Who Speaks for Islam?

Today’s blog is a revision of a paper I wrote which analyzed the issues raised in Who Speaks for Islam using the tools articulated for such analysis in Moral Understandings.  Who Speaks for Islam is a report of a Gallup poll of approximately 90% of the world’s Muslim population.  It is a must read for all Americans.  I would love to say more on this…if you’re interested I can do a multi-part series analyzing the issues in deeper detail, just say the word.

Stereotyping of Muslim men and women which conceals their true personhood is accomplished by covert government operations to “protect” Westerners and Muslim women from allegedly Muslim “traits” of religious fundamentalism and sexism.  The United States government has participated in coups in the Middle East which have ousted democratically elected leaders whose political and religious views were not in alignment with American interests. Privatization is facilitated by the assumption that issues of “national security” require secrecy, which allows our government to intimidate and terrorize other nations without our awareness. As pointed out repeatedly in Who Speaks for Islam, such control by the U.S. results in increased extremism in Muslim countries.

This extremism has taken the form of terrorist tactics such as suicide bombings.  The “normal” response to these actions is military retaliation. “When practices that would otherwise look bad are rendered normal in these ways for certain contexts or people in them, those who rebel against what “everyone” accepts appear as irrational freaks, malcontents, unstable deviants” or terrorists (Walker 2007 p. 182).  We mistakenly view suicide bombings as acts of unprovoked aggression. 

Western refusal give credence to the stories of Muslims seals off “recognizable injuries and credible complaints” (Walker 2007182).  Maintained by restriction of information to U.S. citizens, the stereotypes garner our support for war against Islamic nations.  Americans are kept uninformed about the realities and complexities of the Muslim world or the consequences to Muslims and support these actions out of ignorance.

Stereotypes lead to “The rise of religious fundamentalisms in conjunction with conservative nationalisms, which are also in part reactions to global capital and its cultural demands,” which “has led to the policing of women’s bodies in the streets and in the workplaces” (Mohanty, 2003).   Esposito and Mogahed clarify that fundamentalist oppression of women is worsened by American attempts to control Muslim nations.  Oppression of women under Muslim rule is used as justification for American military aggression.  The US government is fueling the very behaviors it is using as an excuse to engage in military action; this may be intentional. 

Muslim women prioritize economic development and political stability over gender issues (Esposito and Mogahed 2007, 133).  They would like us to stop killing their brothers, husbands, fathers and most of all their children.  Creating space for truth telling would be a welcome step toward the healing the discord between Muslims and Westerners. It would allow Westerner’s to learn how to support Muslim women by using the tools inherent within the framework of their religious views, which are of utmost importance to them.

Religion has been usurped by the state, but nonetheless provides compelling mandates against greed and corruption.  Perhaps that is the primary reason that power holders are so eager to appropriate religion for themselves. This tendency is seen not only in the Muslim faith, but in the Christian faith as well.  Analyzing the process of this appropriation of meaning in the context of oppression using Walker’s tools has helped me to articulate what I have previously only been able to grasp intuitively.  As I said above, I can say a loooot more on this…just say the word!

REFERENCES

Esposito, J. and Mogahed, D. 2007. Who Speaks for Islam?  What a Billion Muslims Really Think. New York: Gallup Press.

Mahmood, Saba. “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War of Terror” in Women’s Studies on the Edge, editied by Joan Wallach Scott, 81-114. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008.

Mohanty, C. 2003. “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 28, no. 2 (Winter, 2003): 499-535.

Walker, Margaret Urban. (2007).  Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Consider This My Purple

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for two weeks, and putting it off about that long.  Two weeks ago I went to a panel discussion on Christianity and homosexuality.  The panel discussants suggested that the best defense against the religious right was to actually read the Bible.  I agree.  One of my favorite quotes is

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 to heterosexuals. This doesn't mean God doesn't love heterosexuals, it's just that they need more supervision.
Lynn Lavner

That one cracks me up every time. The clearest admonishment against homosexuality is in Leviticus.  Chapter 20:13 says that if two men lay together both should be put to death.  It also says, in an adjacent passage, that if a man lays with an animal as with a woman both the man and the animal should be put to death.

Ironically, the religious right quotes Leviticus on homosexuality, but overlooks Leviticus when it comes to the immigration issue.  Leviticus 19:14 says “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.”  Yet the religious right insists on supporting draconian anti-immigration laws (i.e. SB1070 in Arizona).  Apparently Biblical literalism should stop short of endangering favored legislation or preventing narrow-minded meanness. 

It’s important to contextualize the anti-homosexuality clause.  In general, the priests who wrote Leviticus were very concerned with purity and separation and not morality per se.  If a field is used for wheat, it should not be used for barley.  They forbid the wearing of mixed fibers, believing that mixing fibers was risky business.  My Hebrew Bible professor, Dr. Fontaine, suggested asking those right wingers what they do about the elastic in their underpants.  But at any rate, the concern was not a moral one, but an issue of mixing things that the priests felt shouldn’t be mixed.

Along with asking the audience to read the Bible to help us stand more firmly against the religious right (who are most often wrong), the panel members suggested we all be out as either queer or queer allies because people who know someone gay are twice as likely to support gay rights (including the right to life free from bullying and humiliation). 

And that’s why I’ve been avoiding writing this blog.  Because I’m bisexual, and not everyone who reads my blog has known that until right now.  I’ve known this since I was 12, and some of you have known me even longer than that and never knew I was bisexual.   The most common middle school taunt was to call someone ‘gay’ and I was afraid I’d lose friends if anyone found out I was attracted to girls.  So I didn’t come out, and I wanted to never come out.  When I finally did come out, I came out in a lesbian community that was fairly hostile to bisexual women, so I came out as lesbian instead of bi, which amounted to trading closets. 

When I came to seminary I was going to go back in the closet.  Bisexuality is complicated, and I didn’t want to deal with it. Luckily I attend a seminary that supports queer clergy in tangible ways, including supporting queer student groups, classes on pastoral care of LGBT persons, and prayers of support for the recent victims of suicide due to being bullied about being gay.  So I decided to come out, because I need some sanity in my life and as Jesus said, “the truth will set you free.”

So here I am, coming out very publicly in my blog in support and solidarity with other queers.  The Bible has been used against us and I’ve had enough of it.  The hypocrisy is killing me.  Gay sex didn’t make the top ten and Jesus didn’t address it at all.  Whereas adultery was mentioned in both the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ own words, yet 65% of people in this country commit adultery at some time in their life.  So let’s tackle that problem first, y’know, “first remove the beam from your own eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Since you’ve read all the way to the end of this blog, begin reading the Bible.  Arm yourself with facts and find the quotes that support you in your liberal values, because they’re in there.  Wear purple today even though today is almost over with.  Be vocal in your support of gay rights and same-sex marriage, even if you’re not gay.  We all need a little help from our friends. 

Peace, love and blessings,

Shelley

By Your Faith You Are Made Well

About a week ago I spend my entire blog on a single passage of the Bible, which is one of three that really blew me away when I read them as a teenager.  Today I’m going to focus on another one:

“Daughter, your faith has made you well” 

Gospel of Mark 5:34 

Jesus almost always said that after his healings.  He didn’t say “by your faith in me you have been saved.”  He didn’t say “I have saved you because I’m rewarding you for having faith” or even “I have saved you.”  He said “Your faith has made you well.”  When I read that, I knew that my thoughts created the world I lived in; if I could change my mind, I could change my life.

Jesus was able to heal people because they believed he could.  He was a strong presence who saw them as whole even when they felt broken.  Their belief that he had healing powers facilitated a situation in which they could align themselves with their own healing powers while they were in his presence.  But the healing was always theirs and it came about because of their faith. 

Last week I wrote about the Kingdom of Heaven being present here on Earth.  I’m sure most of you can find examples that I’m dead wrong on that one.  But I want to challenge that for a bit, and maybe a story will help.  When I was in medical school I had to look at slide after slide of tissue samples to identify structures.  At first all I saw was pink and purple blobs. However, after I studied the textbook carefully and knew what to look for I had a much easier time finding it.  Sometimes, we can’t see what we aren’t looking for even if it’s right there in front of us!

I’m hearing a lot of talk lately about how broken the world is. When I turn on the news, it’s always bad, and almost overwhelmingly so.  They never cover the good stuff.  Sometimes I think a step toward world peace might be to outlaw newscasts.  But nonetheless, I’m inviting you to see the world as already whole, already well…to look for the evidence that this is so.  And maybe be by our faith in its wellness, the world will begin to look more like the Kingdom of Heaven.

Learning in the Garden

On April 6, 1994 at approximately 7 o’clock in the morning I stepped out of the hospital into the sunlight.  Everything was abloom. Sleepy crocuses freshly emerged from their winter slumber peeked out from their beds, crabapple trees covered with pale pink flowers looked anything but crabby.  I was six months pregnant with my second child.  New life was inside my body, and all around me.  With one significant exception.  My mother had died two hours earlier.  I lived the intertwining of life and death in that instant. 

With the money I inherited, I planted a garden.  Not a utilitarian garden of which my mother would be proud, but a beautiful flower garden at which she would turn up her nose.  I learned so much from that garden!

The delphiniums taught me one of the most important lessons of all.  About two months into the whole garden adventure they were a bedraggled bunch with sparse blossoms struggling into the sunlight through thick clusters of dead leaves.  They cried out for euthanasia, and I almost granted their wish.  Instead I pruned, and when I was done I was convinced there wasn’t enough plant left to survive.  But within days they sprouted new leaves and buds and were nearly unrecognizable.  And here’s what I learned:  in order to thrive you have to be willing to cut out the parts that, while they’re part of your identity, are dead and no longer serve you.

In the habit of learning from plants, years later I learned an amazing lesson about reliance from a very unfortunate tree.  It had been cut down and mostly uprooted.  So imagine, if you will, a stump of a tree about 18 inches tall and 24 inches wide lying on its side with most of its roots exposed.  Now imagine that tree is fighting the good fight and grows branches which every year it covers with deep green leaves.  I used to run past that tree four times a week on my morning runs, and I couldn’t help but think that tree was defying death by its quiet insistence on growing anyway.  When I’m feeling torn town and uprooted—like say, recently, when I moved away from a community I loved and had yet to make a new community here—I feel like giving up.  Then I remember that brave tree, and I just have to keep going.

Today at Andover Newton, we celebrated Community Day.  This year’s theme was about planting seeds for a more religiously plural world.  Andover Newton is committed to becoming part of an interreligious university, where future clergy of differing faiths can strengthen their own religious identities while engaging in interfaith dialogues that will help people of faith work for peace.  Meadville Lombard Theological School, the Unitarian Universalist seminary, will be joined with us in this venture beginning June, 2011.  We are hoping that Hebrew College, already our partners in the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE) and joint course offerings, will join in this interreligious university as well.  It is such an exciting idea, such a transformative time and place to be a seminarian!

We planted bulbs to remind us of our commitment and our hopes every year.  I planted hundreds of crocuses, still my favorites because they were the first flowers to bloom after my mother died and I needed to be reminded that life goes on.  Some students had never planted bulbs and were nervous they’d do it wrong.  It occurred to me that the bulbs may blossom…or they may get eaten by squirrels, or they may decompose in the soil and give nourishment to surrounding plants.  But one way or another they will serve life.  The take home lesson: when you’re planting seeds you can't control the outcome, but really can’t do anything wrong either—so just plant, plant, plant and wait with joy for wondrous life to emerge!

Rejoice, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand :)

“Immanence is a well-known modern doctrine.  The points to be noticed are that it is implicit in various parts of the New Testament, and was explicit in the first theological epoch of Christianity;” so says Alfred North Whitehead in Religion in the Making.  I will go further—immanence is a well-known ancient doctrine as well.  Plotinus believed that we all share a divine origin, and need only quiet the mind in order to connect with our divinity in the present.  I’d like to share, and critique one biblical quote that illustrates immanence, because this quote was critical in my faith development and have everything to do with how I ended up in seminary: 

 “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there!  For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Gospel of Luke 17:20-21 (The Holy Bible, translation unnamed)

Let’s start with the Kingdom of God, also referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven, depending on the translation.  In the translation I have quoted, Jesus says it is within,  Other translations say that it is already among you or at hand.  The idea that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand is why early Christians believed that Jesus would soon return to judge the living and the dead, and it seems the idea that the Rapture is right around the corner becomes prevalent every few hundred years. 

But since, to the best of my knowledge, the rapture has still not happened and Jesus wrote 2000 years ago.  So either Jesus meant exactly what he said, or he was wrong. Either he meant very literally that the Kingdom of God is already here and can be found within, or he meant something else and he was wrong.  I was thirteen when I first read that passage, and the biblical translation I used read “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” I believed Jesus was right about everything, so he must not have meant the world was about to end since that didn’t happen.  Instead, he must have meant that this is the Kingdom of Heaven, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

          Maybe you’re thinking that given my young age when I read this I had a lack of experience with the “unheavenly” aspects of life, and I should reconsider my stance on this.  Well, please let me assure you I was very well aware that life as I knew it was a pretty far cry from anyone’s idea of heaven.  There were other biblical passages I read that helped me understand why that’s the case, and yet others that gave me an inkling of how to live in such a way that I could experience the Kingdom of Heaven right here, right now.  It was (and is) my interpretation of scripture that helped me find my way to a better life, which is why I’m so interested in sharing that interpretation.

          However, my question to you isn’t “do you believe Earth is the Kingdom of Heaven?” but rather, my questions are: a) How would you think and act if you did believe it? b) Could thinking and acting as if you believed it change the world for the better?

          Being a UU, I can already come up with arguments, and maybe you can too, but for a moment set aside the negative thinking and just allow yourself to imagine…

Rejoice, for the End of Repentance is Near!

Repent…what is that all about?  I’ve been hearing it a lot lately, between my Intro to Hebrew Bible class and my Intro to Christian History class.  I went to a Sufi teaching last night hoping for talk of Divine Love, and instead heard more about repentance.  All this talk about repentance is bringing me down.  Is God trying to tell me something?  If so, why would she choose a word that makes me stop listening? 

My reaction when I hear that word is to wonder if the speaker/author has the slightest idea what he or she is talking about.  There seems to be an implication that if we sufficiently “repented” then all of our problems would be solved, and if our problems aren’t solved then we haven’t repented sufficiently.  This seems somewhat circular, a bit uncompassionate, and I have my doubts that it’s a correct interpretation of reality.

I looked up the etymology of the word repent, and it turns out that it means “feel sorrow for what you’ve done” and in early usage was synonymous with “regret.” How on earth can you feel enough regret to get yourself happy again?  At some point, don’t you have to stop regretting and move on? 

Furthermore, it is true that negative life situations reflect a lack of regret and people with good life situation have done nothing worthy of repentance? Really?  Some of the people who should be the most repentant, like for example the CEO’s involved in the banking scandals that have punctuated the past 20 years, are living the good life while hard working people have been outsourced and their IRA’s devalued. How will regret on the part of the average citizen who is suffering in our current economy make his or her situation better? 

The idea of repentance is nice, though, to the extent that it’s empowering.  If  you can do something—anything—to bring about an improvement in your painful life circumstances, you feel more control over your life.  If I just feel sorry enough, and adhere to this dogma, it all gets better.  Ok, I can do that.  Or can I?

What if, instead of repenting we rejoice?  What if we stop feeling regret about everything we’ve done wrong and start noticing what we’ve done right?  What if instead of looking for evidence of our unworthiness and we look at the many ways we bless, and are blessed by, the world around us?  Is it possible that we might find evidence that we are the love we wish to see in the world?  Could the feeling that comes along with that recognition motivate us toward more lovingkindness toward one another?

All I can say for sure is that when I focus my attention on the many ways in which I have been blessed, and the ways in which I bring blessings into the world, I am much more likely to keep up the good works.  What about you?

The Religious Relevance of Secular Feminism

How is it that we fail to see one another’s humanity due to racial, gender or other differences which seem superficial in relation to our common humanity?  Walker says “It is true that if the living human body, rightly taken or read, permits the soul to be recognized…it is also possible for a body misread, unread or illegible to occlude or distort the state, even the presence of a human person” (2007, p. 194). These readings imply a sense of the soul—a soul either valued or devalued, fully human or something less.  These images permeate our culture and inform us about others—images of woman in hijab, men in business suits, starving third world (and always brown) children.  We depict and envision different groups of people with different kinds of humanity, and rank order the kinds, so not only are they different, some are better than others. 

Walker goes on to say that stereotyped reading of the identity may cause us to overlook “the pain, shame, suffering, or humiliation of others (or their pleasure, joy, pride, or self-respect), or may be unmoved or differently moved by its recognition there” (2007, p. 203).  Zora Neale Hurston artfully portrays this phenomenon in her short story The Gilded Six Bits (1979).  Joe and Missy Mae, citizens of African American Eatonville, Florida, have a playful and idyllic marriage until he catches her in flagrante delicto with a con artist traveling through town.  Joe is crushed and their marriage in jeopardy.  As their relationship is beginning to mend, Joe goes to market in Orlando where he is clearly a regular customer.  He leaves after some casual chat with the white clerk, who remarks to the next customer “Wisht I could be like these darkies.  Laughin’ all the time.  Nothin’ worries ‘em.” 

Along with dismissing the very real emotional lives of people defined as “other,” responses to believing in one’s superiority “reveal a curious oscillation between callous or arrogant disregard, and self-congratulatory emphasis on paternalistically described “burdens”” (p. 204).  Going back to the woman in the hijab, the tendency is to assume that she wears it because she is oppressed, possibly ignorant of this fact or afraid to acknowledge it, and we Westerners are obliged to liberate her from this tyranny.  We don’t assume that she is wearing the hijab as a political statement about her identity, or an act of rebellion against a world she views as antagonistic to her faith and kin (S.R., 2006).  And we don’t ask.  We don’t need to, we already know, or think we know, something about who she is based on our reading of the hijab.

In spite of the fact that religious differences may lead to such things as some women wearing a hijab while others do not, and in spite of the fact that these differences have been used in the past to reinforce stereotypes and legitimize social inequalities, even our sacred texts advise us to look beyond surface appearance to the deeper commonalities.  The Hebrew Bible emphasizes hospitality to the stranger in recognition that the ancient Israelites were once strangers in a strange land, too.  The parable of the Good Samaritan shows Jesus’ efforts to simultaneously reveal and undermine cultural biases and hierarchies, as do his actions in several other Gospel stories as well.  Even Paul, who is held in low regard due to his alleged sexism, explicitly says that God does not see particulars, including the “particular” of gender.   These scriptural sources clarify from a religious perspective what Walker clarifies from a secular stance: Biology does not create the differences we perceive between races, classes or genders; nor does God rank people based on these differences. 

How can we engage the world differently in light of the fact that these stratifications are increasingly revealed to be man-made rather than God-given, even according to our scriptural sources?  Hopefully I’ll have some answers, or at least better questions, after Community Day on Tuesday…stay tuned J

Teach Your Children Well, or, What I Learned At Sukkot

A. C. Grayling writes that religious instruction is a “serious form of child abuse” and goes on to say that there is no greater cause of evil than religion.  Now let’s ponder that for a moment. Surely one can point to the many factual errors in scriptural texts as evidence that such texts should not be relied upon for biology or history class.  And a review of history will show that many wars have been carried out in the name of God and religious difference, particularly since the Christianization of the West.  But let us not forget that great empires of antiquity were formed via hostile conquests even prior to the Christianization of the West, so religion is hardly the only cause of human warfare. 

In fact, it was the tremendous turmoil and warfare in the Axial Age that resulted in the major world religions as we know them, in an effort to imbue life with sufficient meaning that people would be less willing to risk their own or take another’s as old gods proved themselves inadequate to the task of ordering life and ensuring safety.  Each of these religious responses was a localized response to deep questions of human worth and the meaning of life. 

Could we be at the beginning of, or in the midst of, another Axial Age?  If so, how might we view religion and spirituality in ways that are adequate to our current scientific understanding of the world while being life affirming?

Yesterday I went to a Sukkot celebration.  For those of you who don’t know, as I didn’t until recently, Sukkot is a Jewish harvest festival held in a sukkah, or temporary shelter constructed in such a way that it is very permeable to the environment.  This shelter is a reminder of God’s sheltering the Isrealites as they journeyed through the wilderness.  While the sukkah is open to the environment, it must also be structured because without structure of some type, there is too much vulnerability and no protection to survive the wilderness. 

Rabbi Or Rose shared an interpretation of the sukkah, or tent, in relation to the permanent home that I think may shed some light on the issues at hand.  The permanent home is designed to eliminate contact with the outside world, and can be seen to represent the religious tradition of the parents.  The sukkah is created to be open to the outside world, and can be seen to represent the new religious insights of the child. 

Every generation reinterprets the traditions inherited from the parents in response to the demands of the present.  You should not pass on everything you learned in church, because a great deal of it is irrelevant even to you.  But the parts you feel have guided you and helped you make sense of the mess that life is—pass those along intentionally!  And, going back to yesterday’s blog, if we were to worship as the children do, we would be singing songs that make us happy, forgiving each other’s goof ups, starting over when we goof up, building community, and laughing instead of trying to answer unanswerable questions or worrying about creed, dogma, or damnation.  And anyway, your children will not believe everything they hear whether or not you take them to church, whether or not you say it, or whether or not it’s true; feel free to share and even to make mistakes because they will sort it out for themselves just like you did. 

My main concern is that we are inadvertently making a God of Economics (or more precisely, the free market), and I fear what we may do in the name of that god more than anything else, because that god reduces the worth of our lives to our net worth and by the time we figure out where we went wrong it may be too late.  We deserve better than that.

Worship as Children

            For my Children's Ministry class we were asked to complete several readings, then reflect on the view of children in today's society and today's church.  Here's my reflection paper:

          As Bakke describes in chapter three of When Children Became People, the church fathers heavily debated Jesus’ precise meaning when advising his followers to be as children.  The context in which the church emerged was brutal toward children, on the whole. While the church fathers were milder in comparison they had limited understanding of child development and a rigid understanding of sin, both of which influenced their understanding of Jesus’ encouragement to be as children.  In general these men hypothesized that Jesus was referring to infants as worthy of emulation due to infants' lack of sexual (or any other type of) desire and lack of pretense (both of which resulted from a lack of reason).  When the child developed the capacity for reason, the child developed the capacity for sin.  Although children were viewed as more likely to sin, they were perceived as still moldable into adults of good character by religious and other instruction and held the parents responsible for assuring this education occurred.

           In both my last congregation and the one in which I currently serve, children are given a great deal of authority over their own lives.  The majority of parents don’t force their children to attend RE, and even those that mandate RE for children usually allow the child to decide for him or herself by age 13 or so. This would indicate an underlying agreement with the church fathers that even children as young as seven are capable of reason.  However, it extends this belief further, implying that children are fully capable of determining which experiences are or are not beneficial for their present lives and future development.  This radical egalitarianism seems part and parcel of being a Unitarian Universalists. 

             Reflecting on the successful RE experiences I have witnessed or facilitated, they have in common an emphasis on the experiential and a minimization of the rational.  Children seem to engage more with an experience, such as the ritual of worship, singing, liturgical drama, or nature excursions.  They come into these experiences with a sense of curiosity and emerge with a sense of reverence.  These, it seems, are the forms of worship children view as worthy of their time, as life enhancing and soul enriching.

             I would agree with the church fathers that children require religious instruction, and can’t help but wonder whether the families that allow their children not to attend religious education are doing them a disservice.  We would all agree that children don’t have the cognitive capacity to make decisions in many areas of their lives, and I believe church is one of those areas.  At the same time, as I reflect on my experiences of successful RE in light of the readings, what strikes me is the ideas that children are “not only to be formed but to be imitated.”  Maybe the point isn’t to allow children to decide whether or not to come to church, nor is the point to force them to attend, but possibly the point is to create worship services that children would want to attend by making them more lively and experiential.

           That said, there is another reality with which to contend: children and their secular activities are now the focal point of modern family life.  Soccer supersedes not only family dinners, but participation in religious life as well.  In The Gift of Faith, by Jean Nieuwejaar, this problem is discussed as ubiquitous in America, affecting people of all religions. 

           She tells a story of a Rabbi who asks his congregation how many of them want their children to grow up to be professional athletes and few hands go up.  He then asks how many people want their children to grow up to be people of moral character and everyone raises their hands.  He asks why then the parents bring their children to soccer practice instead of synagogue.  

           Our culture has become so obsessed with children’s sports that children who don’t play feel (and get) left out.  But when adults set “fitting in” as the priority, we’re saying that fitting in is of utmost importance, and that somehow soccer alone will provide sufficient moral instruction and a guiding light during life’s challenging times.  I’m not suggesting children stop playing sports; I value athleticism greatly.  I’m suggesting that we pause for reflection and deep conversation about where athleticism fits in with the rest of our priorities.

           In a religiously plural society there are no easy answers about when to schedule sports, because every religion has its own Sabbaths, holidays, and observances.  But maybe we can put more pressure on sports leagues to accommodate religious practices, and less on churches to accommodate sports practice.    Even if we create the lively, engaging types of worship experiences that children would want to attend, they will sometimes need adults to remind them of the importance of spiritual practice, and the priority such practices play in maintaining wholeness in this crazy world.

Conversations with El Who Loves Me

       This morning, after a fortnight of immersion in Christian history and thought, I awoke craving Sufi poetry.  It seems to smooth over the rough edges that Christianity leaves in my soul.  When I read Christian history or study the Bible I often become concerned with right and wrong, heaven and hell, punishment and sin.  This is unusual and disquieting for me, and I start to worry about getting things right. 

       Going back to my last post, where I explored the idea that the names for God were actually names for an experience, I would name it "God Who Loves Me."  Being right (or wrong) doesn't even enter into the equation. Craving reconciliation between my experience and my reading, this morning I picked up The Soul of Rumi, opened randomly and read.  It began with

No mistakes can be made or said when your consciousness is in your love and your love is in God.

        If I err, or if I offend you, please forgive me.  I know some of you who read my blog are devout Christians who are challenged by what I write in my blogs.  Some are devout practitioners of Judaism, or Unitarian Universalism, or paganism, who feel the same way.  There are even a couple of atheists in the crowd. Please know that as I type these words into my laptop, my consciousness is in love to the best of my ability.  Rumi continues: 

Hypocrites give attention to

form,  the right and wrong ways of professing belief.  Grow

instead in universal light…

…Let your eyes get used to universal light.  Don’t miss your own splendor!

(emphasis mine)

God Who Loves Me spoke to me through Rumi, a 13th century Persian Muslim.  Later this morning, God Who Loves me spoke to me through Michael Coogan, a modern professor and author of A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament.  Coogan said writings of one particular author of the Bible can be distinguished from others by his unique depiction of El (God):  

“The deity is typically manifest in his “glory.” This is a concrete image that means a light-filled cloud that both indirectly reveals the divine presence and simultaneously conceals it.”

          Rumi used to say that humans were like lamps—each lit from within by a divine flame and each covered with a lampshade that allowed the light to shine out differently from each of us.  I must have had that in mind as I read the above passage, because I was struck by the image of everyone as “God’s glory.” We are all light-filled clouds that both indirectly reveal the divine and simultaneously conceal it.  This is the vision of humanity I feel called to share.

          May you see your light, shine your light and be your light.  Be aware that you are an opening through which the absolute manifests.  May your presence allow those around you to do the same.  Blessings, love, and light.  Amen.

The Many Names for God

       Many years ago, when my daughter was four and quite concrete, she desperately wanted a kitten.  I told her I’d buy her one when it was fall.  On a lovely late September day such as this, distracted after a long day at the hospital and late picking her up from day care, I commented on the beautiful fall weather.  Naturally she wanted a kitten that night.  Naturally I honored my promise. 

       “Mama, what can I name the kitten so it will come when I call it?”

       “Sweetheart, it doesn’t matter what you name your kitten, if you call it a lot it will come when you call it.”

       This went on for several rounds, until finally I said, “Well, what do you want to name your kitten?”

       “A Lot.”

       I’m sure you get the joke, only it’s not a joke it really happened.  And since I was distracted and tired I thought maybe that was supposed to be short for Lancelot and tried to get her to pick a new name because I thought A Lot was a stupid name. Once I figured it out, we named the cat A Lot.

       What if it’s the same with God?  What if God comes to us whether we call it God, or Krishna, or Artemis—just so long as we call it a lot?  What if all God wants is to be called?  Is that so hard to imagine?  Not for me; I suspect that’s how it works.

       Every faith I have thus far studied features spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, reading of sacred scriptures, fasting, etc.  These are excellent tools for bringing about an altered state of mind and, subsequently, an experience that is perceived as religious or holy in some way.  The experience of a devout Muslim in prayer will be similar to that of a devout Christian in prayer, and not at all like that of an atheist eating a ham sandwich.  The main thing seems to be that when we engage in spiritual practice we experience the holy.  God isn’t as hung up on dogma as we are.  The ultimate world traveler, God comes to different cultures, places and times in manners that are appropriate for that time and place. 

       Here’s a list of Hebrew words that get translated as variations on “God.”  I thought it was interesting, because these names can be viewed not as merely names for God, but attempts to name an experience of God.  And, sweetie, it doesn’t matter what you name it, if you call it a lot it will come when you call it. 

• El~                “deity,” also the root for Allah, used by modern Muslims
• El Ro i~          God who sees me
• Ismael~          God has heard  (this is the name of Abraham’s son, patriarch of the Muslim faith that binds the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths together)
• El Shadday~   often translated as “God Almighty” but it's not an easily translatable word
• Israel~           One who struggles with God
• El Elyon~       God Most High
• El Olam~       God of Forever
• Elohim~         God
• Yahweh~       Lord

I Will Be There

If you happen to be lost in the wilderness, Moses is your man.  Set adrift as an infant, he led his people out of slavery in Egypt as a man.  No matter how lost he gets he always seems to find his way.  His quest for freedom echoes in the hearts of every group who has ever suffered oppression, and every empire smacks of pharaoh.  It is a timeless story.

We haven’t read Exodus yet, but in a case of cosmic foreshadowing I attended a lecture last night by Harvey Cox (The Future of Faith) where he discussed Exodus.  That was the first in a lecture series called ‘Coming to Grips with the Bible,’ which Cox advises because the Bible is part of the psyche of every member Western civilization whether we like it or not.  Coming to grips with the Bible is coming to grips with ourselves. 

The talk was supposed to talk about the archaeology of the exodus period.  Well, that portion of the talk was short.  There is no archaeological evidence of Moses.  Nonetheless, the story continues to inspire.  It inspired Martin Luther King in the 60’s, and it inspires Liberation Theologians now.

Dr. Cox shared a new translation of Exodus that adheres more closely to the literal Hebrew.  Y’know how the angel tells Moses to go to the Promised Land and “tell your people that ’I am that I am’ sends me to you?”  The more literal translation is “Tell them 'I will be there' sends me to you.”  

Genesis, which was the reading for this week, seems to have a similar theme. Deceit, disguise, underhanded tricks and manipulation.  Exile and immigration.  Yet  through it all Yahweh—God—watches over everyone, catching them by the shirt collar when they seem about to careen over a cliff and bringing them safely home. 

These tales bring me an odd sort of comfort right now.  I am a stranger in a strange land.  Without my tribe—my children, my close friends, etc—I feel vulnerable.  I’d planned to go to seminary when my youngest son was grown. Negative life circumstances advanced the entry date to this year. So although I'm excited about seminary, I’m living 2000 miles from my twelve and sixteen year old sons and  quite sad to be missing so much of their lives.  Some days it gets me down.

But here’s what I hear when I listen to these stories with my heart: 

You will be deceived by appearances, betrayed by people you love, and exiled to foreign lands.  God will protect you through all of it and lead you home.  And in the end, I will be there.

So What's Up With Paul, Anyway?

I was dreading this week’s readings for Intro to Christian History.  We had to read 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians.  Of Paul’s writings, I had only read Galatians and was deeply moved by quotes such as Gal. 5:6 “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”  But in First and Second Corinthians I would find out what a homophobic, misogynist bastard he really was.  Or so I thought. 

In Galatians Paul emphasized faith in Christ as redemptive and sufficient for spiritual purity and downplayed the need for rules. The tone of the letters to the Corinthians is certainly different.  He is harsher and more directive regarding rules they should be following. So what gives?

Well, the difference here is not so much in Paul as it is in the community to whom he is ministering.  In Galatians he is ministering to a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles that are fighting about whether or not the Gentiles need to follow Jewish law before becoming Christians.  He knows that focusing on rules will only fracture the group, and so he focuses on faith and love.

The Corinthians are a totally different group.  By the middle of the first century Corinth was populated with the dregs of Roman society—recently freed slaves and peasants.   Imagining they had received a “get out of jail” free card as the result of spiritual wisdom, they believed they’d been released from every law.  They were braggarts prone to malicious gossip that turned their back on the unfortunate.  And they were unconcerned about the consequences of their extreme promiscuity because there would be no consequences: Jesus was coming back any minute to judge (and end) the world.  Some people can’t behave lovingly without threat of punishment; the Corinthians were those kinds of people.  They needed rules because they didn’t know what to do without them.

After reading, a few things occurred to me.  First of all, I wouldn’t want Corinthians for neighbors, and I bet you wouldn’t either.  Even if you’d hate Paul, you’d hate them more.  At least Paul would keep his lawn mowed and he wouldn’t wake you up at 2am with some drunken brawl in the street.  Secondly, Paul spends more of the letter encouraging Corinthians to knock off the nonsense and add value to the world by refraining from gossip and spiritual competitiveness and giving to the poor.  In other words, he wants them to use their remaining time wisely, not “party like it’s1999.” Our focus on his sexual advice is our focus, not his.  Thirdly, the words typically translated as referring to homosexuality are slang terms for which there is no known translation, so how can we really know what he had to say about homosexuals? And lastly, Paul believed Jesus would return to Earth during his lifetime. He wasn’t making rules for future generations to follow because he didn’t think there’d be any.

Paul was wrong about that, so we shouldn’t be surprised he was wrong about other things, too.  Still, though, I have a soft spot for the guy.  He wandered from town to town getting the shit kicked out of him for sharing his gospel of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus because he loved people enough to care about what happened to them, and he believed the end was near.  But Jesus never came. 

More Soul Food

She had honey blond hair swept into a beehive hairdo and shellacked into submission with Aqua Net.  I knew her only as Punkin (hillbilly for “Pumpkin,” short for “punkin pie”).  She was glamour personified, grace in jar, and everything I wanted to be when I grew up.  Her ready smile and an open heart drew me in. It would be easy to mistake her cheerful disposition as the mark of an easy life.

“Things don’t matter,” she told me, “people matter.”  “Everything you own can be replaced, but people can’t be. When I was a newlywed my apartment building caught fire, and the only thing I made it out with was my daughter; I was pregnant with her at the time.  I lost everything, including my husband.  And I’ve been able to replace everything except him.  He’s the only thing I miss.  I do wish I had some pictures of him, but there’s nothing else I lost that really mattered.”

She didn’t shed a tear or look self-pitying.  She was sharing the wisdom she salvaged from the wreckage.  Her easy smile and warm demeanor were a result of knowing what really matters: the people you let into your heart, and the moments of connection we share. 

It would be easy, based on yesterday’s blog, to mistakenly assume I meant something along the lines of “God makes the darkness happen so we can see the light” or some such. First, let me be clear, I am not suggesting that God (or the mind of the Universe, or the Spirit of Life or whatever name you want to give it) is the architect of our suffering.  Sometimes shit just happens.  I am, however, suggesting that God redeems our suffering by helping us to rise again into the light. That arising—or resurrection, if you will—makes beauty out of what would otherwise be senseless tragedy.

 Had Punkin wallowed in self pity no one would have blamed her, but she would have added nothing to the richness of the world.  Punkin wasn’t being punished by losing her beloved in a fire; nor was she being taught a lesson.  But by learning a lesson anyway value was restored to the world.  She didn’t suffer those losses so that she could add beauty to my life by sharing her wisdom, and her husband surely didn’t die for my benefit.  But I know the story of his untimely death and the relative unimportance of worldly possessions has helped me to live a more meaningful life.

God does not cause the falling down, but the rising up. And in our willingness to rise again each time we fall, we participate in the holy.  We make it more likely others will also find a way back to wholeness even when they feel broken beyond repair. 

I leave you with this quote from St. Julian’s Showings (Long Text) (more on her later in the semester.  You can count on it!):

“Grace transforms our dreadful failing into plentiful and endless solace; and grace transforms our shameful falling into high and honourable rising; and grace transforms our sorrowful dying into holy, blessed life.” 

In peace,

Shelley

Soul Food

Being a seminarian of modest means, typically I forgo the finer things in life.  But last night they came to me right here on this beautiful campus I am so fortunate as to call home.  There are two art exhibits on campus, and two artist’s receptions were held last night replete with the requisite wine and cheese.  Since I seldom get gourmet cheese or any kind of wine these days, naturally I attended both.  Brie has never tasted so good.  And don’t even get me started on the chevre!

While both artists are gifted, I was most enraptured by the work of Dr. Tom Duff.  A surgeon by training, Tom has spent his leisure time producing a substantial body of work depicting images from Dante’s Divine Comedy.  I’d tried to read Dante on my own at nineteen, made it through two of the three volumes, and quit during Paradiso because it seemed to me Dante had an axe to grind which for some reason turned me off.  Tom was there to talk about his work, as was a leading Dante scholar from Yale Divinity School, Professor Peter Hawkins.  The evening was far richer than I’d anticipated.

Tom drew Satan as described by Dante.  The notation beside the piece called attention to a tidbit I’d overlooked in my reading: not only was Satan devouring sinners, but he was crying the whole while.  Satan suffers an inner hunger that cannot be satisfied under any circumstances because he is utterly separated from grace.  It reminded me of the “hungry ghosts” that Thich Nhat Hanh describes—people who are starving for soul food but their necks are so narrow they’re unable to swallow it.  It occurred to me that almost anything I could call “sin” is most likely caused by that insatiable hunger, that pain and fear resulting from a profound sense of disconnection. 

What I hadn’t known before last night was that Dante placed the story in the year 1300, when he had been at the pinnacle of his worldly success and power.  Just a few short years later he was exiled and all of his worldly possessions seized, during which time he conceived of his Divine Comedy.  Hence the axe to grind.  Tom’s opening piece was a depiction of these words from the opening of Inferno: “Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the clear path had been lost.” In his fictional journey Dante had to dive down into the pits of Hell in order to come out the other side, but he does indeed come out the other side.  Dante says “upon the road of our life” because he knows his is a universal story.  While we don’t all suffer the same devastating losses and betrayals endured by Dante, we do all suffer and from time to time feel as though we have lost our way.

But here’s the really beautiful part.  Dante’s Heaven is an indescribably pure white rose.  Tom painted this rose with lavender tones, and Peter asked, “why lavender?”  Tom said “I needed the contrast. If I’d painted the pure white rose Dante described, it would be a blank canvass.  You wouldn’t be able to see it.”  Tom’s depiction of the rose was beyond beautiful, maybe what the Universe would look like if you could step outside of it.  A blank white canvass couldn’t move the soul nearly that well.  And maybe that’s the thing about heaven, and about life.  We need the dark bits to frame the beauty of the light bits.  Without them, we couldn’t even see heaven because there would be no contrast…just a blank white canvass.

Entertaining Angels Unawares

Thank you for going running with me this morning.  I bet you didn’t even know you were there!  But as I did my morning run around Crystal Lake you were with me every step of the way.  Knowing I would check in with you tonight, whoever you are wherever you are, I felt I was in good company.  I know my personal struggles are not unique to me, and in fact I’m hoping some of you can see yourselves in my writing.  In the middle of the last millennium Rumi wrote “All day I think about it, and at night I say it: Who am I and what am I and what am I supposed to be doing?”  My sense is that everyone wonders about the purpose of his or her life—or the purpose of life itself—from time to time.  For me that question comes up several times an hour, but I happen to have an extreme case of “human.”

Dr. Burrows, my Intro to Christian History professor told us about the semester he tried to teach history in reverse chronological order, so I today took you with me on my usual morning run, but this time we went clockwise, whereas I’ve been going counterclockwise thus far.  All of the landmarks look different in reverse.  I time my runs and I always want to beat yesterday’s time but rarely do. As I’m running, I measure where I am with where I think I’m supposed to be.  I do this in the rest of my life as well.  This means I’m human.  We all do this, at least from time to time.  We congratulate ourselves if we think we’re ahead, we berate ourselves, excuse ourselves or redouble our efforts if we think we’re behind. 

Most drivers completely ignore me standing on the side of the road in the crosswalk—sometimes they ignore me when I’m in the middle of the crosswalk.  But this morning I was extremely grateful, because some guy let me cross the very minute I approached the crosswalk—and that had to shave at least a minute off my time!  It occurred to me that it’s kind of like this in life too.  Sometimes we get delayed or taken completely off track because of life circumstances.  No use beating ourselves up over it.

  Because I was running, I couldn’t help but reflect on Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians when he advises the Corinthians to be like athletes, who put everything they have into reaching their goal and do not let physical discomfort get in their way.  That had a special meaning to me, since over the past 18 months I have for the first time in my life explored my own athleticism.  Oh, I’ve exercised before.  But about a year and a half ago I found a gym partner whose life is devoted to athletics.  She pushed me well beyond my comfort zone, and into sheer exhaustion.  I still managed to walk out of the gym, and became stronger than ever as a result.  So I know the focus and determination Paul is talking about, at least a little bit. 

Memories of my first 5K were awakened by my reflection on Paul’s words.  My son Connor ran with me, and when I hit the point where I wanted to quit he kept me moving forward.  We crossed the finish line side by side, I with tears of joy.  Since that memory inspires me and gives me strength,  Connor is with me now--cheering me on and telling me I can do what I don’t think I can do.

Suddenly the presence of every soul with whom I’ve ever connected—including you, dear reader—was made tangible, giving me genuine respite from the loneliness I’ve been feeling for weeks.  I read your comments, I feel your love and your support, and I am filled with gratitude at your kindness.  Thank you for going running with me this morning.  Thank you for sharing in and supporting my journey through seminary school.  I am in the company of angels!

Namaste~

Shelley

Who Gives a Shit What Glenn Beck Has To Say?

The Bible is in trouble.  While it contains Great Truths, it is factually wrong in so many instances that a significant portion of the population doesn’t trust the Truths, either.  Then there are others who maintain that the Bible can only be read as the inerrant word of God.  Clearly this position is indefensible without resorting to magical thinking about the fossil record—or even about the Bible itself.   The fact is—and I have it straight from a leading biblical scholar, Dr. Carole Fontaine—how the Bible is read says as much about the reader as it does about the Bible.

Dr. Fontaine told a funny story yesterday, which was the first day of Intro to Hebrew Bible.  She’s a cancer survivor, and she said while she was undergoing chemo she not only renewed her Christian faith by studying Jesus.  Every day she spent at the chemo center, Glenn Beck was on TV spouting off his version of Gospel.  Finally she’d had enough of it, and said to the staff:

“Isn’t it bad enough we have cancer?  Do we have to listen to Glenn Beck, too?”

Turns out, the patient who really wanted to listen to Glenn Beck had long since finished chemo, but no one bothered to turn the channel.

Glenn Beck and others like him do use the Bible to batter others, but we can't hold the Bible responsible for their narrow interpretation.  We on the left can use the Bible to boost people up by offering our own broader interpretation.  But we’ll need to study it in order to do so.  Even a quick look at the facts calls into question the allegation that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.  First of all, there isn’t only one Bible!  There are different Canons adopted by different churches based on which of the many texts circulating in antiquity should be included, there are different translations of each Canon, and the Christian New Testament was written in Greek, which wasn’t the language Jesus spoke.  Quite possibly a lot has been lost in translation.

Glen Beck’s support of the Bible has done much to discredit the book in many respects.  People are outraged by the narrow interpretation he spouts and hatred he engenders by the spouting.  But so what if Glenn Beck believes some people are outsiders in the land of God?  Dr. Fontaine said you can win any argument over Hebrew Scripture by saying “What about Job?” and any argument about Christian Scripture by saying “Have you read the Sermon on the Mount?”

I have read both but remember neither.  As luck with have it Dr. Burrows, my History of Christianity professor, assigned some other relevant selections.  In Matt. 15:21-28 Jesus learns that there are no outsiders, a point he repeats elsewhere in the Gospels.  And yes, I said that right.  He learns this.  Peter said, in Acts 10:34 that God shows no particularity toward insiders and outsiders as construed by humans.  Paul said, in Galations 5:6 the only thing that counts is faith working through love; and in Gal. 5:14 “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.;”

There is no escape clause.  We are called to love one another. Period.

And as I mull over the press coverage Glenn Beck gets light of what I learned on just the first day of seminary school this is my conclusion: Who gives a shit what Glenn Beck has to say?