Musings

No Name God

(I wrote this for the newsletter of the Sausalito Presbyterian Church in 2004 when I was its pastor....)

 

Last night, Roberta and I took a stroll down Bridgeway near the church and heard live music coming from the No Name Bar, so we leaned on the open windowsill of the bar and listened for a while. Al, the bar's owner, came out to puff on a huge cigar, and we made his acquaintance. After a lot of friendly and funny banter, it came out that I was the minister of the church up the stairs. This surprised him, and he began waving his arms and talking excitedly about religion.

"Sorry," he said, "but I don't believe in God!"

"So what?" I asked. "That isn't what matters. I don't think Christianity is about belief in anything. I think it's about practicing and experiencing spirituality."

"Then what is spirituality?" he asked.

"I'm not exactly sure myself -- it's a fuzzy word," I answered, "but I aim to find out!"

This was enough to inspire Al to give me a cigar and offer us free drinks on the back patio, where we sat with a group of folks and carried on a lively conversation about religion and just about everything else, late into the night.

Al and I have a lot in common in our understanding of God. The God he doesn't believe in is the same God I don't believe in, either. He thinks that makes him an atheist, while I think that makes me a Christian! I sense that neither of us believes in a supernatural God who lives outside the universe and meddles in its affairs capriciously, showing favor to some and not to others. Neither of us believes in a God who expects us to believe unbelievable things or expects us to think one particular religion is right to the exclusion of all others. Neither of us believes in a divine being who set up humans to "fall" and thus need a bloody sacrifice to get right with God.

For me, God is beyond belief. Instead of believing in God, I experience God. When I feel unconditional love from or for others, I experience God. When I am full of compassion for others and for the universe itself, when I feel compassion that comes from a Source beyond any one person or thing -- then I experience God. When I am filled with awe and wonder as I encounter the natural world around me, I experience God. When I experience the kind of joyful hospitality that Al offered us last night, I experience God.

This experience is beyond any name I can give it. This is why the great religions of the world have always handled the name of God with great delicacy. The Jews wouldn't utter the name of God (Yahweh) because it was too holy, so they used the word "Lord" (Adonai) instead. The Buddhists don't give God a name at all, since they feel that their Ultimate Reality is beyond such descriptions. They are sometimes accused of being "atheists", but that misses their point. The Muslims use 99 names for God (The Merciful, The Compassionate, etc, etc). They have a wonderful tradition that says that Allah really has 100 names, but only 99 of them are known to humanity. The hundredth name is known only to camels, and they aren't telling! - hence the knowing smirk on the camel's face. The Hindus believe there are 333,000,000 names for God. Each of the many gods in their pantheon is really just a manifestation of the one ultimate God. And one of those names, OM, isn't really a name or a "god" at all, but a sound that itself makes you one with God. If you chant OM, you aren't just calling God's name - you are actually chanting the essence and reality of God! All these religions have poetic, mythical ways of saying that the experience of God cannot be contained or limited by the words we give to (him/her/it?). All religions, in some way, worship a God beyond naming.

At the No Name Bar, Al and I had a brief chat about the No Name God. The No Name God can be experienced in a saloon as well as in a sanctuary, on a sidewalk as well as in a pew, and by an "atheist" as well as a "believer". If Al can graciously offer a place for me at his table, and give me a cigar, to boot -- the least I can do is to offer him, and others who disbelieve or question traditional religion, a place at our communion table....

The Third Bird: Cultivating Attention

 

 
Recently I read a wonderful article in the New Yorker magazine about attention… how our culture has made it hard to maintain it. 
 
The article included a description of a semi-secret group called the Order of the Third Bird.  The name of the Order is based on an ancient story about an artist named Zeuxis who painted a portrait of a boy holding a cluster of grapes.  When the artist was done with the painting, three birds showed up.  One of them pecked at the image of the grapes – thrilling the artist that he had made the grapes look so real.  Another saw the boy in the painting and flew away out of fear, which also made the artist feel impressed with himself for creating a human image so realistic that it would frighten a bird. 
 
But the third bird stood back and contemplated the painting for quite a while.
 
Members of the Order of the Third Bird gather, in something like a flash mob, at art galleries or other art installations, and go through a series of attentional practices.
 
The first step for the Order is to figure out which artwork to which they will attend.  Usually it is an obscure piece.  They mill around until they gather at the chosen artwork and then they “attend” to it, staring at it intently for seven minutes.  (This often makes gallery security staffers nervous.)  In this time they are discouraged from having judgments or opinions about the artwork – they just look with open, unfiltered attention.
 
A bell is rung and then the group wanders off, no longer looking at the art, and they try to clear the image of the artwork from their minds.  Next, they ponder in silence about what the artwork “needs”, in either a concrete or abstract way.  Does it need to be appreciated with background music, or does it need to be turned upside down?  The “Birds” then write down their experience of the whole process.  And then they gather at a café to discuss what they discovered. 
 
The attentive process of the Order of the Third Bird resonates very strongly with old Christian contemplative practices.  Richard of St. Victor expressed this, as a teacher of monks in the 12th century: “Thinking always passes from one thing to another by a wandering motion; meditation endeavors perseveringly with regard to some one thing; contemplation diffuses itself to innumerable things under one ray of vision.”  Spiritual practice moves between and among these forms of attention. The Christian mystics discovered that one-pointed focus yields to a wide peripheral vision - a sense of the wholeness and unity of all.
 
Isn’t that the essence of holy awe itself—being absorbed with appreciative attention by something that ultimately is beyond your mind’s ability to grasp or manage? - contemplating it with loving, patient focus, and gently letting insight into and from it to emerge, in its own time.
 
By compassionately, carefully observing things, we are able to apprehend the bigger pictures of our lives. 
 

The Shouting Stone

 

Bounding bootsteps puffing pale dust on the steepening trail, dodging boulders to get to a promontory opening to an aspect to the east of the salt lake below, she stopped upon hearing a yowl, a yelp, a whoop, a holler, a yip, a yap, and turned to seek its source.  Where?  She swiped her forehead with her bandanna, waited for her breath to abate so she could echolocate.  The sound emanated from a jumble of rocks above her.  She approached as the howling got louder.  It came from – a stone?  About the size of a loaf of bread.  Can this be?  Her jaw went slack as sweat dripped off her nose.  She drank a slug of water and splattered some on her face for fear of heatstroke.  But as her face cooled, the joyful exaltation from the stone still resounded off the cliffs and down the desert mountain.  She feared, but what was to fear?  It was the sheer sound of untrammeled joy.  And as she looked about, exhilarated, she shared in that joy.  The stone seemed to celebrate the stupendous grandeur that surrounded her.  So as the stone roared, she began to whoop along with it.  It responded to her yelps with more of its own.  Back and forth, in crescendo and diminuendo, in falsetto with bravado, they resonated until in exhaustion she paused, and the stone went quiet, and she asked:
 
“Who or what are you?” 
 
The stone replied: 
 
“I will answer.  But first you must tell me who or what you are.”
 
“Dorit,” she answered, hesitantly.  “My name is Dorit.”
 
“That’s the name to which you answer.  But who are you?”
 
“Uhhh…. A marketing executive.”
 
“That’s what you do, but who are you?”
 
After a silence she spoke.  “A human being?”
 
“Well, you are getting closer,” said the stone. 
 
“Closer to what?” she asked, bewildered.
 
“Closer to who you really are.  But let’s get closer yet.  Are you only your human mind and body?”
 
“Well, not just…”
 
“So what are you?  Your thoughts and feelings?” 
 
“What do you mean?” she asked, taking off her backpack and setting it against a rock wall and wiping sweat from her face.
 
“You aren’t just your body nor just your mind nor just what your mind experiences.  Who or what is aware of your body and your mind and your experiences?”
 
No one had ever asked Dorit such a question before.
 
She sat on a boulder in silence that the stone did not interrupt.  She observed her breath, her sweat, her sore leg muscles, the aroma of her perspiration, her swirl of thoughts and her shock at having a conversation with a stone.  For the first time she asked herself:  who or what was doing the observing?  “The universe?  God?  Consciousness itself?”
 
“Ahhh!” blurted the stone loudly.  “Yesss! Waaaahooooo!” – followed by more whoops and echoing howls.  Dorit could not help but howl along.  As she caught her breath, she said: “It’s your turn to tell me who you are!” 
 
“Fair enough!  I am who and what you are.” 
 
She stared at the stone in stunned silence.  “But you are a stone.  How can you speak?”
 
“How can I not speak?  How can I not shout with joy, any less than you?”

And together they howled and hollered till the sun hid behind the mountain and the moon rose over the desert to the east.......
 
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.  The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”  Luke 4: 1- 4
 
Now as he (Jesus) was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
  “Blessed is the king
    who comes in the name of the Lord!
   Peace in heaven,
    and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”  He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  Luke 19: 37 - 40
 

Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea

-- an imagined dialogue:

 

A firebrand crackled on its post above them, flickering warm light on their faces as they sat facing each other on the portico. 

“What brings you to me at this hour?” Pontius Pilate asked.

“Your excellency, I have come to present you with the opportunity not only to make your mark on our trivial little pocket of the Empire, but on the whole world, for all time,” answered Joseph of Arimathea.

“It must be an audacious offer, indeed,” Pilate said, with a bemused grin.  “Go on.”

Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the ruling Sanhedrin council of Jewish elders, proceeded.

“Tell me, Pilate, what is the greatest impediment to your goals for Rome in Judea?”

Pilate laughed.  “You are!” 

Joseph laughed with him.  “Precisely!  And why am I, and why are we, such impediments to social and economic progress?  What motivates our resistance to your agenda?”

“Sheer stubbornness.  Intransigence.  Ignorance.”  Pilate shook his head in frustration.

“And what perpetuates that?” asked Joseph.

“We Romans have never in our noble history encountered a people so fanatical about their religion that they would fail to accommodate to ours.  We let you worship your God as you please, as we do everywhere else, but that’s not enough for you.  You think your God is so special that you won’t tolerate ours or anyone else’s being worshipped alongside it.”

“Precisely, Pilate.  And that’s what brings me to you tonight.  You have an opportunity to kill that God once and for all.”

“Kill the God of Israel?  You’re kidding!”  Pilate almost choked on his own laughter.

“Right now,” replied Joseph in a hush, “a man named Jesus has entered Jerusalem.  You’ve probably heard of him.  Just another mad Jewish prophet rousing the rabble, I’m sure you assume.  Well, this one is different.  This one has convinced a lot of the people that he is Yahweh, the God of Israel, walking the earth in human form.  Not just the Messiah – we’ve had lots of those arise in the past – no, the people think this one is God himself!  Soon, the Sanhedrin will bring this Jesus of Nazareth to trial, and will present him to you for conviction.”

“I have learned enough about this miserable, obstinate little country to know that for any human being to claim to be the God of Israel is the worst sort of blasphemy,”  Pilate responded.

“Punishable by death,” Joseph said.

“I don’t crucify people for breaking your religious rules.  I’m too busy crucifying people who break our Roman laws.”

“But you do crucify them for sedition, no?  And what worse form of sedition is there than this – a wandering preacher believed to be not just the local, po-dunk God of little old Israel, but the high and almighty God of the universe, the whole Roman empire included?  Remember, Pilate: the God of the Jews is not only our heavenly deity, but our earthly King.  Our prophets warned against trusting in human kings, and told our people that God was our only true ruler.  That’s what makes our religion so dangerous for Rome.  And even more dangerous for Rome is the heresy that our God has taken human form.”

Pilate chuckled.  “I’d be glad to kill off the God of Israel, and save myself and the Empire a lot of trouble, as you say.  But to kill the God of the whole universe?  The God above all the gods of Rome and all its provinces?”

“That’s exactly what I propose.  Because the trouble you’ve got here in Israel, while an extreme case, is the trouble everywhere.

“Think of all Rome has accomplished.  Straight, solid roads linking all corners of the Empire.  Wealth created by untrammeled trade between the provinces.  Aqueducts.  Law and order.  Uniform measures.  Constant improvements in technology.  So much of humanity has begun to rise above its brutish misery.  What holds it back from further progress?  Fatalism ingrained in the soul by belief in a God, or in the gods, who direct the lives of each and all, regardless of their level of industry.  People resign themselves to how things used to be, to how things are, rather than believing they can change things for the better.

“Supernatural divinity is in the way, not just here in Judea, but everywhere.  The top God, and all the other gods, must die so that humanity may fully thrive.”

“Well, all along, we Romans have been saying that you Jews are atheists, having no respect for the gods,” replied Pilate.  “But I’ve never had that confirmed before by a Jew – much less a member of the ruling council!  The God of Israel – he’s just one of the deities, and a minor one at that.  But as a proper Roman, I know that my fate is in the hands of the gods, no matter how hard I strive in this world.”

“But look at the real consequences of that belief.  It holds you back.  Have you seen the gods?  Or just statues or paintings or mosaics of them?  If there were no gods, what difference would it make?  Would the sun stop turning around the earth?  Would people stop being born and living and dying?  All the sacrifices, all the offerings, all the ceremonies, all the incantations.  What difference do they make?  Nobody’s listening up there.  There’s nobody up there.  The heavenly spheres spin on their own.  You and I are on our own.  And if we really understood that, if we really took full responsibility for ourselves and our fates, what a difference that would make!  We’d be liberated to reach new heights of creativity and social and technical progress,” intoned Joseph of Arimathea.  “So let’s get rid of God – starting right here in Judea!”

“Your impiety astounds me,” said Pilate.  “Such talk is uncivilized, in Rome and everywhere else.”

“What matters to you most, Pilate?  The glory of Rome, or devotion to the gods?”

“They are not so easily separated,” said Pilate, squirming a bit in his armchair.  “Rome is the glory of its gods.”

“But what if those gods held back Rome from its full future glory?  What if releasing the gods would now release Rome to claim its glory for itself?  Maybe you needed the gods in the past.  But now, given your remarkable achievements, they’re just in the way.  Just as the supposedly almighty God of Israel is holding Israel back from what it could do and be.  We should be the richest and most civilized province of the Empire.  Our religion is all that stands in the way!”

“This province vexes me, as it has bedeviled everyone who has come before me.  The fractiousness, the intrigues, the rebellions, the bizarre religious excitements.  But I must say, I’ve never had such rich intellectual conversations before coming here.  This is surely the most interesting of all of them!  So, say more, Joseph.  You have my attention!”

“As should be clear by now, I have come to admire the rule of Rome.  Of course I hate the idea that my country has lost its independence.  But that cost is overshadowed by the benefits.  Rome has shown us that life can be better.  Society can advance.  The economy can grow.  People can eat better, live longer, enjoy more of the pleasures life has to offer.  We used to assume that God had ordered the world to keep being as it was, cycling with the seasons.  When the Romans came, we saw that through organized human industry, the world could be changed for the better.  We have stubbornly clung to our traditions in order to maintain our identity, but in fact we’ve changed forever.  It’s time we broke from the chains of our past and embraced the bright future that lies before us. 

“Our last remaining set of chains are the ones forged by primitive belief in God.  A remarkable opportunity lies before us, Pilate.  People believe that God has taken human form in Jesus.  When you kill him, you kill God, and you break the chains!  And in a chain reaction, the chains of rest of the people of the Empire will break as well!  Imagine it with me:  Pontius Pilate, Liberator of the World!”

Pilate shook his head, boggled.  “You are a member of the Sanhedrin!  One of the top religious authorities of Israel!  And you come to me, uttering blasphemy against your religion and mine! If I agreed with you, both of us should be crucified!” 

“There’s something you should know, Pilate.  When we of the Sanhedrin voted on bringing Jesus to trial, I voted against doing so.”

“Then why are you here?”  asked Pilate, confounded.

“Because that was the moment when I woke up to the absurdity of believing in the God of Israel and all the other gods.  I was starting to have my doubts already, but this incident put me over the edge.  Here is Jesus, a harmless homeless mentally ill person, wandering the country and preaching.  Nutty as he is, it can’t be denied that he is a kind man.  If we suspended our common sense and assumed for a moment that he is God, he makes God look better than God has ever looked before!  Jesus deserves the compassion that he preaches and practices.  He deserves help to recover from his delusions, not execution on a cross.  Supposedly ours is a God of mercy, but not according to my fellow members of the Sanhedrin.  I think it is awful that the top religious authorities of our land would take an action like this.  But as I thought about it, I realized their decision was just a symptom of the real problem, which is espousing the existence of our God and all the rest of them.  Barbaric religious belief inevitably leads to barbaric outcomes.  It makes people assume they can’t change things because the gods are in charge and they are mere pawns in their hands.  That makes them subject to all kinds of manipulation and abuse.

“I don't want Jesus to be crucified.  And I’m willing to bet that you don’t want this, either.  But I see that his crucifixion is inevitable.  As a practical politician, you will have no choice but to go along with the Sanhedrin’s decision and condemn an innocent man.  We both know that. 

“All I ask here is that when you convict him and sentence him, you declare that he is who people say he is.  Tell the people that you have sentenced the God of Israel to death on a cross.  You can put a sign to that effect on the cross above his head:  “Here hangs God”!

“I can’t do that!  That’s preposterous!” Pilate declared.  “I’d cause a riot!  An uprising!  A revolution against Rome!  The whole point of killing him is to prevent just that!” 

“Really?” asked Joseph.  “Step back a bit and think about it.  Neither you nor I, as believers in law and order, want to see an innocent man put to death.  Let’s put the blame for this miscarriage of justice where it belongs – on people’s belief in God!  Let the people deal with the consequences of their primitive ideas.  Let them face the absurdity of religious belief by gazing at it on the cross.  Don’t just condemn one innocent man, condemn the whole belief system that resulted in this terrible injustice!” 

Pilate stared at him, stunned.  “I have never in my life considered that I could be having a conversation like this.  I am horrified by your impiety and at the same time I must confess to being intrigued by what you have to say.  You’ve given me an idea: you’ll see what comes of it.  I believe it is time for this discussion to come to an end.”

“Your excellency, I thank you for listening to my proposal.  I have a last request.”

“Speak,” answered Pilate.

“After Jesus is crucified, I would like permission to retrieve his body and give him a proper burial.  I ask that this be arranged quietly, without the knowledge of my fellow members of the Sanhedrin.”

“Permission granted.”

Then he (Pilate) handed him over to them to be crucified.  So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.  There they crucified him and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.  Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  Many of the Jews read this inscription because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ”  Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”  (John 19: 16-22)

La Chapelle Sainte-Anne: The Silent Sermon

Roberta and I just returned from the French Alps, where we celebrated the wedding of her son Nick and his bride, Sunny.  It was a week-long party, culminating in a beautiful ceremony (which I was honored to be asked to officiate) with Mont Blanc as the backdrop.  In breaks from the festivities in the charming mountain village of Megève, I found myself drawn to a little 16th century chapel next to the onion-domed church in the center of town.  On my first visit, I joined a handful of people gathered to adore the blessed sacrament, housed on the altar in a golden sunburst monstrance with a mirror in its center, behind which the "host" or communion wafer was held. 

This old Catholic Christian practice came about as a way of participating in the eucharist between masses.  In the mass, the wafer of bread is said to be transubstantiated into the physical body of Christ.  To consume it is to be joined with the divine presence.  But to gaze at the container in which it rests is another way to participate in the sacred mystery. 

"Adoration" in this case is more like contemplation.  You can see the monstrance, but you can't see the host it contains.  So as you gaze, you contemplatively imagine seeing the host behind the mirror on the monstrance.  You imagine receiving it and tasting it and letting it melt on your tongue and then swallowing it and then mindfully and gently examining the thoughts, sensations, and emotions that follow.  You observe your inner experience meticulously, to the point where you realize that what you are observing cannot be who or what is doing the observing.  You then contemplate the monstrance itself, with its golden rays emanating from a round mirror, an image that resonates with your awareness that God is the one doing the reflecting at the center of your being. 

You imagine Jesus with his disciples at their last Passover meal, and you imagine Jesus taking the bread and saying "this is my body".  You imagine yourself receiving the bread from Jesus and eating it and then contemplating your own body from head to toe, and saying, yourself, "this is my body".  You have become the mirror image of the Christ. 

You look at the other people adoring the blessed sacrament around you, and contemplate how very many different circumstances brought them here, and how many very different experiences they may be having right now.  And you awaken to the full range of human passion, in struggle and suffering and hope and joy and gratitude, knowing that all of it has come to the table, concentrated in a little wafer.  To receive the host is to receive the whole human condition, elevating it, divinizing it. 

There is a lot going on behind that little mirror in the monstrance on the altar.  In my very short time in the chapel, I got a taste.

The monstrance stands on the altar below a big image, painted on shining brass, affixed to a wall of rounded rocks like the ones over which the mountain rills tumble through the town.  No reference in the chapel is made to the artist.  The image portrays the Christ in glory, surrounded by the traditional totems of the four gospels: an angel for Matthew, a lion for Mark, a bull for Luke, and an eagle for John.  The totems are whirling around the Christ, light as air.  You contemplate these images and consider that the the biblical gospels are swirls dancing around a center figure whom the authors could not capture fully in words on paper, any more than the artist could capture fully in paint on metal.  The icon in the chapel can be read as the Christ blowing through and past the four gospels, through and past all the dogma and structure of the church, right up to and into us. 

And the river-rock backdrop of the image had its own sermon to deliver.  The image bursts out of the very stones from which the chalets and streets of Megève were built.  One exits La Chapelle Sainte-Anne and wonders: what else might emerge from these stones surrounding me?  As Jesus entered Jerusalem in humble triumph, someone objected to the joyful yelling of the crowd. Jesus said: "if these were silent, the stones would shout out."  In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said:  "Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."  
 
I am a devotee of Simone Weil, the 20th century French Jewish philosopher/theologian.  I could imagine her sitting next to me, at the back of that gorgeous little chapel, adoring the blessed sacrament, and gazing at the image of the Christ.  It was the only way she ever engaged with it, after all: she fell in love with Catholic Christianity without ever being baptized and physically receiving the elements.  Clearly she found what we might now call a "virtual" way to take communion.  Her words give a hint of what she might have experienced while gazing at the monstrance: 

"The beautiful is something on which we can fasten our attention... The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it.  We desire that it should be."

And I could imagine her then gazing contemplatively at the image on the wall:  "A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it.  It imitates the anonymity of divine art.  In the same way the beauty of the world proves there to be a God who is personal and impersonal at the same time, and neither the one nor the other separately. ... In everything which gives us the pure authentic feeling of beauty there is really the presence of God…. Hence all art of the highest order is religious in essence."

With gratitude, nodding to Simone Weil, and then bowing toward the beautiful, I took my leave of La Chapelle Sainte-Anne.....

 

Agapetheism for Beginners

 

“Always we begin again.” –St. Benedict.

These words by one of the founders of early monastic Christianity ring true as they apply to the practice of unconditional, divine love.  We're always beginners at love, because when a new day dawns, fresh challenges face us in doing it.

1 John 4:8:  "...God is love."  And that "love" is, in the original biblical Greek, "agape".

An agapetheist is someone who begins again at love, at every dawn.  Love that is deep, unflinching, non-judgmental, open-minded, open-hearted attention to all that is within and beyond us.  And if we're paying that kind of attention to others and to ourselves, compassionate action will follow naturally.

Agapetheism is much more about doing divine love than it is about believing that love is God.  You'll know you've met an agapetheist not so much by their religious profession as by their way of being, by their kindness to others.  An agapetheist is too busy with agape to make a big deal about being an agapetheist. 

Agapetheism is such an awesome and overwhelming undertaking that it makes any other kind of "ism" pale in significance.  Religion, politics, ethnicity, and all other forms of identity recede in importance. 

In the 8th chapter of Matthew we find the wonderful mythic story of a Roman centurion who humbly came to Jesus to ask for healing for his servant, who was paralyzed and in terrible distress.  The centurion loved and cared for his servant across the lines of economic class and status, and, out of love, walked across the line between Roman occupiers and occupied Jews.  Jesus was amazed by him, and said, "Truly tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith."  Jesus was so blown away by the centurion's love that he, in turn, crossed the line between Gentiles and Jews.  "And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant was healed in that hour."  It was a moment when Israelism and Romanism were set aside.  It is a story that reminds us to put Christianism aside, too, when it gets in the way of divine compassion.

Agape love crosses the line, again and again, between us and them, you and me.  It crosses the line between inside and outside, self and other, flesh and spirit.  Agape is undocumented migrant love, walking over the artificial borders that keep us from communing with each other, with the universe, and with the depths of our own souls.  Agape is non-binary love, taking the forms it needs to manifest in order to give and to serve.

Agapetheism is the humility of the centurion, and the awe that Jesus had for him.  Always we begin again, day by day, to practice it...
 

 

Agnatheist Apologetics

 

If God is no less and no more than love, what about God isn't there to believe in?

This is why I'm an agnatheist: someone who is agnostic about whether or not there is really such a thing as an atheist.  

I have dear friends who describe themselves as atheists, and I mean them no disrespect.  I just question whether their atheism applies to the form of theism to which I subscribe.

Whenever I get into a conversation about matters religious with self-professed atheists, I ask them:  "Which God don't you believe in?"  And always they answer with a description of a God I don't believe in, either.  Some them get upset when I tell them what I mean by the word God, and say that I'm not a Christian!  They don't want to be associated with the supernatural God they associate with Christianity, and don't want their disbelief system to be confounded by the possibility that post-supernatural theists like myself can be Christian.  They don't believe in divine omnipotence any more than I do.  But why wouldn't they embrace amipotence - theologian Tom Oord's term for the divinely attractive, creative power of love?  Hence my agnatheism. 

I think that many atheists are awetheists.  They experience the same kind of reverential wonder and respect for life and the highest human values that we associate with religion at its best.  I use Christian language to describe that deep humility.  I feel God when I mindfully and humbly encounter the miraculous natural world around and within me.  

I experience God as the essential creative nature of the universe.   Some Christians say that this makes me an atheist.   In this, I find company with St. Paul.  In the New Testament, in the book of Acts, there is the story of Paul visiting the Areopagus in Athens, where stood statues of the Greek gods.  One vacant plinth was dedicated to "The Unknown God", which Paul said was the real God.  If the real God was unknown, or at least non-anthropomorphic, did that make Paul an agnostic?  Paul and other early Christians were considered atheists because they did not worship the Greco-Roman gods. 

Given this history of the faith, it only makes sense that progressive Christian churches should be fully open and affirming and inclusive toward self-professed atheists, welcoming them into our communities - whether or not we are certain that atheism is really a thing!
 

 

(See more of my "musings" here...)

Progressive Christian Visibility

 

That great defender of the faith, Don Trump, responding in faux outrage to the fact that Trans Visibility Day happened to coincide with Easter this year, declared that Election Day 2024 should be “Christian Visibility Day.”

As if Christians have a visibility problem in America today.

Drive through Simi Valley, the town where the church I serve is located, and you'll find a great deal of Christian visibility. Churches are everywhere—even here in California, the Bible Shoestring of America.

But in Simi Valley, one of the very few places you'll experience trans visibility or LGBTQ+ visibility in general is in front of our church.  Except that every time we put up a trans or pride flag, eventually it gets torn down.  Also, signage that indicates our full embrace of LGBTQ+ is torn down repeatedly or defaced.  In response to Trump’s latest mutterance, we mounted yet another trans flag.

Longer may it wave!

Trump’s cynical declaration played to the grievance that evangelical Christian leaders have cultivated in this country.  They whine that Christians are being persecuted in America.  And they say it in the same breath as they claim that America is a Christian nation.  It's an obvious contradiction.  We could ask evangelicals to make up their minds and choose one trope over the other.  But of course, we’d be asking in vain.  In matters of religious or political identity, logic seldom comes into play.

Christianity in America does not have a visibility problem.  Everyone has been subjected to it, whether they like it or not.  Nor does Christianity have a persecution problem unless one twists the word into a pretzel and claims that being denied the freedom to deny the freedom of others is a violation of religious freedom.

I suppose that I and my church members could claim that we are being persecuted for our progressive Christian visibility since our signs and flags are being torn down and defaced.  I am certain that many of our evangelical counterparts would howl the P-word if the same sort of thing happened to them.  We’re annoyed, for sure.  But vandalism happens.  It hardly counts as persecution.  Nobody got hurt, nobody’s religious freedom was denied, no buildings were burned or bulldozed.  In worship, we prayerfully lift up hope that the vandals will see the light and have a change of heart.  And then, we calmly replace the flags and signs.

Progressive Christian Visibility Day definitely should fall on Election Day 2024.

And every other day, too.

Christianity is hardly invisible.  The problem is the type of visibility that it has.  Its image is painted overwhelmingly in dogmatic black-and-white when really it should be rendered as a rainbow.  When people drive past your church, what most of them think they are seeing is a fundamentalist/evangelical congregation full of people who voted for Trump - unless you make it visibly obvious that you’re different.  That means waving the rainbow in front of the building.  And putting up signs to show that you are different.  And replacing them when they get torn down or defaced.  And making obvious who you are and who you aren’t on your websites and social media.  And doing provocative programming that gives you “earned media” you could never afford to buy:  holding events that stand out and make clear your distinctive witness of full inclusion, non-dogmatic spirituality, and activism for peace and justice.

We need to err on the side of outrageousness. That’s a hard ask for many of our progressive churches, filled as they are with nice folks who don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Of course, we should be kind in whatever we do—outrageously kind!

A few months ago, in response to the book-banning craze spreading around the country, our church put up a “Little Library of Banned Books” in front of our building, near the street.  Anyone can open it up and borrow a book that has been banned somewhere.  (Including a Bible, which is banned or limited in access in many countries.)  When the congregation gathered outside to dedicate it, a reporter from a local paper covered the story, and we got enthusiastic support from people in our wider community.  It was “earned media” that cost us almost nothing since the little library was built from scrap, and the books were donated.

The adherents of Christianity in America are in numerical decline.  Not because Christians are being persecuted but because Christians persecute.  More and more Americans are disgusted with a religion that denies women equality and reproductive freedom, disparages sexual minorities, demonizes immigrants, and denies the reality of devastating human-caused climate change.

As progressives, we have a responsibility and a golden opportunity to flip the narrative about Christianity in America.  The time is right and ripe.  As evangelical leaders panic about the decline of their churches, they are looking for a scapegoat.  And they’ve found one in progressive Christianity.  Scour the internet and you’ll see for yourself just how shrill their condemnations of our movement have become.  They used to ignore us as a harmless fringe phenomenon.  But now they see us as the “devil’s vanguard.”  Of course, their rants are the best publicity we possibly could get!  Because with each diatribe against us, they make their own people aware that there is an alternative way to practice and understand the faith - one that many of them are secretly or not-so-secretly seeking.

And indeed, Election Day looms ahead of us, with consequences that could not be more crucial.  From now till November, we need to let “perfect love cast out fear” (1 John 4:18) and make ourselves visible in ways we might never have considered before.  We don’t need to name candidates.  It is IRS-legal and just as effective to name the issues for which we’ll be voting.  Start making and posting signs for the front of your church now:  WE VOTE TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE.  WE VOTE FOR HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.  WE VOTE TO WELCOME MIGRANTS.  ABORTION RIGHTS = RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

For a lot of us in progressive churches, such messaging will seem edgy.  But outrageous times call for outrageous responses.  In our case, for outrageously kind responses that raise our progressive Christian visibility… not just for our own sake, but for the sake of people who really are suffering and being persecuted.

 

God After Deconstruction

 

GOD AFTER DECONSTRUCTION
a review by Jim Burklo of the new book by
Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller
SacraSage Press 2024

 
In the 12^th century, the Spanish Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote “The Guide for the Perplexed” in order to help the intellectually-oriented to find meaning in the Hebrew scriptures deeper than a literal reading could yield.  “God After Deconstruction” is a guide for perplexed evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who seek a kinder, saner understanding and practice of the faith.  Its authors themselves have “deconstructed” from supernaturalist, exclusivist, and triumphalist Christianity.  Tom is in recovery from his expulsion from a Church of the Nazarene seminary for viewpoints they considered heretical.  Tripp is a leading ex-vangelical scholar and podcaster.
 
Tom Oord now convenes a wide circle of scholars and thinkers around his “open and relational” theology, clearly influenced by his PhD studies in process theology at Claremont School of Religion.  He crystallized a framework that took the essentials of Whiteheadian thought and made them accessible to a lay audience made up primarily of “deconstructing” evangelicals.  A key term coined by Tom underlies this and his other books: God is amipotent – love + power - attracting all toward goodness and creativity, and not omnipotent – directing and controlling the cosmos. 
 
This book breaks down the causes of deconstruction: grappling with the problem of evil, abuse in the church, irreconcilable conundrums in the Bible, doctrinal absurdities, conflicts with science, conflation of the faith with reactionary politics, and the reality of religious diversity.  One by one, the authors offer alternative theological constructs, all pointing back to God as amipotent rather than omnipotent.
 
This book is easy to read, with study notes after each chapter, and lots of useful footnotes to direct further, deeper exploration.  I recommend it highly for individuals and groups as a pathway into a more sensible, compassionate form of Christianity.  It is a balm for the suffering that comes with dismantling a non-functional and often harmful, toxic theology.  Readers going through this wrenching process will feel understood and embraced.
 
At the same time, the book begs a question.  1 John 4:8 says, “God is love”.  Love is not an entity, a divine or supreme being, but rather a certain kind or quality of relationship.   Indeed, as Tom and Tripp repeatedly suggest, love does not control or direct.  It can’t be blamed for the evil that exists in the world.  It manifests beyond any particular religion or scripture.  It attracts and inspires and guides us toward the good.  But why, then, would we continue to use anthropomorphic language to describe God?  Over and over, the authors write about what God wants and what God does.  They say that God relates, as if he/she/they/it were a party to a relationship, but the implication of “God is love” is that God is the relationship itself.  God is a relationship that is personal, but God is not a person.
 
Either God is an amipotent entity, or God is amipotence itself.  This important distinction isn’t clarified in the book, leaving the deconstructing Christian dangling at a precipice.
 
In the process philosophy and theology of Alfred North Whitehead and his followers, the cosmos is understood as a web of relationships rather than as a collection of atomic, individual “dots”.  Relationships are the fundamentals of the universe - constantly creating, shifting, and changing in an open, non-determined manner.  Why, then, would we stick with the old God-language that is used to refer to a Guy in the Sky, managing and manipulating the universe? 
 
We can creatively interpret the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as a mythological expression of the death of a supernatural, omnipotent God and the emergence of God as nothing less, and nothing more, than love.  God as a supreme being was laid in the tomb, and God as the transformative, relational consciousness of compassion rose on the third day.
 
So to this otherwise highly useful book, written with deep sensitivity, I would add this sequel.  Not only is it okay to let go of biblical literalism, Christian exclusivism, and absurd and toxic doctrines, it is also okay to let go of thinking and talking about God as a supreme person or entity.  It’s a small step out of defunct doctrine, and a giant leap into a faith that embraces and nourishes the soul.
 

Remembering Chip Murray

 

 

9/26/1929 - 4/5/2024

When he preached, he spontaneously broke into rhyme.  Not just with his own words, but with the souls of his congregation, with the hearts of the people in the community he served.  Rev. Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray was the quintessence of the Black preacher, rousing his listeners to joyful amens and hallelujias.  But carried along in the cadence of his call and their response, embedded between and under and within his words, was mysticism.  Teresa of Avila came through, as did Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich and Howard Thurman, if you had ears to hear.  He delivered his hearers into union with divine Love.
 
Chip Murray was “twice tested by fire”…. the title of the memoir he wrote in 2012.  First in the crash of a plane in his decade as an Air Force officer, and later in his pivotal role in bringing peace to South Central LA in the 1992 riots that burned through the neighborhood of the church he served for 27 years, FAME – First African Methodist Episcopal.  His inspirational leadership grew the church from 250 to 18,000 souls, and FAME became the center of Black life in the city.  After retiring, he served as a mentor to countless pastors and community leaders through the Cecil Murray Center at the University of Southern California.  He taught them the arts of civic engagement for social justice.  It was in that era that I had the very great privilege of getting to know him, in the course of my work as Senior Associate Dean of Religious Life there.  Upon meeting him, I knew I was in the presence of a saint.  A Bodhisattva.  He was radiant.  You could get a sunburn from his smile.  He was unfailingly kind and humble to the core.  He was one of the most powerful political players in Los Angeles, but put on no airs that would suggest it.  He truly was the greatest among us by virtue of being a servant to all the rest.
 
Chip Murray made Christianity look very, very good.  He was disinterested in dogma.  He was disinterested in theological labels.  He ignored the boundaries within and among religions, embracing what was good in all.  He didn’t need to use words like “ecumenism” and “interfaith” and “progressive” because every corpuscle of his being exuded love without limits.  Showing up on the streets during the ’92 riot, the universal respect he commanded in the community was crucial to bringing reconciliation and recovery.  His cred was unassailable.  He was a PhD student under the legendary John Cobb at Claremont School of Theology.  While Chip did not use the arcane lingo of Whiteheadian process theology, what he learned from Cobb was implicit, embedded, in his practice and preaching.  His was a theology of invitation to participate in cosmic, generative creativity.
 
Years ago, I attended a talk he gave at USC for a group mostly consisting of white evangelical staff people.  He responded to a loaded question about doctrine by saying, in so many words, that Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly on spiritual truth.  That left his audience speechless.  The reverence they could not help but have for the man left them with a palpable cognitive dissonance.  Chip Murray had the purity of heart and character to change hearts and minds.  A purity to which I earnestly aspire.
 
In death, may his life resonate, vibrate, from Los Angeles beyond, as his sonorous voice reverberated inside FAME church.  Chip Murray, “¡Presente!”

(See my 2012 "musing" about him HERE)