It's all on you...
I had a memorable conversation with a friend the other day—a truly decent guy, someone who makes me feel comfortable and who listens well. He's newer in my life than many people and so he wanted the back story on me. Basically, he asked, "What's a business woman like you doing with a missionary past?"
The conversation quickly evolved into shared story lines—he was in a fraternity (Lamba Chi) and I was in a sorority (Kappa Kappa Gamma). I was a little sister at the Lambda Chi house at UCLA, in fact. We both "got saved" through campus ministries (Navigators for him, Campus Crusade for Christ for me). That shared background is a bit like knowing a secret handshake. We talked easily about stuff like discipleship, evangelism, relationship versus religion, moral authority, and the possibility that the world may end in our generation!
It was more difficult to talk about the changes in my faith. My friend was respectful, kind, interested. That's always nice. He did ask one question, though, that I'm still thinking about. His primary concern in all these years since college is that his kids know what he discovered: that there is a moral absolute that is separate from what he, their dad, tells them; distinct from what the culture expresses; superior to their own judgments.
This is where it falls apart for me. It would be nice if such a thing existed. And certainly the case has been made in many faiths that that "thing" does in fact exist and will eternally! But it seems to me that there is a critical oversight in that assertion—that a superior, binding, moral absolute exists apart from our participation in it. The oversight is this: in order forany set of beliefs, principles, to be considered absolutes, we must deem them so (we reason, assign values, determine why we accept them as outside ourselves by consulting our reason, experiences and thoughts). Not only that, but for these morals we've assigned supreme authority to have a binding effect on us, we must empower them with our consent.
The interpretation of what these principles mean in our lives must be arrived at in a context (culture, generation, gender, intelligence, geography, education). We hear stuff said to us by those in power and we adopt their point of view and seek reinforcements.
The "static" absolutes of the past have evolved; the Christian God is no longer thought to endorse slavery, despite Paul's admonition to slaves to obey their masters. Women have rights and are no longer property of their husbands.
One of the benefits of a life that falls apart spectacularly is that you get to see just how much you were in control of the moral compass you adopted for your life. Even the need to label the items as "separate" from self, as binding from beyond can only occur if you say "yes" to that way of knowing, believing and receiving.
Our kids sometimes flummox us because we can see so clearly what they "ought" to see and don't (smoking is harmful, drinking while driving is dangerous, marijuana is illegal, unprotected sex is risky, texting while driving is reckless, not saying "thank you" to those who give to you is impolite). So we invoke larger "backing" for our clearer moral vision (the Surgeon General, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the laws of our state, the Bible, Oprah, and Emily Post). Yet no matter how large we make the authorities behind our morally superior positions, we are powerless to do anything to create conformity to the principles we iterate.
The only way that anyone or any list or any book or any code or any law has power in our lives is by consent. Not only that, the laws themselves have no power! They have never prevented a crime. The choice to act or not is entirely on the individual choosing or not choosing the action.
Moreover, ethics do turn out to be situational. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is filled with practices we would find horrific today. LIkewise, church history is littered with acts deemed moral in their time that today's believers regret.
My favorite professor (Dr. Dewey) once explained to me the genius of Paul's primary insight released to the New Testament churches. Paul articulates that the shift in understanding about God has to do with how God-followers cultivate a spiritual life. The Holy Spirit lives within and we are cultivating an attentiveness to the depths of our experience when we make moral and ethical judgments. But we can't do it alone... none of us is free enough of our own baggage to make those judgments without harming others. So we do it in community. Each community, in each era, with their own language, experiences and limitations seeks the "good" or the "true" or the "compassionate" as best they can together. The conclusions they draw are "drafts," not published "once-for-all" documents. Each generation revises the previous generations insights to conform to their time.
If you doubt what I'm saying, think about the move to end slavery in America. To run an underground railroad, to work toward abolition meant embracing contemporary revelation that flew in the face of Scripture as it had always been understood. We don't shift postures lightly or easily (no whims), but our faith must be responsive to the promptings of the Spirit in community. If the code is already written, there is no need for Spirit. That's what Paul taught us. It's what I believe.
Showing posts with label Beyond Belief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beyond Belief. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Sunday, August 08, 2010
On Being a Christian (HT to Kung and Bonhoeffer)
I've spent many years pondering what it means to live a Christian commitment. Does it mean that Christians will be better, happier, stronger, purer, healthier, wealthier, less sinful and wiser than everyone else? (I used to think so; I was taught so.) "Should" Christians be happier, wiser, more joyful, more peaceful, more successful in their relationships than other people? (In other words, are these the marks of true faith and practice?)
My honest answer for today is: No. In fact, in order to seem as though a relationship with Jesus Christ creates those superior qualities, many of us have had to cultivate a shadow self: protecting secrets, massaging the truth, pretending an appearance into being, minimizing real tragedy, hiding painful truths. Moreover, non-Christians aren't fooled. They don't trust the shiny image.
I lived in a neighborhood years ago where the wild post-high-school grown-ups threw drunken parties with toddlers running around every weekend. One of my Christian neighbors, in a fit of sisterly love, made a pie for the wife in one of these beer-guzzling couples. The loud-mouthed gal told my friend where she could shove that pie! It devastated my friend, who thought she was showing neighborliness (but apparently her "I'll be nice to you so you'll want Christ" agenda seeped through).
A few months later, a Mormon neighbor made a cake for my friend (the pie-giver) and we were both immediately put on guard. We didn't want to "owe" anything to the Mormon. We wondered what her true motivations were—like a cake would make us want to be Mormon? We felt manipulated. And that's because we were being manipulated. Just as we had manipulated others in our turn.
I had to ask myself: why do we work so hard to seem like our lives are better and have more to offer than the rest of humanity? Is that really what today's Christianity means to "sell"? That you get a better life if you follow Christ? That you'll be a superior human being, therefore come to my church where you can opt out of life's hazards?
My honest answer for today is: No. In fact, in order to seem as though a relationship with Jesus Christ creates those superior qualities, many of us have had to cultivate a shadow self: protecting secrets, massaging the truth, pretending an appearance into being, minimizing real tragedy, hiding painful truths. Moreover, non-Christians aren't fooled. They don't trust the shiny image.
I lived in a neighborhood years ago where the wild post-high-school grown-ups threw drunken parties with toddlers running around every weekend. One of my Christian neighbors, in a fit of sisterly love, made a pie for the wife in one of these beer-guzzling couples. The loud-mouthed gal told my friend where she could shove that pie! It devastated my friend, who thought she was showing neighborliness (but apparently her "I'll be nice to you so you'll want Christ" agenda seeped through).
A few months later, a Mormon neighbor made a cake for my friend (the pie-giver) and we were both immediately put on guard. We didn't want to "owe" anything to the Mormon. We wondered what her true motivations were—like a cake would make us want to be Mormon? We felt manipulated. And that's because we were being manipulated. Just as we had manipulated others in our turn.
I had to ask myself: why do we work so hard to seem like our lives are better and have more to offer than the rest of humanity? Is that really what today's Christianity means to "sell"? That you get a better life if you follow Christ? That you'll be a superior human being, therefore come to my church where you can opt out of life's hazards?
I question the idea that Christians ought to have better lives than non-Christians. I know there are verses in the Bible about the peace, love, fruits of the Spirit and joy that come from an active faith. But circumstantially, every one of us (with or without Christ, with or without friends, with or without money, with or without jobs, with or without higher education) is subject to the ravages of living on this planet. In our time, in our place (America), even the poorest have water, electricity, access to education, some kind of medical treatment and the right to vote. Yet even we in the wealthiest nation can't avoid the truly awful stuff!
Car accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, war, earthquakes, cancer, arson, rape, bankruptcy, divorce, unwanted pregnancy, betrayal, affairs, heart attacks, addictions, job loss, disease, failure, kids who do what we don't want them to do—visit all kinds of people, including ardent Christians. There is no divine intervention against life.
God does not answer prayers for your protection any more than you can stop the wind from blowing during a lightening storm by praying. (I hope that if you are the kind of Christian who believes God will do these things for you, please consider spending less time seeking the miraculous and more time living in the real world where your valuable talents and skills are much needed!)
God does not answer prayers for your protection any more than you can stop the wind from blowing during a lightening storm by praying. (I hope that if you are the kind of Christian who believes God will do these things for you, please consider spending less time seeking the miraculous and more time living in the real world where your valuable talents and skills are much needed!)
If someone tells you Christians "should" (fill in the blank: love more, share their faith more, be happier than everyone else, find more fulfillment in their families, have better marriages, be debt free, give more, care more, have more peace, exude more joy, raise better children, see miracles, have better sex, make better communities and neighborhoods, feel more assured of the future...), my reaction is: run. The purpose of your faith is to sustain you during the ordinary conditions of life. Sometimes other people want to draw on those same resources; sometimes they don't. But it's false advertising to entice people with the hope of either miraculous intervention when faced with genuine danger, or the assurance of successful outcomes (marriages, kids, finances, health, happiness) because of the choice to follow Christ.
Bonhoeffer says that the "God who is with us is the God who forsakes us."
The novel understanding we bring to following Christ today is an admission that life can't be beat. No formula, practice, belief system, or church affiliation protects us. Life's demands are unceasing until we meet our end. Rather than going out swinging, with prayer, affirmations, insisting that tragedy is not tragic or that sickness is health or that sadness is joy or that suffering comes from faithlessness, Christians can embrace in a radical way the transitory nature of life—its unique joys, but also the genuine suffering all of us go through just by virtue of sharing this planet. We can do this because we are unafraid, not because we are safe.
As I've looked at it now for nearly 30 years, it seems to me that Christianity is an emptying, not a filling up. It's a divesting, not an acquiring. It's a trusting, not an insuring. It's a faith in a redemptive purpose, not a triumph over tragedy or suffering.
God abandons us to life, is another way I translate Bonhoeffer's insight. Life is to be lived on its terms—we are meant to be fully grounded in and unafraid of the real, all while drawing on the resources of faith to live hopefully, optimistically, empathetically, and redemptively, in spite of life, in reverence for life. Christianity is an affirmation of this life—life worth living.
The joy and peace of faith are not something "put on" to showcase how much better it is to be a Christian than not (like a Mini Cooper is better than a van). The joy and peace of faith come from knowing that in a shakeable life where nothing is certain (where we Christians are just as likely to be kidnapped, raped and shot execution style as the next non-Christian shopping in a mall—yes, this happened to a missionary friend of mine), we still have a resource to draw on. That resource is cultivated in a deep private place, though shared in community. It's not theoretical and it isn't magical. It's not like having access to the president's secret service detail, either.
"God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross," Bonhoeffer wrote. "He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [The Bible] … makes quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. … The Bible directs man to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help." (emphasis mine)This is a hard saying and one that deserves time and contemplation. As I've turned it over in my mind over the last eight years, a dawning sense of truth has bubbled to the surface for me. How I understand this hard saying written for our time, in our world and culture is this:
The novel understanding we bring to following Christ today is an admission that life can't be beat. No formula, practice, belief system, or church affiliation protects us. Life's demands are unceasing until we meet our end. Rather than going out swinging, with prayer, affirmations, insisting that tragedy is not tragic or that sickness is health or that sadness is joy or that suffering comes from faithlessness, Christians can embrace in a radical way the transitory nature of life—its unique joys, but also the genuine suffering all of us go through just by virtue of sharing this planet. We can do this because we are unafraid, not because we are safe.
As I've looked at it now for nearly 30 years, it seems to me that Christianity is an emptying, not a filling up. It's a divesting, not an acquiring. It's a trusting, not an insuring. It's a faith in a redemptive purpose, not a triumph over tragedy or suffering.
God abandons us to life, is another way I translate Bonhoeffer's insight. Life is to be lived on its terms—we are meant to be fully grounded in and unafraid of the real, all while drawing on the resources of faith to live hopefully, optimistically, empathetically, and redemptively, in spite of life, in reverence for life. Christianity is an affirmation of this life—life worth living.
The joy and peace of faith are not something "put on" to showcase how much better it is to be a Christian than not (like a Mini Cooper is better than a van). The joy and peace of faith come from knowing that in a shakeable life where nothing is certain (where we Christians are just as likely to be kidnapped, raped and shot execution style as the next non-Christian shopping in a mall—yes, this happened to a missionary friend of mine), we still have a resource to draw on. That resource is cultivated in a deep private place, though shared in community. It's not theoretical and it isn't magical. It's not like having access to the president's secret service detail, either.
And please don't say it's a relationship. That tired expression has lost its meaning, for me anyway. Its value had to do with moving people from rote religious practices to pondering God and how daily devotion could make a difference in our experience of faith. But now with so many evangelical churches touting "relationship" through "Jesus is my boyfriend" music and Bible studies where we're trained to read the Scriptures at the level of "how it speaks to me," all while we reinforce "My God is better than your God" kind of spirituality, relationship-language has gone too far. The theology descended from it often requires well-educated adults to abandon reason and intellect in service of simplistic theology and communal connection. We're trained to think we are better than others because we have the right God and the right beliefs.
As I read it, salvation is not about who "gets to go" to heaven after all. It's a saving from self-righteousness and false self-confidence. Sometimes it seems to me that Christians need to be saved more than anyone else.
As I read it, salvation is not about who "gets to go" to heaven after all. It's a saving from self-righteousness and false self-confidence. Sometimes it seems to me that Christians need to be saved more than anyone else.
The resource of faith comes from within (the Bible calls it "The Holy Spirit"). Our spiritual legacy in Christianity is guided self-examination (guidance coming from our rich theological traditions, the Bible and our faith communities) counter balanced by (forgive my French) mind-fucking trust in the unseen.
In our age where scientific materialism is the chief authority, to assert that something transcendent may exist, to yield to the possibility that there is something to this God through Jesus—that grace (relief, hope, uplift, optimism, pardon, calm, solidarity, amnesty, compassion, promise, even awe-inspired tingles) is mediated somehow through contemplation, communion, community, worship, alignment with those who suffer, reflection, prayer, even stained glass windows or kneelers or guitar music or bear hugs during the kiss of peace or the reading of poetry—is a radical departure from the rest of our fact-soaked, empirical existences. Our faith opens us to encounter (that direct hit to the solar plexus that defies explanation), rather than mere accumulation of information.
In our age where scientific materialism is the chief authority, to assert that something transcendent may exist, to yield to the possibility that there is something to this God through Jesus—that grace (relief, hope, uplift, optimism, pardon, calm, solidarity, amnesty, compassion, promise, even awe-inspired tingles) is mediated somehow through contemplation, communion, community, worship, alignment with those who suffer, reflection, prayer, even stained glass windows or kneelers or guitar music or bear hugs during the kiss of peace or the reading of poetry—is a radical departure from the rest of our fact-soaked, empirical existences. Our faith opens us to encounter (that direct hit to the solar plexus that defies explanation), rather than mere accumulation of information.
Joy, peace and hope are cultivated when we love other human beings. Let me put it another way. We have joy when we enjoy people. We have peace when we are empathetic to others and work to relieve the struggle in their ordinary hard lives (like our ordinary hard lives). We have hope when we receive care and help from others, indiscriminately, from whoever offers it; we experience hope when we are willing to learn and receive from other people, other communities. That's what Jesus showed the Jews of his time—hope from a suspicious character, openness to the new, redemption from an unlikely source.
The humility of faith is to recognize that God isn't looking for leaders after all. Faith is letting go of all that stuff. It's the way... a way. It's how we live and love.
James Cone once said that the reason the white church had no experience of God (1960s) is that they weren't hanging out where God lives. Find the oppressed, find God. Share in the suffering, experience God.
In 2010, I think of it this way. While it would be easier to jettison the whole project of figuring out how to have a meaningful faith in this culture where Christianity has become a brand more than a basis for a spiritual life, where Christians defend the indefensible in the name of a religion that was developed in the pre-scientific, magical world of antiquity, I've decided to offend my mind and trust anyway.
Somehow in all that language that drives my brain crazy (bodily ascensions, male God, original sin, virgin births, inerrant Scriptures, devils and angels), I still find fragments of transcendence which tether me to love (1 Corinthians 13 is still the best description of love I've ever aspired to live). In plain English: there's something about the redemptive narrative of Jesus and the self-examination I've adopted through Christian faith that gives me a powerful emotional meaningful connection to life, people and hope that I find too precious to throw over.
Somehow in all that language that drives my brain crazy (bodily ascensions, male God, original sin, virgin births, inerrant Scriptures, devils and angels), I still find fragments of transcendence which tether me to love (1 Corinthians 13 is still the best description of love I've ever aspired to live). In plain English: there's something about the redemptive narrative of Jesus and the self-examination I've adopted through Christian faith that gives me a powerful emotional meaningful connection to life, people and hope that I find too precious to throw over.
The wide variety of wonderfully diverse people remains my main connection to transcendence. Jesus seemed to feel that way, too. In all our messy glory, human beings still give me the greatest chance to see the face of God and to practice the faith of love. And while I typed this, I couldn't help but see the sweet face of the matriarch of faith at my church who embraces me with such fierceness each week. Love like that is Christianity to me.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Waking up: The shift from one point of view to the another
My Facebook set of friends is one of the more diverse bunch of people I've run across online. That's because suddenly my past and present have collided in conversation in ways that would never happen if we limited our relationships to in-person contact. So what's happened is that my high school friends, who knew me mostly as a short, a-political, theater student without much of a religious agenda, are interacting with my college friends who knew me as this zealot who shared the Four Spiritual Laws with anyone stuck in a bank line with me. My missionary and Vineyard friends are interacting with my liberal theological graduate school buddies. My homeschool momma friends are talking to my business networking friends here in Cincy. And of course, my Obama campaign colleagues are talking to my rightwing radio pals from bygone years.
And like me, many of my friends have gone through significant shifts (either a deepening of loyalty to their original commitments, or a radical reassessment which led to a new, changed point of view).
I respect all of you (even when we disagree). I wouldn't keep you around on my FB if I didn't! In fact, I have kicked a few off my list when they've crossed that invisible line called "Coerce Julie back to what is good for her and tell her she is going to hell if she doesn't listen."
So here's the thing. For years (over 20), I adopted a point of view both politically and theologically that was rooted in a set of assumptions (these assumptions were handed to me with care and conviction, and they were based on the core doctrines of evangelicalism at the time). I remember once saying to Don Carson (some of you will remember him), the head of our Campus Crusade chapter at UCLA, "Why are you telling me that predestination as a theological tenet has to be believed in order to be a Christian? I haven't even had time to think about it yet." I had the same reaction to inerrancy (Is this really necessary to be a Christian? Can I think about it a bit?), to the doctrines of heaven and hell. I still remember saying at my first Bible Study at Kappa Kappa Gamma that I didn't like the idea of hell, after all, that would mean all my Jewish friends from high school and step relatives were going there... and I couldn't quite *get* that. I mean, it was one thing to believe in heaven and hell when you grew up in La Canada or Pasadena, where everyone you knew was Protestant. But what happened when you had to include people you loved, A LOT, in that number?
I found myself suddenly in conflict: to belong meant to adopt (uncritically, really) the values and doctrines that enabled me to remain a part of the community (this new, great group of people who were so much fun to be with), or I could reject those tenets and not be in the group, not have the love, worship, prayer, moral values, and community Christianity offered. So adopt I did (and worked to learn the apologetics for these tenets) and from then on, made it my chief aim in life to save those I loved and those I hadn't yet met from hell.
But time has a way of tugging at the tangled threads. The intellectual conflicts, the theological discrepancies, the arguments online with people I genuinely grew to love about splitting hair differences... how did these show the compassion of Jesus or the relevance of spirituality in a globalized world of diverse expressions of reality? It hurt to think Christians couldn't even agree on very basic ideas and would be cruel and critical of each other arguing over what amount to technicalities, many times.
The rightwing vision of politics has also walked in lockstep with the evangelical vision. Since we grew up knowing we couldn't criticize theology (who could ask if Jesus really rose from the dead with a physical body or if the Bible has mistakes, and stay in an evangelical church?), we are also equally beholden to rightwing politics as naturally right, clear. If someone speaks with conviction, we tend to adopt that point of view as long as it leads us back to reinforcing those original tenets we were told to adopt (our membership in the community is at stake if we challenge those tenets - ask me how I know this).
To inhabit someone else's point of view, to give it weight, to care about its interior logic is not one of the values of evangelicalism. We are taught to convert people to our point of view and to understand theirs only enough to change their minds. We spend countless hours reinforcing our own beliefs in community contexts, privately, listening to sermons and tapes, reading books, listening to music. We adopt these views as our own, but from within the safe protected context of like-minded people (and we elevate those with more education as leaders as a way to tell us that we are thinking critically, to help us navigate the pesky incongruity or penetrating question of someone from the outside). We suppress our own questions. We avoid The Jesus Seminar or Richard Dawkins, because they are dangerous.
This is not to say that there aren't brilliant men and women on the right or in the conservative evangelical movement who have dug deep and have spent time drawing conclusions that they feel are both intellectually sound and honest. There are. I've read them, met some of them. What I reject today is that so many people have adopted their thinking second-hand. (To be fair: on both left and right, though I am less versed in how this happens on the left - what I have seen is much more arguing over nuances on the left - a chief value of theirs is dissent!)
If you haven't sat inside the point of view (letting it be "right" for awhile, looking for its logic, how it hangs together, how it creates a worldview that coheres and supports a vision of life and happiness for the one who holds it), you can't actually know if yours is true (or at least, "true enough" for your life). It's one reason I attend a black church. I was sick of secondhand reports about what black leaders are doing and saying or not doing and saying. I was sick of the myopia of white church that thinks reconciliation means having a sister church that is black, or getting more blacks to attend your white church. I wondered what the black community had to say about it. I wondered how they experienced America, and the church, and "truth" from their experiences.
I spent two years reading pro-choice literature, getting inside the mindset that saw being "pro-choice" as the higher morality (yes, they do feel that way!), as the obvious right belief system that is more compassionate and ethical than the alternative. I did this after we had been actively involved in Operation Rescue. I also wish pro-choice people would spend time understanding the radical commitment of those engaged in civil disobedience to stop abortion, too.
What's happened to me, then, is that I got tired of secondhand news, theology, sociological commentary. I stopped buying into the scripts I'd been handed and became unwilling to defend something just because it had always been "true" in the community I loved. If I had one piece of advice for those who can't quite grasp what it is that's happened to me, I'd say pick the thing you are most afraid of (the thing you most don't want to be true) and go read about it. Meet someone who holds that viewpoint and let that person influence you. Invite their ideas into your living room, care to understand the world from inside someone else's mind. If you do that for a little while, yes, you will change. But your compassion will also grow, and your insights will be yours, and your spirituality will deepen.
I'm also conscious of the fact that there is so much I can't possibly know well enough to make adequate judgments (how could I ever say if global warming is real or not? I'm not a scientist, have no training or tools to evaluate the arguments, can't come close to making a real case that isn't some watered down version of someone else's). So I hold my current "positions" with some guardedness, knowing that I'm a few arguments away from another shift. But I'm no longer afraid of getting it right or wrong. I love the process, and I feel privileged/relieved/blessed to have been able to leave behind the need to vilify "the other" in order to protect my point of view. (That doesn't mean I won't criticize the other, but I hope I do it knowing that I could again shift my point of view if the facts that I understand warrant it.)
Peace.
And like me, many of my friends have gone through significant shifts (either a deepening of loyalty to their original commitments, or a radical reassessment which led to a new, changed point of view).
I respect all of you (even when we disagree). I wouldn't keep you around on my FB if I didn't! In fact, I have kicked a few off my list when they've crossed that invisible line called "Coerce Julie back to what is good for her and tell her she is going to hell if she doesn't listen."
So here's the thing. For years (over 20), I adopted a point of view both politically and theologically that was rooted in a set of assumptions (these assumptions were handed to me with care and conviction, and they were based on the core doctrines of evangelicalism at the time). I remember once saying to Don Carson (some of you will remember him), the head of our Campus Crusade chapter at UCLA, "Why are you telling me that predestination as a theological tenet has to be believed in order to be a Christian? I haven't even had time to think about it yet." I had the same reaction to inerrancy (Is this really necessary to be a Christian? Can I think about it a bit?), to the doctrines of heaven and hell. I still remember saying at my first Bible Study at Kappa Kappa Gamma that I didn't like the idea of hell, after all, that would mean all my Jewish friends from high school and step relatives were going there... and I couldn't quite *get* that. I mean, it was one thing to believe in heaven and hell when you grew up in La Canada or Pasadena, where everyone you knew was Protestant. But what happened when you had to include people you loved, A LOT, in that number?
I found myself suddenly in conflict: to belong meant to adopt (uncritically, really) the values and doctrines that enabled me to remain a part of the community (this new, great group of people who were so much fun to be with), or I could reject those tenets and not be in the group, not have the love, worship, prayer, moral values, and community Christianity offered. So adopt I did (and worked to learn the apologetics for these tenets) and from then on, made it my chief aim in life to save those I loved and those I hadn't yet met from hell.
But time has a way of tugging at the tangled threads. The intellectual conflicts, the theological discrepancies, the arguments online with people I genuinely grew to love about splitting hair differences... how did these show the compassion of Jesus or the relevance of spirituality in a globalized world of diverse expressions of reality? It hurt to think Christians couldn't even agree on very basic ideas and would be cruel and critical of each other arguing over what amount to technicalities, many times.
The rightwing vision of politics has also walked in lockstep with the evangelical vision. Since we grew up knowing we couldn't criticize theology (who could ask if Jesus really rose from the dead with a physical body or if the Bible has mistakes, and stay in an evangelical church?), we are also equally beholden to rightwing politics as naturally right, clear. If someone speaks with conviction, we tend to adopt that point of view as long as it leads us back to reinforcing those original tenets we were told to adopt (our membership in the community is at stake if we challenge those tenets - ask me how I know this).
To inhabit someone else's point of view, to give it weight, to care about its interior logic is not one of the values of evangelicalism. We are taught to convert people to our point of view and to understand theirs only enough to change their minds. We spend countless hours reinforcing our own beliefs in community contexts, privately, listening to sermons and tapes, reading books, listening to music. We adopt these views as our own, but from within the safe protected context of like-minded people (and we elevate those with more education as leaders as a way to tell us that we are thinking critically, to help us navigate the pesky incongruity or penetrating question of someone from the outside). We suppress our own questions. We avoid The Jesus Seminar or Richard Dawkins, because they are dangerous.
This is not to say that there aren't brilliant men and women on the right or in the conservative evangelical movement who have dug deep and have spent time drawing conclusions that they feel are both intellectually sound and honest. There are. I've read them, met some of them. What I reject today is that so many people have adopted their thinking second-hand. (To be fair: on both left and right, though I am less versed in how this happens on the left - what I have seen is much more arguing over nuances on the left - a chief value of theirs is dissent!)
If you haven't sat inside the point of view (letting it be "right" for awhile, looking for its logic, how it hangs together, how it creates a worldview that coheres and supports a vision of life and happiness for the one who holds it), you can't actually know if yours is true (or at least, "true enough" for your life). It's one reason I attend a black church. I was sick of secondhand reports about what black leaders are doing and saying or not doing and saying. I was sick of the myopia of white church that thinks reconciliation means having a sister church that is black, or getting more blacks to attend your white church. I wondered what the black community had to say about it. I wondered how they experienced America, and the church, and "truth" from their experiences.
I spent two years reading pro-choice literature, getting inside the mindset that saw being "pro-choice" as the higher morality (yes, they do feel that way!), as the obvious right belief system that is more compassionate and ethical than the alternative. I did this after we had been actively involved in Operation Rescue. I also wish pro-choice people would spend time understanding the radical commitment of those engaged in civil disobedience to stop abortion, too.
What's happened to me, then, is that I got tired of secondhand news, theology, sociological commentary. I stopped buying into the scripts I'd been handed and became unwilling to defend something just because it had always been "true" in the community I loved. If I had one piece of advice for those who can't quite grasp what it is that's happened to me, I'd say pick the thing you are most afraid of (the thing you most don't want to be true) and go read about it. Meet someone who holds that viewpoint and let that person influence you. Invite their ideas into your living room, care to understand the world from inside someone else's mind. If you do that for a little while, yes, you will change. But your compassion will also grow, and your insights will be yours, and your spirituality will deepen.
I'm also conscious of the fact that there is so much I can't possibly know well enough to make adequate judgments (how could I ever say if global warming is real or not? I'm not a scientist, have no training or tools to evaluate the arguments, can't come close to making a real case that isn't some watered down version of someone else's). So I hold my current "positions" with some guardedness, knowing that I'm a few arguments away from another shift. But I'm no longer afraid of getting it right or wrong. I love the process, and I feel privileged/relieved/blessed to have been able to leave behind the need to vilify "the other" in order to protect my point of view. (That doesn't mean I won't criticize the other, but I hope I do it knowing that I could again shift my point of view if the facts that I understand warrant it.)
Peace.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
This is an audio of my talk from the Truth Voice (Subversion) Conference in Dayton last weekend. We have a video of it, but right now only 12 minutes are posted. I'll put up the embed once they have re-uploaded it. I think audio is less distracting anyway (I use my hands so much! lol).
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
The meat of the material really gets going after minute 13. I give an introduction that includes personal story and some biographical detail of Bonhoeffer's life. I'd welcome any engagement with these ideas. Am slowly putting together a little dossier of materials, insights, writings and stories to include eventually in some sort of book. Yes, the elusive book goal! :)
Anyway, enjoy!
Here I am!
Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity
The meat of the material really gets going after minute 13. I give an introduction that includes personal story and some biographical detail of Bonhoeffer's life. I'd welcome any engagement with these ideas. Am slowly putting together a little dossier of materials, insights, writings and stories to include eventually in some sort of book. Yes, the elusive book goal! :)
Anyway, enjoy!
Here I am!
Julie Bogart: Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison from Virgil Vaduva on Vimeo.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Virtual Lives
In cleaning out some old files on my computer, I ran across this journal entry from five years ago (Feb. 2004). It stunned me. I remember very clearly what prompted the insights and thoughts at the time. Yet it spoke to me on another level now. See what you think:
Dr. Dewey [professor of New Testament] commented: “God is not in any book but in the Reality of our lives. Trouble is we tend to lead virtual lives. Wouldn't know Reality if it knocked... yet when it does, well, it does. When the baby decides to come, when the water breaks, when the contractions start, you have to face Reality and go with the waves... The stories [in the Bible] are told to help people identify the waves in their lives... the beauty and the horror...”Hmmm. So many thoughts. I'll leave those for another day. What is your version of virtual living? How has Reality awakened you?
Last night I had such an "Aha" about what it means to lead a virtual life. I kept playing over and over again in my head: what does he mean we wouldn’t know Reality if it knocked? And then the realizations of my own virtual existence poured in.
How many times have I felt someone else’s feelings instead of my own when relating to that person? I find myself out of touch with what I want, need or think and totally adjust who I am to what that person says, does or is. How often have I pretended that a viewpoint made sense when underneath was a horror or shock that I knew wouldn’t be acceptable?
I’ve lived in a world of faith that put more emphasis on the invisible that I can’t know or touch or see than on what I can know, touch and see. I’ve invalidated what I know to fit with what I’m told I ought to think.
I’ve not trusted my experiences – I’ve allowed other people to tell me what is right or wrong. I let people tell me what was right in my sex life. I let people tell me that my reasons for a move [to Ohio from CA] wouldn’t be good enough – I must let God have his way. I was told that my ideas about a career were inferior to God’s ideas of a career for me. And ironically, those who play the virtual reality game well figure out ways to get both – getting what they want in the guise of God’s giving it to them. This is my particular world of the virtual. There must be others that aren’t bound in religion. [And yes, those are the ones I'm getting know now.]
Am I saying that I am the final word on my life, my authority comes from within? Scary thought! A hundred voices immediately jump in front of me to warn me of the danger of being autonomous.
Yet I might be. And it is such a deeply ingrained wrong way to think (being responsible for self) that I'm almost nervous to write it out. But the truth is that we all submit to authority – only most of the time we pick an illusion – as though we can submit to something outside of self – something we deem bigger and more real than our own authority, even though our personal sense of right and wrong guides even that choice. To own our responsibility, as Bonhoeffer suggests, is too big for most of us. We have been trained not to trust self and we willingly turn over our consciences, our guilt, our aspirations to the stewardship of others pretending that we are not choosing, are not in control, are not risking being bad or making bad decisions.
Who gets control?
Religion
Government
Family
Culture
Pop stars
Fear of Rejection
Psychology
Fame
Reality: what is it? It’s the bottom rung on the ladder of experience and thought. What is the stuff that gets in the way? What do we heap up on top of it (like drugs to dull the pain of the contractions) to avoid living it and being responsible to it?
I love the idea of birth: the water breaking, the baby coming and going with the waves. Oh my God! I know that feeling totally. The baby is coming – I can’t stop it. I’ve lived this experience five times without drugs, without intervention. It was the most miraculous experience I’ve ever had. To let go of control and to completely yield to the process, to recognize that I could only cooperate or inhibit but that it would happen no matter what. My births were the most “in the moment” experiences of my life and the result was sheer exhilaration, power and joy!
What baby is on its way in my life right now? The profound disillusionment with literal faith is what is at work in me [Feb. 2004]. It’s shattering the old attachments and interpretations and ways of thinking… about everything.
Biblical literalism is such a scary place. The worldview that literalism represents has invaded every aspect of how I live and think. It has a strong hold on my thinking. I have a fog settle in any time I move out of it too far. And it is subtle. I thought I had let it go by letting the Bible be fallible and errant. But no! I then want to literally affirm the metaphorical truths in the same way I held to the literal history or geography.
I work hard to do things “right” so that I can control the outcomes. If I parent correctly, if I homeschool conscientiously, my children will not do drugs, they will love me, they will have friends and go on to college. I expect my obedience to the demands of these “promises” to pay off literally. No mystery. No chance to fail.
But what if Reality woke me up? What if there is more there than what I do? How will I respond? Will I suddenly wake up from my virtual existence and realize that there is something else more real?
And isn’t that what happens so often? My parents are “happily married” for 17 years and then Wham! Reality intrudes and my mom discovers my father in bed with another woman. What illusion were they living before? What virtual life had they tricked themselves into believing?
We pile up debt and believe we own things. We promise ourselves that next year will be better and then miss what’s happening today. What is today teaching me?
I find myself consulting experts and trusting someone else’s word over my own. I don’t want to follow my thoughts - I want someone to tell me how it is. But the baby is coming. I will be born. The “I” I’m supposed to fear, call sinful, distrust… that me is the baby this time. Can I trust that Reality is my greatest teacher, that I can find my way through life with as much honesty as I can muster? Direct access to reality! What a concept.
Dorothy Sayers says:
“And to every man and woman to whom integrity of mind meant more than material gain, defenders in the central keep of man’s soul, personal differences forgotten in the face of a common foe, to be true to one’s calling whatever follies one might commit in one’s emotional life, that was the way to spiritual peace.”
“There are a number of people who are disconnnected between what you do feel and what you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.
“Yes, said Harriet. “And I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel.”
“Oh I don’t think that matters, providing one doesn’t try to persuade oneself into appropriate feelings.”
Virtual living: persuading oneself into appropriate feelings.
And isn’t that the nature of not knowing Reality?
We have to learn the language game of the group we join and then reinterpret our experience of life in light of the new “proffered” reality. We aren’t free, we can’t speak, we don’t share. We conform, adhere, play by the new rules and find safety and protection from a direct experience of Reality.
This must be what E. M. Forster is about. He constantly challenges people to have their own opinions, to face their hypocrisy in the face of truth and beauty. Is it better to love a painting because someone famous paints it or because it speaks to you – you, the one for whom it was painted – the viewer, not the student or priest or tourist.
Oh my! It’s coming to me now. I know I may have a piece of it.
The truly free thinker, or free mind is the one that can stay open to self and not give in to the pressures of the group. On the other hand, we need each other to help us see reality. We need others to help us not be bound by our group think tendencies. But what are friends for? They aren’t supposed to exclaim loudly “How can you think that?” They are supposed to be the midwives of a birth. They don’t know ahead of time what the baby will be. If they do, they aren’t midwives any more. They are the ones who will rob you of the truth once it’s born. They will tell you what baby you should have had.
But real friends will marvel with you and help you see Reality as it unfolds in your life.
That’s it.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Quiet and silence
So the kids survived their media fast. In fact, they happily reported that it wasn't "so bad" and that, in fact, they might do it again some time. I wondered what they liked about it. They read, the house was quiet, they didn't feel pressure to check up on friends, they were proud of themselves for sticking to it. All good stuff. At the meeting where they gathered with their other media fasting friends, the pastor asked if the kids had spent more time in prayer or reading the Bible. My kids told me, "I wished he'd have mentioned that we could be doing THAT while fasting. He never told us that BEFOREhand." Ah well. I majored on what they did experience and told them their pastor is still growing in his leading skills too.
This morning, a friend sent me a couple of quotes that I had supposedly sent her years ago. I mean, I'm sure I did. It's just that I don't remember either of them and clearly didn't learn a thing from them on the first pass. Let me post them first:
I remember naps with little kids. My whole "ragged, on-the-edge" goal by 2 p.m. - get kids into beds and knocked out. I'd be unraveling so fast by that hour, that all I could do was hurl myself onto the floor of the bedroom that had three, four, and finally five kids stuffed into it, letting the current baby nurse while a soft lullaby tape played, hoping the bouncing, questions, tossing and turning would finally collapse into gentle little one snores. I'd extricate myself from the suctioned baby, careful not to disturb a single muscle, and walk into the other room, sighing deeply. Quiet had descended on the apartment. I could draw breath. For a moment.
Silence, though, seems to be another whole level. Silence is not just being quiet, but being with self, alone. Being confronted with hypocrisy? Oh sign me up! Really much easier to be busy and noisy than that. I love that nearly last line of the Basil quote though: "We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves." That seems to be the key to living a rich life, doesn't it?
I'm realizing quiet is not silence. Silence is shutting down communication that distracts me from being with mySelf. I want to cultivate a little silence in my life (probably have to start in small doses - I'm pretty addicted to "noise"). What do you do? Anyone practice silence as a discipline?
This morning, a friend sent me a couple of quotes that I had supposedly sent her years ago. I mean, I'm sure I did. It's just that I don't remember either of them and clearly didn't learn a thing from them on the first pass. Let me post them first:
Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self—the false self—and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.I've spent time being quiet. My kids were quiet last week. I know how to turn down the sound. In fact, for years I called my Bible reading and prayer hour, a "quiet time."
--M. Basil Pennington
Silence is the measure of the power to act; that is, a person never has more power to act than he has silence. Anyone can understand that to do something is far greater than to talk about doing it. If, therefore, a person has a plan or idea and is fully resolved to carry it out, he does not need to talk about it. What he talks about in connection with the proposed action is what he is most unsure of and most unwilling to do.
--Soren Kierkegaard
I remember naps with little kids. My whole "ragged, on-the-edge" goal by 2 p.m. - get kids into beds and knocked out. I'd be unraveling so fast by that hour, that all I could do was hurl myself onto the floor of the bedroom that had three, four, and finally five kids stuffed into it, letting the current baby nurse while a soft lullaby tape played, hoping the bouncing, questions, tossing and turning would finally collapse into gentle little one snores. I'd extricate myself from the suctioned baby, careful not to disturb a single muscle, and walk into the other room, sighing deeply. Quiet had descended on the apartment. I could draw breath. For a moment.
Silence, though, seems to be another whole level. Silence is not just being quiet, but being with self, alone. Being confronted with hypocrisy? Oh sign me up! Really much easier to be busy and noisy than that. I love that nearly last line of the Basil quote though: "We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves." That seems to be the key to living a rich life, doesn't it?
I'm realizing quiet is not silence. Silence is shutting down communication that distracts me from being with mySelf. I want to cultivate a little silence in my life (probably have to start in small doses - I'm pretty addicted to "noise"). What do you do? Anyone practice silence as a discipline?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
You mean God hates happiness?
So my kids came bounding out of "Reset," their Wednesday night "small group wrapped in a big group wrapped in an enigma" at their church. They hurled themselves into my car, which literally rocked sideways by the force of their exuberance, oh wait, scratch that, their energetic gleeful annoyance. They relished their anger, diffidence, outrage.
"Mom, Mom. You can't believe what Carl (youth pastor) is making us do! He's soooo mean!"
Laughter, lurching bodies, locking doors, punching radio buttons, zwipped seatbelting ensued.
They were ooc. "Carl is making us love God this week."
Oh the horror.
"He says we can't do ANYTHING that we like. We can't go on Facebook, can't watch TV (even American Idol!), can't play Halo or the Wii, can't use the computer for any entertainment. We have to turn off our cell phones, can't text or IM, or even listen to our iPods (unless it's [here they did the mocking voice of preteens] 'Christian music' which totally sucks because we hate Christian music). This week, we have to give up anything that makes us happy so we can learn to be happy with God only. It SUCKS!"
Not to be stopped (because believe me, by now I was ready to kneecap Carl and give him a supreme noogie on his head for wrecking God by inferring he(sic) hated happy kids), my two wild-haired middlers went on, "We HAVE to do it. If we don't, Carl won't let us come back next week. EVERYONE has to. We don't have a CHOICE!"
My brain worked itself into a tizzy - two contradictory threads of thought:
1) What an idiotic idea - that God is somehow squeezed out of life because you are happily engaged in activities that bring you joy and connect you to other people.
2) My kids LOVE this. They can't wait to suffer!
A delicate balance had to follow. How do I subvert heresy (yes, I get the irony of calling it heresy since I don't subscribe to orthodoxy) while joining in on the fun of exuberant self-flaggellation? Basically I did a lousy job of both, but saved it by singing really loud to Flo Rida's "Right Round" as we got near home.
Kids flopped on the couch once inside to indulge in their last moments of electronic saturation (they had until midnight), literally clicking the remote, setting up the DVR, writing elaborate FB status updates to reflect their newly adopted ascetic zeal.
I asked at one point: "How will you know you're loving God better than you were when you were happy?"
Blink, blink.
Carl forgot to mention that. They had no idea. I asked if they were supposed to pray more, read the Bible, use their time to serve the needy... They couldn't remember, even between the two of them. Liam said, "I'm pretty sure he does want us to read the Bible, but he never said so." Caitrin rejoined, "I don't pray to their idea of God anyway. I pray to the Universe, to karma, to Buddha." The next thing you know, we were talking about God (what God is, how to define God). I shared about this translation project I'm watching unfold on a e-list where all the God references are being changed to Godde to reflect the divine feminine, not just masculine.
Liam mentioned that God is neither male nor female and we all know that. Caitrin countered, "Yes, but if you say 'God,' your imagination goes straight to the beard." Which is why, currently, she prays to the universe. :)
I found the whole thing a crazy study in how too many people miss the point. If God, if Godde, if Goddess, (invisible, not audible - except perhaps for a few lucky people in history who report otherwise), how else would you experience happiness in the divine than happiness in the fullness of life? Wouldn't joy at singing the lyrics from Rent at the top of your lungs count as connection? Wouldn't chatting eagerly with friends online represent a reaching out to community in love and fondness? Wouldn't time with family in front of a TV count as a happy expression of bondedness? Why do we assume the divine isn't already being loved, felt, honored and known when we are happy?
I don't get how teaching children, especially, to distrust their happiness (to see it as competing with love of God!! What a charge!) is productive spiritually, emotionally or mentally? In fact, I'd say the opposite. It creates that strange split where any time you feel good, you have to call it sin... And that leads to all the stuff we deal with in mid-life. But Carl is too young to know it!
And well, there is a certain happiness to be found in abstaining... we love that at that age.
Sigh...
"Mom, Mom. You can't believe what Carl (youth pastor) is making us do! He's soooo mean!"
Laughter, lurching bodies, locking doors, punching radio buttons, zwipped seatbelting ensued.
They were ooc. "Carl is making us love God this week."
Oh the horror.
"He says we can't do ANYTHING that we like. We can't go on Facebook, can't watch TV (even American Idol!), can't play Halo or the Wii, can't use the computer for any entertainment. We have to turn off our cell phones, can't text or IM, or even listen to our iPods (unless it's [here they did the mocking voice of preteens] 'Christian music' which totally sucks because we hate Christian music). This week, we have to give up anything that makes us happy so we can learn to be happy with God only. It SUCKS!"
Not to be stopped (because believe me, by now I was ready to kneecap Carl and give him a supreme noogie on his head for wrecking God by inferring he(sic) hated happy kids), my two wild-haired middlers went on, "We HAVE to do it. If we don't, Carl won't let us come back next week. EVERYONE has to. We don't have a CHOICE!"
My brain worked itself into a tizzy - two contradictory threads of thought:
1) What an idiotic idea - that God is somehow squeezed out of life because you are happily engaged in activities that bring you joy and connect you to other people.
2) My kids LOVE this. They can't wait to suffer!
A delicate balance had to follow. How do I subvert heresy (yes, I get the irony of calling it heresy since I don't subscribe to orthodoxy) while joining in on the fun of exuberant self-flaggellation? Basically I did a lousy job of both, but saved it by singing really loud to Flo Rida's "Right Round" as we got near home.
Kids flopped on the couch once inside to indulge in their last moments of electronic saturation (they had until midnight), literally clicking the remote, setting up the DVR, writing elaborate FB status updates to reflect their newly adopted ascetic zeal.
I asked at one point: "How will you know you're loving God better than you were when you were happy?"
Blink, blink.
Carl forgot to mention that. They had no idea. I asked if they were supposed to pray more, read the Bible, use their time to serve the needy... They couldn't remember, even between the two of them. Liam said, "I'm pretty sure he does want us to read the Bible, but he never said so." Caitrin rejoined, "I don't pray to their idea of God anyway. I pray to the Universe, to karma, to Buddha." The next thing you know, we were talking about God (what God is, how to define God). I shared about this translation project I'm watching unfold on a e-list where all the God references are being changed to Godde to reflect the divine feminine, not just masculine.
Liam mentioned that God is neither male nor female and we all know that. Caitrin countered, "Yes, but if you say 'God,' your imagination goes straight to the beard." Which is why, currently, she prays to the universe. :)
I found the whole thing a crazy study in how too many people miss the point. If God, if Godde, if Goddess, (invisible, not audible - except perhaps for a few lucky people in history who report otherwise), how else would you experience happiness in the divine than happiness in the fullness of life? Wouldn't joy at singing the lyrics from Rent at the top of your lungs count as connection? Wouldn't chatting eagerly with friends online represent a reaching out to community in love and fondness? Wouldn't time with family in front of a TV count as a happy expression of bondedness? Why do we assume the divine isn't already being loved, felt, honored and known when we are happy?
I don't get how teaching children, especially, to distrust their happiness (to see it as competing with love of God!! What a charge!) is productive spiritually, emotionally or mentally? In fact, I'd say the opposite. It creates that strange split where any time you feel good, you have to call it sin... And that leads to all the stuff we deal with in mid-life. But Carl is too young to know it!
And well, there is a certain happiness to be found in abstaining... we love that at that age.
Sigh...
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Tweet a theological term and wind up on a website
On Sunday, my pastor mentioned "preterism" in his sermon. After the sermon was over, Adam Clark (black theo prof) and I talked about it. I was vaguely familiar with the ideas and the term but not fluent by any means in what that theological stream meant to evangelical Christians. I had a sense that this term might be connected with N. T. Wright. I suppose I could have Googled the term and Wright's name, but I didn't even think of that. I knew I had recently become connected to the emergent world through twitter and knew they'd know.
So I sent out a little tweet and back came a 100 character message from the owner of a website that my FB friend linked to me at the same moment in a response to the same question. Virgil not only owns the site, but runs an emergent cohort in Dayton... like, up the freaking road from me! He and I got to emailing and the next thing you know, my paper on Genesis 3:16 from the Society for Biblical Literature is now posted to the site. I always wanted to share it here but it's too long for that. Now you can read the whole thing here:
All About Eve and Me: Genesis 3:16
I'll be attending that cohort on Saturday. If you're local and want to come, call me! (Hint: Margaret, Ed, Adam...)
So I sent out a little tweet and back came a 100 character message from the owner of a website that my FB friend linked to me at the same moment in a response to the same question. Virgil not only owns the site, but runs an emergent cohort in Dayton... like, up the freaking road from me! He and I got to emailing and the next thing you know, my paper on Genesis 3:16 from the Society for Biblical Literature is now posted to the site. I always wanted to share it here but it's too long for that. Now you can read the whole thing here:
All About Eve and Me: Genesis 3:16
I'll be attending that cohort on Saturday. If you're local and want to come, call me! (Hint: Margaret, Ed, Adam...)
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Best Day of Your Life
In case it's not as obvious as the nose on your face, this is a tough year for me. Blogging has been virtually non-existant since the fall. Life at times has felt like crawling on all fours through the swamps of death and foul seaweedy underworld plantlife on the way to Mount Doom, accompanied by Gollum... without elevensies or Viggo Mortensen.
Seems like when you enter a year like that, you gather fellow swamp dwellers who band together to pull out of the swamp to make little fires in caves to stay warm. We strip the slime off one another's backs and sip hot tea. The other day, I was with a friend who has stripped lots of slime off my back. She shared with me a dream she had and it broke my heart. Got me really thinking. (I have her permission to reproduce it here.)
In her dream, a genie appeared to her offering a great gift.
As the dream went on, she became more and more panicked. Here was a remarkable gift and she had to throw it away because she couldn't find a single happiest day in her life to relive. And she woke up. In pain.
Often in church, I've been taught that happiness is not a goal to be sought. Faithfulness, righteousness, loyalty, goodness, patience, long-suffering, self-discipline all trump feeling happy. Usually at some point when a congregation is flagging from pent up pain, a pastor will intuitively know to pull out the "joy" message. "We can't seek happiness" he says, "after all, its address is on the same street as sin and self-indulgence, but we must be filled with joy." You know, it's a command to be joyful! You can choose joy! Joy is the context of your life, not your feelings. Be joyful, dammit, and stop complaining about being miserable. Believe in your joy. Declare it. Joy is a belief, not a feeling.
But one day, you wake up and realize you don't know what joy is either. According to those pastors and their souped up sermons, joy ought to be translated: Enduring suffering without complaining, pretending happiness when you feel flat, bored, abused, lonely and mistreated. To believe in joy means detaching from the information your senses and spirit give you. You must reframe your very life to match a sermon.
What happens? Eventually along comes a genie giving you the gift of a lifetime and you have no happiness to show for it, no way to access happiness or joy. After all, reliving a day where you believed in joy is just not the same as feeling good. You have instead a long list of days where you've done everything right, where you've denied your self in service of loving someone else (maybe even someone who doesn't deserve your best self's offerings), where you have traded the experience of happiness and joy for "being good" and no amount of "being good" makes you want to relive a single day of that life!
Here's a warning for those who haven't felt happy in a long while (or ever). Look out. It seeks and finds. It knocks and opens. Sometimes it just barges right in, takes up residence and repaints the kitchen in Mediterranean blue. Happiness seeps in through cracks, and holes, and windows, and swamps. It may come in bits and pieces, but it wants to take over. When it does, it overthrows everything you thought you knew about life. There are two options: keep it at bay, or welcome it.
If you keep it at bay, avoid genies. If you welcome it, be prepared. Your whole life is about to change.
Seems like when you enter a year like that, you gather fellow swamp dwellers who band together to pull out of the swamp to make little fires in caves to stay warm. We strip the slime off one another's backs and sip hot tea. The other day, I was with a friend who has stripped lots of slime off my back. She shared with me a dream she had and it broke my heart. Got me really thinking. (I have her permission to reproduce it here.)
In her dream, a genie appeared to her offering a great gift.
"You may return to and relive the happiest day of your life. Just tell me what it is and I will grant you this one extraordinary wish."My friend immediately plunged into panic. Best day? Best day ever? So she hunted through her memory banks. Childhood? No, nothing. Each event tainted by some pain unwanted. Raising kids? Nothing came to mind. Wedding? (Even her wedding!) None of these days was truly happy, worth reliving because pain would crowd into the memory. Not one day could be called "happiest of her life."
As the dream went on, she became more and more panicked. Here was a remarkable gift and she had to throw it away because she couldn't find a single happiest day in her life to relive. And she woke up. In pain.
Often in church, I've been taught that happiness is not a goal to be sought. Faithfulness, righteousness, loyalty, goodness, patience, long-suffering, self-discipline all trump feeling happy. Usually at some point when a congregation is flagging from pent up pain, a pastor will intuitively know to pull out the "joy" message. "We can't seek happiness" he says, "after all, its address is on the same street as sin and self-indulgence, but we must be filled with joy." You know, it's a command to be joyful! You can choose joy! Joy is the context of your life, not your feelings. Be joyful, dammit, and stop complaining about being miserable. Believe in your joy. Declare it. Joy is a belief, not a feeling.
But one day, you wake up and realize you don't know what joy is either. According to those pastors and their souped up sermons, joy ought to be translated: Enduring suffering without complaining, pretending happiness when you feel flat, bored, abused, lonely and mistreated. To believe in joy means detaching from the information your senses and spirit give you. You must reframe your very life to match a sermon.
What happens? Eventually along comes a genie giving you the gift of a lifetime and you have no happiness to show for it, no way to access happiness or joy. After all, reliving a day where you believed in joy is just not the same as feeling good. You have instead a long list of days where you've done everything right, where you've denied your self in service of loving someone else (maybe even someone who doesn't deserve your best self's offerings), where you have traded the experience of happiness and joy for "being good" and no amount of "being good" makes you want to relive a single day of that life!
Here's a warning for those who haven't felt happy in a long while (or ever). Look out. It seeks and finds. It knocks and opens. Sometimes it just barges right in, takes up residence and repaints the kitchen in Mediterranean blue. Happiness seeps in through cracks, and holes, and windows, and swamps. It may come in bits and pieces, but it wants to take over. When it does, it overthrows everything you thought you knew about life. There are two options: keep it at bay, or welcome it.
If you keep it at bay, avoid genies. If you welcome it, be prepared. Your whole life is about to change.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Obama: Yeah, more about him
So the biggest news is that canvassing and phone banking have become a heckuva lot more fun now that Obama is winning (leading) in Ohio. Last weekend, Liam, Caitrin and I hit eleven houses in a row (in West Chester, yes way!) that were Obama fans. Our neighborhood has seven Obama/Biden yard signs and three McCain/Palin. I can't remember a single Kerry sign in all of West Chester, last time. The tide is turning.
Even while it's clear that Obama is leading in the polls, there's a certain element in the voting population who still believe that Obama is a dangerous, alien, terrorist-affiliate. These friends become strained and even hostile toward me when they see my t-shirts or buttons or Facebook status updates. With all the thousands of words Obama has written and spoken to the press, with his record public for all to see, with his hours of youtube clips available, with his detailed policy papers easily downloaded from his website, there are still voters who believe that he is going through all of this exhausting hassle (mostly without a hitch) to hide a nefarious agenda to take down the United States of America once in office. I find that charge (that he's the "beast in Revelation," that he's a secret Muslim, that he's tied to foreign terrorist organizations - or even domestic ones!) utterly outrageous.
Meanwhile, these same voters (often conservative Christians) believe that McCain represents safety (a safe bet) - a man who cheated on his hospitalized wife, married Cindy before divorcing his first wife, has a pro-choice record in the Senate until he switched to a conservative posture for this election, not much of a notable Christian testimony and selected arguably the least qualified vice-presidential candidate in American history. How is he the safe bet? How is Obama the risk?
I thought it might help to read a bit by Obama himself and what he says about his Christian faith. I'm going to post quotes from his own book over the next week or so so you can read what he writes himself (instead of all those crazy email forwards filled with deliberate misquotes and lies).
In the midst of economic challenges, this church continues to take love offerings any time a minister visits from out of town, they sing joyfully and pray enthusiastically. Sometimes just the mention of economic hardship during prayers leads the women holding my hands to a flood of tears, yet they come back every week, ready to praise God again. The black church has been a gift to me. It is the first time I've experienced the merging of both community identity and individual faith.
One of the reasons I find Obama's candidacy not only timely, but truly revolutionary (on par with the work done by MLK Jr.) is that Obama is able to be a president to all of us in a way that perhaps no president before him has ever been. He brings with him an intimacy with ideas, attitudes, and both white and black cultures that will shape and inform how he governs. His sensitivity to the diversity in himself has led him to be sensitive to the diversity of opinion in America. I strongly recommend reading his chapter on Faith in The Audacity of Hope next time you get coffee at Barnes and Noble. Find out what he says for himself. Don't take someone else's word. We've never had a president able to relate to so many in history. That doesn't mean we haven't had good presidents. We just haven't had one with this unique set of experiences that will help Obama to be a bridge of understanding between a stunning variety of backgrounds, socio-economic conditions, international relations and racial experiences.
Today a college friend sent me a message on FB gently chiding me for my Obama enthusiasm. He told me he has a bumper sticker that suggests who to vote for: "Coldest State, Hottest Governor." Really? Is it possible to be so flip this year, with the economic crisis, the war in Iraq still raging, with a fraudulent executive team leaving the country in shambles and a tattered Constitution?
If you are feeling nervous about Obama, take the next few weeks to read his own writings. Get to know him. Don't just watch the sleazy attack ads or trust some forwarded email. Read Obama's own words. Think about what he says he plans to do for America, what his vision is. Then make your decision.
Edited to add: Susan asked in the comments for verification of the McCain affair/divorce and I wanted to include this article from July from the LATimes: McCain's Broken Marriage Fractured Other Ties as Well.
Even while it's clear that Obama is leading in the polls, there's a certain element in the voting population who still believe that Obama is a dangerous, alien, terrorist-affiliate. These friends become strained and even hostile toward me when they see my t-shirts or buttons or Facebook status updates. With all the thousands of words Obama has written and spoken to the press, with his record public for all to see, with his hours of youtube clips available, with his detailed policy papers easily downloaded from his website, there are still voters who believe that he is going through all of this exhausting hassle (mostly without a hitch) to hide a nefarious agenda to take down the United States of America once in office. I find that charge (that he's the "beast in Revelation," that he's a secret Muslim, that he's tied to foreign terrorist organizations - or even domestic ones!) utterly outrageous.
Meanwhile, these same voters (often conservative Christians) believe that McCain represents safety (a safe bet) - a man who cheated on his hospitalized wife, married Cindy before divorcing his first wife, has a pro-choice record in the Senate until he switched to a conservative posture for this election, not much of a notable Christian testimony and selected arguably the least qualified vice-presidential candidate in American history. How is he the safe bet? How is Obama the risk?
I thought it might help to read a bit by Obama himself and what he says about his Christian faith. I'm going to post quotes from his own book over the next week or so so you can read what he writes himself (instead of all those crazy email forwards filled with deliberate misquotes and lies).
"...I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation. It had to serve as the center of the community's political, economic and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather it was an active, palpable agent in the world. In the day-to-day work of the men and women I met in church each day, in their ability to "make a way out of no way" and maintain hope and dignity in the direst of circumstances, I could see the Word made manifest. (Audacity of Hope 207)I attend an inner city black church here in Cincinnati. One of the startling features of weekly attendance is to listen to the pastor mention the church members who need prayer at the end of each service. My very first week, we were asked to thank God that one of the women members was yet with us, as she had been car jacked at gunpoint (placed against her temple) the night before and yet survived (never mind that she lost her car). Since that first, shocking week, I've heard of teenage boys who've been gunned down, neighborhood shootings, and other tragic deaths. I've also listened to sermons devoted to urging the congregation to get "legal insurance" to protect themselves against the likely need for fair representation against our city's police, unfair job firings and the notorious "driving while black" syndrome.
In the midst of economic challenges, this church continues to take love offerings any time a minister visits from out of town, they sing joyfully and pray enthusiastically. Sometimes just the mention of economic hardship during prayers leads the women holding my hands to a flood of tears, yet they come back every week, ready to praise God again. The black church has been a gift to me. It is the first time I've experienced the merging of both community identity and individual faith.
One of the reasons I find Obama's candidacy not only timely, but truly revolutionary (on par with the work done by MLK Jr.) is that Obama is able to be a president to all of us in a way that perhaps no president before him has ever been. He brings with him an intimacy with ideas, attitudes, and both white and black cultures that will shape and inform how he governs. His sensitivity to the diversity in himself has led him to be sensitive to the diversity of opinion in America. I strongly recommend reading his chapter on Faith in The Audacity of Hope next time you get coffee at Barnes and Noble. Find out what he says for himself. Don't take someone else's word. We've never had a president able to relate to so many in history. That doesn't mean we haven't had good presidents. We just haven't had one with this unique set of experiences that will help Obama to be a bridge of understanding between a stunning variety of backgrounds, socio-economic conditions, international relations and racial experiences.
Today a college friend sent me a message on FB gently chiding me for my Obama enthusiasm. He told me he has a bumper sticker that suggests who to vote for: "Coldest State, Hottest Governor." Really? Is it possible to be so flip this year, with the economic crisis, the war in Iraq still raging, with a fraudulent executive team leaving the country in shambles and a tattered Constitution?
If you are feeling nervous about Obama, take the next few weeks to read his own writings. Get to know him. Don't just watch the sleazy attack ads or trust some forwarded email. Read Obama's own words. Think about what he says he plans to do for America, what his vision is. Then make your decision.
Edited to add: Susan asked in the comments for verification of the McCain affair/divorce and I wanted to include this article from July from the LATimes: McCain's Broken Marriage Fractured Other Ties as Well.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Matthew 25 Obama ad
Check it out! Brian McLaren and Matthew 25 have created an ad for Senator Obama.
Obama and McCain will be at Saddleback church on Sunday too. V. Interesting.
Wonder how xtns will vote, particularly those emergent ones. I like these developments.
Obama and McCain will be at Saddleback church on Sunday too. V. Interesting.
Wonder how xtns will vote, particularly those emergent ones. I like these developments.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Therapy: a lot like a mortar and pestle...
with me starring as "clove of garlic."
You know what that is, right? That big granite stone "pounder" that thwacks the willing and cringing garlic clove by smashing its pearly white body against the granite-y bowl beneath until all that remains is shredded garlic shards and pungent clear juice? Welcome to my life in therapeutic conditions!
I keep starting blog entries only to realize that I shouldn't probably detail the latest dysfunction that is plaguing me in front of the entire blogosphere since, you know, I do have a private life... though you may be thinking that I already pretty much bare my little soul here anyway and why not just rip open the bodice a little further? What's the harm?
This time, it's not just my bodice I'd have to rip. So I feel more cautious about sharing what is happening in my life.
I could have written about Obama's epic campaign stop in Berlin (Good Lord - does this mean we can travel abroad again and the "Kill Bush" graffiti might be scrubbed clean? We don't have to pretend to be Canadians any more?)
And I did find this hilarious translation of the Bible. Do you know LOLCat? It's a crazy language based on pairing gamer writing with images of cats, making them say and do ridiculous things. You can read more here.
Here's what they say about the translation project.
Really though, what you need to read is Exodus 20 (The Ten Commandments) in LOLCat. As Dr. Dewey says, "Oddly the Bible is clearer in Cat."
For the "not prudish" (and not easily offended by graphic sexuality - though any student of the Bible cannot in fact be a prude cuz apparently Ceiling Cat likz to tawk teh secks a lot!), here's Leviticus 18:
I've made a vow not to have teh secks with anyone, just to be safe from the lazer eyes of Ceiling Cat.
You know what that is, right? That big granite stone "pounder" that thwacks the willing and cringing garlic clove by smashing its pearly white body against the granite-y bowl beneath until all that remains is shredded garlic shards and pungent clear juice? Welcome to my life in therapeutic conditions!
I keep starting blog entries only to realize that I shouldn't probably detail the latest dysfunction that is plaguing me in front of the entire blogosphere since, you know, I do have a private life... though you may be thinking that I already pretty much bare my little soul here anyway and why not just rip open the bodice a little further? What's the harm?
This time, it's not just my bodice I'd have to rip. So I feel more cautious about sharing what is happening in my life.
I could have written about Obama's epic campaign stop in Berlin (Good Lord - does this mean we can travel abroad again and the "Kill Bush" graffiti might be scrubbed clean? We don't have to pretend to be Canadians any more?)
And I did find this hilarious translation of the Bible. Do you know LOLCat? It's a crazy language based on pairing gamer writing with images of cats, making them say and do ridiculous things. You can read more here.
Here's what they say about the translation project.
Really though, what you need to read is Exodus 20 (The Ten Commandments) in LOLCat. As Dr. Dewey says, "Oddly the Bible is clearer in Cat."
1 Then Ceiling Cat spoked all them werds:
2 I iz Ceiling Cat An I iz Top Cat, An I broughted u out of hawt lend wit no cheezbrgrs for hard werk at all
3 No can has other ceiling cat!! U gotz other Ceiling Cat, I shoot yous wit mah lazer eyes.
4 If u try be Ceiling Cat of any of mai creayshunz up in floaty skai, down in erth or in watr or I shoot yous wit mah lazer eyes.5 If u think faek Ceiling Cat iz Ceiling Cat, I mek u ded An ur kittens ded An if yur kittenz have kittenz, dey be ded too, for being stupid.6 If not I wuv u An all ur lotz uf kittenz!
7 U sez Ceiling Cat bad, I shoot yous wit mah lazer eyes, cuz I dun liek it. Srsly.
8 Remembur caturday An keep holy. 9 U werk 6 dais An finish werk, K? 10 Caturday, u no werk. U An all ur peepz go wrship me. And, if yu beez gudd, I maks it so yu can stays home and do alla stuffs yu wanted tu doos. 11 I maded heavenz An erth An see An the stuff that does teh funney hoppey stuffz in An on it - so I make it holy cuz I no werk.
12 Bez u good to papa An mama so u has long lief.
13 U no maek peepz ded! Srsly!
14 U no maek sexxes wit other gurlz or menz than ur wief (so no awsum treesum alowed!).
15 U no taek stuffs for free if not getz for free.
16 U no tell bad stuff about ur neibor.
17 U no wantz neibor stuff! No wief, no gurlz, no menz, no animulz, NO BUKKITZ! DEY NOT UR BUKKITZ, K? dey da LOLrus' bukkits.
18 When peepz see mai great orkestr wit thundr An all cool speshul effects thei wur scardy wimps
19 Thei sed to Moses 'U goez speek to uz An we will listen; but Ceiling Cat will shoot us wit its lazer eyes!'
20 Moses LOL'd lotz, An a bit moar, for thei wuz such wimps, An sed 'Ceiling Cat no maek u ded; he just wantz to hav fun wit u gais An maek u scaredy cats so u obei him.'
21 But peepz wur still wimps An let Moses go ther to Ceiling Cat.
Ceiling Cat roolz for idles an alters
22 Ceiling Cat sez "Tellz them wimpies: 'U see I spoked to u from big ceilingz. 23 U no mek me of silvar or goldz.
24 U mek me altar of erth An gif me pwnz0rzed animulz ther An I gif u cheezburgr. 25 But u no maek me altar of bjutiful stonez. DO NOT WANT! 26 An u no use steps on altar or I can see ur penises. DO NOT WANT!"
For the "not prudish" (and not easily offended by graphic sexuality - though any student of the Bible cannot in fact be a prude cuz apparently Ceiling Cat likz to tawk teh secks a lot!), here's Leviticus 18:
6 No can has teh secks wif teh fambily. I are teh CEILING CAT.So hope that caught you up a bit with me and my recent perusings and meanderings.
7 No can has teh surprise buttsecks wif ur daddy. No can has teh surprise buttsecks wif ur mommy, or dey wil b teh ghey.
8 No can has teh secks wif ur daddy's hoez, dats like teh buttsecks wif ur daddy.
9 No can has teh secks wif ur sister. No iz okai for teh beej. Srry.
10 No can has teh secks wif da kitteh uf ur kitteh.
11 No can has teh heej from teh cuzins. Srry.
12 No can has teh secks wif teh auntie.
13 No cans get teh beej wif auntie too. Srry.
14 No can has teh buttsecks wif teh unkl. He are teh goatse.
15 No can has beej from dawter in law. Well okai maibe sumtimes.
16 No can has teh secks wif ur broes hoes. Dats ur bro d00d!
17 No can has gangbang wif grandma and granddawter.
18 No can has gangbang wif ur hoes sisturz.
19 No can get ur harbl wetted when ur hoes has teh bluds in hur harbl.
20 No can has teh secks wif ur naiborz wife.
21 No can gif ur kitteh to teh fire of teh Molech. I are ceiling cat.
22 No can has mansex liek has ladysex. (hehe) Taht iz teh ghey.
23 No can has teh dogsecks. No can has secks wif teh horse. No can do teh goats. Srsly.
24 Guys, you no can has. Teh hoes is myne. 25 If u teks mai hoes, I pwn u.
I've made a vow not to have teh secks with anyone, just to be safe from the lazer eyes of Ceiling Cat.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
What happened to pastors who led marches
instead of leveled slurs against other religions? Richard Cohen writes in the WaPo that today our politicians have to shamelessly seek the endorsement of Christians who are known more for their ignorant, hateful remarks about members of other faiths than they are for their actions that help their fellow human beings.
To get you started:
To get you started:
The pilgrim is making little progress. In a futile effort to convince faith-voters that he is one of them, John McCain paid a visit to the Grahams of North Carolina -- father Billy and son Franklin. After the meeting, not a word was said about the Grahams' past indiscretions concerning Muslims or Jews, and neither, for that matter, was an endorsement proffered. The next guest was country singer Ricky Skaggs. He did better. He got lunch.
McCain plods a cruel treadmill. He has thus far sought the endorsement of the extremely purple Rev. John Hagee and the equally purple Rev. Rod Parsley. Both of them were later asked to unendorse on account of offensive things they've said. But to paraphrase Hyman Roth in "The Godfather," this is the business they're in.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
So what do you believe now?
That question is one I don't get asked as often as you might think.
One of my best friends, for instance, has staunchly defended me when I've been targeted as theologically dangerous. Yet she's never actually probed to find out what I believe today.
I told her once, "Please feel free to ask me anything. I don't mind sharing."
She replied, "I like you. I trust you. I don't ask because I don't really want to know. If you share something that I find contradictory to my beliefs, I don't want that to change how I feel about you. I don't know if it would. So I figure it doesn't really matter if I know."
I appreciated that point of view, actually. Mature and kind. And the truth is, my changed beliefs do impact my friendships adversely sometimes.
Still on the occasions where I've been asked, I do a profoundly poor (stunningly bad, inadequate, impoverished) job of answering that question. I fumble, mumble, stumble over big words and ideas, and offer something really lame like, "Well, I'm Christian, but not a Christian any more." Whatever that means.
On Monday, my therapist tackled the big question. What do you believe now? Do you have a Higher Power, anything from which to draw strength or help you define your purpose? Timing made sense. I was crying over things I can't change, won't change and what those patterns have cost me... maybe for good.
She flipped through her notes.
"You were an ardent Christian at one point in time. But you say now that you aren't. How is that for you? What is your spiritual life like now?"
"Religion, feh!"
She laughed. "I didn't ask you about religion."
Oh for the love of Schleiermacher! Hello. I tap-danced, sandwich-boarded, and Four-lawed that script: Knowing God is about personal relationship, not religion. Faith is about spirituality not religious practice.
But I knew she was broadening the search. What about Buddhism?
Ack! Sorry. Can't get into it. Something about saffron yellow robes and vegetarianism. When I read Buddhist writings, it's that hard-working place of foreign language learning all over again. Nothing familiar, strange accent, translation required. No peace.
Yoga works for me because it's the body not the mind, not even the spirit (though my yoga instructor might say otherwise). I just yield to it and stop processing. The readings are grounded in the real, not the virtual. I can do that.
Weirdly, I do attend church. Started up a couple of months ago. Downtown, inner city black church. I don't blog about it because it's not a project, it's a place for me to be in community. I do love it.
But the bottom line is, I don't have beliefs, I don't have relationship (with God), I don't have spiritual practices. And I don't want them.
For years Jesus stood in the gap when pain mounted, when I couldn't get the love I craved the way I craved it. I worshiped, sang, prayed my heart out, wrote thousands of pages of prayers and love notes, studied the Bible like my life depended on it (and in some very real ways it did). But the bottom dropped out.
I'm not in a search for meaning, for guidance, for principles, for tangible support outside myself (and I mean that humbly... I'm not relying on myself either; I'm bobbing along like a cork on the vast sea of life, letting life itself, and all of my interconnections developed over a lifetime, support me).
My mother prays for me.
My church prays and I hold the hands of the ladies in hats who sit by me and pray with them.
I find myself praying at the oddest moments... in the shower, sometimes in the dark at night, often in the supermarket when I'm alone. I usually laugh while I pray because I don't believe in what I'm praying or saying. It's reflexive. And comforting. And habit.
And helps.
And is a waste of time.
God from below is like that. It's not a head thing. Not even really a heart thing for me. It's more like dirt. Soil, out of which I grow.
One of my best friends, for instance, has staunchly defended me when I've been targeted as theologically dangerous. Yet she's never actually probed to find out what I believe today.
I told her once, "Please feel free to ask me anything. I don't mind sharing."
She replied, "I like you. I trust you. I don't ask because I don't really want to know. If you share something that I find contradictory to my beliefs, I don't want that to change how I feel about you. I don't know if it would. So I figure it doesn't really matter if I know."
I appreciated that point of view, actually. Mature and kind. And the truth is, my changed beliefs do impact my friendships adversely sometimes.
Still on the occasions where I've been asked, I do a profoundly poor (stunningly bad, inadequate, impoverished) job of answering that question. I fumble, mumble, stumble over big words and ideas, and offer something really lame like, "Well, I'm Christian, but not a Christian any more." Whatever that means.
On Monday, my therapist tackled the big question. What do you believe now? Do you have a Higher Power, anything from which to draw strength or help you define your purpose? Timing made sense. I was crying over things I can't change, won't change and what those patterns have cost me... maybe for good.
She flipped through her notes.
"You were an ardent Christian at one point in time. But you say now that you aren't. How is that for you? What is your spiritual life like now?"
"Religion, feh!"
She laughed. "I didn't ask you about religion."
Oh for the love of Schleiermacher! Hello. I tap-danced, sandwich-boarded, and Four-lawed that script: Knowing God is about personal relationship, not religion. Faith is about spirituality not religious practice.
But I knew she was broadening the search. What about Buddhism?
Ack! Sorry. Can't get into it. Something about saffron yellow robes and vegetarianism. When I read Buddhist writings, it's that hard-working place of foreign language learning all over again. Nothing familiar, strange accent, translation required. No peace.
Yoga works for me because it's the body not the mind, not even the spirit (though my yoga instructor might say otherwise). I just yield to it and stop processing. The readings are grounded in the real, not the virtual. I can do that.
Weirdly, I do attend church. Started up a couple of months ago. Downtown, inner city black church. I don't blog about it because it's not a project, it's a place for me to be in community. I do love it.
But the bottom line is, I don't have beliefs, I don't have relationship (with God), I don't have spiritual practices. And I don't want them.
For years Jesus stood in the gap when pain mounted, when I couldn't get the love I craved the way I craved it. I worshiped, sang, prayed my heart out, wrote thousands of pages of prayers and love notes, studied the Bible like my life depended on it (and in some very real ways it did). But the bottom dropped out.
I'm not in a search for meaning, for guidance, for principles, for tangible support outside myself (and I mean that humbly... I'm not relying on myself either; I'm bobbing along like a cork on the vast sea of life, letting life itself, and all of my interconnections developed over a lifetime, support me).
My mother prays for me.
My church prays and I hold the hands of the ladies in hats who sit by me and pray with them.
I find myself praying at the oddest moments... in the shower, sometimes in the dark at night, often in the supermarket when I'm alone. I usually laugh while I pray because I don't believe in what I'm praying or saying. It's reflexive. And comforting. And habit.
And helps.
And is a waste of time.
God from below is like that. It's not a head thing. Not even really a heart thing for me. It's more like dirt. Soil, out of which I grow.
Friday, June 13, 2008
True Love Waits: Read my butt
So this article at Huffington Post just cracked me up. Apparently K-Mart is cashing in on the chastity, abstinence craze by promoting sweat pants with the words "True Love Waits" sluttily-embroidered across the tush.
Uh huh. I suppose that's putting the message where it's most likely to get attention... or perhaps it's a tease... postmodern irony? "True love waits until you yank down my pants?"
There is a way to recover from the absurdity of the "true love waits" campaign.
1) Toss your "Preparing for Adolescence" tapes. Outdated, and Dr. D gets just the teensiest angry when he reminds youngsters how hell-ward bound they are if they cross that most important moral line of all: abandoning the poor. I'm not sure what he thinks about sex.
2) Buy your kids multiple promise rings so that they can reclaim their virginity a couple of times, if needed.
Or you could follow the advice of a sensible friend of mine, an RN for the last 25 years.
I have not yet used this plan because I found out about it a little late. Our kids tell me they already know what to do and when and why and what not to do and why not, "And Mom I'm not stupid!" If my kids were younger and our family wasn't right smack in the middle of teens years and "Will and Grace" reruns, I might have done it.
Still I throw it out for those of you who still have time.
Buy some condoms and put them in a basket under your bathroom sink. Tell your kids where they are (no need to explain how to use them - the Internet and TV sit coms have taken care of that). Let them know that they have no excuse not to use them because they are here, free, and Mom and Dad will never ask you about them or whether or not you used them.
Then, of course, you can have the big talk about intimacy, STDs, pregnancy, too many partners, and so on, with the aim of dissuading early sexual activity but not promoting irresponsible sex. (Ask me how many homeschooled girls I know who've gotten pregnant on "true love waits.")
You might also want to throw in some comments about orgasm, sexual arousal, passion, and the fun of sex too. After all, it is and they figure that out.
Or you could just buy the sweats. Same diff, right?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Afterlife
I've spent a week thinking about death. Some strange thoughts about it.For instance, death sounds peaceful. Like falling asleep. An end to the endless sense of urgency this planet plans for every day of my life. Death sounds like "my turn is finished, now someone else can have a turn."
Death doesn't correlate with afterlife for me. Death is an ending. A finality. A moment in time from which to mark time and move forward. Afterlife is something else - a "heavenly" fiction (in the best sense of the word). Afterlife is open for debate, speculation, freaky near-death experiences, fantasy, imagination, spaces and places unknown, one-sided conversation with the ones who've "gone to the other side." Afterlife keeps a cushion around what death represents: final painful loss.
When I was little and heard about heaven, I didn't know what could possibly be a better place than this life - this little tract home in Canoga Park with two parents, a brother and a sister, a boxer named Casey and a jungle gym. One week in church, trying to picture my soul resting in heaven, the best I came up with was an image of a heart muscle wearing wings perched on the clouds. I decided I preferred the jungle gym.
By high school, I no longer believed in heaven. I remember distinctly trying to comfort a friend afraid of dying by saying rather glibly at the time: "Listen, when you're dead, you're dead. You won't know that you're dead so it won't be a big deal. Just live now and when you die, you won't even know it happened."
That didn't comfort her, but it sure made sense to me. I found it possible to live that way without any anxiety at all. I was, naturally, 17.
Within a couple years of that declaration, the Christians in my life came up with an entirely different description of the nature of death (there was not just physical, but spiritual death too) and the afterlife (heaven, hell - pick heaven, smart people do) and expected me to accept it. (I pretended to for about two years.) The truth is, I joined up with Jesus Christ not for life after death, but for life while living. But if they needed me to pretend that heaven existed, well, I could sing along.
Then Keith Green died.
Until someone as close to God as Keith somehow missed the Holy Spirit's insistent tapping on his back, "Hey Keith! Don't get in a seven seater plane with eleven people or you'll die!" I didn't think about death.
Suddenly I had to. I had to answer the question: Where was Keith now?
And on a dime: I believed. Heaven. It was the only thing that made sense.
That's when my daily practice of sharing my faith began. I could not bear the thought of anyone going to hell. Just. Like. That. So for a good long while, I believed in heaven and hell, even saving Muslim souls before it was in vogue to do so.
I tallied it this way: Eternity is a really, really, really long time. This life is nearly pointless next to that terrifying stretch of non-time. Better make sure no one goes to the bad place.
But one day I woke up (after years of theological wrangling and deconstruction) and didn't believe any of it any more. Belief in the afterlife evaporated as quickly as it had come. I didn't miss it.
So when Heath Ledger died last week, my only thoughts about him had to do with our collective loss, his family, his last moments. I don't wonder where he is. I do wonder why and how he died.
Theories about where he is now, though, are a big part of the grief process for his fans (maybe his family too). Some speculate that Heath is able to hear and receive all the love being expressed somewhere in the invisible universe where his soul is attentive and peaceful. Others talk about the grand reunion he will have with one of our forum friends who died the same week. There are theories related to numerology that suggest he "had to die" that day. Nothing he could have done about it. Someone else suggested writing Heath a letter, putting it inside a Bible and then asking an angel to take it to him.
The apartment where Heath died has been showered with flowers, posters, memorials, candles, letters, poetry, and flags. All directed to Heath, as though he is still near, hovering to catch the last glimpse of this life before he ascends over the city of New York like Neo in the Matrix. A final exit, not quite made yet.As I read the heartfelt remembrances and the hopes that Heath is at peace, knows inexplicably that he was deeply admired and loved, as speculations about life after death smoothed the rough edges of loss, I found I could easily wish for all of it to be true, whether or not it is fact.
Perhaps heaven and hell are for us, the living, to help us cope with the losses that death brings. Perhaps thinking about afterlife helps us to live this life more peacefully.
I also know what any of us thinks about it doesn't matter really. No one knows what's on the other side. But the hope of heaven or spiritual life may comfort. And with the short supply of options available in grief, hoping for heaven isn't such a bad one.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Aberration
In the history of the Christian church (all expressions, ethnicities, denominations), 20th century American evangelical fundamentalism is a blip on the computer screen of time. While it still has some evidence of a pulse, I'd say like Billy Crystal in "The Princess Bride": "It's mostly dead." The short life span is good news for the future of faith. It's not such good news if you were born in the sixties.
That life span, unfortunately, coincided with mine. Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ) turned evangelism into a door-to-door sales strategy with little booklets and Four Spiritual Laws that paralleled (somehow) the physical universe. John MacArthur (Grace Community Church Sun Valley) redefined the sermon with his lengthy word by word exposition that had the look and feel of a college lecture rather than weekly nurturing from the "head of a flock." The US Center for World Mission approximated the number of "unreached people groups," never remembered to update the number and expected young Christians to give up everything to live in some of the most hostile, unreached parts of the world to win the lost to Christ... all by the year 2000.
Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family) "took back the family" from Dr. Spock by advocating wooden spoon spanking and following it up with strict patriarchy. Not content to merely take back the family, he created a following bent on taking back the country as well. Randall Terry (founder of Operation Rescue - pro-lifers who gladly went to jail to save babies) proof-texted the Old Testament to shame evangelicals into civil disobedience until he got tired of jail himself and started a bad radio show. John Wimber discovered that Christian pop worship music was big business and then proceeded to believe all he'd been taught about the Bible being literally true. (I admit to admiring that about the guy.) Unlike the rest of the conservatives on the landscape, he tried to "do the stuff" that Jesus did. Depending on who you ask, it's hard to say whether or not he ever succeeded.
Mary Pride led a revolution of large family-ism, home business, home education and home collapse. I remember back in the day explaining to my mother that Jon and I were going to go off of birth control to have as many kids "as the Lord wanted us to have." My mom's memorable response: "We're Catholics. We already tried that. It doesn't work."
New models and methods for "sharing" our faith were being fast forwarded into an exhausted movement of people who had prayed the prayer, had burned bridges with old friends, bosses and family by standing up for the Gospel, who had prayed for intimacy with God in tongues, in closets, on 40 day fasts, who'd studied the Bible until the pages wore out, searching for insights that would reinforce evangelical doctrines. Husbands were keeping promises to wives, wives had given up careers to stay home, children were being raised to distrust the culture, the public schools, Hollywood, and to expect men to lead and women to submit.
Evangelical Christianity became its own self-reinforcing loop of similar people who spoke one language, who saw themselves as embattled good people victimized by the ever-intensifying secular humanist American world. But even more than that, they saw themselves as reflecting true, orthodox, original Christianity, just updated by pop music, Veggie Tales, theater style buildings, television and radio shows, and hip male pastors.
It's so glaringly obvious now that this thing, this culture of evangelicalism, had more to do with a reaction to the slide into postmodernism than anything to do with Christianity of the historic formulation.
Some smart people in my life have tried to tell me that the Christianity I believed in was not the "real" Christianity. Gawd, how that used to bug me. I was living in this massive arena of evangelical interconnections that included superstars, the biggest publishing industry in the country, the most easily spotted Christian movement the media could identify. How could these non-evangelical Christian friends not know what I was talking about or who the heroes of this "true Christianity" were?
Even more, as I began to surf ex-fundamentalist sites, it was clear that there were loads of people like me who had thought that Christianity equaled the evangelical version of it. Proof that the version I knew was legit, representative of real Christianity, literal Christianity... at least by that measurement.
In a classic "baby and bath water" argument, a few of my friends on the outside of this suffocating movement have pleaded with me to reconsider my faith so as to retain a better version of it. Honestly, this is how I wound up in graduate school. I have never liked the "I was this, now I'm that" feel of ex-fundamentalism. I was no more qualified to evaluate arguments for evolution post-evangelical than while living as one. So the quick move to trusting some other "expert" (usually science for ex-fundamentalists) to define my worldview worried me a lot.
Worse, I still found things to like in the Bible, in Jesus and in Christianity. It wasn't all smoke and mirrors. The "commitment to marriage and family" arc of evangelicalism actually served my marriage and family (though I know it hasn't always worked that way for everyone). I loved my community of close friends in the homeschooling movement. I loved the community, period. And the themes of redemption, forgiveness and suffering, valuing the "other," and being a part of lasting change still speak to me loudest through Christian writings, theology and teachers.
Graduate school became the place where I discovered this big huge world of Christianities that I hadn't ever known, loved, understood or considered. It was like leaving the McDonald's playland for Disneyland. No comparison. Made the old version of faith look childish and insufficient.
As a result, I've come to agree with those critics in my life. I was in an aberrant form of the faith.
So now what do I do? Adopt another? Reject them all? Instead of Disneyland, I'm hanging out at the beach for awhile. I'm not ready to get the annual pass; I don't feel ready to commit to one location and call it home. My beliefs? Who really cares? They've not defined me very well for most of my adult life. I'm a bit gunshy of declaring "new convictions" given my history of changeableness.
I decided to try something else. Today, I live by faith, not sight. I got the idea from that one guy in the Bible, in fact. It's a really nice way to live, with lots of different people dropping in for tea and a chat.
That life span, unfortunately, coincided with mine. Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ) turned evangelism into a door-to-door sales strategy with little booklets and Four Spiritual Laws that paralleled (somehow) the physical universe. John MacArthur (Grace Community Church Sun Valley) redefined the sermon with his lengthy word by word exposition that had the look and feel of a college lecture rather than weekly nurturing from the "head of a flock." The US Center for World Mission approximated the number of "unreached people groups," never remembered to update the number and expected young Christians to give up everything to live in some of the most hostile, unreached parts of the world to win the lost to Christ... all by the year 2000.
Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family) "took back the family" from Dr. Spock by advocating wooden spoon spanking and following it up with strict patriarchy. Not content to merely take back the family, he created a following bent on taking back the country as well. Randall Terry (founder of Operation Rescue - pro-lifers who gladly went to jail to save babies) proof-texted the Old Testament to shame evangelicals into civil disobedience until he got tired of jail himself and started a bad radio show. John Wimber discovered that Christian pop worship music was big business and then proceeded to believe all he'd been taught about the Bible being literally true. (I admit to admiring that about the guy.) Unlike the rest of the conservatives on the landscape, he tried to "do the stuff" that Jesus did. Depending on who you ask, it's hard to say whether or not he ever succeeded.
Mary Pride led a revolution of large family-ism, home business, home education and home collapse. I remember back in the day explaining to my mother that Jon and I were going to go off of birth control to have as many kids "as the Lord wanted us to have." My mom's memorable response: "We're Catholics. We already tried that. It doesn't work."
New models and methods for "sharing" our faith were being fast forwarded into an exhausted movement of people who had prayed the prayer, had burned bridges with old friends, bosses and family by standing up for the Gospel, who had prayed for intimacy with God in tongues, in closets, on 40 day fasts, who'd studied the Bible until the pages wore out, searching for insights that would reinforce evangelical doctrines. Husbands were keeping promises to wives, wives had given up careers to stay home, children were being raised to distrust the culture, the public schools, Hollywood, and to expect men to lead and women to submit.
Evangelical Christianity became its own self-reinforcing loop of similar people who spoke one language, who saw themselves as embattled good people victimized by the ever-intensifying secular humanist American world. But even more than that, they saw themselves as reflecting true, orthodox, original Christianity, just updated by pop music, Veggie Tales, theater style buildings, television and radio shows, and hip male pastors.
It's so glaringly obvious now that this thing, this culture of evangelicalism, had more to do with a reaction to the slide into postmodernism than anything to do with Christianity of the historic formulation.
Some smart people in my life have tried to tell me that the Christianity I believed in was not the "real" Christianity. Gawd, how that used to bug me. I was living in this massive arena of evangelical interconnections that included superstars, the biggest publishing industry in the country, the most easily spotted Christian movement the media could identify. How could these non-evangelical Christian friends not know what I was talking about or who the heroes of this "true Christianity" were?
Even more, as I began to surf ex-fundamentalist sites, it was clear that there were loads of people like me who had thought that Christianity equaled the evangelical version of it. Proof that the version I knew was legit, representative of real Christianity, literal Christianity... at least by that measurement.
In a classic "baby and bath water" argument, a few of my friends on the outside of this suffocating movement have pleaded with me to reconsider my faith so as to retain a better version of it. Honestly, this is how I wound up in graduate school. I have never liked the "I was this, now I'm that" feel of ex-fundamentalism. I was no more qualified to evaluate arguments for evolution post-evangelical than while living as one. So the quick move to trusting some other "expert" (usually science for ex-fundamentalists) to define my worldview worried me a lot.
Worse, I still found things to like in the Bible, in Jesus and in Christianity. It wasn't all smoke and mirrors. The "commitment to marriage and family" arc of evangelicalism actually served my marriage and family (though I know it hasn't always worked that way for everyone). I loved my community of close friends in the homeschooling movement. I loved the community, period. And the themes of redemption, forgiveness and suffering, valuing the "other," and being a part of lasting change still speak to me loudest through Christian writings, theology and teachers.
Graduate school became the place where I discovered this big huge world of Christianities that I hadn't ever known, loved, understood or considered. It was like leaving the McDonald's playland for Disneyland. No comparison. Made the old version of faith look childish and insufficient.
As a result, I've come to agree with those critics in my life. I was in an aberrant form of the faith.
So now what do I do? Adopt another? Reject them all? Instead of Disneyland, I'm hanging out at the beach for awhile. I'm not ready to get the annual pass; I don't feel ready to commit to one location and call it home. My beliefs? Who really cares? They've not defined me very well for most of my adult life. I'm a bit gunshy of declaring "new convictions" given my history of changeableness.
I decided to try something else. Today, I live by faith, not sight. I got the idea from that one guy in the Bible, in fact. It's a really nice way to live, with lots of different people dropping in for tea and a chat.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
L'Abri and me
Frank Schaeffer (author of Crazy for God and son of Edith and Francis Schaeffer) would be mortified to see where I ski. He skied Alps. Swiss ones. Those Alps. My little patch of mid-winter bliss is located off I-275 in Indiana on the only hill trying to be a mountain in the entire state. It's always a surprise when you drive up to it. Not a hint of snow, barely a bump in the terrain and suddenly an eruption of pointy white. Today the proud peaks greeted us with snow blowers at full blast like giant white spray paint cans.
Snow! If God won't make it, machines will!
Frank Schaeffer said his favorite times of year were his two week vacations in Portofino, Italy in the summer, and his family's annual trip to Zermatt, Switzerland in winter to ski. Those would work for me.
My favorite day of the week in winter is the alliterative Wednesday. It's my escape from computer screens, washing machines, and the pervasive greyness of Ohio in January.
Crazy for God takes me to lots of familiar places, both physical and metaphysical. There's the Chalet Lez Melezes where I took many of my dinners at L'Abri (the ministry to college students and twenty-somethings in Switzerland), there's the little rickety bus that winds you up the mountain side from the train station in Aigle to Huemoz, home of L'Abri. I remember the wooden shutters over big windows, the long sermon-like prayers of Edith and the well stocked tape cassette library where I listened to Francis lecture on predestination and the sovereignty of God while gazing on daffodils sprouting on green hillsides, huge craggy peaks of white in the distance.
I loved my two stays at L'Abri, though I arrived for the first time in the spring of 1982 after Frank had left in 1980. I met his sisters and parents, but never met him. In 1983, I visited again in the summer for a longer two week stay. But something had changed. The atmosphere of L'Abri felt crumbly, like a cake left out too long on a counter. It had become a memory of itself, a tourist stop to see a by-gone era of young adult free-love hippie soul seekers, now replaced by Reagan-fans who raced through Europe to shop, not to find themselves.
Worse, perhaps, one of the workers introduced me to heresy.
I never have gotten along well with reformed theology. (Just ask my friends.) I worked hard to "get it" in the early days - asking the Holy Spirit to impart the doctrine to me in terms I could grasp, tolerate (I didn't expect to understand it all, I just needed to be able to respect and worship the God I was telling people about).
So after failing to appreciate the doctrine, even after the literally dozens of hours I spent in conversations, reading, and listening to cassettes, I made an appointment with one of the "workers" to have a one-on-one appointment ("workers" often turned out to be those people who got lost in the tulips, loved the alpine lifestyle, and stayed on to talk theology for the benefit of other seekers).
I unburdened myself to this poor nearly 30 year old guy.
What is the point of missions if God has already picked who will or won't go to heaven?
How can God be called loving and only choose some for salvation, since we're all sinners, since none of us deserves heaven? If the choice is random, doesn't that make God a capricious God?
Why don't all Christians accept this theology?
Ah. That was the ticket. That's the question that uncorked the months of bottled up theological fizz-turned-high-pressure-spray. For the next hour and a half, I listened to all of his doctrinal complaints, the way a nurse might listen to an 80 year old woman's body ailments: "I have a creaky knee, and my ankle pops, and yes, that doctrine makes God capricious!"
He had the same problems with predestination I did (and the "years of study and debate" chops to back it up). He had a problem with the trinity. He had issues with the Bible. And all of these he planned to resolve in the most heretical place known to humankind (and L'Abri): Fuller Seminary (the bastion of all things slippery slope to hell). I know. You're shaking in your boots.
Once this worker had declared his seminary destination, his worker status was terminated. While a diversity of seekers were welcome, apparently a diversity of conclusions were not. I happened upon this worker while he was clearing out his books to move to California. He wrote down several titles for me to read. I read one: Grace Unlimited by Clark Pinnock (Bethany, 1975).
I loved it, tried to talk about it with my Campus Crusade friends and staff. Instead, I was told I had exposed myself to heresy. So I put Pinnock's ideas on the back burner and redoubled my efforts to be a good evangelical. Ironically it would be Clark Pinnock's writings again that led to the renewed examination of my faith in the 1990s (and also would become the source of much painful online communication with new friends).
Yesterday, though, was all about skiing for me. Riding up my little mountain, I thought about Frank's strange life in the Alps and what Jan and Stan Berenstain (authors of "Too Much Birthday") might have called "Too Much Theology."
Since May, I've been on an accidental theology fast. It's been good. Skiing even better.
Look at the way the snow blower gets the trees even though everywhere else is green. The snow is an illusion we buy into while we ski. Surreal, isn't it?
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