Musings

Interspiritual Chants

 

These chants are ones I’ve been using for many years in progressive Christian worship, interfaith/spiritual life on campus, and many other settings in my career.   A bunch of them come from the wonderful Taize community in France, which focuses worship on chants.  I take the liberty of switching some words to be gender-inclusive, and to reflect a more progressive theology.  The words here are the ones corresponding to the videos.

 

Mira que te mira, mira que te mira, mira que te mira, mira le – (“See that you are seen” – a quote from St Teresa of Avila, 16^th c. Spanish mystic) -- LISTEN

 

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha…

            (Buddhist Heart Sutra: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond…) There are many versions of this.   You can sing this version more quickly if you wish:  LISTEN

 

Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord...    LISTEN

 

O God hear our prayer, O God hear our prayer...   LISTEN

 

What does the Lord require of you?    LISTEN

 

Ooh, ooh, ooh, adoramus te, Domine...  LISTEN

 

I am sending you light, to heal you, to hold you....     LISTEN

 

Jubilate Deo, omnis terra, servite Domino

            in leatitia, Allelujia, Allelujia, in  leatitita

            Allelujia, Allelujia, in  leatitia

            (Rejoice in God, all the earth

            Serve the Lord with gladness)    LISTEN

 

The river is flowing, flowing and growing...    LISTEN

 

Come and fill our hearts with your peace...     LISTEN

 

Sing allelujia to our God....    LISTEN

 

Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray

            Watch and pray (Taize)   LISTEN

 

One bread, one body... (great for communion/eucharist)  LISTEN

 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord....  (Godspell) LISTEN

 

Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire

                        that never dies away, never dies away  (Taize)   LISTEN

 

Bless the Lord, my soul

            And bless God's holy name

            Bless the Lord, my soul,

            Who leads me into life   (Taize)  LISTEN

 

Return again, return again... (Shlomo Carlebach)   LISTEN

 

Ubi caritas, et amor

            Ubi caritas, Deus ibi est  (Taize)

            (Where there is charity, and love, there is God)   LISTEN

 

Round and round we go

            We hold each other’s hands

            And weave our lives in a circle

            The day begins (or: is done) and the dance goes on    LISTEN

 

The will of your love, the will of your love

            Be done on earth....          LISTEN

 

Love, love, love, people this is your call

            Love your neighbor as yourself for God loves all      LISTEN

 

Seek ye first the kingdom of God

            And its righteousness, and all these things

            Shall be added unto you, allelu, alleluia...   LISTEN

 

Om nama Shiva, Om nama Shiva,

            Om nama Shiva, Shiva Om nama.... (Hindu – “I bow to Shiva”)  LISTEN   There are many versions of this.

 

May the blessings of God rest upon you

            May God’s peace abide with you

            May God’s presence illuminate your heart

            Now and forever more   (Sufi Muslim)  LISTEN

 

Oh, poverty, source of all our riches...  LISTEN

 

Nada te turbe, nada te espante

            Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta

            Nada te turbe, nada te espante

            Solo Dios basta.....

                        (Let nothing disturb you,

                        Let nothing you dismay

                        He/she who has God lacks nothing

                        Only God suffices.... St Teresa of Avila, 16^th c Spanish mystic)  Taize    LISTEN

 

In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful,

            In our God I shall rejoice...   LISTEN

 

Oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh,

            Surrexit Christus, allelujia!

            Oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh,

            Cantate Domino, allelujia!

                        (Christ is risen, sing to the Lord!)  Taize    LISTEN

 

Spirit we adore you

                        Lay our lives before you

                        How we love you....  LISTEN

 

Praise God, the love we all may share

            Praise God, the beauty everywhere

            Praise God, the hope of good to be

            Praise God, the truth that makes us free  (Doxology)   Tune with traditional lyrics:  LISTEN

 

Now in peace O Lord

            Let thy servant go -- allelujia

            For my eyes have seen

            Your salvation – allelujia     LISTEN

 

Surely the presence of our God is in this place....   LISTEN

 

O Great Spirit

            Earth sun sky and sea

            You are inside, and all around me    LISTEN

 

Just as long as I'm in this world

                        I am the light of this world----   LISTEN

 

When I went down to the river to pray

            Studying about that good old way

            And who shall wear the robe and crown

            Good Lord, show me the way

            O sisters, come on down, come on down

            Donít you want to go down

            O brothers, come on down,

            Down to the river to pray.....    LISTEN

 

Day by day, day by day...   LISTEN

 

There is one world, one people, one fellowship...   LISTEN

 

Be not afraid, I go before you always

            Come, follow me, and I will give you rest    LISTEN

 

Our God is an awesome God....   LISTEN

 

Jesus Needs Better PR

You just can't make this stuff up.  Reality is indeed weirder than fiction.

A few days ago, I read a piece on Religion News Service by Christian Pinkston.  He decried the "cannibalism" going on among his fellow evangelical Christians who, among other squabbles, are quibbling about the details of the He Gets Us campaign - which they feel does not tell the true gospel story.  In the piece, he reveals his role as the head of the PR firm for He Gets Us.  I got curious about his background, and it didn't take long to discover that he was the Republican hacker behind the Swift Boat smear against John Kerry and the Weather Underground smear against Barack Obama.  Two of the sleaziest media stunts in recent decades.  (Read all about it here.)

I might have been the first to dig this up, but it wasn't rocket science to discover it.  And surely others would have sorted it out over time.  You can't hide this kind of thing for long. 

Christian Pinkston is the kind of Christian who has trashed Jesus' reputation by association.  I see no evidence of him getting down on his knees before God and asking forgiveness for what he did.  So what sense did it make to hire him to run a PR campaign to restore Jesus' good name?  What were these folks thinking?

Jesus needs better PR.  And since we don't have a billion dollars to squander on PR firms, it's up to us to take on the task.  It's time for progressive Christians to get busy and let the world know the Jesus we know.  Let us take advantage of the front-facing message of He Gets Us - which portrays Jesus as a pioneer of compassion.  And give people a viable alternative to the back-matter of He Gets Us, which funnels viewers into the universe of right-wing fundamentalism. 

Explore the deep and wide universe of resources for contemplative practice, study, activism, and worship at ProgressiveChristianity.org , and invite others to do the same.  (PR alert:  some self-promotion here, which you can tune out if you wish:  check out my own books and resources for individuals, families with kids, and churches here..... and introduce Jesus to curious friends by giving them my recent book, Tenderly Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus.)

And more importantly, do something really, really radical:  invite people to join you in attending your local progressive Christian church.  And if they aren't nearby, send 'em the link to find the one nearest to them. 

Of course, we practice the best PR for Jesus by mirroring his compassion with our own, extending radical welcome and inclusion to all, loving even our enemies.  Because when we do so, we are his avatars - we are his ambassadors - we are his very being and personality in the here-and-now. 

He Gets Us Doesn't Get Him

 

On the TV coverage of the upcoming Super Bowl on 2/12, there will be a major ad for the "He Gets Us" campaign, which is also showing up on billboards, etc, all over the country.  It is a hundred-million-dollar ad campaign funded by the likes of the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby - major right-wing political and "culture warrior" donors.  And the campaign website funnels readers into the fundamentalist media universe.  (See a piece about this ad campaign on NPR here.)  It is an effort to make Jesus look good - funded by the same fundamentalists who have trashed his reputation.  HeGetsUs doesn't get him!

Let's take advantage of this campaign to earn some attention for our progressive Christian movement.  Let's flip their narrative.

Use the meme above freely in your social media - and make up your own.  Put signs in front of your churches - here are some suggestions:

HE GETS US - to stand up for women's right to choose
HE GETS US - to celebrate same-sex marriages
HE GETS US - to welcome immigrants
HE GETS US - to save the earth from human-caused climate change
HE GETS US - to embrace other religions
HE GETS US - to end systemic racism
HE GETS US - to resist the right-wing agenda of the funders of HeGetsUs.com.

Let your local press know when you've put up your signs.   Send me your memes and pictures of your signs and I'll spread them far and wide in the progressive Christian movement. 

Also, register your church with HeGetsUs.com so that at least some of the churches it funnels folks into will be progressive ones.

This is a great opportunity for us to be creative and get the word out about what makes us and our churches different than the narrative that HeGetsUs.com is pushing.  Let's make the most of it!

A Reckoning With Racism

What would it mean for you and me to “end systemic racism” in America?

I’ve been pondering deeply the fact that the five police officers accused of the recent pointless, needless killing of a man in Memphis, Tyre Nichols, were of the same race as the victim.  Some folks will seize on this fact to argue that police killings of civilians are not racially motivated.  That would fit neatly with the agenda of right-wing propagandists in America who are pushing the narrative that making a big deal about racism is un-patriotic.  They’re trying to un-write the history of this country, to downplay the devastating effects of racism from 1619, when slavery began in America, through the present day.  Conservative “snowflakes” are afraid of making white people today feel guilty about an old problem that they didn’t create. 

But anti-racism isn’t about making anybody feel bad or embarrassed.  It is a movement aimed at healing a wound, inflicted long ago, that festers to this day – among us all, and within us all.   Let’s be brave Americans and deal with it, as we’ve dealt with so many other huge challenges in our history!

Our country is going through a fresh and very messy reckoning with racism from the past that pervades our present moment.  Racism is what St Paul called a “power and a principality” – a force that infects individuals, but is at the same time pervades whole societies and social structures.  It’s airborne, like a virus. You can’t see it, but you can definitely see its devastating effects.  It infects us all, including those police officers in Memphis.  It is personal because it is systemic, and it is systemic because it is personal.  It exists within us, and shapes our behavior, without any conscious malicious intention by us as individuals.  Few of us intend to be racist.  Few of us have any overt desire to think or act in a racist manner. 

Years ago, I worked for a majority Black nonprofit in a majority Black community.  And there I learned a lot about myself.  I thought of myself as a good liberal, part of the struggle for civil rights and equality.  But in that job and in that community, I was forced to face the racism that lurked within myself.  And that at some level, still lurks within me.  That experience awakened me to the reality that intimate exposure to people of races other than one’s own is not necessarily the cure to racism – it can just as well entrench racist attitudes.  And the only way to change it is to see how it lives in us now, so that we can boldly, steadily, patiently root it out from within us and also root it out from social and economic and political structures. 

There is no utility in wallowing in guilt and self-blame about it.  Ron DeSantis and his ilk would have us believe this whole anti-racism movement is aimed at making all white people, including young kids at school, blame themselves for the problem.  That’s just nonsense.  Literally a cop-out!  A wimpy way to avoid the subject.  There may be a few folks out there in the anti-racism movement who do want all white people to squirm in discomfort and shame.  But that’s not typical of most folks involved in this work.

It is not a blame game.  It is rather the work of carefully diagnosing the problem, understanding its perniciously subtle nature, and then engaging at both personal and systematic levels to heal from it.  We need to think of it as a depth-psychological, spiritual public health problem.  Those words might seem strange to string together in one sentence.  But I think they point us in the right direction.  Public health is not about blaming any individual for the problem.  It is about harm reduction for everyone.  Racism is a very deeply-ingrained set of habits of mind.  It is a cluster of entrained neural pathways that connect our natural systems of response to fear and disgust with certain culturally-derived perceptions.  In most cases, these pathways activate without our conscious awareness.  Most of us sincerely intend not only to treat all others equally and without prejudice regarding race or ethnicity, but also intend to do our part in opposing systemic, organized racism.  But vestiges of racism against Black, brown, Asian, and other people remain in us all – no matter our race nor our ethnicity.  It is no use to beat ourselves up about this fact.  Nor to perform some kind of exorcism on ourselves or each other.  What we need to do is recognize that racism continues to be present within us, coloring the way we see others, and thus ultimately how we treat them.  Even if it might take very subtle and indirect forms – like looking twice at a person while out at night, feeling ever so slightly more threatened by that person than by other strangers.  Again, no need to feel bad or guilty about this.  That’s useless.  Our task in fighting racism starts with a clear-eyed, honest awareness of its presence deep within us all – even if it manifests only in fleeting ways. 

How does Christianity fit into the struggle against racism?  Part of our work is to recognize how Christianity has contributed to the problem.  One way it makes racism worse is the historic dogma of the faith that suggests that everybody is a hopeless sinner, condemned to eternal punishment unless they assent to a particular religious doctrine.  It is an outdated and spiritually useless and downright harmful belief.  Yes, we sin – we do things and think thoughts that we should not do or think.  And yes, by following Jesus we wake up to our sins and work to rectify them.  But we’re not hopeless sinners.  Instead of feeling guilty and fearing punishment, we can open our eyes to our sins and take forthright action to make things right.  That’s what Jesus gets us to do!  Ron DeSantis describes the movement against racism as one that paints white people as hopeless sinners who deserve punishment.  Ironically, he’s fitting it in to the frame of fundamentalist Christian thinking.  But to fight racism, we use progressive Christian thinking, which follows Jesus in recognizing our wrongs and making them right.

That includes inner spiritual work as well as civic activism.  We need to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to end gerrymandering and voter suppression that has been aimed at disenfranchising Black people in particular.  We need to change fundamentally the way we train and deploy police.  We need to take seriously the need for economic reparations for our country’s history of slavery and racism.  And this can be done in a way that benefits everyone significantly, but will benefit racial minorities, particularly Black folks, disproportionately to their circumstances.  Taking the next steps beyond Obamacare to create a truly universal, guaranteed high-quality health care system will be good for all Americans, but will disproportionately benefit minorities.  Same with universal guaranteed child care and sick leave and reducing mass incarceration.  Same with the proposal for a guaranteed income – an idea first proposed by a notable leader of the American revolution – Tom Paine.  It doesn’t get more red, white, and blue than that!  These are practical ways to help make right the wrong that started in 1619 – ways that are fair and beneficial to everyone.

Another way that Christianity has contributed to racism is its historic pattern of “othering” groups of people – starting with separating Christians from non-Christians.  Either you’re in or you’re out.  If you’re in, you are saved, if you are out, you are damned.  It’s hard to exaggerate how toxic this belief system has become.  It distorts and poisons the relationships between evangelical Christians and everyone else.  And then there is the anti-Semitism baked right into the New Testament, in which the Jews are blamed for Jesus’ death… which is false on the face of it, because he was executed by the Romans.  In this country, millions upon millions of people have been trained by fundamentalist preachers to see people as either “in” or “out”, and that way of seeing the world is racism’s kissing cousin.  But today, following the trajectory that Jesus set for his church, he gets us to see everybody as “in” – everybody is worthy of the unconditional love that is God.  If we are all one, as Jesus prayed we’d be, then there is no category of “other” in which to separate and isolate people by religion, race, or anything else.  This inclusive kind of Christianity is a force for healing the wound of racism in our hearts and in our society.

A mindful, progressive Christianity helps us see what is, with clear eyes – even if it is hard.  And then our faith gives us inner strength to change those hard things – within ourselves, over time with spiritual practice, and in society, through voting and active civic participation – including participating in the life of our church, which is a vital building-block of democracy.    What makes America great is patriotic Americans putting 2023’s rights to 1619’s wrongs.  To love our country is to address actively its present reality of racism.  And Christianity has much to contribute to this cause.  Our work is to see, pray, and act! 

A few years ago I was riding the LA Metro and a woman got onto the train and went from seat to seat, begging for money.  She was big, she smelled terrible, her clothes were rags – and she was Black.  She went up the aisle and into the next train car.  Near me on another seat I saw a Black woman who was shaking her head, visibly saddened, grieving aloud to herself after seeing the beggar: “My people.  My people.” Her words hit me hard; I felt tears well up in my eyes.  It seemed to me that she was upset that the people on the train would think that this begging woman was a typical Black person, representing her people.  And I think she was absolutely right to worry that the sight of that begging woman would harden the deep-seated racism of the people in that train car.  Myself included.  She was grieving the whole weight, the whole burden, of racism’s consequences since 1619.  Let us not allow this woman to grieve alone.  Let us be in solidarity with her.  And with the woman who was begging, as well.  Who knows what events in her life resulted in her condition?  We need to grieve for “Our people.  Our people.”  Grieving for all of us, Black, Asian American, Native American, white, Latino/Latina – because all of us bear this weight and burden of racism even today.  With faith in the unconditional, boundary-free love who is God, let us lift that burden together and put it behind us forever. Amen!

A Progressive Christian Response to Tim Keller

“There is no more urgent question for American Christians than this: What’s wrong with the American church and how can its life and ministry be renewed? Virtually everyone agrees something is radically wrong with the church… We must find a new way forward—to spiritual, theological, and institutional renewal—until the Christian church is thriving again, until it’s growing by appealing to and reaching people with truth and serving and changing people with love.”  So writes Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York, and an important leader in evangelical Christianity.  It begins a piece by him,  “The Decline and Renewal of the American Church,” that is getting wide distribution lately. 

It is an in-depth piece, reflecting his status as one of the relatively rare intellectuals in the evangelical world.  As such, I think it deserves a response – in particular because he blames the decline of the American church, as a whole, on progressive Christians.  His is the old and tired argument that by reconciling our faith with science and social progress, we deprived Christianity of its distinctiveness, thus making it indistinguishable from the wider culture and thus irrelevant.  He also argues that by doing so, we deprived America of any kind of foundation for moral order.  It’s the old circular argument that the Bible must be literally true because we need it to be literally true - so that we’ll have a basis for our ethics and laws and culture.  Meanwhile, current advances in biology show that basic morality is a byproduct of evolution – in the animal world, as well as in the human, it has survival value.  And among those discoveries is the fact that a certain amount of homoerotic behavior in animal populations has survival value, as well.  And then there’s the obvious problem of basing our behavior today on some of the very problematic precepts we find in the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

It is only at the end of his piece that he obliquely recognizes that conservative Protestants might share a bit of the blame for the decline of the church in America:

“The progressive mainline Protestantism still in existence is no real way forward for the American church.   However, because of the reassertion of fundamentalism within American evangelicalism and the consequent exodus of many young adults from the churches of their youth, many are pointing to mainline, progressive Christianity as the place for them to go. There may indeed be some influx into mainline churches, especially in urban areas, of young “ex-evangelicals” who are “deconstructing their faith.” But the overall project of mainline Protestantism has failed. It overadapted to Western secular culture and can’t offer our society an alternative or counterpoint to what the dominant culture already offers.  It also doesn’t appear to be able to grow the way the church has historically grown in every culture—by evangelism and church planting. Can it lead secular people into life-transforming conversion?”

Thank you, Tim Keller!  Like other panicked evangelical leaders are doing lately, by dissing our movement as the cause of their own problems, they give us the best possible publicity. 

He only grudgingly – and very briefly - admits that young evangelicals are leaving evangelical-world because of evangelicalism.  And he’s right that many are exploring progressive Christianity.  But he’s wrong that our project has failed, wrong that it does not offer an alternative to dominant culture, and wrong that it cannot be transformative. 

And he’s way off the mark in his claim that the road to renewal is paved with the same dead dogma and regressive social values that led them into their cul-de-sac.  Evangelicals had their moment, and it was a long and notable one.  Now their movement is rapidly shrinking, and one would think that a person of Keller’s stature would turn his gaze inward to diagnose carefully what it did wrong, and propose a real change of direction.  But no. 

Keller apparently has no awareness of the spiritual renewal going on right now in progressive Christian churches that embrace the contemplative, mystical tradition of the faith, which evangelicals would do well to discover and practice if they’re interested in renewal.  He shows no interest in exploring what is distinctive about the progressive Christian churches that are growing and thriving as they hoover-up young ex-vangelicals.  Nor does he get it that progressive churches are far more of an “alternative or counterpoint to what the dominant culture already offers”.  As if evangelical churches, on the whole, aren’t the Republican Party at prayer?  As if they don’t offer artisan coffee after worship in their huge, fancy, mall-style church buildings?  If you are looking for a critique of the dominant culture, which is capitalism run amok, you’ll go to a progressive congregation.  If you’re looking for communities that are actively practicing alternatives to the cultural norms of rampant consumerism and personal greed, you’ll go to progressive churches.

Sure, he’s upset that the evangelical worldview has become a minority perspective in America.  All religious people are minority voices in America today, and the country is none the worse for this diversity and divergence of expression.  He says that, while once the voices of the non-religious were suppressed, “today in the secular society mainline Protestantism helped bring about, it’s religious voices that are precluded.”  That, of course, is nonsense.  Hello, Tim Keller!  We need look no farther than the front page of the newspaper to see how un-precluded those voices are, as they call for banning abortion, demonizing LGBTQ+ people, and attacking the rights of trans people.  Progressive Christians have neither undertaken to preclude evangelical voices nor succeeded yet in out-voicing them.  Religious freedom in America is as alive and well as it ever has been, for religious and non-religious people alike.  And any claim to the contrary is a dangerous lie.

Progressive Christianity today is exactly the “spiritual, theological, and institutional renewal” that Tim Keller hopes will sweep through the church.  If you’re reading this, Tim, count it as an invitation to set your prejudices aside for a while, visit our thriving churches, and get to know us for who we really are.

Fat Tuesday Word Jazz 2023

 

Twixt twelve and thirty years, who was Jesus, we ask?

The Bible says nothing worth taking to task.

A square or a rounder? - we’re all left to wonder

How hearty he partied, how much did he blunder?

 

‘Twas the night before forty long days and dark nights

When Jesus went wandering way out of sight

The children of Bethlehem all tucked in their beds

But Jesus’ buddies came over and said

“Dude, it’s past time that we tore up the town

Put on your sandals - let’s knock a few down!”

“Why not?” Jesus asked himself, ready to roll

And so they took off in the gloom and the cold.

 

On Mardi Gras night in a funky old hut

They tippled until the tavern was shut

Then they stumbled and wobbled

Down the streets that were cobbled

Laughing and singing

Roaring and swinging

Donging and dinging

Joking and poking

Till they fell in a heap

And drifted to sleep

‘Neath a sycamore tree.

 

Head leaning against the trunk,

Tongue lolling out of his mouth,

Jesus dreamed a wondrous dream.

 

And you and I were in it

Our world and all that’s in it

Now in twenty twenty three

All was plain for him to see.

Ahh, the wonders that played

Like Fat Tuesday’s parade!

With people in costumes that he’d never seen

Zooming along in their gleaming machines

On roads wide and smooth

And in skies where they flew

Markets as big as the temple’s grand square

And glittering lights were festooned everywhere

Bewildering devices

Incomparable spices

Unimaginable prices.

Houses as big as an Israeli town

With perfect pastures all around

But no sheep to be seen

On the neatly-trimmed green…

 

Jesus dreamed all this and more

He saw the rich, and he saw the poor

The ones in the Teslas, the ones in the tents

The ones who paid and collected the rents

Crypto billionaires gaming the system

Fake-tanned demagogue blaming the victim

A blizzard of words in a torrent of tweets

Lies spreading faster than folks can delete

Corrosive opinions promoted as facts

Conspiracy theories churned out to the max.

 

The mental health crisis came into his view

Millions of people lost deep in the blues

Eating to work and working to eat

Meeting to work and working to meet

Lonely souls on busy streets

Friendship faked on hand-held screens

Till no one knows what friendship means

 

He was blown away by the contradiction

Misery and wealth in juxtaposition

Food in abundance

Clothes in redundance

Want it you get it

Sky’s not the limit

So why all the sadness?

And why all the badness?

 

He rose from his slumber as dawn brightly came

But still in his soul those hard questions remained

With his buddies on Tuesday he got himself bent

But now it was Wednesday, beginning of Lent.

 

“I’ll go to the desert and sort it all through;

I won’t come back till I know what to do.”

 

Forty days and forty nights

Forty darks and forty lights

Hunger, pain, and cold and heat

Look within, and then repeat

See what’s real and see what’s not

What you lack and what you’ve got

Who you aren’t and who you are

Where to go and just how far.

 

And when he was done he saw what to do.

Discovered his mission - and it is ours, too.

Know the divine at the core of our being

Open our eyes and really start seeing

Speak out the truth to the powers that be

Stand up for justice for you and for me

 

Tuesday’s upon us, so let’s start the party

Swinging our beads and singing out hearty

Howl an incantation

To all of creation

Vent our frustration

At higher inflation

Lift a libation

And make an oration

To change the narration

Of pointless placation

And take a vacation

From all our vexation

‘Cause Wednesday will follow

As sure as tomorrow

And then we’ll seek the mission

That we’ll bring to fruition –

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Let the good times roll!

 

 

Box Spring Mountain

 

(This one's from the "vault" - I wrote it in 2012, after a hike up the mountain behind the University of California, Riverside, where I graduated in 1975.  It was a nostalgic ascent, bringing to mind and heart the many climbs I made of it when I was a student there - and recalling my sentiments in that era...)

Climbing
the stupendous weight of possibilities,
toward the brooding glint of any-time-now,
into the outrageous orange glow
of setting smoggy sun
sizzling on a stony mountain,
sending shadows eastward
toward nada-land.
My thoughts boiled off
into the invisible aether
interbeing everything around me
as I ascended the steep thrust
of bouldered granite.
A cityscape crystallized below.
Ravens squawked above,
gyring over their roosts.
Sycamores, drunk with vehicular CO2,
clung to the crotches of mountain ravines.
Unwritten books bubbled in the bottom of my mind.
Possible poetry oozed from the subtle glands of my spirit.
My testicles composed an invisible testament
of will to exist beyond myself in union with Her.
University courses decomposed
in the compost heap of my consciousness.
Literature metabolized in the liver of my mind.
Calculus and anthropology stewed in the slow-cooker of my soul.
The crunch of decomposed granite under my bootsteps,
The lightness of my skinny body, nearly effortless
in its bounding up and down and around the what-the-hell mountain
piled high with edible tomorrows and delicious somedays.
I ate the idea of a Joshua tree
and then picked my teeth with the sliver moon.
I'd rather be writing this now than then:
I couldn't have predicted the aftertaste.
Actualized yearnings, undertaken urges, dreamed deeds done.
And still the staggering mountain beckons me up,
giddy with gravity's goofiness,
delirious with the synchronicity of then and now.

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14 Questions for Lent

 

For Lent 2023 at my church, UCC Simi Valley, I'm inviting folks to engage with 14 of the questions that Jesus asked his followers during his ministry.  From Ash Wednesday, 2/22, through Easter, they will be on display in 14 "stations" on the front patio of the church.   Participants can take slips of paper and write responses to the questions, and put them in the boxes at each station, as they choose.  In 10 am Easter Sunday worship, 4/9/23, we will display these responses on the wall inside the sanctuary. 

This selection of questions of Jesus is intended for open-ended, contemplative, prayerful personal meditation and group conversation.  Here, the questions are presented out of their contexts in the gospel narratives.  Those contexts are well-worthy of study and consideration.  But here, you can fit Jesus' questions into your own contexts, imagining how they address or challenge your own life-experience.  The questions are presented here as "koans" - spiritual "monkey-wrenches" -  tossed into our minds to break us loose from habits that get in the way of Divine Love. There are no right answers.  It may be enough to mindfully contemplate the questions rather than trying to answer them!  How can these questions bring us closer to the true Divine Nature within, and draw us closer in loving community?  After each question, I offer some prompts for reflection and response.

Also included below are my interpretations of the 14 Stations of the Cross - which participants also can choose to engage and respond.

Copy and use freely, with attribution!
 

14 Questions of Jesus

1. 
   And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? (Matt 6:27-28) (What are your worries?  When and how do they arise?  How do they manifest physically?) 
   
   2. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? (Matt 7:2) (What are the logs in your own eyes?  What prejudices and assumptions and judgments get in the way of your ability to see things as they are, on their own terms?  How clearly can you see these "logs"?)
   
   3.  Why are you afraid, you of little faith? (Matt 8:26)  (What are you afraid of?  What is the root of your fear?  When/how do these fears arise?  How do these fears affect your life and the lives of others?  How do your fears manifest in your body?)
   
   4.  Do you believe that I am able to do this? (Matt 9:28)  (What do you need to do?  Do you believe you can do it?  Examine your beliefs about what you can and cannot accomplish.)
   
   5.  How many loaves have you? (Matt 15:34) (What do you have to work with - what are your resources to deal with the challenges before you?  Are they sufficient? Can you "make do"?)
   
   6.  But who do you say that I am? (Matt 16:15) - What is your name? (Luke 8:30) (Who are you, in your essence?  If you lovingly observe yourself in prayerful, mindful contemplation, who/what is it that is doing the observing?)
   
   7.  What do you want me to do for you? (Matt 20:32)  (What kind of help do you need?  Are you willing to ask for it?)
   
   8.  So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? (Matt 26:40) - Simon, are you asleep? (Mark 14:37) - Why are you sleeping? (Luke 22:46) (In what ways are you "asleep", spiritually/emotionally/mentally/socially/politically?  What would help you come "awake"?)
   
   9.  My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? (Matt 27:46)  (Is there any part of you in despair?  What is the root of that despair?)
   
   10.  Can you see anything? (Mark 8:23)  (In what ways are you blind - unable to "see" important aspects of life within and around you?)
   
   11.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? (Luke 22:27)  (In what ways are you a servant, and in what ways are you a master?  What is it like to be in each of those roles?  Are there situations in which those roles should be reversed for you? How can you be more of service to your community, country, and the world?)
   
   12. What are you discussing as you walk along? (Luke 24:17)  (What chatter is going on in your mind right now?  What are you thinking right now?  What kind of inner dialogue is going on in you right now?)
   
   13.  What are you looking for? (John 1:38)  (What do you want?  Is anything missing in your life?  What do you want to do about it?  What are you willing to do about it?)
   
   14.  Do you want to be made well? (John 5:6)  (In what ways are you not well?  What is your level of desire to become well?  What difference might it make if your desire was stronger?)
   
   You can also engage with the Stations by contemplating them as Stations of the Cross.  And you can write your reflections on them on the slips and put them in the boxes, as you choose.  Here is my contemporary interpretation of the Stations:
    

STATIONS of the CROSS – Via Dolorosa — Via Crucis — Way of the Cross

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one.  They are based on the New Testament stories of the moments leading to his crucifixion, with additions from medieval legends.  Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

The Roman cross was a sign of the Empire’s power to torture its subjects into submission, but its brutality contributed to its moral decay and eventual collapse.  The early Christians turned the Empire’s intended meaning of the cross upside down and inside out, making it the symbol of transformation from the way of death to the way of life, from hatred and violence to kindness and compassion, from retribution to forgiveness.
 
“…as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up…” (John 3: 14)   In the gospel of John, the cross is described as the homeopathic remedy for the human condition of suffering. 
 
In ancient times, homeopathy – the principle that “a dose of that which ails you is the cure” – was the dominant form of medicine. The cross is the central symbol of the Christian religion; it confronts its viewers with suffering, and it is through this homeopathic encounter that suffering is transcended.  Buddha’s first step on his path to enlightenment, known as the First Noble Truth, is that life is suffering.  Only by facing this truth can one begin to get relief from it.  The first and most deeply paradoxical of the Twelve Steps toward recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit that one is powerless over alcohol.  It is by facing what crucifies us that we begin the process of resurrection into action for healing, recovery, forgiveness, reconciliation, repentance, and renewal.
 
The passage from John refers to a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures (Numbers 21:9): “ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”  The people of Israel, wandering in their desert exodus, began to despair and were then punished for it with a plague of snakes that bit them and killed some of them.  Moses cried out to God for help, and God told him to put up a bronze serpent on a pole and have the people gaze at it, and thus be healed of the snakebites. (The image of the serpent on a pole, the caduceus, is the symbol of medicine.) The gospel of John says that likewise, Jesus was lifted up on the cross before us.  By squarely gazing at our brokenness, we can begin to resurrect into wholeness. 

These interpretations of the Stations invite you to contemplate the cross from both a personal and a social viewpoint.  What cross do you bear, and what cross bears you?  What social and economic and political structures have crucified us and others?  What resurrection awaits us, personally and collectively, on the other side of the cross? 

1. Jesus is condemned to death
The Romans condemned Jesus to death on a cross as a rabble-rouser, a supposed threat to the “Pax Romana”.  The cross was a symbol of Roman state terror, meant to frighten its subjects into submission.  A few hundred years later, the Roman Empire was gone – but the cross still stood: no longer the symbol of Roman power, but rather as the sign of the death-defying love of Jesus the Christ.

MEDITATION: Whom do you blame for the ways in which you suffer?  What are the consequences of your blame and accusation?  In society, who are our scapegoats?  What would it be like to end this game of shame and blame?

2. The cross is laid upon him
“We each have our own cross to bear.”. Suffering is the universal condition of humankind. The Christian religion makes this point by making the cross its most central image. Buddhism, too, begins with this recognition. The Buddha’s first “station” on his path to enlightenment was to recognize that all life is suffering.

MEDITATION: What crosses do you carry through life? When have they become too heavy for you to bear?  Who or what can help you bear them?

3. His first fall
According to the Stations, Jesus stumbled and fell three times as he was marched to Golgotha to be crucified. Jesus said (Matthew 21:42-44) that the stone of stumbling would become the cornerstone — the most important stone in the building of the new kin-dom of heaven on earth.

MEDITATION: What is the “stone” that makes you stumble and fall? What is it like to be humbled? How can your stumbling stone become the foundation of a new and better life for you and others?

4. He meets his mother Mary
What was it like for them to encounter each other as he staggered to Golgotha?

MEDITATION: What unfinished business do you have with your parents and/or with your children?  If this was your last chance to communicate, what would you say to your parent or child?

5. Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross
A man named Simon, who came to Jerusalem from his home in Cyrene, in North Africa, to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem, was picked, apparently at random, to carry Jesus’ cross. It was a common practice of Roman soldiers to press people into service to carry loads for them. 

MEDITATION: What crosses are you asked to carry for others? Do you do so willingly or grudgingly? And who carries the cross for you?  What do we owe the Simons of our world today – the people who labor in our fields and factories, the people who empty bedpans and mop floors?

6. Jesus’ face is wiped by Veronica
This station is based on a medieval-era legend not found in the New Testament.  According to the tradition, Veronica was one of the women of Jerusalem who followed Jesus to the cross. She wiped his face to offer comfort, and his image remained on the cloth. The cloth became a sacred relic that had healing powers. The name “Veronica” means “true image” — the true image of the Christ, which can be found in every human being.  Veronica herself became the true image of the Christ through her act of compassion for Jesus.

MEDITATION: When you look in the mirror, do you see the true image of the Christ ? Do you see the suffering of the Christ, and also the one for whom the Christ is willing to suffer?  When have you witnessed the true image of the Christ in other people?

7. His second fall
Jesus, weakened by beatings, fell again on his way to Golgotha. When we are weakened by one disaster, we are made more vulnerable to others.

MEDITATION: What hurts have you experienced, both physically and emotionally, that leave you more vulnerable to more hurt? Have you chosen to hide or excessively protect yourself from further suffering, or have you chosen to keep on living and loving, and risk being hurt again?

8. He meets the women of Jerusalem
Jesus encountered a group of women who were his followers, wailing about his impending death. He told them to wail not for him, but instead for themselves and for Jerusalem, which he predicted would one day be destroyed. Indeed, about 70 years later, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the people of Israel were driven out of the country, not to return fully until this past century.

MEDITATION: What is your place in history? How do you, and how can you, make a difference in the unfolding of human destiny?  What is your part in preventing catastrophic climate change, and in advancing economic, social, and racial justice?

9. His third fall
Jesus fell a third time on his way to crucifixion, according to the Stations legends. He had lost his strength, his power, his reputation: many of his followers had abandoned him.

MEDITATION: What have you lost along life’s way? In what way are you cursed by these losses, and in what ways are you liberated? If you could have anything back that you have lost, what would it be, and what would you do with it if you had that second chance? What do you have to lose now — dignity, pride, position — and what would it be like to lose it?  

10. He is stripped of his garments
In Jesus’ time, it was extremely humiliating to be seen naked. His robe or cloak was taken by the Roman soldiers, who further humiliated him by drawing  lots to see which of them would get it.

MEDITATION: What part of your life do you want to keep “under cover”? When have you been painfully exposed?  In what ways have you made light, downplayed, or disrespected the sufferings of others?

11. He is crucified
His last words were “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was the moment of Jesus’ worst suffering, but it was also the pivotal moment of the gospel myth.  The writers and the readers of the gospel would have recognized these words as the opening line of Psalm 22.  And they would have remembered the rest of the psalm, which says:  “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.  In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.”

MEDITATION: What ideas or definitions or theologies about God have you forsaken, or have forsaken you?  What experience or understanding of God has taken their place? 

12. He dies on the cross
The sacred myth of the gospel says that Jesus died on the cross and three days later was resurrected.  The resurrected Jesus lived and breathed and walked and talked again, but he still had the wounds of the crucifixion on his hands and feet and torso.  After he died, he wasn’t the same. 

MEDITATION: What part of you is dying?  What part of you has died?  In what ways will you never be the same?   Do you embrace this change, or regret it?

13. His body is taken down from the cross
The gospel tells us that one of the rulers of Israel, a man named Joseph of Arimathea, secretly admired Jesus and asked to remove and bury his body after his crucifixion.  This surely must have exposed him to danger from the Romans as well as from the other members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. (According to medieval legends, Joseph later came to England to establish the Christian church there, and in England he placed the Holy Grail – the cup used by Jesus in the Last Supper – in a well at Glastonbury.)

MEDITATION: When have you been served profoundly by people who have helped you in secret, with no thought of reward or even thanks? What thankless, hard tasks are you asked to do for the sake of others? Are you willing to do them without recognition or reward? When is it appropriate to expect thanks and reward for your good work, and when does public acknowledgement just get in the way of being of service?

14. His body is laid in the tomb
Jesus’ death was shameful, but he was buried respectfully and honorably. Joseph of Arimathea wrapped his body in a shroud and placed it in a new tomb with herbs and spices, in the traditional manner.
The tomb was the cocoon, the womb, in which the story of Jesus the historical person of first-century Palestine gestated and transformed into the sacred myth of the universal Christ – the manifestation of God, who is unconditional love. Each of the three days in the tomb was a “trimester” in that gestation period…. ending with the resurrection we celebrate at Easter.

MEDITATION: What part of your life is entombed — on hold, unseen?  What kind of “gestation” or transformation is underway within?  What new life might await you when the stone is rolled away from your tomb?
 

We Are As Gods

San Antonio Creek, Ojai, 1-10-2023

 

The old gospel hymn said it would be fire next time, but it appears there’s been a change of plan.  Clouds boiled shades and tones of grey over Nordhoff Ridge above Ojai.  Then came the deluge.  On this parched land, years worth of rain fell in days. 
 
On the roof the pounding of rain, sweeping in heavy sheets, echoed through our house, night and day.  Outside, our donkeys, Sespe and Sisar, stood soggy and bewildered in their muddy corral.  The drywash behind our house turned into a roaring torrent of muddy water; a chaos of tumbling boulders, uprooted agaves, and broken irrigation pipes.  An acre of tangerine orchard next door was carved away, calving four-foot-high blocks of dirt, one after another, into the flow.  Later, farther down San Antonio Creek, we saw the bright specks of fruit on the drowned and broken trees wedged into the detritus.  All three roads in and out of Ojai were closed by mudflows and slides.
 
So far, with another arm of the atmospheric river coming from the Pacific soon, our house is intact.  Flocks of birds gyre above, seeking worms driven out of the sodden earth.  You can almost watch the grass growing in its sudden burst of green.  Across the valley, near the top of the huge mountain looming above, a stream drops down three steps of falls in a steep ravine.  It is as if Ojai morphed from the Mojave into Kauai overnight. 
 
The storm inspires awe, in forms both of holy wonder and fearsomeness.  At moments like this, nature in beauty and power puts us in our puny place in the cosmic order.  But on further reflection, it becomes clear that at least on this little planet in this obscure swirl in this nondescript galaxy, we humans are shaping nature in profound ways we didn’t intend.  Storms always have come and gone.  But the intensity of this one, and of others in recent and imminent time, is surely factored by human-generated carbon emissions.  Our neighbor lost a big slice of land due in part to my consumption of gasoline in my lifetime of driving cars.  This mighty storm that blew in from the west is, in no small measure, a consequence of karma that I and my fellow humans actively accrued. 
 
I wish it were not so.  But alas, I’m one of the feckless deities churning the mists and blasting the wind over the mountains.  I’m one of the drunken stevedores recklessly rolling barrels of rain out of the bowels of the colliding clouds.  We used to be subjects of nature, but now we’re becoming its bumbling masters.   
 
Such were my sobering sentiments while standing near the crumbling banks of San Antonio Creek yesterday.  "We are as gods and might as well get good at it," Stewart Brand, the futurist, wrote in 1968.  We have a long way to go.

Epiphanomics

For a week every year, in the early fall, a city of 70,000 people is built in the Nevada desert and then dismantled and dispersed.  Burning Man is a gigantic festival of communal art and expression, drawing people from all over the world.  It was founded by the late Larry Harvey, a quirky character from San Francisco who organized a happening on the beach which culminated in the construction and burning of a large humanoid structure.  Years ago, I got to know him and we did a couple of speaking gigs together – one at my church in Sausalito and another at the University of Southern California.  I admired his ten principles of the Burning Man festival, by which it runs still to this day, because it reminded me very much of what the church, at its best, is all about. 
 
Burning Man is an exercise in epiphanomics.  A word I invented last week.  Epiphany is the time on our Christian calendar when we celebrate the arrival – rather late – of the three wise men bearing gifts for the Christ child.  Epiphanomics is a gift economy.  I give, you give, you receive, I receive, no accounts kept, no tit for tat, this for that.  At Burning Man, people give stuff away freely, and receive freely what is offered.  It’s about 100% participation.  There are no paid performers. Everybody is a performer.  Everybody is an audience member, too. 

Pretty much how the Christian church functioned in its earliest days, as described by the book of Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” 
 
Epiphanomics was counter-cultural in the first century, and it’s wildly counter-cultural today.  In churches and temples and mosques, we joyfully practice it.  And not just for a few days like the “burners” at Burning Man.  We do epiphanomics 365 days a year.  That makes us churchy folks a whole lot cooler than the coolest "burners" broiling in the desert heat at Burning Man. 
 
Epiphanomics at Burning Man, and church, is a reminder that the economic system that prevails in the world today is optional.  There is a cabal of folks with unlimited resources spreading potent propaganda to the contrary – to get everybody to assume that capitalism is inevitable, the only realistic way of organizing economic relationships in the world.  TINA - There Is No Alternative:  that's their dogma.
 
I want to pause here to clarify some stuff.  I’m not against money, or credit, or stocks, or capital itself.  But I am not a capitalist.  Nor am I some kind of socialist, either.  I’m not even an epiphanomist.  I am not into “isms” or “ists” of any kind.  I just want a world in which the consequences of economic and political and social relationships result in something that looks a lot like Burning Man, a lot like churches and temples and mosques and families and closely-knit neighborhoods.  I'm serving as the pastor of a church, because this is what I believe in – this kind of community, this kind of economy.
 
Flawed and funky as we may be, our churches model what the world ought to look like.  What economics ought to look like.  Feeding each other, visiting each other in times of need, edifying and entertaining and encouraging each other, trusting that when our hour of need comes, we’ll be there for each other.  One for all and all for one.
 
We should use whatever means practical and ethical to achieve this goal of epiphanomics at every scale of society.  We’ve had a couple of centuries of experimentation with different economic systems.  The ones that are described as “isms” have been uniformly disastrous.  Capitalism has raped the ecosystem and reduced human beings to underpaid cogs in a machine.  Communism has trampled on human rights.  Fascism and nationalism and racism have become the three horsemen of apocalypse. 
 
We need to get real about what works, and go with it.  Government has its role, and so does private enterprise.  And so do other forms of economic organization – worker-owned cooperatives, for example.   They should each do what they are good at doing, harmoniously functioning together.  And not do what they are not good at doing.  While we don’t want nor need the government to produce cars or shoes or clothes, we do need it to make sure nobody goes bankrupt because they had a heart attack.  And likewise, poverty is not something that the private sector can fix alone.  If you want to feed the hungry and house the homeless, you have to vote, in every election, for candidates who are serious about solving the poverty problem.  And we have to stop externalizing the consequences of our present economic order.  Capitalism considers its environmental damage irrelevant, and does not take into account its negative effects on families and friendships, which in fact are essential components of the real economy.
 
One might imagine that epiphanomics is a sort of libertarian philosophy… that the magic hand of free giving and receiving will solve all problems and meet all needs.  But let’s go back to the manger for a moment.  The three wise men showed up with gifts which they freely gave and which Mary and Joseph freely received.  However, one must ask what Mary and Joseph did with these wonderful gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  They couldn’t feed or clothe Jesus with them.  If they had tried to sell these rare and expensive items in order to get things they actually needed, they would have been suspected of theft and probably gotten themselves into serious trouble.   What worked at the manger, what works at Burning Man, what works at our church points at how we want things to turn out everywhere – but in order to get there at the macro level, things do get more complicated.  Carefully we have to construct effective systems of production and distribution that are humane and fair and efficient and protective of the ecosystem.  Public policy may seem frustrating and boring, but it’s the Lord’s work!  Let’s take it seriously and be informed citizens and engaged voters, participating in creating the best system we can.
 
At the macro scale, to mimic the micro result of epiphanomics, we need a hybrid system of regulated private markets and of government services paid for by taxes.  We need a system that does not fit into any neat dogma nor constitute any kind of “ism”.  A system in which we’re just as willing to pay our taxes as we are to pay for a night out at a restaurant – because we believe in what we are paying for, for our own and everyone else’s well-being.
 
Adam Smith in the 18^th century wrote The Wealth of Nations – still assumed to be the Bible of capitalism.  He wrote about the “magic hand” of the market to set prices and stimulate production.  But what folks miss is the fact that the same Adam Smith wrote another book – The Theory of Moral Sentiments – in which he warned that free markets alone could not meet all the needs of people.  He was, in his time, a progressive Christian.  His “magic hand” was not capitalism – it was God, and for him, God’s providential hand took the form both of healthy markets and of good government. 
 
So right here, let us continue to enjoy our practice of epiphanomics – showing the world a viable alternative to greed and jealousy and excess accumulation and inequality and inhumanity and waste and destruction.  Showing the world around us a harmonious, sharing, compassionate way of life that lifts up a goal worthy for the economy at large to emulate.  Burn on, sisters and brothers!