ToMAYto Or ToMAHto?

Sin just keeps popping up. Not so much in action as simply in conversation. It gets mentioned at church and in religious writings, but you have to expect that. It pops up in other places too. Just for one example, take the day my supervisor said in a humorous context: “…is God-given managerial talent, and it’s a sin to waste it.” Because of the various contexts in which the concept appears, and the ways people express their ideas about what it actually refers to, we demonstrate much disagreement about sin. It’s the “toMAYato, tomMAHto” thing all over again. And when push comes to shove, I can’t do anything but add my own opinions to the confusion.

Besides being a word that functions as noun and verb…what the heck is sin, anyway? Or…what is it not?

My first answer is this – I don’t think sin is just breaking rules. The people who “can’t drink” or “can’t dance” ” or “can’t play cards” because that would be a sin are barking up the wrong tree. Those kinds of rules attempt to address genuine issues, but wind up simply with someone controlling someone else.

I don’t believe it is a sin to make an honest mistake. No one can know all the consequences of their choices. You do the best you can with the information and wisdom you have, and sometimes you are wrong even though your intention was to do the right thing. No wrong was intended. And our motivations matter.

Nor do I think life is all about salvation that basically gets you out of “paying the price” for your sins. Among my objections to that: 1) It teaches us to be afraid of God and 2) It teaches us to despise ourselves. (Without wanting to open another can of worms, I have the feeling that those teachings are more about our fear of death than about the way we live our lives.)

I think life is about relationships. With God who is the Source of our lives. With ourselves. With our families, friends, employees, employers, fellow workers, neighbors, friends, enemies. With the natural world. With our houses, cars, trucks, boats, computers, books, pianos, guitars, lawnmowers. With the place or places where we worship. With our volunteering, use of our free time, our commitments, our recreation. With our sexuality, our bodies. We have relationships with all these things.

Furthermore, I think Jesus was talking about relationships. Relationships with God, with wealth, with those in need, with family and friends. Seek ye first…Do unto others…Give unto Caesar…The Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath…Forgive seventy times seven…Turn the other cheek…

Does that mean I do not think sin exists? Or that it is not an important issue? Not at all. If life is about relationships, it would be sinful to do things that harm or hinder strong and positive relationships. Especially when the choices we make are deliberate and conscious, when we choose actions that we know will be harmful, destructive to others and even ourselves…and we choose them anyway.

People who are contemplatives or mystics realize that we actually are all connected. God is in each of us, and that makes all of us part of that vast Being that we call God. The belief that we are separate, rather than connected, is probably the root of most of our sins. It is our condition, not evil in itself, just how things are. But if we could grasp the truth that we are connected, it would help us correct our issues. No, it isn’t just “New Age claptrap”. Mystics from all traditions tell us the same things. Including those from the Christian tradition. That makes me want to take this concept seriously.

So let me name a few things that when we do them – or don’t do them – I think we are sinning. Missing the mark. Screwing up. It isn’t a comprehensive list, just enough to give the flavor of what I’m talking about.

Anything that promotes the illusion of separation from God or others would be sinful, for that strikes at the very basis of our relationships.

Anything that can divide us, such as discrimination or bigotry (especially in the name of the God of love) is sinful.

Failure or downright refusal to open oneself to spiritual growth is sinful, for we must grow, life is about growth, and this growth nourishes and enhances our relationships. (Is life about growth? Well, how many dead things do you know that are growing?)

Failure or downright refusal to trust our Creator is sinful. How can you have a relationship with someone you don’t trust? Take fear, for instance. Fear is a natural instinct, and it warns us of dangers, but neurotic and unfounded fears are different from the natural instinct. What does fear destroy? Physical and emotional health, our relationship with our Source, and many things that we want to do but are afraid to try.

Anything that can cause harm to another is a sin. This includes all use of sex as a weapon against other people. It includes pornography, which is deeply degrading. It includes child abuse. It includes use of “power over” someone else in an abusive and destructive way. Murder, greed, theft, adultery are all things that can cause harm to others and/or relationships. Addiction to anything, substance (cocaine) or activity (gambling) interferes with both human and spiritual relationships. The things themselves may be safe in moderate amounts; it is the addiction that hurts us.

Failure or refusal to help someone in need is a sin. If God is in each of us, then when we help another person we serve God. And, if you want to link these things with self-interest, helping another also helps you or me.

(I have not included our failure to take care of our soil, air, water, etc. Some think that is a sin; others think it is our right. For my purposes here, the entire issue deserves its own post.)

So there is my take on sin. Not the following of rules, but the harming of relationships. It’s at least as long as a list of rules, isn’t it? And just as challenging. But, I trust, more conducive to growth.

Paying the Piper

This blog is supposed to be a place for pondering spiritual/religious questions, issues, lessons, observations, and so on. It is not intended to be a political blog. I don’t even consider myself a political person. I tend to say I am more spiritual than religious. I don’t even think about calling myself political.

That being said, I see things going on in our country that I believe have spiritual/religious contexts as well as political contexts, and it is legitimate for me to comment on them from that viewpoint. I am talking about our nation’s debt. And the debts of many of our states as well. Contrary to what some might believe, I do not think it is a sin to be in debt. It certainly is not wise, however, to get into the position that we are in. The Christian Bible has a lot to say about money and money management, and the book called Proverbs has quite a bit to say about debt. One thing it says is that the borrower is the servant of the lender.

You see, our debt is coming due now, and the piper demands to be paid.

As individuals, we have spent probably five decades building up personal credit, borrowing money, not living within our means. Some of this debt is necessary if half a dozen expensive things (such as dental work and car repair and a child being sick) decide to happen at the same time. Some of our debt is simply a matter of convenience. But quite a lot of our debt has happened because we want something and we will have it whether we can afford it or not. And then something happens that we may not have control over and we’re plunged into a pit of deep…well, you know.

As individual householders, we know how it works. Income and outgo have to match. If our expenses go up we either go into debt or find more income and/or change some spending habits. We know that, as individuals, as households and families.

Whatever made us think government can do any differently? As a nation, we have been spending money we do not have. We have borrowed against the future, depending on the strength of our economy to support our recklessness.

Now we have a national budget deficit that scares us – it scares me, anyway – and we’re starting to criticize the President for it. I have news for all of us. So far he hasn’t done much to reduce the deficit, but he didn’t invent it. We have been doing this to ourselves for some 50 years. Presidents and legislators from both parties have been collectively responsible for it. And we as voters have allowed it.

Guess what! The future has arrived! We have to start paying our debt down before we capsize under its weight.

Guess what! The longer we put it off, the harder and more difficult our debt will be to deal with.

And guess what! Blaming others will not help! We have all done it to ourselves, and we will all have to suffer the consequences of our folly. Nobody likes to think of it. That includes me. I have little, and I don’t like the thought of losing even a tad of it.

Recently, we voted a whole bunch of people into office because they said they would cut spending and balance the budget without raising taxes. Of course we want a balanced budget, right?

Sure we do. Until we hear that the budget balancers are going to cut funds for things we want. Then we squeal. “Cut someone else’s thing,” we protest, “and leave mine alone.” Sorry, friends, it doesn’t work like that. Our situation is serious, and everyone will have to feel the pain in order to fix it.

Do we have the courage to make our politicians do what is necessary? Do we understand that the longer we wait, the harder and more painful it will be to fix this situation? Can we accept the teaching in our Bible about living within our means?

Do we?

Can we?

Doggone it, we had better! Do we really want to be the servant to our lenders? Of course not. So let’s buckle down and get to work!

What Is Wrong With Christmas?

All my life, I have loved Christmas. The colors. The activities and the swirling crowds. The stories. The parties. The generous spirit which, alas, disappears by December 28 every year. The music. Ah, the music. What can I say? I’m in heaven at Christmas time with all the wonderful music that comes out. I enjoy most of the traditional songs, and I positively drool over the seasonal classical music you can find on NPR or PBS, or at local concerts.

Although my beliefs have been transformed so that they no longer embrace many standard Christian teachings, I have continued to love Christmas. Probably for the more “pagan” aspects of the season, for the Bible stories become stranger to me each year. (None of that affects my love of the music.)

Musicians are usually very busy at Christmas and Easter, including me this year, for with a week’s notice I was resurrecting a piano piece and my half of a duet to help my sister out She had been asked, at the last minute, to provide ten minutes of preludes before her church’s Christmas Eve service.

So on top of everything else I do at Christmas, I was seriously practicing.

It really crowded everything else I generally do: cards by snail mail, cards over the internet, shopping, wrapping, baking (not a lot, usually, but some), putting up and decorating my small tree. In fact, there was no baking. I barely got the punch made that I consume during the season, especially when putting up and taking down the tree.

And this year, doggone it, I didn’t really enjoy any of it. I enjoyed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. That was it.

What really gets me is that everyone else feels the same way I do. When was the last time I heard someone say they were sorry that Christmas was over? Why? What makes us rush around cramming all that activity into a few weeks when we don’t enjoy it? Is there a way I can streamline this, so that Christmas can be enjoyable again?

One thing I might do is start earlier. Which means, before Thanksgiving. I refuse to do that. Thanksgiving is too meaningful for me, and I will not let it get buried in yuletide busy-ness. There has to be another way.

One thing I might do to ease Christmas stress is send cards only to people that I don’t keep in touch with throughout the year. And send as many e-cards, and as few snail-cards, as possible. Local telephone calls would also help to cut the “card load”.

The thing that would really reduce the time and pressure for me is…cutting out that shopping. I can bake presents for local friends, as needed. As for the family, my young great-nephew and I may try to push for a change in the way the family does gifts. That might give us all something new to think about during the season, while easing some of the pressures for all of us. Of course, that all depends on the willingness of the family to go along. Except for my great-nephew who is college now, we have enough stuff anyway.

I will have to think about it this coming year. I love Christmas too much to tolerate being unable to enjoy it. For me, the stories will make a little less sense next year than they did this year. There’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t go backwards, which would undo the marvelous moment that turned me into this Creator-besotted person. But I can work to ease the stresses and re-open myself to the joys of the season.

Christmas is supposed to be a celebration, after all. So let’s enjoy it!

How to Have an Argument

A friend and I got into a discussion about global warming recently at church, and I am glad because it helped me to clarify my thinking and, at the same time, demonstrated that we really can have civilized disagreements about these issues.

I don’t remember now how it got started. But I said something supportive about global warming, and that was when he interrupted me.

“Well, we are at polar opposites there because I think global warming is a big, fat lie!” He looked straight into my eyes and added, “Who is really in charge of the temperature of the earth anyway?”

My heart sank, because I sensed his answer would be the theistic God that I no longer believe in, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I could get out of this one without really getting into an argument. Global warming is a safer argument in church than your interpretation of God! (Even if we do each have our own interpretation of God, mine is off the charts in a farm town. Fewer people are more conservative than farmers.) “That’s okay,” I said, “but then how do you explain the melting glaciers? How do you explain the fact that when they talk about the 10 hottest years or summers in the last 100 years of record, around half of them are in the last 15 or 20 years?”

He went on to explain his belief that the earth’s temperature has always fluctuated and it is just doing that now. And “they” will slap the taxes on us to fight global warming when human beings have absolutely no control of global temperature. And all this debating will achieve is to throw a lot of money at the problem without doing anything to solve it. (I can’t deny that is often the way these things turn out!) He thinks that, while the earth may be warming, God is in control and man can’t do anything about it.

So what he really doubts isn’t the warming itself, but the belief that we cause it and can do something about stopping it.

At that point I sensed the beginnings of common beliefs, and I was able to proceed with an open mind. “I will agree that no one really knows what is causing the warming,” I replied, “and I honestly don’t think anybody really knows if we are the cause or not. But I do think we should do whatever we can.”

That was the point of clarification in my thinking. I believe in global warming, and I think we should do what we can to slow it down (I doubt we can stop it entirely). But whether it is a fact or a myth, there is a real issue underlying it.

“I think the real issue is the environment,” I went on.”We are poisoning our water, our soil, and our air. We have to get that cleaned up. We can’t spoil our home; we have nowhere else to go.”

My friend, a farmer, agreed entirely that the environment is the real issue. We spent a few minutes agreeing on various aspects of that, and then went off toward the parlor, and he was saying, “Now, see? We found common things.”

I grinned. “Of course, you’re either a bad American or a bad Christian because you disagree with me. And that is the kind of talk we need to get rid of. People should be able to have civilized disagreements.”

“I agree wholeheartedly!”

That is the way to have an argument. Try to be open-minded, try to have respect for the other (not hard in this case, I think the world of this man and his wife), and find the things that are common. You might even learn something. What I learned is this: While I do believe global warming is a genuine issue, the total environmental picture is the issue I’m really concerned about, and whether the globe is warming or not, whether we can do anything about it or not, we still need to be cleaning up our pollution.

When I saw this friend at choir practice a couple of days later, we got to talking about our conversation on Sunday, and it turned out that we both had given it a lot of thought. We both concluded it was a very positive and constructive discussion.

Now that is a really spiffy way to have an argument!

One Battle That Ego Lost

“I don’t usually feel my musician’s temperament,” said my sister, L, “but I’m not a happy camper right now.” And with that statement, she offered me the paper in her hand.

My own musician’s temperament began rising too, as I saw that our piano duet was scheduled to be the postlude at her church’s Christmas Eve service. What’s more, someone else was singing the same song that we were planning to play. Neither of us wanted to be childish about a comparatively minor thing, but obviously it wasn’t that minor to us.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was attending a funeral, my sister’s pastor asked me to play at the upcoming Christmas Eve service. I was happy to do so. It is, after all, flattering to be asked. But since L attends this church (she shares the responsibility of playing the organ for services) I thought it was appropriate for her to be involved, so I talked to her and we agreed to play a duet.
I need to digress for a moment. People who start out in life as music majors, or in any type of live performance field, and often in any creative field whether or not it involves live performance, tend to have large egos. It isn’t always the best and easiest quality to live with; even the person with the ego has trouble with it. But how would you manage to go out in front of a few hundred or a few thousand people and risk making a total fool of yourself…without a strong ego?

The problem I have with it, personally, is that in situations that do not involve performance, I still have to deal with an ego that sometimes leads me down the garden path. At times it can be downright embarrassing, and at other times it can be the source of temptation. As it was that evening.

You see, the postlude, being “post”, is at the end of the service, when people are putting on their coats, wishing each other a Merry Christmas, and heading home to bed. (This service lets out around 11:00p.) In other words, they wouldn’t be paying any attention to the music. In fact, usually this service doesn’t even have music going on while the people are leaving.

Unless I’m playing at a reception or some other social situation, I am never happy when people presumably would listen to the music but choose not to. (It doesn’t matter who is playing. Some church ladies whispered once all through our organist’s performance at a church dinner, and I wanted to physically carry them out of the room. It was part of the program after we had eaten, and they should have been listening.) I take music seriously and I want others to respect it. The most obvious way to do that is to listen to it.

My ego, however, had to get involved because I had been specifically invited to play as a sort of guest performer. And my ego did not appreciate being relegated to a spot on the program where the music wouldn’t be heard. How much of my upset was for the sake of the music, and how much was for the sake of my ego, I honestly can’t say. It was probably a mix. It’s likely that the majority of it was ego, even so.

This pastor intended nothing malicious or insensitive. However, he wasn’t in charge of planning the music, and I doubt that he communicated with the lady who was. And my sister and I were trying to determine how we wanted to respond to the situation.

My sister decided to play, be gracious, and take it from there. I agreed with that, but I also planned a polite protest, after a long cooling-off period.

But the more I thought about it, the more dissatisfied I became with my solution.

I’m reading a commentary on the Tao Te Ching right now (Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life, by Wayne Dyer), and one of the points the book makes is that the best thing to do is … nothing. Here is a quote from Verse 48: “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It cannot be gained by interfering.”

So I was thinking about that the next day while walking after work. There isn’t much to look at when you’re walking back and forth in hallways of an apartment building, so I use the time to think about creative projects or life problems that I need to work out. I asked myself: “Who is this for, anyway, my Source or myself? It should be for my Source.” Using my musical talent expresses something Source has given me, and it is first and foremost done to love and praise Source.

That led to: “OK, when did Jesus ever take action to defend his ego?” The stories we have, as I understand them, paint a picture of a man who clearly knew who he was and was comfortable with that, to the point that he never felt insecure or threatened where his ego lived. Though I no longer subscribe to Christian theology, I still seek to follow Jesus’ example, and that thought simply showed me the thing to do: Let it go, play, and move on.

So I did.

And guess what. A couple of people backed out of the program at the last minute, L and I we were moved up, and our duet didn’t have to be the postlude after all. It was well received, I told my sister’s pastor that I appreciated being asked to play, and the thing slipped harmlessly into the past.

What is the lesson to learn here? Did I, in fact, “change my thoughts and change my life”? Is it possible to conclude that I can affect things like that? If so, I clearly need to learn this lesson and apply it. You wouldn’t believe the life issues I would like to see resolved!

Being Different

On the way to work the other morning, in a dense fog (I mean a real fog, not a mental one), I was singing along with the radio. In fact, I found myself singing about Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. It’s a cute song, and we all know it. If it contains a lesson, it is this: The individual who isn’t like everyone else still has value.

That morning, I began to think about all the things it says.

Have you really noticed how the song starts? The other reindeer make fun of poor Rudolph because he has such a funny nose. They laugh at him. They also discriminate against him, not inviting him to play with them. The poor little guy is left all alone, without friends, soaking in unhappiness.

But then one day…they need him. Ah! What a difference that makes! “Oh, Rudolph, won’t you help us tonight so we don’t run ourselves into any mountains or airliners?” “Pretty please?” Rudolph graciously consents to guide the sleigh, and he comes through. All of a sudden, he is popular. Even legendary, for he will go down in history.

Don’t you wonder how it would have turned out if Rudolph had said, “Well, if I’m not good enough to play with you, I’m not good enough to guide the sleigh.” You wouldn’t blame him if he made them beg him to help. The fact that he didn’t do that reflects his goodness. Or it may simply reflect the fact that it was Santa, not the other reindeer, who asked him. Even at the North Pole, you don’t say No to your boss.

And don’t you wonder what the other reindeer did after the excitement wore off? Did they start to like Rudolph? Did they remember that he had value? O or did they just go back to making fun of him and shutting him out of the games?

I hope that, after the story in the song is over, Rudolph became permanently accepted into the herd. If the reindeer continued to reflect human nature, however, that happy ending wasn’t guaranteed.

For this song reflects our own nature. We discriminate against those who are different from the majority. That means there is a whole bunch of discriminating that we do – on the basis of race, skin color, religious belief, sexual orientation and/or lifestyle. And if we need these folks, we use them and then we frequently throw them out with the trash when the need has passed. And the only thing “wrong” with them is that they aren’t like us. They are Different.

We live in a time, however, when some people have a different conception of the way the universe is set up, and they make an astonishing claim: We are not separate at all. We are actually all One, One with the universe and with each other. It erases our differences. You can’t be serious. We’re all One? You’re not kidding me? You mean I have no genuine reason to discriminate against anyone else?

Well, we all put our shoes on one foot at a time, as far as I know, and we all bleed red stuff. That ought to go toward confirming this concept.

Today is Christmas Eve. Today and tomorrow are the days when we celebrate that man who is hailed as the Prince of Peace. It isn’t about presents or feasts or even being with family. It’s about love. Peace. God’s toward us, and ours to share with one another. The way Jesus did – with everyone.

Even if they are different. Especially if they are different. The different ones have the greatest need.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer would say the same thing.

Merry Christmas!

Another View

After all that I said a few weeks ago about people having a fear-based relationship with God, even as I acknowledged that traditional Christians can have a love-based relationship with God individually even though the theology is still based in fear…I have found a person who clearly has a love-based relationship with what we call God.

Recently I spoke with this lady while we were on break at work. We are acquainted with each other. We have seen each other around the building for several months, briefly visited in the break room, gotten to know each other a little. When I ask her how she is, she tends to say that she is blessed. (What a lovely way to be! It’s positive, which is all people really want to hear, and it’s still personal.) She was collecting stuff for a mission project abroad last summer, and when I hinted for more information, she said, “I didn’t want to go there, but God said, “Yes, you do.’” I laughed and replied, “Well, if God says you should go, then you should,” and she agreed. (Do I think we are commanded? Not as such. But if you love God, and you believe He is telling you to do something, then you need to do it in order to be true to the love you hold for God. I don’t look on it as Obedience, but that doesn’t mean I do it for the relationship and for personal growth, not just to Obey.)

I saw her yesterday in the ladies room and asked her in the usual way how she was, and she replied, “I’m blessed, I know it, and I thank God for it!” I’ve heard her give several variations on that theme, so I wasn’t surprised by this response. But then the conversation expanded.

“We really are blessed,” I said, “and so many people take it for granted. Just being able to walk or breathe normally is such a blessing, and we take those things for granted.”

She replied, “I’m trying not to, and I hope God knows that because I keep trying to remember to tell Him so.”

“He knows your heart,” I said. At this point I want to add a clarification. I can talk to traditional Christians (and she is one, I know which church she attends) in their language because I am still comfortable in it as long as it doesn’t have to be conceptualized in certain ways. And God, whatever it actually is that we call God, certainly does know our hearts and minds and thoughts.

“He’s so great!” she exclaimed. “I love Him so much!”

“I know,” I said. “You just keep reaching and reaching for Him and you can’t get close enough.”

She understood that. “And it’s eternal!” she added, pumping her fist the way athletes do.

“And eternity starts now,” I added. “We don’t even have to wait until we die.”

“Yes!!” And we both pumped our fists.

I thought a lot about that exchange throughout the rest of the day. This friend belongs to a fairly conservative denomination and she still conceptualizes the Creator in traditional ways. I know that because of the other things I’ve heard her say from time to time. Even so, she has the energy and enthusiasm of love, and she clearly knows that this is a 24/7/365 commitment, not just a “one or two hours on Sunday and then life goes back to normal after church” type of thing. She clearly has a love-based relationship with the Higher Power that the 12-step programs talk about, the Creator that I talk about, God or Jesus that the traditional church talks about. She has met and responded to Eternal Unconditional Love.

It’s the Love and our relationship with its Source and all the creation that matters. Knowing you are loved, responding with your own love. That’s what “salvation” is all about. It doesn’t matter what we call it or how we conceptualize it. The theology is still based in fear. But guess what. Perfect love can cast out fear.

Yes! [Pump fist!]

New Commitments

My church has just completed an every-member study program this fall. Well, it was intended to be, anyhow, but there were some books left over. Hopefully the vast majority of the members are following this program at home, even if they don’t make it to the weekly small group discussions.

It was been an interesting study with an introductory section, a wrapping-it-up section, and in between we studied the Wesley Quadrennium, as some people call it. This means that John Wesley established four things about church participation: your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service. I was a little concerned at first, for the section on prayer didn’t say much that I hadn’t already discovered for myself. Since then, however, the book consistently taught and challenged me to be more aware of the others who are at church (especially to notice who is not there as well), to give more in terms of financial gifts, and to give more in terms of working in the church’s programs. I have heard many comments from various people to the effect that they liked the study and thought it was valuable. Even transforming, which is its claim.

So here I come, wanting to put in a disclaimer or two. I feel an urge to begin by saying that I no longer feel the need of an external authority to tell me what to think or what to do. And I clearly do not feel any more that Christianity is about right belief; it is, however, in a very real way, about trying to become more like Jesus, because that is what Jesus shared with us. I love this church because I grew up in it. It is in a crisis. I want to do all I can to support it, so I have taken this study seriously in spite of my attitude toward the church as an institution.

In every section the book talked about motivations for praying, attending, financial giving, or giving of time and abilities. Not just motivations, but reasons why. Why we should do these things and how we can feel motivated or motivate ourselves.

The “reasons why” were usually given thoughtfully and with Biblical references to support them (a practice known as proof-texting). The ones that stand out for me now are: because God commands it, because it is a response to God, and because when we give selflessly we receive back. Actually, they also double as motivations. The idea of believing in Jesus as Lord and Savior also came into these discussions.

Should we give because God commands it? I suppose that if you believe God commands you to give, then you had doggoned well better give. But if it is true that we actually don’t “have to” do anything (and I’ve run into that statement also, not in the church but in other readings) then I want to ask, “Who says that God commands it?” And of course there it is in the Bible, stated in a number of places, contexts, and sets of words that we are expected to give, to tithe in fact. Sometimes it appears as an actual command. It is also likely to be a “When you…” statement (when you fast, when you pray, when you give alms). It is made clear that people are expected to do these things. (The passages I am thinking of, to be literal about it, refer to the Jewish people, not to the Christians who didn’t actually exist yet, so much of this discussion comes to us through that heritage.)

But I also have this question: Does God command that we give? It makes sense to me that we have free will. We are always taught that we are free to choose to disobey God, but after we have done that we have sinned and will suffer the consequences. This makes our free will a sham. It makes sense to me that the Source of Everything, the Creator, can’t really need anything from puny us because He could just create it if He wanted it. That leads me to conclude that if He cares one way or the other, He probably desires us to do these things for our own benefit rather than for His. In that context, it makes sense to give because God tells us to, if one needs to be told what to do by another authority.

Should we give because we receive back? That is a principle, but not a reason to give, and I am suspicious of it as a motivation. One might want to experiment with it, sometime, and see how it works out. I do not think, on the face of it, that it is wise to give in order to receive. In fact, it probably won’t even work if that is your only motivation.

And I am becoming bolder even in church about saying that I believe this is about relationships – with God, with Jesus, with oneself, with others, with all the aspects of our lives, with our environment, with nature – rather than believing specific things. What we believe will inform the way we live and the choices that we make, and that is good. But when Jesus himself talked about believing, it tended to refer to believing and trusting God rather than himself. (I don’t include the teachings in the Gospel of John, which is mystical, not one of the “synoptic” Gospels.)

I am grateful that this study gave attention to the motivation that I feel personally, because otherwise I would think very little of what I have read and talked about these past six weeks. As far as I am concerned, there is only one genuine motivation to give anything to the church or to any other institution or in any other context: in response to God, in response to and gratitude for what God has done in my own life. I know Self still gets in the way – doubtless she always will - but I hope and pray that at least 50% of the things I choose and do come from this desire.

If, in expanding my commitments for the coming year, I am obeying God, that’s OK. I can handle that. But I don’t think of it as obeying. I think of it as responding, and growing in the ways I respond, and as ways to inch a tad closer to the Source of the wonderful Love that gave my life back to me on a night when I was ready to throw in the towel. Obedience couldn’t be further from my thoughts if it tried. And certainly, obedience to the institutional church is not a motivation for me.

With all that said, the study promised to transform lives. I have been changed. I am ready to expand my commitments in all four of those areas that Wesley established. Some of those commitments will go back to my church on pieces of paper. The rest are simply between God and me. I hope that the other church members are preparing to follow through in the same way, for the sake of the church we attend. I hope that many of us (all of us would be too much to ask for) have come to understand the story of the merchant who sold everything he had so he could buy a field with a humongous treasure buried in it. That is what we are offered by the Source of Love, a vast treasure of permanent wealth that starts today, not when we die. We respond to that Love by reaching out for it, going toward it, regardless of what we must brush (or maybe, sometimes, kick) out of the way. Nothing, in the end, can possibly be more important than a relationship with that Love. That is the response I hope we all will make.

Was It Condescension or Just Inexperience?

A few weeks ago, in the absence of our pastor, our young pastoral assistant gave the sermon for the Sunday service that I attend. (We have two services, a “traditional” and a “praise” or “contemporary” service. I normally attend the first one.) This assistant is a good kid, enthusiastic about his work with our new youth program, excited about his relationship with God (however he might understand God to be) – but I mean it when I say he is a kid. We hired him as a part-time staff member a little over a year ago, just as he was graduating from high school, because he wanted to work with the youth program and he is interested in becoming a minister.

I’ve heard a couple of his sermons. My basic impression has been that his thoughts are all right but not well developed, and his delivery can use some work. His greatest weaknesses as a speaker and preacher are his youth and inexperience, and those will dissolve as he studies and matures.

But that sermon a few weeks ago wasn’t like the others I have heard him give. It sounded to me like he was repeating things he had heard our pastor day. It didn’t seem well organized. I wasn’t sure exactly what he thought he was focusing on. The woman sitting next to me in the pew said later that it was condescending. My own opinion, however, was that our young pastoral assistant was basically parroting what he has been taught and has not yet begun to take his faith and make it personally appropriated. I think he will be much stronger as a minister and speaker once he has gone through that process. So again, I thought his youth was his major “obstacle.”

It got me to thinking about sermons. What should a sermon do? Inspire you to change your life? Teach you about the contents of the Bible? Teach you about Jesus? Relate the scriptural text to the way you live your life throughout the coming week? All of those are good for a sermon to do. It may depend on the situation you are in; any speech, sermon or otherwise, is shaped by the occasion and the audience.

The text and sermon should be clearly related to each other. The pastoral assistant’s text that morning was the one after the Beatitudes where Jesus talks about not hiding your light under a bushel but letting it shine before men to glorify God. We heard a sermon about the moon and also watched a video about lamps. At least the text mentioned lamps. It said nothing about the moon or even about the sun, whose light the moon reflects. It would have been clearer – also noticeably shorter – if he had just left the moon out of it. A more experienced speaker might have been able to make it work.

The sermon should focus on its object and not get diverted into side avenues. That was the other tension created by the example of the moon. In his hands, the sermon just lost its focus and its point.

And a sermon will reflect the maturity and life experience of the speaker, along with that speaker’s faith. It can do nothing else. Giving a sermon, like giving any other type of public speech, has a performance element, and every live performance forces the performer to bare his or her soul. Between preparation, content, and delivery, that is what happens in performance. At least, that is how it has been for me whether I am playing the piano, singing, or speaking. If your performance hasn’t done that, it hasn’t been effective.

I didn’t think the young man’s sermon that day did any of those things. What it revealed, I thought, was an unformed kid who has not yet begun to question and develop his own personally appropriated faith. I don’t mean to be hard on him. I’m just making an observation. If he is serious about becoming a pastor, he should be starting to understand what he believes and why he believes it. I hope his mentor is guiding him into doing that.

Just for grins, I took his text and started trying to develop my own sermon on it. Lo and behold! I too would like to talk about the moon! Maybe that’s because he got me to thinking about it. It’s tough to make the moon relevant with such a text; it would be better to find a text that talks about the moon, if I want to go ahead with this plan. I may wind up with as confused a sermon as our pastoral assistant did. But one thing I can be sure of – whatever my own sermon’s weaknesses might be, it will at least reveal a speaker with a personally appropriated faith.

Coda - Leftovers

So where does all this leave Jesus? I believe there was a Jesus, and that he attracted enemies who killed him very nastily. I believe that Jesus showed us what God is like. The Jesus we meet in the New Testament was open to all who came with humble hearts, was compassionate toward those who suffered, healed those who asked for it, and taught about a God Who loves us and Whose “Kingdom” or presence is with us now. Jesus was a human mystic, and when he said he was in God and God was in him he was making a mystical statement.

Jesus was presenting the unconditional love of God, encouraging and showing us how to be intimate with God, and saying that God is present with us now. It’s a matter of recognizing that this has always been true; it isn’t new. Christians often say that we should become more like Jesus, and at that point I want to leap to my feet and shout “Halleujah!” because that is exactly right. Jesus was telling and showing us how to live intimately with God as he did, and we should work to become like him and live intimately with God ourselves. What could be more natural? I think it is about relationship, with God and with the environment and with each other. How else can we express the kind of love that Jesus showed us?

Jesus has become for me a sort of older brother figure, who still is prominent in my inner life, but while I love him I no longer believe that he died for my sins, I do not pray to him, and I do not worship him. He confirms what I learned about God in my encounter with unconditional love. I no longer see him as my “personal Savior” but he still remains the revelation of the nature of God.

And the Trinity? One God in three Persons? I never understood that one anyway. There is God, whatever God may actually be. There is the clear presence and working of God, which is what we refer to as the Holy Spirit. There is Jesus, who reveals to us God’s basic nature. Where the “spiritual gifts” come from is now an unanswerable question. I still believe that if f I pray in tongues it somehow adds pizzazz to my praying, and I can trust that and let it go.

Is there sin? Oh, yes. We are full of it. I think it is another way of describing the human condition. There are various definitions of sin. My understanding of it is the deliberate choice to do something that you know is destructive. Honest mistakes are not sins. Knowing something is harmful, and choosing to do it anyway, is the sin. Even if what it destroys…is you yourself.

The devil? Well, my beliefs there have gone back and forth. I do believe that our darkness is energy and can take actual form. There have been times when I felt that I was under a direct attack from it. I also think we are perfectly capable of screwing up on our own and don’t need anyone else’s help in that respect. It would probably be better if we stopped blaming our flaws on the devil, took responsibility for our screwups, and made stronger efforts to clean up our act.

What about the authority of the Bible? A fundamental tenet of the Christian Reformation has always been that the final authority in matters of faith of practice can be found in the Bible (as opposed to the authority of the church). To my understanding, the Bible was written by human beings. Inspired, yes, but still human, and their humanness can be found throughout the Bible. The stories may or may not report accurately on historical events, but whether they do or not, they contain timeless truth. I still read and learn from the Bible, parts of it anyway.

What then is my final authority? It has to be that experience I had, that encounter with unconditional love. It took my faith from a learned thing to an experienced, internalized, and personally appropriated thing, and made it much stronger. Nothing yet has rocked it, not illnesses, not 9/11, not the scandals of televangelists and other ministers. None of that touches my belief that I responded to unconditional love that night.

So in the final analysis, it isn’t that I “reject” God or Jesus, but I am having a great deal of trouble getting my head around the interpretation of God and Jesus that I have been taught by the Christian church. I feel obliged to follow the concepts I learned through my encounter with unconditional love. I don’t feel obliged to live by concepts that I don’t think are God’s. That would include any idea that goes against the love that I believe God has for each of us. That would include any idea that I don’t see Jesus expressing in the Gospels. And he hasn’t disagreed with my experience.

I have been told many times by fundamentalist friends that only the Bible can be trusted, not our feelings, not our experiences, not anything else. I cannot agree with that. We need to learn from our experiences, not ignore them. And I am working to learn from mine.

A Scary God or a Loving God? - Part Three

My objections to the conventional teachings begin with the conviction that in the requirement to believe something, someone (I presume the church itself) has imposed a man-made condition on a love which God offers without conditions. So if you encounter a Love that is absolute, unconditional, and extravagant to the point of being ridiculous, and you respond with your own love, there should be an entirely different result. Whatever you believe about God now will be based on love, His for you and yours for Him, and fear will fly out the window never to return. It is impossible to be afraid of that Love.

My objections continue with the conviction that we are not isolated from God; in fact, we are intimately connected to God and each of us is invited to enjoy intimacy with God. Yes, you can enjoy God. The Source of that Love is now the most important thing in your life, and you will gladly give up any habit or “sin” that keeps you from being close to Him.

And my objections also include the realization that God, the Creator, the Universe, whatever name we wish to use for this Being Who loves us so, is humongous. He is vast enough to make all this, a universe so enormous that we can’t even travel from one side of the Milky Way to the other in a few hundred years (and that’s just one galaxy). The universe is vast and complex, full of galaxies and stars and planets, probably including many other planets that have life, and even intelligent life. We are just one rock in this place, one grain of sand on a beach. We cannot possibly grasp the vastness of the universe or the fullness of this Being Who created it. Our religions and theologies have expressed our attempts to understand God, but none can fully explain Him. They are our theories; they are not facts. No one has the right to say that “I am right and you are wrong.” (Yes, that includes me!) No one can truly say that he has the only route to God.

So how does this look in the lives of the people who respond to God by loving Him back?

The belief of being exclusive: People who have a love-based relationship with God will realize that no one really “deserves” being loved like that. The truth of it is that we don’t have to deserve it. The Love is available for everyone. God loves the other guy too, just as He loves you. Nobody is exclusive. Nobody has the “only way” to God. God welcomes all whom He loves. And He loves all of us.

The belief that you are separated from God: You discover that God, the Source of All, is in you and you are in the Source. God was always there. You have just found Him. That’s all. You and God are organic parts of each other, and you cannot be separated. Neither are you separated from other persons, for God is in them as He is in you, and that connects you. It connects us all. It should help us to build bridges to each other, instead of walls against each other.

The belief that you are separated from nature: If God is in all that He has created, then He must be in all living things. It makes supporting environmental cleanup and responsibility another way to love and serve God our Creator. If you weren’t sensitive to these issues before you learned to love God, you will probably become so.

The belief that all your passions (meaning sex) lead to the greatest sins of all: Sex is a physical expression of love, a part of nature. As a part of nature it is not dirty or sinful in itself. We may use it against one another in destructive ways but we are the problem, not sex itself. Our job is to work to eliminate whatever ways we use sex, gender, gender roles, etc. in ways that control or use others. Once we understand that sex is natural and good, and that we ourselves are the problem with it, we can stop being afraid of our bodies and start healing our sexual dysfunctions.

The belief that God punishes you in horrendous ways for your sins: Look, life isn’t easy. It is true that “old age isn’t for sissies.” All the old people we know are tough as nails. But there is no need to whine: “What did I do to deserve this?” We are free to make our mistakes, and we experience the consequences they bring us. But God’s intention is not to punish. Jesus taught, healed, and restored us. If Jesus is truly the revelation of God, then surely God teaches, heals, and restores. Could the Being Who loves you absolutely and unconditionally and extravagantly do anything else? When we ignore His guidance we suffer the natural consequences of our decisions and actions, but God will also help us get through it. It’s better to take the responsibility for your choices and work to make better ones.

One more thing. If we are connected to one another, we should start making greater efforts to get along better. If God is so huge that we can’t grasp anything except one or two very basic things about Him, there is no point in arguing with each other over our theologies or doing anything else that lets our religions get between us. It is time to start serious interfaith dialogue and get busy understanding each other.

I think I can probably summarize all that by saying that I believe entering a love-based relationship with God will not only turn your life inside out, it will turn you inside out. (I know it sounds scary, but believe me, it is worth it.) You will begin to see life and the world more clearly. You will see the kinds of things I have been describing in this post. And that is the first step in working to heal our world. And, not incidentally, ourselves as well.

A Scary God or a Loving God? – Part Two

At the risk of repeating myself:

The traditional/conventional teachings of Christianity are based on fear of God. These teachings are based on an ancient story that is really a myth. Today, however, we interpret the story as the account of an actual happening. In this story, the first human couple disobeyed God out of willfulness and He punished them for it. In fact, the doctrine of “original sin” tells us that He punishes all of us because we inherit Adam and Eve’s sins and punishment. We are literally born into sin, then, and there isn’t anything we can do to help ourselves. That is what the church tells us. (It makes me feel that I’ve been declared out before I even go into the batter’s box.)

This is where Jesus comes into it. We are taught that he came to earthly life in order to heal this breach in the God/human relationship. This he accomplished by going through a horrendous death and then being physically resurrected from the grave. In spite of all that, we must still be under some punishment; we have not been returned to the paradise from which Adam and Eve were evicted, and we are still allowed to suffer. We are no longer under the threat of eternal damnation. We still screw up, we still commit sin, but we are forgiven anyway.

In spite of this forgiveness, we still put our efforts into pleasing God. If He is not pleased, He inflicts sufferings on us. He can do it to punish, or to discipline, or because somehow it is good for us to hurt. We are constantly on the lookout for ways we offend Him, so that we might avoid doing anything to bring the holy wrath down on us. Instead of being grateful for that forgiveness, we continue to fear the angry and vindictive dictator.

How does this kind of faith work its way out in the lives of those who cling to it?

The belief of being exclusive: Only you, as a Christian, have access to God and Heaven, because Jesus as the only Son of God (or as the Incarnation of God, if you choose that belief) is the only way to find God. There are people who believe that a baby will go to hell if it dies before it can be baptized. There are people who believe that only members of their faith or their denomination will go to heaven. And many Christians believe anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus as Lord and Savior will go to hell, no matter how good they might be.

The belief that you are separated from God: God lives “up there” in Heaven, and He is far away from us. Every time you say something about God “looking down at us” you’re echoing this belief. The idea that God can’t stand us although He loves us would be impossible without the belief that we are separated from Him.

The belief that you are separate from nature: Because we believe in this separation, we have tried to dominate the natural world as an “other” thing. I look at the condition our ecology is in today, with our overpopulation, pollution, and rumors of coming water shortages, and I think we are reaping the harvest of this belief.

The belief that all your passions (meaning sex) lead to the greatest sins of all: This refers back to nature, for sex is nature. The belief of being separate from nature, then, separates us from our very bodies and their natural sexual energies. We think of sex as being dirty. We use sex-related words as profanity. We are taught that it is through the very act of sex that we pass on that old “original sin.” It also affects perceptions of women and their role in sex and giving birth. Many of us resist birth control for teens because we don’t want them to “get away with having sex,” which makes pregnancy sound like a punishment. There are still people who think of rape as something a woman invites, rather than a violent crime done against her.

The belief that God punishes you in horrendous ways for your sins: Some people thought 9/11 was God’s punishment on our nation for our sinful ways, meaning women’s liberation and abortions and the gay rights movement. I also think of the nun who told my friend X, who is suffering from a brain tumor, that she (X) has this illness because of some terrible sin she has committed. (I’m sure the nun thought she was speaking in love, and meant that my friend could be healed if she would confess this sin and repent.)

All of that, in my estimation, derives from a faith that is based on fear of God as dictator, police officer, judge, and jury. If your ideas are based on fear, then you live in fear of God. Even if you love Jesus, you may still be afraid of that almighty judge. Do the people who show the types of attitudes and behavior I have described even realize that they are afraid of God? I suspect not.

But if you encounter and respond to a Love that is absolute, unconditional, and extravagant to the point of being ridiculous, there should be an entirely different result. If you return that Love with your own love…

I really am going somewhere with all this. Be patient. And stay tuned.

A Scary God or a Loving God? – Part One

I have decided to try to work out a huge subject in a sort-of series. If I want to begin to encourage others to base their relationships with God on love rather than on fear, and I believe people need to be encouraged to do so, then let me work out some basics about what all that involves. This is what I believe about God:

God exists. He is the Creator of this universe. He loves every bit of this vast creation, and that includes each of us. He lives within each of us (immanent). Yes, He is also outside of us (transcendent). But my point is that we are not separated from Him. He desires intimate personal relationships with each of us. He is morally better than we are. He is more knowledgeable and more powerful than we are. He lets us live out the consequences of our choices and actions. He is there to strengthen us through that if it becomes, well, unpleasant. He is in everything that comes to us, including the things we don’t like, but I honestly believe that life is just that way. In fact, we grow more profoundly in hard times than we do in easy ones.

Let me inject one disclaimer. In spite of my use of the masculine pronoun, I do not believe God is male. I believe that God carries all genders in His nature. However, I am comfortable with thinking of God as my “heavenly father.” And to say things like “God doesn’t impose Godself on…” is extremely awkward. I just stick with the masculine pronoun. Let me add that I frequently call God Mother, Creator, Source, and Universe also.

These are things that we are taught about God, by the church and/or by “conventional” faith.

God is a sort of “super human,” bigger than we are, smarter and more powerful than we are, as offendable and violent and vindictive as we are. He sits on His throne in the sky with zapper in hand, ready to let us have it if we make a misstep. He is a kind of benevolent dictator, loving and favoring us as long as we come up to His standards, ferocious and mean if we mess up. Even if we do our best to obey Him, He might still inflict terrible suffering on us “for our own good” if that is His will. And on top of all that we will be condemned to hell for eternity.

My own church teaches me that God is perfection itself, and we are horrendously imperfect. Perfection cannot live with imperfection. In other words, He loves us and can’t stand us all in the same moment. Theoretically, then, we are destined to spend eternity in hell, where we are far away from the perfection of God. But He still loves us, so He made a way out for us. Because Jesus died for our sins on the cross, we are saved. All we have to do is believe that Jesus did this, and we can go to heaven.

This all puts God outside of us, gives us a feeling of isolation from Him. And it leaves us with a tormenting question: He knows all, does all, and loves all, but we can’t explain how or why God allows such enormous suffering among His children.

I used to believe most of that stuff myself. I don’t any more. I am not trying to be arrogant; I just had an experience, almost 30 years ago, that taught me another way to look at God. It just happens to take me beyond the traditional faith that I was taught and into other paths. I came away from this experience knowing that I was loved greatly by this Being, that I wanted to get as close to this Being as I possibly could and stay there for the rest of my life, and that He is far above us and much vaster than we can grasp.

I know now that God loves me absolutely and unconditionally. There is a Mt. Everest somewhere, made of love that is all for me; when I use that love, it grows. There is no reason at all for God to single me out and give me such love (I totally fail to merit it), which tells me that I am not special and that He must love everyone the same way He loves me. He doesn’t favor any one of us over another, for He loves each of us. And everyone has his or her own Mt. Everest somewhere.

I went nowhere during this experience; it was an internal epiphany. That tells me that God is within me. He always has been. So much for His inability to be close to my imperfections! (Since that night, I have had other experiences that confirmed this conclusion.)

Because God is so vast and incomprehensible, we might as well stop arguing among ourselves about His true nature, what He wants, how He should be worshiped, etc. We all misunderstand God. One person’s misunderstanding is no better or worse than another person’s misunderstanding. No set of rules is superior to any other set of rules. There are countless ways to get to God, just as there are many roads that lead to New York City or San Francisco.

Because He loves each of us absolutely and unconditionally, He doesn’t care if we are male or female, black or white, gay or straight, Democrat or Republican. Dare I say it? Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Assembly of God. Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim.

So what has pushed me in this new direction? I’m not a theologian. I can’t quote the Bible chapter and verse. I’m just a laywoman who has been transformed. Now all my beliefs and ideas about things of God are filtered through that transformative experience. The faith I was taught as a child no longer makes sense to me in the light of what that experience taught me. That’s all there is to it.

The reason I have gone on at such length here is that I observe that many people are afraid of God. I am here to say that we are loved, and we have nothing to be afraid of. I met that Love. I know it. I am loved absolutely. And I trust that Love absolutely. So can anyone else.

Stay tuned.

Calendar: January 14 and February 1

After several weeks in which I became immersed in some Conversations With God books, I am finally back. As I work through some reflections on Walsch's writings, I will probably make some comments here. Today, though, I am going through calendar pages to start cleaning them off my computer desk.

The Dalai Lama quote for January 14 contains the statement that followers of the Buddha should take his life (the Buddha's, not the Dalai Lama's) as a model.

How I wish the Christian church would say that! I believe that one major tenet of Christianity is that Jesus shows God to us. There are a number of Christianity's tenets that give me problems; this one, however, is spot on. Jesus does show God to us.

What, then, does Jesus show us about God? He shows us that God accepts everyone who honestly seeks Him; we don't see stories where Jesus turned people away because they were the wrong color, had the wrong lifestyle, or believed the wrong things. He shows us that God cares about the marginalized; Jesus was normally found among tax collectors and sinners, not in the company of respectable people. He shows us that God would heal us, teach us, help us to live better lives.

Why doesn't the church teach us these things about God? And about how Jesus shows us these things about God? Why do we keep hearing about sin and salvation, about how Jesus is the only way to God, about the threat of hell if we fail to believe that Jesus was the biological son of God?

Those aren't the things Jesus told us about. Those aren't the things Jesus showed in his life.

If we can follow Jesus' teachings and example, loving and helping others, maintaining an intimate relationship with God as he did, we are truly Christians, aren't we? Isn't that what a follower of Jesus would do?

Moving on to another month, the page for February 1 says this: "When I consider the lack of cooperation in human society, I can only conclude that it stems from ignorance of our interdependent nature."

I would add to that, "Nor do we understand the natural world and our relationship to it."

The reason I want to say that is to spell it out: We are part of the natural world. This planet is part of the natural universe, and every living thing on it is part of the natural world. That includes us human beings.

And we had better learn, quickly, that we are interdependent with the rest of the natural world. We are not separate from nature; we cannot dominate it as though it were something external from us. We have dominated it for so long that we are now destroying our environment. Let's be up front about that. Our soil is disappearing, our soil (such as we have left) and air and water are all polluted, our food supply is polluted with chemicals, and every time we turn around there is another warning or news story about something that threatens us. We also have overpopulated the earth; the only reason we aren't standing elbow-to-elbow throughout all the continents is that we, in the absence of natural predators, prey on each other through war (which with today's technology offers more sources of pollution).

There is a theory held by some that the planet has decided we are vermin and must be gotten rid of. That is scary! Is it true? There isn't any way to really know. But we sure have found some awfully weird diseases in the past several years.

Gloom and doom? I hope not. But we need to wake up, stop arguing about non-issues and roll up our shirtsleeves.

A good beginning would be to heed the Dalai Lama's words. We are interdependent. What happens in Iraq affects something that happens in Alaska. What happens in Chicago can affect people in Chile. Let's understand that and become serious about healing our environment.

Book Review: Come Be My Light

Ever since I heard about this collection of Mother Teresa's letters, I have been eager to read it. While she lived, I found her fascinating and more than a little intimidating. I admired her devotion to the poor of India even as I knew that I was nowhere near that level of living myself. We all admired her. We all saw the humor and strength and dedication in the woman. One way we can judge her impact on us is the many different places in which she is mentioned; I just finished a book on leadership which gave her as an example in a couple of places.

Now we know just how tough she really was.

The letters and other writings were edited and commented upon by Brian Kolodiejchuk, a Roman Catholic priest who is working to persuade the church to name Mother Teresa a saint. The book is published by Doubleday. Incidentally, I found the commentary extremely helpful because the letters refer to things a Catholic might know (or might not) but a Protestant would not, and these things were explained and clarified for the reader.

The letters are presented in a fairly consistent chronological order, which gives the reader a brief view of the events of Mother Teresa's life. The book begins as she left her home to become a nun, follows her to India, shows her life there as a nun, and then follows the events that took her out of her original order (Sisters of Loreto) to found the Missionaries of Charity. We read about the beginning of her work with India's poor, its growth, Mother Teresa's own growing fame, and eventually of the decline of her health.

But the treasure of this book, to me, is that we can also follow her spiritual development. She had a period of mystical contact with Jesus, and during this period she received the call to take Jesus and his love to the poor of India. After that period, she lived the rest of her life with no mystical contact whatsoever.

As we read her letters, we follow the agony of that separation and her eventual acceptance of it, a process that required many years. Through all of it, she was determined to serve with a smile, and to give Jesus whatever he required, and to give it happily and without reservation. While she felt empty and dark within her soul, she was a beacon of that love for the rest of us, and we had no idea of what she was feeling.

As a sort-of mystic myself, I can only imagine what it would be like to have that union for a few months - and then have it removed from me. I haven't had such an experience, but I am sure such a loss would be devastating. It probably compares with losing the color in your TV set and watching everything in black and white. It may compare with losing your sense of smell, so that when you eat your food is virtually tasteless.

And Mother Teresa not only endured it, she transcended it, and with a style that most of us could only aspire to.

When I began reading, I admired her. When I finished, admiration had changed to love.

Come Be My Light is a fascinating book. Anyone interested in saints, nuns, mystics of our time or any time, biography or published letters would surely find it as absorbing as I did.

Thoughts From the Study Group

"You have to die before you can be resurrected. You have to be totally extinguished. Then you can be fully renewed."

"God is forgiving, but He can't coexist with sin. Even an innocent mistake is still sin."

"Sin has to be paid for."

These are statements I heard last night at my church's weekly study group. (We're slowly going through Max Lucado's 3:16, and while I think Lucado is a fine writer I am far from agreeing with him on matters of faith. Still, I believe I can learn something from this study and leave behind whatever I cannot agree with or learn from.) They were made by my pastor. They all waved red flags at me. At one point I almost asked a question that would have made the discussion extremely interesting, but then I decided that the discussion would be better held in private.

It all goes to the root of my problem with the Christian tradition.

It makes sense that you have to be totally extinguished before you can be renewed. Any crumb left from the original can come back to haunt you if you're renewed prematurely. I was totally renewed one night almost 27 years ago, and I happily died to my old life and accepted birth into the new one. Fine. (Pronounced FEE-nay, this is Italian for "the end.")

From then on, nothing made sense.

"God is forgiving, but He cannot coexist with sin." That's because, in His perfection, He can't stand imperfection. Sounds like matter and anti-matter to me. They can't exist in the same place. Well, I was nothing but misery and anger and, yes, sin that night when I met Him, and He had His chance to let me have it. He let me have it, all right; He let me have my life back, cleaned and fresh and new. Doesn't seem judgmental or vindictive to me.

"Even an innocent mistake is still sin." Whatever happened to the matter of your intention? We all make innocent mistakes. We all make wrong choices even if we think we're making good ones. You make the best choice you can with the understanding available to you, and sometimes it blows up on you. But your intention was right, and God knows that.

"Sin has to be paid for." You get out of the payment by believing that Jesus died in your place. That is a condition. We don't get forgiveness unless we do something. Where is grace? Where is the unconditional love I met one night?

So let's take another look at this. I have started to reread another Marcus Borg book. This one is Jesus: A New Vision. Hear what Borg says on page 103: "To say that God is gracious means that the relationship with God is not dependent upon performance . . . The relationship is prior to that." In other words, God already loves us! Love is God's nature, and God loves us from the beginning. All God actually wants from us is to love Him back, to be in relationship with Him. That way we are open to His leading and He can heal us.

That sounds much more effective than the other way.

What Is Salvation Anyway?

In The God We Never Knew, Marcus Borg asks an interesting question about salvation: Is it about the next life or about this life?

He goes into Biblical images of salvation such as bondage and liberation, estrangement and reconciliation, or salvation as enlightenment or forgiveness or experiencing the love of God.

The basic beliefs about salvation that we hear of today are that we get to go to Heaven when we die, if we believe that Jesus died on the cross to give us forgiveness for our sins. That adds a condition; we aren't forgiven for our sins unless we meet a requirement. (So much for grace!) What Borg points out is that we think of salvation as being connected to the idea of an afterlife. Why, after all, should we bother to do good here on earth if there is no reward for it in the afterlife?

If there is really anything to grace, God loves us in spite of our sins and screwups. Knowing God's unconditional love and acceptance is surely salvation, because it is healing and liberating. (I know; I've been there.)

So if you experience this unconditional love, and you are healed and liberated, you will literally be reborn. (I was, anyway.) If resurrection is taken as a dying to the old life and being born into a new one, then we see that in the cross and its aftermath.

And notice that this refers to knowing God. Not knowing about God. Actual experience, an encounter with the Divine, is how you get to know God. Nothing else changes you.

Borg has a lot more to say about salvation. I am branching off at this point.

For a long time, I have believed that salvation was simply knowing that God loves you. And I have been convinced for 27 years that the important thing is to have a relationship with God, not to believe this or that doctrine. I am saved. I have this relationship. I am already in the Kingdom. The afterlife, whatever it is going to be, will only continue what has begun in this life.

Basic Spiritual Disciplines?

Recently we had a sermon in church about your work ethic. That didn't mean your work ethic at work. It meant your work ethic in the church. Whether you contribute time and effort to the work of the church. Whether you work at being an asset rather than a liability. Using your gifts for the good of the congregation. You express your Christianity by doing all that stuff.

Fine.

But then we hit a snag. Basic spiritual disciplines for the individual member were described as: attending worship weekly, Bible study daily, and tithing the full 10% of your income.

After the service I asked the pastor, "Where is prayer in that?" I know that he personally believes in prayer, but while he agreed that prayer is important, he didn't try to explain why he hadn't included it in his list of basic spiritual disciplines. Maybe the congregation has given him reason to think they don't care about it. I don't know.

Let me put it this way. I have begun to reread The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg, and so far he has written about two basic ways we can look at God. Either God is a King (remote male authority figure who dominates us so that we have to obey) or God is a Spirit (right-here compassionate figure who desires to have a loving relationship with each of us). Borg and I both prefer the idea of God as Spirit, remembering of course that there is no actual word or concept that can begin to describe God with any accuracy.

Borg concludes one chapter with this summary: God is real, the Christian life is about entering into a relationship with God as we see God in Jesus, and this relationship can and will change your life. (This is page 51 in my copy.)

What I get out of it is this. The first statement is right on. The relationship is with God as shown by Jesus; it is not a relationship with Jesus himself. And I can testify about how it changes lives. So can many others.

How do we get this relationship? Again, here is Borg: "Prayer is attending to our relationship with God." (This is page 123.)

There are many types of prayer, and many books about prayer, enough to fill a library. In all of them we can open to a relationship with God. But nothing does it like contemplative or silent prayer. Centering prayer. Prayer of examen. Lectio divina done in combination with centering prayer. That last one is also an in-depth way to do some Bible study as well. Those are the applications of contemplative prayer that I am familiar with. I'm sure there are many others as well.

Worship, tithing, and Bible study are all good. I either do them now or have done them in the past. When I get my new life straightened out I may be doing all of them at once. Who knows? But they don't provide what prayer provides. The way to establish and nurture an intimate relationship with God is prayer. And to me anyway, that is the essential thing. There is no life worth living without such a relationship.

And so we need to pray.

That's all there is to it.

Chewing on the Lessons Part Two

Have we settled the first point? The unconditional love, etc.? Probably not. You could argue that it is unconditional because of the cross - but that still sounds like the cross itself is a condition. So that gets me to wondering how and why we have gotten so afraid of God that we want a go-between to approach God on our behalf. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I do not feel the need of a go-between, and I am not certain we need one. If we are intended to have an intimate relationship with God, one on one, what would the go-between do? Is Jesus the Wayshower? Of course. Is Jesus the Example? Certainly. To me, anyway, he is. Is Jesus the Son of God? God Himself? Does it matter? One way or the other, he showed God to us, and if we are already loved unconditionally, is it necessary for us to be "redeemed?"

And that, believe it or not, brings me to the second point.

The other basic fact I have been chewing on is that God, the Source of All Things, the Universe, even (if you don't mind getting ultramodern here) the Particle Field - whatever that Being is that we call God - is totally and absolutely above and beyond all our ideas, concepts, and theologies about Him.

God is whatever God is, and nothing we believe about God can even approach the reality of God. Because I want my personal beliefs to be authentic to me, I have had to question all that I have been taught about God before my Encounter that night.

Let me put it this way. I am playing a keyboard piece by Mr. John Doe, who wrote this music in 1776. I am working from an edition made by some poor scholar who compared every version of this music, note by note, to determine which are Mr. Doe's original notes and which are mistakes. (This kind of edition has ways to tell you which is which.) If the editor could not decide, in the second measure of the composition, what one specific note should be, he has to provide his own guess plus the other choices. If I think one of the alternative choices makes sense, I have the right to play it that way. I don't have to accept the editor's choice.

I come to the nature of God, God's love for us, etc., with this attitude: If I am convinced something is of God (the "composer"), I honor it to the best of my ability. If I believe it is most likely to have originated with mankind (the "editor"), I feel no obligation whatsoever to honor it. I can choose to do so if it makes sense to me.

And to me it seems that all our theologies, creeds, doctrines, dogmas, and so on are simply mankind's own ideas about God. Our own guesses. Our own opinions. I don't believe they have come to us from God at all.

The conclusion this led me to is: We are free to believe what makes sense to us about God, but it is ours, not God's. Why else can we have so many religions? So many branches within one religion? In Christianity, even, so many branches within a single denomination? Is it not because we all develop our own ideas about God? If all this came from God, wouldn't it be more consistent and less varied?

And the conclusion that led me to is: Whatever we believe about God doesn't touch God. All our wrangling and feuding and wars over our beliefs are a complete waste of time, energy, and all too frequently our lives.

It would be comical, if it weren't such a tragic waste.

Chewing on the Lessons

Now to begin explaining how I got from there to here.

God loves me absolutely and unconditionally. And extravagantly! A whole mountain of love just for me? If that isn't extravagant, what is?

Wait a minute. I had been cursing God, I can't say I hated God but for sure I didn't like Him very much, yet there I was, placing myself in His power, saying, "Whether I live or die, it's Your decision." No wonder I hesitated! What would any of us do in such a situation? If God is as angry and judgmental and vindictive as we have been taught, wouldn't He have zapped me for good? Instead of doing that, He handed me my life back to me on a silver platter.

Why me? Not, why did I have to get so sick, but why does God love me so much? What am I to God? What is special about me?

The answer to that one, frankly, is: NOTHING AT ALL!

So what does that mean? Is it possible that God loves everyone the way He loves me? I am unique, and in that respect I am special to God, but if God loves everyone the way He loves me, there is nothing to recommend me. Nothing at all.

So the first thing I realized was that God does, indeed, love everyone the way He loves me. Sometimes that is hard to face. After 9/11 I struggled with it, because if God loves everyone the way He loves me, then He loves those men who hijacked the airplanes and flew them into the towers. There's no getting away from that. He loves Hitler and Stalin the same way He loves you and me. I still struggle with it, but there is no other way. Either God loves all of us, or God doesn't.

Along with that came the realization that I now desired to have an intimate personal relationship with God. No, not desired, itched to. Ached to! I have explored quite a few things since then, each with the hope that it would bring me closer to God. And they have done so.

Again, am I special? Well, we already know the answer to that one. Then could it be that God desires to have an intimate personal relationship with each of us? Why not? He loves each of us. Wouldn't it be natural for God to desire relationship with each of us?

But then the earthquakes began. This love is absolute. This love is unconditional. What does that say about Jesus? The church's teaching about Jesus makes the cross sound like a condition of an unconditional love. I haven't been able to get around that either. I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination and I'm clinging to membership in it even now, but I hear nothing said in church about unconditional love. Or of God's love for each of us. I hear a lot about Jesus. We sing to Jesus, we pray to Jesus, and we literally worship Jesus. It's painful. To me, God is the Head Honcho, the Big Cheese, and it is God Whom I worship. Jesus clearly had a very close relationship with God, a mystical relationship, and everything my Encounter taught me is confirmed in him. But I do not worship him.

And in all the church's emphasis on Bible study and mission, which are good, there is no guidance for people like me who seek to know God intimately, through experience. Up close and personal.

So the result of the activity on the first point is that God loves each of us absolutely, unconditionally, and extravagantly. God desires to have an intimate personal relationship with each of us. And, sadly, I am no longer at home in the tradition in which I grew up. I am not quite sure yet what I will do about that. When in doubt, wait, and I am waiting for the solution to come.

And it will, when I am ready for it.