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I’ve never found it particularly useful to discover whether someone does or doesn’t believe in God. I’ve met cruel or kind theists at about the same rate as cruel or kind non-theists.

The pivotal issue, it seems to me, is not whether someone believes in God, but whether one believes in the unified ground of of truth, beauty and goodness to which the symbol “God” should refer. The symbols of religion become divisive idols if we believe in them literally. We end up fighting over our symbols of unity, lying over our symbols of truth and reducing our symbols of beauty to boring rituals.

When we listen to religious symbols as beacons calling us to a common cosmic song it is easy to join hands with those who use other symbols, as well as those who do not choose to use religious symbols at all. A symbol, after all, almost by definition is pointing beyond itself to a wider and deeper experience of reality. A symbol should be a bridge to greater understanding not an intellectual resting home.

When Dr. King sat in jail, abandoned by so many in the church, he sometimes found inspiration in the works of the Existentialist, Albert Camus. Camus’ atheistic humanism led him into the same kind of passionate commitment to humanity King had discovered through his own theistic faith. In his lonely cell, Dr. King was comforted by the Atheist’s clarity and compassion.

Camus once wrote a beautiful “hymn” in the form of a letter: “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love… In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile… In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm… I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

One can easily see why Dr. King would consider the Atheist Camus a close comrade in the struggle for love and justice. Symbols are like the glistening light on the surface of the ocean. They are beacons of an unthinkable depth out of which we all come, and of an incomprehensible breadth which holds us all.

I love living in Austin. Being a progressive pastor and activist has permitted me to be a fly on the wall in proximity to some remarkable people, not the least of which are the Rathers.

I recently saw the Documentary “Rather” which gives a glimpse into the career of journalist Dan Rather. Watching “Rather” I realized that the title probably should be in the plural because ALL the Rathers were vital elements of the story.

Living in Austin has allowed me to cross paths with the Rathers. Meeting Dan I was struck by his humility. Dan Rather has been a witness to history like few others. Dan took us nearer to the Kennedy assassination, behind the headlines of the Viet Nam War and into the chaos of the Chicago Democratic Convention. Still, Dan likes to quote Edward R. Murrow saying that his opinion “isn’t worth any more than the guy at the end of the bar.” Looking back at his own life, the journalist is as forthright about his mistakes as his successes.

Robin told me that Dan kept a Bible on his desk through all the tumultuous events of his career. His faith was always that the truth would set us free if we can muster the courage of our convictions.

And when I say Dan loves our nation, it seems to me he loves those ideals to which our nation has aspired but has never come close to reaching. The soundtrack of his patriotism is Ray Charles singing with sadness and with hope: “America, America may God thy gold refine. Til all success be nobleness, And every gain divine.”

As I say, watching the documentary I was powerfully struck by how central Dan’s whole family was to his story. Dan has lived his life in the limelight, but his family has been the oasis that made his journey possible. Meeting the family you can tell you they are all prophets just as equally in their own way.

Daughter Robin is a local activist extraordinaire. It seems to me Robin has the temperament of a Quaker or a Buddhist priestess. Still, she, understands that those who seek peace must struggle even more intensely than those who bring violence and destruction to our world.

An article in a local magazine quoted Robin as saying, “I literally wish we never had to fight, because I don’t enjoy it at all. I’m just wired for oneness. But for the greater good, sometimes you have to warrior up and fight back.” Thus, Robin struggles at the local level on behalf of all the earth and all its people.

Dan’s wife Jean is an artist. She served on the New York Art Commission for either years. Jean honors all human art starting with cave art. Like Dan, Jean is a witness to the world, but her gift is to see the hidden beauty and goodness even in the ugliest of circumstances. Jean and Dan’s home is filled with beautiful art which I’m sure provided a him a respite from the brutal realities he was witnessing.

In some ways, the center of the family is Dan’s grandson Andy. To Dan and Jean, Andy is their heart’s treasure and am ambassador of their hopes for a better world. In the article I mentioned earlier, Robin says, “Look, I’ve done the money thing, the fame thing, and power thing, but nothing, nothing compares to being Andy’s mom.”

Like I say, the documentary was called “Rather,” but Dan’s story would be unthinkable without ALL the Rathers. The documentary spends almost as much time on Dan’s mistakes as his successes. But. We all make makes. We all fall short. Dan Rather is not an exception to that rule. I think the documentary is saying that even when we cannot do things perfectly, even when we face a hostile world, love allows us to do together what we cannot do alone. It is love that allows our frightened species to limp through history’s darkest midnights and yet still be filled with light.

What does it mean to speak of hope after we have accepted evolution and realized the web of life cares nothing for our petty human dramas? What does it mean to speak of hope once we have accepted the laws of physics and realized that, because of entropy, the universe is winding down like a top not ascending in never ending progress?

In biology, life and death are not definitive terms. The seed dies into the soil in order to give new life. From the moment of birth our life is moving irrevocably toward death, but when we contemplate a nearby field we can see new life growing out of that which has died.

Far from the fragile ephemeral nature of our own personal lives, our larger ecological life is ferocious. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that all of us are messengers of a thing greater than ourselves. From this point of view, despair is the rejection of the larger life of which our little lives are but an expression.

Hope means not being deceived by the puppet figures dancing before us in the shape of personal success or failure. Hope is not some desired outcome, but the energy that drives our own hearts and the hearts of the great whales as well. Life pulses not only through our blood but also in the sap of trees, life will be throbbing even in the grass that will grow upon our graves.

Hope means living in the whole. Hope is not some wispy dream that may or may not be realized. Hope is trusting in the creative unfolding of the universe. When a modern human looks at the heavens we now realize the constellations are not the expression of a clockwork precision as thought by the creationists of old.

We now realize the beauty of the night sky consists of random explosions. We are the pale lights of a cosmic fireworks display. Our meaning does not come from arriving at our human goals, but in manifesting what it means to be human beings in just such a cosmos as this.

We were not born into the cosmos, we ARE the cosmos. What appears to us as empty space is the womb of a life process we see in swamps and meteors alike.

Hope is remembering that we are not only prisoners of time doomed to execution, we are also expressions of that wild frenzied life holding more in common with lightening than with what will be left in our graves. Hope is realizing our meaning is not contingent upon the spin of some cosmic roulette wheel and that our life’s meaning can be manifested as fully in defeat as in victory, sometimes more so.

I do not believe in a physical hell. The idea of eternal punishment for sins committed by a tiny mortal species would be a crime worse than anything HItler did. At least those vicious torments had an end.

It seems to me the symbol of hell developed to express human fears of time itself. Time itself can seem like a cosmic furnace devouring us all. Perhaps the original question was how to pass through the fires of time with our souls intact.

There is a wonderful quote online. The quote is supposedly by Meister Eckhardt but I haven’t found it in any of his original works. Instead, I found it in a movie called “Jacob’s Ladder” by Bruce Joel Rubin. The quote says:“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn ’em all away. But they’re not punishing you,’ he said. ‘They’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying, and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.”

The Buddha gave what has been called the “Fire Sermon” (The Adittapariyaya Sutta) which gives a similar warning about attachment:”The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.”

There is a sense in which time consumes everything we would hold onto. When we try to possess and control life, it can feel like we are being tortured. Life can feel like hell as every beloved object is torn from our clutching fingers one after another.

The symbols of religion must teach our hearts that life is a mixture of beauty and pain. It must also affirm that the beauty is worth the pain. We are not being punished by life’s changes. Entering into mortality was the condition of our very birth. Salvation is not escape from the fire.

Salvation is realizing that life IS change. Salvation is realizing we ARE the fire not what is being burned. The creative principle that brings us into being is not an object we can possess. It is more like an eternal heart we must live out of fearlessly and completely. We must learn to love the fire in all of its ephemeral shapes and know there is one love burning within it all.

For my Facebook followers…

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.