Musings

(This is a revision of a "musing" from over a year ago.  It will be the basis of a sermon I'm giving at the United Church (UCC) in Simi Valley on June 14 (10 am: http://www.uccsimi.org).  I'm considering this as the "seed" of a new book by the same title.  It is a radically different alternative to the ubiquitous fundamentalist tract by Campus Crusade for Christ called "The Four Spiritual Laws" - http://4laws.com/laws/english/flash/ .  I'd love your reactions/suggestions!)

THE FOUR SPIRITUAL AWES

1.) Awe for _________(God, Nature, the Universe, Allah, Atman, Great Spirit, the Christ, Cosmic Compassionate Consciousness, Ultimate Reality, etc).  The Awesome One is beyond the capacity of words to describe, beyond being named with any one name, too awesome to fit exclusively into any one philosophy or religion.  When we discover the Awesome One in the everyday world around us, we are filled with joyful, worshipful wonderment.

2.) Awe for compassion. Our awe for the Awesome One makes us humble, and this enables us to feel and practice an awesome kindness toward all beings.  Our humility keeps us aware that our fellow creatures are fragile and precious, needing our loving attention.  If we have awe for the Source of all life, then we treat life reverently.

3.) Awe for freedom.  Our deep, powerful attraction to the Awesome One invites us to choose among many paths and purposes.  There is no one predetermined plan for each of our lives.  We can be guided by our powerful inner attraction toward the Awesome One as we continually make and change our plans.  We are in awe of the unique creative potentials given to each of us by the Source of our lives.

4.)  Awe for discovery.  We are always too amazed by the Awesome One to claim full knowledge of its essence or its purposes.  So we remain humbly curious about its awesome ways and workings, eager to learn more through every kind of inquiry.  The more we learn, the more awestruck we become, and the more we want to learn.

How do YOU want to live?  You have a choice.

If you put yourself at the center of your life, what happens?  Do you obsess about how other people affect you?  Do you worry about how you look, how others think about you?  Do spend a lot of time thinking about your future – what you’ll get, what you’ll do?  Are you focused on your possessions – what you have, what you want to own?  What is it like if you make yourself the center of your life – living as if everything and everybody else revolves around you, as if you were the center of the universe?


Is this what you want?


But if f you put the Awesome One at the center of your life, what is that like?  Do you begin to see that others are no less or more awesome than you are?  Do you feel like you share a common life with other people and even other creatures and things around you?  Does that help you feel love and compassion for them?  Does that improve your relationships with others?  Does that help you love yourself more?  Do you feel joy and wonder and amazement?  Do you feel the urge to be creative?  Do you feel like you have a task in life, a purpose to serve others in a special way? 


 
Is this what you want?

If you choose to put Awe at the center of your life, instead of yourself, you have joined the company of the seekers and saints of all the great world spiritual traditions, in all places and in all ages.  Find a community of people to support you in your quest to make Awe the focus of your life: a church, temple, mosque, or other Awe-focused group of people who are open-hearted and open-minded.

New Songs for Progressive Christians

From my work on a campus with tens of thousands of 18 through 30 year olds, from lots of conversations with young people who care about religion and spirituality, I have a sobering report to offer my fellow progressive Christian pastors and lay church leaders.  Over and over, I hear the same sort of thing from students who are church shopping:  "I go to evangelical churches and hear cool music and experience lively, engaging worship, but the punch-line of the message is old-fashioned, right-wing, literalist theology.  I go to progressive churches and listen to dull music with old-fashioned lyrics in boring worship with a lot of old people, but the preaching is up-to-date, pluralistic, open-minded, and creative.  Where can I find lively worship with progressive content?"  There is a big and growing population of young people who are attracted to Christianity but can't find churches that meet their needs.  Will progressive churches rise to the challenge and change their worship habits, in order to serve this emerging demographic group?

For some time, I have been re-writing old hymns with new lyrics that keep the faith but drop the dogma, words that re-energize and re-interpret the Christian tradition.  (You'll see several in my latest book, BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS, which you can order from the "store" at www.tcpc.org .)  Putting fresh words to the old tunes that are familiar to older folks in our churches is a step in the right direction, but to reach younger people who have no sentimental attachments to those tunes, we need an ever-fresh body of new, singable music in our worship.

Here are my latest lyrical contributions to the cause: three progressive Christian "chant songs".   Spread them freely - all I ask is attribution...  I hope that some musically talented members of my readership will offer tunes for them! 

RE-MEMBER by Jim Burklo

Re-member, re-member, re-member me with you
With this bread, with this cup, re-member me with you
Re-member, re-member, re-member me with you
With this love, with this care, re-member me with you
Re-member, re-member, re-member me with you
On this day, in this hour, re-member me with you


JUST A PINCH by Jim Burklo

A pinch of yeast within the flour
A treasure hidden in the ground
We know not the day nor hour
When the pearl is finally found
Secrets held in mustard seeds
Salty grains give food its worth
All our small but loving deeds
Show your presence in the earth


YOURS THE PRAISE by Jim Burklo

Fire who burns inside the mountain
Earth who feeds the trees
Sea who sprays up like a fountain
Wind who sighs the leaves
You, the source of inspiration
You the beauty bring
Yours, the power in creation
Yours, the praise we sing

_____________________

PS to California friends:

I voted (absentee) on the May 19 election as follows:  Yes on 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, and no on 1F.  I think all of these propositions are seriously flawed - however, the first five of them are essential in order to avoid a budget catastrophe that would hurt the poorest people in the state.  The last one, which would prevent pay increases for lawmakers in times of budget shortfalls, is meaningless in terms of its effect on the budget - it's just for show, and on grounds of principle I am against meaningless propositions.  I believe that our state needs comprehensive fiscal reform, starting with a constitutional change that would roll back Proposition 13's requirement of a 2/3 majority to pass a budget or increase taxes in the legislature.  We need a return to real democracy, with simple majority rule in the legislature.  The second reform would be to make it much harder to put a proposition on the ballot, so that our legislature can do its job of crafting laws and passing budgets.  California now has proven that minority rule and Athenian democracy by ballot initiative don't work in running a huge and complex state government.  We need to empower our legislature fully to do its job on our behalf and then hold them fully accountable for the consequences.   It won't be perfect but it will beat the mess we're in now.

Jesus Was A Liberal: book review

Book Review by Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California, and author of BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians: 

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL: Reclaiming Christianity for All
by Rev. Scotty McLennan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009)

“Liberal” is anything but a dirty word for the Dean of Religious Life, and pastor of Memorial Church, at Stanford University.  Scotty McLennan is proof that while Christians may be a minority group within it, publicly professing followers of Jesus still thrive in the Unitarian Universalist Association in which he is ordained. He has written his opus on progressive Christianity without disparaging the conservative Christians or the public atheists to whose positions his book carefully responds.  With his typical generosity of spirit, Scotty shares how much he respects and learns from those with whom he substantially disagrees, while using them to locate progressives in the center of the Christian tradition.  Scotty is the real person behind the figure of Rev. Scot Sloan in Doonesbury, created by McLennan’s Yale roommate, Garry Trudeau.  Contrary to his comic-strip caricature as the pastor of a nearly empty church, McLennan’s big audience will grow bigger with the launch of this new book.

JESUS WAS A LIBERAL is the best introduction to theologically and socially progressive Christianity that I’ve read in the past several years.  McLennan offers a concise definition of “liberal” Christianity, and applies it concretely to hot-button social issues and common confusions about biblical interpretation. He describes what is right about the long, venerable liberal religious tradition more than he argues against what is wrong with atheism or biblical literalism.  He makes his cases unequivocally but without being shrill.  He offers a defense of abortion rights grounded on the Christmas story in Matthew:  “Precisely because Mary’s situation is utterly unique, it places in bold relief other girls and women who have not voluntarily chosen to become pregnant.” (p 16)   He shares the bases of his public opposition to the war in Iraq in Christian “just war theory”.  His analysis of the impending conflict, and his predictions of the outcome of the war expressed in his sermons and a newspaper editorial, turned out to be uncannily accurate.

The book is flavored throughout with both the earthy and the intellectual.    Scotty moves between insights from religious scholarship and stories from his own and others’ experiences of pastoral ministry.  He illustrates with stories from his stints as a poverty lawyer, as a disciple of a Hindu priest in India, and as a university lecturer.  He neatly addresses the common concerns of lay people who are struggling with basic Christian concepts like the Trinity, the “body and blood” of communion, being “born again”, and the apocalypse.  But he doesn’t talk down to the reader: he also salts the text with scholarly analyses of biblical texts and historical details. 

The most distinctive feature of his book is his detailed response to four highly visible public atheists of the past few years; Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.  He engaged with them personally in their appearances at Stanford, responding to their indictments of liberal, progressive faith.  Scotty’s book is a call for critics of supernaturalist faith to refrain from throwing the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.  He vigorously argues against their accusations that progressive faithful people unwittingly aid and abet the perpetuation of archaic, harmful religion.  At the same time, he calls liberal Christians to join atheists in ecstatically experiencing the natural world.  “…I congratulate Richard Dawkins on his enthusiasm, awe, and wonder forged as an atheist in the realm of science alone.  We religious people need more of his spirit.” (p 127)

The book ends with McLennan’s rousing defense of the “L” word.  “Too many (liberal Christians) choose silence, afraid to use the word “liberal” to describe where they stand.  That leaves them lying low, sitting quietly in their pews at church or in private prayer at home… I bellow, ‘Stand up, stand tall, and proclaim the positive power of liberal Christianity!  Do it now, before it’s too late!’” (p 219)  In the cause of redeeming the faith, whether we use the word “liberal” or “progressive”, nobody stands taller – literally and figuratively - than Scotty McLennan.