I am not always able to monitor the threads on my Facebook page during working hours. Later, I am sometimes saddened to discover there has been bullying and ridicule on my site. I have seldom deleted comments on this page, but I may need to start erasing comments that are rude or uncharitable.I believe the purpose of human speech is communication. Taunts and ridicule may express how we are feeling, but they do not usually communicate information across social divides. Rudeness also risks rupturing the tender web of communion that might hold our one human family together. We have a duty to each other to test our ideas scientifically and to not pass along dubious claims. Remember that science is not a body of beliefs, it is a method of honestly testing our truth claims. We are not being scientific when we cruise the internet seeking for information to justify what we already believe. Being reasonably and scientific is an important part of any love that seeks to heal our ruptured species.Emerson implored us to put other people’s arguments in the best light, not the worst. When we study different world views, if we dwell only on their weaknesses we will learn little or nothing. If we look at other people’s ideas charitably we can learn something from almost everyone. This page WILL be a place for respectful communication. I want to provide a place where Theists and Atheists can discover that each has a different kind of wisdom for our world. I want a place where Pagans and Christians can come to a mutual understanding. In other words, I want a place where people can reach across the divide. But for this to be a place of communion, abuse and ridicule have to be limited. Inclusive community actually requires STRONGER boundaries because it must preserve civility and reason. Just as free speech is essential for communicating in the public sphere, so is respectful speech essential for the beloved community. This page isn’t just about expressing ourselves personally, it is about finding the courage to cross the bridge from personal opinion to mutual communion. My assumption is when people are unnecessarily rude it is because they do not really trust the validity of their own beliefs. They ridicule because they want to make their opponents emotional so that reason will not cast its harsh light upon their dubious claims. All this to say I am going begin erasing some comments simply because they are rude or uncharitable. We must always remember that labeling is not understanding. Calling someone a name is not refuting their argument. I want this conversation to abide by the following credo:”When confronted with ignorance, foolishness ridicules but wisdom teaches.”
Recently, I spoke with a friend who was lost in grief. This remarkable person has spent a lifetime serving humanity, but he has just lost his soulmate and is feeling adrift in profound grief. He was feeling uprooted, abandoned, orphaned.There are times when grief is so profound we cannot feel the ties that bind us to other people or to life. Grief is a natural process that has its own timing. It can be an insult to that profound process to try to heal grief’s wounds too quickly and superficially with words of consolation.I did not try to sooth my friend with words because it was too soon. Grieving is the medicine that usually heals our losses, not words. That gift comes later, if it is needed at all. I am writing these words to my friend for a future day. I am also writing these words to anyone else who may be temporarily lost in grief. I believe the great lovers of our human family, people like Buddha and Jesus, do not come to teach us what is behind the cosmic curtains. I believe they are teaching us how to be happy and wise on our own journey through all the stages of life. After a time Mythic stories collect around these great teachers. I believe miracle stories are often teaching parables. I don’t believe great teachers come to be worshipped by us. I believe they come in compassion to teach us that we are also beloved offspring of the cosmos. The four gospels do not present us with one consistent story about how Jesus was connected to his source. Matthew and Luke connect Jesus to his source by their mythic narratives of a virgin birth. John tells a different story of Jesus as the eternal cosmic wisdom made flesh. Perhaps the tenderest and most relatable birth narrative is Mark’s. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is “adopted” by God with words similar those used in ancient coronations of a king, “You are my beloved child, on this day I have begotten you.” In Mark’s gospel, the sky opens up when Jesus is baptized and he hears a voice saying, “You are my beloved offspring, in you I am well pleased.” The Gospel of John discourages any magical interpretation by pointing out that some people heard that same voice thought it was thunder. Religion is about bringing our deepest connections to consciousness that we might feel them. The hope is not only that we will be able to cope with life’s painful beauty. The hope is that someday we can say “yes” to life with its beauty and its tears. Love and grief are two sides of one coin. Love is what life feels like when life’s tide is coming in. Grief is what life feels like when the tide goes back out -as it inevitably must. Our source may be a spiritual creator or it may be a cosmic process. Either way, when we are in tune life can feel like there is a nurturing parent guiding and protecting us. In grief we may feel adrift and alone, but we are still the beloved offspring of the creative principles of life itself. Even our death is a return to the same creative principle that gave us birth. What is left to fear? Even our grief at a lost love ties us to our source and reminds us that the same source that gave us birth is ultimately receives us home. It is too early for such words of consolation for my friend, Today he feels orphaned and alone. But, no one is more loved than an orphan who has been adopted. Adoption means being accepted for who we really are. If others cannot see our beauty it is due to their poverty not ours. I am trusting that, eventually, the storm clouds will part for my friend and he will again feel his roots into life and may almost hear the source whispering in his ear, “You are my beloved offspring, with you I am well pleased.”
I sometimes hear critics say I am against the creeds. This is not exactly true. I am against using the creeds to replace love as the essence of the Christian faith. I am against using the dogmas of sectarian Christianity to replace the call to universal love. And, I am against using belief to replace functioning minds.If truth is important to us, then it is necessary to be radically honest. A part of honesty is not claiming as personal knowledge reports that have been told to us second or third hand. To gather weekly to entrance ourselves by repeating the same words in a creed is not a reliable path to honesty, much less love. In the American Revolution both sides had a majority of self proclaimed Christians. A majority of people on both sides affirmed the essential tenets of the Christian faith and yet neither side found in their faith a reason not to kill the other. That fact alone should warn us that creeds do not lead to peace even between people of the same faith.People sometimes claim that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is the heart of the Christian faith, but Christianity based on the resurrection is faith in power, not in love. If Hitler had died and resurrected it would not prove the validity of hate. According to scripture there were many witnesses to the resurrection, but those witnesses were recorded by the same authors who wrote of the resurrection in the first place. To use the people in the resurrection stories as witnesses to the resurrection is like using Achilles’ men to prove the existence of the Trojan horse, or the characters in nursery rhymes to prove the existence of Mother Goose. Stories of magical power may satisfy incurious minds, but they do not reliably lead to honest minds nor loving hearts. There is nothing wrong with creeds as a kind of spiritual poetry, but if we tell stories of miracles we must never forget one thing:It is love that validates power, not power that validates love.
Religion is either a bridge, or it is a prison. Religion either opens us to the larger life we hold in common with all, or it imprisions us within itself. Religion is either the pursuit of the original song of our hearts or it is a parrot song for us to whimper within our gilded cages. If religion does not free us from its own dogma, it fills our minds with words of the dead. Such faith permits us to believe but not to think.If religion does not free us from its own moralisms we become mimes living in formulaic gestures instead of ethical relationships. Religion either calls us beyond its own walls into life and nature or it shrink wraps our horizons down to those of its own sect and culture. Such religion praises the seed but forbids the blossom.
The Greek word for church, “ekklesia,” once meant “called out.” The Greek word for a religious gathering became the modern word for synagogue. That word meant “to bring together.” Jesus participated in his synagogue, so he wasn’t rejecting his Jewish community, but why would the early church use a word that means “called out” to their self-identity?As I understand it, the word “ekklesia” originally referred to the democratic body in ancient Athens that made important decisions. Athenian citizens had an obligation to the common life. Our modern word “idiot” originally came from a Greek term for someone who lived by and for themselves. Being an “idiot” didn’t mean that the people were stupid, it just meant they didn’t participate in the civic process. They saw the people of their city as total strangers. They may have been personally smart and ethical, but they added little or nothing to the common life.As I said so far as we know, Jesus never left Judaism and he participated in his synagogue. So, perhaps the word “ekklesia” was added, not to describe a new sect, but to emphasize the kind of religion that produces good neighbors and shares a commitment to the common good.Perhaps being “called out” means finding a love that is wider than our narrow allegiances to our own siblings, political party or religious sect. Perhaps “ekklesia” described a community that not only gathered in worship, but also heard a call to serve the common life. When Jesus began his teachings he didn’t give his followers sectarian theological tracts. He took them out to a shoreline and told them to contemplate the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. It seems to me Jesus wasn’t calling his followers into a new religious sect so much as calling them out to a love that would grow into compassion and justice for all.
LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE – Even if it’s true that all roads lead to the top of the mountain, we should still choose paths that save time and do not injure others. If we really want to shorten our learning curve, we should stop repeating the cliches that make us feel comfortable and explore those awkward questions that most disturb our habitual thoughts and feelings. DO NOT LIVE
IN YOUR THOUGHTS ALONE – A tree becomes unstable if its branches grow larger than its roots. For every inch our branches stretch toward the rational brilliance and clarity of the sun, so far must our roots burrow into the dark moist soil of our irrational animal tissue. Wisdom is the balance between our light and our darkness.
MAKE LIFE YOUR TEACHER – Learn from everyone, but follow no one. Learning from your own mistakes is a better foundation for growth than surrendering responsibility to untestable authority figures. No one can be wise for another. If there are beings more evolved than we, their advice might be as useless as the tips you or I would give to a spider monkey. If you want to awaken, make life itself your teacher.
EMBRACE THE AMBIGUITY OF LIFE – Choose the tortuous ambiguity of real life over the comfortable clarity of religious certainty. All our answers are temporary resting places. As soon as we discover new information we must redraw our maps. Answers come and go, it is the great questions of life that accompany and guide us all through life’s twists and turns.
TAKE OFF YOUR MASKS – What you are truly thinking and feeling right now is your only true starting place for growing into wisdom. What you SHOULD think or feel is not a firm foundation for true spiritual growth. Polishing your image so that you appear brave and kind will only give you the mask of wisdom. Masks are very small prisons because we must hide behind them to keep up appearances. Even if someone falls in love with your mask you will still be utterly alone. Do not be ashamed of your own true heart.
SEE THROUGH YOUR OWN EYES – Avoid teachers who constantly appeal to absent authority figures. A seeker would not really know if their teacher was “enlightened” unless they were “enlightened” as well. And if a teacher is “enlightened” they would not need the crutch of authority to make their case. They illumine our lives with insights. Find teachers who speak from their own hearts and humorously use their own imperfections as teaching stories. There is nothing less enlightened than parroting the enlightened. We cannot feel through another’s skin nor see through borrowed eyes. Sleeping in the tent of a wise person is not wisdom. Wisdom is the truth that sets us free.
DO NOT GRASP AT THE WHOLE – Do not attempt to grasp the one. Instead dissolve into it. The “one” is no one’s property. It is the common life of which each of us is a minuscule part. No one grasps the whole but we each move closer toward it when we love any other piece of life’s mosaic.
“No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.” -Herman Melville
Have you ever had the strange experience of feeling misunderstood by everyone you knew, and then had a dog jump on your lap to give you the love you were seeking? Human intelligence is a double edged sword. Reason can sometimes pierce the mysteries of nature, but it can also leave us so lost in abstractions that we are uprooted from our own biological truth. I have always found it wondrous that dogs seem to understand when we are sad even when our friends do not. Unlike us, dogs do not seem to get lost in their plans or regrets. They are four-legged Buddhas mostly living in the here and now. They recognize the pain of a kindred mammal through their own animal tissue. The answer to many of our world problems lies sleeping in our benumbed human tissue. Empathy is a powerful litmus test to tell if our own hearts have fallen into numbness. Almost by definition, we cannot feel it when our own hearts go numb. Dog-like empathy toward ourselves and others is a way of making sure that intellectual abstractions have not eclipsed our own very tender mammalian hearts.
Is it possible that Einstein’s revelation E=MC2 and Moses’ revelation about a divine name burning in a bush were the scientific and poetic versions of the same deep insight? Could one revelation be thinking about our foundation and the other feeling it?Could the believer’s submission to God and the Atheist’s submission to fact be the heart’s and head’s witness to the same reverence? Is it possible that every sincere religion, and every sincere rejection of religion, springs from an even deeper fountainhead which is capable of embracing them both? Could saying “God is one” mean the myriad conflicting world views are all differing tongues of one flame, instead of the doubtful claim that only one vantage point is correct? Perhaps our primary mistake lies in thinking any one approach can capture the one sacred flame burning within and beyond us all, or that any person or group can serve as its only custodian.
Think about it- if Christian nationalism is correct and religion is about being patriotic, armed, anti-abortion and heterosexual then why didn’t Jesus teach any of that? If Christian Nationalism is correct then Jesus would have to be the worst teacher of all time.The answer many Christian Nationalists give to the question “why didn’t Jesus teach against abortion and homosexuality is that Jesus didn’t talk about a lot of important things but that doesn’t make them right. That answer is technically true, but it also completely dodges the question. Christian Nationalists need to explain how they can claim to be following Jesus when the movement is based almost entirely on things Jesus didn’t say. How did Christians Nationalism degenerate from “turn the other cheek” to “stand your ground’? How did Jesus’ call to share the world get replaced by a heartless commitment to free markets? How did Jesus’ call to care for our one human family get replaced with calls to turn the needy sojourner away from our borders?Christian Nationalists need to realize that Jesus never saw the finished Christian scripture. Jesus never approved a hierarchy of clergy. Jesus never said that in order to be married you need to get a wedding license from the state. Jesus never signed off on any of the creeds that would be developed centuries later. If anything, Jesus rejected the religion of dogma and hierarchy in favor of a life of simplicity, humility, forgiveness and sharing. When a rich young ruler asked Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life Jesus didn’t mention baptism, confession of sins, or any of the atonement theories of Paul. He told the young man to share his possessions with the poor. Think about that for a moment.Jesus answered another person asking about eternal life with a story of nonsectarian compassion. The parable of the good Samaritan is a teaching story of religious people getting it wrong and a merciful outsider getting it right. Jesus then told his followers to “go and do likewise.” Doesn’t the story of the good Samaritan imply one doesn’t need to be a sectarian Christian to live the kind of life Jesus described? If we look at the teachings of Jesus it seems that a loving Atheist is actually much closer to the life Jesus described than a perfectly orthodox believer who is indifferent to the world’s suffering. The question is whether some Christians will give Jesus a say in the matter of what it means to be Christian. If Christian Nationalism is correct and the essence of Christianity consists in things Jesus never mentioned then Jesus would have to be the worst teacher of all time. If we assume that Jesus wasn’t a bad teacher, then we must also assume he did not come to teach people to be American nationalists OR sectarian Christians but to be kind and universal human beings. Maybe Christian Nationalists should “go and do likewise.”
When we take the poetry of scripture and read it like it were a logical treatise by Aristotle, we cannot help but miss the point.The symbol “God” is not meant to be understood logically but to be felt viscerally. The word is a poetic attempt to speak of that which is deeper and larger than we can possibly grasp intellectually. The symbol “God” is a poetic attempt to share in the mystery undergirding us.The symbol “God” is an attempt to share those moments when we are struck by an awe we cannot describe. The symbol can refer to a sense of being at home in the cosmos, and even of a visceral feeling of being addressed by the universe. But such symbols are the poetry of subjective feelings not literal dogma about objective facts. An Atheist who refuses to use the symbol “God” may actually understand the nature of the symbol better than someone who loses its sense of poetic mystery by using the word in the same concrete sense as a stone. We “take the name in vain” when we try to argue logically about what “God” thinks or wants. Preachers blaspheme when they assume to speak for “God.” There is more piety in not saying the word “God” at all than in using it as some kind of metaphysical furniture.To say “God is love” means we cannot capture the mystery of being philosophically; but, when we love each other, we can sometimes feel a profound sense of a deeper tie binding us to each other, to the web of life, and to the stars.