Note: I have decided to upload this [edited and abridged] end-of-the-year letter to the H&H community in the hopes that it might have something of value to those outside this gathered community. Our focus for the year was “Embracing Life, Engaging Death.” 

Greetings Human & Holy Ones—

I want to thank each and all of you for the generosity of your spirits this year in H&H. The overwhelming sense of the year was that this was “hard but necessary stuff” and it invited us to go where we must go if we are to avoid being spiritual adolescents running around in adult bodies. So thank you for that.

Allow me to share with you a few reflections to close our year together. The year surfaced a lot of resistance. I know it did in me. But it left me convinced of a few things:

First, that resistance is an invaluable teacher. There is no spark without friction. There is no fire without a spark. And that’s the rub since we are called to become men and women burning with life, with love, with compassion, with wisdom learned through suffering and failure, with hope and joy. One of the greatest gifts we can give to each other is our own commitment to risk facing, acknowledging, and working through our own resistances. Another gift is like it, namely, to hold space for each other. In the spirit of nonjudgmental and deep sympathy, we encourage each other to face into the resistance rather than to avoid it. This is true friendship because it is committed to the other becoming the fullest version of themselves that they can become by courage, persistence, and the grace of God.

Second, as alluded to above, it is a rare thing to find companions who are willing to ask the hard questions, face into their shadows, meet head on the dragon of which Pema Chodron spoke and dare to take their armor off. This work of the soul, going as deep as you are willing to go, and then some, is what makes H&H a spiritual formation (and transformation) community and not merely a class focused on dispensing information however valuable. Always the intent of the content, of the simple rituals or liturgy, of the silent reflection, of the companion circles, of the practices, is to allow ourselves to be broken open so that God can have God’s way with us. Openness is one of our main practices. It is the antidote to resistance. Openness is not openness unless it is openness to change, openness to being changed.

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)”

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)”

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)”

This openness to change (transformation) is at one and the same time our vocation, our practice, and our salvation. As you know, for those of us who self-identify as Christians (read “Christ-ones”) this is called Christening and it’s why we’re here—not just here in H&H but here on earth. It requires the grace of God and our cooperation with grace. But while grace is free it is also costly because it involves saying goodbye to our illusions, our self-protective maneuvers, our prejudices, certitudes, and prized assumptions, all that keeps us seemingly safe and secure, all that hides us from ourselves, others, God, and life rather than being “hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)”

Third, there really isn’t a new theme each year for H&H anymore than there is more than one theme in the life of Christians. The theme that is not a theme for Christians but rather “the mystery of faith” (mysterium fidei) is always this one mystery with a hinged double-movement: dying and rising—“Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Another way of saying this is embracing life, engaging death, receiving the life of Life. It is the way of God in Jesus— a beatitudinal way of being, a way of living, a way of becoming oneself, a way of being for and one with others, a way to flourish, a way into the kenotic freedom that is the heart of God. The false self wants to receive life without engaging death and the integrity of the Christ-life, though too infrequently preached or encouraged, resides in not shying away from this truth, this mystery, this paradoxical way toward life. It’s far more than just knowing bad things happen to good people and waiting with baited breath for when the bottom will fall out. It is a conscious, deliberate, chosen, and embodied orientation most visibly incarnated in the life of Jesus. No smoke and mirrors, no warm-fuzzy, no short-cuts because if the way, the truth, and the mystery of life are to be salvific, then they have to be greater than the disappointments, betrayals, injustices, devastations, chaos, tragedies, and traumas that life brings our way. It’s not just that anything less is a lie but that anything less is either manufactured by the unhealthy ego or not ultimately true, like recreation that doesn’t re-create.

Finally, I am convinced that the persons who get the most out of H&H are the ones who make the time for some, if not all, of the practices. This includes actually using the reflection questions handed out at a given Sunday gathering, to watching film clips, to reading The Almond Tree and material handed out, to establishing a regular daily contemplative practice, to ongoing reflection, journaling, or specific spiritual practices. These practices do not necessarily require lots of time but focused presence. They are not meant as homework unless you understand homework as I do— as your inner work. But in the end, it has to be a free choice done as an act of self-care and by extension as a gift you offer to others, to the earth community, and back to the one in whom you live and move and have your being.

Thank you for being on the way. I appreciate the company.
Dan