Seeing Something New in the Old

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Trappist monk whose writings speak to so many people -- progressive Christians and progressive non-Christians alike.  His Center for Action and Contemplation offers daily meditations, brief reflections on a theme like "From the Bottom Up," "Unknowing," and "Transformation."  He explore each theme for a week, and on Saturday he offers summary of the week's reflections.

This past week's theme was, "This Is My Body."  He was exploring the traditional Christian concept of "incarnation" in what for many would be a highly provocative way.  That's one of the things I absolutely love about his writing.  It puts me in mind of phrase I learned during my chaplaincy training (about which I wrote back in May), "Tell me about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God either."  Rohr seems to me to be saying, "Tell me about this teaching you don't believe.  I probably don't understand it that way."

What is the meaning of the word, "Christ."  It's often been said, "'Christ' isn't Jesus' last name."  It's often understood as signifying Jesus' God-hood. Yet what if you don't believe in those teaching?  What if you believe that Jesus was a man, a human person, who was not God but had, instead, 

"[an] identification with God so complete, [a] relationship so intimate, that they seemed to be one and the same.  Jesus saw the world with God's eyes; he loved the world with God's heart; and his acts were ultimately the acts of God.  Those who looked at Jesus saw God's face, and they met God directly through him."  [That's from my first book, Teacher, Guide, Companion: Rediscovering Jesus in a Secular World, p. 38.]

What does this do to the concept of "the risen Christ"?  There is a spiritual way of understanding it that does not require the overthrow of the human experience of life and death.  John Dominic Crosson notes that the word "resurrection" is different from the word "restitution," and that one need not believe in the later to believe in the former.


In the meditation "The Universe is the Body of God," he quotes the theologian Sallie McFague:

"The resurrected Christ is the cosmic Christ, the Christ freed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to be present in and to all bodies."

That certainly changes things!

So often we get stuck with a particular understanding of a word, rather than experiencing a reality.  So often we refuse to see anything in a particular teaching because of the way we were taught to think of it.  Yet at least equally as often, to quote Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."  And if you take that new meaning with you back into the rest of the text and the teachings, whole new meanings open up.

Christianity is by no means the only way we humans have tried to make sense of that space between being born and having to die.  Yet for those who have left behind that Christian tradition in which they were raised, or who have never even explored it because of what they've heard it's about, I offer an encouragement to look again, and to look anew.  You might be surprised by what you find.

This is one of the ways a spiritual director/companion can help you with your journey.  They provide a space in which to dance with questions of meaning.


Pax tecum,

RevWik

Try God

This is an adapted version of something I originally wrote on my other blog, A Minister's Musings, back in May of 2014.

On my office wall I have a framed image that I took from the inside cover of the magazine Venture Inward (the journal of the Association of Research and Enlightenment).  In front of a beautiful painting of mountains there is a saying taken from one of the "life readings" of  Edgar Cayce.  The subject of the reading is identified as #1472, and this is an excerpt from their 12th reading.  It says:

"Then, in this era, this age of changes ... it behooves the entity (as everyone), in its relationships in any manner, to impress up others in every walk of life -- not impelling by force, but by love -- to try God; to listen to the voice within ..."

I've had this piece on the wall of whatever office I've inhabited for many years now, because I feel that it describes my calling -- to encourage people to "try God."  I will admit that I haven't always said that out loud to folks -- or, at least, not too loudly nor to too many, nor in those exact word -- but when I have those moments when I forget what it is that got me into this business in the first place, I find myself looking at that page.

One of the things I learned to say in divinity school was, " let me unpack that."  Think of a shoe box that someone has kept under their bed, filled with all sorts of memories and souvenirs of their life.  (Like in the beautiful Billy Joel song, Souvenir.)  "Unpacking" something -- like, for instance, a passage of scripture -- is like opening one of those boxes and taking out each thing, really looking at it, appreciating it, and then, maybe, seeing how they all fit together ... listening to the story they tell. 

So ... let me "unpack" that quote that hangs on my wall:

First, "... this age of changes."  Born in 1877, Edgar Cayce, the so-called "Sleeping Prophet," was at his peak in the early to mid-1900s.  In his lifetime he’d seen the advent of the telephone, electric lights, refrigerators and washing machines.  During his childhood the first real “skyscrapers” were built, and Wilber and Orville Wright had shown that humans could go even higher than that.  He lived through World War I, and died just months before the end of World War II.  An "age of change" indeed.  And like many spiritual teachers before and since, Cayce believed that a new "era" of spiritual awareness was on its way.  In so many ways, seemingly on every front, today would certainly qualify as an "age of changes," too. 

At the same time, I think that whether Cayce intended this meaning or not, we often go through our own "age of changes."  It might be a job lost, or a new job discovered (or new responsibilities in the job we've had).  Someone you know and love may have gotten seriously ill, or died.  You may have gotten a frightening diagnosis, or be facing your own mortality.  Perhaps you've just welcomed a baby into your home, or sent one off to college.  Maybe you're leaving college and wondering just what "life on the outside" is going to be like.  I could go on. The number and variety of life-changing experiences we face as humans are almost limitless.

So Cayce is speaking to the individual known in the records as #1472 and saying that this message is in the context of the "this era, this age of changes" (whether they be external or internal).  In other words, he could easily be talking to us.  When I first came across this passage I had the distinct feeling that it was talking to me.

What about the, "impress upon others… to try God" part?  I think it's important to note that the reading is quite clear that one should not use "force."  I understand that to mean not just physical force or coercion, but also any attempt to convert someone, to get someone to change their minds to ones own point of view. In other words, Cayce is being clear that the worst forms of "evangelism" and "proselytizing" are not what he's talking about.  Instead of this, he says, one should invite others to "try God" through love.  I would add, by example.

And that brings us back to the "try God" part of this whole thing. I am convinced, absolutely and utterly convinced, that there is a Sacred Something.  There is something "larger" than us -- call it an energy, call it a spirit, call it what you will. And this thing, whatever we call it, whatever it is, is what I believe people have always been pointing to when they talk about "God."

As previous posts have said, so many people today have been so utterly turned off by the way "God" has been depicted, that they have turned aside from considering any idea of God at all.  Yet, as I hope I've already said, you don't have to believe in "that God" -- whatever "that God" is for you -- for the concept of "God" to make sense.    Brian McLaren, a leader in what some have called "Emerging Church Movement," helpfully suggests that we think of  "God" has been portrayed in the Bible, for instance, as a character named "God," or, actually, a variety of characters with that name.  And given the reputation "God" has developed over time by the way he/she/it has been portrayed, many have closed their eyes and turned their backs on what I think of as the ultimate reality. And that, it seems to me, is a shame. It's like a tree refusing to nourish itself by the nearby stream because it had heard that streams were no good. It's like a flower blocking itself from the sun because it knew a plant that had once shriveled in the summer heat.

I have written elsewhere that I believe "spirituality" has to do with living life "that is life."  Thoreau makes the statement in Walden that he wants to live in such a way that, when the time comes for him to die, he doesn't look back at his life and realized that he'd never really lived.  Spirituality, I think, when divested of all the various theological/religious clothing it has been covered in, is simply about living life that is alive.  So, while I do believe it is my calling to encourage people to "try God," this could also mean, "try touching life at its depth," "try living the fullness of life," "try connecting to something greater than yourself," "try touching a deep and profound wonder."  Although the founders of what has become the Twelve Step movement were thinking about God, they were intentional about using words like "a power greater than oneself," or, "higher power."  Ultimately, the name doesn't matter.  It is the experience the name is pointing toward that is important.

So why use the "G-word"? After all, for so many people the word itself is a stumbling block, and if I'm not encouraging people to "try that old God we no longer believe it," then why use the old word? For me, the answer is simple:  there is so much literature, art, and music which uses this word. Some of it, of course, is too deeply steeped in "that God we don't believe it," making it essentially unusable. But much of it, I would daresay most of it, becomes not only more accessible but more profoundly meaningful when seen with new, more open, eyes.  The works of people like McLaren, Marcus Borg, Bishop John Spong, John Dominic Crossan, and so many others are specifically focused on helping people to learn to see the old texts in new ways.  And in and through these new understandings of these old teachings to, essentially, "try God."

This is the work I feel called to do.  So I would invite you -- not impelling by force, but by love -- to "try God" for yourself.

Pax tecum,

RevWik