2015.01.11 Let's Start a Post-Fear Era

“Fear has in this moment, a respectability I’ve never seen in my life.” 

Marilynne Robinson said this in an October 5, 2014, NY Times Sunday Magazine, interview conducted by Wyatt Mason. Robinson, 2013 recipient of a National Humanities Medal at the White House, is one of the few contemporary writers who is not afraid to speak out about fear. She is also not afraid to speak out about being religious—a “bent” she seems to have been born with, she says. Even clergy these days are hesitant about their religious "bent" and couch their religious faith in currently acceptable terms of spirituality. 

It’s post-Christmas time. It’s post-Christian, post-modern, post-everything, as far as I can figure out. For me it’s post-menopausal, at the least. What’s ahead? I get tempted to “respect” fear too much when I let it hold me back, when I over-anticipate negative outcomes. What if?—and the like. 

Every Christmas season we engage in our annual ritual of watching the film, “A Christmas Carol,” based on the 1843 novelette by Charles Dickens. We watch the 1984 version with George C. Scott playing the aging Scrooge, frozen in his ways by self-preservative strategies, derived from a cruel and humiliating early history. Fear ran Scrooge's show—fear posing as greed. Scrooge shut out the clamor of the world, amassed as much money as he could, never looked back, or forward, or round about him. 

We sat on the edges of our seats, pulled along by the old familiar story we knew by heart. Or did we? It was like Holy Scripture—everyone’s story in all its naked ugliness, yet without any easy answers or security that it will, in fact, turn out all right, just because some people notice what is holy, good, and, yes, divine. But will they (or we) choose good?  Will Scrooge? Oddly, our hearts were never quite sure until Scrooge ended up on his knees, weeping and full of grace. It was the emotional incredulity that kept, and keeps us every year, watching to make sure fear does not have its way entirely and looking forward to pure rejoicing, once again, at the end.

This year a phrase, or idea, from the script I hadn't noticed before struck me. Call it Scrooge wisdom. It went something like this: remember your past well, in order to live fully aware in your present, for these two combine to influence the yet unknown future you are creating. All three of Scrooge's Spirits are connected. The past, the present, and the future are never completely separable one from another in the human psyche. I call this the healthy internalization of one's personal cycle through time. As in Scrooge's transformation, the impact of all three time "zones" had to be known and integrated before his heart unlocked, defrosted, softened, and turned from fear to love.

Marilynne Robinson writes similarly compelling narratives. Her characters evolve and change, less dramatically than Scrooge, but then Scrooge needed several brickbats. Robinson's assessment of our current cultural condition isn’t too far from Dickens’s, however: that we have become overly fearful, and that our fear has become a respectable excuse for not acting as we should.

My gosh, I can identify with that when I hurry by the many beggars I pass on the city streets in Boston and hastily drop money into their cups or guitar cases. I’m generous, yes, a kind of good thing, yet I confess that I feel fear underneath. I’m not sure exactly of what. The future perhaps? These folks are always courteous and always say thank you, or God bless you, and sometimes have a musical offering. 

Mason asked Robinson: “What do you think people should be talking about more?” She talked then about fear as a default position and connected it, specifically, with faith-fear. Some of her religious students, for instance, come to her because they feel inhibited from speaking about the sacred in life, and they know she is faith-friendly. “How it [fear] has come to keep us at bay from our best selves, the selves that could and should do something”

Robinson is 70 now and has always been unafraid to write openly about internalized religious faith through story. Her characters have “soul voices” struggling to be born as they learn to speak for themselves. They often seek guidance from religious resources, like the Bible, while they are working out the scriptures of their own lives.

Dickens did the same. He was critical of religious hypocrisy and pious practices, so religious faith expressed itself from the inside out. We see Scrooge’s soul go through hell and back. And do we know it’s all a dream? Sort of. Scrooge, like the biblical Saul on the road to Damascus, stands out for his powerhouse, overnight conversion. Robinson’s heroes stand out by a similar process, though more nuanced like the slow awakening that begins for the disciples on the biblical road to Emmaus. 

I'm afraid to be called a crazy religionist, so I take courage from Robinson and Dickens. I share a portion of their fine writerly souls, and delight in the enlightenment that comes to their "fictional" heroes. They help me notice and appreciate the steady stream of transformative moments all around me every day.

Honestly? I take more courage from the solid faith of minor characters, supporting roles, who, though less central, are just as luminous in their steady recognition of the sacred in all life—the medicine for fear-driven living.

2013.09.18 Biblical Headlines?

Sometimes, just to help me avoid over-seriousness or grim piety, I poke fun at my religion. I try to imagine what a headline for some biblical story or teaching might be like using today’s jargon. 

In ancient times there were no newspapers, headlines, reporters, journalists or features.  The news traveled orally by word of mouth. And boy did it travel fast!  Even today news gets around like lightning via i-phones, texts, emails and old fashioned land lines!

Extra! Extra! Hear all about it................

Rabbinical type in Galilee stirs up crowds with ethical sermons. Desperate, authorities debate use of drones. 

Moses sees a bush on fire. Local FD unable to extinguish, affirms it’s eternal flame.

Betrothed virgin (name withheld) found pregnant. Paternity suit fails in juvenile court.  Identified Father did not appear in court. Charged with contempt. Virgin sent away to her cousin’s.

King David betrayed by son Absalom. King does not press charges, writes more psalms instead.

New Jewish sect claims Risen Lord. Evidence suggests the claim might be true despite lack of factual evidence.  Resurrection news reported by women called idle gossip—discredited due to sexism!

God diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Only known cure is a new doctrine called Trinity.

Early Christians proclaim Good News: God is Love strong enough to conquer death. Most  ignore. A few disbelieve for joy.  Some call for persecution.  Still others plant a Church.

Tiny parish in Philippi  under archiepiscopal scrutiny for possible Christological heresy: Jesus could be = to God?

Grammar police arrest St. Paul for overuse of the semicolon. Judge reduces length of sentence.

It’s all myth, mirth, and miracle rolled into one big fat religio-spiritual Mystery! Laugh and love in the name of all that is Holy.
  

2013.05.19 Pentecostal Message

Okay, its time to give the  Holy Spirit, Shekinah, Hokmah, Sophia and other names I do not yet know, her due as the Great Connector.  The nature, Spirit and image of Holiness by any name is far too big for our silly denominationalisms with their accompanying doctrinal theologies. Godde will not fit in boxes and Divinity can not be harnessed—or brokered in any way. 

A friend and professor at Boston College sent the below Rumi poem to his students in the Religion Quest class.  I wrote him back in thanks.

You are a blessing!  And this encouragement for students is so crucial (right word) in the face of Cardinal O'Malley's boycott of the BC commencement because of the speaker,  Irish Prime Minister,  Enda Kenny, whose government agreed to allow abortion to save a woman’s life.

And crucial too in the face of, sadly for now, Pope Francis I's ongoing rigidity about the Vatican party line politik against the openness and gentility Rumi’s poem reflects.  

Who is not all Rumi’s categories in her own one precious soul, so why not live it out, come on out with it?  Well, you know my theory: it's all about the death throes of patriarchy—an organizational system that depends on structured domination.  It’s collapsing. We see many signs, and we see the backlash of fear.

Luckily, doctrine follows practice, so it might just follow practices like the poem advocates. Look East young people, go East for your own soul’s health and grace—and bring the West with you.

 

Whoever you are.

Religious, infidel, heretic or pagan.

Even if you promised a hundred times

And a hundred times broke your promise,

This door is not the door

Of hopelessness and frustration.

This door is open for everybody.

Come, come as you are.

Come again, please come again.

Can We Divorce Spirituality From the Transcendent, Divinity?

I read an interview some weeks ago (New York Times Magazine, September 6, 2010) that shocked me.

The author Deborah Solomon questioned Deepak Chopra the man from India raised a Hindu and turned California guru of alternative wellness. Chopra is the founder of a wellness center in California.

I have read some of his work on meditation as a health practice. I confess I have not studied it, because I was not drawn into his thought save for his insistence on a holistic view of wellness.

I detected, however, a subtle suggestion that we could actually take control of our moments, days, even lives by meditative thought. We could almost MAKE or WILL ourselves well by this practice. Too much me and not enough God.

Where was there room for Divinity, for Spirituality meaning that transcendent mystery some call grace, others coincidence. Where was the Holy? Where was the divine/human relationship? Where human trust, faith, hope?

I suspected idolatry, worship of temporality with the expectation that would be enough.

If meditation became your god then what if a day came when you couldn’t do it?

If self-reliance your god on whom or what would you rely when resources dried up?

If science were your god and it had no cure or you couldn’t afford it, then what would you trust, where turn for healing?

Or...if your work was your god what happened when you couldn’t work or lost your job?

Where would meaning be found at the end of your rope?

I am not against meditation, know of its benefits myself, and often suggest it to people as a way to draw energy back from the distractions of a high speed culture and into the self or soul, a way to focus and center on Divinity, to bring together the transcendent dimension we call Divinity with the immanent dimension we call soul.

I call it contemplative prayer.

At any rate meditation is far from new to religious traditions. Neither btw is spirituality. Chopra seemed to me in this interview to calculate his thoughts in a dichotomous way; that is he offered an either/or mentality I didn’t find congruent with what he claims to represent: wellness.

For example, when queried about the Islam center in NYC and whether Sufism represented the reform branch of Islam, he responded, “Yes, traditional Islam is a mixture of obedience to Allah and if that requires militancy, so be it. Whereas Sufism exalts beauty, intuition, tenderness, affection, nurturing and love, which we associate with feminine qualities.”

Seemingly, male/female and Sufism/Islam do not easily co-exist in Chopra’s analysis.

I think growth toward wholeness, and incidentally wellness, happen when the best of tradition is supplemented rather than supplanted.

Asked if he believed in God’s existence, Chopra responded, “Yes, but not as a dead male.” I would agree if I thought the Christ spirit were dead or male. Mostly I thought it a snide slur.

Chopra defined his practice as “what I can only call a secular spirituality.” Can there be such a thing since secular still means any activity or attitude that has no spiritual or religious basis. Didn’t the idea of spirituality stem from religions’ awareness of Spirit beyond human boundaries but interacting within human process?

Or has it morphed to being just human values, nice cozy things like belonging? And aren’t humanistic values contingent, relative to culture? Perhaps Chopra means spiritual humanism?

Why try so hard to divorce spirituality from religion? Just because religion is unpopular in this age?

Spirituality and religion were also polarized in Chopras’ definitions in response to the question about how he would define spirituality as opposed to religion? “Self-awareness and awareness of other people’s needs.”

Spirituality is by this definition self-centered while religion is centered on other people. Is this another dichotomous solution? Aren’t self and other awareness part of holistic wellness?

Healthy spirituality can not be divorced from the need to be aware of the dignity of all human being and the whole created order. Equally, religion can not be sane if divorced from soul-awareness and nurture. Both/and.

The interviewer pushed on asking what religion he would say he is. “I say God gave humans the truth, and the Devil came and said, ‘Let’s organize it, we’ll call it religion.’ ”

No comment.

OK just one. Do you think meditation classes aren’t organized, that we students don’t know who the teacher/guru is and where s/he belongs in the structure? As long as no power abuses (and I know of such abuse in a meditation group in which the teacher, playing god, took physical advantage of a student’s vulnerability) occur the ordered/organized structure is in place for our wellness, just as in a functional family.

Trellis and roses make a necessary whole.

The interviewer soldiered on commenting that religion was free to worshipers and Chopra’s meditation retreats were costly. He countered with tax free donations to religions and the wealth of the Vatican. He thinks insurance companies should pay for his lifestyle management classes and they would save money.

That is a good idea and I agree we need to see, as Chopra said, “that alternatives medicine is now mainstream.” Another either/or?

I use traditional medicine and all the “alternatives.” Only I call them “complimentary.”

We need to remarry spirituality and religion—the best of both.