CONSOLATION PRIZES THAT DON’T COLLECT DUST

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For those that enter beauty pagaents, writing contests, or sports competitions,  receiving the consolation prize is a sign that you are some kind of a runner up.  There was a winner and they won the grand prize. All the others prizes may represent a good effort or recognize the great performance, but are really an attempt to ease the blow of well, losing. 

How different the prizes of consolation are for us when they present themselves amid and after the inevitable losses in life.  To be awarded consolation in its many guises after grief, rejection, emotional exhaustion is to know the sweetest balm.  While these salves can be as simple as a stranger’s smile, they are often times a reawakening of our senses to the world around us.  In The Sinner’s Almanac,  Taufiq Khalil writes these verses in “Audacity No. 127”: “The dew on the grass in early morning makes me happy. The puddle of water left by the evening rain makes me merry.  The Sun glimering behind a green canopy keeps me cheery.  And God is most pleased with those who smile Whatever the hour Who have the audacity to be happy When all life seems sour”.

There is the gift of a  morning when the heavy hurt you carried like lead for a time too long gives way to the sunshine in a way that no longer mocks your inner atmosphere. The warmth on your face and the sound of the chickadee whose great great great grandparents once sung outside your nursery window is calling you to attention, to be attentive, to attend.

The prolific Pultizer Prize winning poet (yes, she did win a grand prize) Mary Oliver understood well how the Sacred and Holy are embued in Nature, that the possibility of a Kairos moment (meaning the right or opportune moment) is ever beckoning. She asks that we lay our burdens at the altar of heartbeating Life in her poem Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, over the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are flying home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

THE LION IN THE CAVE

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It’s been two months since I’ve entered the blogosphere; and I am so ready to be back. 

Do you know Ecclesiastes 3:3 in the Bible? It is in the Hebrew Bible; what I know as the Old Testament.  The book consists of maxims that reflect upon the meaning of life and the best way to live it.  It tells of the hard times that are a part of life and the need to take your time moving through them.  Actually the whole of chapter 3 is about the rhythm of life.  Life’s timing, the wisdom of knowing and accepting fully how long each “time” takes.  The specific verse 3 says, “There is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up.” 

I am broken, but not dead.  Just healing and building up.   I needed to go into my “cave” and like the mighty lion after a bloody fight, lick my wounds. It hurts and it’s itchy and it’s generally not something we humans go out and look for.  

Yet like all crises, all catastrophes, there is God’s gifts of the silver lining.  We are grateful for small things.  A friend’s call, the morning cup of hot coffee (not to be underestimated), and the sense of connection with others who are currently suffering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” all register.  They are not disregarded; as they often times are when the world seems our oyster. 

Suffering is, of course, universal, and cuts us down to size, whether we feel we need it or not.  But when it happens often enough, or poignantly enough, we begin to let go any romantic attachment to drama.  Drama as an addiction, as a predilection, becomes not only a luxury we can ill afford.  It takes off its clothes and it exposes itself for what it really is: a childish, immature, and unimaginative way to engage with the moments given to you.    

There are lyrics to a song that has been mantra; it has made so much sense to me, it has given me strength, it’s almost like I wrote it.  I guess you could say that I wish I wrote it.  It’s by the Dixie Chicks.  I know the Dixie Chicks and Ecclesiastes, huh?  I warned you once or twice of my heretical leanings, so if you are still reading, here you go. The name of the song is Truth No. 2:  

You don’t like the sound of the truth, coming from my mouth.   You say that I lack the proof. Well, maybe that might be so.  I might get to the end of my life, find out everyone is lying.  I don’t think that I’m afraid anymore.  You see I’d rather die trying.

This time when he swung the bat and I found myself laying flat, I wondered.  What a way to spend a dime, what a way to use the time.  I looked at my reflection in the window walking past and I saw a stranger.  Just so scared all the time make me one more reason why the world’s dangerous.

Tell my what’s wrong with having a little faith in what you’re feeling in your heart.  Why must we be so afraid and always  so far apart. 

The refrain is: “Sing my something brave from your mouth.”

That’s what I’m looking for right now.  In everyone I meet, encounter, and I’m finding it.  Bravery, to speak the truth and then live it.  Go on.   

By the way, don’t get me wrong, the irony is not lost on me.  My words ring a bit melodramatic, even to me.  But I have been thinking about them, even nuance of thoughts and events.  And you know what?  In this particular instance, they are not. 

I’m not trying to be mysterious, just judicious. 

Got lots of blog ideas in the queue.

Wishing you peace and love and good health.

EMPATHY IN A WORLD OF SYMPATHY

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Recently, I was asked to say a few words on the topic of “empathy in action” as much of what I do involved listening to people in an open and caring way.  Here is some of what I said, and some of what I didn’t have the time to say, in the time alloted to me:

“When I was asked to speak today, to give “a testimony on empathy”, it was framed at first as perhaps talking about my dual roles here as the communications and membership staffer who also serves as a lay pastoral care minister, and how being a good listener plays into those roles.  I immediately laughed, because you see, I do not consider myself a very good listener.  In my great enthusiasm to connect with you or what you’ve said, I can sometimes miss the nuances.  I hear the content…but in my common state of exuberance and haste, I can miss hearing you, you know the real you, the YOU that really matters behind the words.  As a matter of fact, that I’m standing up here talking on the subject, to me, reveals God’s great sense of humor and irony.

But what I can say, is that I have been trying the last several years, to the best of my ability, to earnestly develop this talent, this talent of active listening, engaging my body and all my sense, to in essence, absorb what you’re experiencing.  This is what empathy means to me and it is really unnatural to my constitution.  Yet is has become a conscious and deliberate spiritual practice because there is really no greater gift to give someone, than your full presence.  Not ever.  Isn’t it hard to not speak or not attempt to smooth things over when something horrible is happening in someone’s life?  It is hard work to simply be with someone else’s pain, not asking them to feel better or saying it’s going to be alright.  Sometimes it’s enough, to just look a person in the eye, and say, “This really sucks.” And then nothing.

But not nothing.  That I am willing to stand with you, sit with you, be uncomfortable, and not judge anything that comes out of your mouth because your feelings are just having their way, that is empathy.

Ever sine I’ve made this commitment, weird things have been happening to me.  I was at the drugstore a while back, looking at birthday cards.  A women, ostensibly also looking for a birthday card for her daughter, started to tell me of how she is trying to decide whether to divorce her husband. She has been with him since she was 15 in Brazil, and he is like a father to her, as well as a husband, as her own father had died when she was seven.  She has been married for 25 years and he has always made her feel special, but he has violated her trust in an unspeakable way with a child family member.  I didn’t know what to with this.  So I just walked over to her and hugged her and she cried.  I said I didn’t have any answers but that I trusted that she would have the courage to find her answer.

To emphasize with someone involves getting involved.  It means that I am you, and you are me.  I say thing because a lot of people confuse sympathy and empathy.  You will never get a sympathy card from me.  You will get a hand written note on blank stationary or one with a poignant quote that resonates somehow, but never one that reads with sympathy.  Sympathy, implies that I can kind of (similarly) understand what you are going though and I feel bad for you.  Empathy means I am attempting to the best of my ability to be in the trenches with you.

Please know that I am not saying that in all situations to simply say wow, this is really awful, I feel your pain, is the appropriate response.  We hear of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, no even a year ago (200,000) dead and we are shocked.  Then they have a tropical storm and there’s more hardship.  Now there is an outbreak of cholera sweeping the country, an epidemic from which they have no immunity.  Having pity does nothing.  Praying for them is a step up, but still does not serve them.  Empathy sometimes needs feet and arms and alms.  It needs to mobilize doctors, nurses, food stuff, and medicine.  It is active listening AND action.

This commitment to radical acceptance listening (which I still stumble at, at any given moment), has given me the blessing to get know some of you and know your stories.  It is a rare gift to share the deepest and sometimes darkest nights of another’s soul.  With empathy, we come to know how strong the spirit is, how incredibly resilient we humans are, even after our losses, how being heard allows us to move through and forward in our lives, touching the lives around us.

YES VIRGINIA, THE UNITARIANS HAVE MYSTICS-TWO TRANSCENDENTALISTS (PART I)

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OK, OK, Unitarians do not have (to my knowledge anyway) ardent pious folk who took the path of asceticism to the degree of wearing a hair shirt or living in a desert cave for decades. For edification’s sake, asceticism is the part of the mystic or saint’s path that includes renouncing worldly pleasures in order to become closer to God.  Those who have taken these extreme measures did seem to have some remarkable “other worldly” spiritual experiences (see Teresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, Rabi’a of Persia, and lots of others in almost every other faith, including Buddhists and Hindus (Gandhi chose a life of asceticism as well).  So, I am not knocking it.  It just that most people do not feel such a calling. 

In fact, most people are adverse to giving up anything they find pleasurable, even when they know it is bad for them (hence the challenges during Lent…) However, no matter how we may kick and scream, there must be some giving up of comfort, security, and ego, in order to attain any real semblance of Communion (with a capital C).      

The first and most famous of the Unitarian “mystics”, who chose a counter cultural lifestyle of purposeful simplicity that reflected and embodied both an ancient and more modern approach for those seeking unity with God, with Nature, and others, was Henry David Thoreau.  Coming from a family of wealth and privilege, with a Harvard education, Thoreau (much maligned in his day for it…he was considered eccentric by the kindest and a nut by the rest) chose to live in a hut in the woods of Concord, MA for two years to isolate himself from society so that he could better understand himself and others.  His classic book, Walden, or, Life in the Woods, now required reading for most High School students, is a compilation of this experiment.  Unlike the Desert Fathers, he was not intending to live as a hermit, and did take visitors, he was instead seeking to understand life more deeply by consciously removing many of its distractions.          

What Thoreau was emphasizing (among other themes) was the necessity of solitude, contemplation, and nature to “transcend” our over hurried existence.  His words and works still call to us today, timeless in their appeal: “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will become simpler, solitude will not be solitude…nor weakness weakness.” While many of his oft quoted words ring of the uniquely American self-reliant spirit, they too challenge us to think and be, rather than to be always about the business of doing.  For as Thoreau puts it, “Being is the great explainer.”  

Many of his criticisms of society were harsh and at many times his views are expressed in an overly zealous manner.  Is that not true of the prophets, the social reformers, and those considered holy men and women of every place and time? I am not suggesting by this question that Thoreau was unique or special as a long revered saint, he was a man with his foibles and misinformation.  Yet there is a reason we keep reading him.

Thoreau is not asking us to build ourselves a cabin and live in the forest, he is asking that we shake off our complacency, that we do not live an unquestioned and unreflected life.  If we are happy with our lives, that’s good and yet we should challenge our assumptions and think more broadly.  If we are unhappy, he is pointing to another way.

“If a man (or woman :)) does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

THE TORCH OF REASON AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

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On the eve of the elections and the “increasing heat and decreasing light” of free expression, I think it apropos to remember that in the end it is the torch of reason that should determine how far our first amendment (the right to free speech) is allowed to go.

In the Oct. 4th issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the article “Free Speech, How Free Should it Be?” covered this very topic.  Using many recent examples, among them the US Supreme Court case now underway examining whether members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, went too far when they staged a protest at a fallen marine’s funeral in Maryland.  The demonstrators hoisted signs proclaiming: “You are going to hell” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”.  Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro church, has made a career out of using blunt and offensive statements to try to shock Americans into joining his crusade against gay rights.  His followers show up at military funerals and announce that God is killing American soldiers for the sins of the country.  Funeral goers are urged to repent…or else.

In Maryland, it was too much for the grieving father, Albert Snyder, to endure.  He sued. The case pits Mr. Snyder’s First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in a church to mourn his son’s passing against the Westboro protesters’ right to chant  harsh slogans and display shocking signs in their campaign for so-called moral salvation for the nation.

The Monitor adds: “The essence of free speech in America is not that you can say whatever you want.  There is no constitutional right to libel someone, or to use ‘fighting words’ that are sure to provoke fisitcuffs…there is no constitutional right to falsely yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.  Government regulation of that speech is appropriate because of the predictable outcome of panic.”

Yet we are also a country that can paint a Hitler mustache on the president’s likeness without fear of the government’s wrath (something I personally find utterly deplorable nonetheless), while a poem critical of the King in Jordan can land its writer in jail.

So what is the yardstick?  Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis provided a sage response in a 1927 case: “To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion.  If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

In other words, “It is the principle that the best way to counter a stupid idea, a hateful idea, a dangerous idea, is through the expression of better ideas.” 

Sound advice.  We have been hearing from the rabble rousers, the stirrers of the pot, and the haters for months now.  We must use our first amendment to speak up and out against those who will not let a family bury their dead in peace.  We must vote for those who represent us in the forum of public civil discourse, that will be, well, civil. It is not in yelling back, but in providing thoughtful responses that seek consensus and equanimity that the wonder of our first amendment stands.  If we do not use our first amendment right to counter the “stupid, hateful or dangerous ideas, we have no one to blame but ourselves, and oh yeah, as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert would say, “the media”!

HOW THE IRISH GAVE US ST. PATRICK’S DAY…AND HALLOWEEN

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What we now know as Halloween began 2,000 years ago as the Celtic festival of Shamhain in Ireland. “Samhain” is the Gaelic word for “summer’s end”. For farmers and rural folk, pagans (the original meaning of pagan was not that of our current understanding, as those who aren’t Christian, but simply those who lived in rural areas, by the rhythms of nature), the holiday marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. It was the transition from the light part of the year to the darker months of the year.  The day was celebrated starting on sundown on October 31st and then throughout the day on November 1st.

It was beloved- and is still beloved by some- as a time when the veil between this world and the spirit world is thinnest, and departed spirits can return to mingle with the those of the living. 

Celebrants would dress up in costumes, representing the various Celtic deities. Part of the folklore contains a story that Samhain is when the old God dies and the Crone Goddess mourns him deeply for the next six weeks.  The popular Halloween image of an old hag stirring a bubbling brew from a giant black cauldron comes from the Celtic belief that all dead souls return to the Crone Goddess’ cauldron of life, death, and rebirth to await reincarnation.  

The jack-0′-lantern, also has its roots in Celtic legend.  Based on a folklore tale about a forlorn ghost named Jack, jack-o’-lanterns were set outside during Samhain to guide lost souls-and to scare away evil ones.  The difference in the United States is that we use pumpkins.  The Irish originally carved out turnips, but when they brought their tradition to America, turnips were much harder to come by than were pumpkins. In fact, they discovered that pumpkins worked better.

Handing out candy on Halloween to our costumed guests at the doorbell stems from the Celtic tradition of giving food and money to the costumed celebrants, just in case they were the physical incarnations of lost souls.  In addition, when the kids say “trick or treat”, it springs from the custom of doing things to please the spirits or else risk some evil.

Around 700 A.D., when the Christian church began to spread throughout Ireland, the Church renamed the holiday All Saints Day (Nov. 1 precluded by All-Hallows Eve (Oct. 31st) and so it became to be known as Halloween.  Like many other pagan festivals, the Christians adopted Samhain and made it a Christian event. 

While other places in the world celebrate Halloween, it is most widely known and celebrated in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the U.K.    

So, while the light outside my window is already dimming at 4:30 pm, and my Halloween candy is at the ready for the throngs of trick or treaters to descend upon my doorstep tomorrow evening, I can relish the spiritual connection with my distant ancestors in the “old country” who marked this as a holy and sacred time AND revel with the all the kids who are simply looking forward to a bag full of candy, getting dressed up, and being out after dark on a school night.  As always, the sacred and the everyday live side by side…it’s important to acknowledge both.

A WHIRLING DERVISH

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Lately I’ve been feeling like a whirling dervish…except that I’ve been getting dizzy.  If you’ve ever since those Persian/Turkish dancers with their high hats, loose slacks, and robes spinning in unison, you may think, well, of course they’re getting dizzy.  But the aim is ironically the opposite; they’re surpassing dizzy.

Dervishes are like Christian Orders.  Among the Catholics, there are Franciscan Friars (which I would have been if I had been male), Dominicans, Jesuits, Paulists, and Benedictines.  The Sufis (the mystics of Islam) have their fraternal orders as well and these are called Dervishes.  Among some of the more important dervishes are the Qadir, Rifa’i, Shadhili, Suhrawardi, and the Mevlevi.  Like their Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist (known as sadhus) counterparts, individuals within the discipline of a dervish are practicing asceticism or a chosen simplicity and poverty, what the Sufis call tariqa (the path, the way to God).   

All dervishes do not whirl.  Each order follows the practices of its founder.  The Franciscans follow St. Francis of Assisi,  (the charismatic nobleman and soldier who gave up everything save God), wearing rough, plain garments, they live completely by alms, and serve the poorest of humanity and the needs of animals.   In Egypt, the Qadiryya dervish, also live humbly and give to the poor, but what sets them apart, is they are mostly comprised of one profession, they are fishermen.  Interesting to note, the more we are different, the more we are the same.  There was another famous fisher of men in Galilee, a Jesus of Nazareth, whose apostles were also fishermen. I guess you could say in some ways, that Jesus was the founder of his particular dervish.

But the dervish that whirls is the Mevlevi dervish. Founder Mevlana Jaladdin Rumi (1207-1273), the renowned mystic and prolific poet included the trance-like dancing as part of his practice of tariqa.  Rotating in a precise rhythm, the dance is part of a sacred ceremony.  The dancer represents the earth revolving on its axis while orbiting the sun.  The purpose of the ritual is to empty oneself of all distracting thoughts. Entering a meditative state, the body conquers dizziness.

There is intention.   When I am spinning my wheels, with a to-do list that is attacked like putting out a fire, tangled up in a lengthy fire hose, un-intentionally wrapped around myself like a boa constrictor; I have not entered the dance mindfully, but rather stumbled onto to the dance floor befuddled.  “Music is to develop the consciousness, poetry is wisdom”, said the prophet Muhammad.  Music, an essential accompaniment to whirling, is repetitive and rises to a crescendo of spiritual oneness, the blurring and blending of the material and cosmic worlds.

It is also about the breath.  It is bringing the body and mind just to the present.   

One of the many reasons that Rumi is known and loved across faiths and cultures is that his prolific writings speak to the timeless life of the Spirit. His message speaks of NOW:

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen.  Not any religion, or cultural system.  I am not from the East or the West, nor out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.  I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story.  My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless,  neither body nor soul.  I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know. First, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human. (Rumi Poem, Only Breath).

Always, a returning, a turning back, no matter how many times one has strayed.

WHAT DOES BEING ‘SPIRITUAL NOT RELIGIOUS’ REALLY MEAN?

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On March 19th, my blog post was entitled The Top Ten Religious Words that the Spin Doctors Doctored. Under #6 was the word ‘religion’, I wrote: “I don’t want to beat a dead horse here.  I mean, after all, hasn’t this word been bludgeoned enough.  But, this word, which has come to represent difference and divisiveness, was originally just a verb, religio, meaning ‘bringing together that which is separated.’ So, all I’m gonna say is, huh?”

My intention in this post is not to try to get you to go to church or not go to church, but to think about the implications involved in the personal belief statement of being “spiritual but not religious.”

When I’m at a party, the gym, at a school function…and I hear, “Oh, I’m spiritual not religious”, I always ask what the person means by that.  Usually, the answers are a combination of the following,  “I didn’t agree with a lot of what the xyz church that I grew up in believes”, “I don’t get anything out of going to church”, “Religion is a construct created by the powerful to appease the poor and downtrodden”, “They’re so hypocritical, the church leaders and so many people I know that go to church”, and so on. 

You know what, I agree with a lot of what they tell me.  There has been a lot of “unholy alliances” between individuals, governments, and church bodies.  Much of what they articulate about why they don’t go to church or practice a faith or why they feel disillusioned or skeptical about much of what is essentially dogma (a good working definition of dogma being, “a corpus of doctrines set forth in an authoritative manner by a church”), are all things I can give a hearty Amen to.

So when people say they are not religious, they mean they have chosen not to limit themselves to the reduced definition of religion as a particular church, synagogue, or mosque with its doctrines, its own definitions of sin, salvation, and exclusions.   

When they do express some of their spiritual practices or ways of experiencing the spiritual, there is also much to concur with. My Buddhist friends use a variety of meditations, both alone and in groups.  And while some will agree that using the original meaning of religion, they are indeed religious. While  others, on principle, still detest the idea. They prefer to call it a philosophy of thought. Here, again, semantics do indeed shape and inform our worldview. Whether it be early bad experiences with a “religion” that has scarred or the in-your- face fundamentalists whose fanatical zeal causes one to recoil…the result is the same.    

Some friends are in 12 step programs, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, and their loved ones. One of the principles of these programs is that they are a spiritual not religious program.  Again, meaning they are asking you to discover for yourself “God as you understand Him or Her” and to turn your life and will over to the care of this “Higher Power”.  However, this is not done alone, but rather with the aid and support of the group.

When I get a vague answer about trying to be a good person, they often add how they don’t need a church to become one (agreed). Most of the people who say this, I know to be good people, caring and true.  So, when I ask them if they could be a bit more specific, they say things like they go weekly with their family to volunteer at a food bank or they are a part of quilting bee that creates blankets for those undergoing cancer treatments.    All of the above examples include a component of community as part of the individual spiritual framework.

“My own kind of prayer” and “being in nature” (responses I often get) are also spiritual experiences and are vital parts of the equation, but are not complete without the balance of others.  I too often find a  centering while walking in the woods, a wonderful “un-lonely” solitude, that feels a communion with God. Yet it also feeds me so that I can help, serve, and nurture others and that I am able to receive the same from them.

In closing, an excerpt from A House for Hope by John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker:  

“Is it really preferable (0r even possible) to be religious alone?  Or, is there an importance to religious community life that need to be claimed anew, while protecting against the liabilities and dangers that community life can pose?  I strongly believe the answer to the first question is no and the answer to the second is yes.  We need life together, and we would be wise to invest in rebuilding the walls of community.  My suspicion is that religious conservatism has grown not because its theology is more inspiring than that of liberal theology, but because conservatives in recent decades have been better at creating and sustaining religious communities that offer people meaningful connection with one another and support in enduring life’s trials and tribulations.”

 So…I am back, congregants of the blogosphere!…new job…yada yada.

I HEAR YOU STEPHEN HAWKING, AND…

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How serendipitous! The BBC news agency published an article on Sept. 2nd relating that Prof. Stephen Hawking, in his latest book The Grand Design, has concluded that God was not necessary to create the universe. Among Hawking’s statements: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch-paper and set the universe going”…”The Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics”…and finally, and for me, most importantly, “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

In my August 31st post entitled “Awe…some”, I was offering a different way to think about God, using new language to include God in the discussion with a wide swath of people with variant viewpoints.  It was not the anthropomorphic construct of a Father or Lord with flowing, shimmering robes and a long white beard.  Rather it was “God as the ultimate mystery of things, as the serendipitous creativity manifest throughout the universe…through which new forms and configurations of reality and life have come into being.” (Thank you Gordon Kaufman).

Spontaneous creation says Hawking, Serendipitous creativity says Kaufman.  Scientist, Theologian.  To my way of thinking, the more that one wants to separate these two fields of inquiry, the closer they appear to fuse.  Science and Religion are compatible. They need not be at odds with one another. Whether we are referring to either science or religion, we must be willing to expand our vocabulary, to open our minds to ways of seeing the world, the universe, in ways that to previous generations seemed unimaginable.  This takes both a willing faith to jump into the unknown as well as all of our faculties of reason to make sense of our new discoveries.

The prevalent worldview is that there is only “this”-the space-time world of matter and energy and whatever  other natural forces lie behind or beyond it.  This modern, nonreligious construct has no foundational place for tradition notions of God.  It thus makes the reality of God problematic.  For some, it leads to rejecting the reality of God, or at least to serious doubts about God, and thus to atheism or agnosticism.

And for those who continue to believe in God, it changes how God is thought of.  Many Christians basically accept the modern worldview’s image of reality and then add God onto it.  God is the one who created the space-time world of matter and energy as a self-contained system, set it in motion, and perhaps sometimes intervenes in it.  God becomes a supernatural being “out there” who created a universe from which God is normally absent.  This is a serious distortion of the meaning of the word “God”.

For me, God always points to something greater,  a “More” and an “And” . Why can’t God be Creator, Spontaneous Creation, and Serendipitous Creativity? We can live out of our imaginations. The vision of reality emerging in postmodern physics does not settle our understandings once and for all.  Religion and postmodern science alike both point to a stupendous “More.”  

 People throughout history and across cultures have had experiences that seem overwhelmingly to be experiences of the sacred.  There are also the quieter forms of religious experiences that happen in the dailiness of our lives.  We witness natural disasters and unmitigated tragedies, and we then we see nature growing and returning to burned forest or flood damaged lands. We hear stories of hope and compassion, beacons of light that rise up when the odds would bet otherwise.   While these experiences can’t be quantified, they can be qualified.  Existence refuses to quit creating.  This experiential base of religion is quite strong; it is ultimately what I find to be its most persuasive ground.

In closing, some words from Marcus Borg: “Finally, no story can be told about the truth of God. It can’t be argued or televised.  And witnesses can’t prove it exists.  Yet the truth of God brings peace instantly.  There is only one unchanging truth about anyone and everyone.  None are left outside of the warm assurance and gentle rest it offers, because God’s truth is Love.”

SPIRITUAL NOTES TO MYSELF

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Hugh Prather, whom the New York Times has called “an American Kahil Gibran”, wrote a book with the title of today’s blog.  In it, are anecdotes, observations, and  spiritual wisdom that Prather has collected and absorbed for himself in over 30 years as minister, lecturer, and counselor.

You may have notebooks or quotes on your memo board that speak poignantly to your heart.  Or perhaps, they are there in way as a reminder for spiritual or emotional hopes you have…the person you would like to be at your best.

Also, there are literally thousands (probably more like millions) of books on meditation, prayer, affirmation, every religion since the dawn of time, and spirituality…practices, techniques, and thoughts.

I have more than a few of them myself.  I also keep several notebooks full with quotes, ideas, and prayers that inspire, teach, or bring comfort to me.

However, I tack a few up on my cork board beside my writing desk for several months at a time.  After absorbing their wisdom, I rotate in fresh ones . Here’s what’s up there right now:

“I will not die an unlived life.  I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.  I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.  I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.”  – Dawna Markova   

“For things that you believe in, pray like a preacher but fight like the Devil”.

“If we hold resentments toward the people who let us down, we’ll be exhausted.  It’s better to focus on the ones who have been there for us”.

The content of two fortune cookies are pinned up there: “Everybody feels lucky for having you as a friend” AND “We are made to persist.  That’s how we find out who we are”.

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”- Edith Wharton

A note that my beloved Dad (who tragically died too young) had written me many years ago:

 “In case you’re depressed today and feeling lonely: You are pretty!  You are smart!  You are vivacious! You have a warm smile!  You have an interesting personality!  You are a little wacky!  Five out of six ain’t bad, Love, Dad xxx” 

These thoughts make me laugh, give me a spiritual shot in the arm, and keep me reaching towards my Higher Self, the one God wants for me.

These are fitting thoughts as my little/big chicks fly the summer coop: one off to another year of college in Rhode Island, one on a year’s adventure, first in Paris and then to Senegal, and the “baby”, 6’1″, driving a car, writing his own music, towering over me, teasing me, “his little mama”.  

In closing, a gem from Mr. Prather: “Our children can see us.  They can’t see God.  Our function is not to describe God’s love or to talk endlessly about it, but to reflect it so that it can be seen.”