The Shack by Wm Paul Young

At the airport on the way to Denver to work for the last few days of the Obama campaign, I bought “The Shack, where tragedy confronts eternity.”  Published in 2007, 25 week on the New York Times Best Seller list, over 4 million in print, says the publisher’s website. “This Story reads like a prayer,” says one reviewer on the back cover.

“What address of prayer would that be?” The integral mind inquires. Well, it’s the story of this Christian father figure, so we’re in zone two, masculine, orange elevation with blue trimmings. And we spend our time first in the Job-like tragedy (almost a caricature of a tragedy) typical of Christian stories and dilemmas, and then the rest of the book is dedicated to this orange man’s green revelation.

And that’s what makes it fascinating. We get to be a fly on the wall as the dry, despairing masculinity of a dutiful orange father is challenged by a tragedy it cannot integrate. And then pushed by miraculous circumstance into wrestling with his very own green-level altered state experience. It’s better written than the Celestine Prophecy and has some similar didactic characteristics. And the story is clearly compelling to a large number of Christians.

The revelation is an extended face-to-face encounter with the Trinity, and in glorious green fashion God the father is a black woman, Jesus is a Semitic, less than perfectly beautiful man, and the Holy Spirit is an Asian woman. Organized religion gets it’s comeuppance straight from the mouth of the almighty, yet Jesus, somehow is still lord, but not exactly of Christians, He’s there for everybody and doesn’t care about your belief system. The theology is a little dizzying at times but fun.

I was born and raised liberal Jewish and practice in the yoga tradition, yet I live in a Christian country. As my life has progressed I have identified as Christian also in a way my parents might have seen as traitorous.

Christian literature and music and so on are coming of age. This offering published by Windblown Media “a breath of fresh air in spiritual publishing.” Is worth a read.  It entertains and uplifts, which is what it is advertised to do, and as an added bonus, it gives us observers of culture a thing or two to chew on.

The after-words shape this story as a seed of a movement- No less than a visionary tale of a new Spirituality, complete with a website. I think this movement has a useful place on the conveyor belt of spiritual evolution. The book might be a useful place to begin a conversation with a person whose perspective is somewhat different from your own.

I was about to unsub from questions and reflections, yet I like this question best. so far.  What I think about, is how to embrace with as much compassion as I can muster the energies and events that arise in and around me. With Hope. With thanksgiving when possible and at the very least with awareness.

Having seen my own circus go around now for a number of decades, it's a challenge to continue to greet it (my character, my genetics, my behavior, whatever beliefs seem vital at that moment) with compassion. If I had to pose one current conceptual challenge, it would be, how to live a clear, decisive life without placing actual human beings (myself included) in the conceptually violent prizon of judgement.

To forgive everyone ahead of time. To be an embodiment of an open space- A welcoming presence thst serves the unfolding of all who encounter me- for a moment or a lifetime. At the same time, To live with discimination, to take moral stances with clarity, To nurture the beast within with the same kind of comapssion, guidance, and care I would hope to give a spirited and beatiful horse if I was in charge of one, Celebrate the beast. Guide my own beast, and enjoy the beauty of the beasts around me.

I do all these things on a good day, and I attempt to compassionately get myself back on track when I find myself ruled by some impulse out of the shadow, when I find myself face to face with some persistant, occasionally traggic blindspot... The shadow is my teacher. And I am driven by a joyous kindness that dances among these thoughts and polarities and wields a sword and finds a path. This is the faith, the hope, and the love with which I resolve to greet all that this life offers. Embodying it more and more deeply is my challenge.