Progressive Christian Reflections by Chris Glaser

Perfection

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

“Be perfect as your God in heaven is perfect.”

Easy for Jesus to say! But as a fundamentalist Christian kid, I believed this was my goal. It made perfect sense to me. Except there was one area of my life in which I would never be “perfect”: I had these feelings for other boys, not just of attraction, but of love. And such tender feelings had no place between boys in the 1950s.

A recent study verifies “the best little boy in the world” syndrome among gay men, according to a New York Times op-ed. To make up for our “deficit,” we had to be the best somewhere else—in studies, sports, stage, spirituality, social action, or service, to name a few that alliterate nicely.

Long before I learned that the term translated “perfect” actually suggests “complete” as in “mature,” I had exchanged my childish goal of perfection for a spiritually mature goal of integrity, to the benefit of my spiritual, mental, and physical health and well-being.

Integrity itself is a lofty goal, of course. And it is a lifelong process. Perfection has the feeling of having arrived, being complete in and of oneself. But integrating your beliefs, thoughts, feelings, experiences, speech, and actions is a daily process that is never completed. I like to say that, in the spiritual life, there is no “finish line.”

It was not until later that I paid adequate attention to the alternate version of Matthew’s “be perfect as your God in heaven is perfect.” I don’t know how I overlooked Luke’s version, “Be merciful as God is merciful” or, in another translation, “Be compassionate just as God is compassionate.”

That to me would have been an attainable goal even as a kid. Needing compassion myself for my “flaw,” I readily offered compassion to others. Even adults felt encouraged to share with me their most deeply felt feelings. I had a good ear. Intuitively, I was Henri Nouwen’s “wounded healer.” That’s one of the reasons why I felt called to ministry.

Listening to—at first, dozens, and by now, thousands of—people gave my call to ministry a prophetic edge. I just wanted to be a pastor, but now, I had a mission. Or, better said, a passion. Nouwen liked to parse words, and pointed out that “compassion” literally means “suffering (passion) with (com).”

At first my passion was largely expressed in the movements for Civil Rights, Peace, and LGBT inclusion and equality. But it was always felt for ALL those excluded and diminished by the church and culture, those made to feel that they were not “perfect,” but who nonetheless struggled for integrity, and struggled to be compassionate. I imagine most readers of this blog know that experience.

I believe that’s what progressive Christianity does in its finer moments: gathers outsiders as “a mother hen gathers her brood under her wing,” just as Jesus wished.

Related posts:

“Colored on TV!”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Wounded Healers

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What I Don't Believe, What I Do Believe

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

News flash: My dog, Hobbes, was mentioned in yesterday’s New York Times!

Kierkegaard echoed the apostle Paul’s spiritual counsel to work out our own salvation “in fear and trembling,” and many if not most of us know exactly what that means. “The fear of the Lord” is so entrenched in many of us that we have dearly struggled to ‘fess up to what we do and don’t believe, for fear of angering a jealous deity, or incurring the wrath of fellow believers (and sometimes, strangely as insistently, of nonbelievers) for not “toeing the line” of standard Christian doctrine. I can do little about the latter, what others think, long ago taking as a mantra (though insufficiently realized) the title of a book I never read, What You Think of Me Is None of My Business by Terry Cole-Whittaker.

But it still feels like my business what God thinks of me, and I have had the fear of the Lord assuaged in me by Brother Thomas Keating’s observation that biblical “fear of the Lord” was less that of anxiety than of awe. I do believe in an awesome God, but what keeps me from quivering (most of the time) is that I TRUST God rather than FEAR God, which seems to me what the gist of the biblical witness is about. I say all this as preface to what follows.

I don’t believe Jesus died for my sins. At least, not exactly. Human sin tortures, torments, and kills people every day, and I do my fair share of causing that, either by sins of commission or omission. But a god who requires the blood of a scapegoat, a lamb, or a child of God to forgive me is not worthy of my praise. The God I believe in is bigger than that. I do believe in a God willing to sacrificially forgive, which to me is the spiritual essence of the story. And I do believe that Jesus lived and died and still lives on our behalf.

Jesus is not the only son of God. Remember, the Hebrews thought of themselves as the children of God. And the Gospel of John says Jesus came into the world that we all might be children of God. I do believe Jesus reminded us of our divine imprint, the imago dei of creation, and the apostle Paul called us to live up to our inheritance as sons and daughters of God—an awesome task, not to benefit our self-esteem as in self-help movements or “extend our territory” as in the prosperity gospel, but to “be the change we seek in the world” (Gandhi).

“One holy catholic (as in universal) church.” Notice I did not preface this with “I don’t believe” nor “I believe in…” “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief,” I would say. I have seen this holy universal church in my dreams as well as in my waking hours. It is not confined to the institutional church, of course, but includes those “standing on the threshold of the church” with Simone Weil, and those well beyond that threshold, “the least of these.” This includes those of us who carry invisible wounds of the church’s abuse and abandonment, like my rescued dog, Hobbes, who ducks when somebody reaches to pet her because she was apparently mistreated before I found her, abandoned in the local park, thirteen years ago. For us and for her, it’s not really about forgiveness, it’s about trust.

I don’t believe in hell. What good is it? What good does it do a deity to enforce eternal suffering? Purgatory makes more sense to me. I’m not quite sure what to make of heaven either, except I’ve long believed that heaven on earth is where God’s will and our wills coincide. I would like to think that those I love who’ve died are with God. I do believe God loves us always, and in that love (again) I trust, so, blessedly, I don’t have to have a fully-formed opinion.

I don’t believe in original sin. This one’s way too easy. With Celtic Christianity and specifically with Pelagius, I believe each of us is born good and essentially are good, though we may be blemished, disfigured, or held captive by sin. Thus redemption may be viewed as liberation to be who we really are.

“Jesus loves me, this I know.” And not only because “the Bible tells me so.” Mere words could never convey the love I have felt from Jesus. It came from my mom and dad, from Christian friends, teachers, professors, clergy, guides, soul friends, and lovers. And it came from the Holy Spirit, opening scripture to me, opening my heart and mind, and releasing me from the whitewashed tombs of doctrines that no longer resonate.

“To God be the glory.” This seems too obvious, but needs be said in a culture and church where everyone’s glory is noted in the phenomenon of celebrity. No matter how “glorious” one becomes, including even Jesus, all glory ultimately rests with God. Else, how would it be there?

Related posts:

The Soul Feels Its Worth

What about Sin?

Copyright © 2013 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. DONATIONS WELCOME! THANK YOU!

Why Didn't Jesus Write?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

This is not intended as an academic treatise—scholars can research and write those! This is a speculative opinion piece of imagination.

If the biblical witness is to be trusted, we know Jesus could read, because he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in his home synagogue in Nazareth. And we know Jesus could write, because he “bent down and wrote on the ground” when a woman accused of adultery was about to be stoned. Columbia seminary professor Anna Carter Florence has pointed out that, having come between her and her accusers, bending down would have forced her executioners to look her in the eye. Maybe it was not only his extemporaneous “Let him without sin cast the first stone” that dissuaded the would-be judges, but also whatever he wrote in the soil at their feet.

But why didn’t he write down all his thoughts and parables on a scroll somewhere, and put the Jesus Seminar out of business? Here are a few possibilities:

There wasn’t time. When one sees fire, the natural inclination is to warn “FIRE!” rather than pen a treatise on the dangers of combustion. Jesus saw the imminence of the inbreaking commonwealth or kingdom of God, and realized transformation (repentance) was needed immediately to embrace it. And once the commonwealth was among us, what need would there be of additional scripture?

Of course, there’s another way “there wasn’t time,” as Jesus died an early martyr’s death at the hands of the Roman Empire, who executed hundreds of Jewish zealots on crosses. By today’s standards, he still would have had time to write a memoir about the trauma of his childhood experiences, from Herod’s slaughter of the innocents to his mother’s reprimand in the Temple (you know, as in “no more wire hangers!”). But philosophies as wise as his are generally written by sages late in life.

Perhaps he needed a good editor. Steeped in the oral traditions of his Hebrew upbringing, with the knowledge that their stories and wisdom were passed down orally through generations before being written down, Jesus might have considered it presumptuous to put in tablets of stone for the world to see teachings he wanted to test among his own people first. Maybe there were others like the Syrophoenician woman who challenged his religious perspectives that limited him initially to “the lost sheep of Israel.” Maybe the Samaritan woman at the well taught Jesus as much about spiritual unity over religious differences as he taught her. And could his strong reaction to Peter’s denial of his anticipated suffering in Jerusalem (“Get thee behind me, Satan!”) reveal his own doubts of his trek toward martyrdom?

It could be that his disciples and the early Christians and his followers throughout the ages served as an editorial prism through which to see his rainbow promise, to harden his break with the religious parties of his time, such as the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as reveal “the new thing” Isaiah had prophesied God doing and “the law written on their hearts” that Jeremiah proclaimed. There may have been copyright issues with his borrowing verses from Moses’ Pentateuch for his core beliefs of loving God and neighbor, though there was no Fox News to call him on his socialistic plagiarism. And his lumping of the scribes with the Pharisees meant they were not likely to take dictation from him.

Actions speak louder than words. Talk about Incarnation! Jesus’ dining with religious outcasts spoke more disturbingly to the religious leaders of his time (and ours), as did his free social intercourse with women, even disreputable ones. His willingness to touch lepers, the hearing impaired, and the blind is worth a thousand of his words. His ability to discern and cast out demons is sorely needed in our own age of addictions and violence. Jesus could have been a mime and we would still get his central message!

“It’s not about me!” Could Jesus’ self-effacing deference to a God beyond our abilities to know, explain, and confine, and his claim to be one of “the least of these” whom we are to clothe, feed, shelter, and visit have made him resistant to writing what would have been a bestseller (eventually) because its inevitable temple merchandising and self-promotion might have distracted us from our own callings to follow him in ministry and mission? Though I would have loved to see him on “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report,” maybe he is all the more memorable in his simple plea to “Remember me” when we dine with him in our hearts.

If you appreciate reading my blog, please DONATE here! Thanks!

This month, Presbyterian Promise invited me to write a letter of encouragement to my 17-year-old self as a gay Christian. Click here and scroll down to two such articles.

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Blessed Are the Prophets

Exorcising Demons

Jesus: Introvert or Extrovert?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Reading Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, was like coming up for air! Or eating an entire box of See’s chocolates at one sitting, enjoying every morsel! As one friend said to me on Facebook, reading the book was her own “coming out” experience.

You see, I am an introvert who nonetheless manages to play the extrovert—I do enjoy people, after all—but then needs a rest, alone, in quiet, probably why I’m a promoter of contemplation. Throughout my life, however, I have felt constantly compared to what Cain calls “The Extrovert Ideal,” sometimes by my own hand, and sometimes at the hands of others, including American culture and the church. For example, I realize now that preaching or even speaking from a manuscript is not deficient, as I have been told, but my strength. Oh, for President Obama’s teleprompters!

Acknowledging the need for both extroverts and introverts, Cain, an introvert, strikes a blow (though that’s usually an extrovert’s temperament) for the necessity of introverts. Studies suggest that introverts are usually “high-reactives” to stimuli, and thus need to limit our exposure. Another word that is used is “sensitive.” We need time to observe, reflect, and consider situations, people, and events prior to speaking or taking action.

That’s why I insist on a “monastic moment” of silence when I pose a question to people in a workshop or retreat, a moment to turn inward, consult one’s own experience and feelings and thoughts, before opening general discussion. My experience has been that others are quick to express their thoughts before I have had a chance to consult my own experience. I thought Sir Thomas More’s Utopia had it right when its legislature vigorously debated a concern but waited till the next day to take action! Cain writes, “Congress…is made up of some of the least sensitive people in the country” because to get elected and re-elected virtually requires an extrovert’s temperament.

That’s also why I wrote a post two weeks ago about experiencing spiritual community outside of church, what I had thought of calling “spirituality for loners.” Several pastors took me to task on Facebook, though in previous posts I have acknowledged that church and worship are worthy spiritual disciplines. But as I have discovered the need for silence in my own spiritual practices, I have looked for more silence in worship, and when it is interrupted or when worship gets raucous it sounds to me like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. And I reclaim words I found appealing in college, words from Alfred North Whitehead, “Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.”

The post opened me to pleasant conversation with Sam Troxal, a young and gifted blogger, and with a role model pastor and author, J. Barrie Shepherd. Barrie, a regular reader of this blog (I am proud to say), has written many books of poetry whose daily rhythms encouraged me to pray regularly long ago. I appreciate the fact that in poetry, pauses are as vital as words, and an economy of words are carefully, thoughtfully selected to convey exactly what is intended. In my book of “secular” poetic meditations, Communion of Life, I called poets “secular mystics.”

Barrie sent me his recent book, Between Mirage and Miracle: Selected Poems for Seasons, Festivals, and the Occasional Revelation, urging me to read his poem about church, “Why I Still Go,” which meaningfully concludes:

For all my weary, reasoned doubt,

the continuing disillusion and despair

of this already blood-drenched century,

for all my anger at her blind echoing

of the worst that hides in all of us,

come Sunday morning, somehow,

I still find myself in church.

I have questioned whether it is the church’s “blind echoing” of prejudice against LGBT people that prompts me to seek other counsel and other forms of worship. But it is also true that the expected conformity and the lack of silence and gentle voices are also factors. And what presents itself as teamwork, collaboration, or democratic process is too often an opportunity for extroverts—sometimes with less experience and expertise, or worse, less compassion and wisdom—to outtalk and occasionally bully others!

So I’ve been wondering about whether Jesus was an introvert or an extrovert. Obviously I may be projecting, but I believe he was an introvert. He was certainly a “high reactive” to religious hypocrisy and “sensitive” to religious outcasts. When tempted in his solitary sojourn in the wilderness by relevance, sensationalism, and power, he resisted. Though followed by multitudes seeking healings and teachings, he found lonely places to pray or a boat from which to preach. He called 12 disciples, and taught them privately. Perhaps it was the temperament of being introverts that Jesus shared with “the disciple whom Jesus (especially) loved” who gave us the most mystical gospel. But without extroverts like Peter and Paul, the world may not have been evangelized.

That may be the power of the Spirit, that gives even introverts the gift of speech. Yet it is also the Spirit’s gift to hear God’s voice in “the sound of sheer silence” that follows the storm, the earthquake, and the fire.

This blog is entirely supported by your donations. Thank you!

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In Praise of Praise

The Right Word

Cuddling with Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

I can imagine red flags going up for my more progressive readers, fearing I’ve gone evangelical on them with a title like “Cuddling with Jesus.” And my more mainstream readers may fear I’m getting too familiar, even sexual, with our spiritual leader.

But the deity with whom Jacob wrestles in Genesis becomes the deity with whom the Beloved Disciple cuddles during the Last Supper in John. It’s okay for males to wrestle (God was imagined as male, remember) but not to cuddle (Jesus was imagined as God, remember).

In my book, As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage, I pointed out how recent translations have distanced the Beloved Disciple, believed to be John, from Jesus. In the King James Version “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is “leaning on Jesus’ bosom.” The Revised Standard Version describes him as “lying close to the breast of Jesus.” But the New Revised Standard Version and the New Jerusalem Bible have the Beloved Disciple simply “reclining next” to Jesus. As the Beloved disciple moves further away from Jesus with newer versions, I imagine in the next translation he will be in another room!

In his book, The Man Jesus Loved, Theodore Jennings translates the passage this way:

One of his disciples was lying in Jesus’ lap, the one Jesus loved; so Simon Peter nods to this one and says: “Tell, whom is he talking about?” That one, falling back on Jesus’ chest says to him: “Lord, who is it?”

Imagine watching TV with a group of close friends, some of whom are seated on the floor. Arms may rest on knees, heads lean on shoulders, hands draped affectionately on legs. This would be like the scene of the Last Supper, where the custom would be for everyone to be on the floor with cushions or mats, not seated upright at a table.

This is the casual intimacy between John and Jesus, but it affords John the opportunity, in the understanding of Celtic Christianity, to “listen for the heartbeat of God” with his head on Jesus’ breast. It is a symbol of mysticism, not sexuality, though mysticism is also erotic, understanding “eros” as the force that compels us toward God or another human being.

What prompts this reflection is a recent opinion piece by Stanford anthropology professor T. M. Luhrmann, who suggests the success of evangelical churches is that they promise such a personal relationship with God, but then overstates the case by claiming—mistakenly, I believe—that mainstream Christians do not imagine a God so intimate. (Since writing this I discovered agreement from a Letter to the Editor by Sister Mary Ann Walsh.)

I do believe mainstream Christians have a problem with intimacy. I once heard seminary professor and author Carter Heyward describe their God as a “Gentleman God,” embarrassed by sexual passion, yet too polite and dispassionate to be rabidly anti-gay. And the changing position of the Beloved Disciple may have to do with a fear of homoerotic implications.

But I believe the broader fear is intimacy with God. I’ve noticed that the same translation that has John “reclining next” to Jesus in John 13:23 also translates John 1:18 about Jesus’ intimacy with God as “who is close to the Father’s heart” when the actual text reads “who is close to the Father’s bosom.”

Yet I believe many mainstream Christians’ embrace of contemplation also chooses an intimate relationship with God. And though it may seem new, it has always been with us, from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, monastic communities, and Celtic spirituality to our present day interest in all things spiritual.

My purpose in writing this blog is to encourage progressive Christians, too, to come out of the closet about their intimacy with God, with Jesus, and with the Spirit. Ours may be a different experience, but no less worthy to strengthen our resolve, challenge others’ certainties, and enjoy communion with all we hold sacred and dear.

This blog is entirely supported by your donations. Thank you!

Posts you may have missed:

Do Progressive Christians Pray? (99 Brattle)

A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer

Much to my surprise, in finding the link to “Do Progressive Christians Pray?” I discovered three recent posts reflecting on that post! To read them (in reverse order), click here.

Please join me as I lead a free public workshop on Just Love entitled “Body Boundaries and the Question of Consent” this coming Saturday, April 27, 2013, from 10 a.m.-1:00 p.m. (free lunch follows) at St. Francis Episcopal Church, Macon, Georgia. We will explore the spiritual dimensions of physical encounters.

Spiritual Community

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Church is not for everyone. Even for those who like it, there are as many distractions as attractions to the spiritual life there. I thought of entitling this post “spirituality for loners” because I want to suggest eight ways of experiencing spiritual community outside of church!

Read. I enjoy the most diverse, stimulating, informed, and wise spiritual community on my bookshelves! Fiction and non-fiction, sacred and profane, fantasy and factual—you name it, all connect me to other people, places, and things with whom and with which I may feel a spiritual kinship. Newspaper and magazine human interest stories, op-eds, obits, and news stories also open me to relationships often more spiritually intimate than possible in ordinary life. All are opportunities for witnessing spirituality at work for those who have eyes to see, fingers to feel Braille, or ears to hear recorded versions.

Pray. Immediately, praying puts us into a global and probably universal community of those lifting their hearts and their loved ones and even unloved ones to God, the eternal, the sacred, knitting our hearts with those with whom and for whom we pray. Prayer, meditation, and reflection make us more attentive to those we care about or want to care about, welcoming their presence in deeper ways.

Watch. Being mindful of surroundings wherever we are with all of our senses puts us in community with the material world. Matter matters. The touch of a fabric, the fragrance of a plant, the sound of rain, the vibration of a machine, the breath of a lover, the view from your favorite chair or mountain ridge—all remind us, in Madonna’s lyrics, that “we are material girls” and boys. And watching films and documentaries can take us to people and places and events we otherwise might never meet or visit or experience.

Walk and Roll. I was asked this week what I would do if I knew I only had 24 hours to live. Promptly I replied, “I’d go walk in the park.” A leisurely stroll or roll on foot or wheelchair through parks, forests, beaches, neighborhoods, downtowns, and more give us an opportunity to relax and be part of something greater than ourselves. An acquaintance gave up city life and lights to work remotely in the countryside just to be able to spend time gazing at the planets, stars, and galaxies each night as earth strolls through the universe.

Communicate. Writing letters or blogs, sketching or painting, playing instruments or sharing CD’s, making videos or recordings, performing or cooking or phoning—finding ways to tell our stories, proclaim our “gospel,” give our viewpoints, share our talents—these are some of the diverse ways we may offer ourselves to spiritual community.

Volunteer or Vocation. Giving time, energy, talent, money, and possessions for a cause, concern, or a calling connects us to other volunteers or coworkers but also to those for whom we do what we do, whether a movement, a non-profit, a community in need, or the environment.

Receive. It may be more blessed to give than receive, as Paul quoted Jesus in Acts, but being receptive is also a gift to those who want to offer us something of themselves, from company to caregiving. Gratitude “in all circumstances” may open us serendipitously to community.

Breathe. Breathing slowly and deeply and consciously is a common way to begin meditation. Spirit is in the very air we breathe if we are paying attention, if we imagine it, if we believe it. We take in the molecules ancestors breathed, brothers and sisters breathe, posterity will breathe. Every breath connects us with them.

No one should beat themselves up for not going to church, not joining a monastic community, or not belonging to a religion or religious organization. Spiritual community is to be discovered simply by attending to the spiritual life, that which connects us to all.

This blog is entirely supported by your donations. Thank you!

Chris will be leading a free public workshop on Just Love entitled “Body Boundaries and the Question of Consent” Saturday, April 27, 2013, from 10 a.m.-1:00 p.m. (free lunch follows) at St. Francis Episcopal Church, Macon, Georgia. It will explore the spiritual dimension of physical encounters.

Posts you may have missed:

On the Threshold of the Church

Interrupted Lives

Spiritual Struggle

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

One spring day I was taking our dog Hobbes for a walk and noted what a beautiful morning it was. The air was crisp, cool, and clear, the trees and lawns brightly green and gardens in bloom with a riot of colors. It was one of those e. e. cummings “most amazing days,” and I thought, how blessed I was to be a part of this universe, a part that could enjoy its beauty through the mystery of consciousness and self-consciousness, that somehow matter has evolved to the place of being able to see itself, to reflect on its own existence, inspired by that sacred drive for life that we call by many names, given our religious or philosophic perspectives. It was an ah-hah moment that came without struggle, that came naturally, that was an absolute gift.

That, I believe, is how many people think about spirituality and how I often experience the spiritual life: serendipitous, joyful, uplifting, insightful, broadening of one’s horizons. The idea of spiritual struggle seems contradictory, a paradox, a product of effort and dare I say “discipline,” as in practice? Do we really have to work at spirituality?

The truth is that we don’t always have “most amazing days” such as the one I described. That they are occasional is the very thing that makes them eventful and extraordinary. We go to work or we get sick or we have a colleague who bullies us or we wonder if we are loved or we live with or near or are related to challenging people. Community has once been defined as the place where the person you would least like to be with always lives.

And, as we look at our broader human family, we see poverty, hunger, disease, injustice, and violence interfering with the possibility of “most amazing days.”

But not to despair! In the retreats and workshops I lead I often do a meditation exercise in which people are invited to recreate in their imagination a moment when they felt most fulfilled, most connected, most loved and loving, most at peace. When time comes to share the images conjured up by this exercise, there are the usual, expected bucolic scenes like the one I just described. But there are just as often the unusual places, people, and things which despite all odds proved an environment or an occasion in which individuals felt complete, fulfilled, loved, loving, and at peace. Hospital rooms. Doing chores. Suffering a loss. Rising to a challenge. Comforting someone.

Perhaps that’s the wisdom behind the apostle Paul’s notion that “all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” It’s not that all things are good, but even the bad things might be transformed for the good in a person who “gets” the larger spiritual picture.

We just experienced the rare convergence of Passover and Holy Week, both observances of spiritual struggles. Jews remembered their oppression in Egypt, and how they heard Yahweh call them out of slavery through a wilderness and to a Promised Land. Christians remembered the Passion and compassion of Jesus struggling with religious and political authorities on behalf of “the least of these,” his crucifixion at the hands of Rome, and his return to those who believed.

Spiritual struggle is called “jihad” in Islam, and Muslims in the United States are now reclaiming the word from terrorists through an advertising campaign. In a sense they are engaging in “jihad” against Al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s violent interpretations of the term.

Similarly, much of our spiritual struggle as progressive people of faith is reclaiming spirituality and religion from those who would coerce rather than persuade, control rather than cooperate, take rather than give, enforce rather than inspire, condemn rather than bless. And we each struggle with similar temptations within ourselves. Hopefully our struggle will lead to more “most amazing days” for all.

This blog is entirely supported by your donations. Thank you!

Posts you may have missed:

Spiritual Handcuffs

Mohammad’s Child

Resurrecting Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Many of us have demythologized Jesus. Others have deconstructed Jesus. Now it’s time to give some thought to resurrecting Jesus!

I don’t mean we can assume divine power to restore life or create the eternal. But just as God is revealed in the sacraments only with our willing suspension of disbelief, the resurrected Jesus is said by scripture only to have appeared to believers. Some of those believers hesitated or doubted, but they showed up anyway. Many of us showed up this past Sunday for Easter celebrations of resurrection. Woody Allen once quipped that 90% of life is just showing up!

This train of thought began for me on Good Friday, in an afternoon conversation about “the empty tomb” with a friend from seminary days, Kim White, visiting us briefly in Atlanta en route home to Nashville. I asked him what difference the story of Jesus’ resurrection makes to his faith in the 21^st century. Like me, he’s more interested in Jesus than the appellations attached to him, like “the Christ.”

As for me, I have discovered the ongoing presence of those closest to me after their deaths, continuing to offer me their joy and wisdom and strength. It’s easy then to imagine that those closest to Jesus felt the same, and this intimacy manifested itself in the stories of resurrection we have in the Bible, including what some scholars consider to be a misplaced resurrection story we call the Transfiguration, in which Peter, James, and John were given a mystical experience of Jesus’ spiritual intimacy with Moses the lawgiver, Elijah the prophet, and Yahweh, who proudly booms again about Jesus as a chosen child, just as Jesus heard at his baptism.

Literalists would say we have to take these stories as literal truth, not as mystical visions or explanatory mythology. But why? Even the early followers of Jesus differed on these manifestations of a risen Christ. Some biblical stories suggest a spiritual resurrection that allows Jesus to pass through locked doors or out of his burial garment, still in place. Others suggest a physical resurrection that allows Jesus to eat with disciples and permit them to touch his wounds. Some stories mix the two. And Mary Magdalene’s encounter and that of the disciples traveling to Emmaus indicate he is not immediately recognizable, and may be known in a garden (nature) as well as in sacrament (the breaking of bread), in grief as well as in hospitality to strangers.

For me, all of this is to say that we actively participate in Jesus’ resurrection by our own desire to see him, to experience his joy and wisdom and strength, to manifest his presence to those around us through compassion for “the least of these” as well as our neighbors and opponents and sisters and brothers in faith.

I have always been fond of the concluding paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who he is.

Thank you for your donation, this blog’s only funding source.

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"Judas Kiss"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

A week ago today during prayers I suddenly felt grateful for embodiment. First, for my own body. Even when it feels pain, I realize it’s the body’s alarm system that something has gone wrong. And when it feels pleasure, ecstasy lifts me onto a different plane of reality, and I know what’s good and true and beautiful.

I did not stop at thanking God for my own body, but began a stream of “thank you’s” for the embodiment of others. For my parents: my mother’s body growing me, my father’s body making love with my mom, together conceiving me. Then the bodies of my partner, family, friends, pets, as well as lovers of times past. And nature and community and the cosmos. It was becoming an American-Psalmist-Walt-Whitman-style song of praise. I thanked God for their touch, their warmth, their holding me, their smiling at me, their crying with me.

But as quickly as gratitude flooded my thoughts, a stream of confessions followed: times when I mishandled or demanded or exploited or ignored or judged or passed by bodies, including the earth’s body, the Body of Christ, and my own body. The elevation of Paradise is never far from the Fall of human mismanagement.

Then I remembered Becki Jayne Harrelson’s painting, Judas Kiss, and its discomfiting, tender, and sensuous depiction of Judas handing over a nearly naked and thus vulnerable Jesus to suffering with a kiss. We most often hurt those we love, and they us. Many of us have been “handed over to suffering” by a kiss in various expressions, from the kiss of baptismal waters, to the kiss of the laying on of hands, to the kiss of promising relationships. And our own bodies have handed us over to suffering through artificial pleasures that seemed good and true and beautiful at the time.

The eroticism of Becki Jayne’s painting cannot be missed, the eros that impels us both to another’s body and to another’s spirit, and to God’s body and Spirit. (For more about the artist and painting, see below.)

The day after these revelations, I found myself praying that I wish I could see God, who evolved a wondrous world and whose creative work also evolved you and me. I opened my eyes as another realization came—I was seeing God. Pictures of family and friends and ancestors on the credenza, the tree outside the window holding a nest of baby birds, the fuchsia-colored orchid flowering in the other room after a long dormancy, our dog Hobbes snoring on the sofa, the furniture and rugs and the people who crafted them, my own arms and legs. And again my gratitude was followed by confession: for betraying, denying, abandoning, and doubting this face of God.

As if that were not enough, the next day on the front page of the newspaper appeared an image of the cosmos as it looked 370,000 years after the Big Bang, looking like an elongated speckled Easter egg in blue, red, orange, and yellow. Inside the paper I read the article associated with the picture, reporting that the age of the universe has been upgraded to 13.8 billion years old. As I turned back to the front page, the unfolded paper revealed again the colorful cosmos, but this time juxtaposed by a full page ad on the back page featuring a model—and all I could think of in that moment was, “from this (the universe) to this (the human being).” God’s countenance is constantly lifted upon us, no matter how much we look away, turn away, are blinded by tears, have doubts, or simply fail to see.

“Judas Kiss” words Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes. Past posts are available in the archive in the right rail on the blogsite.

This ministry is solely supported by your donations. Click here to make a tax-deductible gift. Thank you!

Becki Jayne Harrelson painted “Judas Kiss” during Lent and Easter 1993 “in response to the verbal gay bashing that Congress was doing” over then President Clinton’s attempt to rescind the ban against gays and lesbians serving in the military. It is part of a series of Christian iconography intended to serve as “a narrative about sexuality in harmony with spirituality.” For further explanation, click here.

See another in her series in the post, “Faggot” Jesus.

A post you may have missed: Where is God?

A Common Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

Listen to a podcast of Chris interviewed about “Progressive Christianity” in the Dean’s Forum, Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland OH, March 10, 2013.

During the recent conclave at the Vatican, I prayed that the cardinals would choose another Pope John XXIII. He had a common touch that appealed to me as a Protestant just about to enter my teens. And he led the Roman Catholic Church into Vatican II, a hopeful sign of what the church could become.

So I was pleased by the new pope’s choice of name, Francis, after another soul of God with a common touch, Francis of Assisi. And since his selection, there have been so many reports that Pope Francis I has a common touch, endearing himself to many, beginning with requesting the crowd’s blessing in St. Peter’s Square before blessing them. My prayer now is that his “common touch” will come to include women’s ordination, married clergy, LGBT people, and those who stand up to dictators—even those within the church, Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox.

In response to a favorable review of Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests?, a letter to the New York Times Book Review suggested that the church needed to adopt its hierarchical, corporate structure to demonstrate its worth to a culture whose institutions were based on such models. It reminds me of the children of Israel desiring a king like other nations in Hebrew scriptures, and God reluctantly agrees.

I’ve served churches that had members and leaders who wanted their congregations to follow a business model, and now many church growth models emphasize characteristics of growing a successful business, often featuring the notion that bigger is better, whether it comes to buildings, budgets, or membership.

During one such seminar I attended, the leader proudly described his staff constantly writing notes to church members and visitors during their staff and committee meetings, and I wondered how mindful they could be of the Spirit’s presence and leading in those meetings. He described a member coming to him one Sunday and telling him that he was the only person who remembered his birthday. The seminar leader smiled proudly and told us, “I didn’t know who the f--- he was, but he was grateful I had remembered his birthday.” Ah, that a churchgoer could meet Saint Francis and know, as G. K. Chesterton wrote, “that he himself was being valued and taken seriously and not merely added to the spoil of some social policy or the names of some clerical document.”

Jesus was attractive, I believe, because he had a common touch and took everyone and their troubles seriously. He associated with the poor and sick and judged and oppressed, and challenged those whose privilege distanced them from the people at large. He attracted multitudes, but failed to build membership, budgets, or buildings. And the first Christians were appealing, as Elaine Pagels and other scholars have written, because they were as compassionate as he, not because they were successful.

Though I believe that Jesus was a child of God and reminded us that we are all created and called to be children of God, I believe also that we Christians made a mistake making him “king,” or a part of the godhead, or the first CEO of the Christian corporation. In those capacities, he loses his common touch, and we can use his titles to excuse ourselves from following his spiritual path—after all, we’re not God like he was. Less is required of us. “His” work is “above our pay grade.”

But as the beloved child of God, you and I are blessed not only with God’s gracious love, but blessed, too, with Jesus’ calling to be compassionate toward all.

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes. Past posts are available in the archive in the right rail on the blogsite. Tax-deductible donations welcome! Please click here. Thank you!

For those in north Georgia, Chris will be speaking during the 11 a.m. service of Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church in Dahlonega this Sunday, March 24, 2013, and after a light lunch, leading a workshop on “Claiming Blessings Anyway,” about finding blessings in unexpected, even unpleasant events.

Posts you may have missed:

Et II, Benedict?

Thanking God Anyway

Sacred, Saving Texts

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

(To listen to a podcast of my sermon this past Sunday at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, click here.)

In a recent interview, Garry Wills said, “Nabokov was right: there is no real reading but rereading. I rummage in old favorites all the time.”

Having typed this, I look across the top of my laptop and see what remains of my copy of Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek on the bookshelves in my home office. The binding is completely gone. What I see are the pages pressed together by James Baldwin’s Giovanni's Room and Dostoevsky’s The Idiot on either side. If I were to remove it, I would have to hold it as carefully as an ancient manuscript lest the pages spill all over the floor.

The professor who introduced me to this sacred text was convinced that Kazantzakis would have won the Nobel Prize for literature if he had not written in Greek. What a gifted storyteller! And thank God he met Zorba, who, in the book and possibly in real life, challenged him not just to write about religion, but to embrace a lusty, embodied spirituality.

In similar shape, on the bottom shelf, is my childhood copy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, whose Boo Radley and Tom Robinson and Atticus Finch all spoke to different parts of me as a young boy who knew what it meant to be queer, to be unjustly judged, to want to work for justice. And Scout—dear Scout—I wanted to be a story teller like her. If one only reads or writes one book, this is the one!

Three books down the shelf is The (well-worn) Portable Mark Twain, whose keen wit and humor cut through my youthful piety, both religious and patriotic. Huck Finn, included in this volume, I consider the long lost friend I never met. And between Lee and Twain is James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, whose Shangri-La and valley of the Blue Moon cultivated my hunger for the contemplative life.

Worn Volumes 1 and 2 of my Norton Anthology of English Literature remind me of the road not taken as an English major (either as professor, novelist, or poet) yet revisited again and again as a reminder of the ecstatic possibilities of language. And in the center on top of my bookshelves is Shakespeare, a nine volume set published in 1863, less read than revered, symbolic of his many plays and sonnets I read and reread in less fragile editions, also on my shelves.

Less worn but more read than other books on my shelf is Henri Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love, whose anguish I better understood grieving his death and later, grieving the death of what I thought would be a lifelong relationship, and whose more positive entries I reread whenever I need to remind myself that I too am a beloved child of God.

Suffering severe book spine problems are books by Thomas Merton, Kathleen Norris, Mahatma Gandhi, J. Barrie Shepherd, Anne Lamott, Maya Angelou, and John Boswell. The most fragile of these is Mohan-Mala, A Gandhian Rosary, 366 “pearls of thought” from Gandhi, which I’ve read through daily for as many as a half-dozen years strewn throughout the decades since I acquired it at the Lake Shrine bookstore of the Self Realization Fellowship in California when I was in college. And on the same shelf is Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings and Etty Hillesum’s An Interrupted Life, both frequently consulted.

And I’ve already written of The Temple of God’s Wounds, which I have reread almost every Holy Week since a fraternal worker in India, Rev. John Cole, gave it to me during Eastertide, 1988.

Finally, the Bibles—the most used and worn of all. My clothbound Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version is going the way of Zorba, its binding barely hanging on, curled outward, and its back cover completely detached. Inside, the pages bear underlinings and markings of agreement and disagreement, exclamation points and question marks, a few coffee or wine stains, as well as occasional welts on the thin paper caused when we were caught in an unexpected rain doing our prayers.

I can’t find the exact quote on the internet, so I paraphrase Gertrude Stein: readers have no need of heaven, for they have had books!

Posts you may have missed:

Why Christians Need Contemplation

Miss the Rapture?

If Jesus Read The New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 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 act 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, ideologies, religions, 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!”

Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to this ministry! Thank you!

Please join me this weekend at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland March 9-10, 2013 for a Saturday retreat on Henri Nouwen, “From the Heart,” and on Sunday morning, interviewed in the Dean’s Forum about “Progressive Christianity” and preaching at the 9 am jazz mass and 11:15 am choral Eucharist on “The Holy Place: Mercy and Reconciliation,” on Jesus’ parable of the prodigal.

Thanks to Brian McNaught for this wonderful article, “Religious LGBT Folk Are Unsung Heroes.”

New weekly feature! Posts you may have missed:

We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands

Seeing Things as if for the First Time

Spiritual Dyslexia

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 10:00:00 +0000

This post has been read and approved by the person of whom I write.

Given my vocation as a wordsmith, it is an ironic gift that one of my closest and dearest friends is dyslexic. He has a tough time reading my blog, let alone one of my books. But he believes in God, so he is not the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who lies awake at night wondering about the existence of Dog, as the joke goes. But he finds worship boring, and a wordy liturgy off-putting.

Dyslexia is a learning disability, not a mental disability. Yet what prompts me to write about this now is that I’ve been thinking about the prolific and profound spiritual writer Henri Nouwen’s decision to live the last ten years of his life in community with people with mental disabilities. He took satisfaction that members of the L’Arche community welcomed him for who he was, not for what he had done. What a contrast to Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, where he taught much of his life!

Most of us want to be welcomed for what we have done, yet all of us also want those experiences of grace in which we are simply welcomed for who we are. That’s why a stranger’s friendliness or a baby’s smile means so much, why a therapist’s empathy proves healing, why sharing with a soul friend touches us deeply, why family, whether biological or chosen, is often the model for homecoming.

That is among the reasons I enjoy my friend. Other reasons are that he reminds me there is more to life than words: leisurely time with friends, a fine dining experience, a carefully selected and aged wine, contemporary and classical music, helpful electronic and digital tools, comfortable and aesthetically eclectic environments, art and plants, dancing and laughter, films and television programs. To others he might be viewed as a materialist; to me, for him, matter matters—what creation and incarnation and resurrection imply.

It took some years before I began to realize he might be dyslexic. And then, as is typical of me, I began to broach the subject tentatively. Yet he was ready to talk about it, and subsequently, as we watched a couple of current documentaries about dyslexia, he was almost overjoyed as he confirmed over and over again what was being said. Many children with dyslexia are called “slow,” even “retarded,” yet a disproportionate number of dyslexics become successful entrepreneurs, even academics.

Since the condition became known, I have wondered if I am slightly dyslexic. I read slowly. I remember a teacher pulling my hair as a child because she thought I was intentionally making mistakes as we went through a phonics chart together. While I earned high marks in school, the idea of remaining in academia was unappealing. A neurolinguistic therapist once told me that we often choose our work in the area of accessing information in which we have “issues”—for me, that was writing. In more recent years, I have been able to recognize signs of dyslexia in others, from acquaintances to public figures, finding it more common than I once thought.

So it makes sense to me that many people may also live with a kind of spiritual dyslexia. They might not quite “get” God or spirituality. I’ve met people like that, who have no disdain for the spiritual life and who have had no bad religious experiences, but just don’t understand. My late friend Scott Rogo, who wrote thirty books on paranormal activity, once told me that there is a part of the brain associated with religiosity, discovered when it is damaged and produces an individual who say, for example, compulsively reads the Bible from cover to cover over and over again. I must admit I was a little depressed to learn that spiritual interests might thus be predetermined.

Yet Simon LeVay, the neuroscientist who discovered differences in the brains of gay men, explained to me there’s a kind of “chicken-and-the-egg,” which-came-first question in neuroscience. Does behavior develop a part of the brain, or does the brain’s difference cause certain behaviors?

I believe that’s why the spiritual life needs both intention and attention. We all have something that gets us out of bed in the morning, some belief system that gets us through our day. Discerning this is the foundation of the spiritual life; cultivating this is building our spirituality on that foundation. Yet we don’t have to do this alone. All religions have our foundational figures, myths, and stories on which to build. All religions have traditions and histories and houses of worship on which to draw and in which to participate.

In addition, those with spiritual dyslexia may be our spiritual entrepreneurs who lead us to greener pastures and fresher waters to restore our souls. Maybe that’s the inspiration of Progressive Christianity, the Emerging Church, Creation Spirituality, New Age Spirituality, as well as renewed interest in contemplation, Celtic Christianity, and the interfaith movement, maybe even the passion behind current expressions of atheism and agnosticism. Perhaps spiritual dyslexia offers a different or nonlinear way of conceptualizing God, reality, and the life of the spirit.

Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to this ministry!

Please join me at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio March 9-10 for a Saturday retreat on Henri Nouwen, “From the Heart,” and on Sunday morning, interviewed in the Dean’s Forum about “Progressive Christianity” and preaching at the 9 am jazz mass and 11:15 am choral Eucharist on “The Holy Place: Mercy and Reconciliation,” on Jesus’ parable of the prodigal.

New weekly feature! Posts you may have missed:

Spiritual Picassos

Richard Dawkins Has More Faith than I Do

It's a Small, Small World

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:00:00 +0000

“Most of the time we can forget the universe, frankly,” said Stephen Baxter, president of the British Science Fiction Association and the author of books like Space and Last and First Contacts. “But today, there was ‘a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down,’ to quote David Bowie. It reminds us of our true location, so to speak.”

This comes from a New York Times article by John Williams about last week’s meteor explosion over Russia. Referring to the 1908 Tungusta Event in which a passing asteroid flattened a large area of Siberia, fiction writer Tom Bissell was also quoted as saying, “Can you imagine that happening above a major metropolitan area? It would either fill the churches or empty the churches.”

Most of us live in our own little worlds, living and moving and having our being as if not surrounded by and immersed in an ocean, not just of stars, but of galaxies. Earth is the proverbial grain of sand in multiple quadzillions of miles of a metaphorical cosmic shoreline. And, if the universe is infinite, probability theorists tell us there is another planet not just with life, but specifically with you, [insert your name], and me. The late television series Fringe was not so “fringey” after all.

Location, location, location! The mantra of real estate agents should be our own to gain perspective on our own pet peeves, Washington dysfunction, and Middle East tensions, to name a few examples. Repeatedly the Psalmist got this, as did the writer of Job and the Hebrew prophets, including Jesus. We sometimes get it too when observing the beauty of a clear night sky, enduring suffering or suffering catastrophes, falling in love or giving birth—all opportunities for Bowie’s “crack in the sky” through which we may reach for the hand of God.

When religion no longer opens the sky for us, it is no longer useful in the spiritual quest. Then science or poetry or nature or art or life events may step in to save us from closed hearts, closed minds, and closed church doors.

Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to this ministry!

New weekly feature! Last week’s “top ten” most visited posts inspired me to highlight two previous posts each week that you may have missed. Click on each title to read:

Dolphins and Sharks

Hang-Gliding and Mudwrestling: The Spiritual Life

"A Trust beyond Betrayal"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Readers, happy second anniversary! This weekly blog began on February 17, 2011. Below today’s post I’ve listed the “top ten” posts, those most visited since “Progressive Christian Reflections” began. Contributions to this ministry are welcome. Thank you!

The presentation I refer to in this post is now available on YouTube (18 minutes).

A campus is often a fearful place to speak. I am more likely to be challenged for my religious views than for my sexual orientation. But early in the 20^th century, Martha Berry founded a Christian school for enterprising rural boys in northwest Georgia that has blossomed into a co-ed college that welcomes religious values. Invited to speak by Berry College as a gay Christian to (as it turned out) 160 students and members of the faculty and administration, I feared that conservative and fundamentalist students might play “gotcha” with scripture or outright condemn me.

Instead, I was asked questions by those truly seeking answers, those who actually listened and tried to understand my point of view, even when they disagreed. During the reception that followed, the conversation continued, and one young man asked me to elaborate on something I had said toward the end of my presentation: “As is often true in the spiritual life, along the way I have let go of things and beliefs and practices I no longer need to have faith in God, that can even get in the way of complete trust in God.” And I explained that’s why I embrace progressive Christianity, letting go of incomplete and confining images of God—why the second of the Ten Commandments forbids such images. I concluded, “I like to say that the less one believes, the more faith is required.”

This last sentence had puzzled the student, and I tried to explain this phenomenon further, but unsatisfactorily, in my own judgment.

In preparation for teaching a weekend Spiritual Formation course on the Christian writer Henri Nouwen at Columbia Theological Seminary, I am re-reading the three books I’ve assigned to the class. One is Can You Drink the Cup?, a distillation of the spiritual life written in Henri’s final year of life. Reflecting on the crucifixion, when Jesus felt most abandoned, Henri writes, “Jesus still had a spiritual bond with the one he called Abba. He possessed a trust beyond betrayal, a surrender beyond despair, a love beyond all fears.”

This would have been a fine example to illustrate my point “that the less one believes, the more faith is required.” Stripped of his believing disciples and adoring multitudes and even religious certainty, betrayed and denied and offered up to death by his own, tried and judged and tortured by the religious and political establishment, accused of blasphemy and treason and arrogance, and finally lifted up on a cross of shame, suffering, and death, Jesus “possessed a trust beyond betrayal” in his spiritual intimacy with God.

Progressive Christians have voluntarily followed Jesus’ sacrificial model, letting go of the trappings of religious certainty—the so-called “fundamentals,” including biblical inerrancy, as well as restrictive orthodoxy and religious exceptionalism—to nakedly trust in God as our spiritual hope and in Jesus as our spiritual guide as we quest for truth and justice, kindness and inclusiveness.

Lent, which begins today, Ash Wednesday, is a good time to let go of all hindrances to “a trust beyond betrayal,” whether doubts or sins or untenable beliefs.

May I suggest reading posts from this blog (using the archive in the right rail of the blog site) as a possible daily exercise for this season of preparation for Holy Week?

Posts seen by between 600-700 visitors and subscribers (click on titles to read):

Faggot Jesus

The Body of Christ

Spiritual Care for the Liberated

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

“Bad Theology”

Is Marriage Sacred?

Blessed Are the Job Creators

Wise as Serpents

The God Who Removes Obstacles

Jesus as Sexual Actor

A Bone to Pick with Scripture

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:00:00 +0000

By her mere presence, sleeping at my feet as I write this, our dog Hobbes reminds me to lighten up after my last post’s earnest struggling with the Book of Revelation. For me, she truly is one of those “thin places” of Celtic spirituality through which I glimpse heaven on earth.

And I repeatedly witness that she does the same for others. When she rides in the car with me while out running errands, she often elicits a smile from those we pass. For a moment they transcend their stress and preoccupations and the traffic and enter a place of joy, good humor, and tenderness, like a child glad to be given a new stuffed animal. At first I think they are smiling at me, and then I realize it’s my passenger of the canine persuasion sitting attentively in the front seat. I don’t mind basking in the overflow of goodwill she generates.

A neighbor along our route home after walking in Grant Park has two bumper stickers on his truck: “I BELIEVE IN DOG,” says one, and “DOG IS MY CO-PILOT” says the other. And it’s true, I do believe in Hobbes, and she is definitely my anamchara, or soul friend, also from Celtic Christianity. She’s a very good listener, puts up with my singing, and is always looking out for me. In turn, I take pleasure in her snoring, her big round eyes (alternately wistful, pitiful, or ecstatic, working her wiles), her sloppy wet ear kisses, and her nosing the doorknob when it’s time to go out.

That’s why I was shocked, toward the end of Revelation, to discover it said of the New Jerusalem come down from heaven, that “Others must stay outside: dogs, fortune tellers, and the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone of false speech and false life” (22:15). And there was no footnote explaining the reference to dogs in the New Jerusalem Bible I was reading!

I immediately thought of what I remember as an old Twilight Zone episode, a story that not long ago found new life on the internet, about a man who refuses to enter heaven’s gate without his dog, only to find the true heaven’s gate further down the road and that the gate he resisted entering was, in fact, “the other place.” The true heaven welcomed man and dog.

In her early life, when I was out of town, Hobbes’s favorite dog sitters were both transgender. One was a Muslim, and I had to be careful scheduling around the holy month of Ramadan, when he could not be around a dog during daylight hours. Religion sometimes considers dogs “unclean,” and I wondered if that were the origin of the taboo in Revelation.

So I checked the Oxford Annotated New Revised Standard Version. It, too, listed “dogs” as unwelcome in the New Jerusalem, but this time a footnote clarifies it meant, “impure, lascivious persons,” though it also references Philippians 3:2, where dogs referred to those who insisted on circumcision—in other words, those who were religious purists, the fundamentalists of their time.

Hobbes’s companion, Calvin, who passed on in San Francisco when I served a church there as an interim pastor, wrote “On Dogs in Scripture” in his book Unleashed: The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog. Calvin noted that dogs were “not positively portrayed in the scriptures of various religions,” but “associated with depravity, paganism, heresy, enemies, and the lowest of the low.” Then he pointed out, “Jesus said not to give us what’s holy, but agreed, at least, that we had a right to eat the crumbs that fall from our master’s table.” He continued:

This last reference must serve as the can-opener [Canine for hermeneutic, or method of interpretation] to reveal God’s intentions with regard to dogs. Canine prejudice abounded when most religious canons were written. Surely this admittedly fleeting reference to our right to whatever falls from our masters’ tables gives dogs new status in scriptural dogma. Only those who don’t like us would use the other scriptures against us. And, reading scriptures as a whole, it’s clear that God is usually on the side of the underdog, and there’s nothing more ‘under’ than us dogs! (60-61).

Calvin sat in the back seat of the car when Hobbes joined our family. But he took a back seat to no one when it came to biblical interpretation.

For more excerpts from Calvin’s book, click here.

Other posts about Hobbes or Calvin:

My Dog Ate My Scripture

Let God Rub Your Belly

Please donate to this ministry today. Thank you!

Photos and words Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.

Fear, Flight, Fight, and Fancy--A Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

The last two weeks I’ve been reading Revelation again, this time during my morning prayer time. My favorite part? When the Lamb breaks the seventh seal and there is “silence in heaven for about half an hour.”

Because of the way I was brought up, the Revelation to John has always been the scariest text in the Bible. And confusing—how do you wash a garment white as snow in blood? So it’s a good example for testing a new approach to all scripture.

Growing up, I read, or heard interpreted, Revelation with fear. And there’s much to be afraid of, like a really bad nightmare, and neither God nor Jesus could comfort me, because they, too, come across as frightening in this depiction. The violence and torture in this book makes Zero Dark Thirty, 24, and vicious video games seem tame by comparison. Many of you might consider Revelation just another example of toxic words that I wrote about in last week’s post. And it’s texts like these in every religion that prompt the more literal among us to forget that spiritual warfare is best treated as a metaphor for the spiritual struggle.

As I “evolved” as a Christian, I simply took flight from Revelation. After all, even Martin Luther wished it were not in the biblical canon. It was easy for me to ignore it with so much better “stuff” in the Bible, or use the few parts that appealed to me. Its writer was clearly an over-the-top Goth-style drama queen who needed a good editor, one who might have helped avoid the bored and snarky critic in me, muttering, “The end of the world seems endless.” Preferable are end-of-the-world sagas like The Day After (nuclear holocaust) and The Day After Tomorrow (instant ice age due to climate change) that move more swiftly!

When contemporary Christians began to read it as a description of our times, I fought that notion with biblical scholarship, which teaches that its context was the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, the Beast, and specifically Nero, 666 or 616 depending on which early manuscript one relies on. That explains why the writer seems fixated on retributive bloodshed, burning, drowning, and disease. That’s also why Revelation (and I would say the whole of the Bible) should not be read in a version without footnotes, or worse, a paraphrased version (which means the paraphraser has interpreted the text from their own bias). I’m presently using the New Jerusalem Bible, which has footnotes.

So, having used three approaches to Revelation—fear, flight, and fight—I find myself now using fancy to understand what the mystic John was trying to reveal. (Fancy can be used to understand other scriptures too, which is where midrash comes in handy. Midrash, a rabbinical tool of discernment, is a creative re-telling of old stories, sometimes with humor.)

Think of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The Narnia Chronicles, Harry Potter, Avatar, and other literary fantasies, such as fables, legends, science fiction, comic book heroes and graphic novel epics. They all require fancy to watch or read them as somehow “true.” And their truth lies in what they are trying to impart.

Reading Revelation, I could see George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Dreamworks, Pixar, and like-minded creative fanciers producing it, using current technology to make it seem real.

Meanwhile, what truths am I gleaning from it? Here’s my list so far:

1. The good’s struggle with its opposition is real, externally and internally, materially and spiritually.

2. The good includes those of “every nation, race, language, and tribe,” a refrain appearing multiple times throughout Revelation.

3. Empire—world domination—whether as government, corporation, or religion, endangers our soul collectively and individually, as well as all creation.

4. Idolatry, represented in our time by consumerism, materialism, nationalism, militarism, and ideological and dogmatic certainty, distracts us from what is spiritually vital and eternal.

5. In the words of the praise song, “our God is an awesome God” who is best understood metaphorically, even in Jesus.

6. Worship lifts us up, but its central purpose is to honor the holy.

7. We are surrounded by saints—past, present, and future.

8. God is on the side of the good and of the future, inspiring, challenging, chastening, comforting, and refreshing creation.

9. Joy and life, peace and justice, will overcome what opposes them, thanks be to God, who ultimately wins, as do the good.

10. In trial and triumph, in truth and in time, God is with us.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Read Revelation yourself, but not literally. Read it with fancy.

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Peace in the Neighborhood

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Along one of our morning walks, our dog Hobbes and I pass an old house with two-story-high wooden columns. Recent walks have given me an opportunity to really “see” the house, and in a kinder way than I have before.

You see, during President George W. Bush’s wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the owner of the house nailed a large sign on one of those columns, declaring, “Thanks Pres. Bush & Our Troops for Kicking Ass!” For me, its angry tone disturbed the relative peace of our neighborhood. I’d prefer to see a yellow ribbon or American flag as a sign of solidarity with our troops and our leaders. Instead I felt a little on edge whenever I passed by.

It reminded me of the power of words to be violent, harsh, and violating. The words I most regret are those I’ve spoken or written in careless anger. (I say “careless anger,” because I believe anger can be good if directed, managed, and channeled properly and constructively.) Studies show that even raising your voice can elicit shame in others.

At the polls last November, I endured the toxic sting of just that, a poll manager who yelled at me, when all I was doing was looking to see if I was in the right line. I had not spoken, I had not tried to get ahead of anyone, but her blast heard round my neighbors in the social hall of my own church shamed me as if I had. When I returned to my place, two women in line with me who witnessed what transpired said, “We think you need a hug!” And though strangers, each one hugged me. Even the sympathy of other poll workers did not alleviate my desire to vote and get out of there as quickly as possible. And it took me several days to shake the venom the woman had injected.

The incident made me think of those of us who grew up with hateful language directed at us because of who we happened to be, the venom injected into our bodies by words that violated our souls, a toxin many of us carry within us to this day. It is hard not to repay evil for evil, a word for a word. A gay activist friend discovered that when he began writing diatribes against his evangelical world; someone from the King Center for Non-Violent Social Change called this to his attention, and now he is a devotee of non-violence in speech and thought as well as action.

When Barack Obama became president, the sign on the house briefly disappeared, and I wondered if the reason was partisan. But soon it reappeared, amended to read, “Thanks, Pres. Obama & Our Troops for Kicking Ass!” At least the homeowner was bipartisan! But it made me feel no more pleasure walking past it.

Now that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq is winding down, the sign has recently been removed. The house seems kinder and gentler as we walk past. And the neighborhood feels a little more peaceful.

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Rev. Glaser will serve as one of two presenters on a panel, “Spiritual Journeys of Gay Religious Leaders,” at Berry College in northwest Georgia (near Rome) Tuesday evening, January 29, 2013, 7:30-9:00 p.m. in McAllister Hall 119, the science auditorium.

This blog is only funded by your donations. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!

"Keep the Dream Alive"

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

I captured this photo on the Washington Mall during the 1983 March on Washington commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the historic 1963 march at which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famed “I Have a Dream” speech.

One of the good things about coming out of the closet is that I have a lot of closet space in which to store memories like this. I ran across the photo while looking for several items for Ft. Lauderdale’s Stonewall Museum at the request of my longtime friend, activist and author Brian McNaught.

Looking at the photo now, I wonder where this little girl is today. She would be in her thirties and my hope is that she is in some kind of leadership position—professionally, as a volunteer, or as a parent. I even fancy she might be part of the Obama administration, a dream come true for the 1963 marchers and all those marchers who followed in commemorations since.

It makes me nostalgic for the days when “religion in the public square”—marching, speaking, writing, and activism for civil rights and justice and peace from a faith perspective—was welcomed even by non-religious progressives. Nowadays every time I write such a piece for The Huffington Post, I am stunned by the angry responses from people wary of ANY religion in the public square. After decades of reactionary Christians’ wars on women, LGBT people, peace activists, environmentalists, gun control advocates, atheists, and those of other faiths, even I wish Christians would just shut-up.

But Christians helped transform my youthful conservative views into a mature and open liberal understanding of issues and people. The weekend that Rev. King was assassinated, the youth minister of the Free Evangelical church I attended in high school read King’s sermon, “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” during Sunday evening worship. On the first Sunday I visited the Presbyterian church I soon joined while in college, the seminary intern’s sermon recounted the past decade of the Civil Rights Movement. The senior pastor of the church had earlier preached against an initiative that would have repealed a California fair housing act that eliminated racial barriers to purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. Morning worship was followed every Sunday by a forum on issues of peace and justice, from school bussing and the Vietnam War to the founding of MCC.

In his sermon, “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” Dr. King spoke of length of days for growth, breadth of human concern and community, and finally, “height or that upward reach toward something distinctly greater than humanity.” Of those who miss that upward reach, King preached, “They seek to live without a sky.”

“Where there is no vision, the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18 reads in the King James Version. Subsequent translations refer to prophecy rather than vision. I am grateful Rev. King’s prophetic vision gave us the upward reach to “keep the dream alive.”

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Thank you to the many who responded to my questions in last week’s post, “Do You Read My Blog?” You made my day! For those who haven’t yet responded, I welcome additional comments.

Photo and words copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes. This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!

Do You Read My Blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

On the occasion of this 100^th weekly post on Progressive Christian Reflections, I thought I would provide a report to readers as well as a request for feedback. Do you read this? How often (guestimate)? How do you use it? Do you share it? Do you have suggestions? Subscribers may simply reply to the e-mail address from which it is sent; others may write me at chrsglaser@aol.com (note there is no “i” in the name).

Today this blog will have registered 60,000 visits since its creation mid-February of 2011. Visitors come from all over the world, though the bulk comes from the U.S. and Switzerland. (I’m not sure why the latter, unless there is a server in that country that distributes to other countries.) Inexplicably, I’ve had surges from time to time from disparate countries, for example: 30 visitors in a single week from Morocco, 40 from China, 75 from Russia, and 102 from Italy. The Vatican makes an occasional visit.

Many of my posts have been re-posted on other blogsites or in e-newsletters, such as ProgressiveChristianity.org, and I blog occasionally for The Huffington Post and Bilerico.

There are over 300 subscribers and followers. (If you subscribed and do not receive this weekly, try subscribing again and respond to the follow-up e-mail verifying your subscription, and check your spam filter.) Between 100 and 200 now visit the site each day, perhaps reading more than one post. But few comments are placed on the blog itself; a few more come to me directly from subscribers responding to a particular post.

Since last spring when donations became possible, I am aware of six contributors who have given a total of $215. Btw, if you have made a contribution and not received a handwritten “thank you” note from me, please let me know. Your donations are this ministry’s only financial support. If you’d like to contribute, please click here. Thanks! And please consider inviting me to speak or lead an event.

Told by a publisher that there was no market for meditations for progressive Christians, I decided to give away reflections through this blog. It is free, both to visit and to subscribe. And it is not “monetized” (no ads) to avoid distractions to readers. I post the link on 20-30 relevant Facebook pages each Wednesday morning, as well as to my 2100+ Facebook friends. I encourage all to distribute the link and the posts freely, and to use the posts not only for personal reflection, but for readings in worship or conversation-starters in classes.

I am grateful that Rev. Elder Darlene Garner and Metropolitan Community Churches authorized this blog as an Emerging Ministry in the spring of 2012. MCC receives a tithe from donations in gratitude for handling contributions. MCC has served the broader church throughout its 44-year history as an ecumenical, inclusive, and progressive witness to Jesus and his message of God’s commonwealth.

Writing the blog is a fulfilling form of ministry for me, and I am grateful for you who read it. I believe it’s time for the spirituality of progressive Christians to come out of the closet. We are as spiritually motivated as our often more vocal sisters and brothers in the faith. And we need to be fed and uplifted spiritually.

Early on I mentioned Jesus telling his disciples a parable so that they “might pray always and not lose heart.” It was the story of a woman seeking justice from an unjust judge, who finally gives in to her repeated cries for justice just to be rid of her. I hope progressive Christians take this parable to heart, and never give up seeking justice and mercy and peace, as well as an inclusive church, interfaith dialogue, and fresh ways to understand and interpret our faith.

P.S. Last week’s post also appeared on The Huffington Post, where it has received 470 “likes” and over 500 comments. Click here to see it, and please scroll down to find the comments.

God Is Not a Control Freak

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

God is not a control freak! Evolution should be enough to prove this point. Evil too. And free will.

And yet, when faced with tragedies, such as Sandy or Newtown or AIDS, many people expect God to be at “his” control panel avoiding them. There is much theological handwringing in commentaries and blogs, even by—or especially from—those uncertain about God’s very existence.

With his book, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God, Process philosopher-theologian Charles Hartshorne helped me shed my need to believe in a God in absolute control when I was a college student in the early ’70s. Who are you most likely to love, he posits, the most loving person or the most powerful person? Most of us would opt for the most loving. So it is with God.

Do we want a God who is all-powerful or all-loving? We can’t have both and be satisfied with a God who permits the Holocaust, genocide, war, and tsunamis.

But by the time I published my second book (1990), Come Home!, a book reclaiming Christianity for LGBT people, I found I wasn’t completely satisfied with this resolution, one that gets God off the hook for bad things happening to good and bad people. I had come to the realization that love is God’s power.

Our human notion of power is distorted, I came to believe, a notion of power that’s about coercion rather than persuasion, control rather than compassion. And a central thread of the Bible depicts a God of persuasion, a Good Shepherd more than a king, a Servant more than a master, Empowering more than in power. Yes, there are biblical texts that depict God and even Jesus as king, master, in charge—but that’s more our need than God’s, in my view. God demonstrates leadership, that gift of persuading us to do the right thing, to practice the way of justice and mercy. That’s the power of love.

The final phrase of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is “deliver us from evil.” Putting this request last indicates to me its importance. When I began saying the prayer daily, I thought I was praying that God would keep evil things from happening to me. But now I believe—no, now I know that I am praying that I root out the potential for evil in myself: my indifference, my cruelty, my selfishness, my inattentiveness, my ignorance, my insensitivity, my sins. I should have “gotten” this long ago by the phrase that precedes “deliver us from evil”: “lead us not into temptation.”

I have also come to believe that everything that happens to us—good and evil—is an opportunity for what Thomas Moore calls soul-shaping, and what Henri Nouwen described as turning negatives into positives, the one-time alchemy of the photographer. The apostle Paul understood this when he said “nothing can separate us from the love of God” in the same epistle to the Romans that he opined “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” In a mirrored understanding of the first sentence, everything may connect us to the love of God. Faith gives us a context of meaning in which even the evil we encounter may transform us into more loving and therefore more godly beings.

The public is invited to Henri Nouwen: The Wounded Healer, a spiritual formation course led by Rev. Chris Glaser, a student and friend of the late Christian author, Feb 28-Mar 3, Columbia Theological Seminary, Atlanta, GA. No prerequisite course is required. Glaser’s book, Henri’s Mantle: 100Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy, is available on Amazon.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes. This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!

Newtown to Newcountry? "We Must Change."

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Working from home a week ago, Wade mentioned he had received a CNN news flash on his phone that there had been another mass shooting. Busy finishing up the duties of my online course on sexuality and Christianity, I acknowledged this latest shooting with an “uh-huh” and continued working.

Only toward the end of the day did I learn the victims were children and the site an elementary school. I lost it. Tears immediately came to my eyes. First graders, six- and seven-year-olds, are particularly precious innocents to me. “Thy childish essence was from God,” Charles Dickens wrote of another such child. I lost it again when it was reported that wails could be heard coming from inside the fire station when their parents learned their fate. And the educators—principal, teachers, teacher’s aide—who lost their lives, trying to protect “their kids”: OMG, OMG, OMG.

Moments of silence are being observed the day I write this, one week later, in memory of those so brutalized. Silence is good; it reminds us that there is nothing to be said adequate to this occasion. It gives us a chance to catch our breath and remember theirs. It gives a chance to reflect. But I’ve needed more than a moment. I’ve needed a week, which is why this wasn’t last week’s post. And even now it seems presumptuous, even dangerous to venture thoughts on the incomprehensible tragedy. I felt sorry for all those pastors and rabbis and imams who had to preach that weekend.

In his public reflections, President Barack Obama said of us Americans, “We must change.” Having both worked and volunteered in congregations, on campuses, and in community organizations, I have learned that those are the three most challenging and most resisted words. “We must change.”

Psychologist M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” which he saw at work both in institutions and individuals, an inability even to imagine one’s self or one’s group being wrong. I have used it to describe the church’s resistance to gay people. Whereas gay people, like all outsiders, usually grew up questioning ourselves, the church resisted questioning its prejudice and exclusion.

“We must change” is predicated on questioning ourselves and our institutions and overcoming our inertia, something we are reluctant to do. For Christians, this means also considering how Jesus would view us.

On departure from the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the “military-industrial complex,” which he had earlier warned would take food from the hungry. But his original draft warned of the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” He was persuaded to take “congressional” out, but how needful the warning is today, as we witness congressional impasse and collusion with weapons manufacturers, other major corporations, and the National Rifle Association. (See the New York Times editorial explaining that the NRA actually represents gun manufacturers, not gun owners. Btw, in my view, the NRA’s proposal of a guard in every school is the solution of a third-grader [apologies to third-graders] that would only add to the body count and further burden insufficiently-funded schools.)

When the Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred years ago, I led a prayer for that campus during a regularly scheduled prayer service of a church I was serving in another part of the country. I was stunned to have another progressive Christian offer what amounted to a “rebuttal” prayer, deriding our horror at that violence when things like that happened all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course we frequently prayed for Iraq and Afghanistan in that service. But that night, I felt particularly close to those on the Virginia Tech campus because I had spoken there, made friends there, one of whom I called to see how everyone was coping and if any I knew were among the casualties.

Similarly, I felt close to those on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School because my mother spent her entire professional life teaching first-graders, and I remember every day after school seeing how those innocents hung affectionately on my mother, even when they had moved to upper grades, because they loved her so and she loved them so. I could see her also putting her body between the shooter and those innocents.

At the same time, I am mindful of the ten Afghanistan schoolgirls, all under 12 years of age, killed in the blast of a Soviet-era landmine as they collected firewood for their homes on the Monday following the Newtown shootings.

“We must change.” That means me, and you, this nation and the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes. This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click hereto make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!

The Magic Kingdom

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In memory of the children, who love stories, and the educators, who tell stories, who lost their lives in Newtown, Connecticut, and in solidarity with those who grieve.

From my first book, published in 1988, I most often referred to the “commonwealth of God” rather than the “kingdom of God.” I did so not only to avoid the feudal, patriarchal, and hierarchical connotations of “kingdom,” but more importantly, to convey my perception of the realm of God as one in which we share a common spiritual wealth, equally citizens and inheritors as beloved daughters and sons of God. And I do not think of that commonwealth as exclusively Christian. I know that “commonwealth” may have negative connotations to some of those who think of the British Commonwealth, a product of colonialism, but I wanted a term with more gravitas than “realm” and didn’t sound made-up like “kindom.”

But when I say The Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer that Jesus Taught Us, I still say “Thy kingdom come.” That’s because I associate the term with fairy tales and storytelling and, truth be told, The Magic Kingdom—er, Disneyland.

A little backstory: I grew up in Southern California, and Disneyland was completed there when I was five years old. So I grew up going to Disneyland occasionally, watching The Mickey Mouse Club, and yearning to be home viewing The Wonderful World of Disney rather than attending our far less interesting Sunday evening worship service. Whereas other kids idolized athletes and actors, I idolized Walt Disney, drawn by his enormous creativity and willingness to experiment in disparate fields, but mostly by his ability to tell stories. As a child, I thought the world would end if Walt Disney died, and I still have the newspaper with the headline announcing his death when I was 16 years old, as you can see.

I once saw him at Disneyland showing a foreign dignitary around Frontierland near the paddle-wheel steamboat on the faux Mississippi River. My eyes widened in wonder seeing god a few feet away! And somewhere in storage, I have a photo of him taken that day.

Even in adulthood, I dreamed Disney had hired me as one of his Imagineers, though I wondered what he might do if he found out I was gay. Bob Thomas’s biography of him mentioned an occasion when a gay Disney employee had been arrested in a compromising situation and Disney was asked if he should be let go. “We all make mistakes,” Disney reportedly said, retaining the worker.

To me, the kingdom of heaven is THE magic kingdom, the originator of biblical and apocryphal tales of mystery, hope, and striving. And what better time of year to write of this than Christmas, when we are overwhelmed, not only with the magical stories of Jesus’ nativity, but all kinds of Christmas stories about Grinches and Scrooges, magical golden retrievers and Polar Expresses, The Bishop’s Wife and how, after all, It’s a Wonderful Life. Other than Jesus (of course!) the best thing about Christmas is that it has breathed life into so many wonderful stories, including our own.

I have a very progressive Christian friend who is admirable and smart, wise and insightful, compassionate and a justice advocate. She spends a lot of time demythologizing and deconstructing in a quasi-scientific intellectual and academic search for truth. When I told her about my as-yet-unpublished novels, I learned that she never reads fiction. And my eyes were opened. She doesn’t enjoy stories that are not true, thus her continual reductions and redactions of the biblical story; whereas I enjoy all well-told stories. Even the Hallmark channel can make me cry and rejoice.

Walt Disney said that the Magic Kingdom would never be finished as long as there was imagination left in the world. That’s exactly how I feel about the Kingdom of God, as long as there is spiritual imagination, it will never be complete.

P.S. Go see The Life of Pi. Or better yet, read the book! And Merry Christmas!

You may also want to read last year’s Christmas post, “Put Yourself in the Nativity Story.”

Our Own Fiscal Cliffs

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Many who follow this blog have been involved in non-profits and congregations professionally or as volunteers, so we know about things like “fiscal cliffs,” when expenses exceed donations. And many of us have coped with minimal incomes as clergy, teachers, writers, artists, and service providers, and have braved fiscal cliffs of our own when bills exceed income.

Some years ago I was grateful to have income from leading a weekend retreat, glad to be slightly ahead of the game financially. Then I broke a tooth, requiring unexpected dental costs that emptied my checking account. There were two ways I could interpret that situation: feel despair that my earnings had been depleted by this incident; or feel blessed that I had the resources to cover the unanticipated event. I chose the latter, though I teetered precariously on the brink of a less grateful response!

Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan has suggested that Jesus’ appeal to the poor came because of his attention to the body and its needs, thus the healings, thus the references in the Lord’s Prayer to “forgive us our debts” and “give us this day our daily bread.” Crossan says that bread and debts “are the two ancient ghosts that haunt the peasant imagination.” Often ours as well.

Those of us in helping or creative vocations often struggle to make ends meet. In the early ’90s I took a job that required me parking my car in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood. Walking past one fine home after another, I thought how Hollywood occasionally makes movies about rich people who have an epiphany and give it all up to serve the less fortunate. I joked with my coworkers that I thought there should also be films about people who have spent their lives helping the less fortunate who have an epiphany and give it all up to become wealthy! (I can guess that you might now be thinking of prosperity gospel and mega-church pastors!)

Preliminary studies indicate that the area of the brain stimulated by winning the lottery is similarly stimulated by giving to charity, a kind of neurological “reward” for doing good. That may be why the best book on serving others that I have read, How Can I Help? (Ram Dass and Paul Gorman) offers examples that the least patronizing and most satisfying help is experienced as mutually beneficial.

When his cheery nephew comes to wish him “Merry Christmas” and invite him to Christmas dinner, Scrooge resists and, regarding his poor nephew’s observance of the holiday, retorts, “Much good it has ever done you!”

To which the nephew replies, “There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say.”

Many of us have derived and even promoted good without much profit. Thus we are more likely to take seriously all those end-of-the-year requests for donations from charities and ministries.

Let’s all feel good this Christmas by making it a little easier for our favorite do-gooders to avoid fiscal cliffs.

For a partisan political take on the government’s fiscal cliff, read my latest Huffington Post post: Pushing Tiny Tim Over Fiscal Cliff.

Gandhi Died Today

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Glaser) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Today I read a few of the final entries of The Gandhi Reader (ed. Homer A. Jack) about Mahatma Gandhi’s death. And I cried as if I were there.

I’ve been re-reading passages regarding Gandhi’s belief that non-violent direct action could have challenged Hitler or even atomic bombs, just as it brought British colonialism to an end in India and Pakistan; his concern about Europe’s anti-semitism as well as the establishment of a state of Israel in Palestine; his encounter with the African American preacher and civil rights leader Howard Thurman and his wife; and his multiple fastings to stop the bloodshed among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. Whatever you make of his ideas, his compassion is unquestionable, even in death.

I have visited the site in India where his body was cremated. In college I occasionally meditated and studied on the peaceful grounds of the Self Realization Fellowship in southern California’s Pacific Palisades, where some of his ashes are interred in a World Peace Memorial (pictured above) near a “wall-less temple.”

The Richard Attenborough film Gandhi was released the week before I went to India on a Fordham University religious studies tour. I managed to see it twice before I left, and so, on my first day wandering the neighborhood of our hotel in New Dehli on my own, I discovered Birla House, his last residence, and the garden behind, where he led prayers and met his death. Now a museum, I visited his small room at the rear of the house and followed his final steps in the garden, footprints cast in bronze.

As sacramentals of the visit, I purchased three sets of companion posters, one with Gandhi’s photo and another with a quote of his, two of which I gave to close friends, the Yale historian John Boswell, who contributed so much to the history of gay people in the church; and the other to Linda Culbertson, currently the executive of Pacific Presbytery, with whom I had seen the movie. My friend George Lynch framed my set for my home office, and they serve as a constant reminder of Gandhi’s self-less perseverance to empower “the poorest and the weakest.”

Dr. Thurman asked Gandhi how to train people in the “difficult art” of Ahimsa, non-violence, to which Gandhi replied, “There is no royal road, except through living the creed in your life which must be a living sermon. … Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and everything else shall be added unto you. The Kingdom of Heaven is Ahimsa.”

Gandhi died today, and still he lives, offering his darshan, the joy of his spiritual presence, to all who read his words and remember his deeds.