Many moralists in our day confuse the words “sex” and “gender.” The word “sex” refers to our biological nature, whereas “gender” refers to our deeper sense of social intimacy. Biology can be understood from the outside in, but gender can only be understood from the inside out. No one is free if they are being defined by someone else. When men ask the question, “What is a woman?” the correct answer is “Stop talking for a moment and let them tell you who they are.” I doubt any human beings can really be defined, but I am absolutely certain that a woman cannot be defined by a man.
Sometimes the word “love” falls easily off our lips. Other times that word can’t make it past the lump in our throats. Love is a word that must be felt to be understood. The more love is felt the less it can be reduced to words. In the end, love is a placeholder for something we cannot really say. Our idea of love changes as we move through life. Our first idea of love is usually one of enlightened self-interest. It is said you must first love yourself, and then your circle grows to include close friends and family. This first kind of love begins like a mustard seed. Perhaps we love our toys, then our family, then our friends. Perhaps we even come to love our city and nation, but the idea of loving everyone seems a contradiction in terms. The first kind of love is understood primarily in terms of oneself. There is a second love that pierces us from the outside in. This second love brings the piercing pain mythically depicted as Cupid’s arrows. This ego shattering kind of love may come as a romantic lover, it may be seen in the shining face of an infant, or when we behold something so moving that it pierces our prison of self-concern and opens us to the mystery of another. This second love shatters the walls of our enlightened self-love and opens us, sometimes painfully, to a world where others are not extensions of our own interests but are ends in themselves. When we love children we can find sometimes find a more exquisite pleasure in their joy than in our own. The second kind of love may enjoy the last bit of ice cream in the mouth of the beloved more than in its own. There is a third love that considers all of us to be branches on one tree. The third love is not experienced as a feeling so much as in a realization that we are interwoven with the trees of a forest, the stars in the sky, and with our entire human family. We cannot hate our species without rejecting our own essence as well. Nor can this third kind love stand by passively in the face of injustice. Almost by definition, this love feels a call to protect and nurture the wounded without dehumanizing those doing the harm. The third love comes with the full realization that life on earth is not atomistic but ecological. We cannot love a species in the same way we love a personal friend, but we can feel our interconnectedness down to our own soul. We can realize that our fates are interwoven. We can realize that violence, even when necessary, is more like an amputation than a victory. Growing in love requires three leaps of faith. To love anyone or anything requires a courage to risk losing it. The second leap, to love another as other, requires losing the sense of oneself as the center of one’s own story. The third love cannot be understood in terms of the first or second love. The third love is not self love inflated, nor is it personal love expanded. The third love means drowning in the ocean of interconnectedness. It is the realization that we cannot stand independently from our human family, the web of life or the cosmic process itself. The third love is most simply and profoundly the realization that what we do to any being anywhere, we are ultimately doing to ourselves.
Very few biblical literalists still insist the world is flat, that mental illness is the work of demons, or that the sun rotates around the earth. There is, however, an alarming number of Christians who would impose biblical sexual ethics on modern people. A pious remnant still fights for what they dishonestly call “biblical marriage.” The truth is biblical marriages were often arranged. “Biblical marriage” could also include more than one wife. In “biblical marriage” enslaved women could be impregnated to bring more children into the family. the Bible does not mention getting a wedding license nor of having to receive the church’s blessings. It is utter hypocrisy for Christian Fundamentalists to use the words “biblical marriage” as though any of us really wishes to return to those ancient practices. Even the most hardcore literalists do not believe in fighting only with the weapons mentioned in the bible. By what principle do literalists use the bible to limit the happiness of others by the primitive marital standards of an ancient people? If literalists are okay with our military moving away from bows and arrows, why not recognize that ancient cultural morals were also examples of limited understanding of human possibilities? If even biblical literalists have grown to permit better ways for us to kill one another, why not grow in in permitting more enlightened ideas of human sexuality that would allow us to find better ways to love?
What did Jesus mean when he said our love must be like the sun’s? What does it mean to say the sun shines on the just and the unjust? And why do so many of the world’s great religions tie their symbols of enlightenment with the rising sun or the vernal equinox? Perhaps loving like the sun means radiating from the generative principle that has given us life. Perhaps it means that our ephemeral pulse is but an echo of a deeper song written into the fabric of being itself. Perhaps loving like the sun means that our peace of mind need not go into eclipse when surrounded by violence and shadows. The sun is always shining even when occluded by storms. In the same way we can work for a better world without fretting about the foolish of others. What pathetic kind of wisdom would it be that shut downs when others are foolish? Perhaps loving like the sun means working for universal human and animal rights whether we find those other beings worthy or not. The sun does not make plants grow by coercion. It imply shines. If plants do not open themselves to the common life it is they that wither. Loving like the sun is in no way limited to religion. The Atheist Albert Camus expressed this insight as well as anyone: “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.” Perhaps loving like the sun means when we live radiantly from the creative core of our being, and from the core of being itself, we shine on through the worst of storms.
Universal love is not a feeling so much as a commitment to work for the happiness of everyone. Universal love is like the Bodhisattva vow in Buddhism to work for the happiness of all beings. Universal love recognizes that all of humanity is our family, but it also recognizes that there is sometimes cruelty and abuse in that family. Universal love does not mean ignoring cruelty, it means remembering that life is an interwoven whole. True justice is not an absence of love. True justice is love that protects the weak from the mighty, the poor from the rich, and the oppressed from the privileged. Love in the form of justice is not content with punishing those who have been cruel. We can all be unloving at times. As Gandhi said, the purpose of our struggle is not to eliminate an enemy but to illumine a principle. And as Dr. King said, our ultimate goal is never retribution and punishment but reconciliation and the establishment of what he called the beloved community. Love as a feeling is very unstable and unpredictable. I doubt it is possible to always FEEL loving, but remembering the interwoven-ness of life gives us a powerful foundation for growing in love and a starting place to return to when we cannot feel love at all.
I have always wanted this page to be a pure gift to you. I have resisted efforts to monetize my site on Facebook. When I added SubStack I was touched by the people who offered to pay for my posts; but, again, I want the posts to be gifts for you so I have not claimed any of that money. I just want to post to make your day a little better. As far as an health update, we are still waiting to get rid of my cough so they can do heart surgery. That makes giving you a time table impossible. This is going to be a long hall and I really don’t want to spend my posts, or even my own awareness, on my health problems. You have enough problems with everything that is happening in the world. So that I don’t have to bother you with personal updates on this page I am letting you know the church has set up a caring bridge for me. If you go to caringbridge.org and type in my name you should be able to find updates there. The page asks for money but people have already given more than enough for my food and supplies. As an officially verified nerd, nothing makes me happier than having time to think big thoughts. That is very hard to do with my schedule as a minister. Ironically, being bedridden has allowed me more time to think about my book and work on it internally. Thank you for your concern but, as I mentioned a week or so, I am peaceful and happy. There is no point in worrying about me. My posting will be spotty for a while I will post when I have the energy. Again, thank all of you for your concern.
One of the most powerful moments I can remember, as an activist or as a minister, was when we were working to pass the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Bill in Texas. James Byrd, Jr. had been murdered horrifically in Jasper, Texas by three white supremacists. The gentle prophet Dianne Hardy-Garcia honored me incredibly by asking me to go with her to meet with James Byrd’s mother about naming the proposed bill after her son. The topic of hate crimes was very immediate to me because, several years earlier, I had presided over the funeral of Ernest Saldaña, a kind and gentle gay man, who also murdered in a brutal hate crime. The campaign to pass hate crimes protection was emotionally brutal. Many straight white lawmakers argued that protections for groups specifically target for reasons of race, religion or sexual orientation were asking for special rights. At one point Republican lawmakers sent word to the Black Caucus that, if they took protections for the LGBTQ community out of the bill, they would pass it. The offer took place behind the scenes but I will never in my life forget the reply of the Black Caucus. Clearly steeped in the story of the Exodus, the leader of the Black Caucus responded, “Either we all cross over into the promised land or none of us crosses over.” I think of that moment often when so called practical politicians want to use any part of our human family as bargaining chips for short term political victory. The only power that will stand up fascism is universal human rights and grass roots solidarity. Solidarity means seeing all humanity as our family and not leaving ANYONE behind. When I reflect on the crises facing this nation, as more and more institutions crumble, as more and more voices of minority communities are silenced, as the human rights of more and more people are dismissed as “identity politics,” I remember the voice of the Texas Black Political Caucus showing us the way home. We are one human family, none of us will ever cross over into the promised land until all of us can cross.
Austin lost an icon Tuesday. Tom Spencer is credited with starting the local PBS station here in Austin. I believe I met Tom doing his PBS interview show, but I got to know him much better when he served as leader of our local interfaith organization now known as I-ACT. Most interfaith organizations attempt to be inclusive, but they are built on a Christian understanding of religion. At best they include the three Abrahamic religions, but the vast richness of other world religions is often left unexplored. iACT had begun under another name as a group of Christians wanting to do service projects in Austin. As the group opened their hearts and minds to other worldviews the question arose how could religions reach across their differences. Tom was knowledgeable enough about world religions to realize many of them do not worship what the Abrahamic religions think of as God. Tom was also wise enough to realize religions would never find unity simply by sharing their common beliefs and practices. Instead, Tom realized that what healthy religions has in common is the desire to be better people and to make this world a better place. It is that compassion that reaches across religious divides. Today iACT not only celebrates world religions, it also comes together to repair homes for people who cannot afford it. They have a wonderful program for refugees. They even have a financial literacy program for youth. They are a lighthouse of compassion shining through what can be very dark storms. Tom had the soul of a gardener. He used to say he was raised Catholic and born Buddhist. He found the sacred in the most ordinary of places. When asked to speak about the sacred, Tom would sometimes ask people if they had had a treasure box as a child. He would then ask what those treasures had been. People invariably remembered that the treasures of their youth had been ordinary things like rocks, and feathers, and shells. I think Tom’s point was that the sacred is all around us and we can always return to our spiritual home base if we open our eyes, ears and hearts to the sacred shining through what seems ordinary. It also helps if we do not let religion get in the way of the love to which great religions call us. Thank you, Tom Spencer. You will be sorely missed.
This is a picture of the gallows a MAGA mob built for Mike Pence. Mike Pence, you will remember, was an almost complete Trump sycophant, but because he once chose the Constitution over the whims of one person, the MAGA mob was willing to lynch him. Most Americans are incapable of identifying the fascism of our own day because we were taught to hear the voice of tyranny only in a German or Russian accent. Because so many Americans lack an ethical principle that transcends our own national boundaries, a demagogue needs only to replace the swastika with an American flag, the scapegoating of one group with that of another, and the worship of one unquestionable leader with another. Those with ears need to hear. Once a leader has the power to deport immigrants without due process, then anyone who opposed Trump on any issue can be disposed of with the unproven charge that they are “un-American.” By waiving due process for those you dislike you have thrown away your own rights as well. It is easy to mount on the back of an alligator. It is not so easy to dismount. It will never be easier to say “no” to fascism than it is right now. If you have even the slightest sinew of an ethical backbone, now is the time to say “no” to one person rule and “yes” to a democratic process that, in principle, might empower us all.
When did the church forget Jesus died as a criminal condemned by the state and culture of his time? When did the church begin to dine with the rich and powerful instead of the outcastes we are called to serve? Before the cross was adulterated into a theological monstrosity symbolizing an angry tantrum throwing God, it stood for the hope of the poor and oppressed over and against the power of empire. It is precisely this executed Jesus the church renounces when it justifies the mistreatment of cultural scapegoats by saying, “We are a nation of laws.” Precisely! So was Rome! So was Egypt! Moses was not told at the burning bush to teach an other worldly message of salvation. Moses was told to confront the most powerful man on earth with a very political message, “Let my people go!” Love’s call is not to obedience to our nation or religion but to liberation for our entire human family. The church must cease teaching a truth that does not set the people free. Our calling is not to turn people into Christian clones but to be their allies in becoming who they most truly are whether Christian or not. We do not truly love others unless we can love them AS other. The lamb sitting on a throne, is not a symbol of a good bully dominating bad bullies. The lamb on a throne is a symbol of a non-hierarchical love that has grown so fierce that the privileged are brought low and the wretched are lifted up to receive every right the rich and powerful claim for themselves.
