Musings

An Invitation to Awe: The Soul of the Desert

(This is from a draft I am writing for an interfaith group that is crafting a statement about stewardship of the California desert.  As one who finds spiritual sustenance in the desert, this project is especially meaningful to me!  I'd really appreciate any feedback or suggestions from you, dear "musings" readers, about what could be included in this statement.  )

Pedro Chino, a Cahuilla Native American pa’vu’ul or shaman in the 1930’s, was said to have traveled under the earth through steaming hot springs in the desert.  “This land is alive,” he said.  “That is why you can see where it breathes.”  (Dozier, p 56)  For the Cahuilla, everything in the desert is alive – even the rocks.  (Dozier, p 61)  In traditional tribal life in the desert, according to Alvino Siva, an elder, “Everthing had to be done right if you were going to do it…. Even cutting wood or picking up a rock, everthing.  You had to talk to it.” (Dozier, p 26)

Moses met God in the burning bush on the desert mountain of Sinai.  “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place upon which you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5)

Hagar was led by God to water in the desert, and God promised that from her son Ishmael would come a great nation.

Jesus prayed in the desert for forty days before beginning his ministry.

Mohammed meditated in a cave in the desert mountain of Hira, where the Angel Gabriel visited him and began to recite the Koran to him.

To begin his quest for liberation from suffering, the Buddha left the man-made environs of his palace, and meditated under a tree in a natural setting.

For the Latter Day Saints, who found their promised land in the Utah desert, even the scrubbiest tree had a spirit.  In the words of God recorded by their prophet, Joseph Smith:  “And out of the ground made I, the Lord God, to grow every tree, naturally, that is pleasant to the sight of man; and man could behold it.  And it became also a living soul.  For it was spiritual in the day that I created it…” (Moses 3:9)

The desert is harsh but fragile, seemingly empty but in fact sheltering countless forms of life.  It is a place where absence awakens us to presence.   The place where pride and pretense is stripped away, and we are exposed to an awe-filled encounter with our divine Source.

The Greek word for "desert" in the Christian New Testament is “eremia” -- the root of the word "hermit" that was applied to the solitary monks living in the wilderness of the Near East in the first century.  'Eremia' has at least two meanings.  The outer desert has its natural processes, some awful and others just awe-full, and the sojourning hermit observes them with minimal interference. It may seem at first to be a parched and dusty place, but the longer an alert observer remains there, the more life is apparent in the shade of cacti, scrubby junipers, and creosote bushes. Likewise, the inner, spiritual desert of solitary silence may at first seem dead.  But as practitioners of prayer disciplines so often report, a lengthy sojourn in silence will reveal a rich and complicated inner world of experience that, like an arid wilderness, must be negotiated on its own terms.

The encounter between “eremites” and the “eremia” had everything to do with the land covenant established between God and the people of Israel. The 'hapiru' were semi-nomadic herders who escaped the tyrannies of Egypt and Babylon to live off the land in the hill country of Palestine.   In the Jewish imagination, and to at least some degree in history, they lived in harmony with nature, interfering only minimally in the natural order, honoring the sacredness of all life.  Later, the 'hapiru' became the 'Hebrews', an ethnic group that settled on the flatlands, practiced peasant agriculture, and began to build cities and kingdoms. The Covenant, the Sabbath day, and the sabbatical and jubilee years were established to preserve and restore the connection of the people of Israel to their roots in communion with God and nature.  The Covenant of the Abrahamic tradition is not just between people and God.  It is a bill of rights for the earth.

The primary meaning of Sabbath or Shabbat is cessation from all activity that is 'melacha', the Hebrew word usually translated as 'work' or 'labor’, but more precisely is any interference in the processes of nature.  'Shabbat’ means giving the earth back to itself.  It restores harmony between us and the Creation of which we are a part.   It means ceasing to act as though we were the owners and rulers of nature.

Likewise, in the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions, “ahimsa”, to do no harm, is a fundamental principle that defines not only relations among people, but between human beings and the natural world.  It releases human beings’ claim to ownership and control of nature.

For Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is a manifesto for the redemption not just of humanity, but of the natural order, called for in the Torah. “Consider the lilies,” said Jesus, “how they grow; they neither toil nor spin…” (Matthew 6: 28)  It is a call to a sabbatical way of life.

The vision of the ideal city in the book of Revelation in the Christian Bible (chapter 22) is centered on a natural environment reminiscent of Tahquitz Falls at the base of the mountain at Palm Springs:  “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.  On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22: 1-2)

Two Sonoran Desert dwellers, a Quaker and a Catholic priest, posed this question:  "What would it mean if Law's sword were made into stewardship's plowshare? Covenant communities would convert management into symbiotics, possession into communion, and ownership into earth rights." (Corbett/Elford, p 43)

Islam expresses these traditions in the humility so central to its faith: “True servants of the Merciful are those who walk humbly on the earth…” (The Quran, 25:63)

This humility leads us into awe for the holy and wholly Other, manifesting in the natural world that surrounds us.  Humble awe leads us to let the desert be.

References:

The Heart is Fire by Deborah Dozier  (Heyday Books, 1998)

The Bible (New Revised Standard Version)

The Koran (N. J. Dawood translation, 1956)

 The Servant Church by Jim Corbett and Father Ricardo Elford (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #328,  1996)

The Pearl of Great Price (Selections from the Book of Moses) by Joseph Smith, 1830

God's Dye

“We take on God’s dye.  And who has a better dye than God’s?  Him we will worship.” -- The Koran, 2: 135

A few years back, Roberta and I were treated to a meal at Giorgio Baldi, a restaurant near Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway.  It was pointed out to me that Hollywood notables were sitting at the tables around us.  Clueless as I was about the identities of these personages, even then I didn’t get it that I we were in a super-star restaurant.  Not until I placed on my tongue the asparagus ravioli I had ordered on a whim.  It would not be correct to say that I ate that ravioli.  Rather, it dissolved into my body in successive ecstasies of flavor, aroma, and texture.  If I am what I eat, I was an ennobled being that night.

A few weeks ago, Roberta made an extraordinarily tasty dinner using the Arrabbiata pasta sauce produced by Giorgio Baldi.  This sauce is the refined quintessence, the Platonic ideal of tomatoes, not the flawed mortal form.  The cost of it is accordingly celestial.  At $7 for a smallish jar, it’s not something one could afford to turn into a habit. 

And there’s another reason not to make it a habit.  This sauce is cooked down to its bosons.  It is so utterly disintegrated from its original constituent elements that it stained our dishes, right through the glaze.  The dishes were cheap but beautiful “seconds” from the famous Heath Ceramics studio in Sausalito; the glaze was thin, so the sauce seeped in. 

A few Sundays ago, at Easter, I stood in line to receive communion with the other members of our church.  We received the bread from Reverend Rachel, and dipped it in the wine, and put it on our tongues, and let it melt into our mouths, coloring our souls with kindness.  We let divine love get through our skin, so we could be stained with the rainbow colors of holy compassion. “We take on God’s dye.”  And the church (or the mosque, or the synagogue, or the temple) is the vat where we soak our souls.

We’re surrounded by God’s colors every day, all the time, everywhere.  But often we’re glazed-over so that this brightness doesn’t get in.   The fabric of our lives gets waxed-over by habitual ways of seeing and doing.  We become tasteless and colorless.  Meditative prayer, humble worship, selfless service open up the pores of our souls so that we can receive all the hues of the Holy One.  “And who has a better dye than God’s? “

The Blessings of Taxes

(I'll be preaching, and blessing taxes, at Mt Hollywood UCC Church, corner Rodney and Prospect, Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles,
 this Sunday, 4/11 at 10:30 am)

As April 15 approaches, I am counting the blessings that I receive as a result of paying my taxes.  The long list of bargain benefits makes a lot lighter the work it takes to fill out the forms.  It more than redeems the labor represented by my payments.  There is no way, other than paying hefty taxes, for me to get the even heftier services that come to me in return.

To start the list, there is the IRS itself, a marvel of fund-raising efficiency in providing for the common good.   For all the hype about how private charity is more effective than government, nothing could be further from the truth.  Typically, double-digit percentages of the money donated to charity are expended on fundraising.  But the percentage of administrative cost relative to money collected by the IRS is a half of a percent.  No business, no non-profit, no church, no synagogue in the country can match this level of efficiency.   More than any other way I spend my money, my tax dollars are being spent on services more than on extracting the money to pay for those services.

Then there are the myriad positive consequences that I get from paying taxes. Sewers, schools, roads, defense forces, public health agencies, regulation of food, drugs, and banks, airports, seaports, police, firefighters, protection of wild lands, pollution control, health care, income support and housing for the poor and disabled.  None of this could be provided for me effectively on the private market.  There is no other way that my money could come close to stretching as far as my tax dollars reach in meeting these needs.  Almost all these public expenditures benefit me in some significant way.  And some of the indirect benefits are even more important to me than the direct ones.   Government aid to low-income people protects me, because my quality of life would be much, much lower if I was surrounded every day by masses of starving people on the streets.  I’m protected from deadly epidemics when low-income children get tax-funded health care.   I’m served at businesses by people who can read and write because I paid taxes to educate them.  I can drive hundreds of miles to visit family in just a few hours because my taxes paid for the roads. 

The list of good things I receive from my taxes is much longer than I know.  A fellow member of my church is paid by my tax dollars to protect critical infrastructure, such as dams and electric grids, from natural disasters and terrorism.  I didn’t even know there was such a government job before I met him.  But when he told me what he did for a living, it was one more occasion to feel good about paying my taxes.

So far, I’ve put the blessings that come from my tax payments only in terms of my selfish interests.   I’ve only bragged about how good a deal I am getting on April 15.  But surely I’m doing good for other people when I sign the forms and mail the envelopes next week.  Their taxes help me, and my taxes help them.  Not only am I helping myself a lot when I send in my tax money, I am fulfilling a moral obligation to serve people whose needs are greater than my own.   I pay more than lower-income people, and that is the way it ought to be.  And those who make a lot more money rightly pay a higher percentage of income in taxes.  The greater the wealth we receive beyond the basic needs of life, the higher is our relative burden of social responsibility.

I feel as good about paying taxes as I feel about paying my church pledge.  All the more reason that this coming Sunday, in worship, we will be blessing our IRS forms, just as we bless our offerings to our church.  Thank God for all the good things we do for each other through our government, and God bless the taxes we send to pay for them!

The Passion of God

Coming soon:  April 11, Sunday -  BLESSING OF THE TAXES
(I will be preaching on April 11, Sunday, 10:30 at Mt Hollywood UCC Church, Los Angeles - www.mthollywood.org)
See now:  my endorsement video for single-payer health care in California:  http://californiaonecare.org/365-ad-campaign/365-ad-archive/rev-jim-burklo/
Also coming soon:  May 2, Sunday: PLURALISM SUNDAY - celebrated in congregations around the world

The Passion of God

The sacred myth of Passion Week tells the story of the death of an old idea of God, and the raising of a new consciousness of the divine.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  (Matthew 27:46).   The all-mighty, nationalistic, miracle-making “guy in the sky” God wasn’t there for Jesus when he needed a miracle most.  Jesus’ desperate cry of grief is ours when we mourn the absence of the old-fashioned Sunday School God with a beard and a long robe, the supernatural God who intervenes in the workings of nature for his own mysterious purposes, the God who does us favors if we believe and ask for them “just so”.  That image of God, which we projected onto the heavens, died with Jesus on the cross.

But according to the story, three days later, out of a tomb that had been sealed with a huge stone, there emerged the God of love that transcends hatred and revenge and death.  The God of expressive potential in all beings and things.  The God of life that quickens the universe.  The God who is all-pervasive without being all-powerful.  The God uncontained by any dogma or language we use to describe God.

The early Christians were accused repeatedly of being atheists by people in the Roman Empire.  The Christians didn’t worship a God that could be carved out of marble or minted on a coin.  But over time, a lot of Christians fell into the same idolatry that they had rejected.  They began to worship the Bible and Christian doctrines as if these things could contain the essence of divinity.  It’s so tempting to believe in our fantasy God, the one who gives us what we want, capriciously violates the laws of nature for certain people's sake, and makes us feel superior to others.

Passion Week confronts us with the reality of evil, epitomized on the cross.  It makes us "atheistic" towards supernatural theism.  It reels us back into reality, confronting us once again with Jesus’ cry on the cross.  His pain is ours.  His fear is ours.  His theological dilemma is ours.  Once again, it is time to let go of the God of our fantasies.  This is the season to give up the idols we’ve invested with our self-serving concepts of divinity.

The good news is that there is another way to know God:  the God we find now in vulnerability, gentleness, kindness, and creativity.  These are the days to wait by the tomb for awakening to the God who lives in the whirling electrons of the rolled-away stone.   Now is the time to find God in the tender care that Joseph of Arimathea gave to Jesus' body at death, and find God in Mary Magdalene's wonder-struck eyes as she stood at the empty tomb. Now is the time to catch the divine aroma in the bread broken and shared by that stranger in Emmaus.  It's time to wake up to the God of the love that poured out of a man standing on the shore of Galilee, offering his friends a breakfast of cooked fish.  Now is the time to experience God in the awe we feel when we breathe spring air and gaze at blooming trees: the divine awe of Easter.