Giving Up the Polarizing God
Topic: spirituality

A very nice lady was complaining to me about the sky-rocketing gas prices recently.  While I am as alarmed as anyone in America, the truth is that we are catching up with the rest of the world because the rest of the world is catching up with us in our more global economy. 

As I see it, this isn't really bad.  We'll find ways to adapt and survive.  Maybe become more humble, too, and simplistic.  Perhaps even kinder, more creative and generous.  As we move down a peg.  For I've lived on the other side of things, where I had to pay much more for gasoline and most everything else than America would ever tolerate..  Yet, thanks to a cost-of-living adjustment given to us by our Board, we could afford what most people around us who were living in grass-roofed huts, could not.  Though, I can assure you, we lived very humbly compared to most Americans! 

Of course, the lady looked at me like I was from Mars when I expressed my opinion.  After all, she is a choir leader in a fine church and not in need of any adjustments to her way of life.  Nor, like most Americans, can she see how that relates to the rest of the world. 

God, by not polarizing, doesn't "agree" with any of us.  Nor with any nation or group or institution.  Not even the Pope, dare I say it, 100% of the time!  Probably FAR less than that, in fact. 

The Spirit moves within us, whether we have very simplistic solutions to the world's problems or to oppression or abuse or any other topic that is complex.  The Spirit makes us consider all angles of an issue, change our opinions, and find ways to keep changing as we see just how complex so many things are. 

The Spirit also allows us to formulate opinions and to take stands when our courage wanes.  From the Spirit, we draw energy without asking for it.  We don't need to go around talking about all of this as a "requirement" for being "right with God."  We just accept it and move forward, with understanding, while treating with respect those we may very well see as "dead wrong." 

In so doing, we may bring about changes faster than if we stayed in our own little worlds, licking our wounds. 

Giving Up the Killer God
Topic: spirituality

Most Christians believe in what I'd call "grace with contingency."  It works like this:  "God loves and shows grace to those who are civil and think the way God thinks."  Of course, if I make that statement, that's assuming that I know how God thinks.  Rather arrogant assumption; but certainly a tempting one, I'll admit.  It's really another way of making God into our own image.  As if we needed God to have a brain or eyes or ears.  Something visible, instead of being a Spirit that moves within us and doesn't need any of those things. 

If we are thinking spiritually, it seems to me that we have spirits that are made in God's image--not bodies.

Now, you can disagree with all of that.  I may disagree with myself in a year or two, but this is how I've understood God for quite a few years now.  It works for me because it makes me much more loving--when I remember to keep this all in mind.

Much of Christianity worships a killer God.  Yet doesn't admit this.  God killed, according to the Old Testament, when people went against Him.  Either in the future or (depending on how you interpret things) immediately after death or after a time in purgatory, those who haven't "served God" the way God wants to be served will be tortured.  Not to death, but they will wish they were dead as they burn in a Lake of Fire.  Problem is that, depending on who you listen to, it's up to us to figure out how to avoid that worse-than-death experience.

God also is on the correct side in wars--just as George Bush, the King of America!  He'll tell you how God thinks, no bones about it!!!!

Problem is that the militant Muslims think exactly the opposite as Bush about who God condones killing. 

The God that I embrace is gentle and listens and seems to validate some things I espouse.  God even does the same for people I consider to be "full of the Devil" (to put it in my old fundamentalist tongue).  I decided to "kill" the Killer God some time ago.  Doing so has enriched my life, made me more humble, worry much less about people I love, and helped me understand heaven in ways that the old theology of my anxious childhood couldn't start to imagine!

Respecting the "Silent" God
Topic: spirituality

Spirits, like the wind, do not speak audibly.  So why is it, when we don't hear people reflecting what we believe God should be saying, we decide the Spirit is asleep?  Or even that the Spirit doesn't exist?

Perhaps it is because we have trouble distinguishing what we think should be said at the moment from the inaudible truths that are more powerful than anything we can put into words.  How quickly we forget that all of us are frequently afraid of speaking what we know.   In fact, courage is usually born in silence.

As we are willing to wait in silence, waiting on others who may also be too petrified to speak or act in ways that would stand up to abusive systems, we can learn to live effectively in what Parker Palmer calls the "tragic gap" between what we long to see happening and what we see when we look back, comparing each of these to where we are today.

Each time I find myself willing to wait, I renew my joy in many things in my life.  Eventually, coming back, when the time is right to see things happening that were beyond my own finite dreams in the slow work of raising the consciousness of individuals about a variety of psychosocial issues and global issues that concern me.  Not the least of which is sexual and domestic violence.

Memorial Day -- a Day for New Pledges

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a time to remember those who have done heroic things, often losing their lives in so doing.  It is a time to be silent and reflect.  This morning I said a brief prayer for the many sisters and brothers who have gone to their graves without ever speaking of atrocities that deeply impacted their lives.  Not just Americans, but victims of the Holocaust and other wars, as well as those who have taken their own lives because they were unable to find ways to function because of the abuse or violence they experienced in their own homes, churches, or schools. 

May we not just remember but find ways to prevent the wars, the domination of one country over another, the oppressive world leaders, and the violence and abuse in every form in this world of immature people where resources are hoarded instead of shared.

 

 

Giving Up the Magician
Topic: spirituality

The wind is not a magician.  It "blows where it listeth" we are reminded in John 3.   We are born again and again and again as we allow the Spirit to blow across ourselves, but this often requires that we wait for new insights.  Or, to put it in another way, to wait until we feel the wind blowing. 

Meterologists can't predict with absolute accuracy which way the wind will blow.  They often miss this and have us bringing out sweaters on days when we might do better to have grabbed a coat. 

We somehow want God to always be there to do magical things for us.  Perhaps more than ever before.

I wonder if this isn't related to our obsession with happiness today, which we equate with having luxuries or "necessities" that the rest of the world considers to be luxuries.  It also means that we are always winners or people who believe that justice is a 100% given in this world, so that when we don't get it we see ourselves as being "God-forsaken." 

Or to put it another way "forsaken by the Big Magician" who is supposed to make everything right.

"You can fire that god anytime," I hear Dee Babcock saying.  That god is just a child-like dream, a figment of your imagination.   A common figment, I might add.

God as the Ideal Person
Topic: spirituality

God is a Spirit, we read; and many of us believe this to be true.  Problem is that we very quickly try to make God into a person. 

Does a spirit have a plan?  Does it think?  Does it have gender?  I don't think any of these are requirements for a spirit.

We can only understand what we see and know--that's the problem when it come to spiritual things.  They are NOT seen and they are NOT made in our image.  Of course, Jesus is understood by most Christians to be "the word (that means God) made flesh" because people seemed to need to see a concrete image for a while.  

When taken to the extreme, some people are really fatalists.  In other words, the Christian equivalent of fatalistic people who believe one can't do anything to make the world a different place.  If everything that happens occurs simply because it was God's will, God has a lot to answer for!!!

In contrast, we can accept the fact that we all have a combination of potentially great good and potentially great evil that dwells within us.  We can create a different world as we do what we are able to do that makes a positive impact on others.  That is what I understand of "God in me, at work in this world." 

Even when we have experienced much sorrow because of others' poor choices.  And even when we have made poor choices ourselves--choices that reveal our own limited insight or our very selfish desire to be more powerful for our own good than what we are intended to be--we can still access the Spirit within us and overcome evil with good.

As I understand it, this is how God works most effectively.

Strange Old Words I Like to Sing

It's hard to fit the words of the 2nd line of "Be Thou My Vision" to make them fit the melody.  Yet it's the words that I'm trying to memorize because I love the first verse of this ancient Irish hymn.

"Naught be all else to me, save that thou art."

Modern-day translation:  "God, don't let me make of you something that you aren't."

Doing so makes the Divine into a "graven image." 

As you go through the day today, please think of some of the images that you may have had in the past. Or words that you've used to describe your understanding of God. 

In the next few days, I will be daring you to examine these ideas and their origins.  Some may be very good ones for you still.  Others may be problematic, though they may work very well for others.  In this process, we will be embracing a concept that only can be considered by people who have been walking where angels fear to tread.  

Outside My Comfort Zone
Topic: spirituality

Finding people who we think are very much like us is important.  It keeps us in our comfort zone when we are feeling threatened.  It may allow us to get things done that we could not do on our own by joining with other people who will support us on our quest to bring about changes in society.

The place where the wild things grow, however, requires us to get away from the comfort sometimes, to dare taking risks so that we are able to be more open to the journeys of others.  Especially to those who, for whatever reasons, need to have us sit and understand why they think differently from us.  Whether they are reaching for the wild places where thinking outside the box can occur.  Or perhaps very certain they do not want to go there. 

As a matter of fact, the hardest assignment I can give myself is to sit and listen quietly, past my comfort zone, to people who are able to teach me why they are so afraid to walk down the trails of exploration that my own choices have allowed me to explore.  It requires that I put away all of my own rigid pre-conceptualized ideas about people I may not respect, for whatever reason.  Not that I will ever respect their views, but I could possibly gain valuable insights that will allow me to know better how to approach destructive ideas that are so dominant in our world, whether I like those ideas or not. 

Or it could even turn some of my perceived enemies into friends.

Something in me suspects that this is my next challenge.

The Scariest Question
Topic: spirituality

The hardest question I've ever had to ask myself is:  "Who will I be if I dare to leave the familiar 'securities' and go where the wild things grow?"

That question was born out of a little bookmark sent to me by Jiivani, the pen name for a feminist writer-editor of Buddhist persuasion who had a strong appreciation for people of all faiths.  I've lost track of her and long ago lost the bookmark, too.  Yet in 1994, that little gift struck me so much, for reasons I could not fully explain, that I hung it on our bedroom wall.

It said simply:  "Grow where the wild things are."  I didn't understand where that was, and I'm still learning.  I believe it's a different place for every one of us as we go where nobody else has gone and leave a trail.  This allows others to find their own little safe places among the "wild things" and yet to always be able to leave the sacredness of the individual places to return again and again to find other people who also know how to dwell in community among people of diverse journeys. 

Dispelling the Darkness
Topic: spirituality
"Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself."  These words were spoken by Erasmus in one of the darkest periods in history (1536)!!  Today is SUNDAY, time to shine, no matter what you may feel inside.  In so doing, you'll create a new world for yourself and others around you.