Those who hunger and thirst after G_d should not allow themselves to be deflected from their yearning by our or any other church. It is G_d who answers our prayers, not an institution, not religion.
So the first thing I think we can say out of our UU experience is: “You are on the right path. It is your hunger that will feed you. Hold it close and do not let it go.”
Unitarian Universalists begin with the individual. The ultimate basis of our thought is personal experience. We start in our awareness of life — not in holy books or creeds or traditions. This is not to say that there is no help in these resources, but this is not where it begins. It begins in the heart, in the striving, in the quest, in the transcendent mystery that moves us to renewal of the spirit.
The heart is the seat of knowledge. Our science teaches us that we think with our whole bodies, not merely with our brains. Those who hunger and thirst in their pursuit of true knowledge are already on the path to G_d. We do not urge them to leave that path in order to take our predetermined, one-size-fits-all way.
We can teach that wisdom gathered from many of the world’s religious resources will lead such seekers to recognize that true knowledge does not lie in the content of what we have learned alone, but in the insights we have accumulated through experience of our actions and awareness of our personal characteristics.
For the great Muslim philosopher al-Ghazzali:
“Such knowledge is a ‘disposition deeply rooted in the soul from which actions flow naturally and easily without means of reflection or judgment.’ Such knowledge is not only what we know but what we feel. It is knowledge that is not only known but meant. The fusion of knowing, feeling, and doing integrates the outer and the inner man.” *
In the process of such integration the individual may best hope to find G_d. Unitarian Universalism does not need to invent a separate unique path to G_d. We need to actively point to the many paths already available. In doing so we may reveal the power of the diversity we embrace and provide the open path particularly suited to post-modern times.
The second thing I think we can say out of our experience is: “You are on the right path. It is your hunger that will feed you. Hold it close and do not let it go.”
In your hunger you will digest your experience, becoming one with it. In your thirst you will taste, not merely consume what life brings to you. This path of integration is the path of G_d.
The respect, that you will gain as you experience the interconnectedness of all existence, will draw you more and more deeply into what Christians sometimes call the kingdom of G_d — this place where we belong; this place where your heart’s hunger can find satisfaction; this mystery where you recognize the living G_d that exists beside and within you.
*Revivification of the Religious Sciences as quoted in Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 165.
Showing posts with label Post-modernism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Post-modernism. Show all posts
Monday, March 10, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
"What do we offer to those who hunger for God?"
I don’t usually wander very far in the blogger world, but I had to check out the popular PeaceBang site when a friend sent me a referral to her treatise on “What Depressed Me About GA”.
I had to read this, my correspondent said, because we (she, Sue & I) were standing with PB when she witnessed, at last year’s General Assembly, this really stupid spectacle of a UU man mocking an evangelical Christian who was distributing pamphlets on the street corner nearby.
It was not the first time I had had the pleasure, if you will, of witnessing this sort of arrogant behavior by one of our merry band of tolerant souls. Perhaps I should have been more shocked, but church-people-behaving-badly is pretty old news. It was old news in my childhood Methodist church. It was old in either congregation of the United Church of Christ in whose choirs I sang. That’s why we observers of the world reject the idea that the USA would be a more moral nation were it also a Christian nation. [That and the George W. experience, of course.]
I was shocked the first time I heard a UU belittle Christianity. When I first stepped into the UU world, I hoped to find a far better place than I had known before, but I learned quickly that we are pretty much like everybody else.
What remains truly shocking for me is the perception that, without a quick descent into warmed over liberal Christianity, a large percentage of UU clergy would be unable to answer PB’s question, “What do we offer to those who hunger for God?”.
PB, herself, seems drawn by this escape back to Christianity. But, if mainline Protestantism is answering her question so well, why are its churches losing membership? Why do so many people, who join evangelical churches, leave them? I can’t imagine why any capable UU minister would long to run off to the long-struggling Episcopal church down the street here in my adopted hometown, no matter how classically reassuring its wordy ritual.
Liberal Christianity seems to be struggling, just as Unitarian Universalism is, to enter the 21st century with a meaning filled understanding of G_d that relates successfully to the way-things-really-are. Thanks to the stubborn rationalism of modernists (as, I think, we may well suppose our UU mocker of Christians to be) and the blind attachment to the distant past of evangelical traditionalists on the corner significant portions of our populous are left hungering — certainly PB is right here. But, if either liberal or evangelical Christianity were working, why this hungering?
I am not arguing that contemporary Christianity is wrong. I’m just saying that it is irrelevant to the post-modern world because it doesn’t see the life that we are actually experiencing. It is stuck in scientific beliefs of the past that have led it down deadend paths. And it is further hampered by an inappropriate relationship to its traditions. But, are we, Unitarian Universalists, any more relevant as a Third Way? That’s the real question, isn’t it.
PB seems frustrated by Unitarian Universalism’s continuing failure to provide that Way. Good. But how about broadening the search for truth and meaning beyond our Christian heritage? How about bringing forward those UU clergy whose reactions are leading them to a better understanding of the life unfolding around us? Surely, so powerful a person as PeaceBang could find them were she determined in her search.
Blaming denominational leaders is a peculiar way to go, I think. If the average elected politician could lead, our world would be full of Barack Obamas. Believe in ground up leadership. Be true to our democratic experience. Be the change we are seeking.
I had to read this, my correspondent said, because we (she, Sue & I) were standing with PB when she witnessed, at last year’s General Assembly, this really stupid spectacle of a UU man mocking an evangelical Christian who was distributing pamphlets on the street corner nearby.
It was not the first time I had had the pleasure, if you will, of witnessing this sort of arrogant behavior by one of our merry band of tolerant souls. Perhaps I should have been more shocked, but church-people-behaving-badly is pretty old news. It was old news in my childhood Methodist church. It was old in either congregation of the United Church of Christ in whose choirs I sang. That’s why we observers of the world reject the idea that the USA would be a more moral nation were it also a Christian nation. [That and the George W. experience, of course.]
I was shocked the first time I heard a UU belittle Christianity. When I first stepped into the UU world, I hoped to find a far better place than I had known before, but I learned quickly that we are pretty much like everybody else.
What remains truly shocking for me is the perception that, without a quick descent into warmed over liberal Christianity, a large percentage of UU clergy would be unable to answer PB’s question, “What do we offer to those who hunger for God?”.
PB, herself, seems drawn by this escape back to Christianity. But, if mainline Protestantism is answering her question so well, why are its churches losing membership? Why do so many people, who join evangelical churches, leave them? I can’t imagine why any capable UU minister would long to run off to the long-struggling Episcopal church down the street here in my adopted hometown, no matter how classically reassuring its wordy ritual.
Liberal Christianity seems to be struggling, just as Unitarian Universalism is, to enter the 21st century with a meaning filled understanding of G_d that relates successfully to the way-things-really-are. Thanks to the stubborn rationalism of modernists (as, I think, we may well suppose our UU mocker of Christians to be) and the blind attachment to the distant past of evangelical traditionalists on the corner significant portions of our populous are left hungering — certainly PB is right here. But, if either liberal or evangelical Christianity were working, why this hungering?
I am not arguing that contemporary Christianity is wrong. I’m just saying that it is irrelevant to the post-modern world because it doesn’t see the life that we are actually experiencing. It is stuck in scientific beliefs of the past that have led it down deadend paths. And it is further hampered by an inappropriate relationship to its traditions. But, are we, Unitarian Universalists, any more relevant as a Third Way? That’s the real question, isn’t it.
PB seems frustrated by Unitarian Universalism’s continuing failure to provide that Way. Good. But how about broadening the search for truth and meaning beyond our Christian heritage? How about bringing forward those UU clergy whose reactions are leading them to a better understanding of the life unfolding around us? Surely, so powerful a person as PeaceBang could find them were she determined in her search.
Blaming denominational leaders is a peculiar way to go, I think. If the average elected politician could lead, our world would be full of Barack Obamas. Believe in ground up leadership. Be true to our democratic experience. Be the change we are seeking.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Found Images
By some miracle of technology or lucky intervention, these images (and several others) that I created over a decade ago are still readable thanks to my now ancient Zip Drive. I’m wondering what to make of them.
I remember spending countless hours engrossed in the minutia of each picture, fussing over details most viewers would, in all likelihood, never notice. Was I ill or enraptured? The distinction between artistry and insanity is not always that clear to me.
Leonard Cohen says that it can sometimes take years of revision before he is ready to call a song or poem satisfactory. Perhaps my pictures are like that. Will they ever be finished? Do I even want them to be finished? How can a picture ever be finished, if the artist is always changing?
Today’s me is really an emergent form of the old me; not something radically new. That makes sense, doesn’t it? So each version of any one of these pictures reflects the emergent phenomenon* that goes by the same name on each renewed driver’s license.
Even though I be Born Again down by the riverside, I am still born anew as a version of the self that used to be. Yesterday I may have been just a green plant, but today I emerge as a flower nestled in green leaves. Wow!
When the flower fades and the green leaves wither, will I still be me? Will you recognize me in the wrinkled aftermath of earlier glory or disaster?
*See Jim Sherblom's November sermon at the First Parish in Brookline, "You are an emergent phenomenon".
Friday, February 29, 2008
Out of the Many — One
This week’s Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey release seems to have captured the media’s attention, perhaps because, like so much else in American life, it defies their either/or perceptions. It turns out that not only are we not a Christian nation; we can’t even be called Judeo-Christian — too many Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, et al.
It appears that the Unitarian Universalist experience of religious identity reflects the American landscape better than we might have imagined. Our identity cross-section is different in many ways, but our diversity mirrors the nation. How well are we dealing with our diversity?
Some of us are still trying to absorb the possibility that we may be classified as Protestants! Who knew? I did hear a reference to the Christian Bible during a worship service the other day. No, it was not during the Christmas Pageant Service — that was largely a Christmas-like stories from around the world sort of adventure.
In our church we hear occasional reference to Christian or Jewish scriptures, just as the preacher may call upon Buddhist or Sufi thought at other times. There are even periodic movements to have our various religious traditions celebrated more intentionally. But, mostly, our diversity seems to be taken for granted and not explored very closely. Often we seem, like Barack Obama, to be a little embarrassed by our heritage, rather than eager to celebrate it.
In any case the Big News about our many religions background is not the multiplicity but the seeming ability of parishioners to put together a more or less satisfying spiritual practice based in multiple sources.
The modernist drive to find the single truth all must believe will find no satisfaction among us. How ironic is that — given our Humanist bent for the last couple of decades!
But the post-modernist embrace of the many may help us build a sturdier religious platform as we become more accustomed to not knowing with the old, should we say arrogant(?), certitude.
It appears that the Unitarian Universalist experience of religious identity reflects the American landscape better than we might have imagined. Our identity cross-section is different in many ways, but our diversity mirrors the nation. How well are we dealing with our diversity?
Some of us are still trying to absorb the possibility that we may be classified as Protestants! Who knew? I did hear a reference to the Christian Bible during a worship service the other day. No, it was not during the Christmas Pageant Service — that was largely a Christmas-like stories from around the world sort of adventure.
In our church we hear occasional reference to Christian or Jewish scriptures, just as the preacher may call upon Buddhist or Sufi thought at other times. There are even periodic movements to have our various religious traditions celebrated more intentionally. But, mostly, our diversity seems to be taken for granted and not explored very closely. Often we seem, like Barack Obama, to be a little embarrassed by our heritage, rather than eager to celebrate it.
In any case the Big News about our many religions background is not the multiplicity but the seeming ability of parishioners to put together a more or less satisfying spiritual practice based in multiple sources.
The modernist drive to find the single truth all must believe will find no satisfaction among us. How ironic is that — given our Humanist bent for the last couple of decades!
But the post-modernist embrace of the many may help us build a sturdier religious platform as we become more accustomed to not knowing with the old, should we say arrogant(?), certitude.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Cheerios in the Knees
Limitation
Unbridled freedom is really only suited to a dreamworld. It may be something that a child wants, but restraint of some sort is always applied to truly human behavior. That is to be expected, even welcomed. For it is precisely the application of restraint or limitation which makes us human (“a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor”). Limitations are the means by which we are humanized. Otherwise we are in danger of growing into pint-sized primitive gods (i.e., tyrants) — that is the great fear of Genesis One.
Limitation and self-awareness are the two things the human couple must acquire before leaving the idyllic life in the Garden at Eden. These are essential to their effective life as part of the earth. Without limitation and awareness they will be like unformed gods — loose cannons with no effective constitutional restraints.
As long as the G_d doesn't care about anything beyond himself, he doesn't have to adapt. But as soon as she wants relationship, she has to learn how to do it. Awareness and acceptance of limitation is the means.
One of the many biblical storylines misrepresented by the orthodox is this great one about how the God-Who-Seeks-Us learns to accept the limitations which are essential to relationship. The same limitations which apply to human life, the G_d accepts for himself because she too wants relationship. The G_d’s Sacrifice is the same as that required of Adam and Eve and Jesus of Nazareth.
Limitation is not the end of joyful human life; it is not something to be discarded or bemoaned. It is the essential means by which we grow and develop. There are no exceptions to this rule — it applies even to the G_d because it is a reflection of the G_d's own nature (i.e., the Way Things Are). Limitation doesn't just come from the outside; it moves out from within. (“I will write my Law in their hearts.”)
That is what makes Yahweh a great god and worthy of worship. He is not Perfect, and does not claim to be. He is in fact by nature opposed to the abstraction embedded in the notion of Perfection. He is Real, instead. Her name is “I AM”, not John Calvin or Tom Delay. I don’t know exactly how this works out in practice, but it seems to me that the essential business of religious people lies in trying to figure it out. A religion which constantly rejects the lessons of experience is always missing the point regardless of how brilliant it may be.
So, I am going to start from this possibility — creative life arises out of noting , accepting, and using limits. Growing-up is learning how to deal with them. Pushing limits is heroic and admirable, but so is learning how to live within the edges.
Change
The edges may be moving, changing — just like the rest of life. Expecting to find even a limitation the same today as it was yesterday is preposterous. That is why Laws and Creeds don’t work in the long run — they just can’t keep up with change. A religion of Absolutes is doomed in application. What is the point in maintaining a belief system which in order to withstand the test of use requires a falsified view of reality?
Our science teaches us a few things about living with uncertainty — it’s a lot easier once you give up the illusion of Absolute Truth. There is really nothing to be said about Transcendent Being for it is by definition outside the knowable world –– such life is present only in a place like the Garden or Heaven down by the river. If we go there, we are dead.
Yahweh does not wish to stay in the Garden. He won’t stay dead. That is why he is known as Immanuel —“G_d with us”. While pushing the couple out of the Garden results in travail for them, it is not in fact a punishment if you believe that life in this world is something worth having. Calling the Expulsion from the Garden punishment is to take the child’s point of view as definitive. Their trauma in the World is only a mirror of the G_d’s own experience of living; it’s not something special to humans.
Yahweh may be a sky god, but our earth is, of course, part of the sky universe. Separating Sky from Earth is a false distinction in the 21st century. A revisioning of the G_d in our life story will require special attention to this, I think. The old Earth based religions of Europe could not withstand the power of the Christian Sky-god religion and there is no point in trying to go back to a failed vision. What we need is a vision of the G_d which corresponds to the world we experience, and an interpretation of this known world that reflects our growing understanding of the G_d. In our world sky and earth are one; neither is more or less natural than the other. What would a transcendent experience be in an all natural universe?
The G_d changes and lives in a changing world. Such a god also embraces limits (“I have come to put an ax to the tree.”), because it is limits which make possible a perceivable world, and, so, a world about which it is possible to reflect and communicate.
Word & Image
Yahweh is the god of word and image. They are the means by which he describes and experiences. He uses both in his efforts to create, deal with his need for change, and explore the edges of his current limits. Language is his means of connecting, ordering, and extending relationships. (In the overpowering experience of the G_d’s Spirit at Pentecost everyone understands everyone else’s language.)
His connection with the creative word is established immediately in Genesis One. John’s Gospel story treats him from the point of view of Greek ‘Word’ images. The G_d uses the written word in his first Commandments and it is by means of the word that he stays connected to his creatures in and out of the Garden.
He uses breath (the means by which his word is delivered) to bring his clay male/female figures to life in the second Genesis creation story.
Both word and image are connected, then, by this breathing which is called the Spirit of God. The Spirit must, then, be a rhythm (among other things). The rhythm of life is the breathing of G_d.
In today’s music world rhythm-based music is proclaimed by traditionalists to be distinctly different from melody-based music. This is the false result of peculiar either/or thinking. Poetry is rhythm based melody. Suppose G_d breaths to a rock-and-roll beat as well as to the drone of Gregorian chant?
It definitely muddies the water when you start using this both/and way of combining ideas and experiences. But isn’t that the way we really experience things in this century? It is a gift to be simple in the midst of complexity, and, it seems to me, that a proper understanding of the G_d will reflect that gift. We are looking for the ‘elegant solution’. And we are seeking it, not by ruling out things, but by drawing them in.
Unbridled freedom is really only suited to a dreamworld. It may be something that a child wants, but restraint of some sort is always applied to truly human behavior. That is to be expected, even welcomed. For it is precisely the application of restraint or limitation which makes us human (“a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor”). Limitations are the means by which we are humanized. Otherwise we are in danger of growing into pint-sized primitive gods (i.e., tyrants) — that is the great fear of Genesis One.
Limitation and self-awareness are the two things the human couple must acquire before leaving the idyllic life in the Garden at Eden. These are essential to their effective life as part of the earth. Without limitation and awareness they will be like unformed gods — loose cannons with no effective constitutional restraints.
As long as the G_d doesn't care about anything beyond himself, he doesn't have to adapt. But as soon as she wants relationship, she has to learn how to do it. Awareness and acceptance of limitation is the means.
One of the many biblical storylines misrepresented by the orthodox is this great one about how the God-Who-Seeks-Us learns to accept the limitations which are essential to relationship. The same limitations which apply to human life, the G_d accepts for himself because she too wants relationship. The G_d’s Sacrifice is the same as that required of Adam and Eve and Jesus of Nazareth.
Limitation is not the end of joyful human life; it is not something to be discarded or bemoaned. It is the essential means by which we grow and develop. There are no exceptions to this rule — it applies even to the G_d because it is a reflection of the G_d's own nature (i.e., the Way Things Are). Limitation doesn't just come from the outside; it moves out from within. (“I will write my Law in their hearts.”)
That is what makes Yahweh a great god and worthy of worship. He is not Perfect, and does not claim to be. He is in fact by nature opposed to the abstraction embedded in the notion of Perfection. He is Real, instead. Her name is “I AM”, not John Calvin or Tom Delay. I don’t know exactly how this works out in practice, but it seems to me that the essential business of religious people lies in trying to figure it out. A religion which constantly rejects the lessons of experience is always missing the point regardless of how brilliant it may be.
So, I am going to start from this possibility — creative life arises out of noting , accepting, and using limits. Growing-up is learning how to deal with them. Pushing limits is heroic and admirable, but so is learning how to live within the edges.
Change
The edges may be moving, changing — just like the rest of life. Expecting to find even a limitation the same today as it was yesterday is preposterous. That is why Laws and Creeds don’t work in the long run — they just can’t keep up with change. A religion of Absolutes is doomed in application. What is the point in maintaining a belief system which in order to withstand the test of use requires a falsified view of reality?
Our science teaches us a few things about living with uncertainty — it’s a lot easier once you give up the illusion of Absolute Truth. There is really nothing to be said about Transcendent Being for it is by definition outside the knowable world –– such life is present only in a place like the Garden or Heaven down by the river. If we go there, we are dead.
Yahweh does not wish to stay in the Garden. He won’t stay dead. That is why he is known as Immanuel —“G_d with us”. While pushing the couple out of the Garden results in travail for them, it is not in fact a punishment if you believe that life in this world is something worth having. Calling the Expulsion from the Garden punishment is to take the child’s point of view as definitive. Their trauma in the World is only a mirror of the G_d’s own experience of living; it’s not something special to humans.
Yahweh may be a sky god, but our earth is, of course, part of the sky universe. Separating Sky from Earth is a false distinction in the 21st century. A revisioning of the G_d in our life story will require special attention to this, I think. The old Earth based religions of Europe could not withstand the power of the Christian Sky-god religion and there is no point in trying to go back to a failed vision. What we need is a vision of the G_d which corresponds to the world we experience, and an interpretation of this known world that reflects our growing understanding of the G_d. In our world sky and earth are one; neither is more or less natural than the other. What would a transcendent experience be in an all natural universe?
The G_d changes and lives in a changing world. Such a god also embraces limits (“I have come to put an ax to the tree.”), because it is limits which make possible a perceivable world, and, so, a world about which it is possible to reflect and communicate.
Word & Image
Yahweh is the god of word and image. They are the means by which he describes and experiences. He uses both in his efforts to create, deal with his need for change, and explore the edges of his current limits. Language is his means of connecting, ordering, and extending relationships. (In the overpowering experience of the G_d’s Spirit at Pentecost everyone understands everyone else’s language.)
His connection with the creative word is established immediately in Genesis One. John’s Gospel story treats him from the point of view of Greek ‘Word’ images. The G_d uses the written word in his first Commandments and it is by means of the word that he stays connected to his creatures in and out of the Garden.
He uses breath (the means by which his word is delivered) to bring his clay male/female figures to life in the second Genesis creation story.
Both word and image are connected, then, by this breathing which is called the Spirit of God. The Spirit must, then, be a rhythm (among other things). The rhythm of life is the breathing of G_d.
In today’s music world rhythm-based music is proclaimed by traditionalists to be distinctly different from melody-based music. This is the false result of peculiar either/or thinking. Poetry is rhythm based melody. Suppose G_d breaths to a rock-and-roll beat as well as to the drone of Gregorian chant?
It definitely muddies the water when you start using this both/and way of combining ideas and experiences. But isn’t that the way we really experience things in this century? It is a gift to be simple in the midst of complexity, and, it seems to me, that a proper understanding of the G_d will reflect that gift. We are looking for the ‘elegant solution’. And we are seeking it, not by ruling out things, but by drawing them in.
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