Then Jesus said . . . “You will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.”
Jesus speaks about inner freedom to his disciples. When we know ourselves well enough to live from our center of goodness, that truth will liberate us to love as our most authentic self. Do we act out of the truth of our inherent virtues, or do we react in a way that adds to the suffering of self and others? I often find it both challenging and painful to confront what I’ve managed to avoid.
. . . [Yet] seeing the truth about ourselves does not always mean uncovering something negative or undesirable. We may have disallowed or been unaware of our virtuous qualities, so that “finding the truth about ourselves” can refer to discovering and claiming the constructive qualities that lie dormant within us. This revelation is what rests at the heart of Macrina Wiederkehr’s wonderful prayer: “Help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is.”
Bearer of Truth,
guide me to a clearer and fuller perception
of the unknown parts of who I truly am.
I desire to set aside any fear of what I might find.
I will gladly proceed in discovering and claiming
whatever will lead to a closer union with you.
Today: I ponder a truth about myself that asks for greater acceptance.
We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds. We got lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating – lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.
We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be – to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.
Whenever you bring your attention to anything natural, anything that has come into existence without human intervention, you step out of the prison of conceptualized thinking and, to some extent, participate in the state of connectedness with Being in which everything natural exists.
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.
Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
When walking or resting in nature, honor that realm by being there fully. Be still. Look. Listen. . . . All things in nature are not only themselves but also one with the totality. They haven’t removed themselves from the fabric of the whole by claiming a separate existence: “me” and the rest of the universe.
The contemplation of nature can free you of that “me,” the great troublemaker.
Dogmas – religious, political, scientific – arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.”
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness, however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
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Spiritual awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.
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The realm of consciousness is much vaster than thought can grasp. When you no longer believe everything you think, you step out of thought and see clearly that the thinker is not who you are.
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The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its humger is not being satisfied.
When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s humger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or – and this is not uncommon – transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting food.
Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.
You discover that a “bored person” is not who you are. Boredom is simply a conditioned energy movement within you. Neither are you an angry, sad, or fearful person. Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not “yours,” not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go.
Nothing that comes and goes is you.
“I am bored.” Who knows this?
“I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this?
You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.
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Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.
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Thinking that is not rooted in awareness becomes self-serving and dysfunctional. Cleverness devoid of wisdom is extremely dangerous and destructive. That is the current state of most of humanity. The amplification of thought as science and technology, although intrinsically neither good nor bad, has also become destructive because so often the thinking out of which it comes has no roots in awareness.
The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn’t mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.
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Feel the energy of your inner body. Immediately mental noise slows down or ceases. Feel it in your hands, your feet, your abdomen, your chest. Feel the life that you are, the life that animates the body.
The body then becomes a doorway, so to speak, into a deeper sense of aliveness underneath the fluctuating emotions and underneath your thinking.
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There is an aliveness in you that you can feel with your entire Being, not just in your head. Every cell is alive in that presence in which you don’t need to think. Yet, in that state, if thought is required for some practical purpose, it is there. The mind can still operate, and it operates beautifully when the greater intelligence that you are uses it and expresses itelf through it.
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You may have overlooked that brief periods in which you are “conscious without thought” are already occuring naturally and spontaneously in your life. You may be engaged in some manual activity, or walking across the room, or waiting at the airline counter, and be so completely present that the usual mental static of thought subsides and is replaced by an aware presence. Or you may find yourself looking at the sky or listening to someone without any iner mental commentary. Your perceptions become crystal clear, unclouded by thought.
To the mind, all this is not significant, because it has “more important” things to think about. It is also not memorable, and that’s why you may have overlooked that it is already happening.
The truth is that it is the most significant thing that can happen to you. It is the beginning of a shift from thinking to aware presence.
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Become at ease with the state of “not knowing.” This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. It is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind. A deeper knowing that is non-conceptual then arises out of that state.
King was right back then. And he’s still right. He’s just as right today as he was fifty years ago about the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism, and racism and how they lead inexorably toward war. He was right that, if machines and computers and property rights and profits are considered more important than people, we are doomed. . . . Above all, he was right about what is required of us now: to speak and to act with unprecedented courage and with love. To oppose all forms of hate and racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. To oppose any policy and any economic system that places profit over people. And to reject militarism and state violence as the answer to our most profound, seemingly intractable conflicts and struggles. If we are to honor the principles and values for which King sacrificed his life, we must demand a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestine. We must speak unpopular truths and organize to save our planet, rebirth our democracy, and embrace human creativity and the natural beauty of our world rather than artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
What gives me hope right now is that, despite everything, revolutionary love is bursting and blossoming in all kinds of places and spaces. Years of relentless and patient organizing and deep learning about each other’s histories and struggles have led to a moment when Black activists are showing up at protests organized by Jewish students who are raising their voices in solidarity with Palestinians who are suffering occupation and annihilation in Gaza. And, you know, this is due to connections that have been made over the course of years between liberation struggles on the streets of Ferguson and those occurring in Palestine. And these small acts of revolutionary love are leading to movements, are building movements that just might help us change everything.
And, you know, we see this in communities everywhere, where people are connecting dots between climate change and racial and gender injustice. We see it in the movement to stop Cop City in Atlanta. We see it in movements for clean water and food. And we see that people are making connections between liberation struggles here at home and those occurring around the world, as well as connections between the violence of policing and incarceration and the violence of militarism and the relentless assault on Gaza.
So, you know, people are turning towards really promising forms of movement building, incredible acts of courage in this moment, speaking unpopular truths. And that gives me hope, even in a time when there is so much reason for fear and anxiety, that can be paralyzing.
. . . [W]hat makes King’s [1967 Riverside Church] speech essential in this moment is that he was arguing that if we, as a nation, do not awaken from our collective delusions, we are doomed. . . . [H]e said we must rapidly shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. He said when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplet of racism, extreme materialism and militarism will never be conquered. . . . [I]f we fail to make this turn, if we fail to awaken, we are doomed. And he was right.
Whether we’re talking about climate change, AI, mass deportation, mass incarceration, the wars in Gaza or the wars on drugs, [King was] right, that if we don’t turn away from the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism and racism, and embrace a truly revolutionary love for all people and all creation, we are doomed.
Towards the end of that speech at Riverside, he said there is such a thing as being too late. You know, he said over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words “too late.”
And yet his message wasn’t a hopeless one. He was calling us to embrace a revolutionary movement, one that was grounded in an ethic of love. Just as bell hooks once said, as long as we refuse to embrace love in our struggles for liberation, we will not be able to create a culture of conversion where there’s a mass turning away from an ethic of domination. And that, ultimately, is what revolutionary love is all about and why I believe it is the only thing that can save us now.
Two nights ago, President Biden gave a State of The Union address which was vigorous and largely effective.
At the same time, it showed all the signs of a candidate and a campaign cloistered away from the American people. The speech displayed way too little understanding of the struggles of life for the majority of Americans. Biden has been buffered from that reality by closed door events, staged “spontaneous drop-ins,” distanced from the press and from actual voters.
I have been talking with people around the country. I’ve heard their stories, their lives, their voices. I have spoken to individuals and communities who have been ignored by modern politicians. The true state of the union is that the average American is struggling, both spiritually and economically. And if Democrats want to win in 2024, we better start listening to people now. If we don’t – if it takes a Republican Senator in her tradwife-in-the-kitchen rebuttal to point out that people are choosing between buying their medicine or paying their rent – then we’re in trouble. Such an image of everyday despair is one the President himself should have used. And he should do more than just use the image, as the Republicans do. He should stand for policies that actually assuage the pain.
Denying that pain is a disastrous strategy for 2024. For the majority of Americans it can make you sound seriously out of touch if you refuse to even acknowledge the chronic stress that people are experiencing. I’ve been running for President because neither Republican nor Democratic elites are paying the attention that should be paid – that must be paid – to the West Virginia coal miners who have black lung disease yet no medical insurance, or the millions of children with asthma due to the toxic environment of their neighborhoods, who can’t even run for 30 seconds without running out of breath. The President’s message the other night was “Look at me! We’ve made a bit of a difference!”
Biden spoke at length about the struggles of reducing insulin prices, trying to negotiate drug prices, capping costs and so forth. It’s true that he has made those incremental changes. But those changes do not represent fundamental reform. What he should do, and what I would do, is to fight for Medicare for All. When 75-90 million people are uninsured or underinsured – when millions who have the insurance to cover a doctor’s visit still don’t have coverage for the tests or the medicine that the doctor prescribes – then the ubiquitous despair in modern American life isn’t ended. It’s simply tweaked.
Biden said he wants an economy “where everyone has a fair shot [. . .] and the poor have a way up,” yet his policies do not match his rhetoric. If that was really what he stood for, he would be fighting for a guaranteed living wage. Over the twelve years that Joe Biden has been in the White House, the minimum wage has not been lifted above $7.25 an hour. Someone needs to explain how you can work your way up from that.
Although the President argued for military aid to both Ukraine and Israel, nothing could be more obvious to the American people than that the forever war machine which dominates Washington is neither good for others nor good for us. The war in Gaza is a humanitarian disaster the President must put an end to, now. We need to begin an era in which we are as sophisticated in the ways of waging peace as we are sophisticated in the ways of waging war.
The speech went on to say “We are making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it.” I’m sorry, but the kind of history we’re making is not something that will impress our grandchildren. While the President has made admirable investments in clean energy, he has made even larger ones in dirty energy. He has given more oil drilling permits than even President Trump did. He has approved the Willow Project. There is a classic purse thief distraction technique going on here: bragging about all you do for the climate, in hopes people won’t notice how much more you do for Big Oil. In order for Democrats to win over a younger generation of Americans in 2024, we’re going to have to do a whole lot more than slowing down our walk to environmental disaster.
And whoever wrote that line in the speech that says “Respect free and fair elections!” certainly must know all the ways in which my own candidacy has been suppressed.
It’s not that people don’t realize Donald Trump is dangerous. Millions do. But not wanting Trump to be President does not necessarily equate with making sure you go vote for Biden. I know the Democratic establishment is under the impression that if they raise enough money, and make enough TV ads, then they’ll be able to scrape out a win in November. But they shouldn’t be so sure.
I’ve thought I was the best candidate to be the Democratic nominee, and I still do, for the very reason that I would be offering people much, much more. Our country needs universal healthcare, tuition free college and tech school, and a guaranteed living wage; the establishment of a Department of Peace and the Department of Children and Youth; a plan for reparations and the declaration of a Climate Emergency to mass mobilize for the development of a green energy economy; and ending America’s Drug War. I realize my chances for that occurring are drastically diminished. But I’m not sticking around in hopes that I can win; I’m sticking around in hopes that I can contribute. I know the way that voters hear me. I know I’m hitting a vein. I know that’s why the establishment muffled my campaign. But I’m going to keep talking – I’m staying in the race – because the things I’m proposing reflect some very deep yearnings of the American heart right now. They are things that would win the election.
We will not win by denying the truth of Americans’ everyday lived experience. Consumer confidence, as well as confidence in our future, are among the lowest ever. With increasing economic anxiety come diseases and deaths of despair. And voters don’t want to hear their pain glossed over; they want to hear their pain validated, and addressed.
Leadership at this time takes more than marketing skill; it takes vision. Simply arguing that Trump is so bad gives people nothing to vote for, only something to vote against. And we can do so much better. By offering people genuine hope that their lives can get better, by addressing not only the symptoms of our problems but their root causes, and by calling people to the great cause of creating a new chapter in American history, we can not only beat Trump - we can truly heal the nation.
Friends, it’s a great honor to stand before you and share this homily reflection.
As we all know, our dear Kate embodied many different roles throughout her long life. Along with the roles she played within her family of birth, she was, within the context of her CSJ life, an administrator, a caregiver, an educator, a resource-finder, a listener, an advocate, a justice-seeker, a music-maker, a party-goer, a friend.
She was also both a mystic and a prophet. . . . But more about this a little later.
For now, just let me say that what underpinned and infused all of Kate’s different roles, responsibilities, and sources of life and meaning was her passion and dedication to being a peacemaker.
In all kinds of ways, Kathleen McDonald lived and taught peace. This was her signature way of both following the nonviolent way of Jesus and working to build that “better world,” that “civilization of love,” of which Pope Francis so eloquently speaks.
One of the most visible ways in which Kate did this was by participating, for well over a decade, in two weekly peace vigils – both of which took place each Wednesday – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
It was at these vigils that I first got to know Kate. I was also a neighbor of hers, as in the late 1990s I lived not far from the 6th Street house in south Minneapolis that was home to Kate, her sister Rita, their fellow CSJ Marguerite, their dear friend Lang, and at least two feline companions.
It was a warm, welcoming home; and one that I recall being invited to many times to share a wonderfully home-cooked dinner. More often than not, our meal was followed by much laughter while watching one of the household’s favorite TV shows, Keeping Up Appearances.
I always appreciated Kate and her sisters’ love of humor, and how they used and expressed it to balance the more serious aspects of their lives. Speaking of which, the weekly Wednesday morning vigil that Kate and many of us here today participated in, took place outside the corporate headquarters of Alliant TechSystems, maker and seller of all kinds of weaponry, including landmines and cluster bombs.
The afternoon vigil was on the Lake St./Marshall Ave. Bridge. Its focus was on drawing attention to the far-too-many U.S. foreign policy decisions that resulted in violence and war.
It was on the Lake St. bridge one Wednesday afternoon that I took one of my favorite photos of Kate. We were there that day to protest the economic sanctions on Iraq. These sanctions were adversely impacting the civilian population, children especially.
“Sanctions Kill,” Kate’s sign boldly declared to the passing commuters. Some honked in agreement and support, others gave far less charitable indications of their differing views.
Regardless, Kate, as you can see in this photo, sits serenely on the guard wall separating the bridge’s traffic lanes from one of its pedestrian sidewalks. She’s using her sign to shield her face from the summer afternoon sun, and she has a book on her lap.
I think this image says much – not only about Kate’s dedication to truth-telling and peace-building, but also about the ways in which she prepared for and sustained herself in this work. The presence of the book is key in all of this. Let me explain why.
In Mike Hazard’s 2003 video documentary Four Sisters for Peace, which was made at around the same time I took this photo of her, Kate was asked how she “stayed so positive and committed, even when bad things happened in the world.” Kate responded by saying: “I do inspirational reading, things that feed my soul; like something, maybe, from the Bible, something from a good poem, or something from a peace activist-writer – Martin Luther King Jr., for instance. And I pray, meditate, and try to ground my soul in the morning; I take a little time to do that.”
Author Marianne Williamson writes that the cultivation of stillness is the best preparation for our response to the urgency of the times we’re living through. Kate clearly knew this as, through her daily inspirational reading, her meditating, and her cultivating of stillness and groundedness each morning, she was building inner peace.
This peace, Williamson reminds us, builds non-reactivity. In other words, it keeps us calm and focused in the midst of upheaval and hostility. I don’t know about you, but I hear these words and think immediately of Kate.
Williamson also reminds us that the inner peace we cultivate through times of intentional stillness builds courage, insight and intuition. It deepens the mind and expands the heart. And through us – through our thoughts and actions – this divinely-infused inner peace builds a new world.
Kate McDonald lived and breathed these spiritual truths. She knew that in order to be a peaceful presence and change-maker in the outer world, she needed to be a peaceful presence within herself. It was a balance she intentionally and lovingly cultivated; the fruits of which inspired many – myself included . . . and perhaps you as well.
This balance of the inner and the outer ensured that Kate was both a mystic and a prophet. The late South African theologian Albert Nolan once wrote that prophets are “people who speak out when others remain silent. They [constructively] criticize their own society, their own country, . . . their own religious institutions.” Sure sounds like our dear Kate.
Nolan lifts up Jesus as an example of a prophet. Yet he also reminds us that Jesus was a mystic as well, a person who longs to experience oneness with God. Because he was both mystic and prophet, Jesus, says Nolan, was grounded in a mystico-prophetic tradition that can be traced back to the prophets of the Old Testament.
Jesus’ life – and I contend Kate’s life – was a powerful example of prophesy and mysticism forming an inseparable whole. (And as Kate would say, “that’s ‘whole’ as in w.h.o.l.e.”)
Nolan highlights others who have similarly recognized that an inner life of stillness and prayer and an outer life of justice-making and peace-building are two sides of the same coin. These others include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, and Archbishop Oscar Romero. Not surprisingly, it was the writings of these people that I remember Kate reading on a regular basis for her own spiritual nourishment . . . I also remember her sharing snippets of these writings with myself and others on a regular basis for our spiritual nourishment.
Indeed, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the book Kate was reading that day on the bridge was written by one of these people. Nor would it surprise me if she had shared something from this book in the circle we gathered in for a few minutes at the end of each of our Wednesday afternoon vigils. That was just Kate’s way.
And so with all these stories and memories in mind and in heart, I say –
Thank you and blessed are you, Kate, for being such a powerful and loving example of both mystic and prophet. You lived, taught and created peace. You stayed involved in the often messy realities of this world while mindfully and joyfully working to build all kinds of communities of love.
May our memories of you inspire us to do likewise. And like you, may we nourish our efforts to be and build peace in the world by cultivating inner peace.
May it be so.
