Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser

The Inner Light

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Celebrating a gay couple's wedding in Florida

a few years ago.

A beloved transgender member of Ormewood Church, formerly a member of Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church, died unexpectedly last week, and, in addition to her own outstanding “Message of Hope” about this longtime member, our pastor Jenelle requested me to offer a brief reflection on her life based on our shared love of Star Trek during her memorial service this past Sunday afternoon. Afterward, her lifelong spouse gave me a beautiful Star Trek t-shirt commemorating its various incarnations over 55 years, 1966-2021.

In recent weeks I had tossed about various ideas for my final post on this blog. Should I re-post an earlier blog about LGBT Pride for this Pride Month or write something new? I’ve decided that this reflection is a fitting way to end this ten-year-long blog.

Star Trek, The Next Generation, was one of my binge-watched series during the pandemic, and one episode in particular stood out, entitled, “The Inner Light.” For those who want to watch it on Netflix, it is episode 25 of season 5. I had talked with Jenelle about it at the time, and I discovered lots of other people liked it too, receiving awards.

The episode is simply described: “Picard awakens to find himself in a village where he is a well-known member of the community suffering from a delusion of being a starship captain.” I watched it again to prepare.

I have come to think of Star Trek as a kind of “biblical stories of the future.” They often relate to something going on in the present, offering meaning and values and purpose, just as the Bible does.

Spoiler alert, but what occurs in this episode is that the current Enterprise has happened upon an unoccupied alien spacecraft that sends a beam of memory into Captain Picard’s head, causing him to faint, unconscious for half an hour. But during that brief period, Picard realizes a whole lifetime on another planet. No one in his village believes him to be a starship captain, no one affirms his own “inner light,” thus the reason he is considered under a delusion.

Instead he is recognized as a community leader and scientist who tackles his host planet’s own form of global warming, an unrelenting drought. He is married and has children, and we watch them grow from infancy to adulthood, as Picard and his wife age, and as Picard finally learns to play the flute.

He eventually finds a solution to the planetary drought and offers it to his community leaders. Come to find out, their own scientists had figured out the same solution, but the local leaders (read “politicians”) refuse to make the hard choice to put it into practice, for fear of the average citizen. Again, his own “inner light,” his own “aha,” is rejected.

The beam directed into Jean Luc Picard’s inner consciousness is the way the people of this now destroyed planet have finally told their story, perhaps as a warning for those of other planets. The people of the planet have been gone for a thousand years, but their history and their lives have been preserved and now communicated. Their inner light has become Picard’s (and our own) inner light. The parallel with scriptures and sacred texts of every faith handed down to us is clear, at least to me.

What really moves me about this story is that this is what I experience in every death, including our beloved church member. With every death, we lose a vital (as in “life-giving”) story about ourselves, about life, about the universe, about the nature of things. We will miss their “inner light.”

I will miss her grin, cheerfulness, intelligence, wit, and welcome. I will miss her story, her own inner light. Surely it was a reflection of the very nature and nobility of God.

Some outside our welcoming community of Ormewood Church may have written off as delusion her inner light. But she came to understand something about herself, her gender experience and expression, and I would say, something about all of us and about all of our gender expressions.

Her inner light has brightened our world on her journey into the inner light of God. To quote the opening of Star Trek episodes: “Space, the final frontier…[our] mission is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Hallelujah! Amen! Thanks be to God!

Please visit my website: https://chrisglaser.com

Though this is my final post, more than ten years of posts remain available to you on the blogsite, https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com and I encourage you to enjoy them. I regret that I never created an index of post titles, but the search engine in the upper left corner of my blog can help you find posts of interest by typing in a subject, topic, name, scripture reference, religious season or holy day. Or you may work through them by year and month listed in the right column.

Comments are still welcome on any post.

Though they may have been written with current events in mind, I intended them each to be read meaningfully at any point in time. It has been a pleasure writing this blog, but now, I believe, is a time for silence, something I considered when writing the Zen series.

I assure you I am well, content, and thankful to God for this extension of my ministry. Thank you for your interest, comments, correspondence, and contributions. I am grateful to Metropolitan Community Churches for recognizing this blog as an “Emerging Ministry” and ProgressiveChristianity.org for reposting many of my reflections, as well as the dozens of Facebook pages that allowed me to provide links to particular posts. I am grateful for the free services of Blogspot, Google, Facebook, and the delivery service, FeedBurner. I am grateful for artist and friend Becki Jayne Harrelson and my husband Wade Jones for their technical and moral support.

To date, the blog has had 512,500 visits, a count that does not include 500 free weekly subscribers. Subscriptions have always been free and the blog non-monetized (no ads). Permission is granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

Donations may still be made through the links provided at the end of this post. Thank you!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

At Most a Lighthouse Can Beam an Instant

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

A friend caught my surprise when the congregation

applauded my ordination at Christ Covenant MCC, October 2, 2005.

I miss a custom I created for myself when living in Southern California. New Year’s Eve parties left me wanting some more meaningful way of observing the passing of an old year and the welcome of a new year. I did not want to “pray in” the new year as we did in my Baptist church with us kids keeping one eye open to see the sanctuary clock silently clap its hands together on the number 12.

But the ticking of a clock or the descent of a ball in Times Square felt artificial, so I began watching the sun set as I walked along the beach in Santa Monica every New Year’s Eve. I would spend the time revisiting the events of the past year and imagining what the new year might bring, thanking God for the good and the bad as well as the possibilities. It was something I could do alone, well before the parties. And it felt more natural.

This bit of shoreline is the sanctuary where, in college, I ruminated on my sexuality, spirituality, and call to ministry. This is where I thought I’d like to be reincarnated as a seagull so I could stay near the shore and see my friends on the beach occasionally! This is where I stumbled onto a gay meeting place long before I knew about gay bars. This is where, on a day off from my church work, I would do a long run and work out on the outdoor gymnastic bars.

This is a walk I’ve shared with many friends, including some of you, and others you might know, such as John Boswell, Isabel Rogers, and Malcolm Boyd. This is the walk that Henri Nouwen declined, insisting instead that we sit down on my sofa and “have a really good talk”!

This is where I walked weekly on Thursday evenings with a partner to share whatever was on our minds and hearts. This is where we walked one Easter after worship, ending up at Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy’s hangout, the S. S. Friendship, bumping into an old friend there whose partner we learned had died the previous week, who gave me the Easter message I needed to hear, “He died in my arms. I felt him leave his body. That’s why I’m sure I’ll see him again.”

This is where I took my mom and her dog for her last walk along the shore a few weeks before she died, where she mischievously chose an ice cream cone over lunch. And this is where at least some of my ashes will be scattered.

Though I live far from that shore now, I go there often.

There is no lighthouse there, but in college I composed this poem using the metaphor, which feels all the more apt in later life:

To Be the Sea

The sea beside, I stand alone,

By seasons, wait and search

To be discovered and to discover

In boundless quest.

The sea has all at any time—

No search nor wait.

At most a lighthouse

Can beam an instant

Before bowing to the sea.

This post originally appeared as “New Year” on January 1, 2014.

Please visit my website: https://chrisglaser.com

My final post on my blog “Progressive Christian Reflections” will occur next Wednesday, June 30, 2021. More than ten years of posts will remain available to you on the blogsite, https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com and I encourage you to enjoy them. I regret that I never created an index of post titles, but the search engine in the upper left corner of my blog can help you find posts of interest by typing in a subject, topic, name, scripture reference, religious season or holy day. Or you may work through them by year and month listed in the right column.

Though they may have been written with current events in mind, I intended them each to be read meaningfully at any point in time. You may continue to contact me at my email address used by the delivery service or by leaving a comment on a particular post. FeedBurner has announced it will discontinue all subscription services sometime in July, the occasion for my timing. It has been a pleasure writing this blog, but now, I believe, is a time for silence, something I considered when writing the Zen series.

To date, the blog has had 512,000 visits, a count that does not include almost 500 free weekly subscribers. Once donations were possible, the highest annual income ever was $2,000. Subscriptions have always been free and the blog non-monetized (no ads). Permission has always been granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Donations may still be made through the links provided at the end of this post. Thank you!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Literalism vs Spirituality

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

St. John the Divine in rainbow colors, NYC.

Happy 90^th birthday today to progressive Christian author Bishop John (Jack) Spong, who has helped Christians better understand our faith with the help and support of Christine Spong.

The following post appeared on July 16, 2014.

The trend of people identifying as “spiritual but not religious” is sometimes a rejection of biblical literalism, religious fundamentalism and official orthodoxy. To me that can be a good thing, and, in my reading of a recent translation from Middle English by Bernard Bangley of the book, The Cloud of Unknowing, very traditional.

The anonymous author encourages readers to discard what’s not helpful in the book, and so I freely disagree with the writer’s rejection of physical and sensual experience as unspiritual, even ungodly. This 14^th century English monk must not have met the 14^th century English nun, Julian of Norwich, who wrote, “In our sensuality, God is…”

The beliefs of the church regarding creation, incarnation, and resurrection all support a hallowing of bodily experience. As James B. Nelson and a diverse group of other contemporary Christian body theologians have affirmed, we know God through our bodies or we don’t know God at all. Nelson goes so far as to add, “Pleasure is the strongest argument for the existence of God.”

Yet I wholeheartedly embrace The Cloud author’s understanding that literalism interferes with our spirituality, and he offers many examples. I once wrote that we do a disservice to religion when we treat matters of faith as matters of fact.

For example, the writer cautions against taking the ascension of Jesus literally. As a college professor of mine once said, “If Jesus had ascended at the speed of light, he still would not be out of the known universe.”

The Cloud of Unknowing asserts that “the spatial references are only symbolic. … The spiritual realm is always near, enveloping us on every side. Whoever has a strong desire to be in heaven is already in heaven, spiritually. Measure the highway to heaven in terms of desire rather than miles. … Love determines a soul’s location.”

Earlier the writer explained, “Similar in nature to heavenly bliss, divine contemplation already participates in eternity.” I once wrote that people we recognize as living saints are those who experience God’s commonwealth here and now. Spiritually they have found heaven in their desire to love and serve others. Heaven for me is where God’s will and human will coincide. Saying the Lord’s Prayer (“on earth as it is in heaven”) is a way of aligning ourselves with that greater purpose. That’s why Jesus could say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” or “among us.”

There are many pearls of wisdom about the spiritual life in The Cloud of Unknowing. Here are a few quotes I underlined in my copy:

+ Remember your spiritual needs rather than your spiritual achievements.

+ Continue until your prayer life becomes enjoyable.

+ You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God.

+ Loving contemplation destroys our tendency to sin more effectively than any other practice.

+ The essence of contemplation is a simple and direct reaching out to God.

+ Judging others, pronouncing them good or bad, is God’s business. We may evaluate behavior, but not the person.

+ Christ taught us in Matthew’s Gospel that spoken prayers are best when they are not too long.

+ A little prayer of one syllable pierces heaven because we concentrate our entire spiritual energy into it.

+ The person in great distress will continue calling for help until someone hears and responds.

+ The little word “God” can flood your spirit with spiritual meaning without giving attention to particular activities of God.

+ I desire to help you tighten the spiritual knot of warm love that is between you and God, to lead you to spiritual unity with God.

+ Love functions as your guide in this world, and it will bring you to grace in the next.

+ [After meeting our physical needs,] sensuality urges us to take more than we need, encouraging lust.

+ The important consideration is not what you are, or what you have been, but what you want to be.

Finally, this anonymous monk seems to echo the axiom that spiritual guides remind us of what we already know:

Writers used to think that humility required them to say nothing out of their own heads, but to corroborate every idea with quotations from Scripture or the [Church] fathers [and mothers]. Today this practice demonstrates nothing but cleverness and education. … If God moves you to believe what I say, then accept my ideas on their own merits. (p 99-100)

Given its encouragement to surrender certain knowledge of God for intimacy with God, I can’t help but think The Cloud of Unknowing would be a great text for the “spiritual but not religious” crowd. As they say in recovery programs, religion is for people afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for people who have already been there.

My dear friend and longtime supporter of this blog, the Rev. Steve Pieters, will be featured as a character in a film about televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker due out in September of 2021. Her interview with him on national television opened many evangelical hearts to people living with AIDS and more broadly, the LGBTQ community. Watch the trailer.

My final post on my blog “Progressive Christian Reflections” will occur on June 30, 2021. More than ten years of posts will remain available to you on the blogsite, https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com and I encourage you to enjoy them. I regret that I never created an index of post titles, but the search engine in the upper left corner of my blog can help you find posts of interest by typing in a subject, topic, name, scripture reference, religious season or holy day. Or you may work through them by year and month listed in the right column.

To date, the blog has had 511,000 visits, a count that does not include almost 500 free weekly subscribers. Once donations were possible, the highest annual income ever was $2,000. Subscriptions have always been free and the blog non-monetized (no ads). Permission has always been granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Donations may still be made through the links provided at the end of this post. Thank you!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Learn about Chris Glaser’s life and gay activism in the church.

Everything You Wanted to Know about God but Were Afraid to Ask!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

South African sunset, photo by Wade Jones.

I assure you I am well, content, and thankful to God for this extension of my ministry. Thank you for your interest, comments, correspondence, and contributions. I am grateful to Metropolitan Community Churches for recognizing this blog as an “Emerging Ministry” and ProgressiveChristianity.org for reposting many of my reflections, as well as the dozens of Facebook pages that allowed me to provide links to particular posts. I am grateful for the free services of Blogspot, Google, and the delivery service, FeedBurner. I am grateful for artist and friend Becki Jayne Harrelson and my husband Wade Jones for their technical and moral support.

To date, the blog has had 510,000 visits, a count that does not include almost 500 free weekly subscribers. Once donations were possible, the highest annual income was $2,000. Subscriptions have always been free and the blog non-monetized (no ads). Permission has always been granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Donations may still be made through the links provided at the end of this post. Thank you!

Today’s post appeared on July 20, 2016:

Months ago I mentioned on this blog that I had finally picked up Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps reflective of our desire for theological ignorance, I found it discounted on the remainder table at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble.

I must admit that, at times, I have been slogging through it, sometimes even setting it aside for days at a time. But I read all such books in the context of my morning prayers, hoping for inspiration along the way, so I just read a portion each day. The book is well-written and comprehensive, but overwhelming in its detailing of our fitful attempts to “know” God. Right now I’m flailing in the chapter on the Enlightenment and actually looking forward to next chapter’s “The Death of God?” Whew, what a relief after all this kvetching! (Apparently, making God a product of reason makes him/her/they more easily dispensable or at least optional. Stay tuned.)

Of course I’ve read other books on the history of religion, but there were many surprises and aha’s for me in this book.

Armstrong not only writes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also of Hinduism and Buddhism, though to a lesser extent. What surprised me is how various religions often paralleled and sometimes informed one another’s trains of thought. Given our contemporary insistence on religious divisions, I found it consoling that there are historically points of agreement and sometimes civil disagreement.

There are also periods of dysfunctional fighting within and among religions, and though each have suffered their unfair share of persecution and unpopularity, it seems to me that Jews got the worst of it, long before the Shoah, or Holocaust. Made me more sympathetic to the raison d’être of the state of Israel.

What struck me also is that all religions have had their intelligentsia—their philosophers and academics and scientists—which has helped shape the religions as we know them. And that those who tried to make religion only “of the heart,” could be among the most dangerous because of their subjectivity that resisted intellectual scrutiny.

I had the biggest challenge reading about Islam. I was already familiar—if vaguely—with many of the names and general movements in other religions, but there were so many names and movements in Islam—both unfamiliar because of my lack of education as well as sounding exotic—that it reminded me of a classic Russian novel, having so many characters!

I found the chapter on the Reformers particularly disheartening, especially Armstrong’s treatment of Martin Luther—at this point I reminded myself that Armstrong is a former nun, but that gave me little solace, given her obvious command of religious history. Calvin came off better, I’m happy to say, given my Presbyterian background, though later development of his thoughts on predestination is scary.

You might have guessed that I would be drawn to the chapter and segments on the mystics and mystical traditions, by which all religions were blessed. I was already familiar with many, but now to read of their experiences and insights in relation to one another and their respective religious traditions made me esteem them yet more highly. To me, they provide a salvific thread to what was often a brutal enterprise of religion and theology.

Another salvific thread for me was Eastern Orthodox thinking that we can’t possibly know God as he/she/they is in actuality. Also I liked the idea that God is “no thing,” somewhat of a parallel to what I’ve read of Buddhism’s “no thing.”

By comparison, Armstrong explains how talkative Christianity became in the West, with its emphasis on doctrine and systematic theology. Instead, in Eastern Orthodox understanding, we need silence to understand/experience God, which I believe is central to a spiritual life. Of course, then we might come back to a religion “of the heart” and the subjectivity that is potentially dangerous. But communing with God was to be of the mind as well, and within the context of a spiritual community and a spiritual tradition that can serve as correctives.

As a progressive Christian, two other things were of particular interest:

First, literalism was rare and “untraditional”: there was a deep respect for and valuing of the place of myth in all religious traditions. Myth and storytelling reveal something deeper about our human experience than can be explained. To take them “literally” is to do them and us and even God, a disservice.

And second, those who treated others badly and judgmentally were doing so out of their anxiety and fear of an angry god too demanding to please.

Once the Bible begins to be interpreted literally instead of symbolically, the idea of its God becomes impossible. To imagine a deity who is literally responsible for everything that happens on earth involves impossible contradictions. The “God” of the Bible ceases to be a symbol of a transcendent reality and becomes a cruel and despotic tyrant. (p 283)

Could it be that a deliberately imaginative conception of God, based on mythology and mysticism, is more effective as a means of giving his people courage to survive tragedy and distress than a God whose myths are interpreted literally? (p 286)

Armstrong suggests the benefit of discovering God using “the imaginative disciplines of prayer and contemplation,” and the danger of assuming God as a “fact.” (p 291)

In one of my earliest books and again, in one of my posts on this blog, I wrote that we can get into trouble when we treat matters of faith as matter-of-fact.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Explore Chris Glaser’s books.

Where Your Treasure Is

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Chris at Kirkridge. Photo taken by Brendan Fay.

“Master, you are wonderful! You have renounced riches and comforts to seek God and teach us wisdom!”

“You are reversing the case!” The saint’s face held a mild rebuke. “I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic empire of endless bliss. How then have I denied myself anything? I know the joy of sharing the treasure. Is that a sacrifice? The shortsighted worldly folk are verily the real renunciants! They relinquish an unparalleled divine possession for a poor handful of earthly toys! … The world is full of uneasy believers in an outward security.”

I chuckled over this paradoxical view of renunciation—one that puts the cap of Croesus on any saintly beggar, whilst transforming all proud millionaires into unconscious martyrs.

Paramahansa Yogananda tells this story about Bhaduri Mahasaya on page 63 of his Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) that I am presently reading. In a previous post I referred to Yogananda as founder of the Self Realization Fellowship whose grounds in southern California I frequented in college. While the supernatural experiences of Eastern tradition reported in this book are hard for this Westerner to believe, the philosophy is persuasive and powerful.

While I have not attained the saint’s dispassion toward rupees and “earthly toys,” many if not most of my colleagues in ministry will identify with the saint’s preference for the spiritual life. To whatever degree we have “gone without,” given the culture’s greater monetary valuing of other professions, we have realized our greater dependency on spiritual treasure—the satisfaction of pastoral care, of preaching and writing, of attending to matters of the heart and soul rather than simply to matter and materialism.

A church member once told me that she was well into adulthood before she understood that ministers were paid! And I’ve met people who think spiritual leaders should do what they do for the sheer joy of it, unlike other vocations.

“Worldly people do not like the candor that shatters their delusions,” Bhaduri Mahasaya explained to Yogananda. The gurus Yogananda writes about receive rupees in their slippers from followers. And though I am not a guru, I am grateful that a few of my readers have put rupees in my slippers!

When I was ordained by MCC in 2005 after a professional lifetime denied ordination by the Presbyterian Church simply because I’m gay, I chose for the Gospel lesson Jesus’ words on God’s Providence from the Sermon on the Mount, which reads in part, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly [Creator] feeds them.” It is the scripture that gets me through the tough times when I do not rise to the level of a saint’s disposition!

This post was published July 24, 2013.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Mosquito Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 26 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

As we approach mosquito season, I thought you’d enjoy this post from August 3, 2013, reflecting on a story in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, a book I set aside when it became “too magical” for me but have recently picked up again and finished reading with greater appreciation. Incidentally, this is the only book Steve Jobs had on his iPad when he died, and those attending his memorial service received a copy of it at his request.

Sometimes my spiritual life is just plain spooky.

The morning I write this, my morning prayers on the deck were interrupted by the presence of what I thought to be a mosquito. Now I am considered quite juicy in the mosquito community, unlike my partner Wade, who never needs to use insect repellant as I do to keep the little vampires at bay. And though I had administered that sacred ointment, I thought it possible a missed spot might be too inviting. My heavy New Jerusalem Bible came in handy and dropping it on the pest proved fatal.

Yet I immediately felt regret taking a life. I’m one of those people who take spiders and other critters (roaches excepted) outside where they belong and liberate flies and wasps from entrapment between windows and screens if I can, though the latter I do at some risk, for a sting sent me to the emergency room a few years back, in an ambulance no less.

Examining the remains on the back cover of my Bible, I was no longer certain it was a mosquito, and the best I could do was hope that I had sent it on to its next and hopefully better life! Before you think what a gentle and kind person I must be, all of this is a little disingenuous because I am by no means a vegetarian. But though I can eat meat, I could never kill the animal who provided it.

As you will remember from an earlier post, I am reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s autobiography, and today he finally found his primary guru, Sri Yukteswar. And here’s where it gets spooky, or synchronicitous or miraculous if you like. In answer to his devotee’s concern about mosquitos, the guru tells him, “Is the whole world going to change for you? Change yourself: be rid of the mosquito consciousness.”

During one teaching session, however, the teenage Yogananda is distracted by a mosquito and, as it proceeded to dig “a poisonous ‘hypodermic needle’” into his thigh, he raised a hand to swat it, but then remembered ahimsa (non-violence). Yuksteswar offered a puzzling response, “Why didn’t you finish the job?”

When asked if he agreed with taking a life, the master replied, “No, but in your mind you had already struck the deathblow.” He went on to say that ahimsa means removal of the desire to kill, then explains, “This world is inconveniently arranged for a literal practice of ahimsa. Man may be compelled to exterminate harmful creatures. He is not under a similar compulsion to feel anger or animosity,” thus “overcoming the passion of destruction.”

Of course the context verifies that “harmful creatures” applies only to dangerous insects or threatening wild animals. Yet even in that context, one is best not driven by anger or animosity. Jesus said something like this when he added to the commandment “You shall not murder” the more far reaching “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” Or added simple lust to “You shall not commit adultery.”

If only I could achieve mosquito consciousness, realizing that they too, in the words of Yukteswar, “have an equal right to the air of maya,” I could leave them be and save money on bug spray. Maybe in my next and better life!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Free Time

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 19 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Our neighbor Luna enjoying our bird bath.

Perhaps nothing sounds better on a schedule than “free time.” But it can be a source of anxiety for many—how will I fill up that time? Will I be bored? Will the moments be wasted? What am I to do?

To be honest, though I have no problem spending leisure time with friends, when alone I have difficulty with leisure time. I like to work, I like to be constructive, I like to do things, I like to grow. But the idea of free time does sound luxurious. I love the popular song by Bruno Mars, “Today I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything.” I wish I could live its ideal!

In a video I use during my retreats on Henri Nouwen, Henri talks about how proud we are of being “busy, busy, busy,” buzzing these words like a bee! We brag about it to others, “Oh yes, I’m very busy.” I’ve met clergy who needed to go into detail about how busy they were to counter the misconception that they only work one hour per week! Henri describes our need to be “occupied,” or if not occupied, “preoccupied,” which he jokes as “occupying a space before you even get there”!

This tension between work and idleness is why I begin my workday with morning prayers. There’s a lazy part of me that is attracted to a time when I don’t have to accomplish anything, and so this is a seductive way to begin my workday. Sure, I read various things during that time, but the goal is to spend time in reflection, meditation, and prayer. It can last anywhere from five minutes to two hours, depending on the day’s agenda.

A counseling professor in seminary told of being assigned a child by the courts for therapy. Each visit, the kid said nothing, but wandered around the office looking at things in silence. In frustration, the professor told the child that he would ask the courts to assign another therapist. The child cried, “But I like coming here!” Astonished, the therapist asked why. “You’re the only adult who leaves me alone,” the child replied.

Free time is perhaps the only time that leaves us alone. One possible origin of “scholar” is a word that means “leisure, rest, or free time.” Though most of us worked our way through various schools, we understand that luxury of having been students. I’ve never stopped being a student, though I did not go into academia as a vocation. And maybe that’s partly why I didn’t—I didn’t want my “free time” regulated, occupied, or preoccupied.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

"Nothing Soft about the Quest for a Significant Life"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 12 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Why I Write This Blog

[Four years into writing this blog, I posted this on February 11, 2015.]

On this week’s fourth anniversary of the beginning of Progressive Christian Reflections, I am reminded that motivations are myriad for doing anything. “What’s my motivation?” actors ask to play a given scene, as if a single motivation suffices for any human action. We are more complex than that! (Read Dostoyevsky!) The reasons I’ve given in the past for writing these reflections still apply, but every week, actually every day, I find new reasons.

Today’s reason is being stunned and stumped by a cover essay in a recent New York Times Book Review entitled “Among the Disrupted” by Leon Wieseltier, a contributing editor for The Atlantic and recently resigned literary editor of The New Republic, which was “disrupted” by a new boss wanting to go digital.

I am stunned by insights I agree with and stumped by things in it I don’t quite understand. I have read it multiple times, each time underlining phrases and sentences that give me an “aha” moment or that I need to puzzle over. If I read it many more times, the whole essay will be underlined. (I can’t read without a pen in hand, btw!) It stirred controversy, judging by letters in response and an article in the Observer.

If I had to summarize it in 25 words or less, it’s about our contemporary confusion of technology with meaning. As the author suggests, “The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.” [2021 interjection: one of our dearest friends is an engineer! -crg]

Ridiculing “transhumanism,” the notion that computers and the internet “will carry us magnificently beyond our humanity” overcoming distinctions “between human and machine,” Wieseltier instead questions if we are just having another wave of posthumanism:

The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions of life must be explained in terms of the material dimensions, and that nonscientific understandings must be translated into scientific understandings if they are to qualify as knowledge, is increasingly popular inside and outside the university, where the humanities are disparaged as soft and impractical and insufficiently new.

The late Charles Townes, the Nobel laureate physicist behind the maser and laser who was also awarded the 2005 Templeton Prize for contributing to our understanding of spirituality, “saw science and religion as compatible, saying there was little difference between a scientific revelation, like his maser brainstorm, and a religious one,” according to The New York Times. Quoting from a 1966 essay:

“Understanding the order of the universe and understanding the purpose in the universe are not identical, but they are not very far apart.”

The parallel in my field are those who study, research, and teach religion “objectively” outside any personal faith. We need such “engineers,” as long as we take what they say with a grain of salt, which, as I mentioned quoting Colossians a few weeks ago, means with “spiritual understanding.” Early Christian catechumens were taught the meaning of baptism and Communion only after they had received those sacraments, because it was believed they could not comprehend what they had not first experienced. Spiritual understanding is an inside job.

Wieseltier asserts, “Aside from issues of life and death, there is no more urgent task for American intellectuals and writers than to think critically about the salience, even the tyranny, of technology in individual and collective life. All revolutions exaggerate, and the digital revolution is no different.”

We live in an internet world “in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. … Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements.”

Wieseltier’s solution is to “regard the devices as simply new means for old ends. … The new order will not relieve us of the old burdens, and the old pleasures, of erudition and interpretation. … Never mind the platforms. Our solemn responsibility is for the substance.”

His answer is a welcome of humanism and the humanities, concluding, “There is nothing soft about the quest for a significant life.”

I would add a welcome of spirituality and religion, also because there is nothing soft about a quest for a significant life.

Entertaining these concepts and welcoming this conversation are additional reasons I write this blog.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Why Progressive Christians Need Contemplation

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 05 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Wade took this photo of me resting

on one of our bike rides.

Jesus told his disciples “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart,” and, in his earliest known correspondence, the apostle Paul advised the Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing.”

The first Christian contemplatives took the notion of “praying always” to heart, and went out into the desert to pray, to preserve the “edge” of Christian faith even as church and state colluded in the fourth century. As Thomas Merton explained in The Wisdom of the Desert,

The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a [ship]wreck did not merely intend to save themselves. They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers believed prayer was not about changing God’s mind or heart, but about their own transformation. God brings justice and mercy into the world one person at a time. Thus prayer and contemplation serve as grounding for those of us who seek the transformation of the world. This passion for transformation is one dimension of progressive Christianity.

A second dimension is that we use our minds, our critical faculties, to approach our faith—texts, tradition, history, present, and future. But in the use of our minds we must not lose heart. We are not spiteful children who run around proclaiming “There is no Santa Claus!” to innocents. We are faithful people who affirm spiritual truths without literalist trappings. It is true that much progressive Christianity is about demythologizing and deconstruction. But in so doing, our hope is to recover the ancient meanings of the stories of our faith tradition, as well as their meaning for today.

One way of recovering the ancient meanings of our faith tradition is through prayer and reflection. To participate in the biblical dialogue about God, meaning, virtue, and so on with our hearts as well as our minds is to be an authentic and integral part of an ancient tradition that was diverse in its viewpoints, heterodox in its theologies, and multiple in its expressions.

A third dimension of progressive Christianity is that we plumb the depths of our faith even as we value other faiths, including agnosticism and atheism. Our multicultural world—not as different from the ancient world in its diversity as is often thought—offers opportunities for dialogue, not only across religious and cultural boundaries, but across disciplinary boundaries as well, as I recently wrote on this blog. Science, for example, is not an adversary, but an aid in understanding the world, religion, and spirituality itself. The way of art and literature is another.

Just as some Christians seem to have lost their minds, progressive Christians cannot lose our hearts. As Jesus said, “What benefit is there if, in gaining the whole world, we lose our soul?” We are not modern-day Gnostics who believe our “secret wisdom” will save us. Rather, we believe that knowledge frees us from superstition, sentimentality, and the “elemental spirits” that the apostle Paul confronted in Galatians. Our faith is not stupid, nor is it heartless. Prayer and meditation afford us the opportunity, as the Desert Mothers and Fathers taught, for words to descend from our minds to our hearts. Thus prayer and contemplation must become a fourth dimension of progressive Christianity.

We may feel overwhelmed by the diversity of texts and traditions about Jesus, about God. Biblical scholars discuss the authenticity and accuracy of these accounts. Theologians debate their authority and application. Contemplatives reflect on their inspiration for the present.

These thoughts have been further clarified from my post on the blog of Episcopal Divinity School around the time I began my own.

This post appeared August 17, 2011. I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February of this year but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” my posts. This will give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued interest!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

I took this photo in India.

Prayer is unfamiliar territory to many people, even those reared in spiritual communities. Many fear they’re not up to the task, having heard eloquent prayers of others. Some progressive Christians doubt the effectiveness of prayer. So I thought I’d jot down some simple guidelines from my reading and experience to prompt but not limit readers’ personal practice and experience of prayer. Take these suggestions less as prescriptive than descriptive. And if any sound too preachy, just go on to the next!

Prayer takes you to another place. There are many ways of saying this. Prayer may lift you up, take you deep within, broaden your horizon, make you feel close to God and all that is, or all of the above. The vital thing is that, in your spiritual imagination, your perspective changes, enlarging or focusing, withdrawing or connecting, detaching or more deeply involving. And it brings us into proximity with our better selves.

Prayer consists of words, silences, and actions. Most of us know about words and silences in prayer and meditation, but actions may prove a new understanding. I believe that Martha in the kitchen preparing a meal could be praying as much as Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet and pondering his words. And I don’t mean Martha is saying the rosary while cooking, but that cooking itself may be a form of prayer when conscious intention is there, as is true of acts of justice and compassion. To stretch our imagination further, I believe lovemaking may be a form of prayer.

Prayer is presence, mindfulness, and listening. Prayer is a time to be attentive to surroundings, people, feelings, the day’s expectations, God’s hope for you—listening for God and your inner voice in all of them. Repetition of short scriptures (such as “God is love.”) or meditative chants may help one’s focus.

Readings are helpful to praying regularly. What helped me keep to a regular prayer time was the use of reading material that made me want to sit down and set aside time for reflection—that’s why half of the dozen books I’ve written consist of daily meditations. Scriptures, books of prayers or reflections, spiritual or theological or biblical treatises, and even op-ed opinion pieces have proven aids to meditation and prayer. Others may find poetry, art, or music helpful.

Saying the Lord’s Prayer is sufficient. The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples has every ingredient needed in prayer. Having said it daily for most of my adult life, I still wonder at how new meaning comes to familiar phrases, given where I am and what my experience is. I see it less as a prayer asking for things like bread and forgiveness than as a way of aligning myself with the inbreaking commonwealth of God, in particular being gracious as I have received grace. As Thomas Keating has recommended, if one can’t pray anything else, say the Lord’s Prayer.

Less is more. Too many words, too many “issues,” too many confessions, too many requests make prayer burdensome and more of a duty than an experience of God’s grace and love. An abundance of thanksgivings can lighten the load, as long as they are not simply obligatory.

Prayer transforms you, not God. The Desert Fathers and Mothers held this view; prayer is about our transformation, not God’s. When we pray for someone who is ill or in prison or mistreated, I do not believe God “fixes” these things, but that we become better caregivers, liberators, and advocates.

Enjoy being God’s beloved child. Join Adam and Eve walking naked with God unashamedly in the Garden, Isaiah comforted and dandled on Mother God’s knees, and Jesus hearing “You are my beloved on whom my favor rests.” Prayer is the pleasure of basking in the glory of God’s unconditional love, remembering God’s best hopes for us and the world.

FYI- This post appeared November 14, 2012. I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” posts, and I decided to run past posts that speak to our current experience. This will also give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued interest!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Held by God

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Following last week’s reprise of A Healing Touch, this September 28, 2016 post reminds us that we are ultimately held by God. Given the verdict yesterday, you may want to read, "I Can't Breathe!"

Okay, so now you’re gonna think I’ve gone off the deep end.

I’ve had a lot going on lately, and when I wake at night, I start thinking of all those things I need to do, should have done, am anxious about. I don’t mind when I use such nocturnal musings constructively, as when a post or talk or retreat comes to me and I develop it, lying still. But when my thoughts serve no purpose, I am bothered that I’m losing sleep over them. The worry gene runs in my family, so I’m not alone.

Lately my usual way of simply blocking thoughts, or using a mantra, verse, short prayer, or Psalm 23 has not been working, so I’ve discovered a new strategy.

I imagine I’m being held by God: the soft bedding, the warmth of Wade, the firmness of the mattress, the caress of the ceiling fan, the enveloping darkness become God holding me. And lest you think I am centering God on me, I believe this is true for everyone.

Process theology talks of the cosmos as God’s “body.” God is not separate from the world—what is material is God’s incarnation, God’s embodiment. And body theologians try to recover the body as a locus of divinity. So I do have theological legs to stand on.

And Christianity’s premise is the Incarnation, that God became one of us, and offers God’s body and blood that we may become the Body of Christ, an agent of redemption in the world. So I also have a Christian leg to stand on.

Jesus said the kingdom or commonwealth of God was coming into the world and already in our midst. The trajectory of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that of God coming into the world, not abandoning it. And Paul remarked that the whole creation was groaning in birthpangs to bring something new into the world, and that in God “we live and move and have our being.” So I have a biblical leg to stand on.

I also believe that I’m a part of God as well, so I think of cuddling with Wade as having divine inspiration. Teresa of Avila said that on earth, God’s body, Christ’s body is our own. And Augustine’s spiritual goal was resting in God. So I have church tradition behind me.

My “ah-hah” is how good it feels to be held by God and to hold as God. It awakens a new kind of eroticism, if you will, that feeling of bliss one experiences in the unity of lovemaking or prayermaking. I’ve written elsewhere that “eros” is our “urge to merge,” what inspires the lover as well as the mystic.

I’ve also spoken and written about the Beloved Disciple, who lay his head on Jesus’ chest during the Last Supper, “listening for the heartbeat of God,” as Celtic Christianity would have it. I’ve poked fun at recent English translations of that passage that seem to keep distancing the beloved disciple until I fear the next translation will have the beloved disciple in another room entirely!

The NRSV translates simply that the beloved disciple is “reclining next” to Jesus. But it also translates John 1:18 as Jesus being “close to the Father’s heart” rather than the actual meaning, that Jesus is “close to the Father’s bosom.”

What I believe is that we fear such intimacy with God, one of the earliest themes of my writing on spirituality, a cover article for Presbyterian Survey in the 1980s.

Jesus experienced or was experienced as being a child of God, the essence of Yahweh, and the mystical gospel writer John declared that Jesus came so that we might all be children of God. So I have a mystic’s reason for my experience.

I encourage you—no, I urge you—imagine yourself being held and touched and cuddled by God. Imagine God dwelling in you, your breath, your body, your touch.

It feels good because it is good.

FYI-I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” posts, and I decided to run past posts that speak to our current experience. This will also give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued interest!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

A Healing Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

As our pandemic makes us all “untouchables,” I thought this post of June 13, 2018, might “touch” our experience.

As I get older, I have fewer opportunities to be touched. I knew that about old age even before I got there, and that’s why I’m sitting so close to my mother in the above photograph, my arm around her. I had noticed the need particularly among the older women of our neighborhood church. The passing of the peace was an opportunity for older folk to receive and give full-on hugs. Now I too am grateful for such hugs in greeting or in parting worship.

Perhaps it’s because we regard older people as fragile. Perhaps because of due respect for the aging process, a reverential aspect. Perhaps because we older people are less attractive or no longer “breeding material.”

I have written of an experience of lovemaking that restored my sense of lovability in my book, Come Home! The “healer” in that case visited Atlanta last year and I was able to give him a copy of the book, marking the passage and expressing my gratitude.

But those opportunities are rarer as one ages, even when in a relationship.

In an email exchange with a friend and reader of this blog concerned about losing the gay parts of himself as he enters an assisted living program, I waxed philosophic about my own situation:

As a youth I had fantasies. As an adult I had experiences. As a senior I have memories. I need to hold on to my memories even though they don’t have the anticipatory ecstasy of fantasies or the existential bliss of experiences.

So, simple touch becomes all the more important.

When I was a kid, I used to love sitting in the car as a gas station attendant cleaned our windshield, enjoying the gentle rocking of the car—oh, the olden days of full service stations! I also enjoyed getting my hair cut, and my initiation rite into manhood was when, after many years, the barber finally honed a straight razor to trim my sideburns. These were gentle and safe ways to have a man touch me, and I found them healing.

My father enjoyed telling the story of rocking me as a baby while I steadfastly refused to go to sleep. I no doubt simply enjoyed my father or mother’s touch, being held close to their hearts. (As late as my teens, my joke with Mom was that I could still sit on her lap!) No doubt my body remembers and that’s why I enjoy cuddling so much.

All of this comes to mind because of a transforming incident during my recent contemplative retreat. Though our Roman Catholic hosts were welcoming beyond mere hospitality, their church does not allow offering Communion to Protestants. I do not like this, as you might guess, and I had decided not to go forward to merely receive a blessing. But in moving out of the way to let others in my pew pass by, a smiling sister gently urged me to go forward for a blessing. So I did, crossing my arms to indicate my heresy of being a Protestant.

I expected the tall and very aged priest to simply make the sign of the cross in the air and say a blessing. Instead, he gently touched my forehead while saying a blessing. The power of his touch jolted me. I immediately felt good inside, and the bliss remained with me for an hour. I could not help but think his power was deeply spiritual.

The next time I went forward for Communion, another aged priest made the sign of the cross on my forehead with oil, and I did not experience the same jolt of spiritual power. And I realized I couldn’t even remember if the earlier priest had made the sign of the cross on my forehead; I just felt power from the palm of his hand on my head.

With all the conversation these days about inappropriate touching, by priests and other professionals, I sorrow that this may lead to less healing touch. I remember how my mother’s first graders used to hang on her, begging to be touched and hugged, even after they went on to higher grades.

Being old, I have during this same time had to go to a dentist, an orthodontist, and an oral surgeon to repair or remove two “virgin” teeth which broke. My dentist praised me as one of his best patients, I think because I have a high tolerance for discomfort and pain, no doubt learned in part as a gay activist in the church! (Smile)

But their healing touch also made it possible for me to sit still for some difficult procedures. After two root canals, I explained that the orthodontist’s abdomen pressed against my head during the procedure was somehow comforting. I asked if he did that intentionally to calm his patients, but he explained it was just ergonomically sound, otherwise his reach over me would tire his shoulders as he worked on my teeth with the help of the lens of a microscope over my head.

I thought of Temple Grandin, the autistic expert in animal science who discovered she could calm herself by a device of her own invention that held her and later applied that to an invention to calm cattle on the way to slaughter. There is something calming about being held and touched, whether facing life or death.

As a progressive Christian, one of my reservations about Jesus being known as a physical and mental healer is that such magical qualities do not fit my desire for him to be known rather as a spiritual mentor and healer.

But maybe his touch was like that of the priest’s, or that of the orthodontist’s, or that of a hugger, or that of a lover—especially when visited upon so many people who were “untouchables”: lepers, epileptics, the sick, the dying and dead, those with physical or developmental disabilities. Women of his time were considered untouchable during menstruation. Children were assumed unclean, one of the reasons his disciples tried to send them away.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me” could as easily mean “Suffer those who are untouchable to come unto me.”

FYI-I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” posts, and I decided to run past posts that still speak to current issues. This will also give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued interest!

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

How Did Jesus Let Go of His Cross?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

"Christ Ascending from the Cross"

by sculptor Huberto Maestas.

I would have been angry. And exhausted. And resentful, bitter, unforgiving. And not just of those who tortured me verbally and physically, spitting in my face, nailing me to that cross, but all those who looked away, pretending it wasn’t happening or worse, that it wasn’t important, and fearful of a similar fate if they defended me.

Those fair-weather multitudes I fed with spiritual truths and a little boy’s lunch: where were they? Those I healed with prayer and touch? Those I made glad with the egalitarian promises and parables of the kingdom of God among us?

And my disciples, cowering in hiding! Betrayed, denied, abandoned by those dearest to me, who professed to “love” me. Worse yet, they never seemed to really “get” me, never seemed to understand what I was about, never fully bought into my passion for the world and my compassion for all the little ones in this world.

No wonder I felt God-forsaken.

If it weren’t for the women who followed me and that closeted disciple Nicodemus, I would still be up on that cross, to be devoured by the birds of the air and the beasts of the field as my muscles stretched to the breaking point in the heat of the sun, my lungs gasping for air.

Now, thank God, I can rest in peace. The tomb is cool and dark, the strips of cloth hugging my wounds, the cold stone holding me, my mind and heart at rest, at rest in God. Will anything come of my sacrifice? The way I lived my life for others? The insights the Spirit spoke through my words and my ways? God only knows.

I’m glad to be away from all the noise and chaos outside. I never want to go back there again. Though, there were moments of tranquility and comfort—going up on a mountain to pray alone with God, Mary anointing my feet with a fragrant oil, the beloved disciple cuddling on my lap during our last meal. I feel sorrow for them, but I can no longer help them. I can’t get out of here; this is it.

But then to my surprise, God calls me into action again. I rise to the occasion. Each one who witnesses this resurrection is of two minds*, belief and doubt, from the first to the last. Belief will give them hope; doubt will cause despair. But this is how I let go of my cross: I choose to believe.

* Matthew’s description of witnesses to the resurrection that some believed while others doubted is better translated that each witness was of two minds. The word used literally means “standing in two places.” That is comforting.

Thanks to Rev. Ashley Calhoun for today’s photo by Richard Tohline of “Christ Ascending from the Cross” by sculptor Huberto Maestas located at St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church in Castlerock, Colorado.

FYI-I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” posts, and I decided to run past posts that still speak to current issues. This will also give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued support! Today’s post is from April 8, 2015.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion.

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Wounding God

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

The Asian-Americans who have endured hate crimes during our current pandemic brought me back to this post from the week following Holy Week of 2016, March 30, 2016. This year, 2021, I read The Temple of God’s Wounds earlier in Lent, so in need was I of its spiritual insights and spiritual sanctuary. The friend in recovery mentioned in this post still struggles, and we alongside him, after multiple programs before and after a year incarcerated.

Something burning in my heart is demanding the oxygen of expression.

Regular readers of this blog know I am not persuaded by one line of thinking about the crucifixion: I don’t believe God demanded the death of Jesus to forgive our sins. Of the Passion narrative, I’ve written that the crucifixion was our idea, while the resurrection was God’s idea, however we understand resurrection.

Yet I do believe the story of the crucifixion reminds us that we wound God.

I know that’s not an original thought—many theologians, contemplatives, writers, and preachers have written about this. But it’s being brought home to me in several ways that culminated this past Holy Week as I read again The Temple of God’s Wounds.

Monday night of that week I attended the fourth and final class on the themes of the Confession of Belhar, which the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is in the process of welcoming into its Book of Confessions. It was adopted during the days of apartheid in South Africa by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church resisting the government’s separation of the races.

Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary offered it online, but I attended its meetings in person at the Martin Luther King Center near our home in Atlanta because I wanted to engage in the conversation directly. I thought this would be a way to hear concerns that current movements such as Black Lives Matter raise, but in a context of shared faith. As an aside, I felt very welcomed as a gay man.

The class was small, about 70% African American and 30% Anglo-European, though the final Monday I was the only white person attending.

Long before the course I had concluded that there is no way white people will ever understand the experience of black people in American society. The brutalization of slavery and the degradation of racism and segregation that followed (and still follows) cannot be erased, no matter how forgiving African Americans may be and no matter how transformed Anglo-European Americans may become.

During one class session, we listened to the tape of the families of those murdered in the Charleston church offering forgiveness to their vicious and racist assailant, and I noticed that alongside “I forgive you” were cries of pain and anguish and grief at their loss, calls for repentance of the perpetrator and an expectation of justice for the victims so that “hate doesn’t win,” something the media largely left out in its eagerness to report their forgiveness.

Their mercy was transforming for South Carolina, bringing down the confederate flag, while affecting broader American sensibilities as well.

But, as one woman pointed out to me after class, “There was a lot of anger in black communities for how easily they forgave” that young man. Yet hearing their forgiveness while holding him accountable suggested they were not offering cheap grace.

In class I told the story of participating in a “dog and pony” show at four venues around the state of Iowa for UCC pastors as their denomination was changing its positions on LGBT issues some years ago. One pastor had asked, “Where’s the repentance?” At first we thought he was expecting repentance from LGBT folk, but what he meant was, where was the church’s repentance for its mistreatment of LGBT people?

I suggested to the class that maybe the church needed something like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission where wrongs could be named—the wounding of all kinds of folk because of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Ultimately this is how we wound God.

By the next session of the course I had learned that several presbyteries have passed “A Healing Overture for the Admission of, and Apology for Harms Done to the LGBTQ/Q Members of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Family and Friends.” Hallelujah!

When I’ve written on this blog about the need of being forgiving in the spiritual life, I’ve sometimes received friendly pushback from those who have been abused or work with the abused. It’s been pointed out to me that forgiveness in certain circumstances may not always be possible, even may not be a healthy choice.

In “Forgiveness: The Last Step,” Marie Fortune writes in the context of family violence, “Once justice has been accomplished, even in a limited way, forgiveness becomes a viable opportunity. Prior to justice, forgiveness is an empty exercise.” She points out that Jesus said, “If another sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.” [See Luke 17:3-4 NRSV.]

That suggests at least four steps toward reconciliation: confrontation, confession, repentance (as in metanoia, an “about face”), followed by forgiveness. Only when justice is served, she writes, is “a victim of violence and abuse…freed to forgive.”

On Maundy Thursday last week, Wade and I were part of a support community for a friend in a recovery program. After an afternoon meeting with our friend, a counselor, and a dinner out, that evening we attended what was essentially an Al-Anon meeting for support communities of others in recovery. Emotions ran high, as they must have when Jesus shared his last meal with his disciples: communion and hope, but also shared grief and feelings of betrayal, denial, abandonment.

Some could tell stories in which the recoveries of their loved one held; others told stories of multiple heartbreaking attempts; many acknowledged that they too were powerless over what addictions were doing to their loved ones. I was deeply moved by the love and commitment in that room. I awoke Good Friday morning with involuntary tears streaming from my eyes thinking of them.

The Twelve Steps are all about truth-telling, another requirement of justice. And the eighth and ninth steps are about making “a list of all persons we had harmed” and making “amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

I had thought that I should find some service to attend the evening of Good Friday, when a close friend told us that the day was the 20^th anniversary of the death of his beloved partner to AIDS. So he came over and we ordered Chinese take-out. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend Good Friday. And I better understood his flash of anger about the Reagans when Hillary Clinton misstated after Nancy’s funeral that they had been instrumental in the “national conversation” about AIDS.

A blog reader once pointed out to me that Jesus did not forgive those who betrayed, denied, abandoned, tortured, and crucified him, but rather, asked God to forgive them. That makes sense, for only God could administer the justice required for mercy. Could that be how Jesus’ sacrifice came to be understood as expiation for our sins?

It is a sacred challenge to administer justice without vengeance. Jesus calls us to go the extra mile beyond retribution (“an eye for an eye”) and love our enemies. But real love holds the beloved accountable.

The biblical witness is of a God of justice and mercy. Both are required for transformation. But scapegoating is never just, even if it is Jesus as the sacrificial lamb. Justice requires truth-telling, changing our ways, and making amends (penance). Only then, to paraphrase Psalm 23, can “mercy and justice follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

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Jesus as the New Adam

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Michelangelo's Naked Christ

I offered this post on May 3, 2017.

Jesus as the new Adam is a trope familiar to Christianity since Paul’s letters to the Romans and Corinthians. It has come to be reinterpreted by others, and perhaps what I present here has already been imagined, as anyone reading this blog knows my knowledge is limited. But I want to offer what meaning came to me as I grappled with the notion of Jesus “dying for my sins” during this recent Holy Week.

I have flat out written on this blog that the God who is worthy of my devotion would never require the death of any kind of scapegoat as a stand-in for me taking responsibility for my own sins.

But I have also written that the sacrificial love represented in the story of the cross mythologically conveys the absolute and eternal depths of God’s compassion. Many theologians have focused on the concept of God dying on the cross rather than “his only son,” taking the onus of a demanding, bloodthirsty God off the table. And anyone who has had a terrible sin to forgive of another knows the suffering such compassion entails.

Longtime readers may remember that one of my Holy Week practices is to read one chapter each day of a short book, The Temple of God’s Wounds, in which the narrator visits a mythological monastery at a turning point in his life. I’ve written that I overlook his transactional understanding of atonement to contemplate other, deeper spiritual wisdom contained therein.

This time I focused on how difficult it is for him (and for me) to face that which is absolutely holy. I understand better the “mysterium tremendum,” the “terrible” face of God or, as the OED adds in its definition, of existence itself.

During our last visit shortly before his death, an elderly dedicated churchman surprised me by his sudden tears and seemingly non-sequitur confession, saying something like, “I hope dear old Mother Church can forgive me for any embarrassment I’ve caused her.” I don’t think this was prompted solely by his having been a closeted gay man.

Age may make us aware how far we have fallen short, not only of the glory of God, but of the glory of being a child of God, because I found during Holy Week that, along with the writer of The Temple of God’s Wounds, I felt such a need for forgiveness! Now, I know, as an introvert, that even the good I may do can embarrass me; but I’ve done plenty of things I’d prefer not to have in my eulogy!

I have a depiction, acquired in Egypt, of a Pharaoh being weighed on scales opposite a feather. The tradition was that if the Pharaoh’s heart was heavier than a feather, he could not enter eternity. Few if any of us could pass such a test!

I have been reading The Islamic Jesus by Mustafa Akyol. A reader and contributor to my blog had asked me if there was a book I was eager to have in my library. Having just read a review of this book, that’s what I asked for. What’s remarkable to me is that the Qur’an, while not supporting Jesus’ divinity, reveres him as a prophet, like Moses and Muhammad. The writer suggests that this was the view of the Jerusalem church and its Jewish Christians led by James and represented in Christian scriptures by the epistle of James, which does not refer to the divinity of Jesus and famously includes, “Faith without works is dead.” This contrasts with other Christian emphases on mere belief, and specifically belief in Jesus’ divinity and substitutionary atonement.

Thus I realized that progressive Christians have that in common with the early Jewish Christians, not to mention Muslims and Jews. We may or may not hold to Jesus’ divinity, and consider that doing justice and practicing charity and showing mercy are what the Lord (i.e. God) requires of us.

For me as a progressive Christian, Jesus is the “new Adam”—not the innocent and perfect and beautiful (and initially sexless) Ken and Barbie doll of Adam and Eve; rather the tried and tested, unappealing and vulnerable and wounded one, acquainted with sorrows and grief, the bearer of the sins and injustices of the world—political, religious, and personal. Treasonous and blasphemous, betrayable and deniable, because compassion was all he held dear.

Thus he knows the trouble I’ve seen, the trouble I’ve gotten into, and the trouble I’ve caused, not just personally but throughout the world. He is the real human being that Adam and Eve could not even imagine in their innocence and privilege. They were rough drafts, prototypes, not as fully human.

So when Jesus prays, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” it seems genuine, true, and possible.

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Easter Rising and Saint Patrick

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Today I will fix my traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots.

I’ve always loved the story of Patrick, an English youth enslaved by the Irish, who, after escaping, became a priest and returned to evangelize his former oppressors. And, in How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill asserts Patrick was “the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery.”

Yet even more I love the stories of how Christianity blended with the earlier Celtic spirituality of the British Isles to offer a spiritual alternative to Rome/Hierarchy/Augustine/Original Sin/Organizational Man/ Peter.

Celtic Christianity, whose model was the beloved disciple whose head rested on Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper “listening for the heartbeat of God,” offered more equality between male and female leadership and less differentiation between clergy and laity, permitted married and unmarried clergy, innovated the use of soul friends/guides, believed redemption was possible through either sacraments or nature, recognized and valued the theophanies of the natural world, and recognized that everyone was a child of God, created in God’s image.

If only that characterized the global church today!

I fancy that I may be related spiritually and politically to Ireland, not just biologically. My Irish ancestral name is Plunkett. In the 17^th century, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, Primate of All Ireland, became its last Roman Catholic martyr. Canonized in 1975, he is regarded as Ireland’s patron saint for peace and reconciliation.

In the 20^th century, young poet and journalist Joseph Plunkett was one of the instigators (all ultimately executed by firing squad) of the Easter Rising of 1916, whose centennial I was reminded of by reading Timothy Egan’s column, “Irish Spring.”

Egan reminds readers, not only of the Irish struggle for independence, but of its seven-century history of having its culture disrespected and the resulting poverty, starvation, and injustice it endured. The “troubles” of Northern Ireland, he writes, were finally (mostly) resolved by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

As a progressive Christian, I appreciate the spiritual and political woven together in me/us like the intertwining strands depicted on Celtic symbols, from the Celtic knot to the Celtic cross. I like to think that Oliver’s spiritual fealty and Joseph’s political passion might be “genetic,” and that I may have inherited my spiritual/political bent.

What strikes me is that the Easter Rising, which occurred during Easter Week (which is not Holy Week but the week following Easter) may have had spiritual inspiration in the story of Resurrection. And that the Good Friday Agreement may have had spiritual impetus in the story of Atonement.

I wrote in my second book that the nexus of politics and faith is the cross. Every time we enter a church and see a cross or crucifix, we are confronted with a political reality, because the cross was a political solution of empire. So the political is at the heart of our spirituality. We cannot ignore it, nor can we segregate these two realms.

Jesus was a political victim, not a theological one. It doesn’t mean his sacrifice is any less noble or godly or transforming.

As I wrote in Coming Out as Sacrament, the crucifixion was our idea, not God’s. God’s will is made known in resurrection—always resurrection, however we understand it.

I offered this post on March 16, 2016. It has been amended to reflect being reposted today, St. Patrick’s Day. We've just passed a half-million visitors, not including five-hundred free weekly subscribers!

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The Temple of God's Wounds

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000

The cross at Mt. Calvary Guesthouse.

Every Holy Week for many years I have travelled to The Temple of God’s Wounds, a small book written in 1951 by the Anglican Bishop of Bombay, ‘Will Quinlan’ nee William Quinlan Lash, a mystic. Originally from England, in India the bishop helped found the Christa Prema Seva Sangha (sangha means “community”), which, according to his stub bio in Wikipedia, “sought to live Christianity in a way that was faithful to Indian culture.”

That explains how I received the book during Eastertide of 1988 from the Rev. John Cole, who served in India as a “fraternal worker” (missionary) his entire professional life, immersing himself in its culture and spirituality. John was a sweet and gentle and unassuming man who adopted the speech patterns and body language of the Indian people, complete with their signature deferential slight wobbling of the head.

John arrived in India the year before Gandhi was assassinated, but never met him because, he confessed to me, his Western reserve initially resisted the cult of personality often associated with Hindu teachers. But eventually India’s spirituality had as much or more effect on John than he on it. He spent his furloughs in the States with the church I served, and so became a friend and confidant and spiritual guide, especially after he retired to southern California.

You can tell that the story of how I came to have The Temple of God’s Wounds is as important to me as the story within the book. It took me a few years before I started using it regularly as part of my spiritual practice for Holy Week. In first person, the book tells the story of a discouraged, worldly but faithful man who is referred by a colleague to a contemplative community “in the West” that neither advertises nor hides its presence, but is accessible to its neighbors for help and prayers. He soon realizes that men and women of accomplishment in the world come there for solace, self-inventory, centering, and strength.

The central task he is assigned is the contemplation of seven paintings—one on each day—in the central circular sanctuary. Three have to do with the crucifixion, three with what follows, and the seventh with a vision of their meaning. Each bear witness to God’s wounded love.

It took me a few years of reading this little book to refrain from trying in vain to picture the author’s detailed descriptions of the buildings, which I can’t follow. Instead of exteriors, I am more interested in the interior life. His life in that week is enriched by walking the surrounding hills, tending the courtyard garden, visiting the sick and dying in nearby villages, sharing silence and worship, conversing with spiritual guides in the community, and reading helpful spiritual writers.

I also learned to set aside any discomfort I had with any Christian concepts that I may not embrace and accept the central truths about the spiritual life being revealed in this story. In other words, just like reading the Bible, I am looking for the “inside” story in the storytelling—what is intended to be conveyed in the particulars.

Each time I visit The Temple of God’s Wounds, with its central courtyard cross pierced with nails for each of Jesus’ five wounds, I think of the retreat house in the hills above Santa Barbara that I visited from time to time when I lived in southern California. Mt. Calvary was run by the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross. It too had such a cross at the heart of its central courtyard.

My last two opportunities to visit there before it was destroyed in the Montecito fire of 2008 proved spiritual metaphors. The first, I wanted to show my partner and my family members who live nearby the spectacular view Mt. Calvary afforded of Santa Barbara and its shoreline. But my family members wanted us to see a still more spectacular view, and took us to a ridge high above Mt. Calvary, which, given the haze and the height, precluded good vision. The second, on the way home to Atlanta after my interim ministry in San Francisco, was my last opportunity to show Mt. Calvary to my partner and our dog, and we enjoyed a breathtaking view.

This contrast reminded me that the higher up you are does not guarantee an inspiring view. The Vatican, an ivory tower, a corporate ladder do not assure anyone a better perspective. Success, wealth, even fitness do not ensure vision. The successful but searching narrator of the bishop’s book gives further evidence of this.

That’s why we need centers and stories like The Temple of God’s Wounds.

I posted this on April 11, 2012, without the photo above, which depicts the cross at Mt. Calvary mentioned in the post.

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If Jesus Read The New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 10:00:00 +0000

If Jesus read The New York Times, he would not see a world so different from his own, except in externals. He would still see the poor, the hungry, and the marginalized. He would recognize military occupations, tribal warfare (even in Washington), and rulers who acted like gods. He would experience déjà vu as he read about a variety of attempts at world domination, this time not by the Roman Empire, but by corporations, governments, religion, even terrorists. Misogyny, patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia would not surprise him. And misuse of God’s creation has been with us since Eden.

Religious battles, spiritual abuse, clergy misconduct, religious hierarchy, fundamentalism, exclusivity, scapegoating, judgment, and self-righteousness—he challenged all of these in his own time. Wealth and greed in its myriad expressions (money, property, possessions, knowledge, ancestry, etc.) he has already testified as stumbling blocks to entering God’s commonwealth.

Drones have replaced crosses, weapons of mass destruction have replaced the swords we were to beat into ploughshares, AIDS has displaced leprosy, terrorist acts by individuals and governments alike have more “sophisticated” expressions—but all still intimidate the human spirit. Equally harmful, they may distract us from the life of the spirit. There’s even been a recent slaughter of the innocents.

Violence comes neatly packaged in celluloid and video and digital formats, but the violent games of the Roman circus might also have been considered “wholesome” fun in their time. The internet provides just the latest opportunity for greedy lust to overrule the better natures of our hearts. Prisons, at least in the West, are more humane, but those in the U.S. house a higher percentage of the population than in Jesus’ time.

So Jesus’ calling still has relevance, as he quoted Isaiah, “to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of the vision we need, and to let the oppressed go free.”

And his calling to us still resonates. “Give to the poor.” “Feed the hungry.” “Provide shelter.” “Welcome strangers.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Love your neighbor.” “Love your enemy.” “Do not judge.” “Pray in secret.” “Seek, and you will find.” “Do not be anxious.” “Blessed are the merciful.” “Avoid anger.” “Do good to those who persecute you.” “Avoid revenge.” “Forgive as you have been forgiven.” “Don’t shut others out of the temple.” “Woe to religious leaders who tie heavy burdens on others.” “Be compassionate as God in heaven is compassionate.” “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

If Jesus read The New York Times, I believe he would lament over the world as he did over Jerusalem, “You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

I offered this post on March 6, 2013.

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The Crazy Man in the Basement

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

The intimacies offered me in conversation and pastoral counseling as well as my own self-knowledge have convinced me that many and perhaps most of us live with a crazy man or a crazy woman in our basement. Perhaps that was the intended metaphor of Charlotte Bronte’s Gothic novel, Jane Eyre, that had a deranged relation imprisoned secretly in an upper room or attic.

Yet I think my “crazy person in the basement” concept suggests something more basic to our nature than our upper regions, more visceral than conscious. This is the one stoking our furnace and fueling our engine down below, so to speak. When one escapes, the host makes news, and endures judgment from those of us who think “we are not like them.”

What occasions this rumination was watching an entertaining romantic comedy about a British retirement home for gifted musicians entitled, Quartet (2012). A character’s frontal lobe has been damaged and so cannot edit himself, bluntly expressing indelicate feelings, observations, and thoughts coming from, one could say, his crazy man in the basement.

What you read on this blog I carefully edit, because writing my posts is like working without a net—after all, I have no editor or copyeditor as I have had with all my other writings. Thus I read and review each post multiple times to make sure it says what I want it to say as well as to avoid misunderstandings.

But my whole life—and I would suggest others’ lives—is a product of similar, careful editing. I cannot speak for others, but Christ, culture, and Chris are primary editorial filters for me. I follow Jesus as spiritual guide, and he represents specific views of God, so Christ is also my God filter. Multiple cultures serve as editorial filters for me: spiritual, ethical, theological, literary, social, scientific, liberal, marginal—the list goes on. Most in need of explanation is “Chris,” but all this means is that my life must reflect and reveal what I believe about myself, and I believe this is common for most of us.

The crazy man in my basement is one who resists Christ, culture, and Chris. This is the one I sometimes meet when I become angry or anxious, infatuated or lustful, greedy or envious or vengeful, obsessive or pious, one who is fearful and fearless, vulnerable and arrogant, clueless and clever.

Christian mystics from the Desert Fathers and Mothers to the more contemporary Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating have recognized that the crazy man or woman in the basement rears his or her unwelcome head as our spiritual lives progress. Like the demons who asked Jesus, “What have you to do with us?” so our shadow selves emerge in the presence of God’s light, needing redemption and healing. This is considered a natural progression in spiritual growth.

Some keep the crazy person in the basement, often secretly, preventing their shadow side from encountering Jesus’ or God’s TLC. Some externalize and scapegoat the crazy person, attempting to restrain the demoniac as the Gerasenes did, or allowing him to exile and stone himself naked and vulnerable among tombs, failing to recognize that “he is us.” (See Mark 5:1-20 and my post, listed below, “Exorcising Demons.”)

I believe what is needed is an honest encounter with the crazy man or crazy woman inside each of us. Only then may we come to ourselves, and through spiritual practices and the help of a spiritual community, spiritual director, or soul friend (anamchara), find our right minds.

Related posts:

Exorcising Demons

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

I offered this post on July 17, 2013. The photo is a selfie from 2015 after skin cancer surgery.

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Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Photo Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in your congregation’s or group’s newsletter, including the blog address: https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Dolphins & Sharks

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

Somebody shouted this to me as I began a several-mile run along a beach during a vacation. This stranger was absolutely right. Three dolphins playfully leapt up out of the water and, in tandem, we raced down the South Carolina shoreline for almost an hour. And most of that hour I reflected on that moment when the gracious abandon of a stranger, who might not otherwise have greeted me, alerted me to one of God’s wonders.

Running for me is a time to meditate. Like a Buddhist walking meditation, its rhythm gives me peace and a place for thought. And what I thought was that this stranger had played the preacher—that this is the purpose of any exhortation—to awaken us to such wonders. Because I believe each one of us may serve as a minister, it occurred to me that this is our role, to shout,

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

There’s something about the shore that gives us permission to talk to strangers. I think it’s the elation, even the ecstasy, that we experience in nature—whether manifest in shores or dolphins. It awakens the child in us that freely enters the commonwealth of God.

The stranger speaking to me about the dolphin was purely gratuitous, an occasion of grace. He had nothing to gain by it other than the thrill of sharing the experience. But I proclaimed his gospel to all I passed in my run along the beach,

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

The next day, our last full day along the shore, it rained. And instead of wading into the Atlantic, I waded into all those e-mails I had avoided all week. It was sobering, to get back to business. There’s nothing natural about sitting in front of a laptop, reading a screen and plucking keys on a keyboard.

And I had another thought. Earlier in the week on the beach we had met a couple who alerted us to a shark in the water. It occurred to me that our job as “ministers” (remember, all of us) is not only to point out the dolphins, but warn others about the sharks.

Many of us got too many sharks growing up in our churches and too few dolphins. Like the preacher in the novel and movie Pollyanna, egged on by Pollyanna’s stern and bitter aunt, we heard preachers who focused on the curses found in scriptures rather than its blessings. Pollyanna, the orphan of missionary parents, who herself had every right to be bitter, pointed out to this preacher that there are many more blessings than curses in the Bible, many more dolphins than sharks.

Progressive Christians recognize the sharks infesting the waters of our faith tradition: biblical literalism, fundamentalism, prejudice, exclusion, patriarchy, condemnation, and so on. It’s important that we warn others to stay out of these waters. But it’s equally vital—or all the more vital—that we point out the dolphins of our faith tradition: grace, mercy, justice, compassion, inclusion, blessing, wonder, storytelling, and spiritual truth.

“Look, there are dolphins in the baptismal water!”

This week marks the tenth anniversary of beginning my blog with this post from February 16, 2011.

There’s been nearly half-a-million visitors, not including an average of five-hundred free weekly subscribers.

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Mindful of the Gaps

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Enjoy this blog more by going to the link provided in the first paragraph!

National Public Radio featured a report about why certain popular pieces of music spontaneously set people to dancing. The occasion was Pharrell Willliams’s “Happy” going viral on the internet as people around the world videotaped themselves dancing to the music, even at risk to themselves, such as in Iran, where six teens were arrested for posting their video.

The neuroscientists interviewed have theorized that it’s the gaps between sounds in certain pieces of music that invite us to move, providing the “space” and motivation for our bodies to respond. I think something similar happens spiritually in the gaps reciting liturgies or the Lord’s Prayer.

The mantra of the London subway, “Mind the gap,” could become in sacred music and liturgies, “Be mindful of the gap,” the silences out of which spiritual movement comes: the pauses in liturgies and psalms and eloquent scriptures (such as 1 Corinthians 13 or 1 John 4) as well as the intervals between notes and beats and rhythms and vocals in everything from Gregorian chants to Gospel songs.

In my book, Communion of Life, I named it “the thoughtful pause,” the quiet and the calm required to absorb what has gone before (say, in a poetic or musical phrase) and to respond, anticipating what may come next. I believe prayer, contemplation, retreats, and (I’d like to believe) this blog may serve as “thoughtful pauses” that compel us to dance spiritually.

The lead neuroscientist, Maria Witek of Aarhus University in Denmark, explained during the NPR story that “Gaps in the rhythmic structure, gaps in the sort of underlying beat of the music—that sort of provides us with an opportunity to physically inhabit those gaps and fill in those gaps with our own bodies.”

Surveys found that the most effective drum patterns in getting people off their feet, she says, were “not the ones that have very little complexity and not the ones that had very, very high complexity, but the patterns that had a sort of a balance between predictability and complexity.” That balance of predictability and complexity may be needed in our own liturgies, readings, sacred songs, and sermons.

The anonymous fourteenth century author of the spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing could be considered among the world’s first bloggers, given the brevity of its chapters. Written for English monks, this mystic observed, “You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God. This brief moment produces the stirring that embodies the greatest work of your soul.” (Contemporary English translation by Bernard Bangley.)

Alongside music, the cadences of many preachers, the “call and response” of some African American worship, and the antiphonal responses of the Daily Office may all provide gaps that invite us to fill them with our spiritual dance—and by that I don’t mean “disembodied,” but one that moves our bodies as well as our souls.

When I was in college, the choir of our church sang a catchy Caribbean song. Our staid congregation stayed in their pews, smiling appreciatively, but resisting an urge to rise and sway and clap. To paraphrase Jesus, “If these Christians remain seated, the pews themselves will dance.” That didn’t happen, but when the choir finished, someone spontaneously cried out, “Do it again!”

And they did!

I recommend the current film on Netflix, Sound of Metal, about a heavy metal drummer losing his hearing, for its spiritual subtext. This post originally appeared June 11, 2014.

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We've Got the Whole World in Our Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000

As we approach the tenth anniversary of this weekly blog, I thought current readers would appreciate one of my earliest posts, from April 6, 2011.

During recess in the second grade, my friend Mary and I enjoyed swinging as high as we could on the swing set, singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” It’s a great song of comfort, basically affirming that, no matter what, God is holding us. Note the song doesn’t say God is in control, just that God is there for us. And I still believe that.

These days we have a better grip on what it means for God to hold the whole world because we have the internet and a 24/7 news cycle. Now we too have the whole world in our hands every time we log on.

The narrator in my as-yet-unpublished mystery novel so reveres the internet that, just as many of us only visit God on Sunday mornings, he only visits the internet on Saturday mornings. Comparing it to touching the forbidden Mt. Sinai, he drolly writes:

The internet is such an awesome god—so extensive we can only glimpse a part of it, so powerful that it has crashed many a computer, so desirous that many humans and their marriages have been sacrificed on its local altars. Okay, I’m a little over the top here, but it’s an amusing analogy, don’t you think?

My point is, like any powerful and overwhelming god, the internet must be approached guardedly, with respect, on appointed days and at appointed times, lest we take it for granted (as if our computers are always up) or believe we can domesticate it (making it entirely user-friendly).

Just as the ancient monastics limited human intercourse of all kinds, even so, those of us who practice an ascetic lifestyle must limit our intercourse with the internet, lest it lead us into idolatry or distract us from reality. To switch mythological metaphors, the internet is the Medusa’s head of our time, a face whose tresses are cables rather than snakes, but still able to turn men to stone.

Demonstrating a similar reverence, only recently has my spell-check stopped correcting me when I fail to capitalize the word “internet,” though it never corrects me when I fail to capitalize “god”!

A retreat leader once scandalized my progressive theology—you know, the theology that tells you to have the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other during your morning prayers—by observing the omnipresent news cycle hooks us in other people’s stories before we know our own story for the day. And, during a retreat I was leading on finding space in our busy lives to rest in God, a woman had the “aha” moment that she was busy even in her prayers, listing the world’s concerns, as if the whole world were not already in God’s hands!

Now more than ever, we have the whole world in our hands. And more than ever, we need to step back, take a breath, take moments of Sabbath rest, and resist the temptation to use Eden’s apple or the Silicon Valley’s Apple to be like the gods.

Yet we are not absolved of responsibility. Now, also more than ever, the internet gives what we do and say the power to transform the world for good or for ill.

We’ve got the whole world in our hands. If we are God’s, then that should be a comfort rather than a concern.

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Caesar and God

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

“Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s”

Last week’s post was declined by at least two mainstream Christian Facebook pages that had always seemed to welcome my free, ad-free weekly posts. The admins who declined them determined them “political,” unsuitable for their Christian audience. One even claimed that spirituality had nothing to do with politics!

As long as everyday Christians avoid the marketplace of ideas, extremist Christians will seem the prevailing voice of Christianity and/or the church. As Bishop Spong has said, religion is like a public pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.

My post challenged a reactionary politician’s rejection of one of my Celtic Christian spiritual saints, Pelagius. Yes, he was declared a heretic, but initially by the State and not by the Pope at the time. In J. Philip Newell’s words in Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality:

Two attempts were made to condemn [Pelagius] in 415, but twice Pelagius was acquitted by the Church in Palestine. In 416 Augustine and the African bishops reacted by convening two diocesan councils, at which Pelagius and his Celtic friend Celestius were condemned. In the following year the Pope himself convened a synod in Rome to consider the conflict; here Pelagius’ teaching was declared entirely true and orthodox.

In an attempt to reconcile Pelagius’ emphasis on our essential goodness with Augustine’s emphasis on the prevalence of evil, the Pope wrote to the African bishops, “Love peace, prize love, strive after harmony. For it is written, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The Pope’s guidance was not heeded by Augustine [who championed the concepts of “human depravity” and “original sin”] and the Western Church began to lose sight of the essential God-given goodness of the human. This loss would have implications for the Church’s perspective on the world, as a fundamentally unholy realm [p 20].

When tested by religious leaders about the relationship of faith to empire, Jesus famously said, “Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” Of course, in our faith, everything belongs to God. Some conservative/reactionary Christians instead see Jesus drawing a line between religion and politics, citing the apostle Paul’s dictum about obeying authorities. Progressive Christians, on the other hand, see Jesus declaring the political realm also an avenue for welcoming the kingdom, or commonwealth, of God.

So many political advances would not have been made without Christian and more broadly religious investment: more humane treatment of those who break the law, which led to establishing prisons and reform movements instead of inflicting physical punishment or death; the abolition of slavery and the much later Civil Rights Movement; the establishment of social safety nets to alleviate poverty, hunger, homelessness, and lack of education.

Jesus was crucified for his political views, even if betrayed by religious colleagues. The cross was an execution by the state, the Roman Empire. If it were for religious reasons, he would have been stoned.

Some of our present religious colleagues would like to silence or betray those of us with progressive views on refugees, immigrants, racial justice, women, LGBTQ people, peace, and justice. Theirs should not be the only Christian voices heard in the media and on social networks.

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Senator Josh Hawley versus the Celtic Christian Monk Pelagius

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico, via Associated Press

The senator who gave the mob headed to the capitol last week a raised-fist salute in solidarity and is among those senators who rejected the vote of the U.S. electorate even after the melee that followed has taken on one of my Celtic saints and heroes, Pelagius. In “The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage,” New York Times columnist Katherine Stewart wrote [January 11, 2021]:

In multiple speeches, an interview and a widely shared article for Christianity Today, Mr. Hawley has explained that the blame for society’s ills traces all the way back to Pelagius—a British-born monk who lived 17 centuries ago.

Apparently, Hawley takes issue with Pelagius’s view that, as Stewart puts it, “grace comes to those who do good things, as opposed to those who believe the right doctrines.”

Reading this sent me back to my “go-to” guy for Celtic Christianity, the Rev. Dr. J. Philip Newell, a Church of Scotland minister who has served St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh as well as Iona Abbey, a Celtic Christian community off the coast of Scotland, both of which I’ve visited. I’ve studied and taught several of his books and attended a weekend course he led at Columbia Theological Seminary here in Georgia.

In Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality, Newell explains that, until recently, as translations of Pelagius’s letters have become available, what was known about him came from his opposition, none other than Augustine of Hippo and his school of thought, whose concept of “original sin” and human depravity (echoed in John Calvin and the Scottish Reformation) was at odds with Pelagius’s view that we are basically good, in Newell’s words, “his conviction that every child is conceived and born in the image of God.”

Pelagius’s letters offer other positive food for thought:

The presence of God’s spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God’s eyes, nothing on the earth is ugly.

People do not argue about whether generosity and forgiveness are good or bad; they know that they are good.

You will realize that doctrines are inventions of the human mind, as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realize that Scripture itself is the work of human minds, recording the example and teaching of Jesus. Thus it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him.

A person who is rich and yet refuses to give food to the hungry may cause more deaths than even the cruellest murderer.

There are some who call themselves Christian, and who attend worship regularly, yet perform no Christian actions in their daily lives. There are others who do not call themselves Christian, and who never attend worship, yet perform many Christian actions in their daily lives. Which of these two groups are the better disciples of Christ? Some would say that believing in Christ and worshipping him is what matters for salvation. But this is not what Jesus himself said. His teaching was almost entirely concerned with action, and with the motives which inspire action.

My own two cents: early Christians understood “belief” in Jesus to be not mere assent but devotion to and practice of his principles.

Newell explains Pelagius’s view that “the Church becomes liberator rather than custodian of salvation. It provides the key that gives access to the treasure of God’s life instead of being the source of that richness; the treasure is already present, though hidden, waiting to be unlocked, in every person.”

Hawley’s attempt to deny the U.S. presidency and vice presidency to President Biden and Vice President Harris reminds me of the church politics in the scheming of Augustine to get Pelagius declared a heretic by both Empire and Church.

Related posts:

What about Sin?

The Soul Feels Its Worth

What I Don’t Believe What I Do Believe

This brief article is helpful:

White Christian Nationalists Want More Than Just Political Power

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Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!

Exorcising Demons

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000

This post from 2011 speaks to the attack on the U.S. capitol last week.

The people of Jesus’ time assigned behavior or ailments they did not understand to demons inhabiting the individual. Any of us who have witnessed a friend in the throes of severe suffering, chronic pain, addiction, or mental or physical illness can understand how these things may so transform a person as to seem possessed. Naming the demon is the beginning of compassion, care, and possibly, cure.

We would not stop at naming a disease but try to provide treatment. So, to stop at simply naming a disorder or dysfunction and using it as an excuse for bad behavior or an occasion for getting on Dr. Phil, makes us enablers. Cultural anthropologist Rene Girard writes, “Possession is not an individual phenomenon…[it] is always contagious; those who are [so affected] are likely to communicate their desire to you, or in other words, drag you along their same path…” As Dr. Phil would ask, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

Jesus might as well have been working with an addicted family member, a dysfunctional congregation, the Washington quagmire, or the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate when he confronted the Gerasene demoniac’s “Legion”—a hostile army of demons that caused its victim to live naked among the tombs, exiling himself and stoning himself, the standard punishments (Girard points out) of Middle Eastern societies in Jesus’ time. (See Mark 5:1-20.)

The Greek word for devil in the New Testament is “diabolos,” which means “divider” or “adversary.” I believe that “discerning the spirits” empowers us to name and cast out divisiveness, but not diversity, even of points of view. According to Girard, the demoniac was a convenient scapegoat for the Gerasenes, reflecting their own dysfunctionality. Jesus casts the demons into a herd of pigs which runs off a cliff into a lake to drown, another style of execution. His fellow villagers find the formerly possessed man at the feet of Jesus, “clothed and in his right mind” and they are afraid, asking Jesus to leave their community.

Who exorcises demons in our world today? Whistle-blowers. Prophets. Mediators. Systems analysts. Interim pastors. Therapists. Spiritual directors. 12-Step sponsors. Soul friends. Researchers. Scientists. Journalists. And more.

In our own divisiveness and dysfunctionality, Christians may take comfort as well as challenge in these words from the epistle to the Galatians, “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

May we become “clothed in Christ” and in our right minds.

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Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here. Thank you!