Which Way?

It is often said that there are, generally speaking, two paths -- the apophatic way and the kataphatic (or cataphatic) way.

Apophatic comes from the ancient Gree -- ἀπόφασις -- and means, "to deny."

Kataphatic also comes from the ancient Greek -- κατάφασις -- and means "to affirm."

Most people are most familiar with the kataphatic path, also called via positiva.  In theology this is the approach of focusing on what God is -- God is good; God is loving; God is merciful; God is like a playful puppy.  (That last one's mine, and I think it's a pretty good description of God -- always there, always glad to see you, always showering you with love ...)  The Universalist side of the Unitarian Universalist tradition I serve has sometimes been described as having a theology that can be summed up in just three words:  God Is Love.  That's unquestionably an example of kataphatic theology.

In theological terms, the apophatic path, the via negativa, focuses on what God is not -- God is not evil, God is not petty, God is not a Buff Santa in a Toga.  The Catholic theologian Augustine of Hippo famously said, si comprehendis non est Deus.  (I wrote it in the original Latin because this is one of the few Latin phrases I actually know by heart!)  "If you understand it, it's not God."  This is about as apophatic as you can get -- God is so transcendent, so unknowable, so mysterious that if you think you know something about God, you're wrong.

The theologian Matthew Fox teaches that in Creation Spirituality (not to be confused with Creationism!), there are actually four spiritual paths, which are seen as stages of a journey:

• First, we travel the Via Positiva, in which we experience "awe, delight, amazement."  
• Next we find ourselves on the Via Negativa, on which we find "uncertainty, darkness, suffering, letting go."  
• This leads us to the Via Creativa, the path of "birthing, creativity, passion."  
• Finally we travel the Via Transformativa, were our focus is on "justice, healing, celebration."

Of course, it's not as though this is a one-way trip; there is no straight thru-line.  We go in circles, encounter switch backs, find ourselves in the same place but at a greater or lesser altitude, and sometimes just set up camp for a while.

Where do you find your spirit these days?  Which of these paths do you think you're on?  Do you think you've changed paths over the years?  Remember that other terms for "Spiritual Director" are "Spiritual Guide," and "Spiritual Companion."  We are all on spiritual journeys, and it can be good to travel with someone who knows something of the terrain.  No one can walk anyone else's path(s), yet it can be nice to have a companion with us as we go.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Seeking beauty

At the end of Children's Worship at the congregation I serve, the chalice flame lit at the beginning of the service is extinguished as everyone says together, "It is finished in beauty."  This has now been added at the end of the benediction the congregation in the sanctuary says each week.

"It is finished in beauty."

It's a lovely, dare I say beautiful, way to bring an end to such sacred time.  On it's own, though, it's incomplete.  That's because, in addition to being finished in beauty, it is also begun in beauty.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's sustained in beauty.

Last week I raised the classic question of a spiritual director:  where do you see God in this?  It's a question that can be asked no matter what the "this" is.  Whether we're in the midst of joy or sorrow, clarity or confusion, anger or grief, hopelessness or hope, celebration or concern ... wherever we are in our life, God is with us.  This question is designed to encourage us to listen for God's voice, look for God's fingerprints, feel for God's embrace.

As I've written about before, of course, that word -- "God" -- is extraordinarily problematic for some of us.   It has been so misused (as I would say) that for many it is simply irredeemable.  There are others for whom the word "God" isn't at all problematic -- it's absolutely meaningless.  Like "purple dancing unicorns," the word points to nothing.  It quite literally has no meaning.

Nonetheless, the question is worthwhile.  I would contend that whether or not you find the word "God" palatable, or meaningful, it points (like a finger at the moon) toward a quality of life that is sustaining.  Perhaps that's the reason that word is often replaced with the phrase, "Spirit of Life." So asking where you find God in your current situation is really asking, "where do you see something sustaining in this?"  Or, to put it yet another way, "where do you see beauty?"

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes, and there are lots of things that can be counted as "beautiful."  I've heard that Einstein was once asked how he knew his General Theory of Relatively was correct and he answered, "because it's beautiful."  (If that story is apocryphal I'd rather not know.  As the theologian Frederick Buechner said of the Christian story, "It's too good not to be true.")  There's even a Wikipedia page for "Mathematical Beauty," which contains this quote from the writing of Bertrand Russell:

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."

Sublime.  Delight.  Exaltation. Where are these right now?  Can you see anything that elicits any of this?  Wherever you are in your life at this moment, whatever is happening in and around you, can you see/feel something that lifts you up, reminds you of the "more than," and which can be a touchstone for you?  That's a big part -- maybe really the most important part -- of what I'm asking when I ask, "Where is God for you in this?"

And here's a little something paradoxical -- beauty isn't always beautiful.  By that I mean only that the "beauty" that will sustain us in some situations doesn't "look" all that "beautiful."  We'd be hard pressed to ... well ... to press it into any of the well-established categories society has agreed to call by that name.  Even Russell's "cold and austere" description of mathematical beauty could be recognized as "beautiful."  Yet there have certainly been times in my life -- and perhaps in yours as well -- in which there was simply nothing that I could, by any stretch of the imagination, describe as "beautiful" (at least, as people generally use the term). 

Nonetheless, when encouraged to really look -- really listen, taste, touch, smell, feel -- I found that I could always find an answer to those questions:  "Where is the life-sustaining beauty in this?"  "Where is God in this?"

What do you say?


Pax tecum,

RevWik



P.S. -- The great bop pianist and composer Thelonious Monk wrote a piece titled, "Ugly Beauty," and contemplating that paradoxical juxtaposition has always been helpful to me in my spiritual growth.  I also bring this up because it's a really cool tune (apparently the only waltz Monk ever wrote).  Enjoy:

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Ringmaster

In the movie The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman cuts a dashing figure in his ringmaster's uniform, standing center stage in the full glare of the spotlight.  The chiseled visage of a classical statue, dressed in  a bright red coat and vest (both with gold accents), black pants, shiny boots, cane in hand, topped off with ... well ... a top hat -- this is what a Ringmaster looks like in the mind's eye.  And we know that he -- although there are female Ringmasters, too -- kicks things off with the jubilant shout of, "Laaaadeeeeeeeeeees and Genntlemennnn ..."

But what, really, does a Ringmaster do?  According to the article on Wikipedia:

"A ringmaster introduces the various acts in a circus show and guides the audience through the experience, directing their attention to the various areas of the circus arena and helping to link the acts together while equipment is brought into and removed from the circus ring.  A ringmaster may interact with some acts, especially the clown acts, to make the various parts of a seamless circus performance."

In the 2014 article What, exactly, does a Ringmaster Do? , David Shipman, then Ringmaster for The Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, describes his job like this:

"I think that people have this idea of what a ringmaster is supposed to be:  loud, over-the-top, with a bombastic personality.  And it used to be that way!  It used to basically just be an announcer.  But the reason Ringling Bros. is the Greatest Show on Earth is because it keeps up with the time, and the ringmaster has now become a huge part of the show.  I sing, dance, talk with kids, and interact with the audience at all times.  There's just a lot more to the role now as a whole.  Basically my job is to keep everyone at the edge of their seat from the time they sit down to the time they get up and leave.  I want to make sure that the people who come to the show carry their memories with them for the rest of their lives, just like I do."

If part of the ringmaster's job is to help keep the chaos of the circus running smoothly, and if our lives are, at least at times, a whole lot like a three-ring circus, then we certainly need a ringmaster!  Yet if another part of what a ringmaster does is help the audience keep track of what's going on around them so that they don't miss any of the really good stuff ... then we probably need one even more!  It is so easy for us to get distracted in our day-to-day lives by minutia and trivialities (often in the guise of Something Important or Urgent) that we miss the really important things.  We fail to see the trapeze artist throwing that triple somersault because we're paying attention to the guy hawking souvenir programs.  

Scripture can serve in this role for us, redirecting our gaze to what's going on in "the center ring" of our lives.  (And by now it should be clear that within the category of "Scripture" I include not only the traditional scriptures of the great religions of the world, but also the works of poets and novelists, painters, scientists, playwrights, children, time spent in nature  ... any, and all, of the things that remind us of the "really real.")  A Spiritual Director can serve as a ringmaster, at least in this particular aspect of the role.

The greatest ringmaster, of course,  is God.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

On Prayer

One of the words that often trips up the "spiritual but not religious" is:  prayer.  As with "God," many of us have grown up with very specific ideas of what "prayer" is, ideas taught to us in church -- either a specific faith community or the "secular church" of mainstream, popular media.  We've often been told that prayer is all about reaching out to "God" to ask for things (for ourselves or others), to express gratitude, or simply to give voice to our awe.  The wonderful author Anne Lamott summed up these modes of prayer in her book, Help, Thanks, Wow: the three essential prayers.

I've already written at some length about the problematic images many people have of "God," and how, when they reach a point of deciding that they can't believe in those images anymore, they close their eyes, minds, and hearts to any idea of "God" at all.  The same is often true with "prayer" as well.  Over the years I've talked with a great many people who've told me, essentially, "I was taught what prayer is.  What I was taught no longer makes sense to me.  Therefore, prayer no longer makes sense to me, and I don't 'believe' in it."

Yet even when a person discovers a new way of understanding what the word "God" might point to, the (let's call it) indoctrination on the subject of prayer is often extremely deeply rooted.  We don't know what to do with talk about prayer if the "God" we've come to understand is not that "God."

The 19th century historian, philosopher, and author Ernest Ranan offered one way of making a transition to a new understanding with what's come to be known as The Prayer of the Agnostic:  

O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul. 

Others have suggested that we could see prayer not so much as talking to someone else, and more as talking to ourselves.  We could think of it as making us more conscious about, for instance, the needs of of another person, or our gratitude for the gifts we've been given.  Prayer is, then, not a means for making sure that some external "God" knows something.  This understanding of prayer is about making sure that we know it.

You could also think of payer as an exercise of our creative, spiritual imagination.  Those of us with pets talk to them all the time, yet we know that they can't really understand what we're saying.  Yet we essentially "pretend" that they can.  (Those of us with adolescent children often pretend that they are listening, too!)  We can think of prayer this way as well -- we can personify that "Sacred Something" and talk as if "it" can understand us.

This is not as ridiculous as it might seem.  Dreams aren't "real," as we usually define reality, yet often we can find in our dreams' imagery important insights that do effect our "real" lives.  And using the pet metaphor, many people can tel stories of how talking to their pet has helped them to work through a difficult decision or discover something they hadn't known.

In 2005 Skinner House Books published Simply Pray:  a modern spiritual practice to deepen your life.  In the next several posts I'll summarize some of what I cover in that book about the nature of prayer, and a practice which many have told me has been very powerful, whatever their beliefs might be.

Paxt tecum,

RevWik

Experience Precedes Theology

Back in 2002, while I was serving the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Maine, I preached a sermon I'd titled, "Experience Precedes Theology."  Seven years later, when I was preaching in a worship service at that year's conference of the Unitarian Universalist Musician's Network, I offered an updated version that I called, "We Hear Music in the Air."  This is yet a further refinement of the thinking I've been doing for the past 16 years, nearly my entire career as a preacher/teacher/pastor.

Very often, as I sit with people who are working to make sense of their efforts to "try God" (as I put it in my last post) we come upon the same stumbling bock.  Lots of us -- especially the people who tend to seek me out are pretty "heady" people —we like ideas and concepts.  And in the western religious traditions, at least, intellectual theology plays an important role—most of the churches in which most of us grew up (or that we've heard about) have creeds and doctrines, theories and theologies, that we were expected to learn.  Once learned, they were expected to inform our spiritual lives.  “Here’s what God is like,” we were essentially told.  “Now go look for God.”  For many of us -- particularly those who have rejected the more traditional teachings about, and understandings of, "God," -- we get stuck in those concepts, we can’t see beyond them, and so we end up finding nothing.  Since we've been told quite clearly what "God" is, if "God" is not that, then what could "God" be?  If  "God" isn't what the priests and pastors have told us that "God" is, then "God" must not be.

Not all religions are like this, of course.  There is wonderful series of interviews between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell that took place in 1988, "The Power of Myth."   In one episode, Campell told the story of a Shinto priest at an interfaith religious conference.  Someone asked him if he could explain the Shinto theology, their ideology.  The priest thought for a moment and then replied, “We don’t have a theology; we don’t have an ideology.  We dance.”

There are other traditions like this, of course, other traditions that do not put such weight on the working of the mind, traditions that do not imply that we can think our way to a spiritual life, yet the dominant religious traditions in the United States -- the ones many of us have come from (or are still in) -- approach "God" in this way.

There's a powerful spiritual which offers a key that can help us take advantage to past the road block of orthodox teaching.  

“Over my head, I hear music in the air.  Over my head, I hear music in the air.  Over my head, I hear music in the air.  There must be a God somewhere.”

If we start our search with the idea, the ideology, the theory, the theology, we may find ourselves unable to find anything. To paraphrase the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, the biggest obstacle to finding God is our assumptions about what we are looking for.  Augustine of Hippo wrote, "Si comprehendis, non est Deus" -- if you comprehend it, it's not God.

But that’s not the way the song goes.  It is only after hearing this "music in the air" does the singing recognize that there is "a God somewhere."  Because of their actual, first-hand, unqualified, unfiltered, experience of the sacred and the holy they are able to say with conviction that “there must be a God somewhere.”  Their experience precedes the theology.

So if you’re someone who feels a longing to connect with the Sacred, who wants to live a life that is more in touch with the Holy, but who long ago (or maybe only just recently) gave up on the anthropomorphic deity—the old white guy with the long white beard, or any of his stand-ins—yet who can’t figure out what to put in its place, let me encourage you to stop looking for something specific.  Stop looking for something that you've been told the "Sacred Something" ought to look like, and start simply looking around you.  Stop listening for some particular Something, and listen.  Look for those places in your life where you have felt yourself to be in the presence of the Holy.  Listen for those experiences in which you have heard your connectedness.  Seek in your own life—your own feelings, your own moments—those places where you have encountered—or are encountering—the something you might call Sacred. 

When you find such places, then begin to think.  Think about what those moments, those experiences, tell you about “God” (if you even decide to use that word).  Think about what they tell you about the way the world works and the spirit moves.  Build your theology on your experience, rather than the other way around.

At the beginning of that service when I first shared these thoughts with the congregation in Yarmouth I told a story by Kathleen Connelly, a member of that congregation: 

In 1979 I was living in Jackson, Wyoming, and working the breakfast and lunch shift at the Silver Spur Coffee Shop, where the waitresses had the dubious distinction of wearing the ugliest uniform in the world.  I wasn't crazy about the job, but getting out of work at 2 every afternoon made getting up before dawn worthwhile.  Nearly every day as soon as my shift was over I got into my ten-year-old, falling-apart, hole-in-the-trunk, white Mustang and drove north toward Jenny Lake and Yellowstone National Park to go exploring.  The last thing -- or perhaps I should say the last person -- I expected to find on one exceptionally beautiful September day was God.

My belief in the Deity was pretty much dormant at that point.  Twelve years of force-fed Catholic education and theology hadn't strengthened my faith, it had smothered it.  I believed there was Someone out there, but the facet of this Being that Catholicism insisted was the only one meant nothing to me, despite my spending many years and tears trying to understand.  This had left me so religiously exhausted that I hadn't even tried to explore other faiths.  I certainly didn't expect the simple act of driving along a deserted country road to be the catalyst that would re-ignite my spiritual curiosity and send me on the long quest that brought me here.

On that watershed day I drove slowly along, enjoying the pine-scented air and the sound of golden aspen leaves rustling in the breeze.  Then I rounded a curve, and actually gasped and stopped the car to stare at the most glorious mountains I had yet seen.  When I was writing this last night I closed my eyes and tried to summon up a mental photograph so I could tell you in detail how magnificent they were.  But all I can remember is the impression they gave me: that they rose into the sky like a wall of Gothic spires, that the sunlight gleamed on their snowy peaks and gray flanks, and that I sat there with tears in my eyes thinking, "THAT'S God!"

The road I was on went toward them so I drove on, wanting to get as close as I could.  And as I got nearer I discovered I wasn't the only one to have had that reaction.  A sign at the foot of the mountains told me their name: The Cathedral Range.

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

That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived

I’ve been writing lately about images of God that don’t work for a lot of people, ways of understanding this thing some call “God” which turn people off, send them away, lead them to say, “I don’t believe in God.”  As I said at the beginning of this series, the woman who trained me as a chaplain all those years ago taught me a great response:  “Tell me about this God you don’t believe in.  I probably don’t believe in that God either.”

When I was studying philosophy I learned a definition of God that I’ve always liked:   “that than which no greater can be conceived.”  This goes back to Anselm of Canbterbury in the 1700s, and is an example of an ontological way of thinking about God.  In his book Discourse on the Existence of God he argued that God exists as an idea in people’s minds.  Yet one aspect of this ‘God’ is that God is Supreme, the Greatest, the Ultimate.  Anselm put it like this:  “God is that than which no greater can exist.”

So, we start by acknowleding that there is an idea of God, yet a “God” that actually exists would be greater than one which only exists in the mind.  This means, according to this argument, that God must exist, because, by definition, there can be nothing greater than God, and a God that exists is greater than a God that is only imagined.

Whether this line of thinking proves to you that “God exists,” I want to use it to try to show those who say they don’t believe in God that if God exists, the God they don’t believe probably isn’t God anyway.

Let’s say that you think God is the God of only a certain people or a certain place.  Well, a God who is God to all people and in all places would be greater, so this more expansive vision has to be true because “God is that than which no greater can be conceived.”  Right?  How about if you think that God is focused exclusively on our faults and failures, and has plans for our eternal punishment?  I’d say that a God who loves us for our strengths and our weaknesses both, and who takes pleasure in our successes more than our failures is a greater God.  Anselm’s ontological argument would say that my God — the loving God — must be the real God because it is greater than your angry and punishing one.

This works even in a counter-intuitive way about the issue of omnipotence.  You might think that the expansive, God-can-do-anything, understanding of omnipotence would be greater than my philosophy professor’s seemingly more limited one, God-can-do-anything-that-can-be-done. You’d be wrong.  Because the omni-omnipotent God, if you will, is capable of ending suffering, yet doesn’t.  And even if you say that God permits — or even causes! — suffering so as to teach us and help us to grow, that’s a pretty mean God who created things in such a way that that’s the only means of teaching us.  The more limited God, then, who can only grieve at the deaths of the innocent, comfort the survivors, and try to inspire people to help turns out to actually be greater than the God who could have prevented the disaster in the first place but for some inscrutable reason did not.

Do you see how this works?

You can try it!  If you’ve turned your back on the very idea of “God,” I’d encourage you to do this little exercise.  Write down the description of this God you don’t believe in.  Then try to imagine a God that is better than that — more loving, more inspiring, more inclusive, more healing, more inviting, more ...  Many people who’ve done this have told me that they couldn’t get past the conviction that “the God they don’t believe” in is what people mean when they talk about God.  What good is it, then, to imagine something that isn’t real?

This could bring us back to Anselm’s original argument, couldn’t it?  If you can imagine a God that is truly greater, is “more” than the God you were taught about and which you’ve now rejected, if you can get an idea of such a God in your mind, then such a God actually existing would be even greater still.  So if God is “that than which no greater can be conceived,” then your idea come to life, as it were, must be God.  Simply, that God you’ve imagined must be.

In a spirit of curiosity and exploration ... give it a try. Next week I’ll try to explain why I’ve been spending so much time writing about God in the first place.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Buff Santa in a Toga

A section of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" in the Sistine Chapel 

I was leading a discussion with a group of senior high youth, exploring the various ways they thought about God.  Or, rather, most of our time was spent looking at the ways they thought other people thought they should think about God.  In other words, we were having a conversation about the kinds of ideas they'd heard other people use to describe "God," and, as you might imagine, much of it revolved around "God's" they didn't believe in.

One of them cracked us all up -- and stopped the conversation for a while -- by announcing that they'd always believed that people thought of God as "a buff Santa in a toga."  For all it's shock value, I think it's actually a really good depiction of one of the ways lots of people think about "God."

For one thing, the conscious or unconscious image many people have of "God" is that of an old man much as Michelangelo depicted him -- white, somewhat long and wild hair and beard; male; white skinned; strong features; etc.  This image of God has an ancient feel, as a figure for a long time ago, a time long passed.  And while you or I might see the garment he's wearing as a robe, this young person thought of it as a toga.  So there's the "in a toga" part.

The reason she or he (I honestly can't remember which after all these years) described this "God" as "buff" is that he (of course) is generally depicted as muscular, which, of course, is a traditional way of understanding, and personifying, power and might.  This is, after all, "the Almighty."  One of the traditional attributes given to this "God" is omnipotence.  This "God" can do anything; there's nothing that he cannot do.  (Of course, one of the great challenges to this idea is captured in the question, "Can God create a rock so big that he can't lift it?"  One way or another, lovers of this paradox point out, God's power is supposedly proven to be limited.)  To embody this attribute, this person all those years ago memorably described "God" as, "buff."

That brings us to "Santa."  Right off the bat there's the whole white hair and beard thing. Admittedly, Michelangelo's God doesn't look all that much like Edmund Gwenn, (my personal choice for quintessential Santa), but if you were to put a red suit onto him and relax his stern face a little, he'd sure be able to get work in your local mall.

The real reason this person said he'd thought of "God" as "Santa," though, is God's reputation for bestowing gifts.  This might be the inverse of the "God" whole doles out nothing but punishment.  This "God" is the source of All Good Things, and will hear the cries and supplications of the faithful, rewarding them by answering their prayers.  After all, aren't "all things possible with God"?  Doesn't God perform miracles?  Jesus is remembered in the Gospel of Matthew as saying, "Ask and it shall be given."  (Much like, this young person reasoned, like writing a letter to Santa Claus.)

If the Westboro Baptist Church is the epitome of the God-as-Cop metaphor, as I wrote about last week, then something called the "Prosperity Gospel" could be seen as the ultimate expression of this boon-granting "God."  The prosperity gospel teaches that your financial and physical health are an indication of your relationship with God.  If you are faithful, keep a positive attitude, pray rightly, and, last here but not least, donate generously to religious causes, God will bless you with literal, material abundance.  (If you don't, of course, he won't.)  The Wikipedia article on the prosperity gospel puts it like this:  "Prosperity theology views the Bible as a contract between God and humans: if humans have faith in God, he will deliver security and prosperity."

While this may seem a more benevolent depiction of "God" than the one that condemns, it is no less problematic, and has caused as many people to give up on the idea of "God" entirely, because this is not a "God" they can believe in.

In his controversial (and wonderful) book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Episcopal Bishop John Spong explains why he came to reject this notion of God.  His wife had received a cancer diagnosis with a very negative prognosis -- she was not expected to live.  He wrote, 

"Because we were a well-known and publicly identified family in New Jersey, this news became public knowledge almost immediately.  The religious resources of our people and our friends were quickly mobilized.  Prayer groups throughout the diocese and even in ecumenical settings added my wife to their list of special intentions."

Seemingly miraculously, his wife's cancer went into remission, and to the shock and disbelief of her doctors she lived for another six and a half years.  And as the word of her near impossible improvement, he writes, "the people who were most concerned and whose prayers were the most intense began to take credit for her longevity,  'Our prayers are working,' they claimed.'"

You might imagine that someone, especially someone who could unquestionably be called, "religious," especially someone as "religious" as a Bishop in the Episcopal Church would have agreed with this interpretation.  After all, "God" is a "buff Santa in a toga."  All things are possible with "God;" nothing is impossible for the omnipotent and Almighty One.  Yet Bishop Spong didn't react this way.

"Despite my gratitude for the embracing love that these people demonstrated, both for me and for my wife, I could not help but be troubled at their explanations.  Suppose, I queried to myself alone, that a sanitation worker in Newark, New Jersey, probably the city with the lowest per capita income in the United States, has a wife who received the same diagnosis.  Because he is a not a high-profile person, well connected to a large network of people, socially prominent, or covered by the press, the sickness of his wife never comes to public attention.  Suppose he is not a religious oriented person and thus prayer groups and individual petitions in hundreds of churches are not offered on his wife's behalf.  Would that affect the course of her sickness?  Would she live less time from diagnosis to death, endure more obvious pain, or face a more difficult dying?  if so, would that not attribute to God not only a capricious nature, but also a value system shaped by human importance and the worldly standards of social elitism?"

Capricious.  That's really the only word to describe this "Buff Santa in a Toga" God.  Well, capricious and cruel.  Because a God who can do anything, who does do anything if one lives a certain kind of live and prayers in a certain kind of way, yet at the same time allows 3.1 million children to die of hunger each year?  It is estimated that roughly 1 person dies from hunger every 10 seconds.  What else can you call a "God" who could do something to prevent that, yet doesn't?  Cruel certainly comes to mind.

And when the cruelty of this understanding of "God" becomes unavoidably clear, people of good conscience can do nothing but reject the "God" being described.  When I was doing my chaplaincy training at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, I engaged with a family whose daughter was dying.  They were angry.  They were furious at God.  Years before this same daughter had been sick with lupus, yet after lots of prayers -- like those for Joan Spong -- their daughter had a full recovery.  The doctors were flabbergasted that there was absolutely no sign that she'd ever been sick.  In gratitude, this family began a radio prayer ministry, and they had many, many stories of people who had experienced miraculous recoveries which they all attributed to the power of prayer.  The put everything they had into this ministry -- all of their resources of time, energy, and money.  Yet here they were, after having done all that, and their daughter was sick again, dying, and this time God seemed to be doing nothing about it.  What kind of God was that?  And in their anger, they turned their backs on the "God" they had so recently revered.

I was lucky enough to study philosophy in college with a man named Richard Creel.  He posited a different way of interpreting the concept of God's "omnipotence."  His thought that, rather than denoting the ability to do anything, the word "omnipotence" really described the ability to "do anything that can be done."  We live in a universe governed by laws (which, some would argue, God himself ordained).  There are some things that simply cannot happen in this universe.  Humans, for instance, simply cannot breathe underwater, or fly through the air, unaided.  Those are things that just can't be done, so our inability to do them doesn't show any lack on our part.  Similarly, Dick argued, God's omnipotence exists within the confines of the laws that guide the universe.

Even if you are someone who believes that God created not only the universe itself but also those laws which govern it and who, then, could certainly bend or break them at will or whim, I would think you'd also think that God had had a reason for establishing those particular rules.  If so, then, why would God create rules that "he" knew he would at some point have to circumvent?

There are those who have answered this critique by saying that God created these Laws, knowing that he was going to circumvent them, in order to provide for us humans the experience of "miracles."  It's also been said that "none can understand the ways of God," which is pretty convenient when a logical inconsistency is uncovered.  The Unitarian side of the Unitarian Universalist tradition used to argue that if God gave us brains he probably intended for us to use them!

So let's return to Prof. Creel's assertion that the best way to interpret "omnipotence" is not "the power to do anything," but, rather, "the power to do anything that can be done."  The Universalist side of UU ancestry often summed up their theology in three words:  "God is love."  Putting these two things together you get the description of God having the power to do what love can do.

This post has already gotten too long.  (Thanks to those who’ve stuck with it!)  I want to leave with this last thing.  At a great many weddings people use the words from the Christian scripture of 1 Corinthians (specifically, chapter 13, verses 4-8) to describe what love is really all about.  If “God is love,” then these words should be equally apropos if you wrote it like this:

God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, does not boast, and is not proud. God does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  

God never fails. 

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Cosmic Cop

Michelangelo painting "Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel 

Without doubt one of the most pervasive images of "God" in the popular imagination is, essentially, a kind of Cosmic Cop.  This depiction has God always on the look-out for some kind of infraction, some breaking of some sacred law.  And like some cynical detective on TV, this Cosmic Cop has seen the worst of humanity so often that he now expects it.  (And these fictional cops -- like this fictional "God" -- is almost universally imagined as a "he.")  You are, in this cop's eyes, guilty until proven innocent (beyond a reasonable doubt).

In fact, while often unsaid, this image of "God" is also sort of like a vigilante.  Vigilantes are those who "take the law into their own hands," and since "God" is often seen as the creator of these laws as well as their defender, this might not seem like a fit.  And yet, the other aspect of the classic character of the vigilante is that they act as, "judge, jury, and executioner," and that is certainly part of this image of "God."  Not only does this characterization of "God" police our every action, but judges -- often harshly -- every violation, and then condemns the accused to, in most cases it seems, eternal punishment.

There is perhaps no more famous example of this way of thinking that the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which was preached by the colonial preacher the Rev. Jonathan Edwards on July 8, 1741.  It contains this rather memorable passage:

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider of some loathsome insect of the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.  His wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire.  He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours."

Actually, there is a modern example of such an understanding of "God" taken to an extreme in our own day.  Some will certainly say that it would be to choose just one, but I think that the Westboro Baptist Church, under the leadership of Fred Phelps, is arguably the most hateful.  These are the folks who show up at funerals to "share their message" of "God's"  utter revulsion at, among other things, "LGBT people, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, U.S. soldiers and politicians," to quote from the Wikipedia article about them.  In fact, this "church" believes that "God" hates pretty much everybody.  They wrote and recorded a parody of the rather remarkable so-called "charity song" produced in 1985 by more than 45 of the top musicians in the United States at the time, "We Are the World.".  The Wetboro Baptists Church's version is called, "God Hates The World," and you should only follow that link if you have a strong stomach and want to see how truly pervert a view of "God" some people have.

If this is "the God you don't believe in," then I couldn't agree more.  Yet this is not the only way that "God" has been conceived.  The Universalists, whose tradition forms one half of the lineage of today's Unitarian Universalism (the faith tradition I serve) did not believe in this "God," either.  Their name actually comes from the central teaching in their theology -- that salvation is universal.  Not only doesn't God sit in eternal condemnation of humanity, but God's relationship with creation is like that of a loving parent and their child.  God as "father" (or "mother") is one of the most common ways of talking about God, and if this truly is what God is like, then you have to ask what parent would ever condemn their child to eternal punishment no matter what they did.  All you have to do to convince yourself that we are not born "in sin," predestined to suffer in hell, is to look into the eyes of a baby. 

One might argue that Universalism was branded a heresy, and outside a proper understanding of Christianity.  (I could argue the reverse -- that the kind of "Christianity" we're talking about here is the true heresy, and that Universalist Christianity is the proper understanding, but I digress ...)  Yet even if I were to agree that Universalism is a fringe (which, again, I don't), there are many, many examples of a more Universalist understanding of "God" within mainstream Christian traditions.  In fact, it's been said that one of the reasons the Universalist Church of America  dwindled the way it did was that it essentially won the debate.  Some form of Universalist theology is being preached in a great many mainstream Christian congregations today, so you no longer had to leave your Methodist or Presbyterian church to hear the message of God's love (as opposed to God's wrath).
As an example, look at Matthew Fox.  Fox was a Catholic priest who was silenced by the Vatican and eventually moved to the Episcopal Church, developing what he called "Creation Spirituality."  One of his books is titled, Original Blessing, and contrasts this concept with the idea of the centrality of "original sin" which forms the foundation of the kind of theology we've been talking about here.  "And God saw that it was good," is recorded in the Hebrew Scripture of Genesis as God's first judgement of creation.

In one of his books on contemplative prayer, Fr. Thomas Keating gives what is by far my favorite expression of the antithesis position on God from the idea that God is some kind of Cosmic Cop (and judge, jury, and execution) It is a story that Cardinal Basil Hume, used to tell on himself:

When he was a child, his mother would take his brothers and him into the pantry where there was a cookie jar. She would tell them that God was always watching, and would know if they ever took a cookie out of that jar between meals.  And, so, young Basil grew up thinking of God as some kind of Cosmic Cop, always on the lookout for even the smallest infringement of the rules.  Even so – or, perhaps, because of this – he went on to become a priest.

But he remembers the day when in prayer he received what he considered a tremendous grace.  He suddenly realized that if God had been watching him take one of those cookies, God would have said, “My dear boy. Why don’t you take another?"

"My dear boy, why don't you take another?"  That is a God I can believe in.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Tell Me About This God You Don't Believe In ...

As part of my preparation to become an ordained minister I took a unit of C.P.E. -- clinical pastoral education.  Simply put, for a year I became a part-time hospital chaplain.  I learned a lot!  Perhaps especially because I am a Unitarian Universalist, the need to be able to be of service to people with a wide variety of religious and spiritual beliefs was excellent training.  For those not familiar with the religious tradition I serve, Unitarian Universalism does not demand that people assent to a particular creed.  Instead of asking "What do you believe?" as our foundational question, we ask, "What kind of world do you want to see?"  We think that if we agree on the vision of the world we would like to create together -- if we can agree what justice looks like, for instance, or how inclusive community should strive to be -- then we can recognize each other as religious/spiritual kin.  The question of belief only comes up secondarily -- I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because I believe Jesus Christ shows us the way.  I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because I believe that all things have Buddha-nature.  I believe that we should live in this kind of a world because there's nothing but us and we need to take care of one another.

In a Unitarian Universalist congregation you can find Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Wiccans, Transcendentalists, Spiritual-But-Not-Religious folk, and atheists sitting next to one another as one community.  This same diversity exists for hospital chaplains.  You can walk into one room and find a Seventh Day Adventist, and then walk into another room to talk with a Buddhist.  One challenge I found, and others have encountered as well, was walking into a room and being greeted by, "Thanks for coming, Pastor, but you don't need to spend your time with me.  I don't believe in God."

My supervisor taught me a response that I have used many, many times in my career.  (I have since seen it pop up in other places, so I'm not sure of its ultimate origin, but I'll always be thankful to my C.P.E. supervisor for it.)  When someone would say to her, "You don't need to bother with me.  I don't believe in God," she would respond, "Why don't we talk about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God, either."

To some people, the only thing that qualifies as "pizza" is the kind you can get by the slice in New York City.  For others, "pizza" means deep-dish, Chicago style.  When I was in Japan I ate "pizza" with a crust so thin that it was like a cracker.  And these very different foods are each called "pizza," and each is considered by some the only way that word should be used.  "It's not pizza if you can't fold it in half."

This is true of the way people use the word "God," too.  Some people believe that you can only use the word to refer to a male, interventionist deity who judges all of our actions within very narrow proscriptions.  Others, when they say "God," are thinking about an all-loving Mother.  Some people understand "God" to be singular, others a trinity, and still others a multiplicity.  And some find the word to be utterly meaningless, like "purple tap dancing unicorn with dentures," or "flying spaghetti monster."  And, as with pizza, there are people who think that their understanding of the word is the only understanding of the word.

The dominant culture in the West seems to reinforce the idea that "God" is a triune being, who actively intercedes in people's lives and who ultimately stands in judgement of us all.  (That judgement being, more often than not, condemnation.)  And since that seems to be the predominate understanding of the word "God" in our culture, people who don't find that understanding to be true often end up believing that that have to reject the idea of "God" altogether.  In other words, there are a great many people who "don't believe in God" because they reject a particular understanding of "God."  And, so, the invitation:  Tell me about this God you don't believe in.  I probably don't believe in that God either.

Over the next few weeks I'll exploring some of the ways people understand and experience what they call "God."  For now, I'll encourage you to think about the God(s) you "don't believe in," and to try to define more clearly -- and personally -- the "God" that you do believe in.

Pax tecum,

RevWik