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getting creative around sex, money and power

emma — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 03:54:41 +0000

Issues that all small groups will have to deal with, no matter the noble purpose for which they ostensibly came together:

Some people will develop intimate personal relationships with each other, including romantic ones. People will have sex with each other. Alliances will be formed. Hearts will be broken. There will be drama of various kinds related to romance that seem totally personal and not really to do with larger community but will deeply affect its members and therefore the group.
It takes money to function in the world. Insisting that everyone contribute equally financially will likely restrict the group to middle and upper middle class members only. At the same time, wealthy folks who show up or who act as donors will expect—and usually receive—special attention or access. Wealthy people will often be flattered or held up as examples of ideal group members to eep them happy so they will keep giving. The community may resist talking about this directly because it seems tacky and also confusing. Or, it will be discussed openly but the discussion may be primarily venting because no one really knows what else to do. Money DOES need to come in. The bills DO have to be paid. What does financial fairness and justice actually look like when none of us have had any real experience with a fair or just economy in our lives?

Also, small groups should read this book and use its knowledge for good rather than evil

The group will ultimately be forced to answer the question: What is our top priority? That the organization continues on? That this particular group of people stays together, in one form or another? That the original goals of the organization are faithfully pursued, even if that means in the future they are no longer pursued together, or pursued in this particular group formation?
There will be a lot of administration. Forms. Legal considerations. Rent. Set up. Clean Up. All of this is part of it. Infrastructure, maintenance, and administrative care are part of what it means to put something into the world.
Conflicts will happen. There must be processes for decision making and conflict resolution that feels in alignment with the group’s mission and values or it won’t even take a very challenging decision or a very large conflict to break things apart.
Difficult people will show up. People who at home in disfunction, on both the giving and receiving end. The processes for decision making and conflict resolution must factor in edge cases, and the potential for bad faith actors.
How does the group evaluate itself in all of these areas? Iterate? Stay flexible and responsive to changing conditions while remaining focused on purpose and people?

None of this is “beside the point” or “not the real work.” Organizations that get creative and truly innovate in the above areas will make a different world possible.

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lust for wisdom

emma — Sun, 21 Aug 2022 03:50:07 +0000

Why are spiritual traditions such a mess when it comes to sex?

The Song of Songs 7 by Lezer Manole

Because all major world religions developed in the 5,000 years or so of peak patriarchy?
Because institutions are not flexible and response enough to adapt to social earthquakes like the development of reliable birth control? (But then why so much taboo around queer sex?!?)
Because of an over-emphasis on a mind/body or body/soul duality?
Because it’s hard to get a good religion off the ground if you don’t have a dedicated class of devotees who are focused on building the religious community instead of building families?

Whatever the reasons, spiritual teachings and teachers seem to have very little to say that is helpful or wise about sex life—to our collective detriment. This is a major area of life, and an intimate one, affecting us deeply. We should have better social ideals, even now, besides the conservative, “Don’t have sex until marriage and then…whatever, as long as you stay married” or the liberal, “Do basically whatever you want, but have safe sex and don’t rape anyone.” Certainly there is more to aspire to in love, wisdom, joy and communion than this?

Christianity of course has a particularly horrendous record when it comes to sex. It’s strange in a certain way, when Jesus is right there engaging with all the classic “defilements”: wine, loose women, tax collectors, disease and death. But, yes, of course, our actions around sex have consequences and sexual desire can be chaotic and combustable and cause real harm. Yet this same desire is so often the source of our deepest longing for love and connection. When you try and shut down this kind of inner fire, bad thing things happen. If the last two thousand years of Christian history can teach us anything about sex, it’s that repression is often more harmful that even the most ferocious desire. Can we all just admit this? Repression is a terrible strategy.

“Easy Ned, think of the Bible”

What are better strategies? Acknowledging that fixed sets of rules rarely work well in the mess of real life circumstances, can we at least start with some useful heuristics? Can we practice getting better in this area, together?

Here is my draft list of how and what I want to practice in the area of sex that feels congruent with the rest of my spiritual life:

love myself first
be ok with being alone
ask for and give enthusiastic consent
practice safety
practice honesty
avoid shaming myself or others
share love and adventure in ways that make everyone involved feel more whole and alive
give up hierarchies of sexual value
avoid using other people as sexual status symbols
practice the platinum rule: treating other how they want to be treated
ultimately, drive all desires into One

These feel like a good place to start, a good foundation, but of course leave out a lot.

What is our responsibility when in comes to our partners’ relationship agreements with other people? Do we help them keep their agreements or is it none of our business? What is our responsibility to the children of our long term partners? Are long term relationships something to aspire to if we are not raising children? What kinds of relationships are the most conducive to sincere spiritual practice? I hope we can start to find some useful answers and leave some evidence for those who come after us.

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love vs compassion

emma — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 19:28:12 +0000

A Buddhist practitioner friend asked me a few months back what I thought the difference was between compassion as it is taught in Buddhism and love in Christianity.

“There’s not much difference,” I said. And I still basically think that’s true.

Since our conversation though, a few differences have occurred to me.

Compassion is a response to suffering. Since suffering is presented in Buddhism as a core feature of existence, compassion is an appropriate response in almost any circumstance and something we can offer to every single thing that is alive. I think this is beautiful and useful.

At the same time, compassion is only one of what Buddhists know as the Brahma-Virharas or “Four Immeasurables”: compassion, lovingkindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. The Brahma-Virharas are traditionally emphasized as wholesome mind-states—skillful places to which you can turn your mind and cultivate wisdom.

Love seems to me to encompasses all four immeasurables, not just compassion. But love also includes aspects like appreciation. We wouldn’t really say we feel compassion for someone when we notice how stunning their eyes look in the sunlight. We appreciate it. We love it.

However, the most fundamental difference is in the area of practice. In Buddhism, a focus on the Brahma-Virharas is certainly part of practice, and it is the main focus for some. Yet the strongest similarity between difference forms of Buddhist practice seems to be some type of paying attention in the present moment. There are all different kinds of teachings on exactly how to pay attention and to what, and how practice can lead to a new way of experiencing the world. But paying attention is how this change occurs. For those of us who relate to Christianity as body of practice rather than a set of beliefs, the core practice is, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” Or, for the atheists who show up to church, “Love reality and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is the main thing, the main agent of transformation. It is more than instrumental to awareness. Letting love in and sharing love with others is what makes a different way of life possible.

It’s relevant to note that both cultivating compassion and letting in love can often feel like conjuring something out of nothing. This can feel bothersome (What is the source of the compassion? Is the love really real?). Most of the time, I remind myself that these questions are beside the point. Making something out of nothing is a creative act, and if, in that creativity, we are able to connect to more compassionate, loving ways of being and acting in the world, it seems like a good practice to continue.

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2021 giving review

emma — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 21:05:24 +0000

I consider it part of my spiritual practice to give away 10% of my income every year. This is a standard tithing amount, though I don’t give it all to my church. I have also been influenced by the effective altruism movement, as well as by its critiques. For me, giving as a practice is about pushing myself into an expansive idea of who my neighbors are and making practice about more than just personal transformation.

There are many different philosophies on how to give well and clearly money can distort incentives and, by extension, behaviors and outcomes. I do think it’s important to be thoughtful about where I’m giving and the likely impact of my support. I think there are fairly bad ways to give, like to micro-financing organizations or to large aid organizations after a natural disaster. However, I don’t think that past failures in giving are a good reason to just keep everything I have for myself and those in my most immediate circle of concern. I don’t believe markets distribute resources equitably. It’s a fact that I have more than I need. Spiritual traditions throughout history have a recommendation for those in my situation: you give.

Here’s where I gave money in 2021:

GiveWell – making grants to highly effective global health charities
Marie Stopes International – providing contraception and abortion services to women around the world
Rainforest Foundation USA – working directly with indigenous communities and local governments in Central and South America to preserve existing rainforests and legally formalize indigenous land stewardship
Give Directly’s “In Her Hands” Seed Funding – a joint initiative between GiveDirectly and the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund to launch a UBI pilot for black women in Georgia
Black Queer Artists Farm Fund – two black queer women building a farm and community space near Jackson, MS (this team is accepting direct contributions to their project; they are not a charity)
City Church of Long Beach – my awesome local church that also does direct outreach in our community to find out what’s happening for folks and what they need

One thing I also added to my budget this year was a mutual aid line item so I had money set aside to give to mutual aid requests that popped up in my extended network of friends, family and acquaintances. This feels especially important to keep going as we all stumble forward together in the midst of a global pandemic, changing climate, and broken social institutions. May we keep finding creative ways to take care of each other!

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mistakes were made

emma — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 06:59:27 +0000

Things that spiritual teachers have told me were true or insinuated were true that I believed at some time but now feel fairly confident are false (besides some of the out-there metaphysical stuff):

Rational thought and critical analysis are a dead end
Politics is always a distraction
People who have cultivated a certain degree of spiritual freedom will become more physically attractive in alignment with dominant western beauty standards and will be able to support themselves relatively easily under capitalism
It is good and right for spiritual teachers themselves to not want to get regular jobs but still expect to lead an upper middle class lifestyle
What is most real is happening on a different plane of existence or within a different consciousness, so reasons that seem weak in a “worldly” context are actually quite strong and even enlightened in a cosmic context
A lot of freedom can be found in just doing what you are told

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questions and opinions that brought me to church

emma — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 01:40:44 +0000

I’m not someone who believes in theories of everything. I don’t think there is one ultimate truth or master narrative that explains all of reality or how we should respond to it. Similarly, I don’t think that all spiritual paths lead to same place. So it has become important to me over the years to get very clear about what I’m looking for from practice. Feeling unresolved and agitated by the following questions and opinions is what brought me to church:

Where are the people whose practice is love and who are leaning to love well?
Where is being an asshole, by definition, doing it wrong?
Loving well is not a purely a question for therapy! There are very deep traditions based in love and devotion and what they have to offer is much more than romance, being nice, or having good communication skills. Which of these traditions is the best fit for me?
The basic foundation of “love God and love your neighbor” as the foundation of the Christian tradition—what we are always coming back to—where we are always seeking deeper understanding—not as a side effect of awareness but the very core of what we are doing—this is what I wanted.

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current practice

emma — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 23:19:30 +0000

Why I practice Christianity

Love is a more compelling ideal to me than awareness. Having a deeper experience of love and being better at loving myself and others was my original motivation to practice at age 19 and is still what I care about the most.
I wasn’t raised with any religion or church, so I don’t have person or family baggage with Christianity that makes it hard to practice.
Given the primacy I place on love, viewing life and practice through the prism of relationship—relationship to experience, relationships to other people—is very helpful and practical for me. Cultivating a relationship to God is how I cultivate a relationship with experience.
I resonate with the aesthetics of traditional Christianity—the idols and symbols feel very powerful to me.
I relate to Christianity as a body of practice, not as a set of fantastic beliefs about human history. The faith I have is a faith that a different way of relating to life and of living together is possible.
I love these practices: prayer, sharing food, welcoming strangers, telling stories, reading, writing, walking
In this tradition, there is very little focus on personal spiritual attainments or accomplishments. The emphasis on grace means there is no story about earning or deserving what happens in life. Love is always a gift.
There is a focus on community freedom, so there is much less struggle in the tradition about whether engagement with the world is important. In progressive Christianity, engagement is taken for granted.
Progressive Christian communities are the most diverse communities I have practiced in. They are one of the few reliable places I can go and meet people who truly have different cultural and sub-cultural identifications from me and from each other.

Why I practice Buddhism (sometimes)

To remind myself that there isn’t one story or framework that explains all of experience, or is always useful
To cultivate a relationship with empty space
To practice sitting with discomfort and ambiguity; to practice not answering questions
The teachings of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and no “true self” helped the daily functioning of my life and also fundamentally changed my spiritual practice. Not trying to solve these characteristics out of existence helped me to let go of a lot of unnecessary struggle, and it’s good to be reminded of them.

Why I love the vajrayana view

Non-duality is a critical counterpoint to the traditional dualism of Christianity and many schools of Buddhism.
I am interested in full engagement over ultimate escape and participation rather than renunciation.
I value the ideal of complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people.
I am interested in facility with the embarrassing, disgusting, uncomfortable parts of life.
I want to live a life that is sex-positive, human-positive, interested primarily in this lifetime and this plane of existence, into the the mess of everything.

Some notes on lineage

The points above may not sound like your idea of “real” Christianity or Buddhism, which is fair. But I assure you these ideas are not my own!

The first book I read by a Christian pastor that made an impact was Breathing Space by Heidi Neumark. Nadia Bolz-Weber assured me that there is a place in the faith for single women who curse and have sex outside of marriage and who aren’t trying to change either of those conditions. Wendy Farley’s book The Thirst of God introduced me to Christian women mystics like Marguerite Porete, a profound inspiration. Dominion is a book about history, not theology, but it clarified a lot of what I love about Christian teachings that I was having trouble articulating. And while it’s true that individual people believe a lot of wild things about Jesus, it is also true that if you are going to be a practicing Christian, you cannot practice alone. Christianity a faith lived out in community, and it’s the other members of churches I have attended who have instructed me the most.

In terms of Buddhist influences, I have read dozens of dharma books over the years, many of which have been helpful, but very few that I have really loved. What I did love and wholeheartedly recommend is walking around city streets listening to just about every episode from The Buddhist Geeks podcast. You can find interviews there from a wide variety of perspectives and teachers, including the vajrayana. Emily Horn of Buddhist Geeks was my first 1:1 Buddhist meditation mentor and she helped me tremendously at a very vulnerable time in my spiritual life. More recently, the Evolving Ground community is doing super interesting work in contemporary vajrayana and they have a resources page.

Our Lady Undoer of Knots by Valerie Vescovi

Tibetan Wheel of Life

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