(Photo: Who or what plays the leading role in your spiritual life? Credit: Mojoey.)

I’ve certainly confused a few people since overhauling CHICAGO CARLESS. Not from blogging about my spiritual journey, but from the lack of of a traditional cast of characters playing a role in it.

I can understand that Scooby-Doo “Hruhh?” response some faithful readers have had.  I think it begs the question: how do you define “spiritual” in the first place?

Traditional Judeo-Christian perspectives center around the idea of an external, omnipotent God, clearly separated from man and everyday life.  We are viewed as being from God and carrying God with us. Yet we are also considered to be at the mercy of the Divine, and held accountable to God for our actions.

When my traditional Christian and Jewish friends speak of spirit, they frequently cite the names of cherished personages who appear in the cosmology of their particular faiths, and invoke those names in times of crisis.  

There is great power in relying upon the Divine in this manner.  But for some people, it can make it hard to see that there are other, equally valid paths to awakening spirit and touching the Divine.  Much Eastern spiritual thought does not name the Divine, or invokes the names of deities and spiritual leaders with the full understanding that doing so is merely symbolic.  (Buddha, for example, is very much understood to have been an ordinary person by adherents of Buddhism, not a deity).

My spiritual worldview is based in such Eastern thought.  It is similar to my Judeo-Christian friends’ worldviews in that I believe in an all-encompassing, loving consciousness, from which we spring and that we carry with us throughout our lives.

However, if I were to name God, I wouldn’t point the finger out there.  I would point it back to each and every one of us, instead.  In my tradition, there is no separation between God and us and everyday life. Everything is Divine.  Everyone is Divine.  Every moment is holy.  For me, the sum of us, small as it is but added to the incomprehensibly greater sum of All That Is, literally is universal consciousness–i.e. God.

Or try it this way.  I do believe we carry around a “holy spirit” with is.  But I don’t believe it is in addition to who we are.  I believe it is who and what we are: a very literal part of what others might call God.  

For anyone confused about the cast of characters I cite in my spiritual awakening, this is the main point, from which everything else springs for me.  Radical personal responsibility about our lives, an inherent ability to make miraculous transformations happen, the absolute powerlessness of past-based fears and limitations, and innate and limitless wells of love and compassion?  For me, they all spring from the Source. In my perhaps hard-core view, we are just more a part of that Source than more traditionally spiritual Westerners might claim.  

And that’s a fine difference–a fabulous difference, even.  I don’t pretend to think that my way or anyone else’s is the one and only way to ultimate truth.  I can’t imagine the Divine would be so limited as to give us a single way to get there. I honor everyone else’s spiritual leaders and traditions, and I recognize that we are all aiming at the same target.  The more we let our ideas about God turn into concrete and immovabe forms, the more trouble we get into as a human race.  

I think it’s a shame that so many people go through their lives professing beliefs about God and faith that they haven’t examined and personally validated from deep inside.  I love my Universe, deep down I know why, and I mean it when I say it. It’s a blessing to find your tradition and live it like that.  

But to my mind, it’s a curse to espouse religious views as an adult just because your parents told you to do so when you were a child.  Many people say they adhere to one traditional (or non-traditional) viewpoint or another about God.  But I think far fewer have actually ever considered those beliefs enough to tell you why they hold them.  That strikes me as hollow spirituality. 

I don’t know what that kind of unexamined faith gets you.   I do know that if someone told me they loved me, from the bottom of my heart I would hope that they meant it.  

How do you think Jesus would feel?

(Photo: Gleeful riders aboard seatless Japanese metro train.  Similar glee coming soon, to a CTA ‘L’ car near you? Credit: Mil.)

“The cattle car is being reintroduced on CTA trains…”

That’s how Jon Hilkevitch described the CTA’s plan to run seatless ‘L’ cars on some rush hour trains in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune.  I wholeheartedly agree.

At the July CTA Board meeting, agency president and Daley wunderkind Ron Huberman announced that rising ridership caused by thy skyrocketing price of gas is severely straining Chicago rapid transit, forcing the CTA to explore new ways to fit rush-hour customers into the system.  

It’s an idea Huberman floated at the CTA Tattler coffee meeting that I attended back in March of this year.  Although I was a minority of one at that table, I didn’t like the idea then and I don’t like it now.

When I was back in New York last August, interviewing and riding Gotham’s persistently-packed subway system all over town, I longed for the cloth-covered goodness of a CTA ‘L’ seat–almost always available outside of the peak of rush hour in Chicago.  Much as I hate to be crammed into a packed Blue or Brown line train at 8:00 in the morning, I know that in an hour, somewhere down the route, someone else is going to be happy to plop down into a newy vacated seat once rush hour wanes.

Huberman says the seatless cars will only run during rush hour, with a maximum of two of them per train, and that anyone who doesn’t want to or cannot stand, including the elderly and those with mobility impairments, can simply choose to ride in another car.  

But it doesn’t seem quite so simple to me.  I shared my ideas in the comment thread of Thursday’s CTA Tattler post regarding the “Chicago Seatless” cattle-car idea.  Here are the problems I foresee:

• Delays during rush hour as riders hold doors while they pass along the platform to find a car with seats.
• Crowding becoming worse in cars with seats as riders opt out of the seatless vehicles.
• Danger as riders pass between cars on moving trains to find a car with seats.
• Inconvenience as seniors and the access challenged are forced to hustle down packed rush-hour platforms to find a car with seats–or accidently board a seatless vehicle.
• Damaged credibility as riders board uncrowded cars at the edge of rush hour and still can’t sit down in some of them–although they should be able to do so.

Furthermore, I’m not a big fan of the way Huberman seems to be railroading this idea (pun intended) with the CTA’s own riders.  As a media-relations professional, I know that perception is nine tenths of opinion. That seatless ‘L’ car might be a more economical option for riders choosing a $2 ride over $5 a gallon for gas.  But how attractive does that $2 ride become when the transit agency, itself, is telling you that if you ride, you’ll have even less of a chance at a comfortable commute than before?  Especially when compared to your plushly upholstered–and guaranteed–driver’s seat.  

Hilkevitch wrote that the CTA has already received marked negative criticism from customers regarding the seat-removal plan, and quotes opposition from several riders aboard a packed evening Brown Line train–from both seated and standing riders.  

Much as I root for the CTA, my usually convenient personal limousine around my beloved adopted hometown, I think it’s time we let the aura wear off of Huberman.  He’s had wonderful ideas before in previous posts under the Daley administration and as CTA president (expanding bus tracker, implementing better maintenance and cleaning practices, accelerating slow-zone elimination), and I still think he’s the best person to head this town’s transit system right now.  

But he’s also had some dreadful ideas, too. (For example, this year’s plan to divert most Loop service for track work, and replacing the O’Hare Blue Line with a bus from Rosemont instead of having crews do the work overnight). It worries me that after more than a year on the job, the transit intelligentsia of this town is still willing to give him a free pass on every plan he and his management team come up with.

Huberman says that seatless metro cars are common in Asia.  They aren’t, though they are used during limited hours in certain cities.  But is that a reason to use them here–just because they’re used somewhere else?

Chicagoans deserve transit solutions that are tailored to their specific needs and desires, as well as a methodical public vetting of all ideas that have the potential to affect great swaths of the riding public like this one does.  Chicagoans also deserve the CTA to respect their desires once the agency hears what the riding public has to say.

In short, telling  Chicago riders, “that’s the way they’re doing it in Asia now,” is not a valid justification for removing seats from Chicago ‘L’ trains.

We’re already getting saddled with lateral (all-sideways) seating on new ‘L’ cars arriving in 2010.  Like the no-seats-at-all plan, sideways seats are supposed to allow more riders to fit on peak trains.  Market research showed riders didn’t want to give up forwards/backwards seats.  The CTA’s justification for moving ahead with the plan anyway?  That’s the way they’re doing it in New York now.

Right now, they’re also riding on the top of trains in the Indian city of Mumbai because of crowding conditions.  I tell you this so that if at some point you see a CTA train go by with a row or two of seats bolted to the roof, you’ll know why.

(Photo: Just hand me the chopped chicken liver and a spoon, thanks. Credit: Eleven City Diner.)

As I happily Twittered, I had lunch yesterday at Eleven City Diner, the two-year-old nouveau-Jewish deli in he South Loop. This followed an impromptu dinner last week, when I needed a long walk to work off the stress of my blog migration project and unintendedly meandered to 11th and Wabash.

Now I’ve gone about as native as an ex-New Yorker can go in Chicago in five years.  Deep dish?  Chicago dogs?  Juicy beefs?  Pass ‘em my way.  But there’s something about pastrami, reubens, lox with a shmear, corned beef, and egg creams that never leaves the soul of a former Gothamite.

And then there’s chopped chicken liver.  I guess I get the liver gene from my grandmother.  She was a big fan of the offal organ, although when I was growing up alongside her (she lived in the attic apartment), I wasn’t. As an adult, though, I’ve adopted Ina Garten’s chopped liver recipe as my own, and with the right schmaltz it’s heaven.

Yesterday at the diner, I had a #24: a pastrami-corned beef club with chopped liver and Swiss on rye.  And an egg cream.  It was like I had taken a long walk to the Lower East Side.  As I staggered out grinning, holding half my double-decked sandwich in a to-go tray, I told the waitress, “Next time you see me coming, just hand me the chopped liver and a spoon.”

When I got home, the door woman at Marina City asked me what booty I was bringing back from lunch.  Her widened eyes, cocked back head, and look of abject disgust said it all.  Good.  More for me.

Last week’s dinner at Eleven City Diner I had the reuben.  It’s actually not my Second City favorite.  That title, surprisingly, goes to the Radical Reuben, a mind-blowing vegetarian concoction at Lakeview’s Chicago Diner that you’d swear was made out of something formerly mooing.  But anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve noshed my way through Chicago on reubens, and I don’t mind paying the 12 bucks for the privelege at Eleven City.

For starters, it’s not overly large (unlike some of their other sandwiches, like their six-inch tall Marshall Field’s inspired beast that sparked a controversy I blogged about in 2006 when the still consistently locally challenged Macy’s tried to sue the diner for using the Field’s name on its menu).  Nor does it taste and feel of overused griddle grease, as frequently does the offering at The Bagel on Broadway.

I had a phosphate last week, though.  In a comment under my 2006 post about the diner, I shamefully proclaimed Midwestern phosphates better than my native New York egg creams.  Feh.  That egg cream I had yesterday at Eleven City was the equal of any of the many I had at Dirty Bernie’s on Kew Gardens Road in mid-1970s Queens.  (A long-defunct, authentic mid-century soda shop, I didn’t notice until my teens that the real name of the place was Bernieland). So let me set the record straight: real egg creams are way better than phosphates!

After I got home yesterday, I Googled Eleven City.  To my surprise, they fly their cheesecake in from Junior’s in Brooklyn.  I used to walk there during the eight years I lived down Flatbush Avenue in Park Slope.  The bathroom was horrendous.  But the cheesecake was properly New York: substantial; a bit dry; and anything but mushy (sorry, Ely’s).

I immediately called Eleven City Diner, and they confirmed their cheesecake is the one I miss from Gotham. I believe I told the man who answered the phone that I loved him. Not that I’m a total food slut or anything.  But if anyone wants to import Christie’s Jamaican beef patties from Brooklyn or open a real Portuguese restaurant in this town, you could probably own me.

(Photo: This is what a 15-minute walk to the ‘L’ feels like to me. Credit: Ross Bon.)

The problem with ADHD is you can never make your mind up.  Right or left?  Chocolate or vanilla?  Go or stay?

It’s a symptom that has been driving me–and by extension, Chris–crazy for the past few weeks.  He’ll need a new roommate come September 1st (and, boy, the reason why is a story and a half, but I digress).  Back when we were boyfriends, I was adamant that roommate be me. Then we broke up and I wasn’t so much anymore.

Then I looked at my finances and his in-unit washer/dryer and wheedled my way back into potential roommate-dom again.  Those of you doing the math are already wondering why Chris and I would be crazy enough to be roommates after we just broke up.  Our friends got there long before you.  All I can say is we both have faith.

Except, for me, faith tends to end wherever a 15-minute walk to the ‘L’ begins.  And, wouldn’t you know it, that’s just how long it takes for me to walk from the pastry man’s fabulous apartment, through the pungently leafy streets of Oak Park, to the nearest CTA Green Line stop.  

Now, I love walking as much as the next person. God knows, back in the 1980s GLYNY heyday, a friend and I walked from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Lido Beach, Long Island.  Thirty-five miles.  Twice. (Prompting the proprietress of a bullet-proofed convenience store along the way to query us on our return visit, “Lemme guess, you’re still walking?”).

But a 15-minute walk from my downtown Chicago ghetto-fab apartment would bring me not just to the ‘L’, but to most of the places I normally visit on foot in the course of a given day.  The idea that every one of my daily trips would require an additional 15-minute walking tax each way seems like a lot to bear for a non-driving lifelong urbanite.  Chris thinks I’m spoiled.

Living within a block or two of a Chicago ‘L’ or New York City subway station for most of my life, I suppose I am.  That’s why I’ve never learned how to drive.  (Well, that and a deep love of the richness of urban life).

I’ve come to the conclusion native suburbanites like Chris and native city dwellers like me conceive of walking differently. For a suburbanite, unless you’re at the mall, walking is what you do only when you don’t have wheels.  And since the ‘burbs are more sprawling and less transit-laden than any given center city, a carless suburbanite might be thrilled to have a mere 15-minute walk to get to transportation. Still, he or she would walk that long distance only because they couldn’t drive it.

Back in town where everything is much closer together, walking is what we do because we don’t have to drive everywhere.  That’s a big difference.  In 37 years (soon 38), if I ever wanted to live 15 minutes from transit, I’m sure I would have.  Actually, I did.  My first apartment in Chicago was that far from the ‘L’.  

I didn’t last six months there.

I guess the moral of this story is truly that everyone’s mileage varies.  Your perspective will color your comfort zone about the world around you.  In my heart, I wish that apartment was a few blocks closer to the train.  I also wish that Chris and I were ready to move in together without the potential in the near term to violently flash out of existence like a chance meeting between matter and anti-matter.  (Unfortunately, enlightenment is not a synonym for recovery–mine). Still, I have no doubt things will continue to work out between us in joyful ways.

But right now, there’s a wonderful man with a fabulous two-bedroom apartment in a nice corner of Oak Park who once again needs a roommate for September 1st.  The rent’s reasonable, the bedroom’s decent, the kitchen is enviable, and the occasional cookies are to-die-for.  Check out his Craigslist posting here.  I’m sure the walk to the train would pose no problem for less spoiled souls than I.  

But for what it’s worth, the street parking is killer.

(Photo: Remain seated, with your arms, hands, and legs on top of the cushion at all times. Enjoy your ride.)

This entry marks the (belated) third anniversary of CHICAGO CARLESS. As is obvious, year four is getting started with a lot of changes. The most obvious are the totally re-designed layout and features of the blog.

But they’re only reflections of the most important change of all: my renewed outlook on my life and the world around me. Something had to give. After 37 years, what ultimately gave was me.

God knows I’ve chronicled a lot of changes over the past year and a bit on the blog. Last spring, as I continued my second career as a communications consultant, many old, dear friends came back into my life from what has now become the Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York Almuni Group (GLYNY AGAIN).

That made me want to move back to New York City, and even after my tumultuous breakup with the now NYC-based urban photoblogger, Devyn, I nearly did. As last summer went on, I spent time back in Gotham, (at long last) figured out my codependent nature and started recovering in Codependents Anonymous (CoDA), came to believe in God, and ultimately decided not to trade Lake Michigan shores for Atlantic ones.

I stayed, met and quickly fell for the sugarific pastry-chef, Chris, jumped headfirst into the Chicago Children’s Museum controversy, and also at long last found out I had Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

And then the changes really began, so settle in.

Eight weeks ago, I had a spiritual awakening.

Buddhists say if you can practice while you are distracted, you are practicing well.  But in my experience, it’s when you feel things are going well that it is easiest to lose your way.  That’s a better explanation for why, after a dramatic six months of dating, Chris called it quits, laying bare the level to which I had fallen off the wagon with my codependence.  A year after Devyn, I had managed to bring myself right back around emotionally to the same forlorn place as before.

It was one hell of a shock, but looking back on my behavior, I now see it was also inevitable.  At the time, though, all I knew was that I was about to fall apart.  I thought about the above Buddhist saying.  I realized I had a choice: I could descend into yet another mournful summer; or I could follow the gist of almost every spiritual teaching I’ve ever read, Buddhist or otherwise, and for once face directly into my pain–and into myself–and take a leap of faith.

I cried for hours, sat down, and meditated. I opened my heart to the sorrow of keeping someone I loved in my life, but not in the way that I wanted. I just let it be and didn’t turn away from whatever welled up in side.  Then I went to sleep.

I woke up in a frenzy, consumed by a single suspicion.  I had to test it out.  Before breakfast, I got out an old flipchart, sat on the floor with a marker, and tried to write down the essence of every teaching and rotten experience I could remember having encountered in my journey through life.

I worked fast.  One sheet for Buddhism.  One sheet for CoDA.  One sheet for failed relationships and career hell.  One sheet for ADD.  One sheet for the years of advice from friends.  One sheet for what I already knew inside.

They say many paths lead to one truth.  There it was, inescapable, literally right in front of me.  Thirty-seven years, one message repeated across a slew of pages: let go.  Let go of yourself, your crutches, your fears, and, simply, be here now.

It was an obvious message.  It always had been.  My life was not parted out into discrete areas that were to be dealt with one by one, in isolation, as I had long thought.  No.  My life and everything in it spoke with one voice.  As I realized that, I wept.

And like a trickle of water through a faulty dam finally becoming a flood, all at once it hit me that what for my entire life I had considered love, and compassion, and even joy were nothing more than limited echoes of their true, boundless natures.  And, more to the point, that they all came from inside. After three years of CHICAGO CARLESS, I also finally knew why I came to Chicago in the first place.

To wake up.

Much as you may have just done, trust me, I rolled my eyes, too.  Years of denigrating concepts like love, joy, and compassion in a society that recognizes little intrinsic value in them will do that to you.  That’s a choice of course.  The trick is realizing you even have a choice.  It took me 37 years to realize I had one.

Eight weeks ago I chose to re-examine the basis of my beliefs about myself and the world.  They came up lacking and I decided that from here on out a more loving, joyful, and compassionate basis is in order. After rolling my eyes, I rolled myself back to CoDA and into therapy for ADD, and decided to reopen my spiritual quest as wide as my surprised heart and agape friends could manage.  I feel more free now than I have ever felt in my life.

This all begs the question, what does a snarky ex-New Yorker do with himself once he realizes all that?  Well…he lets it in and changes.  But I know this isn’t an endpoint. This spiritual awakening has been simmering away inside of me for years.  Neither has it ever required me to lose my essential nature in order to wake up.  It only ever required me to lose my fear of the journey.

From the beginning, I have intended for CHICAGO CARLESS to chronicle that journey and put out there for all to see the questions that I struggle with in my life.  I’ve almost always found that the deeper I explore my life’s questions, the more resonant this blog becomes for those who care to read it.

So beginning on the Fourth of July, I took the blog down for a week, spent 50 hours migrating from Moveable Type to Wordpress, and renovated CHICAGO CARLESS.  Moving forward, the tone of the blog will be informed by my new perspective on things.  But have no fear, I intend to remain as frank as ever.  Spiritual awakenings aside, there are no sacred cows here.

Among the new blog features, commenting that finally works, the ability to edit your own comments, a list of recent entries and commenters in the sidebar, an “Around This Date” look at posts from previous years, a Twitter widget so you can follow me around in my madness throughout my day, a much-updated blogroll that more adequately reflects where I browse, and potentially coming soon, an IM Online widget to chat with me when I’m connected, and the very first CHICAGO CARLESS forum.

I invite you to take the new site out for a test walk and let me know what you think. You can also read more about the Journey that led me to my renewed Worldview and find out the full answer to Why the Overhaul? of the blog on the respective new pages.

In the end, the only person responsible for me not getting to this point sooner is me.  I’m reminded of a poem by Edwin Markham that’s often quoted by Unitarian Universalists (a free faith I much admire).  You can Google the original version, but I’ll paraphrase it here:

I had drawn a circle that shut me out;
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love alone had the wit to win…
It drew a circle that took me in.

Sign me happily outwitted, for once.  I’ll spare you the secret oral teachings of Tibetan Buddhism until next year.

Thanks for reading.