"In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.”
( Dag Hammarskjöld )
I don't exactly know when my belief in the absurd story of Genesis finally evaporated from my mind, the mythical story of God digging his hands into the earth like an artist shaping and molding the human body. And when the artist finally pleased with his work, embraced it, breathing into its nostrils, humanity came to life.
It was beautiful to think of creation this way, so profoundly special, so about us. But, are we more freaks of nature, rather than the ultimate end to grand design.
Evolution is deeply disturbing. On the one hand, yes we are unique, but in the other, could our coming into being be more of an unraveling, a cascading series of profound accidents, a chain reaction of possibilities that sometimes "stick" together.
The Genesis story is certainly comforting. The artist who loves his work, the realtionship of molding, shaping and seeing it come to life before his eyes, a sort of self portrait made in "His" image. But, perhaps even more profound (scary) and extremely fragile is the reality of organic chemicals, atoms suddenly sticking together like glue in this primordial ocean. From there unfolds unicellular life, to multicellular life, to a rigid internal frame, to musculature, to neurons, to grey matter, the human brain.
This celestial ocean that our galaxy spins in is some four or five billion years old, and what we imagine as infinity stretches in all directions beyond that. Looking back over our shoulders this evolutionary man, the up-right walking " Homo erectus " is said to be fifty to one hundred thousand years old.
If one still clings to the idea of a cosmic creator, sitting in the factory of "existence," the assembly line slowly moving as he randomly sticks atoms, and molecules together; maybe it is more a story of Dementia (taken from Latin) originally meaning madness, from de- (without) + ment, the root of mens (mind) is a serious loss of cosmic cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person (a God) who lost his mind and we are the outcome of the accident.
Back to the Genesis story. Was it really a conversation that just instantaneously started like someone flipping a switch and words flowed freely back and forth, or again was it something evolutionary?
The shock of self confidence came into existence and this awakening brought the knowledge we were distinct, and in some sense separate, outside the non-being of the rest of creation. Humans would never again identify themselves completely with the natural. The Genesis story reinforces the myth of a creation story being about us, and our maker when maybe against all odds the dice were rolled in our favour and humans found themselves on a evolutionary pathway of higher complexity.
With consciousness we experienced a greater sense of self which stood over against the world. We became conscious of the uncertainty and the shortness of life. We began to contemplate life. With the evolution of human consciousness a tremendous need was also born to find meaning, permanence and stability in a world suddenly meaningless, transitory and destabilized.
We can only imagine the first humans gazing into the infinite black depths of the night sky, the glittering surf rolling across this mysterious ocean. Try to imagine the shock, trauma, sense of aloneness and radical sense of insecurity that seized the human conscience. Now there was an awareness of danger being a chronic state of being. We were aware of our own mortality, and of the existence around us being so utterly vast we sensed ourselves as being insignificant.
The mind of humanity must have been gripped by angst and a fear of being squeezed to death. One thought must have oozed out constantly, "Who? Why? Is there anyone out there?"
There were no rockets, nor satellites to be launched. Primitive man howled at the moon. We screamed at the top of our lungs to anyone, anything, hoping for a response. We began to muse something beyond us, a maker, a creator. We mused what ever it was, it was as interested in us, as much as we were interested in it.
The relationship had begun, the evolution of God and the evolution of humanity.
No matter where I seem to go this Christmas I can't seem to get out of the emotional storm and the long dark shadows that seem to diminish any hope of light. The mass murder of children; fragile life, hope filled life in the midst of a broken world snuffed out in minutes. And now in the wake of the aftershocks that reverberate through the midst of humanity...people point in all directions for why.
But reality stares them in the face, profoundly it does not seem to see it. A nation whose currency is chiseled much like the 10 commandments, with a profound and ancient statement of faith, " In God We Trust." Yet, in an act of profound irony, trust, security come from a nation that clings to 300,000,000 small arms. Can a nation entangled, trapped in constant fear ever imagine faith in Jesus words, " Love the Lord your God, with all your being, everything you possess; and in the same embrace love your neighbor exactly the same...with all your being...with everyhing you possess.
In 2013, and beyond do we even imagine a faith like this being lived out...or will it be buried in the concsciousness of humanity as a wild beautiful idea. and nothing more.
Here, I'm stuck...these thoughts tumbling in my mind like a washing machine stuck in the spin cycle. I close my eyes, trying to focus, searching for some toggle switch to shut it all off. There is nothing to be found. And also tumbling these quotes...
“Children are living beings - more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is love.”
“What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.” ( Jeanette Winterson: The Stone Gods )
And in the aftermath of 20 precious children horribly, viciously erased from a community, from the embrace of loving families...we are left to celebrate the birth of the God-child. Even as I think about this my stomach is tied in knots, this gut wrenching tension. The bizarre theological idea of a cosmic creator, a God, a Father that would birth " his " only precious child in the midst of his creation. A child that would be cuddled, nurtured, cared for...fed by the breast of humanity. To be loved by human parents. But all the while God has a conscious plan in the back of his mind. In the background is a seething, vengeful God, a Father whose anger against sin can only be snuffed out by pouring out his wrath and fury on his precious child. This is the only solution, the only way out to restore a relationship.
Behind, the calm and peaceful scene of angels singing, shepherds watching, cattle lowing...the cosmic glitering surf rolling across the dark mysterious oceans of heaven...a Father plans the death of his precious only child.
This theology I was barely hanging on to...and as those lives quickly vanished before our eyes, so did that faith. But all is not lost, I'm left with the love of a mother...the mother of the God-child. The profound and mysterious belief and faith that she clung to as the divine eternal embryonic life was blossoming in her womb.
And Mary said,
I’m bursting with God-news;
I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.
God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!
What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
His mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before him.
He bared his arm and showed his strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts.
He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.
He embraced his chosen child, Israel;
he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.
I can only imagine in the God-child, this being, fully human and fully divine...in the entanglement of the DNA of life...of mother and child, was a plan that Mary profoundly felt and understood more than anyone. This profound idea of incarnation, was evolutionary and revolutionary. God with us, in the midst of humanity was the birth of a profound of a revolution...the evolution of a new creation. This was the God-news...that this redemptive new life, and restorative plan could be birthed into "all" humanity. We could "all" be a part of it.
It was a plan of peace, and non-violence...where we didn't view the "other" with suspicion and fear. But rather in a posture, of defence and preemptive aggression we would lay down our sword and love our enemies. The profound disturbing redemptive imagination that love can conquer all.
It was a plan where the tilt of the earth would do a full 180 degrees, where those on the bottom would be on top.
It was a plan where the starving, the hungry of mankind would be invited to a banquet where the bounty of God's creation would be layed before them. They would be fed, restored back to health while the rich, and prosperous were sent away hungry.
It was a plan where the powerful, and the oppressor would be toppled from their thrones...and in their place, in the middle ground would be the humble, and the compassionate.
This Christmas I can't believe in the vengeful vindictive Father...I believe in a Father, a loving parent that would risk is only child on love. A creator willing to weave a strand of the divine into the DNA of humanity. And in the same DNA, I see the potential, the profound mysterious redemptive plan to alter life, to re-create humanity anew.
In the tragic loss of 20 children in Newtown...and in the birth of a God-child. Let's again regain that trust, " In God We Trust ", but not only God...but in our neighbor, in "all" humanity. And let us as humanity grasp " Hope ", in this divine redemptive plan of a mothers love...a world in which we can recreate anew in " Love."
For the sake of Jesus, for the sake of the children of Newtown and through out the global village lets create a new world in...unending Love.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Poetry, parables are acts of imagination that offer and purpose "alternative worlds" because they are open, door ways to infinite possibilities. Can imagination be indeed a legitimate way of knowing?
Numbness does not hurt like torture, but in a profound insidious way, numbness robs us of our humanity, and makes us infinitely smaller. It is taking an eraser and removing the God-image in those who do not fit. Has our imagination been claimed by false lenses of perception and idolatrous theology that we protect and defend as absolute “truth?”
Are spiritual nomads, navigating a changing landscape and taking seriously, the shaping of their own field of perception and language of understanding? When we become so at home in a belief system, do we become oblivious to the points of contact in our neighborhoods, in culture, in technology, and art...do we drift and drown in an ocean of irrelevance?
The dominant partisan religious culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it.
Jesus dismantled the religion of static triumphalism by exposing their gods and showing God was profoundly more mysterious than their “truth.” Jesus dismantles the religion of oppression and exploitation by countering it with the profound mysterious reality of “truth” being God’s infinite love.
When we leave our theology unexamined and unquestioned, we end up being slaves to it. When believe in our theology at what ever the cost...do we end up suffocating the redemptive imagination of Jesus?
William Blake called imagination, " the body of God ".
( Eve in the Garden of Eden )
The Garden of Love
I laid me down upon a bank,
Where Love lay sleeping;
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.
Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And 'Thou shalt not,' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
There is no rituals, no doctrine, no theology...just one command, " Don't eat of the tree of knowledge." They are tempted...and they eat. This is what Augustine mused as the " orginal sin." I wonder if we still aren't sinning then?
The Old Testament seems nothing more than humanity's wreckless pursuit of religion. We delude ourselves in thinking religion was God's idea. We wanted laws, rules and commandments to keep...and when we failed we wanted ammendments to the laws. This was so far from the intimacy in the garden of Eden. But we were hoplessly hooked...it was always just one more chance and we'll get it right. We never did...and we never will.
As many times as I have read the gospels...I never come away with an image of a religious Jesus. I come away with my imagination ignited of a God who doesn't occupy a church, but a God who walks in the midst of his creation...as a friend. There are no barriers, no rituals, no confession of beliefs are needed to abide with this profound mysyerious God, who Jesus called, " Love."
I wonder if Jesus in the profound mysterious redemptive imagination he lived and spoke...if he didn't envision a new creation like the Garden of Eden...where it wasn't so much religion, but more life. Or as William Blake called it, " the body or God...and the existence of humanity ", as one...God again walking in the midst of his creation. Man and God, walking and talking as friends.I wonder?
( Hopefully after reading my musing...you'll get the imagination in my food art )
Yesterday I had this thought in my mind tumbling around like laundry stuck in the spin cycle. I just couldn't seem to open the door and get it out. It was this thought ; the " fatality " of truth. It 's truth that is in the quality or state of causing death or destruction, or truth that is in the condition of being destined for disaster.
A lot of so called religious truth is like that, truth that has been carved out in stone, that has become indelible that we some how determine is eternal. Or we are inspired by spirituality, or by some infinite consciousness to write what we determine is code for the OS of life. Our religious tribe determines it as the truth for "all" to obey. We use it as a weapon to confront others, and the deepest concern, we use it to construct an illusion of our own little world.
If anything, this kind of truth is lifeless. And this is the truth that Jesus seems to confront so often in the Gospels. So often we see Jesus in a heated conversation with the religious folk of his day saying, "You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies!"
It is Jesus confronting the " fatality " of religious truth.
We keep forgetting above all that Jesus was the profound revelation of God...but he was also the deepest mysterious revelation of what it is to be abundantly human. He took the religious truth in the context of his culture, society and in the corridor of human history challenged it with his "living" truth.
Left to their own devices and passions, religious folk have a hard time seeing beyond their fences into the world. While the issue of slavery and its grotesque inhumanity seem obvious to us now, it was not so obvious to slave owners then who argued—from scripture, no less—that slavery was a part of God’s plan. . Rather than being “fatal " to religious truth, it seems to me that these changes have argued for a more true following of Jesus' "living" truth for us than past understandings of the faith have allowed. Faith is a dynamic and ever-changing process, not some fixed body of truth that exists outside our world and our understanding. The "fatality" of religious truth may seem to be fixed and unchanging, but our comprehension of that truth will always be challenged in the midst of an ever changing human landscape. Over time, hopefully, we will continue to wrestle with the "fatality" of religious truth.
We must learn to read between the lines of religious truth, maybe the empty space between lines is pause to reflect to wrestle deeply with its understanding in the midst of our cultural diversity, our pluralistic landscape...and in the footsteps of where we are down the corridor of history.
Probably the most deadly and destructive "fatal" truth of our day continues to be...that Jesus doesn't accept the LGBT community. The "fatality" or religious truth may seem support that. I would challenge that assumption with the profound redemptive imagination of Jesus' "living" truth. I think Jesus would challenge any truth that marginalizes, isolates...and destroys the human experience of any life. I imagine Jesus in our midst today, in the midst of our stone throwing, our dehumanizing assault, saying, " You have heard what the law says, but, this is what I say..."
Jesus has given us the example of what it is to be profoundly human by confronting the "fatality" of religious truth...with "living" truth...life giving truth as he lived.
And Ironically having coffee this evening, I'm reading Acts 15...it's what I'm sure was a chaotic angry debate in Jerusalem. It was the decision to let the Gentiles ( the people that still had that wobbly bit on their weenies ) become Christians. You talk about the " fatality " of religious truth...as long as folks could remember God only accepted people who had been "nipped." I can only imagine how wild this scene must have been. And then, out of the conversation Peter says something profound, bringing a hush over the crowd...
"And God, who can’t be fooled by any pretense on our part but always knows a person’s thoughts, gave them the Holy Spirit exactly as he gave him to us. He treated the outsiders exactly as he treated us, beginning at the very center of who they were and working from that center outward, cleaning up their lives as they trusted and believed him."“So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too?"
Absolutely, stunning redemptive imagination...the "living" truth of Jesus transforming the "fatality" of religious truth.
Who says the LGBT community can't have the Spirit of God? Who says they can't live their lives as Jesus did? But, the most important, why are we so intent on trying to "out-god God"?
We can continue to grasp the "fatality" of our religious truths...the weather beaten etched in stone truth, the " wobbly bits ' of truth and continue dehumanize people made in God's image...and reduce the abundant life of humanity to a mere trickle. Or we can redeem life profoundly with Jesus living truth by say, " the law, our theology says, our doctrines say...but this is what we say."
Ever notice how good theology is found in life and not the bible. This week, Fred’s wife died suddenly. He tried his best to be with her, but somewhere between Sidney and Victoria on a Handy Dart Bus she drifted out of this world across the threshold into what I can only imagine as infinite mystery.
Fred is ninety-four and in this past year has been like that wobbly toy you had as a kid, no matter how hard you tried to stand it up, it would fall over. An old war wound, years of hard work and worn out parts had taken their tole. Alice eighty-nine, diagnosed with renal failure a few years earlier spent as much time in the hospital, as she did at home. Dialysis three times a week, a constant fight with fatigue after the treatments left her with little energy to care for Fred. Fred ended up moving into an extended care facility about 10 or so miles away.
"We have longed to taste the resurrection... the insurrection of life... We have longed to welcome its thunders and quakes, and to echo its great gifts. We want to test the resurrection in our bones. We want to see if we might live in hope instead of in the ... twilight thicket of cultural despair in which ... many are lost." - Daniel Berrigan, priest and radical peace activist.
Faith should be filled with redemptive imagination we need to envision the reality of the resurrection " now ", for out the the resurrection comes the inauguration, the revelation and the building of the Kingdom Jesus imagined, and lived in.
There was nothing special about the parking lot behind the Capitol Six Theater, and the transition to the Traveller's Inn. What was special was that a few people took likely what they thought was a mustard seed of faith and planted it. They nurtured it, cultivated, prayed and loved and it grew. There was a vow of commitment, of faithfulness, that despite cold, rain, wind they would be there. The same time, same day, week after week, year after year.
There was a profound evolution of borders and boundaries being erased. What was once "us " and " them " became a community of friends. It became an anticipation and expectation of watching, and looking for the arrival of friends. It was hugs, it was conversations and prayer. It was the worry of wondering about someone if they failed to show up on Friday...to now Sunday.
It was a circle of friends, holding hands, it was faces, it was eyes and smiles. It was improvisation of a God talk, a few minute sermon that sparked imagination. It was communion with the street community distributing the sacraments. It was the parable of the feast, the servant with invitations in hand going to the back allies, the gutters, skid row hotels, anywhere and everywhere so his Fathers table would be full.
It was hot chocolate, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, baked goods, cookies, fruit, socks, mitts, toques, blankets, sleeping bags, shoes, under-ware, clothing. It was, I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me. It was whatever you do for the least of these you do for me.
" What is this ", the young man kept saying to me." I've never seen anything like this." I really believe it was the reality of the resurrection, the " now " presence of Jesus risen in the midst of a community living out radical scandalous faith. He caught a glimpse of the Kingdom now. He saw people acting as co-creators in the revelation and building of Jesus' Kingdom. He saw a place with out borders, boundaries...a place where people aren't reduced to labels and stereotypes. He saw radical hospitality, grace, and mercy. In his " lostness " he felt the loneliness and separation of the prodigal son. But, more, he saw God in that parking lot with open arms welcoming him home. My son which was once lost, is now found.
For me CARTS has become a wild and crazy church. We long to feel the resurrection in our bones.We long for the Kingdom. We long, and welcome its thunder and quakes, and to echo its great gifts. The Kingdom coming into being can seem messy and chaotic. But as someone once said, at the Rainbow Kitchen...even in chaos there is beauty yet to be recognized, if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
Practice resurrection in your daily life...simply let your life be your religion.
I am told, that Jesus only directly answers 3 of the 183 questions that he himself is asked in the four Gospels! This is totally surprising to me who has grown up assuming that the very job description of religion is to give people answers and to resolve people’s dilemmas. Apparently this is not Jesus’ understanding of the function of religion because he operates very differently.
Jesus’ questions are to re-position you, make you own your unconscious biases, break you out of your dualistic mind, challenge your image of God or the world, and present new creative and redemptive possibilities. He himself does not usually wait for or expect specific answers. He hopes to tweak, or ignite a person’s imagination.
Reading the gospels moves you into this profound liminal space. Some people call it the ” slippery slope “, but maybe it is more circumventing obstacles around struggling with truth and suddenly loosing your footing. In reading the gospels you come to the reality what once made sense no longer does. What caused the fall might have been that for years, and years there was only one way to look at something. But, in your pursuit for something deeper you started looking at the obstacle from different angles…and you slipped.
And you thought, Sh……..it! now I’ve done it, I’ve lost my faith. All the questions like lightning begin to strike you from all angles. How long will this free fall last ? Will I land on anything solid?
Christianity for years has been about ” orthodoxy “, right belief. You read the gospels and you can’t miss the only thing Jesus was orthodox about was living. It wasn’t really ” what ” to believe it was ” how ” to believe. And today more and more people don’t really care about ” what ” you need to believe…they want to know how. After we let go of the ” what “, we are left with the ” how.” We grab the profound mysterious ” how ” and throw it into the midst of life. There its, ” how do I believe?” How did I ever believe that? ” How does believing this change the world around me?
It is the ” how ” of belief, that is more about ” orthopraxy ” the right practice of belief…Or simply how do I live like Jesus, and believe in the things he believed in. “How”, is a question that is far more profound and far more life giving than ” what .” ” How “, implies a sense of purpose and pushes us into a deeper engagement with the world in which we live. Diana Butler Bass says, ” What is a conventional religious question, one of dogma and doctrine; how is an emerging spiritual question, one of experience and connection.” How is the struggle of a new way to belief.
You read the gospels and you simply see, it becomes blindingly clear Jesus doesn’t fight for anyone to believe anything. All through the gospels it is Jesus telling profound redemptive stories, acting out the drama of abundant living in the midst of a broken world. Jesus simply fights for us to ” live ” differently as ” on earth as in heaven.” It is simply about living a radical scandalous redemptive love to the point of self sacrifice.
It became apparent for me when Jesus is arrested by the Roman soldiers in the garden of Gethsemane, when Peter grabs the soldiers sword and cuts his ear off. Jesus tells Peter to put down the sword…and replaces and heals the soldiers ear. We will never convince the world to believe in Jesus by defending, and fighting about right belief. We will convince the world of Jesus when we are willing to put down our swords, and willing to sacrifice our lives…for Love.
I “NO” longer care or focus on what I believe…I only care about how I believe…how that might change my neighborhood, and world…and how it will reveal Jesus and his kingdom.