What's New?

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog posting, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by many of you.  From what I hear, it’s pretty typical of graduate students everywhere to disappear between midterms and finals.  Somehow the work (and pressure) seems to reach a fevered pitch and it gets hard to squeeze in much else.  My life has been no exception.

Most of my blog entries have been musings on theological concepts arising in the course of my studies, and I have appreciated the openness so many of you have shown me in reading, questioning, and critiquing many of my thoughts.  I certainly have more to say, but lack the time to write thoughtful and well-written essays about all that is on my mind.  Today’s entry will be a more personal update on new developments in my academic life.

Out of the topsy-turvy, world-shaking questioning that emerges during the first year of seminary, I think I am finally gaining a little bit of clarity.  My academic plans seem to be firming up, and I’m pretty excited to share details.  Prior to coming here I’d been in the Masters in Sustainable Communities program at Northern Arizona University studying the intersection of theology, gender studies, and sustainability.  In large part my entry to seminary can be attributed to the educational experience provided in that program.  I have recently made arrangements to complete that program at a distance, which will add some to my current workload but I find that I have not completely nurtured the thoughts germinated in that program and feel a need to do so.  It will be a lot of work, but well worth it!

Likewise, I have become more committed than ever to pursuing my doctoral studies of the same issues that continue to draw me forward: the link between theology, gender studies, and sustainability.  Given that I anticipate at least 4 years of study beyond my M.Div. I’m super excited to share that I have received numerous transfer credits and with some extra classes during summer and winter I’ll be able to graduate in 2012 after only 2 years of additional study, instead of 3 years as the program calls for.  While on the one had I will miss out on some of the divinity school experience, I will also avoid incurring another $20,000 of student loan debt so it’s financially imperative that I move forward at this pace.   

One question that may be on your minds is “whatever happened to that social justice ministry?”  And I would love to answer that.  The details are still in flux, but I’m working with Audra Teague, a classmate in the M.Div. program, on a very exciting interfaith fellowship idea around the issue of social justice ministry, details TBA.  We will explore both the outer/active role of clergy in social justice and community organizing, and the inner/reflective role of spiritual practices in sustaining one through doing that work.  I’m honored to have such a lovely soul with whom to collaborate, and I sure hope she doesn’t mind me sharing all this in my blog J

My primary goal in all of this planning is to support my social justice ministry in a way that brings my unique gifts to the table while making the biggest impact I can potentially make in that arena, which as I see it may be through teaching theology/religious studies at the university or seminary level.  In the meantime, I will do what I can from where I stand.  Wish me luck, and fortitude!

God's Nature

  This posting is a slight revision of a recent assignment:

     Both St. Augustine and St. Julian would agree that God cannot do what is not fitting for God; God cannot act contrary to God’s nature.   The differences in their understanding of salvation reflect differences in their understanding of God’s nature, sometimes with significant consequences. 

Augustine saw “that divine grace…working through the church, the sacraments, and the Christian faith, was a gift of God that “makes his worshippers into gods” which implies that not only was belief in salvation required, but repentance and behavior change must follow.  However, since Augustine viewed God as perfect in the Platonic sense, any change on God’s part would be unfitting.  Ultimately, this led to a belief in predestination.   A select few humans were predestined for salvation through God’s grace, and the remainder “would fail to respond and would therefore receive the just punishment that all deserved” (Chidester 2000, 139-140). 

          Julian specifically requests to see sin and damnation “whereby I could truly recognize how I [in my turn] ought to look at sin and the manner of our guilt” (Julian 225). However, this is not to be for Julian:  “But I saw not sin; for I believe it has no manner of essence nor any portion of being, nor can it be known except by the pain that is caused by it” (Julian 149).  Not only is she not shown any substance to sin, she is never shown any blame on the part of God.  To the contrary, she says “God, as far as He is concerned, cannot forgive—because He cannot be angry—it would be impossible” (Julian 221). It would be unfitting for God, who is the loving ground of our existence, to be angry, because anger is against His nature.   

         Julian says that “Sin is the harshest scourge that any chosen soul can be struck with.  This scourge chastises a man and a woman terribly and damages him to his own eyes to such an extent that sometimes he thinks of himself as not worthy except to sink into hell” (Julian 183).  Augustine exemplifies this when he says of his rising and falling due to the weight of his “carnal habits” that he “thought that I did not exist in such a state as to cleave to” God (Augustine 151).    This is a poignant example of the self recrimination that leads one to believe that one is separated from God, when in fact “our soul is so completely one-ed to God by His own goodness, that there can be absolutely nothing at all separating God and soul”  (Julian 213). 

          Although both St. Augustine and St. Julian appear to believe in predestination, the differences in their theology have extremely different outcomes for the world at large.  Initially, Augustine seems to believe that God wants us to love not only Him but the world as well, as indicated in this quote, “there is no healing for those who are displeased at some part of your creation” (Augustine 150).  But for Augustine, perfection is God’s most significant trait and over time, perfection and power eclipse love in importance.  This leads him to link “faith…with the coercive use of power,” which seems to contradict his earlier statement that loving God’s creation was required for healing (Chidester 2000, 133).  Augustine’s violent enforcement of Christianity set a trend which continued for centuries.

       Julian’s theology, centered as it is on the God’s love as the most critical of God’s traits, results in a more loving and compassionate outcome.  The concluding books of Revelations strongly suggest that St. Julian is motivated to share her visions of an ever-loving God so that her readers may share in her vision and experience a greater love themselves.  Because her work remained in obscurity for centuries one gets the sense the full impact of St. Julian’s work is yet to come.

      This brief reflection demonstrates that while it is possible to agree with the statement “God cannot do what is unfitting for God” the trouble begins when we start to tease out just what would be unfitting for God.  Some people seem focused on the power of God's perfection (and judgment), and others are focused on the power of God's love (and mercy).   It seems the loudest  beleivers are unswerving in their commitment to a wrathful God, and those who perceive a loving God are more often quietly uncertain.  What would the world look like if that were reversed?

Blessings, love and peace,

Shelley

Ministering to Children: Kicking It Up a Notch!

On Saturday November 6th I attended a district-wide Religious Education training with the other members of my team.  It was stimulating and invigorating, but the news was mixed.  The news applies to liberal churches of other faiths, as most are facing the same challenges and the implications are the same.

The bad news first:  Most churches are having a hard time keeping people in their pews and children in their Sunday School classes. Compounding that the traditional model of RE is outdated, and unappealing for both children and adult volunteers.  Most UU’s are adult converts, and most people raised as UU’s don’t come back once they’ve reached adulthood.  If we can’t find a way to keep our children into adulthood, the future looks grim.

There are many reasons for this.  Children and families are overcommitted and depleted and seek activities that are meaningful uses of their time, a fact we have noticed with much wailing and gnashing of teeth in RE these days. Today’s children crave a deeper exploration of how they fit into the universe and how they can make meaningful contributions rather than discussion about the ideas or activities that only scratch the surface. 

So what is the good news?  As I see it, Unitarian Universalism is uniquely poised to re-imagine the purpose of church as well as RE in an age of religious pluralism. Since we have no absolutes to fight against, we need to work on exploring why our faith is relevant.  One way suggested in the RE training is incorporating multigenerational and whole family faith formation alongside our children into our worship practices. 

 Partly this requires a renewed commitment to putting the Seven Principles into practice with our children because they want to apply the Seven Principles in ways that are meaningful to them and explore where they fit into the bigger picture, not just learn about these ideas. There is no roadmap for where we must travel for and with our children in order to assist them in creating meaning for themselves.  Frankly, it’s never happened before and we’re on the cutting edge.

Religious education for UUs is moving towards a vision of “faith formation,” and this affects every member of our congregation.  In order to preserve and grow both our church and Unitarian Universalism we will need to consider how we can cultivate this faith while meeting the needs of our congregants in the modern world.  The needed changes will affect the flavor of our church's activities and will invigorate the life of the congregation and the individuals within it.

Joyce and I, and the other members of the RE Committee would love for you to contribute your thoughts in creating an approach to Religious Education—Faith Formation—that is livelier and more engaging for everyone—including you!

In peace,
Shelley Dennis and Joyce Fetteroll

Just Wondering...

The Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4-9, is one of the most important passages in Judaism.  It’s about how you have to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and all your might.”  Jesus thought it was the “greatest commandment”  as evidenced by his words in Mt. 22:37-38.  While reading this I had a wild thought…

I was wondering about religious intolerance, thinking about those people who are so sure they’re absolutely right about God and everyone else is wrong.  Those people who condemn everyone to Hell for disagreeing  with their beliefs.  Thinking that, since they’re going to Hell anyway, it’s ok to taunt, bully, exclude, batter, or kill people who disagree.

It occurred to me that a God who can give rise to the Universe could certainly kill off non-believers if it wanted to.  Unless, of course, killing people over religious ideology is against the rules even for God. Then I thought that if it’s against the rules for the source of life itself, it’s probably against the rules for us too.

And that’s it for tonight…I just had to share that thought. 

The Best Kind of One of Those Days

Have you ever had one of those days when things seem to be falling into place and you get a glimpse of purpose and meaning in your life?  I’m having one of those days right now.  Let me tell you how it all started…

Eight years and two days ago, I moved out of the home I’d shared with my husband of fourteen years and into a furnished rental for a trial separation.  I picked up a book from the bookshelf and began reading the introduction, which told a story of a woman who’d moved out of her marital home and into a furnished rental and picked up a book that got her through her separation and subsequent divorce.  I had to read it!  The book was At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst, and it was my first introduction to St. Julian of Norwich, who I quoted heavily in yesterday’s blog.

I felt a comfort and kinship in St. Julian I had never felt before, and reading the book was the beginning of a deep spiritual exploration and growth process that continues to this day.  In many ways, that book is responsible for the fact that I am in seminary now.  Because in St. Julian I found a woman with a theology I could relate to, I felt the courage to claim and proclaim my reading of scripture.

I’m still finishing up my Masters of Sustainable Communities program at Northern Arizona University, which will have a chapter on St. Julian from the perspective of process theology.  I’m also planning to complete a doctoral program that will allow me to more deeply and intensely examine the intersection between ecology and theology.  To that end, I made an appointment with my history professor because he assigned St. Julian’s Showings and has written on the theology/ecology intersection so I figured he’d have some useful advice.

As it turns out, he’s a St. Julian scholar, and is supervising a doctoral student at BU who is writing on St. Julian through the lens of queer theory (and my thesis will include some work on queer theory and process theology).  He gave me great advice on moving forward from here academically, and agreed to check out some of my writing and mentor me on how and where to get an article published.

It feels like things are coming full circle, like a long and arduous journey is coming to…well, the base of another mountain I’ll have to climb at some point.  But in the meantime, I’m in a lush abundant meadow, the traveling easy, and the company splendid.  Thank you for coming along on my journey, whether or not we have met.  Knowing you’re out there reading and cheering for me gives me the strength I need. 

Blessings, love and light

Shelley

Process and Prayer and a 14th Century Mystic

For the past two blogs I’ve been writing about the alterations and meditations I’ve added to the Lord’s Prayer, and a little bit about my experience with saying this prayer twice a week.  At the conclusion of part 2 I invited you to pray some sort of prayer, too.  And maybe you’re thinking, “yeah, that sounds nice an all, but…I’m busy, I don’t believe in God and prayer doesn’t work; I do believe in God but God likes the standard Lord’s Prayer better …”   I can think of at least one hundred reasons why you shouldn’t pray this (or any other) prayer. 

But the seminary student in me is in the midst of reading St. Julian of Norwich and now thinks that none of those reasons is as compelling as the possibility that prayer might work.  The doctor in me does a risk-benefit analysis and determines that the risk is low and the potential benefit is high, so why not try it?  At the very least you’ll have 5-15 minutes of quiet time; you may have lower blood pressure as a result.

St. Julian was a 14^th century mystic whose reports of her visions of God and Jesus would have gotten her burned at the stake had anyone bothered to read them.  .  For example, she asked God specifically to show her sin and damnation in order to validate the church teachings and she saw neither.  She says of sin, “I saw not sin; for I believe it has no manner of essence nor any portion of being, nor can it be known except by the pain that is caused by it”  and of punishment  “I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us.”

But what she said about prayer totally blew my mind, especially since I read it after I started my prayer practice.  God told Julian “I am the ground of thy praying—first it is my will that though have something, and next I make thee to want it, and afterward I cause thee to pray for it.”  And that implies that if I’m praying for the hungry to be fed, and all those other things, it’s because God is leading me to want it because God wants it.  Pause to reflect on that for a moment.  That means God wants us to be free, but we’re keeping ourselves down.  Ok, so if you don’t believe in God maybe this means nothing other than “Shelley needs to be medicated.”  So for the potential atheists in the crowd, consider replacing the word “God” with one of the following: The Consciousness of the Universe, The Spirit of Life, Gaia, The Earth, The Matrix, whatever works 

If God wants us to have it, why can’t God just make it happen for us?  Well, God doesn’t work like that.  Y’know how people are always saying you create your own reality?  And it’s all in your vibrations?  Well maybe there’s something to that, because God also told Julian that “What He intends is this: that we understand that He does everything, and that we pray for it. For the one is not enough, for if we pray and do not understand that He does it, it makes us sad and doubtful.”  Because of the vibrational nature of the universe if you’re sad and doubtful you can’t get yourself in vibrational alignment with the solutions to all of these problems, so they can’t show up!

And it gets even better, because when you do pray, then you are likely to see changes occur because, as Julian wrote, “by prayer comes to agree with God.”  So what that suggests to me is the possibility that God wants social justice, and God wants us to live more gently on the earth, and the other things I pray for in my daily prayer.  But my soul, and the souls of billions of other people are in disagreement with that prayer, so we can’t receive that gift.  I’m not saying that if we all pray for fifteen minutes right now everything will magically get better. But maybe if enough of us pray for fifteen minutes a day for more loving solutions to the world’s issues they will emerge over time.

And speaking of time, what if what we’re praying for doesn’t show up right away?  St. Julian says that in that case, “either we are to await a better time, or more grace, or a better gift.” So if it doesn't work right away be patient.

Maybe St. Julian’s visions were the result of a horrible delirium.  But I like to think that the Universe is conscious, and that consciousness is God.  And God wants us to live peacefully on the Earth, and we can participate in bringing it about by spending fifteen minutes a day agreeing with God’s good ideas.

Strange Days, part 2

This is part 2 of a series on The Lord's Prayer.  It will make more sense if you read Part 1...

Give us this day our daily bread

I pause to think about those who will go hungry today because we as a species still have not figured out how to distribute food equitably and humanely.  I hope my prayer helps at least one person find a good meal, or sets some better process into motion in that “butterfly effect” kind of way.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

This reminds me that as we forgive, so are we forgiven.  I take a moment to loosen the grudges that have a stranglehold on my heart.  I make a silent request for forgiveness from those I have wronged.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors

Oh, do we have debts to pay.  We are accumulating an energy debt as we rob the Earth of natural resources and create environmental disasters that require years of recovery.  The United States loans money to developing nations, and does so under policies structures to prevent these nations from ever rising out of poverty.  And I personally am accruing some debt for school.  I take a brief moment to remember the times I have loaned money never to have been repaid, and I forgive that debt.  I hold a thought that “forgiveness of debts” can be set into motion somehow and the looming global problems that scare me (and I bet you too) can begin to unravel with this forgiveness.  You may say I’m a dreamer…

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

It is easy to get distracted from the beauty of life on Earth, and to forget how fragile it is and also that we are charged with loving care of this Garden of Eden.  It is easy to get distracted from the inherent worth and dignity of each and every person, including ourselves.  It's easy to forget to love one another.  The "evil" of consumerism, with its attendant problems, results from this forgetting.  We shop and spend to fill the void caused by forgetting who we really are.  We forget the real cost of these things we're buying, costs such as greenhouse gas emissions, sweatshop labor, animal testing.  I pray to be led from the temptation of distraction, and to grow in my ability to bring my full presence to each moment.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory

Another reminder that I am a very tiny party of the Universe, life is much bigger than I am, and I shouldn’t take myself so seriously.  And also, an invitation to trust that “all shall be well” as St. Julian says (much more on her later this week—I love her).

Forever and ever

Amen

May it be so.  Let it be so that we end racial, religious, gender, ethnic, economic, and sexual oppression because injustice isn’t sustainable.  And besides, love is much more fun.

It has been a strange thing to do, saying the Lord’s prayer.  I say it slowly, pausing with each phrase to breathe and meditate more deeply on how to make this a prayer of compassion similar to the Buddhist prayer “may we be free from suffering and the root of all suffering, may we know happiness and the root of all happiness.”   I’m certain the world at large hasn’t noticed a visible difference yet, but I feel better—happier, more grounded, freer, and more authentic.  That has to help me engage more positively with the world.  And maybe if you join me in praying fifteen minutes a day—any prayer of compassion at all—maybe people will notice.

Blessings, love and light,

Shelley

Strange Days, part 1

I’ve been saying the Lord’s Prayer this week.  Twice a day.  On my knees. For those of you unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism in general or me in particular, this is a very strange thing for a UU to do, even for one who believes in the existence of God.  I, along with other Unitarian Universalists, do not embrace the Trinity.  Let me tell you how it all started, and how it’s all going, because I’ve gotten a lot out of it and maybe it will speak to you, too.

On Tuesday we had our Hebrew Bible midterm, followed by the most amazing celebration!  Dr. Fontaine laid out a map of the Levant on the floor, divided us into the various ancient peoples who lived there and “delivered us from Egypt.”  The point of deliverance, according to Dr. Fontaine, is to celebrate: “they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.”  After delivering us from Egypt, and before eating the bounteous buffet she assembled, we said the Lord’s Prayer and it moved me like never before. 

Chaos theory suggests that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China possibly it will trigger a storm in Texas.  Based on that theory, maybe we all have the potential to participate in the healing of ourselves, each other, and the Earth by changing our thoughts, which in turn change our behaviors.

I’ve had to modify the Lord’s Prayer somewhat; sometimes I modify the actual words and more often I modify the meaning.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Our Mother and Father who art in Heaven

It’s dangerous and misleading to imagine that God has a gender.  The ancient Israelites included traits of the Near Eastern goddesses in their conception of Yahweh.  Throughout history various theologians (i.e. St. Augustine, St. Julian) have glimpsed God’s feminine nature.  God is not restricted to categories of race or gender or any other category we try to fit God into because we are too small to imagine an infinite God. Maybe if we can be more intentional in seeing this we can begin to see the divinity in all people and stop using religion to justify oppression based on sex, gender, race, physical ability, sexual orientation….

Hallowed be thy many names

I pause for a moment to think of the many names people use for God, and the many people who have faced and still face religious persecution.  I pray that we can come to see the Holy in all of them so that we will stop hurting each other over these differences in perspective.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done

I believe the Source of Life is good, and has a much bigger perspective on what wonderful things are possible.  How can I think I know better?  This is a nice reminder to remember that God is bigger than I am, and opens me to loving the world as it is.

On Earth, because this is Heaven

This reminds me that the Kingdom of Heaven is already among us, as Jesus says in Luke.  All time is holy time, all ground is sacred ground.

Thank you for reading with an open heart.  Please tune in tomorrow for part 2 J

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.