Theo/a/poetics and Microtheology

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2011-06-19T08:01:00.001-07:00

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Job 38 a translation by David Breeden

2011-05-10T06:45:00.001-07:00

Then GOD spoke to Job out of a whirlwind:

“Who is this who talks without knowing?
Get some clothes on, like a man.
I have some questions
And I expect you to answer.
Just where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you have any answers.

“Just who planned the earth? Do you know
Who stretched out the plumb line?

“What are the foundations of the world fastened to?
Who laid the cornerstone of the earth
On that day when the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

“Who was it shut up the doors of the sea
When those broke open and the water
Rushed out, as if from a womb?

“Who was it made the clouds
Like clothing for the earth
And the darkness like swaddling clothes,
And set the outer boundaries
And set bars and doors?

“Who said to the waves,
‘You can come this far and farther?’
Have you commanded the morning in your lifetime
And made the daylight keep its place?

“Have you been to the springs of the sea?
Have you walked in the sea’s depths?
Have the gates of death been opened to you?
Have you seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Have you seen the breadth of the earth?
Tell me if you know.

“Where does light dwell?
And as for darkness. . .where does it live?
Do you know the way to those houses?
Were you born when these things happened?
Are you that old?

“Have you ever visited the storehouse of the snow?
Have you seen the storehouse of the hail
That I keep in reserve for battles and wars?

“Which is the road to the place the light is parted
And the east wind is scattered on the earth?

“Who was it made the courses for the rain
Or a way for lightning and thunder
So that it falls upon the earth,
Even in the places no person lives
So that the tender buds of the herb can grow?

“Does the rain have a father?
Whose child is the drops of dew?
Who is the mother of the ice
And the frosts of heaven
That make water turn to stone
And freeze the face of the deep?

“Can you chain the Pleiades
Or free the shackles of Orion?
Can you bring out the constellations in their seasons?
Can you guide Arcturus with his sons?

“Do you know the laws of heaven?
Might you make the earth obey them?
Can you lift your voice to the clouds and bring down rain?
Can you send lightning bolts wherever you please?
Who has taught the rules to all things?
Who gave wisdom to the human heart?
Who is wise enough to number the clouds?
Who can open the jars of heaven
When the dust grows hard
And the clods stick together?

“Will you do the hunting for a lion
When her cubs are hungry
And they crouch in their dens
Lying quietly in wait?
Who feeds the raven
When his young ones
Cry to God, wandering in starvation?

An Other

2011-05-03T07:05:00.001-07:00

In the world of flesh
Killing another
Is victory

In the world of spirit
Killing another
Is killing yourself

My father found
This moment
Rifling the corpse
Of another
He had killed

He found a pocket watch
In a silver case
To keep it safe
Yet here it was—
On a dead boy

A farmer in a photograph
Like my father

Who knew why
These boys were killing
And not cutting wheat?

Who knew why?
The spirit
The soul
Does not know why

He looked at the uniforms
He looked at the wounds
He looked at the nice watch
Exactly
Like me

An Other

2011-05-03T07:04:00.001-07:00

The Last Hours of Jesus a translation from Mark by David Breeden

2011-04-20T07:51:00.001-07:00

Chapter 14: 17

In the evening Jesus came with the twelve. And as they sat and ate, Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, one of you eating with me will betray me.”

The disciples were dismayed, each asking, “Is it I? Is it I?”

Jesus answered, “It is one of the twelve, one who dips bread into the dish with me. The Child of Humanity goes as it has been written of him. But woe to that man by whom the Child of Humanity is betrayed! It would have been better for that man had he never been born.”

The disciples were dismayed, each asking, “Is it I? Is it I?”

Jesus answered, “It is one of the twelve, one who dips bread into the dish with me. The Child of Humanity goes as it has been written of him. But woe to that man by whom the Child of Humanity is betrayed! It would have been better for that man had he never been born.”

As they continued eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave to them, and said, “Take, eat: this is my body.”
And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

And he said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. Truly I say to you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Sovereignty of God.”

After they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. There, Jesus said to his disciples, “All of you will desert me tonight. For it is written,

‘I will smite the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’
But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.”

Peter said to Jesus, “Even if all the others desert you, I will not.”

Jesus said to Peter, “Truly I say to you that on this day, even in this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.”

Peter spoke more vehemently, “Even if I have die with you, I will not deny you in any way.”

All the disciples said the same.

They came to a place called Gethsemane. There, Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.”

Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him. As he walked, Jesus became distressed and full of anguish. He said to them, “My soul is sad, deathly sad. Wait here and watch.”

Jesus went a little distance farther off, then fell to the ground, praying that, if it were possible, this trial might pass from him. Jesus said, “Abba—Father—all things are possible for you. Take away this cup from me! Nevertheless, it is not what I will, but what you will.”

When he came back, Jesus found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn’t you watch with me one hour? Watch you and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.”

Jesus again went away and prayed, speaking the same words as before.

When he returned, Jesus found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. They did not know how to excuse themselves.

Jesus prayed a third time, and when he came back, finding them asleep, he said, “Sleep on now, and take your rest. It is all done. The hour has come. See: the Child of Humanity has been betrayed into the hands of those who do not understand. Get up. Let us go. He who betrayed me is near.”

Even as Jesus spoke, Judas, one of the twelve, came with a large crowd carrying swords and staves from the religious leaders and the scholars and the elders.

Judas had explained to them, “Whoever I kiss, that is he. You may take him and lead him away in safety.”

As soon as he saw Jesus, Judas went to him, saying, “Rabbi, Rabbi.” And Judas kissed him.

The crowd laid their hands on Jesus and took him.

One of those nearby drew a sword and struck a servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

Jesus said to the crowd, “Have you come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves to take me? I was there in the temple daily, teaching. You did not take me then. Yet, the scriptures must be fulfilled.”

All of his followers forsook Jesus and fled, including a certain young man who had a linen cloth tied about his naked body. Men in the crowd grabbed him, and he left the linen cloth, running away naked.

They took Jesus away to the high priest. The religious leaders, elders, and scholars had assembled with him.

Peter followed, far off, to the palace of the high priest. He sat outside with the servants, warming himself by a fire.

The religious leaders and the council sought witnesses against Jesus in order to put him to death. They found none. Many bore false witness against Jesus, but their testimony was contradictory. Some bore false witness against Jesus saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.’” Yet none of the witnesses agreed with each other.

So the high priest stood up and asked Jesus, “Don’t you have anything to say? What is it these people are saying about you?”

But Jesus held his peace, saying nothing.

The high priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?”

Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Child of Humanity sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “Why do we need further witnesses? You have heard blasphemy. What do you think?”

And they all agreed that Jesus should be condemned to death.

Then some spat on him. Then they blindfolded him and beat him, saying, Prophesy!” The servants slapped him.

Peter was outside, and there came one of the maids of the high priest. When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You were with Jesus of Nazareth.”

Peter said, “I don’t understand what you are saying.” Peter went onto the porch of the palace. And a rooster crowed.

The maid found Peter and said to those who were standing around, “This is one of them.”

But Peter denied it again, going off into the crowd. Someone said, “Surely you are one of them, for your speech is like a Galilean.”

Peter began to curse and swear, saying, “I do not know this man you are talking about!”

Then the rooster crowed a second time.

Peter called to mind the words that Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me thrice.” When Peter thought of that, he wept.

Chapter Fifteen: Execution

Early in the morning the religious leaders held a consultation with the elders and scholars and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, delivering him to Pilate.

Pilate asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Jesus answered, “You say that.”

Then the religious leaders accused Jesus of many things, but Jesus answered nothing.

Pilate asked Jesus again, “You say nothing? Look how many things they are saying against you.”

Jesus said not a word, and Pilate marveled.

Now it was the custom at the festival time to release one prisoner, whoever the crowd desired. At that time there was a man named Barabbas in custody, a man who had plotted insurrection and had committed murder in the insurrection.

The crowd began crying for the customary release. So Pilate said to them, “Do you wish for me to release the King of the Jews?” For Pilate knew that the religious leaders had arrested Jesus out of envy.

But the religious leaders moved the people, convincing them to cry for the release of Barabbas.

Pilate said to the crowd, “What, then, do you wish for me to do with the one you call the King of the Jews?”

The crowd screamed, “Crucify him!”

Pilate said to the crowd, “Why? What evil has he done?”

The crowd cried all the louder, “Crucify him!”

And so Pilate, wishing to appease the mob, released Barabbas to them and delivered Jesus, after he had been beaten, to be crucified.

Soldiers led Jesus away into a hall, called the Praetorium, and they called together the entire cohort. Then the soldiers clothed Jesus in purple and wove a crown made of thorns, putting it on his head. The soldiers began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they beat him with a reed and spat on him, bowing as if they were worshipping him. After they had mocked him, they took off the purple and put his own clothes back on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

Along the way, the soldiers compelled a man named Simon, a Cyrenian, who happened to be passing by, a peasant from the country, to bear the cross of Jesus. He was the father of Alexander and Rufus.

So they brought Jesus to Golgotha, which translates, “The Place of a Skull.” There the soldiers offered wine mixed with myrrh, but Jesus would not take it. When they had crucified him, the soldiers took his garments, casting lots for them, deciding what every man should take. It was at nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.

The inscription of his accusation said, “THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

With him was crucified two thieves, one at his right hand, the other at his left. So it was that the scripture was fulfilled which said, “And he was numbered with the criminals.”

Those who passed by railed at him, wagging their heads, saying, “Ah, you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days! Save yourself. Come down from the cross.”

Likewise, the religious leaders and scholars mocked him, saying, “He saved others, yet he cannot save himself! Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross so that we may see and follow.”

Those who were crucified with him mocked him as well.

At noon, a darkness came over the whole land. The darkness lasted until three in the afternoon. Then Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Translated, this means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Those standing nearby, hearing this, said, “Listen! He is calling Elijah.” One of them ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed, and gave it to Jesus to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.”
Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the spirit.

At that moment, the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

When the centurion who stood nearby saw how Jesus cried out and gave up the spirit, he said, “Truly this man was the Child of God.”

There were women watching from far off, including Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who followed Jesus in Galilee and took care of him. There were many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

At evening, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathaea, an honorable member of the council, and one who expected the arrival of the Sovereignty of God, came, going in boldly to Pilate and asking for the body of Jesus.

Pilate could not believe that Jesus was already dead. He called the centurion and asked if Jesus was dead. When the centurion said that Jesus was dead, Pilate gave the body to Joseph.

And Joseph bought fine linen and took Jesus down. He wrapped Jesus in the linen and laid him in a tomb that had been cut into rock. Then he rolled a stone to the door of the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses watched, to see where Jesus was buried.

Chapter Sixteen: Prophecy Fulfilled

When the Sabbath had past, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought sweet spices in order to anoint the body. Thus, very early in the morning on first day of the week, they came to the tomb at the time of sunrise. As they walked, they discussed who would roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for them because the stone was very large.

When the women got there, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away. Entering into the tomb, they saw a certain young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment. This frightened them.

But the young man said, “Don’t be frightened. You are searching for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has raised up; he is not here. See, there is the place where they laid him. Go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he went before you into Galilee. There you will see him, as he predicted to you.”

The women hurried out, fleeing from the tomb, for they were trembling in amazement. They said nothing to anyone, because they were very afraid.

(Here ends the early text of Mark.)

Commentary

Why—or if—the Gospel According to Mark ended here is unknown. If the original did end here, “a certain young man” looms even larger, and more mysterious, in the narrative. If the original did end here, Jesus, having become the Child of Humanity, has gone back to Galilee. The women will have to lead the men to the truth.

What would it mean to have the ending be, “They said nothing to anyone, because they were very afraid”? Certainly, such an ending underlines the incomprehension of the disciples. It also underlines the importance of the text we are reading, The Gospel According to Mark, since it is saying something and is not afraid.

If this is the original ending, it also underlines the extreme danger of following Jesus, perhaps challenging the audience of this book to get past fear and go tell everyone.

The Longer Ending of the Gospel According to Mark

After Jesus was raised, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven demons. She went and told the disciples as they mourned and wept. Yet, when they had heard that Jesus was alive and that Mary Magdalene had seen him, they would not believe it.

After that, Jesus appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked out in the country. These two went and told what they had seen to the group, but no one would listen to them either.

Afterward Jesus appeared to the eleven as they sat at a meal, and upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they would not listen to those who had seen him after he was raised up.

Jesus said to them, “Go out into all the world and preach the good news to every creature. Those who follow and are baptized shall be saved, but those who will not listen will be damned. Here are the signs that will occur to those who follow: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and, if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover.”

So it was that after God had spoken to them, Jesus was received up into heaven, and he sat at the right hand of God.

Thus it was that they went out, preaching everywhere, God working with them, and confirming the word with signs.

Amen.

The Gospel According to Thomas

2011-03-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

Note:

This translation was constructed by the use of the original Coptic and Greek, directly consulting Michael Grondin's Coptic/English interlinear translation, Revised November 22, 2002, Copyright 1997, 2002 by Michael W. Grondin. All rights reserved. http://gospel thomas.net/xtransl.htm

The author refered to translations by Willis Barnstone in The Other Bible: Ancient Esoteric Texts, HarperSanFrancisco, 1984 and The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated and Explained by Stevan Davies, Skylight Paths Publishing, 2002.

The Gospel of Thomas is one of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945.

These are the secret words that the living Jesus spoke.
Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.

1.

Jesus said: Whoever realizes the meaning of these words, that person will not experience death.

2.

Jesus said: Do not stop until you find, and when you find, you will be troubled. Yet, having been troubled, you will become amazed, and then you will be a master over the All.

3.

Jesus said: If those who lead you say, "Look, the Kingdom is inthe sky," then notice how the birds get there before you. If they should say to you, “Look, the Kingdom is in the sea," then notice how the fish get there before you.” No—rather, the Kingdom is within you and also outside you. When you know yourselves, then they will know that you are children of the Parent. If, however, you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are poverty.

4.

Jesus said: An old man will not hesitate to ask a baby about the source of life, and he will live. There are many who are first who will become last, and the two will become one and the same.

5.

Jesus said: See what is in front of your face, then what is hidden will be revealed. Nothing hidden will fail to appear.

6.

The disciples asked Jesus: Do you wish us tofast? How should we go about praying? Should we give to charity? Should we abstain from certain types of foods?

Jesus said: Do not tell lies. If there is something that you hate, do not do it, for everything is revealed to the sky. Nothing hidden will fail to appear, and nothing covered will fail to be revealed.

7.

Jesus said: Blessed is the lion that a human eats, because that lion becomes human. Cursed is the human that a lion eats, because that human becomes a lion.

8.

Jesus said: A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea. He pulled it up full of little fish. Yet among them the wise fisherman found a good, large fish. So, he threw the small fish back into the sea, keeping the large one. Those with ears, let them hear.

9.

Jesus said: Listen—there was a man who came out to sow seeds. He filled his hands with seeds and cast them. Some seeds fell upon the road; the birds came and ate those. Othere seeds fell onto rocks, and those seeds did not send roots down into the earth and did not send shafts rising into the sky. And some seeds fell into thorns, which choked the seeds, and the worms ate them. And other seeds fell upon the good earth, and those gave fruit up to the good sky. And the sower got 60 bushels from some and 120 from others.

10.

Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and, look, I watch as it burns.

11.

Jesus said: This sky will pass away, and the sky above that will pass away. Those who are dead do not live, and those who live will not die. When you eat what is dead, you are making it alive. When you come to be in the light, what will you do? When you were one, you became two; when, however, you become two, what will you do?

12.

The disciples said to Jesus: We know that you will leave us. Who will lead us then?

Jesus answered: The place where you are, there turn to James the Just, for whose sake the sky and the earth came into being.

13.

Jesus said: Think of comparisons. What am I like?

Simon Peter said: You are like an angelic messenger.

Matthew said: You are like a philosopher.

Thomas said: Teacher, my tongue cannot tell what you are like.

Jesus said: Thomas, I am not your teacher. You have gotten drunk on the bubbling spring which I measured out.

Then Jesus took Thomas aside and spoke three things to him. When Thomas returned to the group, they asked him what Jesus had told him.

Thomas said: If I spoke to you even one of the words he spoke, you would take stones and throw them at me and a fire would come out of the stones and burn you.

14.

Jesus said to them: If you fast, you will bring sin to yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned by others, and if you should give to charity, you will be doing damage to your spirits. When you go out into the world, when people accept you, eat what is put in front of you and heal the sick among those people. For what goes in your mouth does not defile you; rather it is what comes out of your mouth that defiles you.

15.

Jesus said: When you see someone not born of woman, bow down and worship that one. He is your Father.

16.

Jesus said: Perhaps people think that I have come to throw peace upon the world. They do not understand that I have come to throw divisions upon the earth—fire, sword, and war. There will be five in a house. There will be three opposing two and two against three. Father will oppose son and son oppose father. Each will stand and stand alone.

17.

Jesus said: I will give you what eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, hands have not touched, and minds have not thought.

18.

The disciples said: tell us about our end. How will it happen?

Jesus said: Have you found the beginning? Is that why you are now looking for the end? Where the beginning is, there is the end. The blessed will stand on twofeet at the beginning and will therefore know the end, never experiencing death.

19.

Jesus said: The blessed is one who came into being at the beginning. If you become my disciple and listen to my words, these stones will serve you. There are five trees in paradise that do not change from summer to winter and do not lose their leaves. Those who know them will not experience death.

20.

The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

Jesus said to them: It is like a mustard seed, smallest of them all. However, when it falls on the earth it sends out branchs and becomes a shelter for the birds of the sky.

Mary asked Jesus: What are your disciples like?

Jesus said: They are like small children living in a field that is not theirs. When the owners of the field come, they will say, "Give us our field back." They will strip naked in the presence of the owners and give the field back to them. Therefore, I tell you this: If the owner of a house knows a theif is coming, the owner will keep an eye open so that the theif does not sneak in and steal things. You must always keep watch on the world. Arm yourselves with strength so that thieves will not ambush you, though the defense you have will be the defense that is attacked. Keep one with understanding in your midst always. When the grain was ripe, he hurried out with his sickle in his hand, in order to reap. Those with ears, let them hear.

22.

Jesus saw little ones nursing. He said to his disciples: These little ones having milk, they are like those who enter into the Kingdom.

They said to Jesus: Then we will enter into the Kingdom if we are little ones?

Jesus said to them: When you make two one, and when you make the inside like the outsid, and the outside like the inside, and the top like the bottom, and the male like the female, so that there is no male or female. When you make eyes that replace eyes, hands that replace hands, feet thatreplace feet, images that replace images, then you will enter the Kingdom.

23.

Jesus said: I will choose you, one out of a thousand and two out of ten thousand. You will stand on you feet as if you were one.

24.

His disciples said to Jesus: Show us the place where you are, since we must get there too.

Jesus said to them: Those with ears, let them hear. There is light inside a person of light that becomes light to the world. Those who have no light are darkness.

25.

Jesus said: Love your brother like your soul. Guard him as if he were the pupil of your eye.

26.

Jesus said: You see the mote in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the beam in your own. If you first get the beam out of your eye, then you will see well enough get the mote out of your brother’s eye.

27.

Jesus said: If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the Kingdom; if you do not treat the Sabbath as Sabbath, you will not see the Father.

28.

Jesus said: I have taken my stand in the world; I have appeared in the flesh. And I found everyone drunk; no one was thirsty. My soul was pained for the children of the earth, for they are blind in their minds. They do not look outside themselves. They came into the world empty and they seek to leave the world empty. For now, they are drunk; when they quite their drinking, then they will see.

29.

Jesus said: If the flesh comes into being because of spirit, that is a wonder; if spirit, however, comes into being because of the body, that is a wonderous wonder. What amazes me is that this great richness has grown in this poverty.

30.

Jesus said: Wherever there are three gods, they are gods; wherever there are two or one, I am with them.

31.

Jesus said: No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him.

32.

Jesus said: A city built and fortified on a mountain cannot be hidden.

33.

Jesus said: What you hear, preach that from the housetops; for is there anyone who lights a lamp and puts it under a basket? No, we put it on a lampstand so that everyone can use the light.

34.

Jesus said: When the blind lead the blind, they all fall into a pit.

35.

Jesus said: It is not possible to go into the house of a strong man and steal his goods unless he is bound first. Then his things can be stolen.

36.

Jesus said: Do not worry from morning until evening and evening until morning about what you will wear.

37.

His disciples said: When will you appear to us? Which day will we see you?

Jesus said: When you strip yourselves naked without being ashamed, and you take your garments and stand on them like little children, trampling them, then you will look upon the Son of He Who Lives and you will not be afraid.

38.

Jesus said: You have many times desired to hear these words which I am saying to you, and you have no one else to say them to you. There will be some days that you seek for me and will not find me.

39.

Jesus said: The Religious authorities and the scholars have taken the keys to knowledge and hidden them. They have not entered, nor do they allow those who desire knowledge to enter. You, however, will be cunning like snakes and innocent like doves.

40.

Jesus said: They have planted a grapevine outside of the Father, but it will have no nourishment and it will be uprooted and destroyed.

41.

Jesus said: He who has, he will get more; he who has not, even what little he was will be taken.

42.

Jesus said: Be by passing by.

43.

The disciples said to Jesus: Who are you, that you say these things to us?
Jesus said: When I speak these things, you do not realize who I am. Rather, you are like those Judeans who love the tree yet hate the fruit or love the fruit yet hate the tree.

44.

Jesus said: Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven; and whoever blasphemes against to the son, will be forgiven; whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, however, will not be forgiven on the earth nor in the sky.

45.

Jesus said: They do not harvest grapes out of thorns. Nor do they gather figs out of thistles. Those do not produce fruit. A good man brings good things from his treasure; an evil man brings evil and wicked things out of his treasure, which is in his mind. Out of the excesses of his mind he brings evil things.

46.

Jesus said: From Adam up to John the Baptist, among those born of women, no one has been more worthy of respect than John the Baptist. Still, as I have said, any of you who becomes like a little child will know the Kingdom and be more worthy of respect than John.

47.

Jesus said: No way can anyone climb onto two horses or stretch two bows. No way can a servant serve two masters. He will honor one and despise the other. No one drinks old wine and immediately desires new wine. No one pours new wine into old wine skins because they would split open. Nor does anyone pour old wine into new wineskins because that would ruin the wine. No one sews old patches to new garments because that would split them.

48.

Jesus said: Should two make peace with each other in this house, they will be able to speak to a mountain saying, "Move away," and the mountain will move.

49.

Jesus said: Blessed are those alone and chosen, for you will find the Kingdom, since you are from it and are going back there.

50.

Jesus said: If they should ask you, "Where have you come from?" say this to them— "We have come from the light, the place where the light came into being, made by its own hand, standing forth in their image." If they should ask you, "Are you him?” say this—“We are his children, chosen by the living Father." If they should ask you, "What is the sign that your Father is in you?" say this to them—"It is movement and repose."

51.

His disciples said to Jesus: When will the repose of the dead occur? And which day will the world become new?

Jesus said to them: What you have been looking for has come. But you do not know it.

52.

His disciples said to Jesus: Twenty four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they spoke about you.

Jesus said to them: Speaking only about the dead, you have left out the living one who is in your presence.

53.

His disciples said to Jesus: Is circumcision beneficial to us or not?

Jesus said to them: Were it benificial, children would be born circumcized. Rather, circumcision of the spirit is what is beneficial.

54.

Jesus said: Blessed are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven.

55.

Jesus said: Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become my disciple. Whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters; whoever does not take up his cross as I do, he is not deserving of me.

56.

Jesus said: Whoever has discovered the world has discovered a corpse, and whoever has discovered a corpse, the world is not worthy of him.

57.

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who has sown good seed; but his enemy came in the night and sowed weeds over the good seed. The man did not allow anyone to pull up the weeds, saying, “You will go to pull up the weeds, but will pull up the good seeds as well. At the time of harvest, the weeds will be plain to see. Then we will pull them up and burn them.”

58.

Jesus said: Blessed is he who is troubled; he has found Life.

59.

Jesus said: Keep in mind He who lives while you are living lest, when you die, you begin seeking and cannot find.

60.

There was a Samaritan carrying a lamb and going to Judea.

Jesus asked his disciples: Why is that man carrying a lamb?

The disciples said to Jesus: So that he can kill it and eat it.

Jesus said to them: While the lamb is alive, the man will not eat it; rather, he will eat it after the lamb has become a corpse.

The disciples said: That is the only way.

Jesus said to them: You yourselves must seek a place of repose, lest you be killed and eaten.

61.

Jesus said: There will be two in one bed; one will die, the other will live.

Salome said: Who are you that climbed into my bed and ate off my table?

Jesus answered: I am he who came from he who is the same. I have received from the Father.

Salome said: I am your disciple.

Jesus said: If he is one, he is light. If, however, he should be divided, he will of darkness.

62.

Jesus said: I speak of my mysteries to those worthy of my mysteries. Do not let your right hand know what your left is doing.

63.

Jesus said: There was a rich man who said, "I will spend my riches in sowing and reaping, filling my storehouse with grain so that I need nothing." These were his thoughts. That night, he died. Those with ears, let them hear.

64.

Jesus said: A man had some visitors. When dinner was ready, the man sent his servant to call the visitors.

The sevent went to the first and said, “My master calls you.”

The first one said, "I have to pay some traders and order some things. I cannot come to dinner."

The servent went to the second and said, “My master calls you."

The second said, “I have just bought a house and must complete the deal. I cannot come to dinner."

The servent went to the third, saying, "My master calls you."

The third one said, “My friend is getting married and there is a party. I cannot come tonight.”

The servent went to another, saying, “My master calls you.”

That one said, "I have just bought a farm and have to pay the taxes. I cannot come.”

The servent came back to the master and said, "Those you invited have all begged off."

The master said, "Go outside to the road and invite to my dinner anyone you meet.”

Buyers and traders will not meet my Father.

65.

Jesus said: A just man owned a vineyard. He hired tenants to work the vineyard for a part of the crop. The just man sent a servent to collect his portion. The tenants grabbed the servent and beat him. Another went, and they nearly killed him. The just man thought, “Perhaps they did not know who he was.” He sent another servent, but the tenants beat that one too. Then the just man sent his son, saying, "Perhaps they will be ashamed when they see my son." But the tenants, knowing the son to be the heir of the vineyard, seized him and killed him. Those with ears, let them hear.

66.

Jesus said: Show me the stone, the one the builders refused; that is the cornerstone.

67.

Jesus said: One who knows it all but does not know himself doesn’t know anything.

68.

Jesus said: Blessed are you when they hate you and persecute you. Those who persecute you will never find a place.

69.

Jesus said: Blessed are those who have persecuted themselves, for they truly know the Father. Blessed are the hungry, for the belly of those who desire will be filled.

70.

Jesus said: When you conceive for yourself, you save youself. That which you do not have in youself will kill you.

71.

Jesus said: I will destroy this house, and no one will rebuild it, ever.

72.

A man said to Jesus: Speak to my brothers so that they will divide my father’s estate with me.

Jesus said to the man: Who made me a divider?

Jesus turned to his disciples and said: Serioiusly—am I a divider?

73.

Jesus said: The harvest indeed is plentiful; the laborers, however, are few; pray to the Lord to send laborers out to the harvest.

74.

Jesus said: Oh, Lord, there are many around the well but no water inside.

75.

Jesus said: There are many standing at the door, but only those alone will enter into the place of marriage.

76.

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant who had a consignment. The merchant found a pearl. He was wise and so sold the consignment and bought the pearl for himself. You, also, should seek after treasure that does not perish, a place no moth approaches and no worms destroy.

77.

Jesus said: I am the light above all lights. I am the All; the All comes from me and all goes back to me. Split timber and find me there; lift a stone and find me there.

78.

Jesus said: Why did you come to the field? To watch a reed moving in the wind? And to watch rulers and powerful men in fancy clothes? Those in expensive garments will not know the truth.

79.

A woman in the crowd said: Blessed is she who bore you, she whose breasts nourished you.

Jesus said to the woman: Blessed are they who have listened to the word of the Father and done it. The days will come when you will say, "Blessed is she who did not bear children, she whose breasts never nourished."

80.

Jesus said: Whoever has known the world has found the body; whoever has found the body, however—the world is not worthy of him.

81.

Jesus said: Whoever has become rich, let him become king, and he who has power, let him abdicate.

82.

Jesus said: He who is close to me is close to the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the Kingdom.

83.

Jesus said: People see images and the light in them. The light of the Father is hidden in the image, though it will be revealed. His image is hidden in his light.

84.

Jesus said: You rejoice in your own likeness. However, when you look upon your likeness that came into being before your birth and that will not die, how much can you bear?

85.

Jesus said: Adam came into being out of great power and great richness, yet he is not worthy of you. Otherwise, he would not have experienced death.

86.

Jesus said: Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests; the Son of Man, however, has no place to lay his head and rest.

87.

Jesus said: Wretched is body that depends upon body and soul that depends upon two.

88.

Jesus said: The angels and the prophets come to you, giving you what you have already. You yourselves give them what you have, saying, "When will they come and take what is theirs?"

89.

Jesus said: Why wash the outside of a cup? Do you not understand that whoever created the inside also created the outside?

90.

Jesus said: Come to me, for my yoke is light and my lordship gentle. You will find rest.

91.

They said to Jesus: Tell us who you are so that we may believe you.

Jesus said: You read the face of the sky and the earth, yet you do not see who is right here. You do not know how to read the time.

92.

Jesus said: Seek and you will find. In the past I did not answer you when you asked me. Now, I wish to tell, but you do not ask.

93.

Jesus said: Do not give what is holy to the dogs since it will end up in a dungheap; do not cast pearls to swine.

94.

Jesus said: He who seeks, he will find; he who knocks, he will be let in.

95.

Jesus said: If you have money, do not lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone who you know will not return it.

96.

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman who took a little leaven and hid it in dough; with it, she made huge loaves of bread. Those with ears, let them hear.

97.

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a woman walking on a road carrying a jar full of meal. She did not hear the jar crack and did not know the meal was emptying out onto the road. When she got home, she put the jar down and only then saw that it was empty.

98.

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who wanted to kill a more powerful man. The man practiced with his sword at home, sticking it into the wall. Then he killed the more powerful man.

99.

The disciples said: Your brothers and your mother are standing outside.

Jesus said to them: Those here who do the will of my Father are my brothers and my mother. They enter the Kingdom of my Father.

100.

They showed a coin to Jesus and said: Caesar’s agents demand taxes from us.

Jesus said to them: Give Caesar what is Caesar’s, give God what is God’s. And give me what is mine.

101.

Jesus said: Whoever does not hate his father and mother as I do cannot become my disciple; whoever does not love his father and mother as I do cannot become my disciple. My mother gave birth to me; she gave me life but not The Life.

102.

Jesus said: Woe tothe religious authorities, for they are like a dog resting in a manger. The dog neither eats nor allows the oxen to eat.

103.

Jesus said: Blessed is he who knows where the thieves come in so that he may prepare himself.

104.

They said to Jesus: Come, pray and fast today.

Jesus said: What have I done wrong? How have I lost the battle? When the bridegroom is gone, then will be the time to fast and pray.

105.

Jesus said: Those who know both father and mother will be called “child of a whore.”

106.

Jesus said: When you make the two one, you will come to be the Sons of Man. Then, if you should say, "mountain, move away," it will move.

107.

Jesus said: The Kingdom is like a shepherd with his sheep. The largest sheep wandered off. So, the shepherd left ninety nine sheep and went searching for the one until he found it. Then, the shepherd said, “I love you more than the ninety nine.”

108.

Jesus said: Whoever drinks out of my mouth, that person will be as I am; also, I will come to be as that person is, and the hidden will be revealed.

109.

Jesus said: The Kingdom is like a man who had a treasure in his field that he did not know about. When the man died, he left the field to his son. The son did not know of the treasure either. He gave the field away. The new owner plowed the field and found the treasure. He became a rich man.

110.

Jesus said: Whoever has found the world and become rich, let him abdicate from the world.

111.

Jesus said: The heavens and the earth will be rolled up in front of you; those who live out of he who lives, those will not see death. As I have said, whoever discovers the world is superior to the world.

112.

Jesus said: Woe to flesh that depends on the soul; woe to soul that depends on the flesh.

113.

His disciples said to Jesus: Which day is the Kingdom coming?

Jesus said: It is not coming because of watching. No one can say, "Look, there!" or "Look, over there!" Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spreading upon the earth, though people are not looking at it.

114.

Simon Peter said to them: Mary should leave us, for women are not worthy of The Life.

Jesus said: Look, I will lead her and make her male so that she herself will be a living spirit resembling you males, for any woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Gospel According to Thomas

An Adaptation of Ecclesiastes

2011-03-03T14:10:00.003-08:00

CHAPTER ONE

These are the words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:

The airiest of air, says the Teacher, airiest of air; all is empty air.

What is the product of all our labors under the sun? One generation passes away and another generation rises; but the earth abides on and on. The sun also rises and the sun goes down, hastening again to the place where it arose. The wind blows toward the south, then turns to the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again and again according to its circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers came, there they return. Everything is full of trouble; the tongue cannot express how much trouble. The eye is not satisfied in its seeing; the ear is not filled with hearing.

That which has been, that is what shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done: there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there anything of which it can be said, Look, that is new? No—it has been seen before.

There is no remembrance of things past, nor shall there be remembrance of things to come.

I, the Teacher, was king of all Israel, in Jerusalem. And I gave all my heart to the search for wisdom concerning all the things done under heaven. God has given this sad work to the children of humanity. I have seen all the works that have been done under the sun; and, behold: all is air; all is vexation of the spirit.

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is lacking cannot be counted.

I spoke with my heart, saying, Look, I have risen to a mighty place, and I have acquired more wisdom than all who have come before me in Jerusalem. Yes, I have great wisdom and knowledge. I dedicated myself to wisdom; I committed myself to learning madness and folly. Yet, I know this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief and those who increase in knowledge also grow in sorrow.

For God Then Apparently (Genesis 22: 1-12)

2011-02-21T17:48:00.001-08:00

And it came to pass
that God did test Abraham,
and said unto him: “Abraham,”
and Abraham, patriarch,
madman, said: “Here am I.”

For God then apparently
knew not where
everyone was . .

“Take now thy son,
thine only son
(for some don't count
all that much),
whom thou lovest,
even Isaac, that son,
and get thee to Moriah;
and offer him there
for a burnt-offering
upon one of the mountains
which I will tell thee of.”

For God then apparently
spoke like that
or leastways apparently
humans heard like that;

And this is a story of obedience;
and this is a story of obsession;
and this is a story
that makes no sense
aside those mad for fervor.

And Abraham took the wood
and laid it upon Isaac his son;
for the low
do the carrying,
and he took in his hand the fire
and the knife
for the high
have the killing stuff;
and they went
both of them together.

For you must then
kill your pretty ones;
it is an obsession
drives artists mad.

And Abraham stretched forth his hand,
and took the knife to slay his son.
For God then apparently
had given us neither
firing squad,
chairs electric,
chambers of gas, nor
lethal injection.
And the angel of the LORD
out of heaven
called to that wretched father,
saying, “Abraham, Abraham."
And he said: "Here am I."
And that angel up there said:
“Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
neither do thou any thing unto him;
for now I know that thou art
a God-fearing man, seeing
thou hast not withheld thy son,
even thine only son,
at least the one that really matters,
from Me."

For God then
didn't know
the hearts of men,
how we do dream of killing
all our pretty ones . . .

No,

apparently not.

Presidents' Days

2011-02-12T11:54:00.001-08:00

In the old United States always
there were pictures on the wall
of presidents in oval
Washington and Lincoln
in the drear light of Winter
and we were given
we students of February
to know they were great
and we and our timelessness
second-best at best

our space race
our arms race
our mutually
assured destruction
our dominoes

our Vietnam
well, that was our Vietnam

in the old United States always
we were given to know
we students in February
that the winter of our discontent

was second best at best
to the wars of the men
in their oval portraits
defining moments
unlike our sour February

that it was our Vietnam

Beginnings

2011-01-28T08:11:00.001-08:00

There’s a picture of me
Pushing myself up—
A toddler almost walking—
Against the canvas side
Of a mobile home.

That is me,
Remains me,
Holding to
What moves
Only a little,
Life like a
Trailer park,
Nothing firm in sight.

Ludendorff, Perhaps

2011-01-14T13:22:00.001-08:00

Ludendorff, perhaps
I should apologize
That I think of you

More as a cough
Drop than a mover
Of millions. More

As the light word
“ludicrous” than
A master of millions;

I apologize, for you
Were only a suffering
Being like the rest,

Needing therapy after
Murdering millions.
Yes, OK, I

Apologize. For what
Are any of us but
The ludicrous hats

We wear? You there,
Only a suffering . . .

Like the rest.

My Covenant with All That Is

2011-01-06T09:32:00.001-08:00

I pledge to follow
The earth’s gentle curve
As I go;

I pledge to breathe only air as I am able;
I pledge to breathe often;

I pledge to eat of the earth;
Nothing other shall pass my lips.

I pledge to wend along the ways,
Trodding earth, never air,
Clouds and sun above,
What rocks are there under foot.

I pledge to see as best I can in bright sun;
I pledge to squint as I am able in dark;

I pledge to remain
Upright at times
When I am able;

To lie prone when the need arises.

I pledge to find flames hot;
To find snow cold;
To find water according to its fashion;

I pledge to love as best I can;
To hate sparingly;
To mock seldom;
To judge not;
To jump to few conclusions;
To subscribe to few illusions.

I pledge to be
As I am able
And to cease
As the rules require.

The Spreading Web

2010-12-17T06:25:00.001-08:00

The spidering cracks
Shooting across
Hard clay pan
Webbing across
Silence and flax

The spreading cracks
Like roots
Like breaks

The spreading cracks
As in porcelain
Into tiny boxes
As glass into
Myriad fragments

The spidering cracks
Like laces of blood
Tying back
Tying out
Into its webs
To the first decibel

The spidering webs
Flesh in its chains
To back and to back
To side to side
Until all is one, is one

The spidering cracks
The spreading web
Into webs of webs
Spreading into
The shimmer of all
The tremble of everything

The spidering spread
Of web into web
Into ever
Into all
The encompass
Of all direction
The embrace of all continuous

Into flood
Of the sap popping
In fire
The rocks, paper, and scissors
Of consciousness

The cracks spreading
Until the paper
Rows in fire
Until the rocks
Sail to cloud
Until the steel
Scissors to the earth

The spidering cracks
Web, crack, and spider
Fly of the spark
Spark of the fly
Destruction of remover to remain

Birth of the builder
To build
Spreading cracks
The ink on air
Spreading webs
The words into fire
Spreading webs
The earth into earth
Water, the water
Spreading

Triolet on Piety

2010-11-27T09:38:00.001-08:00

Does a confused premise
Make the devotion wrong?
Is love so easy to dismiss?

Does a confused premise
Silence a kitten's hiss
Or quiet a swan's song?

Does a confused premise
make the devotion wrong?

The Apophatic

2010-11-09T07:38:00.001-08:00

Not ______
Not ______
Not ______

Add your blank
to the blankness

Add your all
to the everything

With What Knows Who (Genesis 32)

2010-10-28T14:22:00.001-07:00

Happens after the night
Wrestling with the dark
With what knows who

Wrestling the place
Wrestling the time
Wrestling to matter

Wrestling until dawn
Calls shadow home
The light and the dark

That never fight about it
And sometime a sacred wound
Jacob to Israel

Displaced and un-named
One other into a thing
Happens after a night

Wrestling
With what knows who

The Word

2010-09-28T06:28:00.001-07:00

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.

In the beginning the Word was with God. All things came to be by God; and without God nothing came to be. In God was life; and life was the light of humanity. And the light shone in darkness; but the darkness did not grasp it.

Jesus was in the world, and the world came to being through him, yet the world did not know him. As many as received him, he gave them power to become the Children of God. These are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of the human, but of God.

The Word became flesh and lived among us,
(And we have seen his glory,
The glory as of an only child,)
Full of grace and truth.

Liturgy and Meaning

2010-09-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

“Music rots when it gets too far from the dance,”
said Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading,
“Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.“

And liturgy? Leitourgia, service to the people?
What of the rites performed for the people?

Too far from music? Too far from dance?
Atrophied, the poetry rootless,
wandered so far from music?

Music, movement, poetry,
The roots grown back
to the old, old rites,
to the tying we people again
back to cause, to the service.

“Cassandra, your eyes are like tigers,
with no word written in them
You also have I carried to nowhere

to an ill house and there is
no end to the journey”

Pantoum based on Aesop: Care After the Fact Being Useless

2010-08-23T11:40:00.001-07:00

Once there was a singing bird in a cage.
She sang at night while other birds slept.
One night a bat flew by and clung to the bars.
“Why do you sing so at night, while other birds sleep?”

She sang at night while other birds slept.
“I must sing,” the bird said from her cage.

“Why do you sing so at night, while other birds sleep?”

“I was caught by the fowler because he followed my song—
“I must sing,” the bird said from her cage,
“But never again will I sing when I can be seen.
“I was caught by the fowler because he followed my song.”

“There was a time for such careful singing,” said the bat.

She sang at night while other birds slept.
“Why do you sing so at night, while other birds sleep?”

Meditation, Technologies

2010-07-21T08:31:00.001-07:00

Why can’t I build
A bicycle from car parts?

You can, you can!

Why doesn’t it work right?
Because, because. . .

Because technologies are different.

Why isn’t Islam the same, the same;
Why isn’t a Muslim like a Jain?

Why aren’t they the same,
The same?
Why aren’t they the same?

Because technologies are different.

A Voice . . . Still, Small

2010-06-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

The still
The small

Voice
Listen—

Is yours
Soul, heart

Listen well
Speak well

The still
The small

Voice

Voice of god

Speak well

The still
The small

Listen, speak

Don’t you
Hear it?

If not
Why not?

If not god
What?

Prequel: Isaiah 1:12-22

2010-06-03T06:12:00.001-07:00

(written on the occasion of the Gaza Aid Attack)

Israel, listen to your prophets:

Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

Think of this when you come to me—
who asked this from your hand?

Your hands are full of blood.

Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
your incense stinks.
Holy day and sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure your solemn assemblies with iniquity.

Your hands are full of blood.

My soul hates
Your new moons and your festivals—
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.

Your hands are full of blood.

When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;

Your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

Your hands are full of blood!

Seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the mother raising her children alone,
Free the children of Abraham.

Your hands are full of blood.

Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Your hands are full of blood—
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

Jerusalem has become a drunk!
She that was full of justice,
righteousness lodged in her—
but now

murderers!

Your silver has become dross,
your wine is mixed with water.

Your hands are full of blood.

Come, let us argue it out,
Says the Lord:
Seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the mother raising her children alone,
Free the children of Abraham.
Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;

Look:

Your hands are full of blood.

Israel, listen to your prophets.

The Eternal Questions are not Easy Questions

2010-05-26T11:55:00.001-07:00

When we begin to ask the questions of ourselves—seriously ask them—we begin the work of theology, the work of religion, the work of spirituality, which is aligning ourselves to the transcendental ground of our existence, the thing beyond time and space (or not). We begin to align ourselves to the something that is larger than our struggle for hourly, daily existence. We begin the work of weaving our lives around our ultimate concerns

The work of theology has many facets—tradition, authority, speculation, personal experience, mystery. . . Some of us have experienced a good deal of grace, having felt that nature or reality or deity has been on our side most of our lives. Others of us have felt cursed a good deal of the time by whatever powers may be. Others have felt blessed, until a certain event. . .

After all, it is well to remember that it may not be truth we are after, but peace of mind. Again, knowing ourselves is not easy, though perhaps it is required.

First we must ask the questions. “Doing” theology is at once mind-numbingly complex and painfully simple.

Your Cosmology is Showing

2010-05-19T06:44:00.001-07:00

There are certain inevitables in life: death and taxes often get mentioned. These are things that happen to us, whether we have an opinion about them—or a theory about them—or not. Our theory about the meaning of death informs how we live; or, more commonly, we decide not to think about it until we have to. Certainly we’ve seen recently that how we feel about the taxes we inevitably pay defines how we act in the world.

An inevitable that we perhaps think about even less often is our cosmology. I, for one, don’t often sit down to ask myself: What is the universe really like?

Yet our actions in our lives on this planet flow from our beliefs concerning how this universe works.

FLAT EARTH

Imagine a world that is as flat as a pancake. The pancake sits on the shoulders of a god who is being punished for something or other. Or perhaps the pancake sits on the back of a couple of elephants. Below that is the world of the dead; perhaps a place of active and brutal punishment; perhaps a place of general discontent and boredom; perhaps a place where those killed in battle get to drink and carouse and everyone else gets to be generally discontent and bored.

Above the pancake sits the sky, perhaps a large glass dome; perhaps another pancake, again held up by a god being punished for something or other. Or perhaps there are some very large pillars somewhere. Above that dome is another world, much like our own, except that the beings there are immortal.

Then there is the pancake itself. In the center is land. The rest is water. And in the center of the center of land is us—the people who the gods above love. We are surrounded by dangerous people unlike us. They are held at bay, these dangerous people; and the dangerous chaos of storms, plagues, and droughts is held at bay only so long as we honor our gods and our king, who lives in harmony with the gods and pleases them.

That’s the flat earth. There are many variations. The sun rises and sets; the seasons come and go.

Dangerously, I think, many people in the world today still live on that pancake earth, with a good us and a bad them; with gods to please through inherited practices; with rulers charged with holding back chaos not with wise policy but with religious obedience. In the John Donne poem I read earlier, reflect on what Donne is really concerned about:
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix. . .

It is social order that is threatened: hierarchical “relation” of ruler to ruled. The concern is about hierarchy, and we might also notice. . .PATriarchy. Donne was NOT correct about the universe “being out of joint.” What was changing, at least in some European societies of the day, was the attitudes about who got to be in charge. Donne was correct that his position was in danger.

A lot of people still live on the pancake world; and a lot of people have John Donne’s fears.

I’m not a cosmologist. Or a scientist. And I hope you don’t think I’m trying to be. I understand the poetry of John Donne considerably better than I do the equations of Einstein. Despite that mental quick, I take science seriously. I read the popular books that come along, trying to grasp with my non-mathematical mind what the latest thinking is. Because I believe that if there’s anything “out there” that we can legitimately call “god” or “divinity,” science will be the branch of human knowledge that will find that.

Like John Donne, who became a minister later in life, I have spent my life on poetry and religion. I believe these are important pursuits; but also, my mind works that way. I am an intuitive thinker. The details confuse me and make me tired.

Yet I am convinced of this: Art and religion have created some beautiful stories about gods and afterlives and how we can best live on this planet, given our circumstances. But for me the important and beautiful thing about art and religion is that every human being has had roughly the same materials to work with. Moses, Homer, the Buddha, Jesus, Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Albert Einstein. You, me. We all go from the silence of the womb to the silence of the tomb. And we all experience the noise that occurs in between. We each have consciousness. And a few days in the sun. And we do something with it. Something. Some good. Some bad. Some indifferent. But something.
It’s another inevitable: how we live and what we do. Yet everyone who has ever lived has worked with the same material.

When considering the work of past human beings, I find this both more believable and more interesting: The human problems, and the human heart, have remained the same.

ROUND EARTH, EXPANDING UNIVERSE

What HAS changed is the science. . .

Physicist Leonard Susskind calls what happened in the early Twentieth Century a “wholesale breakdown of intuition.” Whatever we call it, the universe is no longer understood by merely looking at it.

The authors of The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos are not talking to pancake-earth people. They are talking to people with some knowledge that the universe is a very strange place, from the Big Bang, to Black Holes, to dark energy and dark matter, to String Theory and the expanding universe. Some of us know just enough to be dangerous, as the old saying goes, but more importantly, most of us falling into the camp of existentialists when it comes to our understanding of the universe. It is the beliefs of Carl Sagan with his “billions and billions of stars.” That is, that many of us have developed a cosmology in which human life, and our earth, aren’t all that important. This can lead to the attitude that philosopher Bertrand Russell articulated:

Only on the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

This has been my cosmology for many years: We are happy—and sometimes unhappy—accidents of the Big Bang, living as we do on a small planet circling a small star in a small solar system in a small galaxy in a universe—that may or may not be one of many—expanding at something like 380 million miles an hour.

Unlike Bertrand Russell, I don’t despair about it. For me it helps put humanity—especially mine—into some perspective. The pettiness of my pettiness, if you will. Or as ee cummings put it, the bigness of our littleness. Cummings concludes that poem by saying,

listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

The authors of The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos,Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams are trying to convince people like me to see the universe in another way.

ANOTHER WAY

Art and religion are not about the universe, at least in a descriptive way. All I can do when I see a number such as ten to the negative twenty-fifth power is say, “Wow. Cool. That must be really small.” A concept such as ten to the negative twenty-fifth power is useful in describing reality, but it isn’t a way to RELATE to reality for most of us.

Our relationship with reality is really fairly simple. Take taste, for example: we can sense four or arguably five flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and perhaps “umami.” That’s it.

“Really big” and really “small” are like that too. The way I think, there’s “really big,” then, “really, really big,” but those concepts don’t have much real value for understanding reality, whatever that is.

For me, someone who does not comprehend numbers (frankly, I’m innumerate), the only way I can imagine the cosmos—even in a rudimentary way—is to work with metaphor. So, for me, when someone says, “imagine a marble on the fifty yard line in a football stadium,” I can somewhat grasp the idea through the metaphor. That’s why Einstein appears clearer to many of us than he probably should: We can understand, to a point, his thought experiments, without understanding the equations. We understand Einstein’s metaphors of trains leaving stations and falling elevators. This kind of metaphorical understanding is what the authors of The View from the Center of the Universe are trying to get us to do. Numbers can DESCRIBE the universe in ways that scientists can use, but they don’t help most of us EXPERIENCE the universe.

The flat earth, the pancake world, can be experienced: the gods are up there; the dead are down there; and our existence depends upon balancing cosmic forces here on the pancake. But the expanding universe? Well, in the expanding universe, the galaxies are like raisons in raison bread as it bakes. . .

That metaphor is not nearly as compelling as one in which the wraiths of the dead rise like black smoke from the earth at midnight!

Infinity? I know that mathematicians look to set theory. Yet for me, the “Net of Indira” makes much more sense:

Once the great god Indra, as gods will, wished to possess the most beautiful of all things. And so she ordered Vishwakarma, the cunning artificer of the gods, to make her a marvelous net. And just as Vishwakarma had built all the worlds that are, he built a net that stretched, in all directions, to infinity. And at each juncture in the net Vishwakarma set a precious stone, so that, just as the net was infinity, so was the number of precious stones. And so it was that each stone reflected every other stone, an endless reflection of stones, each reflecting each and all, an infinite regress in reflection. And the net of Indra was so fine that a touch to any part sent the whole shivering.

Perhaps this story does not help me see what infinity “really” is, but by thinking about it, I EXPERIENCE infinity. (At least in my own small way.)

Ten dimensions? Falling into Black Holes?

Humanity has been through a lot of cosmologies. What the successful ones have in common is their compelling connection to the human scale, to things we can understand. We can understand a man and a woman in a garden. It feels good to have a good that creates us in his image. We know more about the universe now, yet we do not have to live in a universe of “unyielding despair.” We can live in a universe in which we know that our metaphors are metaphors, but that they are keys to ultimate reality. The universe is not a snake swallowing its tail. But perhaps it helps to imagine it that way. The arc that bends toward justice may or may not be bent by the “hand of God.” But perhaps it helps to imagine it that way. As long as we control our metaphors, as long as we do not bow down to our metaphors as if they are idols, the metaphors themselves keep us warm in a universe that fits to a human scale. And we—as we must—find our way to live in the cosmos.

Beauty, Transcendence, and Mercy Ahead of the Curve

2010-05-03T12:39:00.001-07:00

It doesn’t take long working as a hospital chaplain in a large urban hospital to see a great deal of mortality. Where I worked, we averaged eight deaths every twenty-four hours. Amid the gunshot victims, car accident victims, heart attacks and strokes, not to mention the slower deaths by cancer and what-have-you, the persistent question I heard from the dying and the bereaved was, “Why?”

Why is God doing this?

There were also of course the narrow escapes often called miracles.

I am a Unitarian Universalist minister. I came to that profession late in life, after being a Unitarian Universalist layperson for many years. I take seriously the commitment in my religious tradition to honor all religious traditions. It was through that lens that I comforted the dying and the grieving. Muslim, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians of every stripe; the atheist and the true believer. Young, old, and in-between.

Fact is, a pattern did emerge: all religions fail and all succeed in those difficult times. The difference is the individual. Some people handle their deaths calmly; others do not. Some people handle the deaths of loved ones calmly; others do not. The flavor of religion or irreligion matters not at all; it is the depth of commitment to one’s beliefs that matters.
To me, this is an important religious insight: it is the depth of commitment to one’s beliefs that matters.

The conscience must have integrity.

Being part of a creedless faith tradition, Unitarian Universalists have been a bit ahead of the curve in grappling with questions that people of all traditions will sooner or later have to struggle with:

What if no particular religious tradition has a monopoly, or perhaps even a claim, on Truth?

What do we do when we no longer find meaning in the religion we grew up in?

What if sacred scriptures are not divinely inspired, but are, rather, fallibly human?

What if there is no God, or at least a god of the type we wish there to be?

What is the meaning and purpose of human life?

Are we accountable to others and to the world?

A common answer to questions of this sort is to give up—to reject all religions and seek meaning elsewhere. This is one answer.

Another answer is to believe harder, rejecting all evidence contrary to our chosen belief system.

Perhaps neither of these, however, is the best course. As with other amputations, these reactions often lead to feelings of lack, not resolution or wholeness. If we choose materialist scientism, we cut away the ancient voices that resonate in us. If we choose unquestioning faith we must cut off. . .well. . . all the questions.

My chosen path is a middle way, between questioning rejection and unquestioning faith. I have learned to take mystery seriously.

The Cost of Religious Metaphor

2010-04-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

The Seventh Century Buddhist Sikshasamuccaya said, “Thought does not arise without an object. Can thought look at thought? No. Just as the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, or a fingertip touch itself, so thought cannot see thought.”

The flat earth, the pancake world, can be experienced: the gods are up there; the dead are down there; and our existence depends upon balancing cosmic forces here on the pancake. But the expanding universe? Well, in the expanding universe, the galaxies are like raisins in raisin bread as it bakes. . .

That metaphor is not nearly as compelling as one in which the wraiths of the dead rise like black smoke from the earth at midnight!

Infinity? I know that mathematicians look to set theory. But I am not included in the set "understands sets." For me, the “Net of Indira” makes much more sense:

Once the great god Indra, as gods will, wished to possess the most beautiful of all things. And so she ordered Vishwakarma, the cunning artificer of the gods, to make her a marvelous net. And just as Vishwakarma had built all the worlds that are, he built a net that stretched, in all directions, to infinity. And at each juncture in the net Vishwakarma set a precious stone, so that, just as the net was infinity, so was the number of precious stones. And so it was that each stone reflected every other stone, an endless reflection of stones, each reflecting each and all, an infinite regress in reflection. And the net of Indra was so fine that a touch to any part sent the whole shivering.

Perhaps this story does not help me see what infinity “really” is, but by thinking about it, I EXPERIENCE infinity. (At least in my own small way.)

Ten dimensions? Falling into Black Holes?

Humanity has been through a lot of cosmologies. What the successful ones have in common is their compelling connection to the human scale, to things we can understand.

We can understand a woman and a man in a garden. It feels good to have a god that creates us in his image.

We know more about the universe now, yet we do not have to live in a universe of “unyielding despair.” We can live in a universe in which we know that our metaphors are metaphors, but that they are keys to ultimate reality.

The universe is not a snake swallowing its tail. But perhaps it helps to imagine it that way. The arc that bends toward justice may or may not be bent by the “hand of God.” But perhaps it helps to imagine it that way.

As long as we control our metaphors; as long as we do not bow down to our metaphors, making them our idols, the metaphors themselves keep us warm in a universe that fits to a human scale.

And we—as we must—find our way to live in the cosmos.

Jonah and the Whale

2010-04-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

The Luck of Jonah

Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah.
God spoke to Jonah and said this:
“Get up! Go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach there.
Tell the people that I have seen how wicked they are.”

Doing such a thing scared Jonah.
Rather than doing what God said,
Jonah decided to sail for Tarshish.

So, he went to Joppa,
Found a ship headed for Tarshish,
And paid the fare.

Jonah thought he had gotten away from God.

A Very Big Storm

But as the ship sailed along
God sent a great wind,
And there was a bad storm.
It appeared that the ship would sink.

This scared the sailors on the ship.
So, they all prayed as hard as they could,
And they tried to lighten the ship
By throwing everything they could
Off into the sea.

While this was going on,
Jonah was in the hold of the ship,
Sleeping away.

When the ship’s captain saw Jonah, he said,
“What do you think you’re doing?
Wake up and do some praying!”

Meanwhile, the sailors were all saying,
“Someone on this boat must be evil.
Let’s draw straws to see who it is.”

Jonah got the short straw.

So, the sailors asked Jonah,
“Whatever have you done
To bring so much bad on all of us?
What do you do for a living?
Where did you come from?
What nationality are you?
What’s your tribe?”

Jonah said, “I am a Hebrew. I worship
The God who made both the sea and the dry land.”

Then Jonah told them about how he was fleeing God. . .

This frightened the sailors
And everyone started asking,
“Why did you do this!
Look at this storm!”

Jonah said, “Go ahead.
Throw me overboard.
All this is my fault.
When I’m gone, the sea will be calm.”

The sailors did not want to do this, however,
So they tried and tried to get the ship to land.

Finally, however, they saw they could not do it.
The storm was just too strong.

Then the sailors started praying:
“God, we know you will do as you please,
But we are begging you:
Don’t kill us! We aren’t to blame!”

Then, they picked up Jonah and pitched him into the sea.

At that, the storm stopped.

These events caused the sailors to feel very pious,
So they made a sacrifice and offered vows to God.

Jonah Gets Swallowed Whole

Now, God had made a large fish that could swallow Jonah,
Which it did.

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish
Three days and three nights.

In the fish’s bellow, Jonah did some praying.

“The waters surrounded me,”
Jonah said,
“And I thought I had been
Driven from your sight
As the depths closed around me.
Weeds wrapped around my head.
I sank to the bottoms of the mountains;
The bars of the earth closed on me,
But you brought me back from the depths.”

God spoke to the fish and
Up it vomited Jonah
Out upon the dry land.

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

Then God spoke to Jonah a second time, saying,
“Get up! Go to Nineveh, that great city,
And preach there what I tell you.”

So, finally, Jonah got up and went to Nineveh,
As God had told him to do.

Now, Nineveh was huge, a three day walk across.
So, Jonah walked for an entire day, then began to preach:

“In just forty days,”
Jonah preached,
“Nineveh will be destroyed.”

The people of Nineveh believed Jonah was speaking the truth.

So they proclaimed a fast and put on mourning clothes,
From the most powerful all the way to the lowliest.

Yes, even the king himself
Got down off his throne,
Put his fancy clothes aside,
Put on the clothes of mourning
And sat in the ashes.

The king and his officers sent out a decree saying:

Hear ye!
Let neither man nor beast,
Herd nor flock, taste anything!

Do not let them eat!
Do not let them drink!

Let every person
And every beast
Be clothed in
Mourning clothes!

Let everyone and everything
Cry mightily to God!

Yes! May everyone turn
Away from bad,
Away from violence!

Who knows?
Maybe God will repent
And stop being angry.
Who knows?
Perhaps we won’t all be destroyed!”

Jonah Gets Angry

It happened that God saw what the people of Nineveh were doing,
How they turned from their bad ways;
And God repented of the bad that he had said that he would do to them;
God didn’t do a thing to them.

Now, that did not please Jonah at all!
He was very angry and prayed to God,
Saying, “God! I’m praying here!
Didn’t I say I did not want to come to Nineveh!
Isn’t that why I headed for Tarshish?
I knew you are a gracious God, and merciful,
And slow to anger, and very kind,
And that you repent of doing bad.
Now, I’m asking: Take my life!
I am so embarrassed that
It is better I be dead!

God said to Jonah,
“Why are you complaining?”

Jonah and the Gourd

So Jonah went out of the city
To the east side of the city,
And there he built a hut,
Sitting in its rather poor shade.

He waited there to see
What would happen to Nineveh.

God caused a gourd to grow there,
So that Jonah could have more shade,
Which helped some with Jonah’s grief.

Jonah liked the gourd very much.

The next morning, however, God made a worm
That attacked the gourd and killed it.

Then, when the sun got hot,
God made a strong, hot wind;
And the sun beat down on Jonah’s head
So that he got faint and wanted to die.

Jonah said, “It’s better for me
To die than to live!”

God said to Jonah,
“Is it good that you are angry about the gourd?”

Jonah said, “Yes! It’s good for me
To be angry, even if it kills me!”

God said, “You have pity for the gourd,
Even though you never worked for it.
Never made it grow.
It grew in a night
And died in a night.
Think about it:
Shouldn’t I spare Nineveh,
A huge city,
A hundred twenty thousand people
Who don’t know their right hand from their left hand;
And many animals as well?”

God had a point!

The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice

2010-04-02T06:04:00.003-07:00

With thanks to Apollonius of Rhodes, Virgil, Ovid, and Edith Hamilton

I.

Orpheus. His music could make the rocks dance.
He was the son of a Muse and a mortal from Thrace,
Place famous for musical people,
The most musical people in all of Greece,
And Orpheus was the best of them.

Orpheus and his lyre and his voice
And his words—when he played
High in the mountains, the trees danced,
The wild beasts danced. Animals,
Rocks. Even the rivers would dance
On their way down to the sea.

Orpheus roamed from place to place,
Cheering all he met with his song.

II.

It was among the mountain villages
That Orpheus met Euridice,
A shepherdess charmed by his song.
And she charmed Orpheus in turn,
Such beauty, a beauty born
Of the mountains and farms,
A beauty bound in dark earth.

Orpheus sang of his love.
And the people of the hills;
The animals and trees;
Yes, even the rivers and stones
Danced and sang to his music.

They married, and so it was that,
Even as they joyed at the wedding,
Even as she danced in her wedding gown,
That Euridice trod upon a snake,
A poisonous snake that bit her.
And so, Euridice died,
Just so, in her wedding gown.

III.

The music stopped.
Orpheus could sing no more.
And the people of the hills;
The animals and trees;
Yes, even the rivers and stones
Wept at the silence.

“I will go down to Hades,”
Orpheus said to himself.
“I will go even the Hell,
Where I will sing for
Persephone,
Queen of the Dead.
I will sing for her.
And she will understand.”

IV.

And so it was,
Down he went,
Orpheus and his lyre,
Down and down far below
Into the place the living
Dare not go. He went,
For love, confident in his song.

In the darkness and the depths,
Amid the silence of a stunned place,
Orpheus tuned his lyre
And began to sing,
Began words from his heart:

“Oh, dark world,
Place where all
Born of woman come,

Place that swallows
All beauty, all love.

Place of the debt
All the living must pay;
Place eternal

Where passing flesh
Waits forever,
Place of all lovely things,

I come to you;
I come seeking one
Who came here too soon.

I come seeking a bud
Cut before the flower
In its loveliness could bloom.

I come, for this was
A loss too great to bear.

I come, King of the Dead,
Knowing well the old poetry
Of a girl raped among spring flowers,

Beautiful young Persephone,
Daughter of the corn,
Daughter of Demeter,

Your wife now when
Winter comes to earth.

I come singing the old poetry,
Knowing that you know beauty,
Oh, King of the Dead.

Knowing you too know loss
When spring is on the earth
And your dear wife flies away.
I come singing of a loss too great.
I come, asking for oh, so little.

Asking not to keep my dear love
Forever. No. only to keep her
For a little, little while.

Give her back to me, I implore,
For this little, little while.
Only so long as a human life
Passes in its natural course.”

And the shades of the dead
Spread across the airless plain,
Yes, the shadows of the passed,
People, animals, trees,
Even the cold gray stones,
Even the River of Death
Danced a little, weeping
At time and life gone away.

No thing and no one
Could resist his song.
No, not even Hades,
King of the Dead.
Hades himself wept
At the beauty of the song,
Hugging to himself
His dear Persephone
Who left him each spring,
Weeping at time passing
And the beauty of life.

“You may have her back,”
The King of the Dead declared,
“On only one condition—
She will follow you back
To your world of light,
But on that dark journey,
You may never, never once,
Look back at your love.”

V.

And so it was that Orpheus
Turned his back on his love
And began the long, dark trip
Back into the living world.

And Orpheus knew she was there,
There behind him, and he longed,
Longed so to see her. But no.

They climbed the darkness.
They climbed and climbed
Until the black had turned gray.

They climbed until at last
Orpheus stepped into the green world,
Turning to greet his love.

But it was too soon.

Too soon. Euridice still
Lingered in the darkness.
He had turned too soon,

And so her form shrank back,
Faded back into shadow.
Gone. To be gone forever.

Yes, the decree
Of the Lord of the Dead
Is final. And so Orpheus
Left the hills of Thrace.

Left the joys of human company
Going far into the desolate
Crags of the lonely mountains.

VI.

There Orpheus played his lyre,
Singing songs of his eternal love
For his dear, lost Euridice.

And the animals danced;
And the trees and the stones
Danced a slow, delicate
Dance for the dead Euridice.

On he played and played,
Weeping all the while,
Until his poems drew
A band of Maenads,
A band of crazed ones
Worshiping Dionysus,
Mad ones who danced
Their frenzied dance
In rising and rising rhythm
Around Orpheus
Until in their madness

They tore him
Limb from limb
And threw his shreds
Into the river.

VII.

And the shreds of Orpheus
Floated down to the sea,

Down to the edge of Olympus
Where his mother buried him

And where the nightingales
Still can be heard singing his tunes.

GOD Continues Questioning Job

2010-03-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

“Do you know the time when the wild goats in the mountains have their babies?
Have you seen the deer bringing forth their young?

Tell me how long they are pregnant.
Tell me the time they give birth,
How they conduct themselves,
And how they ease themselves of their sorrows.

Those young ones are healthy;
They grow up well fed;
They go out into the world.

Who was it made the wild ass free?
Who was it took off those shackles
And gave them the wilderness for a home
And desert as a place they thrive?

They scorn crowded cities
And hate the sound of traffic.
All the mountains are their pasture
And every green thing their food.

“Do you think the unicorn will be your pet?
Might the unicorn pull your plow?
Will you get any work out of him?
Can you trust him with your harvest?

“Did you give the peacocks their wings?
Did you make wings and feathers for the ostrich
That leaves her eggs in the earth
And warms them in the dust,
Forgetting that a foot may crush them
Or animals may find them?

The ostrich has a hard heart
Toward her young ones,
As if they weren’t even hers,
Because God made her that way.
Yet when she stands tall
She scorns both horse and rider.

“Did you give the horse its strength?
Did you give it a mane?
Did you make him jump like a grasshopper?

His snorting is frightening.
He paws the valley floor
And rushes headlong into the enemy.

He laughs at fear,
And is not frightened by the sword.
The quiver rattles against him.
He carries the glittering spear and the shield.
He swallows the ground in his fierceness
And stands firm at the sound of the trumpet.

He says among the trumpets, “Ha!”
And he smells the battle far off,
Hears the thunder of the captains and the shouting.

“Were you wise enough
To give flight to the hawk?

Do you tell the eagle to fly
Or where to make her nest?

She lives in the rocks,
In the highest crags.
From there she watches her prey
And her eyes see far, far off.

Her young ones drink blood
And where there is killing, there she is.”

YAHWEH Speaks from a Whirlwind

2010-03-11T07:11:00.001-08:00

Then YAHWEH spoke to Job out of a whirlwind:

“Who is this who talks without knowing?
Get some clothes on, like a man.
I have some questions
And I expect you to answer.
Just where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you have any answers.

“Just who planned the earth? Do you know
Who stretched out the plumb line?
What are the foundations of the world fastened to?
Who laid the corner stone of the earth
On that day when the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Who was it shut up the doors of the sea
When those broke open and the water
Rushed out, as if from a womb?
Who was it made the clouds like clothing for the earth
And the darkness like swaddling clothes,
And set the outer boundaries
And set bars and doors?
Who said to the waves,
“You can come this far and farther?
Have you commanded the morning in your lifetime
And made the daylight keep its place?

“Have you been to the springs of the sea?
Have you walked in the seas depths?
Have the gates of death been opened you?
Have you seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Have you seen breadth of the earth?
Tell me if you know.

“Where does light dwell?
And as for darkness. . .where does it live?
Do you know the way to those houses?
Were you born when these things happened?
Are you that old?
Have you ever visited the storehouse of the snow?
Have you seen the storehouse of the hail
That I keep in reserve for battles and wars?
Which is the road to the place the light is parted
And the east wind is scattered on the earth?
Who was it made the courses for the rain
Or a way for lightning and thunder
So that it falls upon the earth,
Even in the places no person lives
So that the tender buds of the herb can grow?
Does the rain have a father?
Whose child is the drops of dew?
Who is the mother of the ice
And the frosts of heaven
That make water turn to stone
And freezes the face of the deep?

Can you chain the Pleiades
Or free the shackles of Orion?
Can you bring out the constellations in their seasons?
Can you guide Arcturus with his sons?
Do you know the laws of heaven?
Might you make the earth obey them?
Can you lift your voice to the clouds and bring down rain?
Can you send lightning bolts wherever you please?
Who has taught the rules to all things?
Who gave wisdom to the human heart?
Who is wise enough to number the clouds?
Who can open the jars of heaven
When the dust grows hard
And the clods stick together?
Will you do the hunting for a lion
When her cubs are hungry
And they crouch in their dens
Lying quietly in wait?
Who feeds the raven
When his young ones
Cry to God, wandering in starvation?

Zophar Counsels Prudence in What We Say

2010-03-01T05:49:00.001-08:00

Zophar the Naamathite said:

“Such a lot of words!
How can a man who
Talks so much be forgiven?

“Should we quietly listen to your lies?
Should no one call you on such mocking?
You have said your beliefs are pure
And that you are sinless.
But, oh, how I wish God would speak up!
God would have a few things to say!
Oh, how I wish God would show you
The mysteries of wisdom!

“Face it: God is punishing you
A whole lot less than you deserve.
Can you find God by searching?
Can you comprehend God through piety?
God is as high as heaven;
What can you do?
God is deeper than hell;
What can you know?
God’s measure is longer than the earth
And broader than the sea.

“If God abandons; if God impedes;
If God gathers, who can avoid that?
God knows vanity;
God sees wickedness.
So, won’t God take those into consideration?
Sure, the vain wish to be wise,
Even when they have been born
Like a wild donkey’s colt.

“If you prepare your heart;
If you stretch your hands toward God;
If iniquity be in your hand, put it far away.
Do not allow wickedness to live in your tent.
Then you will lift up a spotless face.
Yes, you will be steadfast and fearless.
Then you will forget your misery,
As if it were waters that pass away.
Then your life will be clearer than the noonday,
And you will shine like the morning.
And you will be secure, because there is hope
Yes, you will feel protected and rest in safety.
You will lie down, and none will make you afraid

“Certainly, many will ask for favors,
But the plans of the wicked will fail,
And they will not escape,
And their only hope will be death.”

Job Admits Feeling Persecuted

2010-02-20T06:55:00.001-08:00

“My soul is weary of my life
I don’t mind saying that:
I speak in bitterness.

“I have this to say to God:
Do not condemn me!
Show me why you have done this.
How is it good that you oppress?
How is it good that you despise your own creation?
How is it good that goodness goes unrewarded?

“Do you have eyes of flesh?
Do you see as we humans see?
Are your days the days of a human life?
Are your years like human years?
Is that why you bring me to trial?
Is that why you search for my sin?

“You know that I am not wicked.
You know there is no escape from you.
Your hands have made me,
Shaped me into what I am,
Yet you destroy me.
Remember, please, that you
Made me from clay,
And you will bring me to dust again.

“Haven’t you poured me out like milk
And curdled me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
And fenced me in with bones and muscle.
You granted me life and grace,
And your presence preserved my spirit.
You know these things in your heart;
I know you remember these things.

“If I do wrong, you see it,
And you do not approve.
If I am wicked, woe unto me.
But if I be good . . .
Woe unto me in that case too!

“I am confused!

“This is what torments me.
It just gets worse.
First, you hunt me like a fierce lion,
Then, you are marvelous to me.
Then, you accuse me of something else,
And the war starts all over again.

“Why is it I was born?
If only I had died
Before any eye ever looked upon me!
If only I had never been,
Or had been carried straight
From womb to grave.

“Isn’t my life short enough already?
Stop, then! Just leave me alone
So I can find some little comfort
Before I go to that place
From whence there is no return,
To that land of darkness
And the shadow of death,
That place soaked in chaos
Where the light is like darkness.”

Job Points Out that God Holds All the Cards

2010-02-10T08:10:00.001-08:00

Then Job said,

“All you say is true,
But how can we humans
Be just with God?

“In an argument, our chances
Aren’t one in a thousand.
God is wise in heart,
And mighty in strength.
Who has resisted God
And found prosperity?

“God removes mountains
At a whim;
God overturns them
In a fit of anger.
God shakes the earth out of place.
The very pillars tremble.
God commands the sun,
And it doesn’t even rise
God seals the light of stars.
God alone spreads the heavens
And walks on the waves of the sea.
God made the Bear, Orion, the Pleiades,
And the chambers of the south.
God does incomprehensible things,
Wonders without number.

“Consider: God goes by me,
And I don’t see a thing.
God keeps going,
But I am none the wiser.
Who can stop God?
Who will say,
‘What do you think you’re doing?’

“When God is angry
Chaos itself bows down.

“So, consider: How might I answer God?
What words might I choose to make an argument?
Even if I am innocent,
With a judge like that,
All I can do is beg.
Even were I to call,
And even if I got an answer,
How might I know that?

“God breaks me in a storm,
Then keeps stabbing for no reason.
God won’t even allow me a breath
But fills me to choking with bitterness.

“If I talk about strength,
God is what I’m talking about;
If I talk about judgment,
Who makes the court date?
Were I to try justifying myself,
My own mouth would answer,
Condemning me. If I say
That I am perfect, my mouth
Answers that I am perverse.

“Even if I were perfect,
How might I know my soul?
Look—God destroys both
The perfect and the wicked.
Yes, the wicked pay for crimes,
But trials for the innocent end no better.
The earth is in the hands of the wicked,
Yet God turns a blind eye—
If that’s not true, tell me how I’m wrong!

“My days are faster than a sprinter,
And they see no good.
My days pass like a swift ship,
Like an eagle swooping on its prey.
Were I to decide to forget my complaining;
Were I to decide to leave depression,
Seeking only comfort, still—would I be forgiven?
If I am wicked, why bother trying?
If I wash myself with snow water,
And make my hands never so clean—
Still yet God will throw me in a ditch
And my own clothes
Will find me disgusting.

“God is not human
As I am human.
God will not answer me.
We will not reason together.
There is no intermediary
That might listen to us both.

“If God would take the whip away;
If God would stop terrifying me,
Then I might be able to speak
Without abject fear, but
That is not how it is in my case.”

Bildad’s Discourse on The Wisdom of Times Past

2010-02-03T06:44:00.001-08:00

Bildad the Shuhite answered,

“How long will you speak these things?
How long will your words be like a hurricane?
Does God make mistakes in judgment?
Does the Almighty ever get it wrong?

“If your children sinned against him,
Then, if you have sought God,
If you have made your petition to the Almighty,
If you were pure and upright,
Surely, then, he would wake you from this dream
And make you rich and blessed again.

“Surely, though you are down now,
You will be rich again soon.
I ask you to think of the days of old.
All we know is yesterday,
Since our present days are only darkness.
Don’t the old ones teach you
And strengthen your heart?
After all, reeds won’t grow without water;
Papyrus only grows in mud.
While these are growing,
Do not cut them down.
Such is the path of those without God.
The godless perish without hope.
They put their trust in spider webs.

“Sure, the godless grow in the sun,
But their roots are in trash;
They are planted among stones.
They think they are thriving,
But God does not see them.

“It is the way of God to nurture.
God never abandons a perfect person;
Neither does God help an evildoer.
God will fill your mouth with laughter
And your lips with rejoicing.
Your enemies will be clothed in shame,
And the garden of the godless
Will come to nothing.”

Job Considers Patience and Hope

2010-01-27T06:29:00.001-08:00

“Aren’t our days on the earth numbered?
Aren’t our hours counted as if we worked for wages?
We are servants praying for evening;
We are employees waiting for our checks.
It is our job to live in vanity;
It is our job to live through the nights.

“I lie down and say, ‘Will I wake up
And the night be gone?’
All I do is toss to and fro.
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust.
My skin is broken and loathsome.
My days move faster than a weaver's shuttle,
And they are spent without hope.

“Remember—my life is so much wind.
My eye will see no more good.
Every eye that has looked upon me
Will see me no more.
Your eyes are upon me, and I am not.

“Just as a cloud is consumed and vanishes,
So is he who goes into the grave.
He will go no more to his house;
His daily routines won’t know him.

“That is why I keep talking:
I am speaking the anguish of my heart;
I am voicing the bitterness of my soul.

“Am I a sea, or a whale,
That you set a watch over me?
When I say that my bed will comfort me,
Or that my couch will ease my complaining,
You try scaring me with your dreams;
You try terrifying me with your visions.

“So, my soul chooses strangling and death rather than life.
I loathe life; I do not wish to live any longer.
Leave me alone; my days are vanity.

“What is man, that you should honor him?
That you should follow him?
That you should visit him every morning
And try him every moment?

“How long until you leave me?
How long before I can swallow my own spit in private?

“So, I have sinned.
What could I do to you,
Preserver of humanity?
Why have you declared war on me,
So that I am a burden to myself?
Why have you not pardoned my wrongs?
Why have you not taken away my iniquity?

“For now, allow me to sleep in the dust.
You will seek me in the morning,
But I will not be.”

Job Responds to Eliphaz

2010-01-21T06:04:00.001-08:00

But Job said,

“If only my grief could be weighed!
If only my calamity could be put on a scale!
It is heavier than the sands of the sea,
And so my words are swallowed up.

“The arrows of the Almighty are in me;
The poison of those arrows drinks my spirit.
The terrors of God line up for their turn.
Does the wild ass bray when he has grass?
Does the ox low over his fodder?
Can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?
Is there any taste in the white of an egg?
What once I would not have touched, now I eat.

“If only I could have my one wish;
If only it would please God to destroy me.
Then I would find comfort.

“May God not spare me!
I am hiding nothing from the Holy One.
What is my strength that I should hope?

“What is my destiny that I should prolong my life?
Is my strength the strength of stones?
Is my flesh made of brass?
I find no strength left.
My wisdom has been driven away.

“Friends should pity those afflicted, but
My friends appear to know nothing of God.

“My brothers, you have dealt deceitfully with me,
Like a brook, like the streams of brooks that pass by:
They are dark because of ice; snow is hidden inside.
When those streams grow warm, they vanish;
When it is hot, they are consumed and gone.

“You see my catastrophe and it frightens you.
Did I ask for help?
Tell me ‘yes,’ and I will stop accusing you.
Help me understand how I have been wrong.
Strong words sound convincing,
But who learns from your argument?
Do you think you can find fault in my words?
The words of a desperate man are merely wind.

“Try calming down and looking at me.
You can see if I am lying.
I speak nothing but justice.
I still know right from wrong.”

Eliphaz Discourses on Just Retribution

2010-01-13T05:14:00.001-08:00

“Call out, and see who will answer;
Can you turn to the Sons of God?
Wrath kills the foolish man;
Envy slays the silly one.
I have watched as the foolish take root
Though I curse their houses.

“The hungry eat the harvest of the foolish;
The robber swallows their things;
Affliction does not grow from the dust,
Neither does trouble spring out of the ground.
Human beings create their own trouble
As surely as sparks fly upward.

“I believe in seeking God
And committing my causes to God.
God does great and mysterious things,
Marvelous, numberless things.
God gives rain to the earth,
Sends waters to the fields.
God sets high those who are low;
Those who mourn may be lifted to safety.
God disappoints the devices of the crafty;
God snares the wise in their own craftiness,
And the counsel of the deceitful is revealed.
They meet with darkness in the daytime;
They grope in the noonday as if it were night.

“God saves the poor from the swords
And from the hands of the mighty.
Thus the poor have hope.

“Look, that person is happy who God corrects.
Do not despise chastening by the Almighty:
God makes sore, and God binds up;
God wounds, and God heals.

“God will deliver you from six troubles;
Even in seven troubles no evil will touch you.
In famine God will redeem you from death;
In war God will save you from the sword.
You will be hid from the scourge of the tongue,
And you will not fear destruction when it comes.
You will laugh at catastrophe and famine;
You will not be afraid of the beasts of the earth.

“Can’t you see? You will be an ally to the stones;
The wild beasts will be at peace with you.
Can’t you see? Your tent will be peaceful;
You can relax in your home.
And you can be assured that
Your offspring will be great,
As numerous as the grass of the earth.
You will go to your grave in old age
Just as corn is harvested in season.

“This is all true, as we have seen.
It is as we say;
Know it for your own peace of mind.”

Eliphaz Relates His Vision in the Night

2009-12-31T06:19:00.001-08:00

Eliphaz the Temanite said, “Will it grieve you to talk with us? I feel moved to speak. Look, you have been a leader. You have strengthened the weak. Now trouble has come to you. Yet, think: Who ever died for being innocent? Whenever is the righteous left out in the cold? Those who plow iniquity—and those who sow wickedness—reap the same. God blasts them. The roaring of the lion and the teeth of the young lions are broken. The old lion dies for lack of prey, and the stout lion's whelps are scattered.

“I know this little secret;
It came to me as a vision in the night
And fear and trembling shook my bones.

“A sprit passed and my hair stood on end.
It stopped but had no shape.
Yet it was an image in the silence and it asked me,
‘Will mortals be more just than God?
Will mortals be more pure than their maker?
God cannot trust his servants
Even his angels are fools.’

“So, as for we who dwell in houses of clay,
For us whose foundation is in the dust,
We die like moths.
We are destroyed from morning to evening
We perish continuously, no one ever noticing.

“And as for the good in us—
Where does that go?

“We die without wisdom. . .

Chapter Three: A Curse and a Lament

2009-12-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

The first word to come out of Job’s mouth was a curse.

Then he said,

“I wish I had never been born!
Or that I had died at birth.
Then I would be quiet;
I would sleep with the kings
And the counselors of the earth,
With the powerful who build
Desolate places for themselves
And with princes who had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver.

“In death the wicked cease their troubling
And the weary can rest.
In death the prisoners relax, never
Hearing the voice of the oppressor.
In death the small and great gather,
And the servant is free of the master.

“Why is it that light comes in misery?
Why does the bitter soul go on breathing?
Why do those who long for death have to wait,
Digging for it as if it were a hidden treasure?
When they find the grave, they rejoice.

“Why is it that light comes to those
Whose paths are hidden
And whom God has fenced in?
I sigh before I eat;
I pour out my screams like water.

“What I feared most has come to me;
What terrified me is here.
I never felt secure;
I never rested;
Never was I complacent;
Yet trouble came to me.”

Chapter Two: Job's Further Afflictions

2009-12-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

Now it so happened, on another day, the sons of God met with YAHWEH. Satan was at the meeting.

YAHWEH said to Satan, “Where are you coming from?”

Satan answered, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

YAHWEH said to Satan, “Have you taken a look at my servant Job? There is no one else like him on the earth. He is perfect and righteous; he worships God and eschews evil. He holds to his integrity, even though you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause.”

Satan answered YAHWEH, “Skin for skin, I do declare: all that a man has he will give for his own life. But I suspect that if you put forth your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, he will curse you to your face.”

YAHWEH said, “Look, he is in your power. All I ask is that you leave him alive.”

So Satan left the meeting with YAHWEH. And he afflicted Job with sore boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

Job took a piece of a broken pot and scraped himself with it. He sat down among the ashes.

Job’s wife said to him: “You are still keeping your integrity? Curse God and die.”

Job said to his wife, “What a foolish thing to say. Are we supposed to take the good from the hand of God but not the evil?”

Despite his misfortunes, Job would not speak blasphemy.

Now, Job had three friends, and when they heard of all the evil that had come upon Job, they agreed that they should go comfort him. His three friends were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.

While they were still far off, the three friends thought they saw Job, then realized how much he had changed. They wept for him, tore their clothing, and poured dust over their heads.

When they came into Job’s presence, they sat down on the ground near him, but they did not speak for seven days and seven nights, knowing Job was in grief.

A Retelling of the Story of Job

2009-12-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER ONE

Once there lived a man in Uz whose name was Job; he was perfect and righteous; he worshiped God and eschewed evil.

Job had seven sons and three daughters; he also had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, one thousand oxen, five hundred she-donkeys, and a huge household. Job was the greatest of all the men of the east.

Job’s sons had a custom of feasting in their houses, every one taking a turn, and they would call for their three sisters to come to eat and drink with them.

And every time his children had a feast, Job sent them a blessing, and then got up bright and early the next morning to offer a burnt sacrifice, just in case, as Job said, they had sinned in any way or somehow cursed God in their hearts. Job did this every time.

Now it so happened one day that the Sons of God met with YAHWEH. Satan was at the meeting.

YAHWEH said to Satan, “Where are you coming from?”

Satan answered, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

YAHWEH said to Satan, “Have you ever taken a look at my servant Job? There is no one else like him on the earth. He is perfect and righteous; he worships God and eschews evil.

Satan answered YAHWEH, “Ah! Not for nothing does Job worship God! You have built a hedge around him and around his house and around everything he has. You have blessed everything he does and he gets richer and richer by the day. But were you to put forth your hand and take away what he has, I suspect he would curse you to your face.”

YAHWEH said, “Look, everything that he has is now in your power. All I ask is that you do not hurt his body.”

So Satan left the meeting with YAHWEH. Meanwhile, Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the oldest brother’s house.

A messenger came to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them. Some nomads attacked them and stole them. They killed the servants and I am the only one who survived to come tell you.”

While that messenger was speaking, another ran in. This one said, “The fire of God has fallen from heaven, and it burned the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I am the only one who survived to come tell you.”

While that messenger was speaking, another ran in. This one said, “The Chaldeans attacked in three bands, and they stole the camels. They killed your servants, and I am the only one who survived to come tell you.”

While that messenger was speaking, another ran in. This one said, “Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. Suddenly, there came a great wind from the wilderness, crashing into the four corners of the house, and the house fell upon the young people, and they are dead; and I am the only one who survived to come tell you.”

Job stood up, tore his clothing, shaved his head, fell down upon the ground, and worshipped God. Job said, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked will I return thither; YAHWEH gave, and YAHWEH has taken away; blessed be the name of YAHWEH.”

Despite his misfortune, Job did not commit a sin, nor did he speak to God foolishly.

Theology is Creative Writing

2009-11-19T06:16:00.000-08:00

Religion has two faces: a public and a private.

Private experiences are just that: experienced. A person knows he or she has had the experience, no debate. We can certainly debate the interpretation of the experience: Was it really an angel; was it really Jesus; was it really an alien abduction. Mystics, however, have long claimed that their experiences are not expressible in words. That is the private face of religious experience.

It may be irritating for theologians to dwell upon, but the zaniest self-help book, based as it is in recommending doing something that feels some way, is downright scientific compared to theology.

The public face of religion is all about words, or, if you prefer, all about symbols, of which words are one subset, and pictures, statues, and incense others. The hidebound tomes that heap up around religions are also symbol sets. Word sets. And they are creative writing.

Where, after all, is their basis? Other books. Mentors. The tradition.

But wait! Isn’t tradition based in experience? Somewhat. Just as novels do not spring full-blown from abstraction. But that’s my point: a book of theology is very much like a novel.

I have written novels. And I have tried my hand at theology. What I have come to believe is that theology may best be written as poems are written—much closer to experience.

The Logic of the Materials

2009-11-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

Think about kids toys for a moment. Not just any kids toys, but the ones you can build stuff with. Think of the different sorts of construction sets there are: LEGO, Erector sets, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys. . .and on and on.

Now, consider these sets each as a specific religion. Many religions teach that only their set is valid for constructing a theology. For example, if you’re born a Southern Baptist, you must construct your theology out of, say, Lincoln Logs. Tinker Toys won’t do. Don’t even look over there at the people building with Tinker Toys. Or LEGO bricks. That won’t do. Only Lincoln Logs contain the correct—the one true way—of building.

Now imagine the Roman Catholic Church claiming the same thing about LEGO. Don’t look over there at the Erector Set.

You get the point.

(Yes, I know that analogies are dangerous, but bear with me.)

Just think about Lincoln Logs. You can build cabins and forts. You can even build, if you’re so inclined, shopping malls and airplanes and space ships. But, come down to it, no matter what you build, it’s always made of Lincoln Logs. Even the space ships you build will have a vague resemblance to log cabins.

Or take Tinker Toys. You can make great Ferris Wheels with Tinker Toys. And dogs and cats. Even shopping malls and space ships. But, at end of the day. . .everything has a certain . . .roundness to it.

Or take LEGO bricks. You can build pirate ships of LEGO. Space ships. Perhaps you’ve seen online that someone has told the story of the Bible in LEGO. Perhaps, were you persistent, you could even build a heart out of LEGO bricks. But, at the end of the day, it would still be a heart made of. . .LEGO bricks. There would be a certain. . .blockish quality to the heart.

LEGO has LEGO logic. Lincoln Logs have Lincoln Logs logic. That’s the way it works. (I do hope you’ll forgive my ignorance of contemporary toys: I was born with Eisenhower was president and my kids are grown.)

I’m not working with this metaphor to be silly. I think perhaps there’s some truth to be got at here. Yes, in a very real sense, all analogies are false analogies, since if things were truly similar, they would be the same, wouldn’t they? This analogy problem is especially tricky in the matter of the spiritual realm—analogies being often mistaken for reality. Yet I do think there is some truth to be got at here. Bear with me. . .

If we say that Roman Catholics can only play with LEGO in their theology; that Southern Baptists can only play with Lincoln Logs; that Pentecostals can only play with Erector Sets, what we’re saying is that there is an internal logic to the theologies built into the play sets. We’re saying that Roman Catholicism will always—whatever the new idea—come up with a creation, a new toy, based on its preexisting logic.

Becoming the Path

2009-11-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Poet Keith Waldrop wrote, “This much seems obvious, that as we move along the path, slowly but certainly the path replaces us.” I’m not sure just how obvious that is, but it is perhaps true. We become what we do. And, as the old saying goes, our deeds live after us. I suppose at one level, this could be interpreted as a threat: “Oh, no! I’d better be careful what I do!” In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, however, the idea functions more as opportunity than threat. When I am gone, it is what I have done that matters. And, today, I am what I do. The path I am moving along is replacing me. It isn’t what I’m thinking but what I am doing that is slowly adding up to what I will have been. For me, anyway, that thought helps when things get murky.

The Way of Poetry

2009-05-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

Philosophically speaking, I am a nominalist. That is, as John Stuart Mill said, "there is nothing general except names", hence the prefix "nom". What that means, and I have to quickly add that I’m in no way a philosopher, merely a weekend-warrior when it comes to philosophy, is that I don’t believe abstractions exist except in the human mind.

I don’t believe there’s a quantity called “justice,” only individual happenings that we can say are just or unjust based on past experience, cultural norms, theory based on human experience, and a certain inner core of value developed through evolution.

I don’t believe there is an entity called Death, black robe and scythe or not. All we have is a long history of individual cases. And the prediction that there will be more.

There was a first death, a first murder, a first injustice. And those have kept coming, always individual, specific. The ability to abstract those individual cases into theory is what makes us human. The ability to think abstractly about individual instances is a wonderful gift; it is also inherently deceptive.

The ability to institutionalize murder and injustice is also human.

As an example of what can happen when we take wisdom too literally as an abstract entity, here is a passage from the book of Job:

Where then does wisdom come from?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of all living,
and concealed from the birds of the air.
Abaddon and Death say,
“We have heard a rumour of it with our ears.”
God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place.

Now, this is good poetry but dangerous philosophy, I think. Though the poet of Job goes on to give concrete instances of YHWH expertly making the earth, the poet concludes,
Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding

But wait: hocus pocus has occurred: we have gone from the beautiful poetry of YHWH making the earth to a command to follow the rules of a particular religious practice. “Fear of the Lord is wisdom.” The act of performing a particular abstraction leads to another abstraction.

And then what is “evil,” and what is departing from it? Is sticking to a path constructed by this particular religious practice REALLY the way to the abstraction called “understanding”?
Or is this a particular way merely a particular way to a particular understanding?
Ah, I think that’s it.

I am a poet myself. I understand the beauty of images and the beauty of abstraction (I’m a big fan of Wallace Stevens). I understand the human need to suss abstraction out of image. I also know it’s an inherently dangerous practice.

Meta-narrative

2009-02-21T07:22:00.001-08:00

I have a basic thesis, and it is this: Whatever “powers that be” in the universe that may or may not exist, a basic requirement of being human is being adult in our religious and spiritual thinking. That which infantilizes us; that which shifts the burden of moral responsibility away from our own actions to some vague other, is wrong-headed.

Abrogation of responsibility is not an adult act.

After all, doesn’t our spirituality deserve our utmost attention, not because we need to escape some unearthly punishment but because each moment of our lives is precious? Furthermore, isn’t each moment fraught with difficulty and alive with possibility?

The Buddha said, “Be ye lamps unto yourselves.” This anti-authority sentiment did not sit well with the Brahmins of Buddha’s time, just as Luther’s sola scripture,” nothing but scripture,” argument sat badly with church authorities of his time. There’s lots of hay to be made with religion, after all, and authorities of any time are authorities because they know a bit about the levers of power.

Despite the time, the place, the style, fashion, and mode of government, the question is always this: Do I know myself?

This is one of those eternal questions.

After we ask the question of ourselves, we must begin the work of theology, the work of religion, the work of spirituality, which is aligning ourselves the transcendental ground of our existence. We must begin the work of weaving our lives around our ultimate concerns

The work of theology has many facets—tradition, authority, speculation, personal experience, mystery. . .

Some of us have experienced a good deal of grace, having felt that nature or reality or deity has been on our side. Others of us have felt cursed by whatever powers may be. And it is well to remember that it may not be truth we are after, but peace of mind.

“Meta-narrative” is a sometimes overused term that describes the idea that there are grand schemes working in history. The “march of progress” is a meta-narrative. The old Christian teaching that humankind’s fall in Genesis set up “original sin” only washed away by the death of Christ is a meta-narrative. Nations tend to have meta-narratives concerning their formation, governance, and destiny. The lives of famous people are often turned into meta-narratives that indicate an inevitability to the shape and success of their lives.

The human mind creates narrative, even when it isn’t there. Many of us have had religious meta-narratives imposed upon us in childhood. This overarching explanation of being is of course a map, not a territory, and, like a map, meta-narrative ignores minutia to indicate a larger pattern. But as mathematician and originator of Process Theology Alfred North Whitehead pointed out, “We think in generalities, but we live in detail.”

And thus do meta-narratives fail us. Fail us not only in their lack of detail—in their map for how to get through the minutes of our lives—but also in the stories they tell us.

Meta-narratives lie by omission. Meta-narratives shift the burden of responsibility away from our selves. We are born in the place and the time in which we are born. We are born as we are. Meta-narratives function to remove our own reality. Meta-narratives infantilize us.

As Jesus demonstrated, theological thought and discourse works best in story and in conversation. The spiritual exists only in the moment. The now. That is the stage on which we all decide, all act.

What the Questions Are

2009-02-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

Theology, in the Western tradition, encompasses questions such as where revelation of the sacred comes from; how the universe came to be; and the role of divinity in the upkeep and maintenance of the universe and its living things, an activity often known as providence.
On these foundational questions theologians then build structures that posit answers to questions such as anthropology, or what it means to be human.
The interaction of deity and the universe, with our understandable preoccupation with human beings, leads to the question of theodicy, that is, an explanation for why evil and misfortune exists in the world despite or because of the sort of deity posited. A corollary question tends to be, “how can I be delivered from the evils and misfortunes of the world?” This question is answered in a consideration known in Greek as soteriology, from the word “soterion,” meaning deliverance.
Other questions include pneumatology, or the question of the existence of a spirit world and how it interacts—or not—with the material world, and ecclesiology, or the question of how best to worship and/or appease the sort of deity proposed. This includes the question of various sacramental actions and how to lead a moral life.
Then of course there is the question of how, in the religion one chooses, to live with those who have chosen other religions.
Lastly there is the question of eschatology, or last things; that is, what does death mean; what happens after death, and what will eventually become of the universe.

Complicating these matters, when the religion has aged a bit, are traditions. Traditions with great meaning in one time and place don’t make sense in other times and other places.
Further complications are added by the existence of texts considered sacred. How tradition and text get interpreted leads to questions of epistemology—or how meaning is made—and hermeneutics, or how we go about doing interpretation.
All human religions grapple with these issues, though the Western frame does not always comfortably fit pre-Christian First People traditions or non-Western traditions.
Unitarian Universalist minister Alice Blair Wesley attempts to further synthesize theological questions by asking three:
What realities are most worthy of our devoted love?
How is our participation in these realities conditioned?
And how do they interact with other realties?

This nicely sums up what the questions are.

What the Questions Are

2009-02-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

Abrogation of responsibility is not an adult act.

Mainline Christianity is slowly awakening to the idea that people need a daily spiritual discipline. In this, Christianity is much like the Detroit automakers on the early-1960s or today. Then, GM’s response to the need for smaller cars then was the Corvair, a car that proved to be unsafe at any speed. Detroit’s answer now is to ask for emergency loans. I wouldn’t say that Centering Prayer, which reaches back to Roman Catholic monastic practice for its grounding, is exactly like a Corvair, but I would say that it is probably too little. . .very late.

Yes, there has long been a tradition in Christianity of daily Bible reading and prayer. But reading—even in its “spiritual” form, lectio divina—is not an activity focused on spiritual discipline. Nor is intercessory prayer. Thus, the Western ideal has involved imprinting the mind with external knowledge through reading and directing thoughts outside the self through prayer.

Since the Second World War, Buddhist practices, particularly Zen, have spread to the Western world to fill this hollowness at the core of Christian thinking. The “emergent” church movement has also developed as a counter-balance, in some ways a fifth column, to the spiritual and rational holes in mainline Christianity. The rediscovery of early Christian Gnosticism has further changed the Western spiritual landscape. Meditative introspection is back. But again, it looks a bit like a Corvair.

Unitarian Universalists have been among the “early adopters” of Buddhism and have shown a fascination with the emergent church movement and the reexamination of Christianity through Gnosticism. These new ways of seeing have led to a new understanding of the power in organized, daily, and dare we say conscious, spiritual practice.

Assembling Freedom

2008-08-08T07:33:00.001-07:00

Reflections on the July, 27th, 2008 shootings at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church

I had prepared another sermon for today but the events of last Sunday has had me, as it has many Unitarian Universalists, thinking.

The first thing I’ve been thinking is that freedom of assembly is one of the basic requirements of freedom. It is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, right alongside freedom of religion. It is part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, the European Convention of Human Rights, and on and on. Freedom of assembly is basic to what makes freedom freedom.
The great Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams believed that voluntary associations are the central protection of freedom. And he had experience, having watched the Nazis systematically removing freedom of assembly in the Germany of the 1930s, first by thugs, then by thugs in uniform. That’s why, in this morning’s reading, he makes a distinction between freedom of thought, which is personal, and freedom of assembly, which is communal. It is free assembly that frightens oppressors and affects change.
Free people are free people BECAUSE they have the ability to meet together without fear.

Last Sunday morning, at about the time we settled in to listen to a sermon here in this sanctuary, a man with a sawed-off shotgun walked into the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee and began shooting. Greg McKendry, an usher that morning and a board member of the church, stood up to shield the congregation, and was the first to die. Linda Kraeger, a visitor from a nearby UU church, was also killed. Several others were wounded before congregants tacked the assailant, holding him down until police arrived.
The speculation began immediately: was this a random act by an insane person? Was he looking for an estranged spouse? Or was he there to kill Unitarian Universalists because they were Unitarian Universalists? Had our right to assemble freely been infringed upon?
The answer to the question appears to be complex. A manifesto that the killer, Jim David Adkisson, left behind, thinking he would die in a hail of police gunfire, attacks what he calls liberals, blaming them for opposition to the war and for support of minority and GLBT rights.

The killer, it turns out, is from Harriman, Tennessee, a small town in the central part of the state. I have relatives who live in Harriman, Tennessee. One of my cousins was a truck driver and Pentecostal preacher in Harriman. He was an illiterate man and had his wife read the Bible readings for the day to him until he had them memorized so that he could pretend to be reading. Harriman is an isolated place with quite a few poor people.
Barak Obama caused quite a political firestorm earlier this year when he said that the frustrations of poor whites often lead them to cling to guns, religion, and racism. Well, since I’m not running for office, I can say it: Obama is correct. Jim David Adkisson was unemployed and he was bitter about it.
Now, full disclosure. I grew up with guns and religion and racism. I grew up with people like Adkisson. We can’t help being born poor; we can keep from forcing our religion on others; we can keep from hating others; and we can keep from taking a shotgun to church. You can’t help being born into hatred and ignorance and violence.
One of my earliest memories: My parents and I were living in northern Louisiana in a small town. This was the early-1960s. The South was still more and less segregated. I remember the weird look of two cultures, black and white, occupying the same small space yet seldom interacting. And I remember a realization hitting me one day as my family was walking down a sidewalk. Now, my father was born a sharecropper. My parents can barely read. But we were walking down the sidewalk, and an elderly black man stepped off into the street, to avoid us. And then it happened again. And again. And I knew, even as a child, that that was wrong. I don’t know how I knew. Maybe I had gotten in tune with the innate moral core Emerson talks about; maybe Walter Cronkite told me. I don’t know. But I saw that my white skin was a ticket down the middle of the sidewalk. And that was wrong.
I just knew it: People have the right to be who they are and they have the right to walk on the sidewalk.
And with that realization I realized something about oppression.
How could this injustice ever go away?
Nothing could change.
My parents were the sort of poor whites who just kept their moths shut. Part of the problem.
Fortunately, over in Georgia, some people, freely associating in churches, by the way, DID have some ideas on how things could change. They were NOT “silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.”
And things did change. And Unitarian Universalists, in their free congregations, risking their lives, joined in the fight for justice.
And things changed.
Still today, when I’m in the deep south, and I feel the stifling humidity and smell the strong stench of the pines, still, I go right back to 1962, and I look around, and I still feel amazed to see blacks and whites, no longer running on parallel but separate tracks, but interacting. Living together.
Free people did that!

I’m not trying to sugar coat. We know that black kids can still go to jail for sitting in the wring spot at lunch. It happened just last year in Louisiana. And we know that the book has still not been closed on slavery. Last week the House finally passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow.
Well, it’s about time.
But the effects of slavery—and the amassed fortunes based on slavery—still exist in this nation. We have apologized but we haven’t paid up. We still have work to do. But good people and freedom will prevail—eventually—I believe that.
Racism, though we have plenty of it in this nation, is at least officially illegal thanks to some good people freely gathering in churches.
Unfortunately, we can’t say the same thing in the case of the oppression of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. That’s still mostly legal.
It occurs to me that the question to ask is the other way around: Where does a person like Jim David Adkisson get the idea that people unlike himself should be oppressed?

The specific mention of GLBT rights in the so-called manifesto the Knoxville killer left is perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the incident last weekend. We have, unfortunately, grown accustomed to random shootings in this country. But targeted ones. That’s different. Whatever the back story, Adkisson set out to kill Unitarian Universalists because they were Unitarian Universalists, and he was committing a political act.
Now let’s admit that the US media is not all that. . . nuanced, shall we say in its consideration of stories. So perhaps you have missed the information that the killer’s ex-wife had been a member of the congregation and that the killer attended some UU functions in the mid-1990s. So there is a bit of nuance to the motive. And it places Adkisson closer to the usual profile of America’s lone gunmen. Still, Adkisson did choose to name his own motive. And that motive was an attack on liberal values.
And I’m not sure how much good it does to wax philosophical concerning the difference between liberal religion and liberal politics. But we can’t blame others for forgetting the difference when we don’t make it explicit ourselves. After all, Adkisson was apparently a religious liberal. Or at least he questioned fundamentalist assumptions concerning Jewish and Christian scripture and often complained about being forced to go to church as a youth. He sounds like one of us. Apparently preachers such as my Pentecostal cousin were too much for him. So it wasn’t RELIGIOUS liberalism that bothered Jim David Adkisson.

I haven’t been able to decide if this is a digression or not, but the fundamentalist concept of the inerrancy of the bible is not an old Christian tradition. It’s not Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or even Lutheran or Anglican dogma. Luther played with it; a few sects have thought about it, but it really took off among protestant ministers in the South in the years preceding the American Civil War. Now, liberal pastors, such as the Unitarian Theodore Parker, argued that the progress of Christian thought required the abolition of slavery. Certain conservative pastors countered that slavery is clearly sanctioned in both Jewish and Christian scriptures, and is therefore sanctioned by God—back then, and now. Ministers such as Parker countered that the scriptures were the product of particular peoples in particular social settings, and therefore reflected the prejudices of the time. The response was: NO! God’s word is God’s word, it does not change with the whims of human fashion.
That’s the source of inerrancy.
Now, slavery was indeed ended in this nation, not by logic or theology but by force of arms. The new concept of inerrancy did not die, however. Liberal ministers did not convince less liberal ministers of the error of inerrancy. And the dogma of inerrancy has retained this hydra-headed, or Janus-faced, life in our national discourse: It’s a religious concept invented to argue a political agenda and that is still its purpose.
I don’t think any rational person would argue against the right of churches to preach inerrancy. Have at it. We’re all free people freely gathered in voluntary association. You can keep whoever you like out of your church; you can condemn whatever you like in your church; you can believe whatever you like in your church. (And by the way, fundamentalists still, necessarily, believe slavery is hunky-dory. Inerrancy is inerrancy.) Go ahead: preach it and be it. It’s a great recruitment tool for the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalists!
Jim David Adkisson did not agree with my cousin the Pentecostal preacher concerning inerrancy. In that way, Adkisson was one of us. . .

But back from my digression. Yes, the theologies of the Universalist and the Unitarian traditions have tended toward progressive—dare we say—liberal—political opinions. We fought for emancipation when most Americans believed slavery was OK; we fought for women’s rights when most Americans thought women had it good enough; we fought for worker’s rights when most Americans thought that workers were getting what they deserved, thank you very much; we fought against segregation when most Americans thought separate but equal was peachy-keen; we have fought against various invasions and wars; we have fought against the oppression of immigrants; we have fought for the rights of gays and lesbians and bisexual and transgender people. We have always been a tiny fraction of the US population, but we get out there and agitate and negotiate and educate until a majority of well-meaning people agree with us. These are political battles we fight from a spiritual core value: the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. This is a spiritual value and it is NOT negotiable with us.
But wait: Back to my digression. Isn’t that a contradiction? The fundamentalist can’t do that too? Of course they can. It is their right to take political action based on their spiritual values. And they do. It’s their right to attempt to perpetuate old laws or add new ones that discriminate and subordinate and oppress their fellow citizens.
It’s our calling to stand on the side of human dignity. Then we have a horse race. We have a political system. And “compromise” is not a four-letter word.
That’s the point Jim David Adkisson missed.

Not all Unitarian Universalists have agreed with progressive values over the years. Very few Unitarians were abolitionists early in the struggle, for instance. Certainly in our movement patriarchy has died a slow, loud death and still comes back alive from time to time to startle us, just like the monster at the end of a horror movie. Our greatest failure has probably been in the area of workers rights, most likely because we tend to be educated people and we have a hard time understanding what it means to live without an education.
Let’s admit it: as a religious movement, we STILL don’t know what racism means; we still don’t know what sexism means; we still don’t understand classism, ageism, ableism. We have hardly begun to peel away the layer upon layer of assumption that keeps us from understanding each other. But we are trying.
For all our faults, we are a people who choose to congregate for the purpose of nurturing what we consider sacred—in ourselves, in others, and in the larger world. This is our purpose.

I think we can safely assume that our fellow Unitarian Universalists Linda Kraeger and Greg McKendry did not go to church last Sunday morning expecting to die for their beliefs. In a society in which freedom of assembly is guaranteed, that should never be an expectation or even a fear. It should never be a choice anyone has to make. Yet the facts are there: circumstance required them to die for what they believed.

I propose that the way to honor them is to keep doing what we’re doing, loud and proud, remembering what we are: we are a free people, freely gathering, to affirm and promote the dignity of every human being. We will not remain “silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.”

We UUs are not dangerous to people like Jim David Adkisson because we occasionally affect social change in the United States. The United States is a blip on the radar screen of human history. What we are doing is adding to the human understanding, for the long haul. Because in the case of freedom, after the genie is out of the bottle, it doesn’t go back in. Sure, it’s often one step forward and two back, but the genie won’t go back into the bottle.
We feel dangerous to people like Jim David Adkisson because we are changing the discussion about religion and freedom. . . forever. We UUs don’t agree on many things theologically—we’re free people, after all—but I believe, based on our Universalist and Unitarian traditions we can say this much:

We emphatically declare that it was not Satan or sin or human depravity that drove Jim David Adkisson to commit murder, but his own sad confusion and loneliness. We could have helped him. And perhaps we still can.
We are dangerous to oppressors because we emphatically declare that human beings are good;
That God hates no one;
That God oppresses no one;
That God punishes no one;
We emphatically declare that God does not decree—or underwrite—ANY oppression. Ever.
Oppression is the work of confused human beings.
That is our dangerous message. That is the message we offer to history and to humanity. Call it liberal if you want; call it crazy; but it is the truth.

Now and always.

Amen

Bullet, Ballot, Cross: Would Jesus Vote?

2008-04-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Jesus once said, in response to a question concerning loyalties, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Or in another translation: “Render unto the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And perhaps we should consider: “Render unto the President the things that are the President’s and to God the things that are God’s.” Or, render unto George Bush the things that are George Bush’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

Today we will consider the question of whether or not rendering unto Caesar and rendering unto George Bush, rendering unto the emperor and rendering unto the President, have similar meanings. And just what it is we should be rendering to ruler and to deity.

In order to consider this question I wish to put aside speculation concerning what Jesus knew and didn’t know; speculation concerning what Jesus could do and could not do—in other words put aside the question of the divinity of Jesus—and place Jesus instead in the context of his time, the politics and the economics, to consider if the actions of Jesus can help us reach some conclusions concerning ways moral people may act in their own time and place, embedded as we human beings always are in politics and economics.
We can’t know from historical research what Jesus THOUGHT, but we can know what people around him, listening to him, HEARD.

What belongs to the President?
What belongs to the deity?
What is of the material world?
What is of the spiritual world?
What are our obligations to each?

These are not simple questions. . . and they never have been. . .

One: Picture a world….

Picture a world in which all the important economic, political, and artistic work goes on in a language other than your own, a language other than the native tongue of the region. If you wished to participate in that world, you would have to learn a foreign language. That was the world of Jesus, who spoke Aramaic. The business of his world went on in Greek (not Latin, as is sometimes popularly thought).

Picture a world in which your religion is tolerated but denigrated by the politicians. The Roman occupiers of Palestine found Judaism a fascinating, but fanatical, religion. Unlike most of the conquered peoples on the Roman world, who accepted the Roman gods into their local pantheons, there were things that Jews would not do; things Jews would not say; even things Jews would not eat, and many Jews were willing to die rather than offend their religious sensibilities. Thus the Romans found Jews fascinating but fanatical. Interesting but dangerous.

One of the major sticking points for Jews was that Romans declared their emperors gods and required subject peoples to pay the emperors homage. Most Jews said no. In the years of the occupation, some Roman emperors overlooked or excused this behavior, some did not. And so the cycle of relative peace and open rebellion circled and circled during the Roman occupation of Palestine. The Jewish historian Josephus reports that, around the time of the birth of Jesus and just up the road from where Jesus grew up, the Romans crucified 2000 Jews in one day. . . Crucifixion was a horrendous and highly public form of capital punishment designed to keep the occupied population scared. It took days to die and the bodies were left hanging to decompose.

Picture a world in which the Roman occupiers and the Jewish elite were highly skeptical people; people for whom the news of an exorcist and healer in the backcountry villages would have raised alarm, not because they believed in miracles but because such reports indicated to them that the poor peasants were getting restive again.

Were Jesus alive today, and in the political position he was when he lived, Jesus would not be a US citizen or an Israeli citizen or a citizen of the European Union. He would be a poor kid in a small country occupied by a world power; he would be a person whose actions, should they come to the attention of local authorities, would likely get him killed. Perhaps the best analogy today would have Jesus living in a small village in Iraq. At least it’s something to think about . . .

Picture a world in which political options are few, but much resemble the political options we have today: acceptance of the political hierarchy; violent resistance to it; or spiritual resistance to it.

Picture a world in which people are divided into slaves, day laborers, small farmers, and artisans. Above those are merchants, tax collectors, and priests, all people cooperating with the occupiers. Then, there are the occupiers themselves. . .

Picture a village of two hundred people, no paved streets, no public buildings, no walls against marauding bandits; a village so small it is not often mentioned at all (Crossan). Everyone in the village is poor. There was NO upward social mobility in Palestine during time of Jesus. If you were born poor, you probably died poorer. There was no working hard and sending your kids to college to improve the family social standing.

Picture a world in which hunger was ever-present, the people malnourished. Skeletons from the time of Jesus indicate extreme vitamin deficiencies and, due to hard work and malnutrition, nearly everyone suffered from arthritis. Few people lived to the age of fifty. Most, like Jesus, died in their thirties.

The Greek word often translated “carpenter” is tekton, more correctly translated “woodworker” (Meier). Houses in that region and time had very little in the way of wood in their construction. Doors and roof beams, mostly. A woodworker of the time would most likely have been engaged in making furniture and making yokes for oxen. There is disagreement among scholars concerning just where on the social scale a woodworker fit. Some argue that Jesus would have made a meager living fixing things for local villagers and farmers; some argue that Jesus would have traveled to do skilled labor and would therefore have been better off than the average villager. The evidence appears to me to indicate that, were Jesus alive today, he would be a handyman, trying to keep worn out things working for a little longer.

Yet, even if Jesus was better off than the average peasant, according to the gospel record he gave up all financial security when he began preaching. . .

One of the oddities of the New Testament is that there is no mention of a major city, Sepphoris, which was only an hour’s walk from Nazareth, the place where Jesus grew up. Sepphoris was a large city under the influence of Greek culture. A city with education, wealth, and Greek arts. Jesus chose to ignore this city and preach instead in small agricultural villages.

And while we’re on the subject of preaching, we should look at the fact that Jesus was a layperson, not a priest. In the society in which Jesus lived, priests exercised both political and religious power. Jesus did not have that power.

Two: Would Jesus vote?

Fact is that Jesus was executed for political crimes. He was considered an insurgent. The act that got him executed was his attack on the Temple. We must remember a central, all-important fact: there was NO separation of church and state in the minds of human beings at the time Jesus lived. The temple in Jerusalem was the central religious AND political fact in the life of Jews in Roman Palestine. When Jesus says that we should “render unto Caesar,” he is not talking about a separation of church and state. The concept did not exist.

The Temple in Jerusalem was, besides the Roman army, the largest employer in Palestine. The temple complex covered thirty-three acres (Hendricks) and included a Roman garrison. Remember that at trial Jesus was accused of predicting the destruction of the temple—a bit like predicting the destruction of the Capital Building, White House, Supreme Court, Federal Reserve, and National Cathedral all rolled into one.

It is important to note, then, that Jesus DID take direct political action when he attacked the money changers in the Temple. What this means in the context of moral action, however, is a difficult question. The problem of the intentions of Jesus boils down to this: what did he mean when he talked about “the Kingdom of God”? This is no small question, and it has vexed Christian thinking from the beginning.

One of the things we have to remember is that when Jesus spoke of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s, Caesar was in utter control of the material world. As a matter of fact, in the ancient way of thinking (and sometimes it’s not so ancient), Caesar’s god—Jupiter and the Roman pantheon—had soundly beaten the God of the Jews. As I mentioned earlier, the Caesars themselves had been declared gods and were to be worshiped. Thus the Kingdom of God, whatever Jesus meant by it, didn’t appear too likely.

HOWEVER, in only a bit more than three hundred years after the death of Jesus, Caesar had become a Christian and Christianity had become the law of the land. So “rendering unto Caesar” had taken on rather of a different meaning by that time, a meaning that still colors our thinking today, and that has been part of the confusion ever since. Fact is, Christianity has been the power behind the throne and ON the throne of a good many nations for two thousand years now, and continues to be today in places such as the United States. But, again, the question is: Was that sort of seizure of political power what Jesus had in mind by the coming of the “Kingdom of God”?

Evidence suggests that is wasn’t. The most obvious indication of that occurs in what is now known as “The Lord’s Prayer”: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Clearly the point of the prayer is that God’s will be done on earth. Which leaves us with two questions: What is God’s will for the earth? And How did Jesus think that will would come to the earth?

Let’s consider the second question first: How would God’s will come to the earth? There are, I think, three options here: either Jesus meant the coming of the Christian Roman Empire; or he was wrong about the coming of the Kingdom of God; or he envisioned a Kingdom which did indeed come.

Now, the Roman Empire has come and gone, so we have to assume the first option isn’t of much value to us. The second option, that Jesus was wrong, isn’t of much value either. So we’re left with the third option: Jesus considered that a Kingdom of God would not look like a Kingdom of Caesar. Which leads us back to the first question: given that the Kingdom of Caesar, or the Republic of George W. Bush, are neither one the Kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus, what WOULD such a thing look like?

What kind of candidate would Jesus vote for?

Though the vision of Jesus for the Kingdom of God is not precisely clear, we do have a vision of what a just life is like in the much-quoted Matthew chapter 25. In versus 31-46 the Jesus of Matthew speaks of the judgment to come and the rewards to come in the afterlife. Since this passage bridges the gap between human action on the earth and reward in the afterlife, it covers all the bases we are considering here:

"When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, `Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'

And the King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, `Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
Then they also will answer, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?'
Then he will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.'
And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Though we hear a lot from many Christian churches that we must be saved, we seldom hear how it is we are supposed to go about doing that, beyond the “personal savior” mantra which is not biblical. Notice that, in this rendition, there is no discussion of an inner life nor of an outwardly pious moral life. This is salvation through social action: feeding the hungry; giving drink to the thirsty; welcoming strangers; clothing the naked; visiting the sick and the imprisoned.

This is a vision we can sink our teeth into. This tells us how Jesus would be acting and how he would be voting. We have in our nation and in our world the hungry, the thirsty, the immigrant, the naked and sick and imprisoned. These are things we can deal with; things we can vote on; things we can fix. And we have those other guidelines we heard earlier, commonly known as the “the Beatitudes.” These are things we can do.

Conclusion

Would Jesus vote, and, if so, for what? We do have some clues.

Jesus lived his life as most human beings through time have lived their lives: under the domination of a repressive government designed to enrich the rich and to tax and subjugate the poor. The choices Jesus had were to obey the system or fight the system. Jesus was executed for fighting the system. It is difficult, if not impossible, to know what he had in mind, but I choose to believe he wanted good rather than ill for humanity—here, on this earth.

Jesus never got the chance to vote. His attempts to bring the spiritual world into the material get the attention of powerful people. And his vision of a better world led to his execution. We, however, DO have the privilege of the vote; and we have the responsibility that goes with that privilege. We also have the examples of other women and men who have passed through this world, most of whom did not have our privileges, but who fought for justice anyway.

What should we render unto Caesar or George W Bush? What should we render unto the sacred and holy? Where is the line between the material and the spiritual worlds?

Good questions.

Whatever it was Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God, we have the opportunity to nourish, to welcome, to clothe, to heal, and to free our fellow human beings.

These are not small tasks; they are, however, I believe, our call and our duty—in our lives, in our voting, in our churches. . . until it is on earth as it is in heaven.

So may it be.

Sources:

John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001.

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus’ Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted. New York: Doubleday, 2006.

John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. One. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Trolley Problems

2008-04-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

“Trolley Problems: Where is my Neighbor?” (Sermon for Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Sunday)

A reading from Aesop, “The Lion and the Boar”

ON A SUMMER DAY, when the great heat induced a general thirst among the beasts, a Lion and a Boar came at the same moment to a small well to drink. They fiercely disputed which of them should drink first, and were soon engaged in the agonies of a mortal combat.

When they stopped suddenly to catch their breath for a more fierce renewal of the fight, they saw some Vultures waiting in the distance to feast on the one that should fall first.

They at once made up their quarrel, saying, "It is better for us to make friends, than to become the food of Crows or Vultures."

One

A trolley is out of control, running down a track. On the track ahead are five people, tied to the track by a mad psychologist. Thank goodness, you are standing by a switch. If you flip the switch, the trolley will change tracks, saving the five people. Unfortunately, the mad psychologist has tied a single person to that track. Should you flip the switch?

Those of you who keep up with developments in psychology or ethics know that this scenario is called “The Trolley Problem.” The Trolley Problem presents us with a simple ethical dilemma: Are we willing to become personally involved in the deliberate killing of another human being in order to save five human beings, or are we more likely to choose inaction, choosing to blame the mad psychologist for tying people to the trolley tracks to begin with? The problems go on: Would you be willing to PUSH a person onto the tracks to stop the trolley? And imagine this: you are walking down the hall of a hospital. You know of five people who need organ transplants to survive. And there, walking toward you, is a perfectly healthy person with fine organs. Do you kill that person in order to harvest the organs?

Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser has been working with variations of the trolley problem with various human populations around the globe and in his book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, Hauser proposes that human beings have a genetic, hard-wired sense of moral decency. A sense of moral decency developed not by culture or religion but by evolution itself. Hauser’s thesis greatly upsets the conventionally religious; but I believe it argues for hope, not despair, at the future for humanity. Human beings have innate, hardwired, ethical understand. And I my humble opinion it takes bad religion to mess that up.

It takes bad religion to convince innately moral young people to blow themselves and others up. It takes bad religion to convince innately moral herders that it’s OK to exterminate farmers in Darfur.

It took bad religion to makes us during the Cold War hate “godless Communists” so much that we built a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the planet. . .over a disagreement concerning economics!

It takes a hateful, tribal god to circumvent the innate moral sense of humanity.

Human beings have posed the sorts of morality scenarios presented by the Trolley Problem for a long time. Probably the most famous moral scenario occurs in Christian scripture, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10 verses 25-37, to be specific. For those who don’t know your Christian all that well, this is the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In the set-up to this parable Jesus has been talking with an expert on Jewish law who has just agreed with him that central to the law is the command “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The law expert responds by asking who his neighbor is. Jesus responds with this parable:

A man is robbed and beaten and left by the side of the road half dead. Two members of the priestly class pass him by, not helping because of ritual purity concerns (another case of bad religion!). A Samaritan, who practiced a form of Judaism not acceptable to the legal expert, helped the man. Jesus asks the expert a simple question: "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replies, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus responds by saying, "Go and do likewise."

The reading this morning, Aesop fable of the lion and the boar, is an example of enlightened self interest—agreement will avoid the vultures. The parable of the Good Samaritan and the Trolley Problem pose to us larger questions of empathy and altruism and community:

Who is my neighbor?
Where is my community?
What are we to do in the face of human suffering?
Who am I willing to throw under the trolley. . . or the bus. . .and for what purpose?

Today we celebrate the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a group that offers a radical vision of just who our neighbors are...

Two.

Allow me three examples:

The genocide in Darfur is the first of what will become a pattern in the face of global climate change. Traditionally nomadic tribes have been forced, by drought and desertification, into lands owned by people different from themselves in culture and tradition. Since the genocide began in 2003, 400,000 human beings have died and 2.5 million have been displaced.

The government of Sudan is complicit in these killings. Sudan has oil reserves, but seventy percent of the oil revenues go to fund the military. Roughly one million people remain on the land, but those numbers drop by approximately 100,000 every month. The main source of sustenance for the refugees in Sudan and neighboring Chad are non-governmental organizations such as the UUSC, which are increasingly coming under attack (savedarfur.org).

Are the people of Darfur our neighbors?

The UUSC has also been involved in New Orleans, USA. The UUSC reports that,

Forty percent of the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are tenants. Since the storm, rents have doubled and apartment buildings, even those undamaged by the storm, remain off limits. Ninety-six percent of funds for government housing aid go to homeowners (uusc.org).

Undocumented workers are cleaning and rebuilding New Orleans. Yet, often, when it comes time to pay them, rumors of immigration sweeps send them into hiding. And so they don’t get paid (uusc.org) .

After all these months and years, only thirteen of twenty six hospitals are open in New Orleans. Only eighty three of two hundred seventy six public schools are open. Public transportation is at fifty percent of pre-Katrina capacity. (http://uspolitics.about.com/od/katrina/l/bl_katrina_stats.htm)

Last year there were three full-time therapists in New Orleans. Now there are twenty two. For a traumatized population of 600,000 people.

Are the people of New Orleans our neighbors?

Three.

Here’s one closer to home, one the UUSC is not involved in but that we here should be.

If you own an older home, have you read your property deed lately? Allow me to read some samples:

"The parties… agree each with the others that no part of the lands owned by them shall ever be used or occupied by or sold, conveyed, leased, rented or given to Negroes or any person of Negro blood."

"No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race…"

"No property or building shall be owned or occupied by the colored race, except such buildings as may be constructed by the owners and residents of the property, for the use of their servants."

"No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property, or any building thereon, except domestic servant or servants may be actually and in good faith employed by white occupants of said premises."

"No person of other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or lot except as servants domesticated with any owner or tenant."

"A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood."
(Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/restrictive-covenant?cat=biz-fin)

Fortunately, sisters and brothers, thanks to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, all the words I just read are now illegal. Unfortunately, we still live in the shadow of those words. Yes, those were the bad old days, but. . .

Barak Obama, in his recent speech on race, wisely quoted William Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”

Who are our neighbors? Who are NOT our neighbors? And why?

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

"Rabbi, the one who had mercy on him."

"Go and do likewise."

The Talmud tells of a gentile who approached the rabbi Hillel, who lived a generation before Jesus, and said: "Convert me but teach me the entire Torah as I stand on one foot." Hillel said, "That which you hate, don't do to others. That is the entire Torah. The rest is only commentary. Go and learn it!”

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee helps us learn that lesson.

Martha Sharp and her husband the Reverend Waitstill Sharp helped found the Unitarian Service Committee during the Second World War. On their first trip to Europe they beat the Nazis to Prague, Czechoslovakia by one month, where they helped Europe’s growing refugee population. For that, they got on the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List.

Undeterred by that distinction, they went to occupied France, where they helped hundreds of people escape. Martha Sharp was particularly adept at distracting Nazi attention as people crossed borders with falsified documents. Reverend and Mrs. Sharp are two of only three US citizens to be designated “Righteous Among Nations” for saving human beings from the Nazi Holocaust.

Who were the neighbors of Reverend and Mrs. Sharp?
Apparently they had to go to Nazi-occupied Europe to find their neighbors.
It is a proud tradition.

Who are our neighbors?

Service and community. As many of you know the flaming chalice, symbol of Unitarian Universalism, originated as a symbol used by the Unitarian Service Committee. The original chalice was drawn by an Austrian refugee, Hans Deutsch, a man in mortal danger for drawing un-flattering cartoons of Adolf Hitler.

It is a noble tradition. On this Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Sunday, we honor that tradition. And we dedicate ourselves to that tradition.

Sisters and Brothers, we live in a world in which the population of Darfur is being exterminated.

We live in a nation in which the city of New Orleans has lost eighty percent of its African-American population (http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2006/01/26/study_new_orleans_could_lose_80_percent_of_black_population/).

We live in a community which is ninety percent Euro-American (http://www.muninetguide.com/states/missouri/municipality/Kirkwood.php).

We live in a nation in which one in ten people live in poverty. We live in a nation in which one in seven people have no health insurance.

We live in a world in which seventy-one per cent of women live in poverty, half of those on less than two dollars a day.

Who are our neighbors?
Who are our sisters and brothers?

One last trolley problem. Say you’re driving down the road. You’ve just bought a new car with white leather seats. And there, by the side of the road, is a girl who has wrecked her bicycle. She will bleed on your brand new seats. Will you spend the money to have them cleaned in order to take the girl to the hospital and save her life?

Let’s say a girl is dying in Darfur. Or New Orleans. You will never see her but you know that a check to UUSC will save her life. Do you write the check?

What would we have done to us?
How do we wish to be treated?
With privilege comes responsibility.

Join UUSC.
Roll up your sleeves.
Help your neighbor.
Expand your neighborhood until it includes everyone.

So may it be.

Sources

www.savedarfur.org
www.uusc.org
Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.

Sermons

2008-04-05T08:56:00.001-07:00