Faith

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An Elder’s Hope

First, a poem…

At the center of every crisis 
is an inner space 
so deep, so beckoning, 
so suddenly and daringly vast, 
that it feels like a universe, 
feels like God. 

When the unthinkable happens, 
and does not relent, 
we fall through our hubris 
toward an inner flow, 
an abiding and rebirthing darkness 
that feels like home. 

— Dr. Barbara Holmes, “What Is Crisis Contemplation?”

As one who at 74 wants to get old well and who is consciously trying to discover what being an elder looks like, I consequently want to honestly embrace my mortality and remain curious and deliberate about my dying (spoiler: it’s a process and not just an event).  That’s where Holmes’ poem comes in. I’m intrigued by the second stanza and drawn to the potential of death as a life process, an “inner flow.”

My rumination has been enriched by a response shared by a friend with whom I did hospital chaplain residency a dozen years ago. She wrote: “Amen!  Ask: Is this darkness, darkness of the tomb? Or darkness of the womb?”  

Yes, death certainly “does not relent, and we fall through our hubris” into a dark tomb — echoing all those creedal formulae we babble unwittingly throughout our lives… “he descended into hell and on the third day…” And, yet, as Christians we proclaim this to be the darkness of the womb — “an abiding and rebirthing darkness that feels like home.” 

As we age, and especially in our elder years, we recognize this growing awareness not so much as a “profession of faith” but as an experiential foundation for our burgeoning hope!  As elders we transition from being persons of naive, doctrinal beliefs to those living with a reassuring, alluring hope we increasingly experience, at last, as HOMEcoming!

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A Christian Nation

While brushing my teeth I often ruminate on whatever is upper most in my curiosity at that particular moment. This morning it was about the contention that America is a Christian nation. What even does that mean?  What ever does this imply for for Jewish, Muslim, Hindu Americans?

About the time I was warily navigating around a recent root canal, the Lord’s Prayer came to mind. God, how many times in my 74 years have I rattled off those words?  “…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” grabbed my attention. What might this even mean if we actually were a contemporary Christian America? You know, that “…on earth as it is in heaven” part!

Some ask, “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” Isn’t it at least consistent, if not required, that we ask whether Jesus is accepted as our national Lord and Savior?

Here’s the rub… do we go deep enough with these questions?  Are Jesus’ concerns and associations our concerns and associations?  His mission, His values; our mission and our values? Quoting the prophet Isaiah, He clearly told us what he’s about… 

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4)

Are we on board? Or, does the acceptance of Jesus in our lives function as a “salvation insurance policy” collectible after we’re dead? Perhaps a Baptist preacher said it best, “Sometimes our faith can be so heavenly minded it’s no earthly good!” Clearly, the pastor wasn’t preaching Joel Orsteen’s “prosperity Gospel” primarily used to rationalize obtuse wealth and a self-serving contortion of divine favor! 

Here’s my honest observation… “Christian” too often appears as an adjective we tag onto whatever we want to justify or to “baptize” what we want to believe. If this is not so, we who would profess Jesus as our Way, Truth and Life must subject ourselves to honest self scrutiny to legitimate our claim. This isn’t Liberal or Conservative, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican! It’s simply Christian!

We must critically judge whether we can muster sufficient evidence to validate that we as individuals, families, congregations — as a nation — merit the name Christian.

Here’s this 74 year old’s reluctant assessment… Capitalism is actually our religion, consumerism our currency of grace, materialism our standard of virtue and money our God!  Are we willing to consider whether our prayer is more accurately, “My kingdom come, my will be done on earth and in heaven.”?

Jesus sets a truly high bar for any claiming the appellation “Christian”. He explicitly gives us the ultimate criteria in what is our “Final Judgment”…

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25)

Again, this is not Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican! It is the Scriptural litmus test for whether we and this nation are, in fact, Christian.

Rinsing toothpaste from my mouth, my eyes fixed on the mirror. A pang  of discomfort and soul searching found apt release in my spitting into the sink.  Again, staring at myself in the mirror, I commiserated with those folks who start leaving Jesus because His is a “hard teaching’” (John 6). My reflection transported me to Caesarea Philippi, “Who do you say that I am?”(Luke 9). 

Jesus begs a response profoundly more momentous than most of us are willing to fathom!

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Preposterous!

Been thinking the unthinkable… what if the burgeoning number of people who describe themselves as “not religious” and a culture that no longer reflects Christian values actually reveal the precise place of the Holy Spirit’s action, desire and intentions?

We only half-jokingly mumble “it’s over” for religion as we have known it! Paraphrasing Pope Francis’ prescient observation: “Ours is not simply an epoch of change; we live in a change of epochs!” Like it or not, this is the world in which we find ourselves. There is certainly resistance and grief woven through our denial or resignation. Yet, why would we expect to find God anywhere else?

What elements of “the faith” would we want passed on? Yes, the kerygma for sure. But what form or expression does the proclamation of Good News need to take? What of current methods, structures, practices or traditions are essential, effective and deserve to be preserved? And the always more relevant question: “What’s God up to?”

Christian faith and religious expression have not always been as we’ve experienced in our lives. Imagine the rich diversity of styles and configuration of community spawned by the Reformation. Only in the nineteenth century did Rome disentangle itself from the political shackles set in place by Constantine in 313 CE.

Consider a specific example near and dear to my heart: How must Ignatius of Loyola’s revered Spiritual Exercises — composed in the 16th century at the dawn of modernity — be reformulated for a fast approaching post-modern world? Some would dismiss my question out of hand and charge me with heresy, apostasy, sacrilege, ignorance, even arrogance for imagining such a preposterous idea. But, again, “What’s God up to?”

Observing how Christianity has been transformed, even co-opted, over the centuries, who are we to say that the forms, structures and expressions of religious faith we have known, treasured and served are even suitable or relevant to whatever the future holds? So much around us is crumbling — much needs to crumble! There’s plenty of precedent for that in Judeo-Christian faith.

“Unless a grain of wheat fall to the earth and die it remains but a single grain, but…” My faith suggests that the Spirit is up to something great, grand and unimaginable! We are never left orphans. Might the self-proclaimed “not religious” actually be clearing the land and preparing soil for the seeds of faith most relevant for our grandchildren’s children? Preposterous?

“They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” (John 20:9). This is the kerygma, the faith we too need to better take to heart.

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The Day After

So, it’s the Monday morning after Easter. I’m still mulling over the question, “So what has changed?” Does our celebration of Easter make any difference? I’m concluding, “No, for most it doesn’t! Except for kids who’ve come to look forward to it as a mini-Halloween — Easter baskets just being a smaller version of their Halloween haul.”

I do not mean that as a crotchety old curmudgeon! Rather, it points to the importance and urgency of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits. I’ve come to believe that unless people have some sort of a genuine personal experience of the passion and death of Jesus, even the liturgical celebration of the Triduum remains an exercise of pious wishful thinking regarding a reward in the hereafter.

Far too many may even regard going to church on Easter as a pious social practice at best or, at worst, as an obligation for earning heaven. I’m not saying the Spiritual Exercises are the only means to open us to the transforming grace of encountering the Risen Christ! It is simply an especially well honed instrument for disposing us to such grace. When well executed and fully engaged, the Triduum liturgies will also dispose us to the same.

But this morning I’m still taken by what I shared yesterday…

“Life is changed, not ended.” echoes through these events and is evident in the world around. But how? How is life — the whole creation — different from yesterday? Easter Sunday cannot be a final, singular, historic event. So much suffering, injustice and death attest to that. Rather change, transformation, resurrection, salvation, reconciliation, peace, joy, justice, pulses within and radiates from all that shares being. Resurrection is now, here, today if anywhere, ever!

Gerard Manley Hopkins captured it best when suggesting Easter as a verb. If yesterday, if the Triduum, means anything at all it is that Christ “Easters” in us and throughout all creation. That is the only faith that can nurture and sustain us within a world of war, death, suffering and injustice! Christ “Easters” in us, or not at all! We are to be an instrument and locus of that “Eastering” in our world.

Otherwise, we are simply about something as fantastical as the Easter Bunny.

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Tenacity Suited to a Pandemic

Barbara Brown Taylor and the dean of the National Cathedral shared a conversation last evening. I love everything BBT has to say as well as those all too familiar ribes from church-types she deftly sidesteps. Two things really rocked me…

She shared a favorite quote from theologian Walter Brueggemann: “The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you, and this by the grace of God.” Yowzer!!! Sit with that for awhile.

Second, BBT referred to the destruction of the Temple in 70CE as a source of consolation for her at this time in the life of Christianity. The Jewish people had to change, adapt, transform in unthinkable ways. Yet, they endured!

Hmmm… maybe God’s in charge after all; a “jealous God” who will have no truck with idolatry (magic, fantasy or superstition)!

Just some random thoughts percolating this morning on the Feast of the Ascension, that occasion when the departure of the Risen One yet again leaves his friends befuddled!

Are we to simply keep doing what we’ve been doing, frantic to return to what we knew as “normal”? How do we stay true to Christ? How do we avoid being co-opted by a past — not all bad — that needs to fall to the earth and die if it is to yield a rich harvest?

Somewhere in all this is the secure footing for a tenacious hope.

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Eyes Glazed Over

Conceptual. Philosophical. Abstract. Theoretical. Credal… feel your eyes glazing over?

It happens routinely every Sunday when Christians stand to “proclaim our faith.” Absurd arguments over words — “consubstantial with” versus “of one being with” — exemplifies our dire and desperate straits. God save us!

Yet, Sunday after Sunday we dutifully stand to rattle off an obtuse treatise composed in the fourth century in some long forgotten outpost in present-day Turkey. We know it as the Nicene Creed.

Richard Rohr diagnoses our malady with characteristic precision, “There seem to be very few actionable items in most Christians’ lives beyond attending Sunday services, which largely creates a closed and self-validating system.”

What if our Christian proclamation was less conceptual and more concrete, less philosophical and more practical, immediate rather than abstract, applied more than theoretical, a matter of actually “walking our talk”?

Here’s a modest proposal… What if those who care to express their belief chuck the Nicene Creed for a year and substitute one or another proclamation attributed to Jesus? When our carpenter from Nazareth offered his core teaching, what did he say?

We do no better than the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor, they that mourn, those who are meek, and hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful, the single-hearted, peacemakers and those persecuted for what is right. Blessed are you when others revile you, persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Is this what we believe? Might such an expression of our faith make us too uncomfortable, threaten our status quo, challenge our cultural presumptions and preferences? Might this put in too glaring of a light that which we truly believe and where we actually place our faith?

If this be too much, we might consider a different formulation offered by Jesus as his valedictory address: “The righteous will answer. ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’.” (Mt 25) Jesus clearly has in mind an actionable and actualized life of faith.

Today we begin Advent. Will it truly be a preparation for Christmas — that occasion when we celebrate Word made flesh, God-With-Us, the birth of our Savior? May our commemoration make us appropriately uncomfortable, challenge our cultural idols and expose our false gods. May we actually experience the surprise and gift of our salvation and not merely feeling satiated with stuff brightly wrapped in Holiday style.

Come Christmas, may we find ourselves proclaiming a faith that is concrete, practical, immediate, and enfleshed. May the glaze over our eyes only be the tears of recognition and love.

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This reflection was inspired by the sentence of Richard Rohr quoted above. His essay, “Powering Down: The Future of Institutions” is available in The Future of Christianity, Oneing, An Alternative Orthodoxy Vol. 7, No 2 (2019), a publication of the Center for Action and Contemplation.

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Everyday for 7 Years

Again and again, rain or shine, through ice or humidity! JebTheDog has faithfully taken me for a walk virtually every afternoon since 2011 along Minnehaha Creek. Nothing I post on Facebook is as popular as photos from these outings. Friends consistently remark about how they look forward to seeing the latest in the “creek series”.

At first, the walks were a duty I accepted as part of dog “ownership.” Self-interest motivated me during bleak February freezes — why else would I get out for a 30 minute walk in the depths of Minnesota winter? …it was good for me! Hassles were not limited to obligation or inclement weather. In 2017 I tumbled over a granite boulder on an idyllic summer afternoon. Surgery, screws, plates and physical therapy over a couple months were required to return my left wrist back to normal.

What happens when we do the same ritual time and time again over a considerable period of time? I now annually await the bluebells on the north slope. These are followed by an explosion of violets. Unintentional comparison of water levels are noted from year to year. JebTheDog remembers where to look for the snapping turtle each June in case I forget. Worried curiosity wonders what’s happened to the coy white squirrel. The rotting stump of a ginormous willows plucks a cord of grief, followed by grateful memories for what remains and for all that has been.

Beyond the uniqueness of each day and incidental occurrences, something cumulative and and rhythmic takes hold. Shifts in motivation creep in over time. Obligation morphs into anticipation. Laughing water reliably softens a knot of worry. Trees become faithful sentinels. Field mice consistently entertain and confound Jeb. The migration of mallards and the cyclic flow of seasons nudge us to notice patterns in our lives.

After seven years, the creek no longer presents itself as a destination. Rather it has become an extension of home, a harbinger of relationship, a sanctuary of wisdom, a grounding in matter — and in what matters. The Shakers had it right:

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
It will be in the valley of love and delight

Seven years of mentoring by my faithful companion, JebTheDog, casts a gentle glow on my 68 years of “occupancy” on this planet. I recognize how so many years and relationships have been characterized by action/reaction, effecting change, leading the charge, not simply being driven but being the driver. Perhaps a certain intensity needs to characterize seasons or transitory roles in our lives — they too can reveal the bulwark of a life well-lived. Yet, these can too easily come to dominate. In dire cases we accept them as our destiny — such is the death rattle of stifling monotony!

The demise of leonine willows, the laughter of rollicking water, the tenderizing cycle of seasons unmask my patterns of foolishness. A smile begins to replenish worry lines framing my eyes. With a spiritual master extraordinaire leading my way, doing the same thing everyday for seven years nudges me to awaken, let be, listen, allow and behold — recognizing we are in the place just right and precisely where we ought to be.

I’ll be glad for another seven years of dog-duty!

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The familiar Shaker quote is from “Simple Gifts”, composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett.

I am indebted to Martin Laird, O.S.A.; An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation; Oxford University Press, 2019 for the distinction between reactive and receptive mind as well as the perfectly prescriptive words: let be, listen, allow and behold (p. 94).

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What’s Really on My Mind; What’s Really Going On

You’re correct… I haven’t been blogging much recently. Part of the reason is that I have felt constricted by a presumed obligation to write “for others” and not for myself. Would my honest curiosities and musings be too raw, too honest? Would anyone else really care? I’ve heard the blank response from my family (perhaps the only ones caring enough or willing to tell me), “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

Well, today is different! Here’s what’s on my mind, the stuff I really want to talk about, what I’m really wrestling with inside. It’s from an email I just sent to a dear soul-mate friend with whom I had a long overdue phone conversation last evening. I offer it here with the simple desire to transparently “let others in” and with a faint hope that something, anything, will be of interest — maybe even helpful — to someone else. Here’s what’s been on my mind and what I really want to write…

Thanks for the great conversation. Really good to reconnect. It’s triggered a few more thoughts prompted by recalling that I had not spoken of a key awareness central to the “shift in consciousness” I’m aware of HAPPENING TO ME. And that last part is critical… happening to me.

I used to interpret the likes of Stephen Fowler and such behavioral psychologists as if we/I somehow had the ability or responsibility to “recraft” or even “recreate” our sense of meaning (e.g., our understanding of God, our “faith” as if it were some sort of volitional act). No!!! Now I’m recognizing that this “reformulation” is something that happens TO US, is done FOR US, is given (grace).

This is why talking with you is so important. I don’t create or craft the “shift in consciousness”. I don’t do the work. It’s done to us, for us!!! Nevertheless, speaking about it clarifies the experience (sheer gift) and enables me to recognize it, to RECEIVE IT! Thanks, buddy!

Another recognition from the past couple months of my wrestling with what felt like depression (dark night?)… the institutional church (in my case, the Society of Jesus but compounded by the global clergy sex abuse crisis that triggers my PTSD) betrayed me. Charlottesville and the pardoning of the AZ sheriff, etc. further sends me over the edge because it to also triggers my sense of betrayal.

I’ve both a BA and MA in Political Science, I worked for the Nebraska Legislature for 4 years, been a delegate to state Democratic conventions, staffed a district Congressional office (all before entering the SJ). I taught American Government as a regent, did a summer internship in DC with Network, spent three years doing human rights advocacy at the Jesuit Conference again in DC. I could be fairly described as having been a “Faith & Justice” Jesuit (I would be honored by such an epilation).

Trump and our thoroughly dysfunctional Congress feels to me like wholesale betrayal (not to mention the racist and fascist undertow and allusions) by the institutions of government — our “public life”, really — paralleling the earlier betrayal by the church. In other words our public institutions have proven themselves to be wholly undeserving/unworthy of the faith I/we presumed I/we could place in them.

This is the context in which I experienced the killing on July 15 of our neighbor, Justine Damond, by a Minneapolis police officer. She had called 911 for help — actually she was reporting what she feared was a sexual assault in the back alley. She was doing what she trusted was the correct and right thing to do. Those who were invested with the public trust to “protect” us shot her! (Welcome to the world of Black America!!!!).

Again, those in whom we thought we could place our trust proved, not only to be unworthy of trust, but abusive. In sum, the core institutions of our culture — the very foundations for my sense of meaning and trust — have proven to be bankrupt and even a source of betrayal.

That’s the context for my outrage about “God never gives us more than we can handle” bullshit and my passionate insistence, “Oh yes He does, AND THAT’S PRECISELY THE POINT!!!” I/we don’t reformulate or recreate “our” concept of God or recompose our understanding of faith. It’s done FOR US, TO US. My best way to give expression to the experience is that “We are BIRTHED into it!”

BTW, I hope you noticed that I used male specific language to describe God just above. That was choiceful and deliberate! Even our politically correct language and tip-toeing around our God-talk for fear of “offending” someone else’s sensibilities — or that gender-specific language somehow “limits” or “constrains” God — is fairly bankrupt in itself (if not a pile of bullshit — but we dare not say that out loud, do we😨😱😃👍👏👌)?

Maybe the reason I don’t blog very much any more is because this is really the stuff I want to write about. And I’m aware that most people wouldn’t know what the hell I’m talking about (I hope that’s not as elitist as it sounds). And for those who do, they’d take it as a cognitive exercise, an “academic” speculation, a Lonerganian “insight” we think we can “comprehend” in our 30s. And the truth is it’s just the opposite.

It’s not something we comprehend or “command” as as if we were strategically moving pieces in a cosmic game of chess! Every shift in consciousness is done to us, for us, is wholly given! We are continuously re-birthed when the womb in which we have found so much security and nourishment is found to be inadequate (i.e., “not-God”), actually idolatrous. When God gives us (i.e., invites, teases, nudges us to experience) more than we can handle!!!

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity sayeth the Lord!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

TS Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”: “I should be glad of another death.”

😎😃😉🤡🤓 Smile… this is all very Good News!

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Beyond Comfort

Here’s a really insightful and poignant paragraph from Richard Rohr’s daily post from the Center for Action and Contemplation:

Those who rush to artificially concoct their identity often end up with hardened and overly defended edges. They are easily offended and may become racists, overly patriotic, or remain entirely tribal—afraid of the “other.” Often they become codependent and counter-dependent, living only in reaction to someone or something else. Being over and against is a lot easier than being in love. If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional “threat,” you probably need to do some growing in the ways of love.

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Not a Blanket, but the Cross

A profoundly wise woman! Tragically, she died of Lupus at age 39! Now that I have lived many more years than she, I am all the more moved by her insight, faith and honesty — imagine if she had lived a full complement of years. Perhaps she had…

“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.
― Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor