How many of you are familiar with Anthony De Mello? He’s written a boatload of books, and turns out the only one I have is The Way to Love. He was an Indian Psychotherapist who was also a Hindu-Catholic and wrote many books on spirituality. He was a masterful storyteller, and today, Bill retells the story about the Guru’s cat.
Listen and see what you get from it - there are many layers here, but ultimately, one of the points is not to hold our doctrine so rigidly that we lose sight of people and presence. When we are busy arguing about doctrine, we are no longer in the experience. We lose sight of the sacred and of each other.
In deconstructing our faith, it can feel necessary to take something from the old into the new so we can learn how to hold it loosely and allow it (and ourselves) to change. The Guru’s cat was initially just a cat, but it eventually became the central meaning of the meditative community, and the whole thing fell apart.
Next week, we’ll talk about reconstructing. But in the meantime, don’t tie up your Guru’s cat.
