Darkly Devotions

Lyric prose meditations that play with elements from evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, yoga, reiki, Tarot and “weird voodoo shit.”

~by Cindy Clem

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Opening exercise: Walk on your knees back and forth across your living room floor. Pretend that the floor is a desert. Pretend that you’re repenting.

Today’s passages:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. [1]
~Mary Oliver, from “Wild Geese”

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
~Matthew 5:6

An Attempt to Reconcile the Two:

It’s goodness versus righteousness, Elinor Dashwood versus Jane Eyre. It’s caring about what other people think versus embracing your inner freak. Good = nice. Righteous = whole.

Good is giving money to starving children instead of buying Christmas presents when you’d rather buy Christmas presents. [An important distinction: feeding starving children isn’t the problem; doing it because you think you should is.] Be too good for too long or too stridently and you’ll hate everyone, even children.

Good = should. Righteous = is.
Good = not being a bother. Righteous = being.
Good = guilt and fear. Righteous = joy.

Consider the next line of “Wild Geese”: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.[2]”  Beautiful, right? Not good.

So how is hungering for righteousness different than being good? Goodness = striving. We will never be good enough. Righteousness is a gift; Jesus says we should hunger for it, but in truth we already have it. We are already filled. I think Jesus (and Matthew) would agree with me[3]. Righteousness is our potential and our current state. It is our right and ability to trust ourselves. We may not see it, we may not believe it, we may think we don’t deserve it, but it is who we are, beyond our small sense of ourselves, beyond our ego’s insistence that we are nothing but ego. The voice of goodness devours us. It tells us we are broken. It demands that we fix ourselves, make ourselves worthy of forgiveness. But we are already forgiven[4]. We do not have to be good. The voice of righteousness comforts, always.

But what happens when the effort to stop trying so hard to be good (and thus be a good non-achiever) feels like the hardest struggle of your life?

Adyashanti[5] writes: “Relaxing and letting go of struggle isn’t something the ego does—yet we often get our egos involved in trying to make letting go happen. To even say, ‘Let go of struggle’ isn’t quite right. All that’s required is that you begin to notice that place within you that’s not struggling.”

Closing exercise: Find the place within you that’s not struggling. Don’t struggle to find it, though. And when you get there, don’t stare at it. Staring is work. You’re not trying to dissect it, for God’s sake. Just notice it and try to at least act casual, except don’t “try” and don’t “act.” In fact, maybe it’s easier in the end to just let yourself struggle, being aware that you’re struggling but not letting it bother you too much. Just struggle away and stop thinking about it. In fact, don’t even read about struggling or not struggling, about being good or not being good. Don’t read. Don’t think, either.