Musings

Blessing of Smart Phones

 

With a gathering:  "Lift up your smart phones!"  With an individual:  "Hold out your smart phone!"  (celebrant puts hands around it and around the hand of the owner of the phone)

"Let us take a moment of silence to be prayerfully mindful of the role this device plays in our lives..... (several seconds)....  Source of needed information, means of communicating personally and professionally, platform for our education, provider of entertainment, and so much more.  We are grateful for this marvel of human ingenuity, for connecting us as one human family around the globe as never before.  And we take time now to be mindful of its power over our lives.  We contemplate which uses are of benefit, and which are obsessions that do not serve us or others well.   In what ways have we become slaves to its beeps and flashes?  Do we have the discipline to turn it off for extended periods in order to have more face-to-face interaction?  Do its social media posts seduce us into unhealthy comparisons of our lives with those of others, and into the commodification of our identities?  Or do we use it to maintain deep relationships, ask sincere questions, and stay close to people we know and trust?  On it, do we seek out reputable news sources, or do we just believe whatever it feeds us?  Do we let it amplify our prejudices, or do we use it as a tool for critical thinking?   Do we passively accept the preferences of the corporations behind this device and its applications, or do we claim control of our digital footprints as engaged citizens?  Prayerfully, let us lift up our intentions to make wise use of our smart phones, and ask daily for inner guidance about when to turn them on and when to turn them off.  Amen!"

 

The Digital Mennonite

Shane Cole is a tanned, athletic young man from Vail, Colorado, studying at the University of Southern California, living with his fraternity brothers near campus.   

An unlikely digital Mennonite if there ever was one.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio neighbored by Mennonite farmers.  Their Christian Anabaptist faith tradition puts them on a spectrum of simple living that ranges between the horse-and-buggy Amish over to urban Mennonite congregations.  We called our local adherents of this tradition “black-bumper Mennonites”.  The men wore overalls and the women had their hair buns in white caps.  But they bought fancy power equipment for their farms and brand-new passenger vans for their families.  Upon purchase, anything shiny on their vehicles was painted black, as a display of modesty.  Such was their chosen spot on the simplicity scale, their answer to the perennial Amish-Mennonite question:  “Will this new thing help our community to flourish, or will it cause our community harm?”  For Mennonites, communal harmony matters more than mere personal convenience.
 
Shane started asking that question about smartphones and social media when he was in high school.  The closer he looked at his use of this technology, the more disturbed he became about its intrusion into his life and the lives of people around him.  He trashed Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat.  He bought a LightPhone, a stripped-down unit for texting and calling.  “We need to de-colonize our minds!” he exclaims.  
 
Shane is not a Mennonite.  But in my recent chat with him, I anointed him a “digital Mennonite”.  A kind of black-bumper Mennonite.  Not on the Amish end of the spectrum:  he still owns a smart phone and a computer.  I gave him this appellation because he asks the same question that Mennonites ask.
 
Shane is amazed by the ways his life has lifted up since he stopped looking down at a screen all the time.  He immerses himself in nature, working with SC Outfitters, the campus group for outdoor adventure.  He reads books – lots that are not even assigned to him in class.  There is more space and time for him to devote to real relationships.
 
“The social media companies have commodified our attention,” he says.  Getting it back means looking up, looking within, being mindful of that constant physical urge to check our smart phones.  It means taking a break from devices long enough to be mindful of everything else.  Shane sees liberation from social media as the most recent front in the long struggle for freedom from oppressive social systems.  
 
Shane is forming a student club to take action on the need for “digital de-tox” on campus and beyond.  Our office is lending support.  “I want us to empower students to take control of their use of social media.”
 
Were he inclined to do so, I’m sure Shane Cole would have no trouble presenting himself as living the perfect Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat life.  But he’s opted out of that part of cyberspace.  And he’s not missing it at all.

 

On Being a Patriot...

A big US flag flutters in the breeze right now in front of our house in Ojai.  This 4th of July weekend, Roberta and I enjoyed waving smaller ones at our town's parade.

It included the usual small-town spectacles:  vintage cars festooned in red, white, and blue, floats assembled by schools and civic clubs, etc.  Then there were "only-in-Ojai" entries, like the herd of brush-clearing goats that marched with remarkable poise down the main street, and the Hindu-temple juggernaut with huge ropes pulled by bhaktis of the local Hare Krishna community.  On its side were the words to the chant:  "Hare Krishna, Hare Hare...."

And on the back of the juggernaut was a huge American flag. 

When I saw it, my eyes welled with patriotic zeal. 

As they did when each of four different "equipos de caballeros" rode their prancing horses accompanied by brass bands.  Hispanic women, men, and children, many in US flag-themed garb, proudly rode their beautifully groomed steeds down the street, pausing to display remarkable horsemanship skills. 

I love being a citizen of this country where Hindu Americans and Mexican Americans and Euro Americans and the rest of us love being citizens of this country, enriching it with our diverse spiritual and cultural heritages - which become the heritage of us all as we march down Main Street on the Fourth of July. 

That's what makes America exceptional.  Not that we're better than other nations, or ought to have special privileges.  We're exceptional because of the sheer quantity and quality of our cultural and ethnic and religious diversity.  We're exceptional because of our unique history.  Because we started out in 1776 with an idea emulated by people around the globe.  Even when we failed to emulate it ourselves, it is an idea that, over and over and over again, impels us to reckon with our failures.

We're exceptional without needing to claim exceptionalism.  A nation without needing to be nationalistic.  We're patriots without demanding patriotism from each other. 

Lately, menacing mobs have descended on local school board meetings demanding an end to teaching something that isn't even being taught.  The histrionics aren't about "critical race theory" itself, which few of the right-wing protesters comprehend in the first place.  They are using it as a red herring to deny the existence of systemic racism in this country, claiming that those who recognize its reality must believe that America is a bad country.  This brouhaha is a manifestation of the long-term right-wing agenda to privatize and individualize all the systemic problems in this country, so they can be swept under the rug and ignored.

But sweeping stuff under the rug is not the American way.  We're not, and never have been, a racist country.  We are a nation with a history of racist individuals and institutions - a history that spills into the present.  And we're a nation that has reckoned, and is reckoning with vigor today, with that history.  And that history, and present efforts to rectify it, must be taught in the schools if we are to have educated and empowered citizens who can make our country greater and greater.

For this current mass movement to right the wrongs that continue to be inflicted on people of color in this country by social, economic, and political institutions, let us wave the American flag with pride.  We're a great nation partly because we are recognizing and meaningfully addressing systemic racism.  I want the children of this country to know about the problem, and to appreciate the heroic efforts being made to fix it today. 

What makes America great is not sanitized propaganda about ourselves.  What makes us great is that we are a nation of hundreds of millions of fantastically eclectic humans who don't just march proudly down the main street in red, white, and blue on the Fourth of July, but give the flag meaning by making our union ever more perfect.

Beginners' Mind for Christians

 

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Jesus, Matthew 18:3
 
It’s worth noting that Jesus said this to his disciples – his circle of confidants.  By the 13^th of the 28 chapters in the gospel of Matthew, you’d think the disciples would have had a spiritual head start on everyone else.  But no.  Jesus told them they had to go back to the beginning.  To live in the kingdom they had to become spiritual children – ever humble and open and curious.  
 
In Zen Buddhism, practitioners are told to maintain “beginners’ mind”.  Every “sit” is a fresh start, a new now.  Believing you are an expert at the practice just gets in the way of your practice.  Wisdom not much different than what St Benedict, a founder of Christian monasticism, observed about the contemplative life:  “Always we begin again.” Or what the 20^th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote about prayer:  “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”
 
My grandsons bring me back to beginners' mind on my weekly visits with them.  Jacob, 1.5 years, is a joyful, fascinated beginner with water.  I supervised his bath a few days ago, and watched him experience it in every way he could devise - non-stop.  Splashing it, pouring it over himself with his bathtub toys, waving his hands through it, watching it do the many things water does.  His wide-eyed little brother, two months of age, is a beginner at everything.  Holding him, I enter into holy awe for him and for the awesome universe he is discovering.  Jesus said we must be born of water and of spirit.  Through the water of childbirth, we entered the world: through birth of the spirit, always we begin again to encounter it.
 
I work at an “elite” university – whatever that means besides the fact that only 12% of students who apply are admitted.  And that 12% don’t get in because they went to Sunday School.  So the religious knowledge of our students – even those who claim to be Christians – is pretty thin.  I started writing books and blog posts about progressive Christianity 21 years ago.  Things have changed.  I started by offering an alternative form of the faith to those who knew something about it.  But now, I must address students – and many others - who are starting from scratch.
 
And if we’re serious about following the way of Jesus, we are all, and always, starting from scratch.  We wake up in the morning and have to deal with the same challenges and temptations that distracted us yesterday from practicing the unconditional love who is God.
 
Here’s Christianity – for beginners:
 
In the land of the Jews, over 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born in humble circumstances.  He began his three years as an itinerant rabbi, or teacher, by spending forty days in the wilderness, engaged in a powerful inner struggle to get clarity about his identity and mission.  Then he wandered his homeland, healing people and preaching to growing crowds.  He found God at the center of his soul, and taught others to do the same.  He spoke and acted with an inner authority, inspiring people to rise above their fears in a time when the country was occupied by the Roman army.   He challenged the people to follow him in living out the radical, unconditional love that is God:  a love not only for friends and neighbors, but even for strangers and enemies.  He challenged the religious authorities of the day to repent from their hypocrisy.  The Romans and their Jewish elite collaborators considered his popularity a threat to public order.  So the Romans tortured him to death on a cross.  Living out divine love to the end, from the cross he asked God’s forgiveness for the people who crucified him.  After his death, at first his followers scattered, but then they awakened to the eternal quality of his life, and they regrouped to continue following him, forming the movement we now call Christianity.  They created and circulated gospel stories – “good news” – to express the overwhelming significance of his life for them.  They gathered church communities around the Roman Empire and beyond.  To this day, around the world, Christians gather in church communities to emulate Jesus’ boundless, timeless, divine compassion. 
 
Christianity is a good religion for the practice of beginner’s mind.  Because at its core, it is simple.  It is about worshipful awe before a love so intense and inclusive that it extends even to the seemingly unlovable.  It’s not complicated, but it is extraordinarily difficult to practice.  That’s why Christians gather in churches to support each other in living out the radical compassion of Jesus.  The Christian religion is fantastically rich with history, art, music, liturgy, writings, and spiritual disciplines.  It would take many lifetimes even to begin to explore its layers.  But when Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount to a crowd of people who would never hear or see any more of his words than those that fit in a few chapters of the New Testament, his message wasn’t complicated.  No dogma.  No doctrine.  Just an alluring and challenging call to love of God and neighbor.
 
So let us begin again.  Let us be born of the spirit again, today, here – asking now how to love our neighbors as ourselves – and ourselves as neighbors….  

God's Apology

(with a nod to Carl Jung's "Answer to Job")

 Hi, humans.  I’m God.  I’ve been through some changes and I want you to know about them.
 
There are many ways to tell my story.  Just as there are infinite ways for you to tell yours – all based on the same data.  So this is one version.  Maybe you’ll find it helpful.
 
I started out as the creator of the universe: a guy beyond the sky who breathed the cosmos into existence.  I was a human-like entity with unlimited supernatural powers.  I created the universe because I was lonely.  I needed a companion.  So I formed the world and put a human on it – someone I could talk to.  Someone who would worship me.  But right away I could see there was a problem.  It is hard to be friends with someone who is not your equal.  But if I created him as my equal, he would be God, too.  This was a problem that I couldn’t seem to supernaturally work my way out of.  I wanted companionship, but not competition.  Adam wanted companionship with someone at his level.  He wasn’t happy – I could tell.  So I put him to sleep, pulled a rib out of him, and turned it into a woman.  
 
That worked for a while, but it didn’t take long before the two of them got ambitious.  Taking walks with them in the Garden of Eden was nice for all three of us, but they wanted more.  They wanted my superpowers.  So they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and that’s when the trouble really got started.  I didn’t like how uppity they were getting, so I kicked them out of the garden and made them work for a living, thinking that would wear them out so much that they wouldn’t be so ambitious.
 
But they got good at agriculture and started amassing surpluses of food, and their offspring created cities and civilizations.  They got good at building things – like the amazing Tower of Babel.  I was impressed, but also threatened, again, by how close they were getting to my heavenly realm.   So I had to bring them back to earth by confusing them with different languages, so it would be harder for them to cooperate and do god-like things.
 
It was a nice try, but it didn’t do the job.  People created more and more elaborate civilizations and were so focused on the pleasures they had created for themselves that they were beginning to forget about me altogether.  I got really angry about it and decided to wipe the earth clean and start over again.  I picked out one family to build a big boat and put pairs of animals on it, and then flooded the whole earth.  After the flood, Noah re-populated the earth and things were better for a while.  I got more respect and people seemed humbled.
 
But of course they just went back to their old ways again after a while.  This time I tried to take a more subtle approach.  I invaded the minds of certain people called prophets, who spoke on my behalf to correct the proud and evil ways of humanity.  Occasionally this tactic worked, but mostly the people ignored or persecuted the prophets while they were alive, and only showed them respect after they were dead and gone.   I was losing interest in human beings, just as they were losing interest in me.  I felt lonely and frustrated.   
 
But there was one human who gave me joy:  Job.  He followed my commandments and worshipped me with all his heart.  With Job, I felt like there was hope that I could have a meaningful relationship with humanity. 
 
Satan served as my special investigator in my heavenly court of angels and archangels.  He saw that I was happy with Job, but he knew I’d been burned by people time and again.  Satan told me that we ought to test Job to make sure his faithfulness and goodness was real.  I reluctantly agreed.
 
The miseries that Job endured in this time of testing were many.  He lost his family, his wealth, and his health.  It hurt my soul to hear him crying out to me for justice and mercy.  He knew that my treatment of him was unjust, and he told me so.  And he was right.  I tried to shut him up with a long diatribe about my mightiness and gloriousness.  But neither he nor I found any satisfaction in it.  In the end, we restored to Job his family, wealth, and health.  But the test left both of us traumatized. 
 
For millennia I felt guilty about what I had allowed to happen to Job.  It made me re-think this whole business of divinity.  Being supernatural was over-rated.  I created the universe in the first place because I wanted a loving relationship with somebody.  Love requires vulnerability.  Job was vulnerable.  I was not.  Being supernatural got in my way. 
 
So I decided to become a human being – a mortal.  In Jesus, I experienced everything that Job enjoyed and suffered.  It was wonderful and it was awful.  After the torture on the cross, after the tomb, there was no going back.  I gave up omnipotence and omniscience, and settled for omnipresence.  Three days later, I emerged from the tomb… reduced to nothing more – and nothing less – than pure unconditional love. 
 
Love is all that is left of me.  I can’t fix things.  I can’t force things.  I can’t control things.  All I can do is invite, attract, and welcome.  All I can do is exude kindness and compassion, and hope that all beings will be drawn to me.  And as they take me into their hearts and treat each other with love, humbly releasing puffed-up pride, I experience overwhelming joy in our companionship.  My cosmic loneliness is gone. 
 
Just as people must do, I had to give myself up to find the love I was so desperate to have.  For eons I suffered loneliness and frustration, and in turn caused humans to suffer from unrealistic expectations of what I could do for them.  I really wasn’t very good at being a supernatural divinity because I was so preoccupied with my own jealous rage.  I’m sincerely sorry about all that, dear humans.  Getting down to your level gives me infinite empathy for all you go through.  I don’t want religion to make life any harder for you than it already is.  So from now on, know me as love - so that I can know you, and you can know me, fully.

 

Tenderly Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus

(Available at Amazon or by emailing [email protected] - $19.95 - St Johann Press)

 

God is love.
Jesus tenderly calls us to love.
 
Can your heart feel the vibration of Jesus' voice, tenderly calling you to follow his way of divine compassion?  And if you sense his voice, what would it mean to follow him?  Jim Burklo attunes the reader to this call and question in Tenderly Calling.  It is an initiation into Christianity for those starting along the path of Jesus for the first time, as well as for those setting out afresh after a pause.   Tenderly Calling invites the reader into the depths of the Bible's myth and poetry, into the practices of the church's contemplative traditions, and into action, building the kingdom of heaven on earth.  The way of Jesus is kindness: it is the open-hearted, open-minded, humble faith of a humble man.
 
For two decades, Jim Burklo's books and blog entries have thrown spiritual lifelines to disillusioned Christians, offering them an alternative, progressive form of the faith.  Now, in Tenderly Calling, he addresses the growing population of people who know so little about the faith that they have little to unlearn.  His book introduces the texts, rituals, symbols, and practices of the faith as raw material for the spiritual imagination, inviting the follower to creatively participate in the ongoing evolution of Christianity.  Tenderly Calling is a welcome into the Christian faith that rings true for our time.
 
Rev. Jim Burklo is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California.  An ordained United Church of Christ pastor, he is the author of six previous books about progressive Christianity.  His weekly blog, Musings, has a global readership. 

On TENDERLY CALLING:
 
In this superb work, Jim Burklo has succeeded to transmit in a succinct and clear manner the way of Jesus and invites us to rediscover his path. In the way of the great mystics of all traditions, the author shows us how God reveals himself to us, embracing two complementary modes. Externally: In nature, in his students, in the faces of the homeless and persecuted, and in all of life, and internally: In the inner recesses of the soul where knowing Self is to know God.  This book unwraps the kernel of the teachings of Christ, showing us the radical way of Jesus, one that goes daringly beyond identifying as Christian. It speaks to everyone who journeys toward authenticity. It is a path in which Christ continues to tenderly call us to selflessness, compassion and love translated into service. The love that Jesus showed us in his time shines a spotlight in our times calling us to sacred activism in protecting our ecosystem, in cities, in the border crossings, and wherever his presence is needed through us. As the author writes, “But Jesus is not calling you harshly and forcefully, demanding that you make the one-and-only choice. Jesus is calling softly and tenderly to walk his path with an open mind and heart.”
 
Rosamonde Ikshvàku Miller, Bishop, Church of Gnosis (Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum), Redwood City, CA
 
This is the book I’ve been wanting to write for years! Thanks to Jim Burklo, I can instead send copies of Tenderly Calling to all my friends who keep asking me for a book that explains “progressive” Christianity without assuming any prior knowledge or understanding of Christianity itself.  Tenderly Calling distills the essence and implications of Jesus’ visionary message into an easily accessible form without losing its transformative power. In this masterful work, Burklo helps people discover (or remember) why the Jesus’s message was originally called the “Good News” by those who heard and lived it.
 
Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes, Senior Pastor, First Congregational United Church of Christ, Portland, OR
 
 
Tenderly Calling is a book that stands with arms outstretched to the seekers, doubters, lovers, and thinkers who are searching for a way in (or back into) Christianity. It contains thoughtful examinations of the many ways Christianity seems to pull us in and draw our attention and wonder. Jim Burklo gives a heartfelt appeal to enjoy the warmth and deep joy of loving Jesus by way of progressive Christianity. 
 
Ariel Quist, Speech/Language Pathologist, member, Mt Hollywood Congregational United Church of Christ, Los Angeles, CA
 

Twists and Turns: Celebrating Vulnerability

 

“When I check out a piece of land that is up for sale, first I look at the trees.  If they have trunks with bends in them – straight up, then a curve, then straight up again – that’s a sign of unstable ground.  A landslide tips the tree to the side, and then the tree grows straight up from that bend.  You can guess at how long ago the landslide happened by estimating the age of the tree when it bent.” So said my dear dad, Don Burklo, back in the day when he was a real estate broker selling undeveloped land in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

 
On my daily hikes in the Sespe Wilderness above Ojai, I admire the yuccas.  At the end of their life-cycles, they shoot up tall stalks that burst at the top with masses of gorgeous white flowers – in bloom on the mountainsides right now.  Then the stalks and the rest of the plants dry out, fading from green to white.  The dry stalks are stiff but light in weight – perfect for walking sticks.  I collect them, trim them, and give them away to friends.  Because friends need support! 
 
As I consider yucca stalks, I remember Dad’s sage observation.  When stalks first emerge, they shoot straight out of the middle of the mass of sharp, green spikes, regardless of the terrain on which they grow.  But shortly after that, they begin to grow vertically.  So all yuccas that grow on mountains have a curve at the base of their stalks.  Show me a yucca stalk and I can measure the steepness of the land on which it grew.
 
It may not be a mountain.  But all of us are up against something in this life.  And letting it be obvious opens us to deeper relationships. 
 
To this day I am haunted by a conversation I had a few years ago with a student at USC right after her friend and fellow student committed suicide.  “I thought I knew her,” she cried, keening over with grief next to me on a bench on campus.   “On Facebook, her life was perfect.  I didn’t know she was suffering.  I thought we were close, but….”  She didn’t know what her friend was up against.  She didn’t know her friend was on a slippery slope.  If there were signs at all, she had missed them – and felt awful for failing to notice.
 
That wrenching moment seared into my soul a conviction that I and my office had to do something new and different to help prevent the next suicide.  And that led me to start a “belonging” initiative through our office.  We convene “campfires” where students ask each other questions that can lead to deeper relationships.  We hired a wizard of a teacher, Cat Moore, now our Director of Belonging, to create a popular no-credit class called “CLICK”, imparting friendship- and community-building skills.  We train student club leaders in methods of encouraging real friendships to form among their members.
 
 Very many relationships on campus – and in the wider world – are transactional.  I hang out with you because doing so can help me get ahead.  And vice versa.  It’s an especially insidious feature of life in Los Angeles, where so many people are in the “gig economy” – actors, musicians, creatives – and depend for their sustenance on developing a network of contacts that can keep them in the Hollywood game.  On campus, we have 1,200 clubs for 45,000 students.  I’m convinced that a large percentage of these clubs exist for the purpose of students being able to put on their resumes that they were “presidents” or “founders” of something, making these groups transactional from the start.  And I’m told that we have sororities and fraternities in which the number (and “quality”) of social media contacts of students who “rush” is a criterion for admission.  When I worked at Stanford, I knew several students – all white men – who had some form of the word “president” in their email addresses.  They were entirely focused on one goal: becoming President of the United States.  All their relationships were transactions aimed at reaching this destination. 
 
What is sacrificed at the altar of transactional relationships?  Vulnerability.  You don’t want folks to see the twists and turns of your life that might un-burnish your reputation.  But without vulnerability, there’s no real friendship.  And if we curate away from view our failures and foibles and flaws, we starve ourselves and others of love.  Because love is attention.  It is attentively seeing and sharing what is, as it is – not what we want it to be, or think it ought to be.  Love is letting our kinks give us an authentic character that makes us believable, and that inspires vulnerability in others.  If that student had let my young friend know about the ninety-degree turn her life had begun to take, she might be alive to tell the rest of her story today.
 
So let us look for signs of unstable ground beneath the feet of those we love.  Let us attend, and let us be attended-to.  Let us be like the trees and the yuccas on the sides of mountains, uninhibitedly letting the awkward stretches of their lives be seen - for the sake of love, and for the sake of life itself.

Undoubtedly Supportive

 

The St. Thomas Collective:

A Haven for Students in Recovery from Fundamentalism

 

You're a student at a fundamentalist Christian college. Your grandparents promised to pay for your entire college education if you would enroll in one. But after your first year, you begin to think critically about the doctrines you were taught as a child - doctrines upheld by virtually everyone you know and respect - beliefs that are starting to unravel in your mind and heart. But to speak out about your changing understanding would risk expulsion from your college and alienation from your family and friends. You are expected to continue to show loyalty to a form of faith that no longer makes sense to you, and the dissonance in your soul becomes a torment.

 

And then you get into a conversation with a fellow student whom you sense might understand at least a bit of your predicament. She quietly invites you to attend a gathering of the St. Thomas Collective, a student-led group that meets off-campus in a progressive church nearby. The meeting opens with a circle in which students share, openly and honestly and without judgment toward each other, where they are right now in their spiritual and personal journeys. You sink back in your chair with a sense of overwhelming relief. You have found peers who are going through so very much of what you are experiencing - peers who listen and support each other no matter where their paths lead them. Now you know that hard as this transition might become for you, you aren't going through it alone.

 

The first paragraph of this scenario is playing out painfully in the real lives of students at fundamentalist colleges around the country every day.

 

But the second paragraph manifests only on the outskirts of Biola University near Los Angeles.

 

"The St Thomas Collective provides a safe community for Biola students/alumni who find themselves doubting, frustrated, and spiritually homeless," reads one of their Instagram posts. Their gatherings are soulful, making space for tears and laughter. They are leaving evangelical theology behind, but they maintain the earnestness and closely-knit community life of their tradition. They have developed their own impressive set of resources for guiding their meetings and retreats.

 

The Collective is interested in helping to establish chapters near other fundamentalist colleges. To assist them in this quest, and learn more about the Collective, contact their student leaders here.

Her Hand on your Shoulder

I dreamed a few nights ago....

I was sitting in an amphitheater outdoors with a large group of Indian Sikh men in turbans and dhotis, all speaking with each other in animated tones.  Below were irrigated fields.  I was the guest of one of the men, a farmer, but for some reason he had to leave the assembly.  I noticed that there was something wrong with his farm plot, and in his absence thought it my duty to attend to it.  So I walked down to his field.  As I investigated, I began to sink.  I was in quicksand up to my waist!  I reached for a concrete berm and with difficulty pulled myself out.  I walked back up into the amphitheater, sloughing mud off my dhoti.  Now the men were clearly agitated, and I realized that somehow I had disturbed the entire irrigation system for all the fields below.  Men raced down to lower sluices along the irrigation canal.  I spoke loudly to apologize - saying I had only tried to help.  Despite the language barrier, they seemed to get my message and appeared to be placated.

Still worried and confused, I took my seat in the amphitheater.  And then I felt a warm hand on the back of my shoulder.  I turned around to see an elderly woman in a sari, mouthing words of encouragement.  I did not know her language but I strongly sensed her meaning.  She kept her knobby but strongly reassuring hand on my shoulder, nodded at me, and bestowed the most beatific smile on my soul.

I woke up feeling her hand on the back of my right shoulder.  Just writing about the dream, I feel her hand again, and feel the warm blessing that flowed through it into me. 

I saw her clearly in my dream, and that visual intensity passed.  But the vivid sensation of her hand on my shoulder, and the gift of kindness that she imparted into me through it, remains. 

This nameless angel came to me in a dream. 

May she come to you in my telling of my dream. 

May you, too, feel her hand on the back of your shoulder. 

She gives no advice.  She explains nothing.  She works no supernatural magic.  She has no agenda but to share the pure love and joy that abounds from her soul.  She senses your need for reassurance and reconciliation, and through the grip of her ancient hand on your shoulder, she pours her heart into yours. 

And even when you turn around and see no one, may the strong impression of her hand remain.

Sighs Too Deep

 

My newborn grandson in my arms,
Asleep in guileless peace -
Heaven brought to earth afresh
In sighs too deep for words.

I pause to sigh along a trail
Deep in a mountain cleft:
As water tumbles over stone,
Clouds shadowing the walls.

We mark the passing of a saint
With tears and stories told;
Hearts rent, words spent,
Our sighs are all that's left.

I gaze upon a work of art,
I listen to a song:
Enraptured into speechless awe,
I answer with a sigh.

In silence we are gathered round
To prayerfully attend
To what’s within and what’s without
With sighs too deep for words.


Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.   St. Paul, Romans 8:26