Don’t get me wrong. I love the church. I’ve devoted most of my life to the church.  I believe in the church.   Jesus is with the church for better or worse–he’s committed to working through flesh and blood.

The church in the United States does a great deal of good, much of it unsung.  The global relief efforts supported by church based missions around the world are STAGGERING in their scope. The hungry would be hungrier without churches.  The fragile fabric of community in this ever man for himself culture would be torn asunder without churches being churches.

But we’ve managed to shoot ourselves in our gospel-clad feet.  Consider this: the largest Christian institution is wracked by a paedophilia scandal that will be with us for our lifetime.  The most vibrant religious movement in the United States–evangelicalism–has squandered it’s inheritance in exchange for what?  To become a hard-ball political force deeply entwined with with one political-cultural alliance, branding the Jesus faith as pro-war, anti-gay, pro-Israel whether justice is served or not,  anti-environment, anti-science.   The book by the Barna Group, UnChristian, provides the gruesome details.

I’ve been a believer since 1971, and it didn’t use to be this way.  The barriers in the path of those who are in need of some good news are massive. If we are in denial over these things, it’s completely understandable.

Christians have always been, will always be, misunderstood. We claim to follow a guy who who rose from the dead. This will invite skepticism.  But that does not account for the state of things today.

I really do, believe it or not, hesitate to speak like this. But in this post, as in the previous two, I’m writing for fellow pastors.  We cannot afford to candy coat what it is we’re up against. And the responsibility we have to do our small part to change it.

We have a responsibility to understand how outsiders read us.  And the impact their reading has.  Because people don’t read the Bible until they’ve read the readers of the Bible and find in them a story they want to explore further.

Let us take the matter of science that’s been the concern of the previous two posts.

Let’s say you are a non-religious person who is open to believing.  You’ve have never encountered a compelling reason to believe; you’ve never been close to a compelling witness.  But you have a new friend who is also a believer.  Reads the Bible daily.  Gives generously–ten percent of income to the church and more than that for other neighbors in need.  Gives way more than you do to causes you believe in.

But then, your friend starts spouting opinions that you can’t help but regard as crackpot opinions.  I don’t know, say he thinks the moon landing was a hoax, or believes aliens have been abducting people on a regular basis, or is convinced the President of the United States is a Muslim.

Mind you, I’m not arguing that the moon landing wasn’t a hoax or that aliens haven’t been abducting people for a long time.  I’m just trying to help you appreciate how jarring it would be, when someone you would otherwise respect, turns out to hold, for lack of a better word, crackpot views.  It makes you wonder if this new friend is someone you want to listen to when it comes to discerning what is real and what is not.

That’s how many normal, moderate, considerate people view those who think science has it all wrong–that the earth is really 10,000 years old, rather than 4,500,000,000 years old, say, or that evolution is a theory in crisis, or that climate science is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to lead us down the primrose path of socialism.

Please, if you hold any of these views, I am not calling you a crackpot.  I  know many very intelligent and thoughtful people who have the aforementioned opinions.  I don’t think of them as crackpots.  But I have the insider information needed to see them differently than others do.

But, pastor, can you place yourself in the position of someone who might perceive these as crackpot opinions? Opinions that would affect your  willingness to trust a person’s ability to bear reliable witness to something you don’t yet see?

I’m using the inflammatory word, “crackpot” so you can appreciate the feelings many people have when, from the outside, they look into the Christian culture.

But you, as a pastor, have a responsibility to face this reality squarely–this missional reality, that is–and decide what to do about it. Is it OK with you that millions of people are reluctant to accept the witness of the church because in their view Christians hold very strange opinions about scientific matters?  As a pastor, do you challenge this reality and seek to change it?  Or do you play along?  Oh, well. This is the way it is.  If it makes people stay away from God, so be it.

The church is the authenticating structure of the gospel, as N.T. Wright says.  People who don’t know whether the gospel is reliable or not, look to the people who organize their lives around the gospel to see how it impacts the community they form around the gospel. Does the community formed  by the gospel taste, feel, seem, like good news?

What is the message of your church culture to the people on the outside of faith looking in, kicking its tires, so to speak?

When people who care deeply about science or who identify culturally with science whether or not they are personally interested in it come to your church, do they go away saying, “These are reliable witnesses, they might be on to something.”  Or do they go away thinking, “Those are some nice people but, but gosh, they have some strange opinions when it comes to science!”

A long, long time ago, a North African Bishop named Augustine, one of the great lights of the later Reformers, said this about the way some believers of his time were reading the first chapter of the book of Genesis:

“It often happens that even a non-Christian knows a thing or two about the earth, the sky, the various elements of the world, about the movement and revolution of the stars and even their size and distance, about the nature of animals, shrubs, rocks, and the like, and maintains this knowledge with sure reason and experience. It is offensive and ruinous, something to be avoided at all cost, for a nonbeliever to hear a Christian talking about these things as though with Christian writings as his source, and yet so nonsensically and with such obvious error that the nonbeliever can hardly keep from laughing.

The trouble is not so much that the erring fellow is laughed at but that our authors are believed by outsiders to have held those same opinions and so are despised and rejected as untutored men, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil…How are they going to believe our books concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven when they think they are filled with fallacious writing about things which they know from experience or sure calculation?

There is no telling how much harm these rash and presumptuous people bring upon their more prudent brethren when they begin to be caught and argued down by those who are not bound by the authority of our Scriptures, and when they then try to defend their flippant, rash, and obviously erroneously statements by quoting a shower of words from those same Sacred Scriptures, even citing from memory those passages which they think support their case, ‘without understanding either what they are saying or things about which they make assertions’ (I Tim. 1:7)” – St. Augustine in The Literal Meaning of Genesis  [By "literal" Augustine means something more like, "literary".]

I know this series of posts on evolution seems like much ado about nothing. A side issue.  But there’s more than science at stake.  The gospel is at stake as well.  That’s the only reason Billy Graham weighed in on evolution, knowing full well he was wading into the swamp on this one.  But Billy Graham was dead on.

Augustine was dead on too.  And we’ve got to face the tough truth he spoke so long ago, again today, together.

Young pastor, help make a church that would make Augustine proud. Even it means stirring the pot a little.  Billy Graham has done the heavy lifting for you. The Bible is not a book of science.  God could easily work through an evolutionary process his wonders to perform. You love your Bible?  Billy loves his Bible too.

And there are many others who would read the thing, if we just got out of their way.

There’s something in this descriptor that touches the heart of God. God is evangelical–in the sense that God has a heart for the outsider and seeks to bring the outsider good (to them) news.  (The term is from a N.T. Greek word that refers to the announcing or proclaiming of news.)

So if you are a young pastor wrestling with the word, evangelical, allow me to recommend that you care less about the marketing albatross that we’d all love to jettison, and wrestle instead with God, like Jacob at Jabok.  Over His evangelicalism that is. Over His  affection for the outsider.

To be evangelical is to care as much for the outsider as the insider.  Do you realize how difficult a thing that is?  Especially if you are a pastor?

Who pays the bills: insiders or outsiders?  Who has more power over you, pastor: insiders or outsiders?  Who do you spend more time with, day in-day out: insiders or outsiders?

I thought so.

This means that, all else being equal, your heart is more inclined toward the insiders.  That’s an inescapable sociological, psychological, and spiritual reality.

Many years ago, I read “On the Religious Affections” by Jonathan Edwards.  I was convicted by that book that my heart had grown hard, as Edwards defined the condition. My heart was suffering from a dearth of “fleshiness” and a surfeit of “stoniness.”  You’ll have to read the book to catch the gist of Edwards on this.  (Besides the Bible itself, this book has affected me more than any other.)

It was deeply disturbing, this realization.   It drove me to a kind of desperate praying, which over time, led to extended periods of weeping, a most uncommon occurrence in one with a stony heart.   The weeping was of a most peculiar sort.  It was, for lack of a better word, empathetic.  As if my mirror neurons were responding to God’s heart for outsiders.   It felt as though I were feeling what God feels toward those on the outside of faith looking in.  What Jesus feels for them.  Remembering myself as one of them.

It was, and is, the tenderest feeling.  The most ferociously gentle affection. The most scandalously sympathetic disposition.

During this time, I think I became more truly evangelical.

Over the years since then, I find myself increasingly in tension with my evangelical tribe. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

Why do evangelicals who go by the motto “love the sinner but hate the sin” have such a difficult time convincing the sinners of their love?   Why do environmentalists, secular scientists (especially biologists) feel the prickliness of our tribe?

What kind of evangelical was Jesus?  He was the sort of evangelical beloved by the tax collectors, the sexual outcasts, the party throwing riff-raff of Israel, the people who were on the outside of Israel’s faith, looking in.

The fact that these people so delighted in Jesus led many in his own religious community to accuse him of compromise. His view of Scripture was  suspect. He failed the orthodoxy litmus tests applied to him by the litmus testers.

If we’re following Jesus, shouldn’t we be accused of the same things he was accused of? At least every now and then? Unless we’re not guilty of following him.

For that matter, what kind of evangelical was Paul? The kind considered too accommodating to Gentiles, playing it fast and loose with the Law, a Scripture-fracturer.

Which brings me to Billy Graham and his comments about Scripture and evolution.

Young pastor, are you deeply affected by insiders who think evolution is a threat to Christianity?  Are you reluctant to poke this topic for fear that you will disturb your fellows who bristle at the word?  I was.

If you live in a culturally conservative community–in which even those who don’t attend church think the world was created 10,000 years ago in six, 24 hour days–then you’re off the hook.   Don’t waste your time on these matters. Life is too short and the kingdom is a coming.

But if you’re in a major metropolitan area, and certainly if you have a major University in your town, you’re stuck with this thing.

Your fear of the insiders may be hindering you from making the gospel known to outsiders. I know fear may not be something you’re willing to cop to, so let’s call it instead the inclination to please or the disinclination to displease.

It may affect what you read, what you question, what you assume.   David Brooks says it well: “We have confirmation bias: we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.”

Like most pastors, you’re not looking for more conflict to manage.

See how difficult a thing this is?

Pastoring is already messy business, who is looking for more mess to muck about in?

I don’t know what to say except that you might have thought of that before you got into this line of work at this particular time in history.

So what’s to be done?

Perhaps you could go friend-making. Find some people with graduate degrees in science–people who are not socialized in the American evangelical milieu.  People who read Scientific American or Discover or Nature.  Who prefer N.P.R. to A(ngry) M(an) radio.  Even those who simply enjoy science,  whose eyes don’t glaze over when the Big Bang comes up, will do.

It’s not a huge group, this science loving crowd, but it’s the inner circle of a much larger community of people who are not the church going type–the people for whom science is an accepted authority.

Chances are you are not reaching these people, not with your church as it is.   Even though yours is a hip-contemporary-emergo-not-your-father’s Oldsmobile church.  These are the people who stay away from church for fear of meeting people who think their views of science are deeply mistaken; they are the people who don’t bother going because they assume that Scripture and science–as they know science–are necessarily at odds with each other.

Go find some people like that and get to know them.  Listen to their thoughts about science. Ask questions in the hopes of hearing even more.  Seek to understand what you hear.

Do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until your  heart leans toward them sympathetically.

And pray and read and pray some more to see if you can imagine a bridge from the Bible to them.  Even if it feels a little daring or daunting to imagine such a bridge.

Later in life, when Billy Graham said what he said to David Frost about Genesis 1-3 not being science, he revealed his evangelical heart.  I’m guessing he had you in mind when he said such a thing, hoping you would have ears to hear.

Like this, on evolution: “I don’t think there’s any conflict at all between Science today and the Scriptures. I think we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we’ve tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren’t meant to say. I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course, I accept the Creation story.  I believe that God did create the universe.  I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man….whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.”  (Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, by David Frost and Fred Bauer)

Yes, that’s Billy Graham saying the Bible is not a book of science and that it is not incompatible with evolution.  Let me restate that for clarity: Billy Graham says evolution and Scripture are compatible. We all know that in many churches, were a pastor say such a thing from the pulpit, he might be looking for a different job.

All over the nation pastors who see it as Billy Graham sees it stay quiet about it, because pastors do not enjoy stirring up conflict.  And this, of course, is at the expense of the gospel finding a hearing among the many people outside of faith who don’t have a gripe with evolutionary science.  Which is to say, modern science.

I’m guessing that Billy Graham hasn’t written books on this topic.  It came up in an interview late in his life.  He has so much credibility that no one is going to cancel a Billy Graham crusade because of this quote.

The challenge in pastoral ministry is always to gain and maintain Billy Graham’s heart for the gospel; that is to say his heart for people hearing the gospel who have not had access to it.  If you don’t lean toward the outsider, the church won’t.  And if you do, you may have a more difficult job in the church.

So this will test your mettle.  And it’s only one of the radioactive issues you will have to wrestle with.

By wrestle, I mean study.  Read books that are outside your comfort zone.  All the major issues facing the church today–the hot button issues, the culture war issues–have a strong science component.  Are you willing to read some science?  I mean science written by scientists, not Christians leaders, pastors, or lobbyists, who are critiquing the scientists.

I’m guessing you didn’t go into pastoral ministry because you love science.  You probably preferred religion classes in your college days. But John Wesley exhorted the circuit riders to read books, lots of them, and to include science in their reading.

If you don’t study up on this issue, you will be subject to the prevailing winds of the culture, especially the church culture.  The loudest voices will prevail, at the expense of the gospel.

If previous posts in this blog are any indication, the angst will be evident in the comments. Reading the comments you might say to yourself, “Why would I want to step into this hornet’s nest?”   You should have considered that before becoming a pastor.  Unless your heart beats like Billy Graham’s heart beats, you might want to consider a change in your line of work.

The culture war that shapes our national conversation on such topics makes it difficult to converse on such matters.  We all seem to want to search out confirming voices to create our own echo chambers.

One of the perspectives that most mystifies me is something I hear a lot from those who don’t accept the climate science: that it is a big stretch to think that mere human beings could affect something as massive as the global climate.

Gosh, where does this come from?

Certainly not the Bible.  In Genesis, chapter one, humans are given a prominent place in the creation.  We are to exercise a form of dominion, or rule. That perspective is not a popular within the secular wing of the environmental movement–which is ironic because environmentalists know that human beings are in fact the dominant species on earth, and environmentists are the strongest advocates for improving our influence. In fact, more than any other group, they are concerned about our rule–as we should all be.

The atmosphere seems massive to us.  But if the earth were the size of a volleyball, the atmosphere would be thinner than a coat of varnish covering the volleyball.  Check out this photograph of the earth to get a sense of how THIN the entire atmosphere really is, realizing that our climate is the lowest layer of that thin band.

We’re so used to experiencing the earth as a human-dominated planet that we don’t appreciate how profound the human impact really is. Between a third and half of the earth’s land surface has been transformed by human action. The earth’s total plant growth is reduced by 40% by human action.

Growing up in Detroit, I used to think of “the country,” i.e. farmland, as “real nature.”  But of course, farmland is a human rearrangement of the surface of the earth at scale.  The wildlife that inhabits farmland is drastically reduced compared to the wildlife that inhabits land before it was farmed.

We haven’t been in space very long at all, but the litter we’ve left up there is a serious threat to every satellite orbiting the earth, and much time and attention is devoted to keeping our satellites from being destroyed by flying debris we’ve left behind.

Other examples abound.  Merely through our use of aeresol sprays, we increased the size of the ozone hole.  When the early science came out on that, the manufacturers of the suspect chemical (CFC’s) where skeptical about the science. They launched a campaign to deny it.  But the evidence accumulated, and eventually the United Nations brokered an international agreement that led to the reduction of the use of these chemicals, and the ozone hole is now getting smaller. Crisis averted.

In the 1980’s scientists said our forests were in trouble due to acid rain–the rain was becoming more acidic, thanks to the sulfur dioxide pumped into the atmosphere during the burning of coal at coal burning electricity plants.  The utilities were not happy to hear this.  But the evidence accumulated and we got together and passed legislation to cap sulfur dioxide emissions.  Yes, it was a cap and trade system.  It’s been working brilliantly.  President George W. Bush actually lowered the cap during his administration ahead of schedule, because it was working so well.

We sometimes forget that the author/s of Genesis 1 were writing after the fall, not before it.  By the time Genesis is written, the author knows that humans have not exercised their dominion wisely or well. The command to rule is dripping with irony by this time.

The ancients knew this.  They had a sense of our place in the order of creation and our impact for good or ill on the whole of it.

For the past 30 years climate scientists have been increasingly concerned about the climate warming faster then humans (especially poor ones)  and many other of God’s creatures adapt to.  It’s very complex, and there’s lots of back and forth on the details, but the vast majority of climate scientists are increasingly concerned.  In fact, it’s as close to settled as this sort of science is ever going to be. The science, for all it’s complexity, isn’t rocket science.  Carbon acts as insulator–no one denies that.  There is more carbon in the atmosphere than there used to be–no one denies that. Human activity like burning fossil fuels, is one of many factors that impacts the amount of carbon in the atmosphere–no one denies that.

Yet many Christians in the United States seem predisposed to deny that human activity is helping to warm the planet.

This is not our faith at work in us.  This is something else at work in us.

The sleep doctors use the same principle for treating insomnia. The bed, they say, should only be used for sleeping.  No reading, watching television.  This conditions the body to sleep in bed rather than lay awake.  We are environmentally embedded beings, space-sensitive creatures.

So if you’ve got inoransia, try making and maintaining a place for your praying self to dwell.

Mine is a corner in my office at home.  Got a nice chair from Ikea, an end table from my parents home, a little rug from Kashmir, a few candles, a picture of my honey, and my favorite icon, “Not Made with Human Hands“.    Facing a window looking out at some nearby trees with four– count ‘em four–bird feeders attached to the window.

We forget that prayer is a bodily function.  We pray with our praying brains in our praying bodies to a God who delights to inhabit human flesh.

You probably have what used to be called an “entertainment center” in your home. You have invested a chunk of change is this space. Now that it’s a multi-media center, you have to manage it.  (Man, you should see the set up my son has.  He gets a call on his mobile phone and it shows up on his television screen, which is connected to his computer network.  I just sit there in stupified wonder, trying to imagine what it would be like to truly inhabit the New Millennium as he does.)

Certain kinds of praying–especially the ones that calm your over-active alarm system–take time.  This time probably won’t come out of your work time, or your time to eat, dress, and perform essential acts of personal hygiene.  It will come out of your media time.

To overcome inoransia, you may have to give your praying body a fighting chance.  All that media is so powerful because it is perfectly adapted to your dopamine-reward system. Your brain is fine tuned to tune in–to see the flashing images, respond to the cascade of new sensory data.  Media is reality on steroids.

Which is to say, if you’ve got money to maintain a media center, invest in a praying space to give your  praying self a little room to move.

Y’all, I heard it every day, many times over.  Server at the restaurant said “y’all” 4 times in 30 seconds. Favorite iteration, “How are all y’all doin’?”

Boom, it hit me: these people have a plural form of the word “you.”  We need to stop, drop, roll, and adopt this.  We need a Thomas Nelson “The Y’All Bible Translation.”

Because we often read the Bible falsely.  “Christ in you, the hope of glory” we read, hearing “Christ in you [singular you, as in me, myself, and I] the hope of glory.”  So that one of our contemporary worship songs makes it “Christ in me, Christ in me, Christ in me, the hope of glory.”

But the “you” is a plural you, y’all.  Christ in y’all, the hope of glory.  Christ in the gathered you, Christ in the communal you, Christ in the networked you, the hope of glory.

And this happens often when we read the Bible.  The “you” in English can be singular or plural.  But with our individualism lenses on, we almost always hear it as singular.

Can you imagine a more pernicious confusion?

Wonder why we have an I, me, my Christianity?  A consumer Christianity? A “What have you done for me lately?” Christianity? A church conceived of and engaged in as though it were a collection of individuals?

The South is a more communal culture for its use of “y’all.” And it’s no surprise that the South is also a more mystical culture. Because the mystical parts of the brain are the ones that connect the self to the beyond-the-self, as though the self in itself is perhaps the first hint of hell, and the self connected to the beyond-the-self is the first taste of heaven.

So pastors, when you’re reading the Bible or teaching from the Bible, get your bearings straight on the meaning of the yous.  When the you is plural, specify that it is. Adopt the y’all, y’all.  And see if it doesn’t change everything.

No, you don’t have to get off the grid to escape. Though the occasional day long (or longer) media fast, come to think of it, is a great idea.  I’m sure I’m less connected than you are, but here’s what I do to make a little more space for whatever it is that happens when I’m not checking email.  I’m working the art of sacred disconnection points through the day.  Training my brain to let me unplug from the digital machine.

1. No emails an hour before bedtime. Most of my anxiety producing communication happens through email.  You know the story–the tone, the freedom to speak one’s mind without regard for the emotions of the receiver, etc.  Train your brain, by repetition, over and over, until it’s habitual, not to check email an hour before bedtime.

2. Set up an electronic media free zone. A prayer chair in a prayer corner, perhaps.  A place you go to get off the the information highway.  Whatever you do in that chair, don’t have anything to do with anything that depends on binary code there.

3. Practice prayer at intervals through the day. Morning and night is an interval.  But the real  benefits come when you add a mid-day interruption–a pause in the action to duck in for a few minutes of prayer somewhere.  I use The Divine Hours, by Phyllis Tickle.  And yes, it feels at first like extracting a tooth–pulling yourself away from whatever it is that is occupying your thoughts.   But it gets easier with repetition and the act of pulling yourself away trains your brain to refocus.  And if your brain is not able to do that, my fellow pastor, you will be a sucker for any enslavement.

4. Practice a focusing prayer–like the Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.”  First part on the inhale, second part on the exhale.  Over and over, meditatively, for oh, say, a minute or two–better yet five or ten.  Yes, your mind will rebel at first, running riot like a toddler past his nap time.  But every time it tries to focus on anything other than the prayer, you just gently and non-judgmentally turn your attention back to the words of the prayer.

Add these practices one at a time over time as you are able.  Pick one and insist on it with yourself.  Meaning, keep returning to it after forgetting until it’s habitual.  You know, habitual, like checking email when you’ve got a spare moment, or taking at peek at what’s happening on the Twitternet from your iPhone.

I know, it’s probably not called the Twitternet. But, hey! I’m a boomer, and at least I’m trying, so give me credit for that.

[What's a good book to help with this sort of thing,  you might ask?  Funny you should ask.]

After the game, Galarraga expressed his respect for Joyce as a first-rate umpire and let him off the hook with a simple and poignant, “Nobody’s perfect.”  Kind words from a man who had just pitched a perfect game ruined by an imperfect call.

And wise words. We depend on each other. Baseball players and umpires need each other.   As do husbands and wives, parents and children, co-workers, fellow citizens.  But nobody’s perfect.  We will let each other down. And when we do it’s the person let down who has the most power—to let the other off the hook, to turn the other cheek, to speak words of release, to let love overrule.

The next night, Tiger manager Jim Leyland sent Galarraga to home plate umpire Jim Joyce with the ceremonial line-up card.  Another classy move.  Tiger players stopped by before the game to pat Joyce on the arm and speak kind words.

When the game was over, Joyce said, “I don’t want to make it sappy and say it was love, but the support I got was just love.”

Just love.  Nothing but love.  In a game that is more than just a game, it’s good to know that love can overrule an errant ump’s call.

We humans don’t reveal our beauty in perfection. We reveal our beauty in love.

Thanks, Armando Galarraga, for something more beautiful than a perfect game.

An ancient take on the world around us might help.  Few people seem to notice that in the creation account of Genesis, chapter one, God blessed the sea creatures and the birds of the air—the very creatures affected by the British Petroleum oil spill—first.

Yes, before any other blessing had been uttered over this blessed planet, God blessed them first. “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth….God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.’ “ (Genesis 1: 20, 22-23, TNIV)

Anyone familiar with the Hebrew concept of blessing knows that any subsequent blessing cannot impinge on this first blessing.  The second blessing, of course, is ours: “God created human beings in his image…God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky” (Genesis 1: 27-28)

For better or worse, we are the dominant and dominating species on this planet. For better or worse, we rule.  Increasingly, the other creatures thrive, survive or suffer, in the space we allow them.

Our rule over the sea creatures and the flying birds in the Gulf of Mexico has missed the mark of our calling.  We were the ones chanting “Drill Baby Drill” when the price of oil started to rise.   We were the ones looking out for our own interests first, the blessed interests of the other creatures be damned.

Maybe it’s time for us to take a step back from the shrill voices of the culture war and consider the wisdom of the ages.  What does it mean that God blessed them first?

This is a function of our love affair with rationalism that goes all the way back to Descartes, the father of the modern era whose first principle was “I think, therefore I am.”  Whatever that great philosopher meant by that, it came to mean what we moderns tend to assume: that our thinking self is our deepest-truest self.

But the Spirit has been leading us out of that for the past hundred years or so (and long before that) when the winds of Pentecost began to blow again.

The mystics of old engaged different capacities of the brain for prayer.  Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits (the Jesus freaks of the Catholic Church), taught his followers to engage Scripture with the imagination: to place one’s self in the unfolding scene of a text to see what happens.

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing urged a wordless praying through the discipline of not paying attention to the normal mental chatter that runs like a gaggle of four year olds at a birthday party through Chucky Cheese.  Over time this practice quiets the part of the brain that enhances our perception of separteness from others and the world in which we are immersed, the world of which we are patently a part, but sometimes forget.  This wordless prayer leads to a sense of deep calm and connection.

Any new-to-us ways, of course, we distrust–the default setting of the brain set on survival mode.  It’s the reason we distrust strangers. It’s also the reason the Bible reminds that when we provide hospitality to strangers we may be entertaining angels unaware.

A blogger from Texas was put off by my use of the term “mystic” in the title of the book.  I know exactly why, and I’m sympathetic.  But he came up with a good solution: place a piece of tape over the word if it bothers you, but try some of the practices taught in the book, if you’re praying brain isn’t satisfied with it’s current praying.

There are new-to-you realms of prayer that engage capacities of your praying brain with which you’ve not yet learned to love the Lord.

It’s taken the whole church, not just your little familiar wing of the church, over the whole lifetime of the church, to explore these realms.

The wisdom is buried in plain sight in the Bible, covered over by our limited experience, which serves as a set of blinders.

And it’s buried deep in the history and experience of the church, about which most of us, myself included, know previous little.

The same might be said of our knowing God.  We know so little of Him, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus knew so little of their fellow traveler because “their eyes were holden.”

But isn’t that exciting? Whatever it is you know of God, it is such a small sliver.  There’s so much more to be known.  And so much more of you to be engaged in the knowing.