You are welcome to share anything you find on this site. Please link back to jimrigby.org.
I’m never sure I’ve preached the Sermon on the Mount correctly until a nonreligious person says, “yes, that makes sense.”
If I understand the Bible correctly, we should make love our aim not religion. Our goal should not be orthodoxy in our belief but a certain depth and breadth in our loving.
And, frankly, if religion isn’t about love, I would rather spend eternity in hell with the lovers than in heavenly mansions with judges and haters.
Originally posted in 2012
As a child I was taught rituals that tuned my heart to the church, but not to nature nor to life. Mine was a religion that did not illumine life, but itself needed illumination.
It was from the Sufis that I learned of a path that could call us past our sects and dogmas and into life itself. I could tell the Dervishes were dancing to a music I could not yet hear.
Years ago ran across the works of a wonderful Sufi named Hazrat Inayat Khan who said: “The true use of music is to become musical in one’s thoughts, words and actions. One should be able to give the harmony for which the soul yearns and longs every moment. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony, and harmony is best given by producing it in one’s own life.”
When one sings or dances without reservation, the sense of a separate self sometimes melts away and we become one with the music of life itself. At that point we learn to hear beyond the feeble hymns of religion and begin to hear the sacred music of streams and breezes, and to dance to that cosmic hymn in which we live and move and have our being.
It makes all the difference in the world whether religion is born of fear or of compassion.
The First Commandment (No Gods before me) can be heard in two very different ways:
To a frightened heart, the First Commandment seems to say we are to lift up our sectarian idea of God over every other or face the wrath of a jealous heavenly dictator.
To a loving heart, the First Commandment can be heard as the voice of life itself. It can be heard as a reminder that we are part of a life that is deeper and broader than our own little lives and so must remember to always love the whole of life more than any of its parts.
Fear hears the First Commandment as a call to sectarian loyalty. Love hears the exact same words as a call to empty ourselves into a kindred sympathy with all.
Please realize if someone runs government like a business you will someday no longer be a citizen but only a customer.
The purpose of a government run like a business will be to make as much money as possible off of you. And- because you allowed the civil rights of marginal communities to be stripped- you, too, will someday stand naked before a merciless law.
Only your vanity convinced you that sharks would take pity on you because they flattered you when they needed your vote. You will soon wish you had stood up for others so there would be protections for you against the lying and greed you have enabled.
The old saying still holds: if someone will cheat WITH you, they will cheat ON you.
One of the greatest gifts we can give the world is to live from our own roots.
Living from our own roots means trusting the creativity within us more than the hymns and creeds of the religion we have inherited.
The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart asked the following question: “What good is it to me that Mary gave birth to the child of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God. God is always needing to be born.”
Living from our own roots means not believing what a scripture or clergy person says until we can find its meaning in our own experience.
Living from our roots means treating whatever we read on the internet, or hear from the mouth of a friend, as provisional until we have personally verified it from at least a couple reputable news sources.
It is not enough to read Lao Tzu, I must discover the “Way” running through my own place and time. The Buddha cannot enlighten me unless I am willing to sit under my own version of a bodhi tree. The resurrection of Jesus has not happened until I rise from my own dead endings and enter the common life of all in this present moment.
Again, one of the greatest gifts we can give the world is to live from our own roots.
It looks like I’m through the woods for now, but when I was in the ER and the staff was trying to get me through the night, I was amazed at how peaceful and happy I felt.
Part of that peace came from a lifetime of honoring the Stoic teaching not to regard any fate as belonging to me. But the peace came even more profoundly from believing that my sense of separateness is an illusion. Albert Einstein is often credited with this quote, but I believe the true author is Daniel Christian Wahl, who said:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. (We) experience (ourselves), (our) thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of (our) consciousness.”
I want to always remember that the universe did not owe me life. My existence has been a free gift. I have flowered out of the depths of the universe, either as the result of an ultimate being, or of a cosmic process. Either way, why should I not trust the circle of life when my eventual tomb will be born of same creative principle as my initial womb?
One thing I know is that I want every moment from here on to be full of gratitude. No matter what my fate, I want to be grateful. I hereby resolve that when that last moment comes (hopefully, many years from now) the last utterance that passes through my lips will be the word “yes!”
Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and a lifelong Republican. By 2007, the party had changed so dramatically that Fox & Friends aired a segment where one of the hosts said Fred Rogers was “an evil, evil man.”
According to Snopes the commentary to the FOX segment said:
“These experts are saying that the kids of today who grew up with Mr. Rogers were told by him, ‘You’re special, just for being who you are.” Well, here’s the problem [that] gets lost in that whole self-business, and the idea that being hard and having high issues for yourself is discounted. Mr. Rogers’ message was, “You’re special because you’re you.” He didn’t say, “If you want to be special, you’re going to have to work hard,” and now all these kids are growing up and they’re realizing, ‘Hey wait a minute, Mr. Rogers lied to me, I’m not special — I’m trying hard, and I’m not getting anywhere.’”
Joanne Rogers, Mr. Roger’s widow said of the MAGA movement, “We have somebody leading us right now who is not a forgiver. His values are very, very different from Fred’s values – almost completely opposite.”
I can understand how rabid capitalists might claim that mercy is a weakness and that diversity, equity and inclusion weaken the nation; but, for the life of me I cannot understand how any Christian could make those claims without blushing.
Loving those who are different and redistributing the world’s goods are ESSENTIAL teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. In Luke, the Beatitudes not only comfort the poor, but also warn those who have hoarded the world’s goods:
“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
I believe the Beatitudes were Jesus’ way of assuring the oppressed that they were loved of God and warning those who did not do justice to their entire human family would discover themselves to be to be hungry of heart and internally bankrupt.
Jesus taught a love that does justice. The church becomes an Anti-Christ when it mocks as “woke” who would care about justice in our day. Donald Trump is tragically wrong and Mr. Rogers is eternally right. Love must grow into justice because the entire world is our neighborhood.
These are brutal times. It is easy to become discouraged and want to drop out of the struggle for a better world.
It can be helpful to remember the bright souls we have known who refused to be defined by their political era and so gave birth to new possibilities for an age to come.
Living in Texas, I have met some remarkable feminists and womanists. It was probably from these “steel magnolias” that I learned not to let political victory or defeat define us. Like anyone, these champions got discouraged and needed to rest, but they were fully committed to their causes and had each other’s back.
I remember sharing coffee with some of Ann Richards’ pals at the State Capitol. They had given their lives to make conditions better for women, the LGBTQ community, the working poor and the children of Texas. I could not believe how much love and joy they expressed for each other as they danced through some of Texas’ most brutal struggles. The deck was rigged against them, but they seemed unflappable. Their joy came, from not from political victories, but from serving their highest values in a beloved community. For these brave women, despair was energy out of harness.
People who give their lives for their highest values cannot be evaluated in terms of political wins and loses. They are like lanterns burning in the window through humanity’s midnight times. Their faithfulness reminds us of our own best selves.
It is easy to despair as we listen to gloating politicians who believe that might makes them right, but it is no small thing to give our lives as lanterns of love and justice shining in the window through humanity’s midnight hours. If we can remember the fierce and gentle souls who refused to be defined by the struggles of their time, perhaps we can remember the gift we give the world simply by refusing to be anything less than fully human.
(Originally published in May of 2023)
Nothing in church history has done as much damage as the idea that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
No one can count the families torn asunder, the innocents tortured as heretics, nor the minorities oppressed because the church thought they would be tortured eternally if they did not convert to sectarian Christianity.
The church honors itself, not God, when we say God has only spoken to us. I cannot imagine a blasphemy more arrogant than to boast we are the only tool in God’s toolbox.
When Jesus said salvation could only be found through himself, I do not believe he meant through the Christian religion. When he was “the way, the truth and the life” I do not believe he was speaking as the leader of a religious sect. I do not even believe he was speaking as a human ego. Instead, in the tradition of mystical Judaism, I believe Jesus was speaking poetically as the creative heart of life itself.
My guess is that Jesus was referring to the radical and universal love which he had embodied in his life and in his death. I believe he was saying that only that radical and universal love would take the disciples to where he was going. It seems to me he was telling his soon-to-be heartbroken followers that, deep down inside, they already knew the way home.