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.

Saying What I Believe

Late Saturday night I found myself in a dream explaining in great detail what exactly I believe about heaven and hell and the possibility of an afterlife. This was an occurrence (even in a dream!) so unusual (I don't like to be pinned down and what I believe is constantly changing anyway) that the shock of it woke me up, and I was almost, but not quite, energized enough to get up and write it all down while it was fresh. I didn't do that, but I will try to reproduce some of it here, since I thought it was a better job than I'd ever done of it while I was awake and I wanted to record it for future reference.

As is evident from the synthesis of my blogs over the past 8 months or so, my belief set ranges from something approaching orthodoxy on some days to the downright heretical on others, and it would bother me more if my beliefs were constant than it does that they are constantly changing. But, of course, they have been pushing more in some directions than others over the past few years, and I am enjoying the leisure at this point in life to spend some time following through and chasing down some trails of spirituality and religion that others have walked before me. I doubt that I'm blazing any new trails, but do hope that my rambling will encourage others to ramble a little on their own as well. I think the only true heresy in this world is to be of a completely settled faith -- to stop questioning, learning and growing. That would be to be dead already!

One might think that it being Easter had a lot to do with my dream and the arguments I made in it, but I think it was the expected death of an elderly friend (she died on Easter Sunday) that actually precipitated the dream. In it, I was pinned down and made to explain whether I believed in heaven/hell and an afterlife, and there was no escaping putting my thoughts into words. So here, to the best of my memory, is what I said:

"Humans have always had a very difficult time talking about things that are spiritual, since we don't have very good vocabularies to do it. At the same time, I think we are in awe of the power of the spiritual realm, and that we use language not just ineffectively, but deliberately in attempts to put at arms length or play down the importance of the things we are discussing. Thus, we too often use "only" and "just" where they should not be; as in "only metaphor" or "just a myth." Actually, metaphor and myth are quite possibly the most powerful language we possess, and certainly best we have devised for talking about the realm of the spirit.

"That said, I believe that heaven and hell are metaphor and that the concept of afterlife is myth. AND, I believe absolutely in the thing, the concept, behind these terms. We have no other language to convey -- but, let me try anyway.

"I believe that the choices we make have meaning and consequence greater than anything we can conceive, not just for ourselves or even those close around us, but even for the universe as a whole.

"I also believe that we are each more a part of the universe, and of each other, than we fully understand. One of the first tasks of a baby, in order to function as a human in this world, is to distinguish between "myself" and "other." We are not born with than innate distinction of separate self. In fact, meditation helps to suppress the part of the brain where we have built up the 'separate-self sense,' which may explain why it can be such a spiritual experience. Perhaps we learn this sense a little too well -- I think in many ways the separate self is a dangerous illusion.

"Physically, the universe appears to be a closed system. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. We are the stuff of stardust--our molecules the remnants of ancient suns exploding into the vastness of space and converging here on Earth in just the right conditions to give rise to life as we know it; and 'remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.' Time too, we now know from Einstein, is a physical property of the universe, related to space and distance. I think eternity in the spiritual sense is perhaps more of a concept of outside of time-outside the constraints of the universe or perhaps encompassing time and space and the physical universe. I believe that what we call 'the spirit' that is in us is also part of this closed system of the universe, and is neither created or destroyed but changed again from one being to another in this complex web about which we understand so little. And perhaps "God" is the spiritual equivalent of eternity -- encompassing, or outside of and beyond...

"If we were only to say that our choices matter in ways that will continue to have repercussions after our death, the very wording seems to imply that they will matter to others after we die, but somehow we will be beyond caring or will have ceased to exist to care. But, this violates the idea of the universe as a closed spiritual system. Whatever it is that makes up me, that is my life's meaning, doesn't just go away when I die, however changed it may be. So, what matters now will still matter to my spirit--my self--as something that it deeply connected to all of life's/the universe's continuity. And, although my choices affect others as well as myself, the responsibility for my choices lies only with me. [That is, perhaps what matters in the spiritual sense is not so much the consequence (the physical element) as the responsibility.] I can think of no metaphor other than heaven/hell that actually captures this kind of awesome responsibility for our choices and the profound consequences (physical) and import (spiritual) of them for a universe in which there is no escape.

"In complexity science, one talks about the emergent properties of a system (such as the intricate patterns of sand dunes sculpted by wind, rain, and individual grains of sand; or the intricate dance of schools of fish). Emergent properties are properties of the whole of a system that are not in evidence in, or extensible from, any of the individual components that make up the system. In a sense, I think, one can consider life itself to be an emergent property of the right collection of complex organic molecules, water, and energy. And, perhaps consciousness is an emergent property of a highly complex brain. I wonder if it couldn't also be considered that God is an emergent property (THE emergent property, or the sum of the emergent properties) of the whole of the complex universe? Despite the seeming reductionism of this thought, I don't think it necessarily takes anything away from our concept of God. If everything we are -- our consciousness, our sense of self, our creativity and values and morals -- could be emergent properties of our complex individual lives and our societies together, how much more complex could be a God who is emergent from the whole of the great, almost infinitely complex universe? And if we have questioned and pondered for generations on whether we are the sum of our parts or whether we create ourselves through our learning, actions and choices, then how much more complex a question about whether God is creator of the universe, or the universe of God? Or, if that is ultimately even a meaningful question? As small individual components in that complex system, the one thing we do know is that we do not have--cannot have--the ability to fully grasp that whole, even though we are impacted by and live in the patterns that characterize it.

"Complex systems may have several different stable states, and often transition between them with only seemingly minor variations in the configuration of the components. Thus, the individual components of even vast systems can produce major changes that affect the whole. (One fish encounters an obstacle and begins swimming in a different direction -- suddenly the whole school is engaged in a new dance pattern!) Seen from this point of view, again, the consequences of individual choice on the universe could be considered to be vast, ongoing, and inescapable -- still under control of God; within the design of God--whose nature is the patterns that are the 'stable states,' but choices that are momentous nonetheless.

Passion, Sanity and Betrayal

As I write I am looking at the wedding portrait of two good friends -- still happily married as far as I know, and I hope they remain that way--but the portrait reminds me, nevertheless, that sometimes the people who most despise each other are those who were, in the past, married to each other. Why is it that we reserve our most intense, almost insane, enmity for the people who have been perviously the most dear to us? Passion: red hot or cold blooded, fire and ice, ecstasy and horrible pain. Love is so strong, so full of hope; yet also so costly and so prone to be disappointed. We expect that our loves will provide us with the reason for living. I think, in fact, it can be the hardest thing that we ever do to forgive when when we are failed by someone in whom we have invested so many of our hopes and dreams -- when we can only say, "I gave so many years of my life, my fortune, all my effort, all my future into building what has turned into only ruins and shambles." The sense of betrayal can be so severe that it does bring on a sort of (hopefully temporary) insanity, where it's almost impossible not to lash out in violence of words and/or acts. Perhaps at the same time, this is the greatest test of character.

The gospel for today (Matthew 26), I believe, gives us two examples of this kind of overwhelming passion that can lead to disappointment, and the extremes to which the one(s) who are disappointed may go.

The crowds who followed Jesus truly believed that he was going to be the leader who would restore the kingdom of God to Israel, who would give them independence from Rome, drive out foreign invaders, restore prosperity and self-determination. Many followed him at great personal expense, risking family, fortune and freedom to help in his political and social rebellion. And here he was seemingly giving himself up, abandoning their movement just when it looked like they could achieve something. If he would only seize the opportunity and call on the crowds he had gathered to fight and overwhelm the rulers, protest in the streets, create an uprising! Hadn't he been telling them that the time had come? --the kingdom of God was at hand? How quickly, but how naturally too, the devotion to Jesus' cause turned into hatred and scorn at how he had duped them, how he refused to fight, how he refused to compromise, even a little, for the sake of ends that should justify whatever means necessary to effect them! It's easy to look back in scorn at the crowds yelling "crucify him," but I've felt that same kind of bone crushing disappointment myself; that feeling of having given everything I had into the hands of someone who just thrust it all aside as if it was nothing. I suspect that Judas really did believe that Jesus just needed a little push; that his kiss would simply spur him into taking the action that he'd planned all along. But, if it did not, perhaps it was fitting as the last chance and the last straw -- "if this doesn't make him act, then we are all history! Too many promises, not enough follow through." It's perhaps a bit ironic that, with us, the crowd that condemned Jesus could have easily sung "All my Hopes on Him are Founded." The only difference is that their hopes were also thoroughly dashed. They expected an uprising, a successful throwing off (intifada) of the oppressor, a new kingdom that would launch a new age. And what they saw was a revolutionary that had given himself up and given them over. No WONDER they turned on him.

But, Jesus too must have been terribly disillusioned. By all accounts, he really believed, at least early in his ministry, that he would lead a revolution, establish a new society -- a kingdom of God here on Earth. James Taybor's The Jesus Dynasty (I highly recommend it, but be aware that it is a secular view of Jesus life and times, not a Christian text) gives some of the most convincing and exciting commentary on what Jesus and John the Baptist must have felt like and worked toward in those few years of his public ministry -- and it was revolutionary, and inspiring, and it did look like a believable threat to the Roman rule! Jesus too must have wondered where it all went wrong, where God's promises had taken him. In the garden, he gave God one last chance as well -- "There's still time, if it is Your will, You'd be welcome to get me out of this thing right about now!" Even in Jesus' choice on the cross to invoke King David in quoting Psalm 22 ("my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"), one can also hear the echo of later verses of the same psalm ("O Lord, make haste to help me! Deliver my soul from the sword."). What is amazing, though, is that Jesus never once turns bitter. I can't believe that he really knew that it was all part of the Plan, that he believed it would all turn out the way it did. He must have been truly disappointed, his hopes for his own life completely dashed and his hopes for his followers undergoing some serious confidence-shaking; given their dispersal and betrayal. Yet, he does not accuse God of betrayal. He follows his sense of God's will, his trust in life's goodness and in truth and justice to the end. Even his refusal of the drugged wine while on the cross was, above all, an act of confidence in the goodness and value of this life he had always conducted in the very best way he knew -- he would not willingly miss a minute of it, not will himself into oblivion for even those last few moments. For Jesus, it was truly not over until it was over, and he never wavered in his passion for life lived according to his revelation, his sense of God.

I have often read that it's not possible to understand the Easter story without fully understanding the Passion story. I've never quite understood why, but perhaps the key is Jesus' passion for life, his confidence in its goodness, his willingness to live every second of it in radical obedience to his vision despite every temptation to the contrary... In another book I read this week, the main character remarked about how good it is to outlive one's resentments. That is, how different life is when one has learned that resentment, feelings of betrayal, the desire to strike back when we've been hurt -- all those things that have the capacity to turn formerly loving, self-sacrificing individuals into insanely vindictive and broken people -- do not need to be our response to even the worst disappointments of life. Radical trust in God, profligate giving of one's self and one's resources--like the sower who scatters precious seed freely over good, poor, stony and weed-choked ground alike, confidence even when all reason seems to be gone; these crazy and counter-intuitive things are our inheritance as Christians. If there's anything in this idea of resurrection that we will ponder next week, perhaps there are clues here.

The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring

I had been back in the North Country for 10 days, but it would seem that as yet I had not even opened my eyes. My sister asked me if I my crocuses were out, and walked me outside to see hers. Their progress had been lovingly noted since the first small pinprick of green had creased the soil or pushed up under the still remaining mantle of snow. Surely, she said, I must have some too. But my winter mind was still focused inside on the leftovers of last year; repacking Christmas decorations (still waiting for me here in March after I drove south during the holiday season -- What? They didn't put themselves away?), cleaning away the dust that had settled over possessions and thoughts as well, putting things back in order and thinking to prepare for new life in the spring. Somehow, spring had arrived while I was lost in its anticipation.

I walked out the next morning and really looked at my yard. There were brave little purple blossoms all along the front fence, thrusting up through as yet unraked leaves and nearly buried under sand swept from the center of the road after a season of winter plowing. I spent the morning raking and tidying, and now the row of crocuses is startling and bright and I wonder how I could have missed their profusion. The longing, anticipation and preparation had become so absorbing that I almost missed the real thing. And they such bright and loud, almost raucous harbingers.

Is there a lesson in my deafness to the loud shout of spring all around my house? This is what I longed for and rushed back to see, yet I have been so focused on preparing for it that I almost missed it happening all around me.

What's become of me?

If you're wondering what's become of me, I'm on 3 month sabbatical. Blogging and my winter trip to warmer climes just didn't manage to work out well together. I will start up the blog again in April. See you then!

--AnnBarbie

Lions and Lambs and Climate and Forests

Today's Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 11:1-10) is the one that promises that the wolf shall live with the lamb and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. In my psychology class I teach about altered states of consciousness. This altered vision of reality must come from some such altered dream state, as we all know that a wolf would not be a wolf if it didn't prey on animals like sheep, nor a lion a lion if it wasn't a carnivore. This is not a description of some possible state where everything works the way it is supposed to. In fact, predators and prey, scavengers, even the worms, bugs and microbes that feed on decomposing bodies, are part of what we recognize as the natural order of things that we mess with at our peril. No, this is metaphor that speaks to something much more real than our physical world and it's order, it speaks to our greatest fears and vulnerabilities. In Isaiah's time, just the sheer vulnerability of life would have been constantly in the forefront. Things could change in an instant; dangers from wild beasts and poisonous snakes, but also from wars and cruel leaders and simply man's inhumanity to man. Perhaps today the stark fear of violent death is less an issue than for our ancestors, but we too have dreads that sit at the pit of our stomach and cause us untold anxiety. What will we do when the climate is changing more rapidly than our infrastructure can handle? When the rainforests are all gone? When there are no more wild fish in the seas? In church this morning, one man's t-shirt read; "Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money." Perhaps these concerns are the lions and bears and adders and asps of our time -- the forces outside our carefully circumscribed lives and beyond our control that we know, even as we know they are forces of nature that are not inherently evil, still threaten to bring us harm and destruction.

So, what does Isaiah pose as the cure for our very real and rational fears about the potentially destructive natural forces in life? I find it to be an enigma. Buddhists would say that one must realize that it is both all an illusion and that it is all one -- one creation of which we too are part of the whole. To accept the true nature of things, avoiding attachments that deceive us into wishing permanence for that which is inherently temporary, is to free one's self from suffering. But here in Isaiah, we are told that the cure is in moving from rightness to righteousness. "He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth." Perhaps he is saying that our fears of the destructive natural powers are not so much about the natural order of things after all--that they are displaced. Might our anxiety actually stem from all the ways that we fail to live up to our ideals? Do guilt and shame transform the uncertain and very temporary nature of our lives from something that just is into something fraught with terrors and menace? Can the simple word of truth ("he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked") turn everything back around?

--AnnBarbie