Turning Things Around

When I began this blog, I promised myself that I would, as much as possible, try to write something every Sunday. It doesn't always look like I've done very well at that, but what you don't see (and I don't want to see when I revisit my blog months down the road!) is all the stuff I write that is clearly not worth posting. Having just finished a letter criticizing my own preacher for saying very little worth listening to, I have to admit that I have less of interest to say than I thought I did when I started the blog. Sometimes I feel really inspired, but inspiration is elusive even when I do apply perspiration to the task!

What survives of my musings from last week is below:

What I "believe," how I think or speak about anything spiritual, changes with every approach I make to the subject. Sometimes I believe it all, sometimes none of it, and most often bits and pieces, but it's all dependent on how I look at things at the moment. Just a slight change in angle or time makes everything look different and elicits a different response. Anyone reading these pages can see that what I say is not "consistent" in any common use of the term, I make no attempt to avoid contradicting myself and claiming essentially opposite things -- I just write as I feel at any particular moment. And yet, it never seems that what I actually feel, behind the attempt to put it in words, changes all that much. How I describe it changes radically depending on the perspective, the viewing angle, but the reality behind all the striving to put it into words is as steady and unchanging as it is elusive and impossible to describe...

In somewhat related thoughts this week, I heard the preacher ask "Is it sufficient just to believe in God, to be a Christian?" but my heart responded with the question, "Is it necessary to believe in God to be a Christian?" Because I often don't "believe" in God -- or at least, what I do believe has very little in common with how many would define God. Nevertheless, being (in some sense, not everyone would agree) a Christian is central to who I am, and I doubt I could walk away from defining myself so even if I wanted to.

Some friends and I are reading Karen Armstrong's Case for God together, and one thing she says early in the book is that atheism requires a doctrine of God to oppose -- that it's not possible to be in opposition to something without some definition or conception of what it is that one's against. She is (and I am also) an atheist to the God of most fundamentalist Christians (as well as other fundamentalists of various religions) and perhaps to the God of many other Christians as well. In fact, I find that many of the Criticisms leveled by the Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking, etc. crowd of neo-atheists to be extremely on target. Yet, I listen to them with a great deal of frustration because I don't recognize the God that they don't believe in -- at least that God is foreign to me on so many levels, yet they seem to insist that anyone who professes to believe in God must hold at least some of these beliefs that they oppose. (I could, perhaps, argue that I hold none of them and yet STILL profess to be a Christian -- it all depends on what one means when one uses words to describe things essentially not describable with words. There are always different angles and different interpretations.)

I like too what Armstrong says about evaluating religious ideas and practice not in terms of right and wrong, but in terms of skillful and unskillful (or helpful and unhelpful). Does something (a belief, a practice, a text, ...) help me to connect with others, to feel integrated and whole, to find meaning and purpose, or not? And, are other people finding those things that do the same for them?

I'll finish for today with one of those things from the Bible that opens so many questions for me about the nature of God, of faith, of how we look at things and what they might possibly mean: The gospel for today (John 17) says, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Actually, pretty much along with our neo-atheists, I'm one of those people who has very little of either fear or expectation from death, I think it is just the end, like birth is the beginning, and that the two endpoints in some sense encompass the total of my being. But, there's nothing in the above that contradicts from that at all -- it says "eternal life" is "to know God." If you look at that from some vantage points it blows the traditional idea of "life after death" quite out of the water. Time and space are related and derivative, properties of the physical universe, rather than outside of it. Perhaps to know God is to touch something which transcends time and space? Beyond that, my thoughts grope blindly... but, does anything essential in scripture actually insist on a "life after death" perspective? [That people have, at times, believed in life after death? -- yes. That it is an essential belief for faith in God? -- I haven't found it!]

Last week, Jesus spoke to his disciples of "In my father's house are many mansions," and "I go to prepare a place for you." But, is he necessarily speaking of some kind of life after death? "My father's house" could equally well be something we encounter in this life. Jesus knew he was going -- this life was ending -- but with his life and death he had perhaps shown how, prepared us for, finding a dwelling place in God for our being, not someday, but now. Of course, "a dwelling place in God" could be equally many things, or nothing at all. Isn't that the point; to keep asking these questions and searching for answers, looking from as many angles and vantage points as possible while we still can?

Falling Down on the Job

I mentioned in my last post an elderly friend who died on Easter. She fell, knocked herself unconscious, and died a few days later as a result of the trauma. The following Sunday, I too fell -- about halfway down a flight of wooden stairs while carrying two suitcases and a glass. While I didn't hurt myself very badly, I did get bruised and shaken up quite a lot, and the recovery time explains my lack of blogs for the month...

One thing about falling down the stairs; it takes a remarkably long time. Between the fatal misstep and the final crash at the bottom is PLENTY of time for regrets and apprehensiveness. As I stood at the top of the stairs, I briefly thought that I should not attempt to carry so much down all at once. But, going up and down the stairs hurts my bad hip and I did not want to have to make another trip. I thought, "I'll just be careful," forgetting that said "bad hip" often fails me at the critical moment. A few steps in, a sharp pain hit as my hip complained of the extra weight, the foot slipped, I started to catch myself and then realized that it is too late! Simultaneously, in those stretched-out seconds while I fell, I was thinking: "Don't tense up, try not to twist, be careful of the glass..."; "My partner has already started driving to Virginia; she'll have to turn around to get to the hospital, or maybe plan the funeral!"; "How stupid! Why didn't I listen to my good sense and not try to carry two bags at once!" "I'm too young to die!" And when I finally hit bottom, I gingerly moved a muscle at a time and thought what a miracle as everything seemed to work, for the most part. "Artificial hip still in place? Check. I can move my right leg out from under me? Check. Left leg? Also check. Hand? Lots of tiny cuts -- rapidly turning red all over and lots of smashed glass all around, but no spurting blood anywhere. No major cuts! OK. What hurts? Major gash on the left leg, I don't want to look... My inlaws are running in--No, not dead. Ice please! And let's just sit here for awhile before trying to get up..."

As it turned out, I was tremendously lucky. No major injuries, although enough minor ones to keep me sore for a couple weeks and reflecting on the lesson: "Listen to that little voice that tells you when you are trying to do too much!" Much gratitude for having another chance. Whether or not God exists as we envision, it seems necessary at times to feel that overwhelming gratitude for second chances--just as it is sometimes necessary to rail against God over the tragedies of the world. Sometimes faith isn't a conscious choice, it just seems to be human nature.

With my fall behind me as I sat in church this past Sunday, listening to the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm, I thought a bit about "thy rod and thy staff." As with many familiar Bible stories, I had never really gone back and revisited my early Sunday-School interpretation of this Psalm and what it means. What we had always been told is that the rod and staff mean that sometimes God punishes us when we are wrong, so that we will know to do right later ... sort of a Biblical "Story of Ping" with the Good Shepherd waiting to hit us across the rear with his staff -- consequences teach us to appreciate punishment when we see what trouble we would get in without correction. But today I wonder how often shepherds go around hitting their sheep? Although I don't know much about herding sheep, I do know a lot about herding and chasing cows. My father always insisted that we were NOT to hit the cows. We carried large staffs to whirl around our bodies and make ourselves look bigger, so that it was easier for the cows to see us and understand our directions, to be guided -- not hurt! Only if the cows were going in the wrong way or charging would we threaten them with the staff, and only if they were charging directly at us would we ever resort to hitting them. That was a last resort!

So, this Sunday when I heard "thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me," I thought about that voice that whispered in my ear, "don't try to carry too much down the stairs!" Remember to look for guidance! It is given to comfort, not punish.