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When some ancient people within the Christian religion became too focused on their own pain as human beings they invented a sadistic story of fall and atonement to account for the random suffering they saw all around themselves.

When human beings believe themselves to be the special creation of a humanoid god there is much about life that does not make sense. It is understandable that creationism would lead to the belief that we are being punished for something that we did not ourselves do.

Only when we realize that the universe was not made especially for us can we also understand that we have evolved within the web of life. We do not need to come up with excuses for God to explain why a loving heavenly parent would invent something as pointless (from a human perspective) as cancer. Instead, we just need to step out of our self centered story as a species and realize we are leaves on the tree of life.

Life is painful, but it is beautiful.

Wendell Berry is an example of someone whose religion calls him deeper into science. His mystical and poetic nature does not untether him from the birds of the air to make room for a mythical heaven. His religion is a cosmic poetry that expresses his sense of deeper roots into nature

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

The symbols in Genesis can be understood as a call to the fairy tales of creationism, or they can be heard as poetic calls into an evolutionary spirit that is interwoven with every other life form.

The meaning of our lives is not found in concocting creationist narratives to make sense of our pain and death. The meaning of our lives is discovered by living joyously and courageously as cells in web of life and in realizing the beauty of life is worth the pain.

When some ancient people within the Christian religion became too focused on their own pain as human beings they invented a sadistic story of fall and atonement to account for the random suffering they saw all around themselves.

When human beings believe themselves to be the special creation of a humanoid god there is much about life that does not make sense. It is understandable that creationism would lead to the belief that we are being punished for something that we did not ourselves do.

Only when we realize that the universe was not made especially for us can we also understand that we have evolved within the web of life. We do not need to come up with excuses for God to explain why a loving heavenly parent would invent something as pointless (from a human perspective) as cancer. Instead, we just need to step out of our self centered story as a species and realize we are leaves on the tree of life.

Life is painful, but it is beautiful.

Wendell Berry is an example of someone whose religion calls him deeper into science. His mystical and poetic nature does not untether him from the birds of the air to make room for a mythical heaven. His religion is a cosmic poetry that expresses his sense of deeper roots into nature

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

The symbols in Genesis can be understood as a call to the fairy tales of creationism, or they can be heard as poetic calls into an evolutionary spirit that is interwoven with every other life form.

The meaning of our lives is not found in concocting creationist narratives to make sense of our pain and death. The meaning of our lives is discovered by living joyously and courageously as cells in web of life and in realizing the beauty of life is worth the pain.

The strongest rebuttal of Christian nationalism does not come from outside critics. The strongest rebuttal of Christian nationalism comes from Christians who refuse to hate, who refuse to follow an American messiah, or to reduce Jesus’ message of universal love to members of the Christian sect.

The strongest rebuttal of Christian nationalism comes from those who refuse to let Calvin, Augustine, or Luther replace what Jesus taught at the Sermon on the Mount.

The strongest rebuttal of Christian nationalism comes from those who realize Jesus did not teach moralism, dogma or magical rituals. He taught love, period.

Grief can feel like we are drowning in a deep ocean. Grief does not seem to care what we are currently doing with our lives. It rises up and washes away our personal projects like so many sandcastles. Grief can be uncomfortable under the best of circumstances, but, when we fight against it, the agony of grief can be unbearable.

Grief can be the body’s way of processing great change. Grief has natural rhythms like the tides of an ocean. We cannot speed ahead to avoid the pain of a lost love, but we can live trusting that no pain is eternal. We can remember times when beauty and wisdom blossomed out of our earlier griefs.

When we honor the process of grief we are building our capacity for future joy. The energies of grief can be unbearably painful at the time, but eventually, if we can slow down and listen, we hear a deep embodied wisdom trying to find its voice within us.

Sometimes, we can be like waves that have forgotten they belong to something wider and deeper. When we live by and for ourselves we set ourselves up for tremendous pain. I, too, belong to ocean. My blood is like sea water. So are my tears. It is possible to understand grief as primordial life rising to claim its own. Life whispers to us as a friend, not enemy, when it warns in our every personal project, “This, too, belongs to me.”

Those who can build their sandcastles without forgetting we live within the pulse of deeper tides are never far from joy. Grief comes as a brief storm and then moves on. Our personal experiences are as fleeting as sandcastles but the creativity expressed through our loves is as eternal as a cosmic ocean.

As we approach the holidays I’m hearing a growing dread about political conversations with friends and family. I don’t have all the answers but here are some suggestions that might be helpful in holding these difficult conversations. Some of these suggestions have came from books on negotiating like the Harvard Project’s “Getting to Yes.”

1. If you find yourself cornered into talking about politics this holiday, the parameters of the discussion are very important. Agree not to allow name calling of the persons being discussed. Calling someone a name or labeling them with a catchy insult may feel like communication but it does not actually build a bridge to exchange information. If one party believes someone from the other side is lying, calling them a liar is not as helpful as presenting examples of their dishonest claims.

2. Agree to define terms and unpack popular cliches. Do not try to build understanding based on emotionally biased terms. Labels like “communist” or “fascist” are not as clear as they make us feel. We cannot model rational communication with emotionally manipulative words.

3. Agree that both sides will get to speak for equal amounts of time. Take turns speaking without interrupting or letting yourself be interrupted. When one person finishes their point, ask the other to summarize what was just said. The conversation should not go on until the person who just spoke agrees they have been heard.

4. Agree to a common measure for truth claims. This can be hard if your friend is denying science, history or critical thinking but if honest communication isn’t actually happening it is better not to pretend that it is. Sometimes the most helpful form of communication is just being honest about the obstacles that prevent communication and negotiating a future setting that would be fair to both sides.

5. Separate thinking and feeling. Our world has changed so much that many people are in grief. Their former identities were based on oppressive hierarchies that, while unjust, can be painful to leave behind. We double our chances at communicating if we can affirm what someone is feeling at the same time as protecting those being being harmed by traditional hierarchies of wealth and power.

6. Admit when the other is right. If we are truly seeking truth, honesty never hurts our efforts. To admit where the other is right (and anywhere your side might have been wrong) powerfully models that you are seeking truth and justice for all, and not just trying to win an argument.

7. Separate the people from the issues. You can love someone deeply without losing your higher calling to seek truth and to do justice. The world has grown very complicated. Trump has convinced many people they can go back to a simpler world before science and demographics destroyed our earlier simplistic answers. The friends of humankind have always found a balance between keeping a tender heart, and, at the same time, calling our species to radical honesty and a broader justice that includes us all.

As I say, I don’t have all the answers but it might be helpful today for readers to leave their own suggestions on how to communicate on these difficult topics.

These days, when anyone calls for higher taxation of the rich and programs of uplift for the poor, they are accused of Marxism by MAGA loyalists. It appears most MAGA enthusiasts have never read a page of Marx and have no idea what socialism is. I suspect few of them have read Adam Smith either. If Adam Smith were alive today, he himself might be accused of Marxism.

Capitalism was originally an organizing economic principle within humanist values. Adam Smith wanted to find leverage to dismantle feudalism so he used property rights for leverage; but Smith operated with an assumption that persons are the context of things, not things the context of persons. Adam Smith’s writings contain many warning labels about the dangers of his own property based economic system.

SMITH WARNED THAT A SYSTEM BASED ON PROPERTY RIGHTS LEFT UNATTENDED WOULD DRIFT TOWARD WEALTH INEQUITY:

“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich (person) there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.”

SMITH WARNED THAT HIGH PROFITS COULD LEAD TO LOW WAGES:

“Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

SMITH WARNED OF GOVERNMENT STACKED TOWARD THE RICH:

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

SMITH BELIEVED THE RICH SHOULD PAY MORE TAXES:

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

WHILE SMITH WAS PROPOSING THE SYSTEM WE NOW CALL CAPITALISM, HIS WORK IS REPLETE WITH WARNING LABELS NOW DISREGARDED:

“To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers… It comes from an order of (human beings) whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”

Capitalism cannot by itself lead to economic justice because it is a system. Underneath any economic system needs to beat a human heart that, like Adam Smith’s, sides with propertyless human beings over and against inhumane concentrations of wealth and power even those resulting from his own system.

I certainly understand why many wonderful people hate religion.

I know intelligent and compassionate people who use the word “religion” as a synonym for everything bad. Religion has done much damage in the world and I agree wholeheartedly that humanity would be better off without superstition, cruel moralisms, and theocratic clergy.

On the other hand, I also believe people are using the word “religion” meaning different things. I believe it is important to find out what people mean by that word before condemning them. There is much evil done in the name of religion, but also much that is wise and good.

When people say that all religion is brainwashing, I wonder if they’ve studied Buddhist texts like the Kalama Sutra where the Buddha says”

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’

When people say all religion is patriarchal, I wonder if they’ve ever listened to feminist religions like Wicca where the brilliant Starhawk says:

“I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the earth is sacred, and that women and women’s bodies are one expression of that sacred being.”

Or, have they studied the Christian feminist Rosemary Radford Reuther who wrote:

“Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the demands of the women’s movement with those of the ecological movement to envision a radical reshaping of the basic socioeconomic relations and the underlying values of this [modern industrial] society.”

When people say that all religion is about control, I wonder if they’ve studied the liberation theologies of Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day or Gustavo Gutiérrez who wrote:

“The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.”

And:

“Liberation from every form of exploitation, the possibility of a more human and dignified life, the creation of a new humankind – all pass through this struggle.”

Or Bishop Oscar Romero who preached a Christmas sermon saying:

“We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.”

When people say that all organized region is bad I wonder if they have ever thought about how much organization it take nurture an intimate community, or to offer a regular food pantry for the poor, or a cold weather shelter for people who are unhoused?

When people say all clergy are money seeking bullies, I wonder if they’ve ever thought about the fact that Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister?

Instead of talking past each other about religion without even defining the word, I wonder what would happen if we listened respectfully to each other rejecting whatever is ignorant, sectarian or cruel and honoring whatever is good, or true or beautiful?

In his book on the Emotions, Sartre left us with a striking image.

Sartre said there was a difference between fear and horror. As I remember it, he illustrated that difference by describing the experience of being startled by a leering face on the other side of a window.

Fear, Sartre said, is when we are concerned that the grinning face might break the window and harm us. Horror, on the other hand, is the irrational dread that the face is somehow magically affecting us through the window. Sartre’s window has been a helpful image for me in realizing when I have become unmoored into fears born of my imagination.

I have also been helped by the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment. We are told in that story that, just as the young seeker was approached awakening, he was beset by fearful demons. We are told the Buddha dispelled the demons by simply taping the earth.

Both of these stories have been helpful to me over the years. Fear is a necessary emotion for our survival, but when fear lapses into to irrational horror it can be helpful to come up with our own version of “touching the earth.”

Studying science can be a way of touching the earth. Actually science can be invaluable in developing a love based on reality, not imagination. We cannot share the world as we each imagine it, we can only share the world as we both experience it. Science can be a bridge to bring us both to a common understanding.

The Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote an extremely loving book on science entitled, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.” In it, he wrote:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

If I understand Sartre, he was describing the difference between fear and horror by illustrating a situation were our perception becomes untethered from our real experience and floats off like an untethered balloon into the demon world born of ungrounded imagination.

When it feels like our world is melting into terror, salvation can be found in “touching the earth” in our own way. When we are lost in our fearful imaginings simply wiggling our toes or fingers can bring us back to our bodies. Touching a tree, looking into a human face, working with our hands- these can all be ways of remembering that however afraid we may feel, we are always cradled in reality. We are not abandoned observers of indifferent fate. We are the universe that has become aware of itself through us. Heaven does not lie if finding another, better world. Salvation is always awakening more deeply to where we are in the here and now.

We had an interesting church service yesterday. We celebrated the baptism and naming ceremony for a transgender man named Morgan.

Morgan had driven by our church countless times. He had seen our signs proclaiming inclusivity, but he did not trust church rhetoric. The larger church had told him that gender is binary and that people like him who do not fit into the church’s simplistic duality were a dangerous perversion. When Morgan finally did come to our church, he sat on the back row as near to the exit as he could get.

When I got a chance to meet Morgan for coffee I realized he was the person I had read about in the Washington Post. Morgan resigned from a position with the state of Texas because he realized he was unintentionally helping Gov. Greg Abbott and the State of Texas traumatize families whose teens were struggling with issues of gender and identity.

I found out quickly that Morgan is a very innocent and trusting person. I realized my tacky sense of humor was going to be a problem. After we got to know each other, Morgan said he had seen the Transgender flag on our church sign. I acted embarrassed and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. That was the flag of Uruguay!” Eventually Morgan laughed, but I realized I needed to be more careful with this innocent and trusting soul.

I, too, had learned in church a simplistic moralism based on a binary notion of gender. After all, the Bible says that God created humans male and female. In seminary I learned that taking a Hebrew word literally in English can lead to terrible errors.

For example, the Bible also says God created night and day. That does not mean that there is only night and day. It does not mean that dusk and dawn are perversions. I realized the mistakenness of moralism based on a binary understanding of gender when I was in seminary.

I was serving as a chaplain in a hospital in Oklahoma. One day, when I decided to take a break in the surgery library, a huge book caught my eye. The book must have been six inches across. Curious about what such a large book might be, I went up to get a closer look.

To my shock the book was about surgery procedures for children born between binary genders. Opening the book I read with horror and fascination about members of my human family who did not fit in my simplistic binary definitions. I realized if this ambiguity was happening externally, I had no idea what was happening invisibly inside other people. I realized I had to leave my simplistic certainty behind if I was to follow the call to love.

My text for Sunday’s sermon was Paul’s great passage in Galatians:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

I hear that passage saying that Christlike love for other people must be bigger than their (or our) gender roles, bigger than their (or our) politics, and even bigger than their (or our) religion. We are not baptized into Christianity but into universal love.

In the early church, baptized people often given a new name to honored their new life. We wanted to celebrate Morgan’s new life by honoring name he has chosen for himself. Rev. Babs Miller handled the naming ceremony using a liturgy shared by the Rev. Janie Spahr.

During the baptism, Morgan was crying. Most of the congregation was crying. After the baptism the congregation rose to give Morgan a standing ovation. They wanted him to know he was a beloved and honored member of our church family . When the ceremony ended, and the Sanctuary was filled with joyous chaos Morgan bent over and whispered conspiratorially, “Viva Uruguay!”

Whether we are religious or not it can be helpful to live in a community that honors our art, our quest for meaning and our desire to make this a better world.

Human beings are social animals. Our emotions can be confusing to us if we do not share them with others. Communities of art have often been helpful in the flowering of creativity. To have an oasis where we do not have to defend ourselves can be very helpful in learning to hear and sing our own song.

Religion has traditionally had rituals of individuation and bonding, of healing and transformation, and of sharing gratitude and grief. Even if one leaves traditional religion, it can still be helpful to find a community of art.

It can also be helpful to seek out a safe place to learn and grow with others. In a community of meaning one can ask the deep questions of life without having others rush to provide answers. After our community has listened and honored our questions and our fledgling insights, it can also be helpful to hear other insights and points of view. When ancient or modern wisdom texts are understood as cosmic poetry (not science or history) they can be a wonderful way of widening and deepening our perception.

Finally, finding communities of activism can be very helpful in responding to the needs of the world. We cannot give money to every cause or take in every needy person. In community we can welcome the stranger without running every risk and carrying every weight alone. Prophetic communities can help us live as change agents and models of what the world could be.

Through art and activism communities can help us live out on a small scale what we hope the world might be for everyone. Again, whether we are religious or not, it can be helpful to live in a community that honors our art, our quest for meaning and our activism.