Daniel Nahmod - Water

Last Sunday at Unity we were privileged to have several guest musicians with us, one of whom was Daniel Nahmod. Daniel is a California-based singer/songwriter who has put out several albums. I had been looking forward to seeing him since we had been singing some of his songs on Sunday mornings. His performances during the morning as well as evening services were great, and afterward I picked up one of his more recent albums, from 2006, called Water. Here is a run-down of a few of the songs on the album, with a few lyrics and then a few thoughts.

2) If The Race Is Over - What do I do if I'm not chasing anything? What do I do if I've got everything that I need?...Where do I go if I'm right where I'm s'posed to be?

What if the race is over, and we all automatically win? What if the game is ended, long before it even begins? What if the test has been taken, and we're all passing again and again? If the race is over...what then?

This is just the first of several songs on the album that goes right into my soul. I think a lot of us spend a whole lot of time trying to be "better" people, perhaps so we'll be viewed more positively or with admiration from other people. But this also applies to God. Many of us grow up with the belief that there is some sort of test that we have to pass in order to be acceptable to God. We think that naturally, on our own, we are intrinsically flawed somehow and so the straining and the striving begins, trying to become the kind of person we think God wants us to be so we'll be acceptable. We run the race, but unfortunately it never seems to end. Yes, there are improvements that we all need to make and there is growth that happens. But what if we aren't at a disadvantage from the very start? How would that viewpoint change our daily actions? I think it could go a long way to dissolving guilt and feelings of inferiority. What if, rather than flawed sinners, we viewed ourselves as beautiful at the core, how would that change our experience in day-to-day life?

7) To Be Free - I have made a decision about my life/It may be a strange surprise to some/I have always thought I wanted what so many want/But it's to a different conclusion that I've come...

Oh, I need...to be free/I will go where the wind will carry me/To be free, oh to be free.

You won't see me playing any kind of lottery/You won't catch me wishing on a falling star/You will find me wherever I am called to be/Wherever kindness and beauty are/For I think of all mankind as my family/This entire precious planet is my home/So let others build their borders, walls, and boundaries/I will fly above them all, even if I must go alone

Where to start on this one? One thing that comes to mind is, well, as previously stated, that we try to change ourselves in order to impress people. But even moreso, I think that we often try to take on another person's solution for our own. Maybe we see someone who seems to be very successful at life, and we try to mimic them, hoping that the things that make them successful will also work for us. This works for some things, I'm sure, but not all. When it comes to our soul, our spirit, I think that each of us has a unique path to travel. We are each born into the world, and we come as discoverers, sent to break new ground. Unfortunately we spend much of our time trying to walk in someone else's path and we fail to realize that we can walk our own. No path is truly satisfying unless it is uniquely our own. Indeed there can be many similarities with others. We can get together with other like-minded people, and attend church services with those of similar beliefs - I currently attend a place called Unity, and one of the things I like about it is that each and ever Sunday the minister states that there is no right and perfect path, not even Unity - but still, we all must find our own way.

We each have a path to walk, and don't be surprised if it has a lot to do with our dreams. I think that most people have dreams, but we think that they are too unrealistic or that they are unachievable. But it could just be that the dreams we have are supposed to determine the path we walk.

Or something like that...it's late and I have beer.

9) Empty - Nothing to say, nowhere to go, nothing to do/I have no promises to make, no-one to know, nothing to prove/It's a strange sort of existence, but somehow it seems so true/The only thing I really know/Is that I don't know a thing/The only sound that I hear now/Is the silence when I sing...

I'd be perfectly fine/If I stayed this way forever/Nothing on my mind/And I've never felt better.

What a strange idea, of being empty. What are we if not for our cluttered minds and the overwhelming amount of feelings that we feel as we go through life? What if there was nothing to say and nothing to do? We see a lot, come across a lot as we live and we pick things up until they become heavy. But what if, underneath everything, we're simply wonderful beings, standing there naked and with no need to impress (there are oh, so many jokes I could make right now!)

Um, anyways, I like the song.

10) Last Song - If this is my last song/If this is my final day/If tomorrow I'll be gone/What do I want to say/If this is my last song/If it's my time to go/When my body's moved on/What will I have to show...

Have I given hope to the hopeless, has a hungry soul been fed/Has a child stood a little bit taller 'cause of something that I said/Have I left a little kindness, have I eased a little pain/If so, then I'm glad I came.

I'm skipping the commentary on this one.

I'd HIGHLY recommend, if you have a few extra bucks for a CD, to order this one online. Daniel's voice reminds me a little of James Taylor, and the style of the album is folky.

His bio can be found here.

Coming To Terms With Past Beliefs

It's kind of like having an uncle that taught you how to fish, but he has some really harmful traits as well. If he's disrupting your life and causing harm to your well-being, you may have to distance yourself from him for your own good.

But it doesn't take away the fact that he taught you how to fish. What are you going to do now? Are you going to curse fishing even though you love doing it? No, you're going to keep fishing - just not with your uncle.

Growing up within fundamentalist Chistianity taught me how to be interested in spirituality, in matters of the soul (whatever that means..that sounds so deep!) I am thankful for that, and will take some of the things that I learned with me as I continue on my journey. Things like loving those who are different than you, being kind to those who are abandoned by society (I suck at these things a lot of the time.) I can look at Jesus again and ask "what was it about this man that caused people to associate the divine within him?"

For as long as I remain bitter about everything associated with Christianity, the longer that piece of my life will be left out in the cold. But it is part of who I am.

I have been lucky that there have been people in the last few years that have helped me to see that there are other lenses by which to see Christianity and the Bible other than fundamentalism or literalism. Thanks go to those who have encouraged me to think, or steered me to take a look at different viewpoints. I think of the prof in Bible college who directed me to a book called "God of the Possible" by Gregory Boyd, and more recently I've also appreciated the Unitarian church in town, and Unity, where I currently go on Sundays, often on very little sleep. Authors such as John Shelby Spong, Henri Nouwen, and Marcus Borg have been helpful to me as well.

The journey continues, with an acknowledgement of my fundamentalist past.

A Work In Progress

Things happen and you get to thinking “Maybe it’s not for me.” It’s for everyone else. First it’s for the class-mate in grade school who seems to have the perfect family with lots of money and hosts parties all of the time. Then it’s the guys and girls in high school who have all the popular friends, are on the basketball teams, and who end up in the King & Queens Court at the prom. And then a bit more time goes by, and then the ‘maybe’ turns into a ‘probably,’ as in ‘it’s probably not for me.’ What is the ‘it?’ ‘It’ is the good, happy life that you have always wanted to have but for one reason or another haven’t been able to walk into. But the truth is that you have the power. The lie that you’ve bought into is that you aren’t good enough on your own, that you lack what it takes to be happy, that you need something that you don’t already have inside of you. But you can do it. The only things you need are confidence and boldness, and they are things that you can choose to have right now, right at this very moment.

“But you don’t know what I’ve been through! You don’t know what my life has been like! You don’t know the things that I’ve done!”

STOP.

I’m not denying that you have seen much pain in your life, but it is time.

It is time to let it go.

All of it. Somewhere in life you have picked up a heavy rock, and you’ve carried it around for far too long. It’s time to leave the past where it belongs, in the past.

Whatever, I mean WHATEVER you have seen in your life, it is done. Now is the moment for you to live and to choose the kind of life you want to have today.

A good step forward is to re-connect with yourself. Things happen in life, and you lose touch with yourself, just like old college friends. You’ve lost touch with the truth, if you ever believed it in the first place, that you are a unique and wonderful person, a wonderful mish-mash of divinity and humanity. Start believing this, day in, day out, and eventually you’ll settle into this truth like your favourite pair of worn, holey blue jeans. You’ll accept yourself.

Believe that you have the power to do anything that you want to do.

An Inspirational Word From Your Friends At Burger King

It's rare that I'm up early enough for breakfast, but I was the other day, and was greeted with this inspirational message on the wrapper of my Croissanwich. I really like it! (click for larger image)

Who We Are

Each new child that is born into our world is a new opportunity for God to get to know him/herself and to experience love. I had heard the idea quite a few years ago while I was still fundamentalist-leaning, that God created the world because he needed somebody to love – sort of like the Beatles song says. Maybe that is true. I also think it’s true that each child born into the world is both connected with God and is also unique.

First, everyone, every person, is connected with God. Now let us remove the words “connected with.” People get freaked out by this because they say, “Well, only God is God! There is only one God. How can you say that you are God?!” One of the reasons for this disdain for the claim “I am God” is because people think you are trying to take away some sort of authority from God. They see God as a King who desires worship and praise and obedience “just because” he is God and because he deserves it. To them it may sound like I’m back on the school playground pronouncing, “I’m the King of the Castle!” But this is not the case. What I am saying is that we are all made up of the same stuff as God. The positive energy that we feel within us when we dream big and think our highest thoughts, that is the energy of God. We are not separate from God; it’s only that we have yet to realize it. The more we realize that connection, the more easily we will be able to tap into the energy of God.

In order to do what?

In order to create. Like the Volkswagen commercial says, “On the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted.” We are not merely passengers on the road of life. We are creators. We are born to do extraordinary things. We have immense power at our disposal at any time in our lives, whether we have millions and are healthy and happy, or whether we’re in poverty, filled with cancer, and miserable.

What does it take to tap into this power to do anything, to be anything? Does it require that we say the right words, feel strong, or something else?

No, it’s very simple.

Faith. And this is not something restricted to those who go to church. It is not a pre-requisite that you recite some theological language that doesn’t make sense to you.

All it takes is faith that you can have exactly what you want.

Faith is more than asking. Many people pray, hoping that God just might answer them this time and give them what they want. The next step is believing that it will happen, that you will receive what you’re asking for. But how can I do that? It doesn’t require much. Just even a tiny amount of faith. You don’t even have to feel it at first. Choose to have faith, choose to believe that what you want you will receive, and expect it.

Well, that’s pretty ballsy.

It is the boldness that you were made for.

Each person that is born is God in the flesh.

Each person is also unique, with different desires and dreams. This is so because God is just that vast, that creative. I think that one of the reasons for the existence of the world is so that God could be born into the world as us, so that God could live out the dreams and desires that are constantly part of God. Those dreams need to be expressed, so here you and I are.

All there is to do now is to realize who we actually are, and to have faith. It’s time to live. It’s time to have the life you want to have.

Can We Be Sure?

A few days ago I got onto the bus and sat down. On the seat next to me was a small pamphlet with the back cover facing upwards. It didn’t take me long to realize it was a religious tract. I flipped it over and alas, it was. The title of this particular one was “Can We Be Sure?” and its cover had numerous arrows pointing upwards and downwards. It became quite evident that the topic within was the afterlife.

The first sentence (no pun intended) that greeted me was “Can we be sure we’ll spend eternity in heaven?” This is immediately followed by: “Many people say you can’t be sure. Are they right? Does spending eternity in heaven or hell have to remain uncertain until it’s too late?”

The middle part of the booklet is made up of the story of Queen Victoria of England, and how she wanted to be sure of where she would be in the afterlife. She made an inquiry to the chaplain at a cathedral, but he didn’t know how to be sure. Upon hearing of her question, an evangelist of the time sent the Queen a letter, humbly asking her read John 3:16 and Romans 10: 9-10.

Most people with a passing knowledge of the Bible know the first verse, and the second one is similar. A fundamentalist interpretation of these verses suggests that in order to be assured of a place in a literal Heaven in the afterlife, one must believe that Jesus Christ’s death served as payment for our sins and that he rose from the dead.

The pamphlet notes, by the way, that the Queen wrote him back and said that she did read the verses and that she was now sure. It also states that “the way of salvation is the same for a queen or a common citizen.”

Hmm, where to begin? The rest of this particular piece will not exist in order to rebut the idea of a literal Hell, mostly because I have written about this in other pieces, and partially because I don’t particularly like the word “rebut,” as if we were talking about plastic surgery on one’s posterior. But briefly, I’ll state again that when I think about the words Heaven and Hell, I think about things that we experience in this life, external things that happen to us, or internal peace or unrest.

Instead of discussing Heaven and Hell, I return to the beginning, as that’s a very good place to start. The question was asked, “Can we be sure we’ll spend eternity in heaven?” My first question is: “Does it matter that much to you? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about it?” Perhaps you think about it a lot if you grew up in a church, because it tends to be talked about quite a bit in some churches. And if you didn’t, perhaps you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Heaven and Hell. I think regardless of your (in)experience with religion, probably everyone thinks of the end of his or her life from time to time.

But can we be sure, I mean really sure? (Remember the deodorant commercial from a few years ago that repeated over and over “Sure? Unsure?” People were comfortable raising their arms in public or being close to other people on the bus if they were wearing this particular product, and if not they weren’t comfortable. Anyways, enough about that.) Personally, I don’t think that anyone can be absolutely sure what happens when they die, because no one has died, taken a video camera into Hell or Heaven, and came back and shown it on Larry King Live. Some people have had near-death experiences, or say that they’ve had experiences when they’ve briefly been dead in an emergency room or on an operating table, but you’re not completely sure. They very well could be telling the truth, or it could be a unique experience to them, or they could have eaten some underdone potato. Many have written about the afterlife – I’m thinking about religious books particularly, and many view these as literal and without possibility of error.

But personally, I don’t think we can be entirely sure. And you know, that’s okay with me, I’m quite comfortable with it. I have my hands full with this life, and find that I have little time to worry about the next one.

And I think that living life unsure of a definite answer to this question and many others can be a great thing. Yes, for some it can be scary, because they’d prefer solid answers to their questions; this provides a level of security. But there are those who, though it can lead them into a certain amount of discomfort, find that living their life is more about wrestling with the questions and coming up with personally true and personally believable answers than making sure they’ve found a one, solid answer. They prefer to explore all kinds of possibilities.

It requires an openness, a boldness, and a deep trust in yourself that no matter where you are or where you go on your way, you’ll be alright, you’ll be okay. The openness and boldness that this kind of life requires also opens the doorway to new discoveries, new truth, and fulfilling, truly personal growth.

I hope today finds you doing well and that you will experience peace and confidence on your journey, wherever you may be today.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

We are dying and being born with every breath.

This comes to mind as I sit in Starbucks on a Saturday night, listening to Sexsmith’s latest, and eating nanaimo bars.

I believe I first came across this particular expression in a Buddhist-themed book. And I’m thinking tonight that it contains truth.

Maybe one of the reasons that we get so stressed out in our lives is because we carry around so much baggage from moments that have gone before, instead of letting them die with each breath. We carry around a lot, perhaps because we have come to believe the falsehood that external events and happenings are the key things that form the definition of who we are. For example, perhaps when we are children in school we are told that we’re the ugly one, or the weird kid. Maybe we are labeled the bright one and are consigned to years of expectation that we’ll get good grades and be the good kid and never fail.

Maybe we do damaging things to ourselves – drinking too much, or putting ourselves in unhealthy situations. Instead of forgiving ourselves and moving ahead, we carry them around and think ourselves unworthy of happiness. Maybe we’ve come to believe that we have some deep, irreparable flaw. We carry the past around like a carcass dragging from our rear bumper.

Then there are things, sometimes terrible and painful things, that have been done to us that we had no control over. Unhealthy home situations, deep inner or outer bruising. And we just have a hell of a time moving on, thinking that we are sullied or damaged goods moving forward.

Sometimes we can almost intentionally wave the flag of the victim, for a few reasons. If we maintain the view of ourselves that we are so messed up, people may stay away and we won’t have to be vulnerable again, where we may get hurt.

Sometimes we hold onto awful things from our past because they give us a seemingly valid excuse to not be happy and make progress. This is tempting, because happiness can be hard work. If over the course of your life you have come to steadfastly think poorly of yourself, it can be hard to let the past go and finally embrace the truth of your own wonderfulness.

We do not need to hold onto past moments, which often only result in more stress in our lives.

Each new breath is a fresh opportunity for something good to happen. Each new breath brings a moment in your life that has never been. You can do whatever you want to do in this moment. If it turns out to be pissy, it too will die off and a new moment will be born.