David CookView other columns by David Cook
Years ago, I stumbled onto centering prayer, then meditation, and both have saved me in the way swimming lessons would a drowning man.
Instructions are simple: sit quietly and alone for a period of time - five minutes, 20 minutes, an entire weekend - and turn inward. When thoughts come, let them go. Notice, but don't cling to them. Follow your breath. Inhale, then exhale. Within such silence, it's stunning what we may find.
"The kingdom of God is within you," Tolstoy liked to say, echoing Christ.
As someone acquainted with depression and anxiety, I can testify to the very real difference meditation makes. Over the years, the residue of consistent meditation has turned my mind less chaotic and reactive, my heart more gentle and resilient.
Which brings us to today's column.
Last Monday night, the kids were scratching out homework, everybody was fed, so I went into the bedroom, shut the door and sat - alone, quietly - practicing something called metta, or loving kindness, meditation. With each inhale and exhale, you repeat a certain phrase designed to open your heart toward happiness. For yourself. Your spouse. Your neighbor. Even your enemy. An example? Let's do San Fran QB Colin Kaepernick.
May Colin be safe from danger.
May Colin be free from fear.
May Colin be happy in his mind.
May Colin be healthy in his body.
Yes, it oozes sentimentality, yet there is an immeasurable lightness in the practice. Your heart opens. Softens. Grows.
Then the meditation ended.
It was 9 p.m.
I plopped on the couch and clicked the TV.
Time for the presidential debate.
And just like that, my evening swung from meditative prayer to presidential politics.
The back-to-back experience took me from the spiritual realm to the political, and it felt like going from a sauna to an ice bath, from the womb to a fight club, from one world with one set of instructions on how to live to another world where those instructions are abandoned.
That two-hour window was jarring.
It felt like the worst kind of separation of church and state.
In our temples, churches, mosques and chapels, we are instructed on right ways of living. Forgiveness and humility are prized. We are taught to trust God, and treat others as we wish to be treated. Blessed are the peacemakers. Beware desire, greed and anger.
For millions of Americans - certainly atheists and agnostics as well as people of faith - significant time is spent, privately or collectively, cultivating inner lives that strive more toward goodness and mercy than bitterness and aggression.
Yet within politics, such lessons are forgotten, and replaced by the very behaviors religion condemns. What would be shockingly inappropriate in our religious lives seems to be ho-hum acceptable within our political lives.
It turns the spiritual truths we learn into half-truths, applicable in certain realms, but not all, like weak passports that don't really take you anywhere.
Don't you feel this, too? Isn't this a huge reason why politics has become so soured, as politicians seem to operate with a poisonous playbook, adhering to rules no spiritual teacher would ever advise?
"So what would it look like if they didn't?" my wife asked.
It would look quite, quite different.
Candidates and politicians would refuse the warlike practice of trying to destroy the other. The stench of partisanship would be replaced with the air of humility. Public service really would look like public service. The money would dry up: no more campaign finance. No more money-changers in the Legislature.
Love would become a very real campaign platform. Reconciliation, a true goal. Political language would change. (Make America Meek Again?) Our foreign policy would shift, as we broaden our definition of who belongs in God's family. (Answer: everyone.)
And capitalism?
"If the Golden Rule were generally observed among us, the economy would not last a week," writes the poet Wendell Berry.
Maybe, then, politics and the spirit don't mix.
Or maybe we just haven't tried hard enough
May Donald be safe from danger.
May Hillary be free from fear.
May Donald be happy in his mind.
May Hillary be healthy in her body.
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.