About Our Beliefs in the Public Arena

I have been saving this cutout for a couple of weeks now, until I could get back here and unburden myself. Generally I do not invest in newspapers, but I have been purchasing Sunday papers for their want ads, and a couple of weeks ago I ran into a column by Cokie and Steve Roberts. They were writing about the role faith should play in our politics.

What we believe (whatever it might be for any individual) should form the basis for our lives - our relationships with one another, our sense of responsibility to society, our treatment of the environment, etc. Isn't that what beliefs are for, after all?

If we get involved in politics at any level - local, state, national, or even international - our beliefs and values are going to influence our decisions. That is obvious. If there is any place where you would want your values to influence anything, it surely would be in politics.

So what is the beef with the conservative Right?

It wasn't until I read Cokie and Steve's column that I saw the distinction expressed in clear language. It is one thing to do your political work according to your values and beliefs; it is proper for them to be your guide. It is another thing entirely to use them as a blueprint for public policy which imposes your values on others who don't agree with you.

And that is what scares me (and I doubt that I am alone) about the conservative Right. They are doing just that. And while I hear that they are in the minority, they seem to be positioning themselves to make their beliefs the law of the land. That will be worse than sad, if it actually happens. I hope that we will wake up before it goes that far.

Where Have I Been?!

I hadn't realized it has been a whole three weeks since I wrote. A lot has happened. A lot of anger and emotion came roaring out of me a little over a week ago, and it has taken me this long to recuperate from the experience. I am not sure what all the excitement was about - I know for sure what kicked it into motion - but it is behind me now and I am getting over it.

Christian mystics would call it a dark night of the soul, I believe, and apparently I was having one of those, and the worst of it seems to be over now. That is good. It's a cleansing process that raises your consciousness, and the result is good while the process is uncomfortable.

This is how the cleansing process worked: I had been scheduled to present a workshop on the contemplative practice known as lectio divina. The people who had been asked if they were interested said that they were. However, at the appointed hour, the only person there was, you guessed it, yours truly. It came after a series of disappointments and frustrations in which everything I tried came up empty, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I was furious with my Source. Royally PO'd. Depressed, fairly seriously, for several hours, but it was only for a few hours and I am thankful for that. It wasn't until the next day that I was able to go to my Source and tell Him that no matter what else is going on, I must have my relationship with Him.

Has that changed anything? Yes, my blood pressure is dramatically lower. And yes, I have had something cleaned out because there has been a hole somewhere inside me, empty and deep and numb, that has been gradually getting refilled with peace and new energy. There may be more changes yet to come, too.

I guess my point is this: Spiritual cleansing isn't always simple or fun, but it is essential for wholeness and growth, and it is worth whatever you go through.

So without trying to make any new plans or efforts just yet, I feel that the ball is not in my court any more, and the next move is up to my Source. I'm sure it will an interesting ride, whatever happens next. My Source is many things, but boring is not one of them!

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.

How Did All This Begin?

What happened to turn me from a staid, conventional Christian into a flaming contemplative semi-mystic, anyway?

I won't go into all the gory details here. (This doesn't need to be a novel, after all.) But 27 years ago this November, I was living in the city 800 miles away from home, and I went to the wrong surgeon for an appendectomy. Had he known what he was doing, the whole thing wouldn't have happened, but he messed it up big time, and I was in the hospital for three months trying to get over it.

No, not that hospital. My family came down from the Midwest, moved me to one of the large teaching hospitals, found me a better doctor, and the rest is history.

Well, anyway, there were several setbacks, and I fought my way through each as best I could. The moment came one night, as the nurses were settling me in for the night, and I knew that all the setbacks had been encountered. I don't know how I knew that; I just did. It was time to start healing now.

And I had run out of strength.

I didn't even care, for a few minutes, if I lived or died. It was just too doggoned hard to face going on.

I had been in a period of rebellion, to put it in orthodox Christian language. But that night I crawled back to God on my - no, not my knees, but my belly. I told God that I didn't care if I lived or died, I just wanted out of there ASAP, and how I got out - gurney or body bag - was up to Him. I knew exactly what I was saying, and for a moment I briefly hesitated, but I went ahead and finished it.

Then I went to sleep.

Something happened to me in the night. I have to admit that I have no actual memory of it, although I do have a couple of pictures of what it must have been like. But there was an Encounter in the night. There is no other explanation for the transformation that I discovered when I woke up the next morning, still alive and glad of it, joyful mind you, feeling all cleaned out and free of baggage. I was another person, and I hope it has been an improvement over the original version.

There were still several weeks to go in the hospital, although after that experience I soon graduated from Intensive Care. I had time to think and "process" what had happened.

By the time I went home to finish recuperating, I had two main concepts to chew on:

• God loved me unconditionally, absolutely, and abundantly.
• God was colossal, far grander than anything I or any other human could ever comprehend, and utterly beyond all our attempts to confine Him in our boxes.

I will expand upon them in the next post, because they sort of grew. For now, let me leave with a description of the picture I took home with me, the picture of the Encounter that is the closest thing I have to an actual memory of it:

I am standing on one side of a chasm about the size of the Grand Canyon. On the other side of the chasm is a vast mountain, wide, high, massive as Mt. Everest. It was made of love. And it was all for me.

And ever since then, I cringe for all the people who are afraid of God. We are loved! There is a mountain of love for you as well as for me. What are we so afraid of? How can we be afraid of such love? I love God, I revere God, and I speak candidly to God, but I have absolutely no fear of God. I can't be afraid of a mountain of love.

To be continued . . .

Maundering On

I don't have any single specific thing I want to say today, but there are two or three "short shorts" I would like to touch on. Here goes.

Today I received one of those emails which require you to read some inspirational or nationalistic verbiage and then forward it to X number of friends. The implication is that if you do not, you don't have time for God or you aren't patriotic. To be perfectly candid, I have come to resent that entire scenario. It is a chore to sift through my mailbox, looking for friends who I think might appreciate receiving this message from me, assuming that I think it is actually worth passing on. And I distinctly resent the implication that I am not patriotic enough, or "religious" enough, and that is proven because I deleted the email instead of forwarding it on. In fact, since I don't feel I need to earn people's approval that way, I downright enjoy deleting their emails!

In this case, the person who sent it to me is a friend in treatment for brain cancer, and I did reply to her, thanking her for the lovely prayer. It was lovely. I copied it into a file I keep for that purpose. But I made no pretense of forwarding it. I hope she understands, because I have no desire to hurt her. She has enough to go through as it is.

I have just finished reading (for the second time) Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. It has led me to a conclusion. For years I have felt more and more distanced from the Christian church because I had an experience which transformed me. As time went on, I felt less and less connected to what I heard in church, but more and more connected to the fallout of perceptions from that experience. I have finally come to realize, and admit to myself, that I lean toward mysticism. My beliefs, which stem from that transforming experience, are beliefs I share with mystics of all traditions. There has been conflict between orthodoxy and mysticism for centuries of Christian history. It is not a new argument.

All this time, I have felt . . . well . . . timid about it. Crouching behind half-truths that I uttered. Letting people think I believed what they do when that isn't so. But there is nothing wrong with what I believe or how I perceive our world. It is time for me to stop skulking furtively in the closet. It is time to come out into the daylight and challenge orthodoxy. It has its accomplishments and it does its good things. But it also teaches things that I believe should be challenged.

So today I am resolved to come out of my mystical closet and work to let people know that there is life and faith and growth beyond the orthodox. I explore that territory freely. Anyone who wants to join me in my journey is welcome to come along.

Is God a Servant or a Serve-ee?

Like most of us, I grew up believing that God requires us to serve Him. (Or Her, or It . . . ) And it made sense at the time. Well, after all, here is this Old Man in the Sky who can send disaster upon you if you fail to serve Him, right? Of course you are going to serve God!

Then I grew up. First physically, then (this part took a little longer) psychologically, and finally (this part took still a little longer) spiritually. But I still wanted to serve God. This time it wasn't a matter of self defense but a desire to give back to that fascinating Being for returning my life to me.

Then from somewhere - I don't remember now, it may have been something I read - I got the idea that maybe God wants to serve us, rather than to be served by us. What a concept! Can there be any truth to that? Is there a way to answer such a question?

Actually, there is. Despite my dispute with much of what Christianity teaches (well, most of it to be honest) there is one thing I still agree with. I still believe that Jesus shows us what God is like. And did Jesus sit back on his fanny, demanding that his disciples bring him meat and bread and drink? Or did Jesus travel all over the place on foot, teaching and preaching and healing the sick? The gospels reflect the traditions, the stories that people remembered about Jesus, and even if eyewitness accounts disagree with each other and stories get stretched in the retelling, the healing stories are pretty consistent. So I have to think there is truth in them.

Okay, if Jesus helped people, served people, and showed God to us, what does that make God? Is God a cosmic Servant?

I think that I would have to say God is both Servant and Serve-ee. Here's why.

I wrote in a recent post that I am a piece of God. Why would God make little ole me a piece of Himself? If I am not special (and I definitely am not!) then everyone would be the same as me, and each of us is a tiny piece of God.

That means that when I do something to serve you, I am serving God by serving the piece of God that you are. You receive that, so God is a Serve-ee. But as a piece of God myself, as I serve, then God becomes the Servant as well.

See what I mean?

Of course God is there to help us through our crises and give us good things and all that. But God often does that through other people, each of whom is a piece of God. So no matter how you look at it, God is both.

There isn't much I can do for that august Being Who built the cosmos. That Being is the Source of All Things, utterly beyond anything I can say or do, and surely He can make whatever He desires. But there is quite a bit that I can do for His pieces who live around me.

So every time I hear someone going on about how we must "serve God" when they mean that Old Man in the Sky, I smile on the inside. It seems much more cozy to see it the way I do.