This is my favorite bit from the article:

“Spiritual and religious” expresses a grassroots desire for new kinds of faith communities, where institutional structures do not inhibit or impede one’s relationship with God or neighbor. Americans are searching for churches — and temples, synagogues, and mosques — that are not caught up in political intrigue, rigid rules and prohibitions, institutional maintenance, unresponsive authorities, and inflexible dogma but instead offer pathways of life-giving spiritual experience, connection, meaning, vocation, and doing justice in the world. Americans are not rejecting faith — they are, however, rejecting self-serving religious institutions.

Can I get a “Blessed Be”? (An “Amen” will work, too.)

Joe Perez offers his two cents for what this means for a new “World spirituality”. I’m more interested in what this means for religious diversity, and for the freedom that this affords individual practitioners. This shift away from hierarchical, power-over religious structures signals a new model of “religion” in which “going to church/temple/zendo/the open grove” doesn’t mean receiving The Holy Word, but sharing part of one’s spiritual practice with like-minded practitioners.

I had the good fortune of taking my kids last week to Gaia’s Temple in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The Temple, which has been in operation for over a decade, welcomes people of all genders, races, and sexual orientations to come once a month and celebrate the Divine Feminine through song, meditation, and discussion. I had never even knew it existed until a friend told me about it.

Oh, what I’d been missing. My younger kids liked it. My (Pagan) teen son loved it. I loved it. I have no clue what most of the 100+ people in attendance that Sunday believed, or how they practiced on their own time. What mattered is that I could sit with them, chant with them, ground myself in Earth energy with them, and celebrate the turning of the Wheel with them.

And that, to me, is the true meaning of “religion” – from the Latin religare, “to bind together”. I felt this binding together at Gaia’s Temple. I feel it when I practice zazen with my fellow Buddhists. Rather than being bound by doctrine, we come together around a few principle ideas or practices that are sacred to us. The officiants of such practices are highly esteemed in the community, and may even have special recognitions bestowed upon them. But they’re not there, generally, to chastise us for our sinful ways. They lead practice. They instruct gently. They remind us, over and over again, to come back to who we really are.

Is this type of religious practice on the rise? I sure as hell hope so. Despite our technological prowess and burgeoning wealth, our planet and its denizens suffer immensely. It’s going to take a living, breathing spiritual practice – and not mere religious dogma – to wake us out of our slumber.

Ouch. Okay, that didn’t work at all. Forget I ever typed that.

Anyway, when it comes to spiritual scandals, Friend has all of the bases covered. He attempted to rob his employees of their pensions (money). He’s been accused of using his workers as pot couriers (drugs). The story came to Jason’s attention because, while supposedly in a monogamous relationship with his girlfriend, Friend used Wicca as a cover to sleep with several (married) women on the side (sex). He’s the Yogic Dennis Merzel. Oh, no, wait – that was Amrit Desai. Whatever. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme. The only twist this time is that Friend has dragged two spiritual traditions – Yoga and Wicca – down into the muck.

Let’s get one thing straight. None of this reflects on Yoga or on Wicca. It reflects on John Friend. Unfortunately, it won’t be seen that way by many. Some people will blindly defend their teacher. Worse, some will become disillusioned and walk away from their spiritual practice. And that’s the real tragedy of such scandals.

As Brad Warner’s observed, we put spiritual teachers on such a high pedestal that we’re devastated when they (inevitably) come tumbling down. And that’s a shame, because there are so many great spiritual teachers doing good work all around the world. How do you find them? Don’t go for the self-styled guru fashioning a multi-zillion-dollar spiritual empire. Find someone in a sleepy corner of your town or city who is quietly doing her practice, and quietly passing it onto others. Don’t revere this person; just absorb as much wisdom from her as you can in your short time together. As Brad states regarding teachers in the Zen tradition:

A Zen teacher is someone who has chosen to do serious work on herself or himself. Our experiences in doing this work on ourselves can be useful to others. Many of us allow other people to join us in this work. Those who join us in this work may very well be helped. And most of us will try our best to help them when we can.

And if that teacher does let you down? If at some point you discover he’s been defrauding his employees, or sleeping with her students during their “private spiritual consultations”?

It doesn’t matter.

If your teacher has given you good instruction in an authentic spiritual tradition, and those teachings have positively impacted your life, then it doesn’t matter that your Roshi needs a flatbed truck to carry his baggage around with him. Your daily practice is what matters. Have faith in your practice, even if you’ve lost faith in your teacher.

Oh, and don’t let John Friend within 10 feet of your hot yoga pants. Just to be safe.

One sentence in the piece really jumped out at me, though, and I couldn’t pass it over without pitching my two cents into the communal fountain:

In a less adversarial situation, I heard the issue phrased in the following way: “If you like to talk, you’re going to like to pray; if you like to listen, you’re going to like to meditate.”

Lupus goes on to explain how he has tried meditation over the years, and has been dissuaded from the practice because he “sucks horribly” at it.

But here’s the thing. No one likes meditation. Least of all the people who practice it daily.

I meditate because I believe I should. It’s good for me. I don’t “like” it. There’s nothing fun about sitting still for 30 minutes at a wallop watching the incessant chatter of my mind. The short retreats I’ve done – in which participants perform a combination of sitting or walking meditation for over seven hours a day – are some of the hardest challenges I’ve ever faced in my life.

I’m not good at it, either. After years of imperfect, irregular practice, it’s just as hard to sit with my thoughts as it’s always been. Oh sure, at first, you improve. I started out barely able to sit still for five minutes straight. Then I could easily do 10 minutes, then 15 minutes, until finally I could sit for a half hour at a time without wanting to bolt off of my cushion every 30 seconds to check e-mail and Facebook. This happened for me during the first three months of regular practice. Since then, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten a lick better. My mind still wanders all over the place. A typical sitting of zazen is a seemingly endless cycle of defeat. It’s like running a hamster cage in Hell. Resolve to observe my thoughts. Start thinking. Notice I’m thinking. Bring my attention back to my breath. Repeat for what feels like eternity.

So, why do it? The same reason people exercise when they’d rather sit in front of the TV. It makes me a little less edgy, a little more thoughtful, and a little more compassionate. It makes me more aware during the way of when my mind drifts into anger or self-deprecation, and helps me return to the present moment. And it provides a solid foundation for my other spiritual work. Is it hard? Yes. Is it depressing? Some days more than others. But it’s also humbling. I’m prone to regard myself as the Master of My Universe. Truth is, I don’t even control what happens inside my own skull.

I’m not trying to beat up on Sufenas for choosing prayer over meditation. I love prayer as a devotional practice. And he makes a great case for Pagan prayer. But I’d hate for anyone – Pagan or otherwise – to steer clear of meditation because they believe it requires some kind of natural talent. You sit with the mind you have, and you do the best you can. And you evolve.

When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one.  In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind.  Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen.  But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it.  So I think that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one.

- Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, from “The Marrow of Zen” in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (full excerpt here)

For those of you who missed it, GLAAD has the skinny. During the Super Bowl last night, while those of us who could care less about sports were busy playing Halo or dancing across multiple lanes of traffic, Martin made public with his disgust for a half-naked David Beckham:

Martin later claimed that he was dissing soccer, not the luscious Beckham bod. Unfortunately for Martin, that doesn’t explain his next tweet:

GLAAD is calling on Martin to apologize, and for CNN to fire him, based on this and his past history of inflammatory statements towards the LGBT community.

What staggers me about Martin’s comments is how oversensitive this dude is to anything that violates even the most trifling norm of straight behavior. Wear pink? Stare at David Beckham’s package for more than 0.07 microseconds? Obviously, someone needs to take a pair of pliers and a blowtorch to your homosexual ass. There are no shades of gray here, no Kinsey Scale: step over the Thin Straight Line, and the Hetero Cops have license to beat you back over to the right side.

I doubt CNN will let Martin go so that he can get a cushy job on conservative radio. The network has spent the better part of the past few years catering to right wing hate in a desperate bid for viewership. But we can always hope. Go to Change.org to tell CNN and Martin that that ish doesn’t fly here.

(The following post is fiction. Unfortunately.)

By now, the principal’s office was as familiar to Bianca as her own room. The sports hero bobbleheads on his desk were to the point of becoming old friends. Mr. Arvanti was a nice enough guy, a middle-aged man with an aw-shucks personality, and a near permanent smile that turned into a wince of paternal disappointment whenever he was faced with the unpleasant task of disciplining one of his “buddies in education”.

It wasn’t Arvanti who put the fear of God in her. That honor went to the tall lady dressed above her station, sitting next to Bianca with her hands clenched together in her lap, and her eyes boring a hole through the floor.

“I want you to know,” her mother said with a stone face, “that I don’t blame you, Mr. Arvanti, so much as I blame the entire rotting school system.”

Arvanti looked amused. He never took his stare off of Bianca, who squirmed in her seat. Behind his back, most of the kids called him either “Mr. Armani,” “the Arvanator,” or, simply, “douchebag.” At that moment, Bianca favored “douchebag.” Tired, but direct.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Mrs. Hammond,” he said.

“You teach them that this sort of thing is acceptable today. When I was a girl – ”

“Now hold on, Julia – ”

” – no one accepted such…sinful behavior.”

“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, as you well know. Bianca is fighting a chronic problem that needs serious treatment. More treatment than we can provide in the context of a public education.”

Julia Hammond sat up straight, her body as taut as a spring about to snap. “So you’re saying it’s our fault? That we didn’t raise her right?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Bianca muttered.

Bianca’s mom stuck a finger in her face. “You be silent and obedient, young lady, for once in your blessed life. You’ve brought enough ridicule upon us for one school year. I mean, in a school bathroom, of all places!”

Bianca burrowed herself more deeply into her seat. Her eyes landed on one of Douchebag’s posters, a picture of a woman dangling by one hand off of a rock ledge whose inscription read, “DETERMINATION: You’ll Be Glad You Have It When You Really Need It”. She needed all of the determination she could muster to remain fixed in her seat, listening to this shit. No one in this dump understood who she was, or what she really wanted out of life. And the little they did understand, they hated. They called her a freak, and a degenerate. But I never hurt anybody, she thought, her anger on the edge of boiling over. I’ve only made myself and others happy. What’s wrong with that?

“I’m not blaming you or Jack,” he said, a hand raised in a gesture of abeyance. “I’m saying…Bianca,” he continued, turning back to her, “there’s a place in Minneapolis that helps girls and boys like you who are struggling with these feelings. You would be gone for two, three months at most, and then you could come back to school with your friends.” He stood up and picked up a pamphlet, which he handed to Bianca’s mother. He sat down on the edge of his desk, facing mother and daughter. “You can take some time to think about it, review the literature I gave your mother.”

Bianca looked at him. “They’ll help me. You mean…cure me?”

“They can help you manage it, Bianca. Help you to learn to make better choices, so you can…socialize better with your fellow students.”

That’s when Julia started weeping. Mr. Armani fidgeted uncomfortably as Bianca’s mother took a tissue out of her purse and daubed at her eyes. Bianca was beside herself.

“And that’s the thing, isn’t it,” her mom said through tears. “‘Manage’ it. She’ll never be normal. She’ll never be like…us.” Her mother stood up. “I’ll do it. Let’s send her away. Send her away for the rest of her life, as far as I care. I’m tired of dealing with this evil little curse.”

Bianca bolted out of her chair and put her hands around her mom’s shoulders. She pushed her back toward the wall. “Shut up shut UP SHUT UP!”

“Bianca!” The principal jammed himself in-between them, making himself a shield between Bianca and her parent. “Please, let’s all regain our composure and talk about this like adults.

It was then that Bianca saw something that she knew had always been there, but had always carefully hid itself behind sneers and derisive laughs. Fear. Her mother, the Armanator, her “friends” and “fellow students” – they lived in waking terror of her. Of what she could do, if she set her mind to it. All of these taunts and jeers and discipline and ill treatment were simply a way to control what they didn’t understand. They’d opened the cage, and she’d locked herself in.

She could have laughed. Instead, she just stared at these authority figures, absorbing how pathetic and small they appeared in this new, bright light. She grabbed her blue backpack by a single strap.

“You know what? It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “I’ll expel myself. Mr. Armani.” She shot Julia a mock curtsy. “Mother.”

Halfway down the hall is when the laughter struck her. The sea of students parted before her in almost Biblical fear as she pranced down the hallway, throwing all of the items she wouldn’t need out of her backpack – school books, rulers, a couple of math notepads and a lumbering three-ring binder. They would only weigh her down.

As she walked away from them, she felt her heart become lighter; she wanted to leap in the air! When she broke out of the prison into the open air, she slung her lightened load over both shoulders and did just that: pushing off the ground with her left foot, her soles strode into the air, her right foot gripping atmosphere as if it were stairs, pushing on that foot off of nothing and clasping her two feet together as her body at first drifted gently towards the sky, until, gaining speed with every meter, she pierced the oxygen like a rocket, her long black hair streaking behind her in a trail of exhilaration.

Those dumbasses probably think I’ll come back and demolish the school. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed her mind. But she wasn’t about to let herself become the monster they’d created in their minds. No more. No more letting the judgment of others weigh her down. No more feeling guilty because she used her speed and her strength to help out poor Tricia Zhu, who was being beaten about like a soccer ball in the girl’s lavatory. No more staying stuck in a small world that feared her powers, when she could be using them to heal a world that was hurting.

No more, she thought. From now on, I’ll embrace the air.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Janey challenged me with “As she walked away from them, she felt her heart become lighter; she wanted to leap in the air! ” and I challenged Jester Queen with “Bananarama.”

On the other hand, there must be limits. You can’t tolerate intolerance, or make room for religious systems that are nothing but thinly veiled systems of control and oppression. There’s a clear line between “religion” and “cult”. And by many accounts, Mars Hill is crossing it.

To be frank, Mars Hill is on my shitlist anyhow. Its pastor, Mark Driscoll, is an intolerant homophobe who thinks masturbating makes you gay. Even worse? He had the temerity to take shots at Avatar. This man is EEEEEVIL, I tell you.

But that’s nothing compared to the stories of control and submission rounded up by Kiley, some of which would make the Scientology high command blush. When one young man quit the church over a dispute around a building safety issue, one of the pastors called his girlfriend’s father to warn the man what a dangerous individual his prospective son-in-law was. Others tell similar stories of hounding. On those occasions when Mars Hill couldn’t get its way, it brought out the favorite weapon of all cults: shunning.

None of this should come as any surprise. Mars Hill places undue stress on authority and submission to the church (another black mark, for those of you keeping score with the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame). Pastor Driscoll has made it clear in his sermons that submission is critical to the Mars Hill Way, and that if you’re asking questions, you’re practically having sex with Satan:

Some adults are just always questioning… these are people with critical spirits. These are people that if you answer their question, they’ve got 25 more questions, and they’ll have questions forever. And it’s not that they have questions, it’s that they’re sinning through questioning. The heart is not good.

I don’t have many litmus tests for faiths, but one of my strongest is that one’s faith should be open to inquisition, examination, and even dissension. One woman’s heresy is another woman’s doctrine. Any church whose leader would use the phrase “sinning through questioning” without a drop of irony isn’t worth the $31 million in cash and assets it’s sitting on.

Small wonder that so many people these days are finding Jesus outside of church, huh?

Tuesday was Donut Day at the homeschooling center that my kids attend four days out of the week. The center is part of the Bellevue School District, but operates on a different model that requires at least one parent to be present at all times. Meaning, I had to spend a day surrounded by these sugar bombs. As I looked at the glistening field of cholesterol spread out on the large circular table, I thought to myself, Thank the Goddess that no one else here is vegan.

Yes, friends, you can make a vegan donut. And they’re damn tasty. A company in Seattle called Mighty-O Donuts makes some nice dosh off of the enterprise. What’s good for Mighty-O’s bottom line, however, is bad for my waistline. I have no self-control when exposed to sugar. Had those been boxes of vegan donuts occupying the room, I’d have scarfed down near a dozen, and spent the remainder of the day curled up Golem-like in the corner with the last Chocolate Raspberry cradled in my hands, stroking its cratered contour while hissing “My precccccioussssss…”

I know this defies stereotype. I’m supposed to be strutting around all self-righteous in my dietary choices, lecturing people on how the chicken they’re enjoying was raised in a 5-by-5-inch cage and tortured with sewing needles by sadistic farmers every evening at seven, after which the poor little things are strapped to chairs and their lids propped open a la Clockwork Orange as they’re forced to test-screen the latest Adam Sandler film. It’s that kind of (largely fictional) zealotry that led Anthony Bourdain to christen us the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarianism.

But, truly, I’m glad on a certain level that everyone around me eats meat and dairy. Because if they didn’t, I would gobble up any random morsel that had the misfortune to cross my path. While my decision to be vegan is primarily motivated by concern for animal welfare and the environment, health is also a factor. I feel a thousand times better whenever I eat a plant-based, whole foods diet with little added sugar. It’s easier to stick to this lifestyle when you know that three quarters of the food that floats past your grasp every day is strictly off limits.

So live it up, omnivores. Truly. You’re doing me a favor. And I’m not judging you. Well, maybe a little. But never out loud. Except perhaps during the twice-monthly meeting of the Liberal Vegan Ecological Homosexual Agenda Conspiracy Committee.

Goddammit. I’ve already said too much. Jay out.

Psssst…wanna know more about the health benefits of a plant-based diet, despite my best efforts to convince you to continue eating Bessie and Babe? Check out the documentary Forks Over Knives, which is currently available via Netflix.

Mona stormed out through the entry gate of her apartment building and took in several gulps of cold, crisp air. She had to huddle her sleeveless arms around herself for warmth; she hugged herself so hard that she dug her nails into her flesh. She didn’t care. It was worth not being in that damn building for two minutes.

I could run, she thought. Run far away, before I do something I’ll regret. Except I left my purse and cell phone upstairs. And my shoes. And it’s my apartment.

A blast of frozen air tore through her skin. The stars above leered down upon her, as if they could see through her clothes. A few more minutes here, Mona knew, and they’d have to amputate her feet. Reluctantly, she plodded back inside and upstairs seven flights, taking each step with the measured precision of the condemned. I’m calm, I’m calm. I’m a fucking fairy in the woods I’m so calm.

The apartment was as she’d left it. The couch tipped over. Chips scattered on the floor and mashed into the carpet, arranged in accidental geometry around a large wine stain that Mona could swear had swelled in her absence. And at the far end, near the window, sat her five friends, huddled around two card tables.

She sat down. To her left, Fran ignored her, opting to study her own hands instead, while Andy and Toshiro were grimacing so intently at one another she didn’t think they even noticed her. To her right, Meela looked at her with begging eyes. Pansy, Mona thought, only distantly concerned with where her world-famous empathy had gone. And Greg – Greg who brought her flowers, who begged her every other Tuesday to bear his children – Greg fixed her with a look that blended “slept with my best friend” and “murdered my puppy” into a grimace of absolute malice.

“That was the longest smoke break since the discovery of tobacco,” Greg said.

“Oh, fuck you,” Mona spat.

“Can you two shut it?” Toshiro said, not removing his death-stare from Andy. Both maintained a death grip on a plastic figurine. “We’re waiting on you guys here.”

Greg threw the dice at Mona.

“Roll,” he said.

On the first toss, Mona flung both icosahedra so hard that they flew off the table. Meela wept silently. Fran gathered up the dice and placed them in Mona’s hand. On Mona’s second roll, they came up a perfect 40.

The table sat in shocked silence. The only sound was the wind swelling and shaking the window, demanding  entry.

Meela was the first to crack. “No no no no nooooo. Oh GOD!” she screamed, and tore into the kitchen, where she attempted to open an artery with a butter knife.

Fran wheeled on Andy. “You’re fucking him?” she said.

“I give him what he needs!” Toshiro hissed. One of the card tables spilled over, taking game pieces and half the board with it, as Fran tackled Andy to the floor.

While this was happening, Mona removed the ring on her left hand. She stood up and loomed over Greg. Everything was illuminated. Her soon-to-be-ex-fiancee sat fixed in his seat amid the chaos, wringing his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, over and over. He looked like he could cry, but his eyes were empty. The tears of the guilty, Mona’s mother used to call them.

“Not good enough,” she said. Mona unfastened and opened the window. “I need you to be sorrier.”

Two hours later, the apartment was swarming with police. Everyone had been taken away by one means or another, except Mona, who sat on her couch cradling her bandaged right hand in her left. A detective rummaged through the mess on the floor and picked up the top of a box in his gloved hand.

“Must have been a hell of a game,” he said.

“What?” Mona said.

He handed it to her. “Hell of a game, yeah?”

The game box cover depicted a young woman in Goth Lolita garb sitting on a throne woven out of bramble. The spear she held in her left hand dribbled blood onto the throne room floor. Scrawled above this in sharp pink lettering: Malevolence.

Mona handed it back. Her face was an unsolved jigsaw. “You know…I don’t remember. I don’t think we ever got around to playing it.”

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bewildered Bug challenged me with “Malevolence” and I challenged femmefauxpas with “No doubt about it: this was worse than the last time I’d drowned”.

I was shocked last week when I dug into a dish at Seattle’s Plum Bistro and my first thought was, “Mmmm…steak.” The dish was Double-Dipped Seitan. For the uninitiated, seitan is vital wheat gluten. I swear that’s not as disgusting as it sounds; it’s actually tastier and heartier than tofu, when done right. And Plum Bistro does it right, cooking the “steak” to perfection until it has a crisp, golden exterior. No, it didn’t taste like dead cow – but the texture and experience were equivalent, at least. And it did taste damn good, which I’m convinced has as much to do with Plum’s decision not to saddle this dish with the “steak” label as with the culinary talents of Chef Makini Howell.

I had the pleasure of meeting an online friend for the first time at Plum. It turned out that we had intersecting food peculiarities: she’s gluten-free, and I’m vegan. In Seattle, that’s a sweet overlap. Most of our hippier-than-thou eateries, such as Chaco Canyon Cafe and the amazing Flying Apron Bakery, cater to both sets of dietary refugees. The only down side of the get-together? I didn’t take any pictures of the meal, out of fear that the person I’d just met would think I was a total, irredeemable dork. Given the lighting, I imagine my iPhone wouldn’t have captured anything more tantalizing than a dark blob shrouded in pixels anyhow. So I stole the photo for this post from The Stranger. (Thanks, guys. Don’t sue me. Love ya!)

If you live in Seattle, or visit our fair city, you should give Plum a go, even if you’re a committed lifelong eater of things with faces. Be warned that it’s “affordable upscale”: main courses start at around $13, but top out at around $19. Great for a date or a night out with friends, but not a place you’d visit three nights a week. For cheap vegan sandwich fare, visit Plum’s sister store, Hillside Quickie, in the University District.