T16:19:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Bob joined the ethics class I teach here in the prison, came for two weeks, then didn't show up again for the next three weeks. When he came back he raised his hand every two or three minutes and offered long rambling comments that were usually off-point. I had a certain amount of material that I wanted to cover and found myself thinking with a little irritation, “If you'd been here for the past three weeks you would know this stuff.”

The topic this night was, appropriately, intrinsic vs. extrinsic value. I was talking about the fact that we tend to measure value extrinsically — according to what people do and how they serve our needs or fail to do so. On this level people all have different value. There's a material version and a non-material version of this thinking. The material version judges value according to what people do for us materially. The non-material version judges value according to whether people are a beneficial presence in the world, whether they're "good" people or "bad" people.

Intrinsic value, on the other hand, has nothing to do with whether we're beneficial on any level. It simply is what it is and it's the same for all people. Intrinsically, the Dalai Lama and Jim Jones are of exactly equal value. So are the guy who shows up to ethics class every week and doesn't talk us to death and the guy who misses meetings and holds up the class with rambling soliloquies.

Hmm. I was thinking some of these thoughts and observing myself as Bob rambled on — something about why God sends people to hell — seemingly happy just to hear himself talk. I found my irritation dissipating and realized I was, in that moment, shifting from seeing Bob's extrinsic value to seeing his intrinsic value. I was, in other words, practicing what I was preaching.

I finally did cut him off, but by the time I did, I knew for certain that this class — and life for that matter — is more about people than the agenda. Whenever we put the agenda, no matter what it is, ahead of the people involved, we know we're off track.

In my introduction to this month's topic I said that refusing to accept peoples' imperfections is the very doorway to evil and this is one of the ways that's true. It leads to crazy conclusions like: It's okay to kill people to "save" them — re: Vietnam or Iraq.

Indeed, this is one way of looking at "imperfection" — it's the name we give to situations and things that don't serve our agendas or meet our expectations. One way of learning to see past imperfections (and even to celebrate them) is to see intrinsic value — the value of things even when they don't serve our agendas.

Bob wasn't serving my agenda but I found myself enjoying his quirkiness once I got past the idea that my agenda was the paramount concern between us. The universe has its own agenda and I saw with sudden clarity that Bob was playing his role in it — whatever it might be. That made me smile.

Celebrating Imperfection

2007-03-04T08:21:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

The older I get the more I am giving up on the idea that the world is supposed to be perfect. I’m reaching the shocking conclusion that there’s an Intelligence in the world that is wiser than me about the way the world ought to be, and that this Intelligence has built imperfection into things.

So why do I still think that we’d be better off if problems, inconveniences, flaws, and even ignorance in myself and in the world were somehow eradicated? Isn’t that just another way of saying, “The world ought to revolve around me?” Because that’s the real meaning of a perfect world — one that revolves around me.

The first question that comes up when we talk about celebrating imperfection is the question of evil. Should we celebrate children blown up in wars or starved to death in political or ideological struggles? These are, after all, “imperfections” aren’t they? Obviously, I’m not talking about celebrating these things. It seems to me that these kind of things are most often caused by a refusal to accept imperfections. The same thing happens on the personal level when we try to deny or cover up our own shadow. The most intolerant people in the world are those who think they have no flaws. Indeed, rejection of imperfections in ourselves and others is the very doorway to evil.

So no, celebrating imperfection doesn’t mean we ought to celebrate or even accept evil. In fact, it means the exact opposite and is probably the single most powerful thing we can do in the world to reduce evil.

When we get to heaven God won’t ask how perfect we were or how valiantly we stood up for perfection on earth. He’ll ask how much we loved the people and the world behind the imperfections.

So let’s take some time to honor imperfection as the teacher it is. I’ll do this by giving thanks for every imperfection I encounter in myself and in the world this month. I’ll write some more during March about the role imperfection plays in our spiritual lives, examine some of our attitudes about it, and ultimately celebrate it.

February: Celebrating Sensuality III

2007-02-22T17:59:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

Well, February has disappeared like a wallet at a pickpockets’ convention and I’m standing here patting my pockets in dismay. I’ve spent this month trying to be aware of physicality and the senses that connect me to the physical world. As I’ve become more conscious of my own body I’ve begun to see others more in their bodies as well.

I’ve found myself talking to people and wondering how they experience being a body in this world. Are they dealing with achy joints and sore feet? The strange tingling that’s lately been named “restless leg syndrome” (which sounds like a medical name for “ramblin’ fever”)? The constant impulse to clench their teeth (like me) or, its close cousin, the desire to be chewing, drinking, or smoking something all the time, what psychologists call an “oral fixation,” and I think of as a physical manifestation of spiritual hunger? Are they losing their eyesight (again, like me) or maybe their hearing?

At first, asking these questions felt like an invasion of privacy or at least a violation of unspoken social etiquette. Maybe it is, but it’s also a form of empathy. It makes me feel more connected to people. I see their fragility and the sense that “we’re in this together” is stronger when I make an effort to be aware of people on this level.

Now, I’m finding myself extending this awareness to other aspects of creation. How does the raven there on the light pole between my unit and the chow hall experience its physical presence in the world? What does it even mean to “experience being”? I’m fairly sure the raven isn’t self-reflective the way I am and probably isn’t sitting up there wondering about me as I am about him. But it’s still experiencing its being in some way.

I’ll probably never know how, but just asking the question makes me look at myself in new ways. Maybe that’s the point. We can’t really know ourselves by looking only at ourselves any more than we can truly know the meaning of a word without reading the sentence around it.

As the raven pushes off the light pole with a bullfrog croak and flaps away on the wind, I watch until it becomes a tiny black dot in the sky, a period, I think. Then, one wing drops and the period becomes a comma and I’m aware of my face muscles finishing the sentence with a smile.

The Knitting Birds

2007-02-22T17:56:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

When I called her she was knitting
Sitting in her chair
With yarn and needles clicking
Like two birds with metal beaks
Kissing in the air where
Wings that look like hands
Were flapping
And a nest was forming in her lap
And lapping
Like a river over thighs
That could be shores along which
Knitting birds of local lore
Are known to nest
Or simply rest on winter days
To knit a scarf or two
Warm socks and watch
The world unfold below
And so
I listened to their kissing
Flapping, nesting, lapping, watching, knitting
Dance
Until she said, “Hello?”

February: Celebrating Sensuality II

2007-02-21T19:19:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published February 11, 2007)

I had just started paying attention to my senses and my body, when a cold/flu/crud swept through the prison and got hold of me. So I’ve been paying attention to the aches and nausea and clogged sinuses. Then I threw my neck out doing calisthenics which gave me a whole new set of painful sensations to observe. Life has an odd sense of humor.

The thing is, I haven’t been getting grouchy like I usually do with this stuff. I haven’t been thinking of it as my body letting me down but just as my body being what it is — a body. It’s made me aware of my temporariness in a good way. I’m not here forever in this form and that makes me want to, well, pay attention. It’s like I’m a spirit inhabiting a pool of water that’s slowly drying up in the sun. When it’s gone, my spirit will go elsewhere and there’ll be just the mark in the earth where I stood. But while I’m here I have the choice to be muddy and constantly churned up or clear and calm so I can show off the pebbles where I stand and reflect the light off my surface for anyone passing by.

I like the second choice. So I’m trying to be still and not too churned up even when I face the various pains of evaporation.

This Sunday morning I allowed myself to stay in bed a few miutes after I woke. Then, after my shower, I came back and watched out my window as the eastern sky turn salmon pink. There’s a water tower off in that direction and a pine tree that sticks up above the horizon. It all said “Peace” to me this morning and I said “Thank you,” as I sipped my coffee (and tried not to move my neck too quickly).

...

In our Year in Spirit, we are celebrating sensuality in the month of February and invite observations on the senses from our readers. We liked this from our friend Cynthia:

"I've been having chemo treatments every week for the past two months and on one of the down days I decided simply to observe the experience. Hmmm... not fun. The next day the mood had passed. I was taking a load of laundry to the laundry room in the pre-dawn darkness and I experienced a sweet rush of joy ... pure and simple ... the return of delight in the little things.

"It occurred to me that what was so about the previous day was an absence of joy, or of any other positive sensation. The mood was down and dark and empty and without life. Chemo can do that. Fortunately, it is temporary. I love it when the simple fact of being can make me feel good all over.

"Here's to our wonderful senses... sight, sound, smell, taste, touch ... let us make the most of these most wonderful aspects of embodiment."

February: Celebrating Sensuality I

2007-02-21T19:17:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published February 3, 2007)

I was walking to the hobby-craft building the other day. The day was bright and cold and the wind whipped through my thin coat. I had my eyes on the ground, hands in my pockets, and was just plodding along thinking of this distance between me and my destination as something to be endured.

Then, in a moment of grace, I asked myself a question: How many pine trees line this path — and why don't I know that? I've walked it too many times to count, yet when I've looked in the direction of these trees I've just looked through them. I lifted my eyes now and actually tried to see.

There are five in the front row along the road, young jack pines I guess. The last one in the row is unusual, a pine with two trunks like a maple. I've only ever seen (or noticed) single trunk pines. Actually seeing these trees was a treat and I felt more alive as I continued on.

We tend to think of sensuality entirely in sexual terms and also as something opposed to spirituality, or at least somehow in a different direction. But "sensual," in one sense, just means "of the senses," and it's very compatible with spirituality. It's about being in our bodies more fully and enjoying the connection we have with the world through our senses. This kind of sensuality awakens me and feeds me spiritually. I think of it as "luxuriating" — simply enjoying whatever my senses are feeding me as I go about my daily business. It's the simplest thing.

I'm lying on my bunk right now and the pressure of my body on the (admittedly hard) mattress is enjoyable. So is the hard plastic feel of the pen in my hand and the sight of blue words appearing on white paper. It feels good.

Yet most of the time I approach this kind of being as a guilty pleasure, as if I shouldn't be "wasting time" enjoying myself in these simple ways. After all, my life is lagging way behind what I wish it was, there's war, and at least one or two genocides going on, corporations are taking over the world, babies are dying, addicts are overdosing, evildoers are plotting... Whoa! There I am, back in my head again, busily turning life into ideas, memories, worries, and other intellectual property. I'm experiencing the same things but taking no joy in them.

This is pure puritanical pathology, but deeply ingrained in me and our whole society. The idea that sensuality and physicality are somehow mere vehicles to be endured so my intellect can live in this inhospitable environment — a sort of spacesuit for my ego. I say it again (because it feels good on my tongue but also because it's true): pure puritanical pathology. Another part of me is wiser. It likes being alive; it likes flirting; it likes eating olives (which I haven't had in years); it likes breathing, moving, and being in this body. Why should I apologize for that? Why should anyone?

We shouldn't. So this month I want to celebrate the blessings of our senses and the art of luxuriating in the bounty they present us every minute of our lives. Being for the sake of being — and enjoying it. Or at least not rejecting or intellectualizing it. Just experiencing it directly and without judgment.

Activity:
An easy way to do this is just to focus on each of your five senses at any moment throughout the day. What are you seeing? Smelling? Tasting? Hearing? Feeling physically at the moment? Note your body in space and its connection to the earth — your bottom on a chair or your feet on the floor or ground.

I'm always surprised that what I'm experiencing in any given moment is pleasurable.

I'm also going to keep a sense journal to help me pay attention. I'll share bits of it in the coming days. If nothing else these exercises should make me a better writer.

If you want to celebrate sensuality by recording a moment of your own, send it to us and we'll turn it around for others in our circle.

Many blessings.

January: Shining Our Light III

2007-02-21T19:14:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published January 07)

In the month of January, we’ve been exploring “Shining Your Light”: being the light of the world. We’ve received some great examples and here’s one more. Thank you all for the examples you sent of moments when you found yourself shining a light.

Here’s one from our friend Janice:

A few years ago, Bob and I were waiting to take a three-hour train ride home. The train was late. Most of the crowd was in an apathetic state, including me. Gradually, I noticed a frantic rhythm coming from the person standing next to me. I would guess he was in his late teens and he was rapidly going through all his bags and pockets. I wasn’t sure whether to step in, but as he continued his hunt I decided I would.

“Did you lose something?”

“Yes, I need to buy a ticket home and I’m short a few dollars.”

“By how much?”

“Let’s see.” He counted his money again. “I think about $5.00.”

“Here,” I said, finding and handing him two fives. “Use the second one to buy yourself a cup of coffee or something to eat on the way home.”

He handed the second five back to me and said, “No, that’s all right, I just need one five.”

“But keep the other five in case you need something during the trip,” I said.

“No, that’s O.K. I only want to take what I need,” he insisted, “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

I didn’t press him further to take the other five because I could see that it was important to him to be honorable, and I so respected that.

I don’t have children, but I thought that if I did have a son and he was in trouble, I would definitely want someone to help him. And I felt that I had done this for his mother, too.

…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. … Our playing small does not serve the world. … We were born to manifest the glory of spirit, which is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.” —Nelson Mandela

January: Shining Our Light II

2007-02-21T19:12:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published January 07)

I have a picture in my mind of thousands of babies in Bangladesh and Malawi who will soon have their little heads wrapped up in colorful caps. On Christmas Eve, Maryann found a charity knitting project at Warm Up America online and knitted caps over the holidays. Inspired, her friend Charlotte, who already does volunteer work for local children in the foster care system, got her needles out of storage and started knitting up caps, too.

A simple thing, but a light in the world that shines not only on the babies who need caps to keep their newborn heads warm, but on me and anyone else who’s inspired by it. Thanks to the people at Warm Up America for making the opportunity available.

Another great story: My cellmate’s wife, Melissa, was worried about getting their two girls’ Christmas presents last month, as a check she was waiting on was late.

She and a friend were at the checkout counter of a local store when the friend asked, “Aren’t you going to do your Christmas shopping now?” Melissa explained that the check hadn’t arrived and shared her worry about it. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

That’s when a stranger in front of her turned and apologized for butting into their conversation and asked how much this late check was for.

“$600,” Melissa told the woman.

“Well, I can’t cover that,” the woman said, and began writing in her checkbook. She then handed Melissa a personal check for $200 and said, “You can send it back when you get your check.” Then she turned and walked out of the store.

Another story from our friend Richard in Oregon:

“One day, as I was getting ready to walk into the market, I noticed my eye started to wander, looking for a pretty girl, no doubt. In some amazing way, I caught myself, saw that it wasn’t good, and simply said to myself, like a prayer, ‘How can I be helpful?’ I went on into the market, and there was a commotion. A mother in her late 20s was chasing her little boy down the aisle. He was about 3 1/2, and had taken her keys. When she finally caught up with him, she said, ‘If you don't give me those keys, I’m going to be really mean!’ I was just a few feet away, and said in a kindly way, ‘You don't want to be mean!’ All activity stopped at that moment and I began talking with the little boy. He was extremely bright and attentive. We talked about things on his level. Just plain, ordinary things. And yet, in a way, the whole experience was quite remarkable. He was talking with me like a little man, calm and attentive. His mother just stood a little distance away, taking in the whole thing, with the keys back in her hand. Afterwards, I thought that perhaps the mother might have seen her son in a way she may not usually see him. A very bright, calm, special little boy, with a budding maturity. I believe this whole thing happened the way it did, simply because I was able to catch my wandering eye and wonder ‘How can I be helpful?’”

“We cannot sow seeds with clenched fists. To sow we must open our hands.” — Adolfo Perez Esquivel

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” — Helen Keller

January: Shining Our Light I

2007-02-21T19:10:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published January 07)

Every person is given a light to bring into the world. This is what we’re here for, what our lives are about. Most of us, however, lose track of this light, forget how to keep it lit and often even forget that it exists. This has happened to me again and again to varying degrees. When it does, my life starts to spiral into darkness and I have to find my light and start finding ways to bear it in the world again.

This month we will focus on this task of keeping ourselves turned on and shining in the world. I begin by simply reminding myself that this is my purpose and truest mission in life. I pull back from all the stuff that has distracted me from this mission, all the worries, demands, and alarms that are clamoring for my attention. If I am being a light in the world I’m doing what I’m supposed to do and everything else can wait. This is the truth and I return to it now by simply stopping, taking a breath and bringing it to the front of my mind.

I know that attention is a form of energy that calls forth its object, so I turn my attention to the light within myself. As it grows I look for places in the world around me that need it. I commit myself, the content of my words, thoughts, and actions, to the task of expressing light in its many forms. These include self-kindness, kindness to others, goodwill, good humor, joy, hope, faith, and love. I will try to find ways each day this month to become these things in the world.

December: Spiritual Optimism III

2007-02-21T19:09:00.001-05:00

(published December 06)

May today there be peace within. May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing.

—St. Therese of Lisieux

December: Spiritual Optimism II

2007-02-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published December 06)

Help me remember that goodness in all its forms is God-ness — your holy spirit here in and among us — so I will never forget how close you are. Let me find in that the courage to be flamboyant and fearless in my own goodness, to risk myself and regret no loss in the name of love.

December: Spiritual Optimism I

2007-02-21T19:02:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published December 06)

One of my deepest spiritual beliefs is that humankind is engaged in a process of development and unfolding. We are struggling to come out of the darkness of our delusions and begin living in the deeper truth of who we are and what we’re doing here on earth.

Some of us are aware of this process and are actively involved in it; others are completely unaware of it and so live lives governed by fear and often violence.

Those of us who are engaged in the spiritual process must account for those who are not. We must find a way to face the reality of darkness in our world without allowing that darkness to drive out our knowledge of the bigger spiritual picture, the knowledge that we are, in fact, in process.

In my experience, this is difficult. When I see some of the things we do to one another, be it in war or just in our daily lives, I often find myself leaning toward pessimism. It’s during these times I need to make a conscious effort to remember that despite all appearances to the contrary, we are on our way to the promised land.

December, for me, is a time to remember this; it’s a month to strive toward spiritual optimism. It’s the month Christians celebrate Advent, a time to ponder the mystery of God as a human being, a child no less. Here God is putting himself in our hands, rendering himself utterly vulnerable. I see the baby Jesus as a stark question to, and a profound belief in, humanity. The question is: What are you going to do with me? The belief is a belief in the possibility of our redemption.

For God to turn himself over to us as a child is the ultimate spiritual optimism. God obviously knows something about us that I often cannot see. I too often look at humanity and ask: can anything good ever come of us? (The way it was asked about Jesus: Can anything good come from Nazareth?) and God says, Yes, I am coming out of Nazareth and out of humankind.

Spiritual optimism isn’t just about seeing good and looking for the silver lining in life. It’s about looking darkness square in the face and still being able to see what’s possible. God sees possibility and this is what spiritual optimism is — it’s seeing through God’s eyes.

What does God see when he looks at us? What is possible for us as a species? I don’t know but I want to ponder it. I want to catch a glimpse of it and put it out in front of myself, to live in the knowledge of it.

For me this is the highest form of faith. Not believing in a certain doctrine or accepting a certain way of perceiving God, but rather believing that God is with us and is rising up through our dreams and longings and goodness. It’s knowing that the light in us is overcoming the darkness in us.

Someone once defined mysticism as the belief that the universe is conspiring on one’s own behalf. I would define faith as the belief that the universe is conspiring on humanity’s behalf. It’s a belief in the basic good will of God and of life itself.

December is a month for nurturing this belief in God’s goodness and knowing that it dwells in me — in us.

November: Gratitude III

2007-02-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published November 06)

Well, we’re coming to the end of November and our month of gratitude. I did take my own advice and went out the other day to break bread with the earth. As I took out the cracker I’d brought along and held it in my hand I felt more self-conscious than thankful. But I made myself look at the trees and the ground, listened to the squirrels and various birds and try to say thank you from my heart. What actually came out was: I desperately want a connection with you. Which is, I suppose, if I’m willing to let go of my agenda, as important as feeling gratitude: just to acknowledge my disconnection and ask for more connectedness.

So I stood there and reached out. I ate my cracker knowing it came from the earth and I thought about loss, about something being severed between me and my larger self. Then I crumbled the other half of the cracker and laid it down where it came from. I stood there for a minute and listened to the wind, watched it ripple the grass at my feet, and walked away.

It’s said that old testament law was handed down by God not because he expected us to follow it — he would know better, wouldn’t he? — but to reveal our inability to follow it. I guess the point was to teach us humility, to get us to admit our need for grace which, from the Christian perspective, was Stage 2 of God’s plan.

My commitment to thankfulness this month has served the same purpose. I tried to read my prayer every day but only succeeded about three quarters of the time. I tried to be consciously grateful (or just conscious) but I’ve been distracted by pains, pleasures, plans, busyness, desires, and dislikes.

But the commitment made this distraction visible. It revealed my need for grace, so to speak, and I find myself feeling grateful for that. Grateful and more compassionate toward myself and others. If the purpose of spiritual work is not accomplishment but rather insight, then this month has been a spiritual success despite my failure to live up to my own commitment and overcome my distractedness completely. And isn’t that how the cracker often crumbles in spiritual matters?

November: Gratitude II: Practicing Thanksgiving

2007-02-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published November 06)

Here I am a few days into this month of gratitude and the first thing I notice is how forgetful and easily distracted I am. I wander off into mental grumbling or thoughtless boredom a few hundred times a day. Still, I’m reading my daily prayer and asking myself throughout the day: what am I grateful for in this moment?

It focuses me and that’s the point of spiritual commitment and practice. Focus, for me, translates into connection, which is a valuable commodity. So, here are some practices and ways to celebrate gratitude that I’m using this month to stay focused:

1) Set aside morning time — even if only a few minutes — to say thank you and meditate on all we have to be grateful for. This simple practice sets a tone for the day by opening our heart.

2) Break bread with the earth. Choose a place that’s meaningful to you, take a bit of bread there, give thanks, then break the bread, eat your portion and lay the other portion down as a symbol of your gratitude and connection to life. This can be done alone or with a friend and should be a time to remember that our body and everything we eat, drink, taste, touch, see, and smell come from the earth.

3) Have a thanks giving party. Invite a few friends — no more than five — to join you, but don’t tell them what it’s about until they arrive. When they arrive tell them you have something to say to each of them, then tell each of them at least five specific reasons you’re grateful for them. Toast them with wine or coffee. Raise your glass to the people who make your life worth living. Why not?

4) Give God a gift. Jesus said, Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me. In other words, the poor among us — whether spiritually or physically poor — represent Emmanuel: God with us. If we want to give God a gift we only have to give it to one of his representatives. Does God need a winter coat, a ride to town, an invitation to dinner, some work done around his house? What better way to say thank you for the many blessings in our own lives? It can be done anonymously or not, depending on the circumstances.

5) Thank those who serve you. Waitresses, clerks, countless people in positions under us at work from mailroom employees to secretaries serve us every day and deserve our gratitude. But don’t just say “thank you” in passing. Stop them or call them aside and tell them you appreciate their attitude, the way they do this or that aspect of their job. Or do it publicly by asking for people’s attention at a meeting or lunch. We certainly often forget to be grateful in life, but even when we remember that we often forget to express it. Both are important.

In closing, these are just ideas, not a “program” of any sort. Take just one or two or whatever fits your life, or come up with your own. One other thing is that if there are children in your life you can bring them in on any of this as a way of putting it out into the world and the future. Kids also bring their great energy of willingness and openness to such things and can help us get out of our adult ruts.

So, there you have it. I’m off to experiment. I’ll keep you posted.

November: Gratitude I

2007-02-21T18:55:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published November 06)

November is, appropriately, a time to remember gratitude. It’s already the month of Thanksgiving in America but unfortunately, Thanksgiving as a holiday has been commercialized to the point that it has little connection any more to the act of giving thanks.

Yet even here in prison there is so much to be thankful for. I’m alive and fairly healthy; I’m loved by many good people; and every day I’m nourished by food that rises up out of our good planet.

Still, I find myself taking it all for granted, thinking about what I don’t have, or imagining various ways things might be taken from me. My mind is like a child that needs to be reminded to say “Thank you” over and over again until thanks giving becomes a spiritual habit. But it’s worth the effort because gratitude enriches me and ingratitude is a form of poverty.

As such, I find that giving thanks makes me less hungry. This is true literally with food but also metaphorically with life. I just finished work and looked through my cupboards (actually a metal wall locker) for something to tide me over ’til lunch. We haven’t gone to store yet so my cupboards, like Mother Hubbard’s, are a little bare. I ended up eating some saltines and two slices of American cheese. As I was eating I remembered to be grateful for this humble fare. I appreciated it by thinking about where it comes from and remembering that something was given up by another part of creation — animal, plant and earth — so I could have it. It was a gift and so I slowed down to savor it… and it became sufficient, even plenty.

This morning I had a similar experience on a broader level. I woke up with a feeling of anxiety that was trying to tip over into irritability. At first I just clenched my spiritual teeth as I sat there in the predawn darkness and sipped my first cup of coffee. Then I remembered my commitment to gratitude this month and began writing a prayer of thanks giving. My angst — a form of spiritual hunger — abated as the energy of thankfulness pushed out the energy of “not enough.”

Here’s my prayer:

Dear God,

Today, make my breathing and the beating of my heart a thank-you. Help me remember to be glad I’m here. Remind me throughout the day to say thank you as I meet you in all your disguises, to know that you always come bearing gifts if I’m willing to look inside the many packages I think of as “other.” Today, give me the eyes of a child.

Sincerely, your forgetful friend.

This is my prayer for November. I think I’ll make a copy of it and carry it around with me. I’ll say it at least once a day and try to remember to practice thanks giving this month.

The Year in Spirit

2007-02-21T18:49:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published November 06)

What if the world we live in is a reflection of what we focus our attention on, of what we honor, celebrate, and think about most? Is it really so farfetched an idea? We are a culture obsessed with evil, danger, and materialism and our world is becoming more plagued by these things with each passing day. We tend to believe that we’re obsessed with them because they’re growing, but what if it’s the other way ’round: They’re growing because we’re obsessed with them, because we keep feeding them our energy?

I was thinking about this and imagining how different the world might be if we fed the things we love rather than the things we fear. I envisioned a culture in which goodness, connectedness, and life are celebrated in meaningful and tangible ways, in which the energy of our lives is expended in living deeply rather than in endless war.

This vision gave birth to the idea of honoring an aspect of connected living each month, by focusing on it, celebrating it, and lifting it up in the world. I’m calling it The Year in Spirit and I see it as a way of reclaiming my spiritual energy and attention from a world that is frantically trying to direct this valuable and powerful resource to sick ends. Attention is spiritual currency and I want to spend mine on things I value, on things that will leave me not poorer, but richer when all is said and done.

I agree with Charles Bowden that we already know more than we’ll ever understand. I’m more in need of remembering what I already know on a daily basis than I am of learning anything new. And that’s what this amounts to, a way of remembering.

I invite you to join me if you’re so inclined. Each month I’ll send out a meditation reading, suggested ideas for ways to honor and uplift that month’s focus, and commentary on my personal experience with it. Even though we’re already into November, we’ll start there.

The Dark Side of the Stairs

2007-02-21T18:45:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published October 06)

Dear Friends,

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything. This is partly because I’ve been working on a group of paintings for a show in southwest Michigan. But it’s also because I’ve been in a place of spiritual reorientation. There’s this big cycle in my life where I go through phases of being sure I know what I’m about, then others where I don’t have a clue. It’s like my spiritual life is a spiral staircase split right down the middle with light and darkness. When I’m on the light side I can see every step clearly and have the reward of knowing I’m ascending slowly. But this heads inevitably to the dark side of the spiral where I go blind and have to grope along not knowing if I’m going up or down. It’s a place where I can only go on by faith. Yet I always come back to the light and find myself a little higher up the stairs.

I’m trying to embrace this knowledge: That the spiritual journey consists of these alternating patches of light and dark, seeing and not-seeing. Still, when I get in the light I inevitably think, “I’ve got it! I’ll never have to deal with blindness again,” which, of course, is a setup. When the blindness comes ’round again I get in a big emotional turmoil about it and end up spending more time there than I need to — most of it sitting on the steps crying “Woe is me.”

This is humorous to me when I manage to watch the process from a place above the staircase and don’t get caught up in the see-saw perspective that comes from seeing things from within the process.

Anyway. I’ve been on the dark side of the stairs for a while and have just remembered that there’s always light up ahead. I can see it now and it makes me think, “Oh yeah. It always happens this way. I remember now.” (With a blush of embarrassment at how easily I’m duped again and again on this point.)

It was something Maryann said recently that snapped me out of my drama and set off a chain reaction in my mind. It was something to the effect that it’s a miracle that anyone at all is trying to be awake in our world when you think about all the baggage we carry and all the stuff we’ve been through. She’s absolutely right. It made me realize that we are often too stingy with our congratulations and gratitude. We tend to focus too much on our failings and downplay our successes.

I beat myself mercilessly for what I am unable to accomplish and I tend to see the world through this same lens. I have become an “abstract optimist” — believing in a positive future out there somewhere but completely overlooking all the good stuff that’s going on right under my nose all the time. I’ve let my vision of what we could be become a curse by causing me to reject or ignore what we are. And there is so much to be thankful for.

You, for instance. You who are on this mailing list are extraordinary people. That you care about the things we discuss here, that you keep hoping, that you keep trying to walk in love and, as Bo Lozoff says, keep “stumbling toward the light,” all speak of this. With all the craziness around and inside us we keep right on dreaming and reaching.

I know that every one of you is struggling mightily with countless things in your own lives, yet you reach out to me: here’s money for your lawyer, here’s prayer and encouragement, here’s a little piece of me if it will make your journey easier. That is a miracle.

But our little network is just a sampling of something much larger. All around the planet good people are striving to serve our higher nature.

It’s like Gandhi said: When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end they always fall — think of it. Always.

But as when I’m on the dark side of my personal staircase and forget, I also forget this truth about us together. I need to remember that the light is always here whether we can see it or not and that many of Gandhi’s “tyrants and murderers,” like me, fall up and come to the light.

At any rate, the truth is that we’re all doing the best we can and that’s enough. It’s also true that what we note with attention and reward with encouragement grows. Let us remember to be kind to ourselves and encourage one another. We are the light of the world and you, my friends, shine on me. Thank you.

Become a Spiritual Arsonist

2007-02-21T18:43:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published May 06)

One of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard or read is a little verse in the book of Hebrews that says simply: Provoke one another to love and good works.

Ever since I first read this many years ago it has become one of the central mottos of my life. It’s one of those iceberg ideas where you see only 10 percent of its mass while there’s another 90 percent under the surface. It’s a tiny little manifesto that, if taken seriously, can be turned into a form of activism that can transform us and our world.

After all, what did Gandhi do but provoke the British to love and good works? Martin Luther King later did it in America as did Nelson Mandela in South Africa. The extraordinary politics of these people can all be reduced to this one core idea. But it’s not just a political philosophy. Indeed, as a form of activism, provoking one another to love and good works is infinitely adaptable and can be practiced in any situation and on any level we choose. Most of you have provoked me to love and good works many times simply by e-mailing and telling me how something I said was important to you, by encouraging me and telling me not to give up. And I must tell you that I couldn’t keep doing what I do without at least some of that provocation (the more the better, actually).

We all need provocation and encouragement from one another and, therefore, we ought to practice it intentionally. We can do so by talking about goodness, by telling people we admire them when we see them do something kind, by constantly and aggressively rewarding goodness.

The human mind — at least my human mind — tends to focus (obsess?) on the negative things people do and take the positive for granted. People get a lot more attention by doing bad things than they get by doing good things. Yet, we’re creatures who respond powerfully to attention. Most good people I know continue to do good regardless of the fact that no one ever says “thank you” or “I admire you for that.” But they often do so tiredly. Think about how priceless it is when somebody unexpectedly says, “Yes! Keep it up. It matters to me.”

There are countless people and situations in our world that provoke us to anger, apathy, and outright violence, but there is, sadly, a poverty of provocation to love and good works. What if there were more? Who knows the power that might be unleashed? What if there were an army of people speaking out for love and goodness and everywhere we turned we found encouragement? There could be and should be.

We can practice provocation in an organized way, if that suits us, by, say, running a class or bringing a small group together weekly for no other purpose than to uplift goodness. The ethics class I run here is an example of this and I’ll work personally with anyone interested in hosting a small group of friends.

But, if that doesn’t suit you, you can simply do it opportunistically. We’re constantly encountering people who are kind despite the fact that they deal with difficult people all day — waitresses, airport staff, government workers. There are single mothers and fathers who, despite the difficulty of their task, are working hard to do the best they can. Add in educators who get all of our social problems dumped in their lap and are paid half what they’re worth and are attacked by politicians, yet they continue trying to teach the next generation to be decent human beings. The list is endless if we look. How simple it is to tell such people: “I know you have a difficult task and I admire you for doing it so well.”

Become a praiser if you want to make a difference in our world. The power of it is immeasurable.

I believe this power even extends to people who aren’t doing good. If we can find one good thing to say about a person and encourage it — despite the many ways they’re missing the mark in other areas — that one good thing will grow.

I see a lot of negativity here in prison but I try to take advantage of opportunities to encourage goodness. If the food service supervisors make a good meal I try to tell them — no matter how bad the food is most of the time. The same with the officers and other staff who do something right. They’re only human and as such a little encouragement goes a long way.

Try it. You may never see the effect or be able to measure it but do it any way as an act of faith. Do it anonymously if you’re uncomfortable identifying yourself. Do it subtly or overtly, seriously or with humor. Do it as on act of subversion. Every time you do you’re starting a little spiritual fire and there’s nothing better to be in this world than a mad spiritual arsonist. The world might put out most of the fires you start but some of them will burn on. And if there’s enough of us starting them, eventually, the whole planet will be ablaze.

Love and Right Relationship

2007-02-21T18:41:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published April 06)

Love, when put into practice, becomes right relationship. We’re in constant relationship with everything in the universe and these relationships can be put into four basic categories:

1) Relationship with transcendent reality (God);

2) Relationship with ourselves;

3) Relationship with other human beings;

4) Relationship with nature.

The “practice of love” is simply a matter of trying to come into right relationship in these four areas. This is also a pretty good definition of virtue. Whatever facilitates right relationship is virtuous; whatever undermines it is not virtuous.

Remember we started this series on Calling Ourselves by talking about more fully reaching our potential as individuals and as a species. These things — right relationship, virtue, reaching our potential — are all synonymous. But for me, the concept of right relationship is more accessible and practical. I can look at my relationships in any one of these four areas and ask a) whether it’s as good as it could be and b) what I can do to improve it. That’s where I want to go next in these e-mails.

The first practical action I want to suggest is something we’re all familiar with: simple mindfulness. In this context I mean taking time out to be aware of our relationships in each of these areas. Our lives are so hectic sometimes we just go on automatic pilot. The idea here is to take back the controls and be aware that we are in relationship — right now — with transcendent reality, ourselves, others, and nature.

There’s not a right or wrong way to do this. Just put it on your agenda as something important to be aware of and think about.

This mindfulness leads naturally to the two questions presented above: Is my relationship here as good as it could be? And, what can I do to improve it? Another facet of these questions is: How is wrong relationship in any of these areas negatively affecting my life? Remember, wrong relationship isn’t just a matter of harming others; ignoring or failing to acknowledge another’s existence is often more harmful than hostility. And this is how I most often get out of right relationship — I simply forget I’m in relationship.

Thus I’ve found this process of reminding myself very helpful. Simply saying to God, myself, others, and nature, “I’m aware of you,” is a powerful way to get out of our own heads and whatever small circles we tend to draw around our lives.

I’m aware of you now, sharing my world, and I feel gratitude, a smile in my spirit. It’s good that we exist in this time together.

Getting to the Marrow

2007-02-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published March 06)

I recently restarted my ethics workshop here at the prison. After all the administrative junk to get it ready and approved I walk into that first session and face a room full of men and feel like I’m looking at a rich quilt. Each face is a patch that has suffered hardship. Maybe it belonged to a garment that was discarded but then someone realized there’s still good material here that can be part of something else. All these patches, cut, shaped, and sewn together with love by an unseen hand, can become something more than any of them can be alone.

I made it a point to invite Muslims, Buddhists and Christians, as well as those who aren’t associated with any religion. Some I’ve known for years, some I’ve just met. They come looking for answers, these men who’ve lost their families, their freedom, their shot in life (some have been in prison for decades and are old men now). They come wondering if there’s some knowledge that can make sense of and give meaning to their journey.

I’m touched by the trust they show me by sitting in the school desk-chairs and allowing me to “lead” them in the class. Our collective brokenness makes us brothers — as does the hope we share, hope that we can he better people.

I talk about goodness and tell them we’re going to stay away from an “academic” study of ethics. We’re just going to talk about what it means to live decent lives in the real world. They nod their heads telling me this is right. I tell them I have no magic formulas or special knowledge (they know this already, I presume, but I’m letting them know I’m under no illusions about my own genius). All I know is that when people get together, with all their differences and shortcomings, to talk about the kind of things we’re going to talk about, something happens. Something bigger than the parts that are so joined.

It’s as if the answers we seek are hidden in the spaces between us and when we listen, really listen to one another and speak honestly, things become clear. Wordless things mostly, but things about the marrow of life.

The men ask questions — what about this, what about that? But the information exchange is a subtext. The real exchange is of ourselves — a bit of me for a bit of you — never spoken, but seen in the eyes.

We talk about what we can do for the younger guys coming into prison. We all shake our heads when we think about them. So young and confused and strutting — trying desperately to figure out how to be men. After we talk about ideas for a while and get ourselves centered as a group, we’re going to split into teams to come up with ideas for reaching out, selling our message to others.

Simple stuff. Just caring together and deciding to try to do something about it, even something small. I’ll keep you updated on our progress.

Practical action: Have a conversation with someone about our world and what ordinary people can do to realign things. This can be informal with one person, or more formally with a small group that sits down over coffee. Let me know what you come up with if you try it.

Incomplete and Streaky

2007-02-21T18:34:00.000-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published February 06)

Knowledge of ourselves begins with an awareness and an acceptance of our brokenness. In this sense my crime and imprisonment — hitting the very bottom of depravity — was the beginning of redemption for me.

Up to that point I had been able to deny that anything was wrong with me. Or, maybe I should say, that anything was inherently wrong with me. I knew something was wrong but I blamed it on others. That was my form of denial. I wasn’t the problem. But after I took a man’s life, this denial could no longer hold up under even the mildest scrutiny. I was broken in ways that were obvious to everyone.

And I still am. So what’s different? Just that I know it. Not only that I know it but also that it’s all right. As Ernst Kurtz and Katherine Ketchem point out in their book, “The Spirituality of Imperfection,” “Spirituality suggests not ‘I’m okay, you’re okay,’ but ‘I’m not okay, you’re not okay, but that’s all right.’” And being okay with our brokenness — with our very selves, really, because brokenness isn’t an aspect of us, it’s who we are — is the beginning of redemption.

Sometimes when I see my brokenness and admit it my mind translates it as “bad.” I stop liking myself and drag out all my (many) flaws, braid them into a whip and start in on myself. Then I try to be perfect and walk around on egg shells, afraid to take a chance, afraid to do anything spontaneously for fear of doing it wrong. This ping-pong between “I’m no good” and “I’m perfect” is an impossible way to live. Not only that, but it’s a denial of my self — neither no-good nor perfect but rather imperfectly perfect — which leads on either side to self loathing. Which leads in turn to frantic efforts to measure up by accomplishing and acquiring and proving my worth.

The acceptance of who I really am, one imperfect human being longing (and striving) for completion, dissolves all this and allows me to love myself. Whenever I come back to it it’s like a burden being lifted off my shoulders. I can never be perfect but that doesn’t mean I’m no good either. I am what I am and whenever I look directly at that I can suddenly breathe with the honesty of it.

There’s a story of a preacher putting this question to his students: “If all the good people in the world were red and all the bad people were green, what color would you be?”

Little Linda Jean thought mightily for a moment. Then her face brightened and she replied: “Reverend, I’d be streaky!”

I can’t think of a better description of myself — of all of us — than “streaky.” And our streakiness isn’t a problem. Our problem is that we insist on seeing ourselves and others as all red or all green. And when we do we vacillate between self-condemnation and self-righteousness, neither of which allow room for love, generosity, and compassion.

This dualistic denial of who we really are is also played out in our national psyche between the so-called Left and Right. During the sixties and seventies liberals seemed to excuse others’ bad behavior by blaming themselves and America. We’ve all heard of “liberal guilt” and people on the Right still call liberals the “blame-America-first crowd.” Then Reagan came along in the eighties with the appealing notion that we should feel good about ourselves because, really, we’re pretty darn swell. If liberals were the “blame-America-first crowd,” conservatives became the “never-blame-America crowd.” Reagan encouraged us to be self-righteous, arrogant even, about our own goodness, and in so doing made intolerance and lack of compassion permissible and even virtuous, as Mario Cuomo noted at the time of Reagan’s death. If liberals blamed themselves for every bad thing that happened to them, conservatives went to the opposite extreme, aggressively denying all blame and transferring it to various others.

Liberals have moved away from their self-condemnation to some extent (and seem not to know who they are as a result) but conservatives are still very much the party of self-righteousness. Again, both of these positions represent a denial of who we really are and consequently foreclose the possibility of self-acceptance, which in turn forecloses the possibility of accepting (read: loving) others.

If I’m optimistic, I can see our political psyche balancing itself out in the middle, where both sides see that together they comprise the truth. Yet I know from my own life that both self-loathing and self-righteousness are seductive. We love our self deceptions, especially when we’re sitting across from someone who holds a deception opposite our own.

We run to one side or the other in order to escape the tension and anxiety of our paradoxical selves. But since tension, anxiety and paradox are who we are, we lose ourselves with this solution. A more courageous, though admittedly more messy, solution is to accept our incompleteness. To embrace with gentle good humor the tension of our imperfect selves. I am flawed. We are flawed. It’s so easy when I just say it. It’s all right. I don’t have to be anything else.

Yet I see us inflicting so much pain on ourselves and each other by insisting on one of the extremes of self-condemnation or self righteousness; either “I’m perfect and you’re to blame” or “I’m no good and deserve to suffer.”

Getting out of these two extremes is a form of forgiveness. We tend to think of forgiveness as having to do only with past sins we’ve committed. But for me, forgiveness isn’t only about the past but also about the present and the future. It’s forgiveness of who I am. In the case of divine forgiveness, it’s like God saying: I give you permission — indeed, blessing — to be who you are. What a powerful release! I don’t have to apologize to myself or anyone for being here just as I am. Yet, I can only hear this when I repeat it — to myself and to others.

I think of this as fore-giving, a promissory kind of forgiveness that covers not only the past but, again, the present and future as well. It’s a permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes, and, well, to sin. Without it there’s no permission to be who we are. This may seem like a bad idea, giving ourselves and others permission to sin, but, in fact, it leads to less, not more of it. This is because it makes room for love, both self-love and love of others. And love alone dispels both self-condemnation and self righteousness. Love (with a bit of humor) allows us to be streaky with no need to blame others or curse ourselves.

And that is a thing that this world is in sore need of.

Pardon Me, I'm in Transition

2007-02-20T21:05:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published February 06)

You’re having breakfast with a friend when she suddenly slaps the handle of her spoon and catapults a bomb of oatmeal across the table where it lands on your chin and slides down your neck. Then she laughs out loud and claps her hands in pure joy.

It’s the kind of behavior that could cause some serious tension in a friendship, if not a recommendation to get on some sort of medication. Yet your reaction would be very different if your friend were, say, two years old. You might still be annoyed — especially after the eighth time — but you would understand.

My question is why? The answer, of course, is because we’re talking about a baby. We make allowances for babies because we understand that they are going through a stage of development. They are, in fact, beings in transition.

Material processes and themes often mirror larger (but more subtle) spiritual processes and this is a case where that’s true. Just as a baby is a being in physical and mental transition, so we are all beings in spiritual transition. In fact, we live in two worlds. Christian theologians refer to them as “the transitional world” and “the consummated world.” The universe is trying to wake us up and open our hearts — very much as a parent guides a child through childhood. We, and all of creation, are in transition.

This is important because when we forget it we lose our rationale for spiritual or intentional love. This love makes no sense without an understanding that we’re going somewhere as a species.

A good friend of mine recently got a new cell mate. The new guy didn’t have anything so my friend shared coffee, smokes, and other items with him. The man repaid this kindness by stealing from my friend every chance he got. When finally there was a confrontation and the thief was moved to another cell he went around telling people my friend had stolen from him, literally adding insult to injury.

As fate would have it the thief ended up right across the hall from me. I see him when I walk out to use the bathroom or get coffee water. I walk to meals with him. My opinion of cell thieves isn’t very high to begin with and this guy has the personality of a spider to boot — one that might lay eggs under your skin if given the chance.

Why should I love this person? Or for that matter any of the child molesters, predators, extortionists, corrupt and hate-filled staff, and countless others I encounter here daily? I can’t find a reason in the immediate reality. If immediate reality is the whole story, love is stupid.

But it’s not the whole story. When I see this cell thief I remind myself of the world we’re moving toward. I hold up my vision of this world and in it I find the logic of loving him. At my best I live with one foot in this other world and act from that perspective. I know that every time I manage it I move us one tiny step closer to its realization. Conversely, every time I fail to act and think from that world I delay its coming and insure that the one we’re living in now lasts a little longer.

This is true both spiritually and practically. Spiritually it’s a matter of investing energy/attention into our realization, our higher potential (and consequently, withdrawing this energy from what we are today). Spiritual attention is like an invisible tow rope that we cast out. It attaches itself to the object of our attention and begins to draw us toward it. Practically, acting and thinking from what we want to be breaks up the relational patterns that keep us caught in our destructive world. Intentional love, in this sense, is doubly subversive to the present order, undermining it spiritually as well as practically.

When enough of us unhook our ropes from this order and attach them to the next we will find ourselves rapidly moving into that world which now seems so impossible.

As much as we may dislike the present order on one level, on another we feed and uphold it because it serves us in some way. America, for example, would lose her very purpose and identity if she suddenly had no enemies. We pretend we would like to get rid of our enemies but the truth is, in our present state of consciousness, we would shrivel up and die without our enemies. Witness the “war on crime” in which we quadrupled the size of our prisons, brought our death chambers up to full steam, wrote countless new laws, and shifted enormous resources from other areas of our society over a 20-year period beginning in the early 1980s. It’s no coincidence that this “war” began at almost the precise moment the Soviet Bogey Man crumbled.

We needed a new enemy and since nothing else was happening we decided criminals would do. If you listened to politicians and the media at that time you would have thought the nation was on the verge of collapse due to crime. Then 9/11 happened and suddenly our “crime wave” disappeared from the news and the national attention. The terrorists will serve us for a long time but eventually they’ll be replaced by another enemy in this circular process.

It’s not merely a political process but rather a spiritual process that’s expressed politically. Individually we need and extract meaning from enemies. And it’s through trying to meet this need that we uphold the world we say we dislike.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are other ways to find meaning and identity — seeing ourselves as ambassadors of a future better than our present, for instance — but the fact is that right now we turn again and again to enemies for these things and in so doing we attach the rope of our attention to the present dysfunctional world like an anchor dropped from a boat.

To view this present as transitional is to refuse to drop anchor here and to instead keep our sights on that shore up ahead. It not only gives us a rationale for adopting the mores of that future world now — intentional love, for example — it also gives us the strength to do so. When I look at the cell thief I remind myself he’s in a transitional state.

When I do stupid things or hurt others I’m able to forgive myself if I remember I’m in a transitional state. Indeed, I am gentler with all of creation. I keep returning my attention to the task of helping it through this difficult stage. I remind myself that that’s why I’m willing to love: Because all this is about something more than me.

If I were living this out perfectly I would be completely unoffendable, I would always respond to people according to what they need rather than what they deserve. Of course, I’m not and I don’t. But I am learning; I am in transition. And that knowledge is a piece of thread which, if I can keep hold of it and pull, can unravel the world we live in now and weave a better one in its place.

Intentional Love: Assistance

2007-02-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

Continued from the post: Intentional Love: Goodwill

by Troy Chapman

(published February 06)

When I'm able to maintain this desire for any length of time it leads to the third face of intentional love: assistance — turning my desire into some form of action.

This action may be prayer, or speaking a word for consciousness and against callousness. It may be running a class here in prison or simply listening to someone.

Since all things are connected this action doesn't have to directly affect what initially moves me. Seeing starving children in Africa can provoke me to donate cosmetics to the church to be distributed to those in need. Or I can remember these children while working in the garden here to grow vegetables for poor families in the surrounding community. Or I can write a letter to someone who's lonely or talk to another prisoner about his kids and give him ideas for connecting more deeply with them.

When we recognize the intrinsic value of one thing we recognize the value of all things. When we assist one, we assist all. Too often we see big things that are being done by celebrities and others with big resources and we get performance anxiety. We freeze up and don't do anything.

But love is not a competition. Remember the words of Mother Teresa: We can do no great things — only small things with great love. Listen to your own spirit and do what you are led to do. What's in your heart at the moment of action is more important than the action itself. Honor yourself as you honor others with your actions and the third face of intentional love will smile on you and on the world through you.

In conclusion, this is a look at love as a practice. We've drawn a distinction between intentional and unintentional love and identified the three faces of love: reverence, goodwill, and assistance.

I know from personal experience that when we wear these three faces by practicing intentional love, the first result is always our own transformation. So if we are committed to bringing out the image of God within us we should consider adopting reverence, goodwill, and assistance as daily spiritual practices. As Sister Therese of Lisieux said: That will be my life, to scatter flowers — to miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love.

For, as Joseph Fort Newton points out, when we get out of ourselves and into the lives of others new life flows into us.

Changing the world, as much as we may care about it, will never be sufficient motive to practice love. We must practice it because we know it is the only hope of healing and transforming ourselves as well as the world.

Intentional Love: Goodwill

2007-02-20T21:01:00.001-05:00

Continued from the post: Intentional Love: Reverence

by Troy Chapman

(published January 06)

The second face of intentional love is goodwill, having a desire for the persons or things we encounter to reach their highest potential.

Like reverence, goodwill is easy to practice toward those we like and admire, i.e., unintentionally. It’s more difficult to practice toward those we fear and revile. But that’s what we’re talking about here, intentional and universal goodwill.

One of the most destructive aspects of the American psyche is our concept of justice (which we’ll explore more fully later). Particularly I’m talking about the notion that justice is a matter of deciding who deserves to suffer and then withdrawing our goodwill from such people. Nature hates a vacuum, so the moment we withdraw our goodwill, ill-will rushes in to fill the void. We want those who offend us to suffer, we want some harm to come to them.

This plays out not just in matters of criminal justice but in all aspects of our everyday lives. We withdraw goodwill from political adversaries, from people who differ with us religiously, from the driver who cuts us off, the cashier who’s rude, the waitress who gives poor service. This desire to see those who “deserve it” suffer is the opposite of love and is like a poison in our culture and in our souls.

The thing to understand about it is that desire of any kind is a spiritual energy that affects our world. Our mechanistic view of the world tells us that thoughts don’t have any direct effect on the world, but spiritual masters have long claimed they do. Jesus taught that to think murderous and adulterous thoughts is the same as committing the deeds.

Thoughts are either pathogenic or biogenic, death-inducing or life-inducing; they are either toxic or nurturing, just like other things in our environment. What we call will, either goodwill or ill-will, is a concentrated direction of our thoughts toward some aspect of our world. In the case of ill-will, it’s like deciding to spray poison on some aspect of our world.

Think about all the ill-will, the anger, callousness, apathy, fear, and hatred that’s flying about in our culture. A culture is like an ecosystem, a pond for instance, that we all share, and if we believe that we can indiscriminately dump poisons into this ecosystem and escape the deathful effects of it we’ve missed the environmental lessons of the past three quarters of a century. Yet we do seem to think that directing ill-will toward certain people is not only harmless but virtuous.

We are deeply connected within the web of life and if the system is sick, the individual organisms within the system will be sick. This is as true on the metaphysical as it is on the physical level. We may not be able to trace the complex connections between cause and effect, but if we understand the principle we don’t need to. We know that toxins don’t simply go away. They go into the system and ultimately have a negative effect.

They also have an effect on the user. What we put out comes through us. The practice of ill-will stunts our spiritual growth. Goodwill, being a part of love, facilitates our development toward our potential.

I remember when I first started to change 20 years ago, I focused on my behavior. I forced myself to refrain from violence and other bad acts yet I found that I still thought about lashing out at people who tried to harm or otherwise step on me. Ultimately I concluded that merely controlling my action wasn’t much of a virtue. I set about trying to intentionally replace ill-will with goodwill. It was like setting off an atomic reaction in my spirit. That was the moment my transformation began to accelerate beyond anything that had come before.

The practice of goodwill intentionally, universally, and even aggressively, is a powerful catalyst for our own personal transformation and the transformation of our world. It is the second face of intentional love and we practice it by consistently saying “yes” to the intentions of life and “no” to that part of ourselves that wants others to suffer — as we would say “no” to a child if he or she had this same negative desire. This face is the inner foundation of all kindness, gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness. And when we create these things in our heart, they will spill out in an authentic form on the world.

Next time: Assistance

Continued in the post: Intentional Love: Assistance

Intentional Love: Reverence

2007-02-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

Continued from the post: Intentional Love

by Troy Chapman

(published January 06)

Reverence is recognizing the intrinsic value of the person or thing in question. “Intrinsic" means: Belonging to the essential nature of a thing. Intrinsic value is value that cannot be reduced. It is the same no matter what people do or what their circumstance in life may be. An ax murderer has the same intrinsic value as the Dalai Lama or a newborn baby. A mentally deranged bum has the same intrinsic value as Bill Gates or the president of the United States of America.

One of the first things we do to our enemies is deny their intrinsic value. This makes it much easier for us to destroy or brutalize them. But we also deny or fail to recognize intrinsic value in many other cases. In fact, we do it whenever we judge the value of people and things in reference to ourselves. In other words, when we assign value according to how useful a person or thing is to us.

Intrinsic value has nothing to do with whether people or things are useful to us. It stands completely outside all human consideration. Our opinion or accounting of this value has no effect whatsoever on it. But, here's an important truth: our reckoning of and accounting of intrinsic value has a profound effect on us.

When we fail to recognize or acknowledge intrinsic value we belittle ourselves. This is because to deny intrinsic value in any one person or thing is to deny it in all things, including ourselves.

We're talking here about the virtue of reverence. Reverence is simply recognizing the intrinsic value of a person or thing. When we do it, it undermines the ego and our ego-centric view of the world and acts like yeast to our spiritual growth. This is how and why it causes transformation — because it is utterly contrary to our ego nature.

But it is a practice, something we commit ourselves to then forget and remember a thousand times a day. It's something that must be done with conscious effort until we become proficient at it and it becomes a habit of living.

An encouraging point about this process is that those instances when it is most difficult are always the most fruitful. Practicing reverence while talking to Mother Teresa is easy. Practicing it toward the rude person who just cut the line ahead of you or stole your parking spot is much more difficult — let alone toward criminals and terrorists and others who hurt us — but it will also be more fruitful in terms of spiritual growth if you make yourself do it.

Another point is that this practice is as much a matter of untraining ourselves as it is of retraining ourselves. By this I mean that we've been trained by our culture to value people and things according to how useful they are to us. In other words, we've been trained to not see intrinsic value. One way to begin untraining ourselves from this blindness is to consciously accept as truth the existence of intrinsic value. When I first started this process I told myself, "I know it's there. Now I have to learn to see it."

When we begin looking at the world with this certain knowledge and remind ourselves constantly that the reason we're not seeing intrinsic value is because we have poor spiritual eyesight, this will keep us looking — and if we keep looking we will begin to see.

This seeing is the first face of intentional love and when you encounter it you will find that you've had a glimpse your own true face.

Next time: Goodwill

Continued in the post: Intentional Love: Goodwill

Intentional Love

2007-02-20T20:58:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published January 06)

I’ve learned and experienced countless things during my time in prison but whenever anyone asks me, “What changed you?” I always point to one thing: love. By this I don’t mean people being nice to me or making me feel good or giving me hugs. I’m not talking about love I received at all. That has certainly been important for sustaining my spirit but the practice of love has been responsible for whatever transformation has occurred in my life.

If we want to tap into love as a means to reach our true spiritual potential and change our world we have to be ready to embrace it as a spiritual practice and this demands that we expand our understanding of love and begin to think of it in new ways.

We can begin with this distinction between love as something that happens to us and love as something we practice. We’re all familiar with the first kind of love and have experienced it in the form of romance or when we first laid eyes on a baby or even a puppy and felt the emotions of protectiveness and a desire to please and nurture.

I think of this as unintentional love because it grabs us and takes possession of us with very little intention or effort on our part. This kind of love is a wonderful experience and it often has a profound effect on our lives. It is a spiritual experience that can lift us higher — and drop us lower — than almost any other human experience. And it is certainly transformative to some extent.

But there is another form of love that transforms us far more consistently and profoundly — intentional love. Intentional love is something we choose to practice the way someone might choose to practice medicine. It’s a philosophy of life that we believe in and commit ourselves to the way someone might believe in and commit themselves to a religious or political ideology.

We do it with an expectation that it will cost us something in the way of sacrifice and with a complete willingness to bear that cost. We commit ourselves to the study, defense, and advancement of love. We turn “love” into “love-ism” and ourselves into “love-ists,” and when this change occurs in the way we think about love, love itself becomes a radically different thing.

This view of love is based on the belief that love is the ultimate good and is therefore always the right response to life. Which means that intentional love is universal and unconditional. It draws no distinction between those who treat us well and those who treat us poorly. This love isn’t given or withheld according to who others are but according to who we are. It is driven from within in the form of action rather than from without as a reaction.

It’s the love Jesus was talking about when he said: “You have heard it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The original Aramaic word translated here as “perfect” can be more accurately rendered as “all-encompassing.” Jesus is telling us that the love of God is universal and unconditional. God loves his enemies as much as he loves his friends. It is an intentional and proactive love that does not depend on peoples’ behavior.

Furthermore, the “reward” he speaks of is a transformation of our spirit. Loving only those who love us causes no transformation, no fundamental change in us. Only by pushing ourselves beyond our own boundaries to love even those who hate us, are we able to tap into the full transformative power of love.

This is intentional love, and it is a whole different animal than the love we usually think of when we hear the word. Over the years I’ve identified three aspects of intentional love that define it for me. They are:

1) Recognizing the intrinsic value of the person or thing in question;

2) Having a desire for this person or thing to reach its highest potential;

3) Turning that desire into some form of action.

We can think of these as reverence, goodwill, and assistance.

They are the three faces of intentional love and together they constitute the only means for us to realize our full spiritual potential. Practicing them consistently leads to our own fulfillment as surely as failing to practice them leads to unfulfillment.

In the next three Sacred Living letters, we’ll explore each of these in turn. Stay tuned!

God's Personality and Voice

2007-02-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

Continued from the post: The Measure of All Things

by Troy Chapman

(published January 06)

... More personally, we can measure our personal life strategies by the same standard. The level of our commitment to love is an exact reflection of how spiritually healthy and happy we will be. It is also a reflection of how harmful or beneficial our presence in the world is.

So, for me, love is the sun of my mental, spiritual, moral, social, and political solar system. When I ask, How can I be more happy and healthy? my answer is: By bringing love more fully to bear in my mind and actions. When I ask, How can I be more virtuous and better serve God? my answer is: By learning to love more. When I ask, How can I become enlightened? my answer is: By letting more love in because love is the light of my universe. When I ask, How can our society be made more just and our world more sane? my answer is: By people learning to be more creative and committed to the application of love to our problems. When love becomes the sole means of all human endeavor we will have accomplished all these things.

For me love is the manifestation of God; it is God’s personality and presence and when the Scriptures speak of “the image of God” within us, they are speaking of our ability and potential to love. Love is the only way to serve God and the only way to become more like God. Indeed, though this may make some people uncomfortable, I say we’re not wrong to even pray to love because love is another name for God. When we listen to it we’re listening to God. When we seek it we’re seeking God. When we embrace it we’re embracing God.

Often during the day I catch myself whispering: Love, show me the way. Expand your kingdom through me. Keep me on your path.

Maybe this is just a way to keep myself focused but it seems to me that if love is the manifestation of God it is more than an emotion. It’s an intelligent energy and it does answer such appeals. Love speaks to me and as far as I’m concerned it is the voice of God.

When we talk about people “playing God” when they exercise absolute power over others we display a complete misconception of God. Those who truly play God are those who make a total and radical commitment to love and abandon all other power. They put their faith in love and conform their thinking to it, they lay down their lives for it and sacrifice themselves on its altar. And in so doing they find themselves, because every other path in life is a path away from ourselves.

Our task, if we care about personal and collective spiritual self-realization, is to figure out how love works. It is to study love the way Mozart studied music; to explore its endless and largely untapped possibility.

The degree to which we learn to see the world through love, to apply it creatively in the world, and commit ourselves to it as serious disciples, is the degree to which we will witness our spiritual self-realization. It is the degree to which we will move toward the image of God within us and move our world closer to the kingdom of God that has been the longing of the millennia.

The quote from Paul earlier compared love to other things Christians at that time considered valuable — speaking in tongues, prophesy, faith, charity, and a martyr’s death. If he were writing to us instead of the Corinthians he might have said: If I become wealthy and successful, but have not love, I am nothing. If I become famous and have more power than anyone else, but have not love, I’ve wasted my life. If I have lots of comfort and pleasure, but have not love, I’ve squandered my potential.

Or, if he were speaking to our society he might have said: If we defeat terrorism, build lots of prisons and walled communities to keep us safe, win the war on drugs, and learn to control all people, but have not love, we have failed.

Love is the “one thing” Rumi warns us never to forget. It is the fire that lights up the image of God within us and when it goes out this image fades into darkness and we lose sight of our very selves. But the embers remain, waiting for breath and for fuel, waiting for us to return from the cold night of distraction that our lives have become.

So, to Quote Rumi again:

Come
Come, whoever you are! Wanderer,
Worshiper, Lover of Leaving
Come.
This is not a caravan of despair.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve broken
your vow a thousand times, still
Come,
and yet again
Come!

The Measure of All Things

2007-02-20T20:55:00.001-05:00

by Troy Chapman

(published January 06)

If I tell you my height is 5’ 11” you can know how tall I am even if you’ve never seen me. That’s because we’ve agreed beforehand how much distance a foot and an inch represent. We have a standard by which to measure and talk about the distance from the floor to the top of my head.

In the same way, when we talk about realizing our potential, becoming enlightened and conscious, and rising up to the image of God within us, we need a standard by which to measure and understand these things. I believe this standard must be love.

Indeed, in spiritual terms, love is the measure of all things. St. Paul talks about this in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love I am only a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

Paul was only expounding here on what Jesus himself taught. When asked what was the greatest commandment — the most important and central value of his teaching — he said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The question we want to ask is whether Jesus and Paul were simply issuing a religious edict specific to Christianity or whether they were speaking a universal truth that is valid whether one is Christian or not. One clue is that this teaching is central to every major religion on earth. It’s the core of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Beyond this we all know as individuals that love is the ultimate good. It’s the thing we need and long for most. All our visions of peace and goodness have at their core a world in which people love one another.

Another point is that love feeds life. It is the one thing that causes us to flourish as surely as on absence of love causes us to languish. Love causes us to move toward our potential. It is the catalyst of the process of self-realization, of us becoming what we’re capable of becoming. This is a universal truth. Numerous scientific studies show that even plants respond to love with increased growth and health. And, of course we’ve all seen examples of abused animals responding to the same healing power of love.

And if this is true on an individual basis it’s just as true on the level of community. Whole neighborhoods have been transformed by the love of a few people. Indeed, whole nations have. Look at the work of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in South Africa.

Love is the ultimate good, yet this is a truth we’ve barely scratched the surface of. What does it really mean?

If love is the ultimate good then there is no good outside it. If we believe this we should throw out the concept of “good and evil” completely and stop seeing the world in those terms. Instead of “good/evil” we should see the world in terms of “love/not-love.”

Throughout history people have committed all kinds of atrocities in the name of God and goodness and even in our time this is a common practice. It’s possible because the concept and definition of “goodness” can be manipulated to serve almost any end.

When terrorists recruit people to kill other people they convince them that this is a “good” thing. Racists, Nazis, and fundamentalists of every stripe use the same tactic. But imagine them trying to convince people that murdering other human beings is an act of love. It doesn’t work nearly as well. When we think in terms of love/not-love we bring a clarity to morality that isn’t there when we think in terms of good/evil.

Many Christians in America are attacking homosexuals under the banner of fighting evil and serving God. But ask this simple question about them: Are they treating homosexuals with love? Some people may try to twist the definition of love to fit their behavior but we know what love is and the way some people treat homosexuals isn’t loving.

This is just one issue within a much larger political and religious movement in America under the same banner of moral righteousness. It includes support for the death penalty, harsh sentences and no forgiveness for criminals, support for war to deal with our enemies, intolerance and violence against those don’t agree with us, and a general sense of superiority.

These are angry people who believe in fear, violence, and domination, yet they have cleverly hoodwinked a large number of Americans into believing that these positions and attitudes represent Jesus Christ and the moral good. This is strange when we consider that Jesus never punished or attempted to dominate anyone. Jesus separated the world into love/not-love and was crystal clear about what represented God.

Beyond this, if love is the ultimate good and we believe in goodness, we must consider love to be the remedy to all human problems. In other words it is not only right, but good in the sense of promoting health and well being within us, within our society, and within our world. What is the solution to crime and violence? If love is the ultimate good we must say that love is the solution. The same is true of the abortion conflict, terrorism, and the entrenched conflict in the Middle East. If we want to know how successful our response to these situations will be in the long run we need only ask whether or not they arise from love. …

Continued in the post: God's Personality and Voice