Category: Spirituality

Christmas Reflections 2020

Thus he has given us…his precious and very great promises, so that [we] may become participants of the divine nature.

2 Peter 1:4

The good news of Christmas is that God is with us and is present with liberation and transformation. God desires a relationship with us, coming to us in Christ Jesus. We become participants of the divine nature through the one who is the Participant of the divine nature. The Word (God’s self-expression) became flesh and dwells among us. In creating, God did not fling us away into infinite silence, but became united to creation and speaks into it life and healing. The Word became flesh, became matter, so that God is intimately near: God is “above all, through all, and in all.” (Ephesians 4:6)

God is in creation. God is in our humanity and relationships. God is in all of the situations and circumstances of our lives. God is present to us and for us in the midst of a pandemic. God can be found there. God is in the darkness as well as in the light. God is in the world as it is, not in a world of make-believe. We experience this when we relinquish our lives to God, living from the source of our lives.

In the midst of the pandemic, we may have run to various coping mechanisms for relief from anxiety and stress. We may, for example, have tried binge-watching streaming videos. In this way, we managed a little escape for a while, but binge-watching lasts only so long before we must escape it as well. And then, we must face our anxieties again. The good news is that God is in all things with deliverance for us. God is in a world going through a pandemic. We meet God in the midst of our present situation. By trust in God, we can face our anxieties and find release. “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

Our coping mechanisms serve a purpose until we surrender ourselves to God, which is a daily activity of faith. Our coping mechanisms allow us to carry on with a degree of sanity. They are necessary because of our experience of alienation from God. I think of them as symbolically expressed in the Genesis story of humanity’s fall into sin where God makes for Adam and Eve a covering, something that they had not needed before their break with God. Without God, we need ways to cope in the same way that Adam and Eve needed a covering. It is only as the reality of God’s presence deepens that we are increasingly freed from having to cover over our anxieties. We can start to face them.

Coping mechanisms are both a covering and a bondage. They are habits similar to addictions. They offer no freedom. Our freedom is in facing our anxieties in Christ. This is why we experience prayer as so critical to our lives, prayer understood as the surrender of our lives to God in the midst of present circumstances.

The coronavirus pandemic has been experienced in many different ways. For many it has meant isolation from loved ones, loss of employment, and survival concerns. For some, it has meant death and grief. It may also have meant the acknowledgment of our vulnerability, a deepening of trust, and finding God in the midst of it all. The good news of Christmas is that God is with us. God is near and available with forgiveness, mercy, welcome, peace, healing, and freedom. Therefore, we can turn to God no matter what we are presently facing. With grateful hearts, we celebrate the one named Immanuel, “God with us.”

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Nothing Has Changed For Faith

Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump as president of the United States is a welcome change for many of us. But nothing has changed for faith. We expect a positive change in the rhetoric coming from the White House, the treatment of children arriving at our southern border, and the policies addressing the disparities in our nation. These changes, of course, will be relative to what has gone before and what is envisioned for our future. Many of us will be disappointed by the smallness of these actions. Which is why it is important to recognize that nothing has changed for faith—for faith in God and the actions flowing from faith.

The trusting relinquishment of our lives to God keeps us rooted in and growing in love and reality, whatever may come. Dependence on God for our very being sustains and grows our vision. Our ultimate dependence is not on a particular form of government or political party or president or congress but on God and God’s reign. By faith, all governments and all who govern are critiqued by God’s ways of governing. All actions are seen against the backdrop of God’s reign where the servant is leader, the last first, and the humble exalted. Nothing has changed for faith. God has always been the all in all, whatever the circumstances. When we have been anxious about our circumstances (a pandemic and a president), it has been faith that has kept us and will keep us, whatever we face. By faith, we have found that we can cast our anxieties on God who cares for us, sustains us, and guides us through it all.

Nothing has changed for the changeless center of all things. Faith, hope, and love abide. By faith in God, we see visions and dream dreams. By hope, we stretch out for the realization of those visions and dreams. By the unconditional love of God, we are enabled to act. The love of God poured into our hearts by the Spirit gives us the actions that are true to our humanity made in the image of God and to the visions of the Spirit. This love is merciful and forgiving; it sees beyond ours and others’ faults. It does not judge, nor is it demeaning toward others but rather is manifest in works of healing and deliverance, justice and peace.

By faith, we are clear-eyed about the corruption of humanity, the self-absorbed divisiveness, enmity, greed, and lust, the self-inturned ways of a broken humanity. By faith, therefore, we are not given to magical thinking, no matter how sophisticated and intellectual. We are not into ideologies or rational programs for fixing things. We know that our fundamental problem is spiritual. Jesus’ good news remains the answer: “Repent and have faith, for the reign of God is near.” “Turn to God, who is the source of your life, and surrender your life to God’s reign.”

Nothing has changed for faith. An election has not changed our fundamental problem, nor its solution. We need God. We need to be centered in the One who is the center of all things. Nothing else will solve our divisions. Every division has a wrong center. In God, we live and move and have our being. Trust in God frees us to truly embrace each other.

Nothing has changed for faith. Faith in God continues to look to a future beyond our brief history. It reaches out for the end and goal of history in Christ, who is our true humanity in union with God. In its stretching out, faith works through love with the goal in mind: All things will be made new in “a new heaven and a new earth,” all finding their home with God.

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We Choose Our Bubble

Much has been made of the influence of Fox News and social media for the continued support of Donald Trump by 42% of the electorate. There is little question that if you got someone off a diet of Fox News, it would likely affect their views. But there is a reason why people are drawn to Fox News. And there is a reason why Facebook gives its users the kind of news they seek. People choose the bubble they live in.

A White woman, in an overwhelmingly White suburb of Milwaukee, described herself as a Democrat concerned about climate change and health care who was voting for Biden, until the police killing of George Floyd and the massive protests around the country. Now she is going to vote for Trump and law and order and safety. She has depicted the Black Lives Matter movement as a guise for looting and burning. What is particularly revealing to me is that she started listening to Black conservatives and managed to find a Black commentator who portrays White privilege as a myth. We choose our bubble.

Getting out of our bubble begins when we choose to leave it. That is why Jesus says, “Repent for the Reign of God is near.” We do not have to remain in any bubble. We can enter the freedom of God’s reign. Under God’s rule of love, we begin to be liberated from our racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. We are being delivered from the ways we make an idol of our “blood and kindred,” our security, comfort, pleasure, power, money, etc. We are empowered to turn from these idols to serve the living and true God and to become a people for others.

Conversion from lives centered in ourselves to lives increasingly centered in God is the basis for deep, foundational change. Our fundamental bubble is the self-centered bubble. Spiritual conversion (which is an ongoing experience) is the way out. We come to this experience by grace. It is a gift of God who is our Liberator. Without spiritual conversion, we remain stuck, merely working around the edges of our bubbles or exchanging our bubbles for others, perhaps bigger bubbles, but which have us equally trapped.

In the Spirit, we become open to our true selves and to others. In the Spirit, there is an infinite openness that enables us to see our bubbles for what they are, one bubble among many others—bubbles of our making. In the Spirit, we are brought into the broad expanse of God’s reign of love and mercy. In that openness, we are made able to see others and to listen and receive from them. We experience the call outward and the desire to move out from our inturned selves into the lives of others. This becomes the basis for our seeking to understand and to know more of what others, different from ourselves, experience and contend with. It also allows us to examine our own hearts and our decisions and actions and their effects on the lives of others. For those of us who are White, this openness will have us stop defending ourselves with “I am not a racist” to become antiracists working to change laws and policies and the way our society has been structured by White law-making, practices, and institutions—in other words, by White supremacy.

I pray for a spiritual awakening in our nation—for the foundations upon which we have built our lives to be shaken and that we reach out for our true selves and for true community in the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.” It is in this way that we can begin to truly come out of our bubbles and meet each other and build a life together.

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When Does “Do Not Be Afraid” Help?

Joe Biden quoted Pope John Paul II, who quoted words from Scripture: “Do not be afraid.” I became interested in how many times that phrase is used in the Bible and did a search. I found that it is used 68 times, 76 if the Apocrypha is included. Mostly, this phrase is a word of the Lord spoken through a prophet or in a vision or a dream. These words are also on the lips of Jesus. What is apparent from the occurrences of this phrase is that most often our fear is a fear of others or a fear of an individual with power:

Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him; for there is one greater with us than with him.

2 Chronicles 32:7

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 1:8

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racism pandemic that spans our nation’s history, along with the absence of leadership, we need these words. We need to hear God speak these words to us. We cannot speak them to ourselves. When we mutter them, often over and over again, they are generally our attempt to repress our fear or to deny what is happening around us and to us.

When these words are a word of God to us, they are a call to trust in God, no matter what we face. When it is God who says to us, “Do not be afraid,” we are helped. These words free us for action, for doing God’s will.

Left to ourselves, without trust in God, fear either immobilizes us or has us lashing out. Fear of losing the “traditions of his ancestors” had Paul persecuting the followers of Messiah Jesus. An encounter with the risen Jesus turned his life around. He began to operate from the call of God rather than from his self-made righteousness and anger. He was open to hearing God say to him, “Do not be afraid.”

“One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent.'” (Acts 18:9) Paul was in Corinth, at the time, where a community of Jesus followers was being formed. Paul needed these words of the Lord. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, we learn of his emotional state when he came to Corinth: “I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” Considering what he had already been through, it is not surprising that he came to the city of Corinth in fear and trembling. In Philippi, he had been beaten with rods and imprisoned, and he was driven out of Thessalonica and Beroea. He kept finding himself in, what John Lewis called, “good trouble.” Although it was good trouble (or God trouble), it nevertheless was trouble, and as he approached Corinth, he had every reason to expect conflict. So it was that he came in fear and trembling. That he came despite his fear had to do with the call of God upon his life. As Paul pursued the mission God had given him, he received God’s encouragement to “speak and do not be silent.” God was with him for the work he was to do in that place.

God’s message, “Do not be afraid,” comes to us when we are responding to God’s call, a response that brings liberation and healing to some, but reaction and trouble from others. When we have decided, by the grace of God, to come out of our comfort zones to respond to the needs of others, God says, “Do not be afraid.” When, in response to God’s call, we turn away from racism and prejudice and fear of the other to welcome the refugee, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and those imprisoned, the words, “Do not be afraid,” give us courage.

We cannot separate the message, “Do not be afraid,” from the speaker. Our fear of a virus or of others will not be removed by telling ourselves not to be afraid, but by turning to God and away from xenophobia, racism, and self-absorption, trusting the whole of our lives to God.

It is to those who are actually following him, responding to his call, that Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) To the “little flock” who are losing their lives for Christ’s sake and the gospel, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

We, who are coming to find our true selves in God and beginning to live in love, know that we are to “speak and not be silent.” We are to protest injustice and work to make right what is wrong. In the face of opposition, God speaks a message of encouragement to us. “Do not be afraid” is a word that frees us for the steps God calls us to take in bearing witness to God’s reign of love. In trusting obedience to God, we are freed to do justice, love mercy, and live faithfully.

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“I Can’t Breathe”

“The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’

Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist

George Floyd, a black man, his arms handcuffed behind him, cries out for help with the words, “I can’t breathe,” as a white police officer presses a knee down upon his neck. There are three other officers at the scene. They all hear the cry for help. Bystanders hear and call out for the police officers to help: The man is down and handcuffed; how much more brutality is necessary to demonstrate your power? All of the officers, who are called to “serve and protect,” ignore the pleas. George Floyd dies.

There are many steps before murder: many attitudes, fears, prejudices, demeaning actions, and unjust behaviors. Some talk about a white supremacist police culture, but this kind of police culture flows out of a wider American white supremacist culture.

Often, in the media, white supremacists are depicted as an ideological minority. But white supremacy is an inherent ingredient in the narrative of this nation. The history of the United States is a history of white supremacy in the form of white law-making and actions that created and maintained the institution of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, the present mass incarceration of people of color, voter suppression, and continued support for inequities in education, health care, jobs, wealth, and power—if not supported actively, certainly by white apathy toward these injustices.

White supremacy must not be seen merely as the ideology of a few. Those of us who are white do not need to have a developed supremacist philosophy to have attitudes, tendencies, and views that keep us from truly understanding and addressing the injustices in our society. White sense of entitlement, along with denial of our racism, allows us to ignore the voices and experiences of people of color.

White supremacy involves us in viewing white ways and culture as the norm and standard by which we judge others. This all happens, of course, implicitly and in an unacknowledged manner. But it allows us to form views without listening as if all we need are the “answers” that our biases and fears provide. We simply draw from what we already think. Where and how our thoughts are formed goes unexamined.

Every aspect of racism, whether blatant or subtle, minimizes the humanity of another human being. There is a link between the apathy that ignores injustices and police officers who act with brazen disregard for the life of a fellow human being. The distance between the two is not so very great.

When we realize this, we are approaching the first step of the Twelve Step Program for Addicts (racism being very similar to an addiction). Step one requires us to come out of denial: We admit our racism and powerlessness and that this way of living has become unmanageable. The acknowledgment of unmanageability means we are recognizing the massive scale of the problem: the deep entrenchment of racism. We feel our inadequacy and realize we need power to change. We need spiritual liberation. We need step three: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” We need to be raised up into a higher reality—into the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.” We need to be freed into our true selves that have their source in God.

With the confession of our brokenness and a spiritual turning (repentance) and the grace that brings liberation (steps 1-3), we are released into action. In this spiritual journey, there are further steps that involve a “moral inventory” of our lives. We become involved in inner work, the Spirit helping us to acknowledge the intentions, motivations, and attitudes of our hearts, and the actions that flow from them. We are helped by words of truth that come to us from others and from their experiences. We listen to others, and the Spirit of truth helps us to receive truth.

There are also steps for “making amends,” that is, making right what is wrong. These steps have us moving outward. We become intentional about addressing racism not only in our own lives but in the institutions, laws, and structures of our society. We work for radical change and reform—the reformation of the criminal justice system, the removal of voter suppression laws, and the dismantling of discrimination and inequities of all kinds. We are becoming antiracist. The defensive “I am not a racist” does not work for us anymore. Our focus is outward on understanding the nature and extent of this social disease and equipping ourselves to fight against it.

Formerly, we were not seeking to understand and gain knowledge and wisdom for action—not about racism and white supremacy. But now that we are on a journey of openness and action, we are seeking—and finding. In our seeking, we reach out to others who have a history of being antiracist. We are being liberated into community antiracist action. Together we become agents of change. Or, as Jesus puts it, “salt and light.”

Are you on the journey? If not, this blog post is an invitation.

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Gifts in a Time of Pandemic: The Freedom of Love

Consider two different responses to the pandemic:

  1. A group of people protests in front of a state capital building, some carrying assault weapons providing an image of threat and intimidation. They are protesting the infringement on their “freedom.” Social distancing orders have deeply affected their lives, their freedom of movement, and, for many, their employment. They have framed their losses as bondage.
  2. An elderly man is given a ventilator by people who love him, in a nation where there are not enough ventilators for all who need them. A band of people has found a way to pay for and obtain a ventilator for this man they love. It is a gift to him. He receives it and then gives it away to a young man who also needs a ventilator. He then succumbs to the COVID-19 virus.

Which of these two responses to the pandemic is an expression of freedom? Is freedom found in my ability to do what I want (do my thing) even when it infringes upon the lives of others, disregards their ability to live? Or, is freedom found in the ability to freely give up my life for the life of another?

Freedom is often expressed in terms of our ability to do what we want. But, as theologian Karl Rahner expressed in one of his essays, there are spheres of freedom. When it comes to our freedom of choice, one person’s sphere of choice is larger or smaller than another. Our spheres of freedom impinge on or affect the freedom of others. One person’s sphere of freedom can diminish another’s. Historically, the “privileges” given to white people by racism have limited the choices available to black people (choices regarding schools, vocations, health care, freedom from violence, etc.). The present economic disparities in our nation depict different spheres of freedom to make various choices. Those who are wealthy have many more choices for escaping the effects of the coronavirus than those who are poor.

The only thing that truly begins to address the disparities and injustices is the freedom that is love. Martin Luther King, Jr, understood this with great clarity: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” This is true because love enters into the sphere of the other, even when that may mean diminishing one’s own sphere of choices. The elderly man, in giving up his ventilator, narrowed his choices. Again, Martin Luther King: “Love is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another.”

Love may have us narrowing our choices, but it also may have us expanding them. Love calls people beyond the limitations placed on them by others. It has us pressing forward, expanding our sphere in order to live out our calling in the compassionate use of our gifts in relation to others.

Whether our choices narrow or expand, love freely gives itself. It is the reality that cannot be coerced. We cannot make another person love us and we cannot keep another person from loving us. Even our evil actions against another cannot undo love, for love forgives. (Jesus from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”) Love, compassion, mercy, justice (making right what is wrong), bring true life-giving change and liberation.

The pandemic that we are enduring calls out for compassion and love. The disparities, along with leadership that ignores the poor and props up Wall Street, cry out for radical acts of love. When we see people answering this call, we see them freely giving themselves for the sake of others. Their actions heal and restore, do justice and liberate. We see genuine human freedom in these acts.

Regarding the two responses to the pandemic that I began with, each has a different feel to it. The first feels like the bondage of self-absorption. It does not feel like freedom to show up with weapons to demand that you get your way even at the cost of others’ well-being. The second feels like freedom, the freedom of giving oneself, one’s life, for another.

The opportunities to love are always there. But, in this time of a pandemic and the new situations it has created, it may be that the call to love—to the freedom that is love—is more easily distinguished from other voices. A gift is being offered to us: the call to love. Therefore, paraphrasing Jesus, “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear and obey the call.”

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Gifts in a Time of Pandemic: Darkness

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping

Paul Simon

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

Psalm 139:11-12

God is present in the light and the darkness. In joy and sorrow. In success and failure. In gladness and affliction. God is in the darkness and darkened future of the present pandemic.

This year, I started growing plants for my vegetable garden from seeds. I had the opportunity to observe what many others have known: Seedlings grow faster at night. They capture the energy of the sun during the day and much of their growth happens in darkness. I am considering this as a metaphor for our growth into our true humanity. Growth often happens in the darkness and in the midst of trials.

The psalmist says, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalm 30:5) Our lives include both night and morning, weeping and joy. Both darkness and light are necessary. God is in both.

I recall entering a time of trial and darkness. Because of previous experience, I was desirous of receiving what God had to give me through what I was enduring. When I came out of that period of struggle, I had mixed emotions, wondering if I had received everything from it that was meant for me. (Likely not, but I was grateful for what I did receive.)

Some trials are personal, some communal. We are presently enduring a global pandemic. It is a dark night that we share with others—although not all in the same way. Those who have lost loved ones to the virus experience the darkness acutely. Health workers on the front lines experience the depth of this pandemic in ways that most of us escape. And there are great societal disparities in the way this pandemic is experienced.

There are pandemics in the midst of pandemics. The pandemic of racism has a long history that continues alongside the coronavirus pandemic. The recent shooting death of a young black jogger by two white men (who were not charged until a video surfaced two months later) is a manifestation of this brutal pandemic—as are the historic inequities that are exacerbated by the virus. One pandemic affects the other. Will the darkness of the one help us to enter, in some manner, the darkness of the other? Because of the great unevenness of this virus’ impact, mainline news has had more to say about disparities than we are used to hearing. Will we stay with the hearing and go deeper?

The COVID-19 pandemic may be heightening our awareness—as the darkness often does. If we are open, we may no longer be able to ignore these other pandemics. We may gain hearts that move us to do justice and love mercy. We may find ourselves working to overcome the divisions that we have erected. We may receive an elevated sense of community that calls us to action, as we share with others during this pandemic.

In the darkness of this pandemic, there is great potential for change and growth. In the darkness, we may become more self-aware and engaged in inner work, acknowledging our false attachments, motivations, and attitudes. In the quietness of the night, we may wonder about our purpose. What is our true calling? What is truly essential for our growth as human beings? In the darkness, we become still and wait. We become open and receptive. In the darkness, we let go of trying to secure ourselves and, in letting go, we gain our true humanity made in the image of God.

God is in the darkness as well as in the light. We find God there if we do not attempt to fill the darkness with something foreign to it: binge-watching videos or drowning ourselves in social media or dulling our fears and insecurities with various addictions. And yet, even our addictions may play a part. Their enchainment may bring us to our knees and have us crying out to God for deliverance. When that happens, we have allowed ourselves to enter the darkness to receive its gift: The gift of growth and change and greater awareness of our need and the needs of others and the sharing of ourselves in the building of true community.

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Anxiety and the Coronavirus

It is hard to tell ourselves or others not to worry. Our lives are being upended by a virus. The whole of our society and the global community is in combat mode directed to this invisible attack. Growing numbers are contracting this virus. Health workers do not have all the equipment they need; there is fear that the health system will be overwhelmed. Businesses are shut down, many are out of work, schools are closed, travel is halted, and we are being directed to distance ourselves from one another. And we do not know how long this “new normal” will last. So very much is out of our control. Of course, each of us can take steps to help in this situation, but we are also dependent on the steps others take—including our leaders. Anxiety is a natural and even necessary response. Fear gets us responding to situations that need quick action. It got our attention to the realities of the present crisis so that we would act. And yet anxiety can undo us. Fear can overcome and immobilize us. So, how can we tell ourselves not to worry?

For followers of Jesus and others who are open, that is exactly what Jesus tells us: “Do not worry.” With these words, Jesus calls us from fear to faith and assumes that it is possible to trust rather than be taken over by, and act from, anxiety. With this directive to not worry, Jesus expresses the possibility of our taking steps away from anxiety. Here is the passage: Matthew 6:25-34. Here are the first two verses of that passage:

I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

The reality that makes possible the movement away from anxiety is that God cares for us. When Jesus says to us, “Do not worry,” he is calling us away from the anxiety that would direct our lives, to a trust in God in whom “we live and move and have our being.” He assumes that the empowering Spirit of God will help us to turn from being driven by anxiety, to the care and direction of God.

Jesus also describes the alternative to anxiety: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Make the focus of your life, God’s reign, God’s ways of governing, and God’s will. Anxiety, when it directs what we do (rather than merely telling us to act fast), will have us losing our humanity and purpose. Anxiety tempts us to believe it is all up to us. It will make us feel that everything is urgent all at once, and it will have us getting frantic and acting rash. Trusting in the One who holds our lives together frees us for action—for compassionate, life-giving action.

The movement from anxiety to liberated action happens in the relinquishing of our lives to God and God’s purposes for this time in which we live. God calls each of us with our gifts and ways of serving, for the time we yet have, to love one another. The message, “Do not worry,” is the same as “Trust God.” Our heavenly Father knows what we need, knows what we need right now in this time, and cares for us. We are simply to go after God’s reign and purpose, and trust that God will provide what we need to do what God calls us to do.

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Beauty and Awe

This month of December, my daughter and I, along with her dog, Fiona, drove from Chicago to Anchorage, Alaska, where Elizabeth has been called to pastor a church. At Dawson Creek, in the upper part of British Columbia, we were at mile zero of the Alaskan highway—ahead of us, 1580 miles of mostly snow-packed roads and mountainous terrain of astonishing beauty. We started our days, of increasingly shorter daylight, before sunrise and ended them after sunset. We experienced the beauty of snowy mountains, some of which reached 19,000 feet, in various kinds of light, blue sky, and clouds. We lived in awe of the beauty that surrounded and enveloped us.

God has been referred to as Being itself, Life itself, Love itself. Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth century American pastor and theologian in a time of great awakening, referred to God as Beauty itself. We meet God in the beauty around us and within us, large and small, magnificent and lowly.

Beauty meets us in the grandeur of mountains and the delicacy of a beetle. I meet beauty in my backyard. I encounter it in the chickadee that grabs a sunflower seed at my bird feeder and, unlike the sparrows, does not linger, but flies away to a solitary place to enjoy it. I meet beauty in the sunflowers that the birds plant in my garden and the butterflies that visit them.

Beauty meets us in the human body and the human mind, in form and thought, in sound, sense, and creativity; art, music, and dance. I am taken in by the beauty of Chicago’s cityscape lit up at night and viewed across the water of Lake Michigan, and by the canyons and cliffs of its skyscrapers during the day—and the peregrine falcons that nest there. The city itself is an expression of nature, of human nature and therefore of the divine nature and of Beauty itself. The sin and evil that reside in the city (and in its making) and in the world cannot overcome the beauty. It shines in the darkness.

And God is in it. Beauty itself draws us. The awe we experience is our drawing near. We are invited to come nearer, to enter in and to receive and be changed.

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Where Security Resides

At some point in my early twenties, in college, it occurred to me that I was not simply seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge and truth. I had told myself that that was what I was doing; it was a conscious desire. But I came to admit that there was more going on than simply a search for truth. There was a desire to secure my life with knowledge. There was the feeling that if I just knew enough, I would feel more secure in the world and perhaps feel that things were a little more under my control. I became increasingly aware of this attempt to secure my life, along with the realization that it was not working.

When it came to my relationship with God, in whom there is true security, I found that I was often attempting to think my way to God, a decidedly futile project. I despaired of it and continued a journey of surrendering my life to God.

I am seventy now and am mindful that my efforts to secure myself have never gone away, even as I have found security in God who, in the words of Karl Rahner, is Incomprehensible Mystery. My security is in the Incomprehensible! It is in the Mystery! Since my attempts at securing myself have not disappeared, I have been on a journey of relinquishing my life. My security is found in losing my life, my insecurity in trying to secure my life. (“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” – Jesus)

The struggle remains. And God’s grace remains. God knows where I am in the midst of this struggle, for which I am grateful; I am thankful that God knows me and knows where I am. And God is my deliverer. The journey I am on is a journey of grace.

I share this experience, because I realize I am not alone in this, and I understand the danger of seeking knowledge and information as a way to secure ourselves. This danger is certainly found in the ways that technology can give the illusion of power and security. And the scientific method, while achieving much growth in empirical knowledge (and at the same time multiplying the questions and keeping us immersed in mystery), can, nevertheless, for some, be a means of “pinning things down” in order to gain a sense of security. When technology and science become a way of securing ourselves, our lives narrow to a very mean (as in “small”) self. On the other hand, when science is pursued for the sake of knowledge rather than security, as with all forms of knowing, it opens us up to wonder and mystery—and therefore to spirit. (Read the Journey of the Universe, by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker.)

But an attempt to secure ourselves by our knowledge may reach its most dangerous level in theology. The temptation to have our thoughts about God secure us is great. For many, the fall into this temptation is most obvious in fundamentalist thinking, where, for example, Bible quotes are provided as pat answers to all manner of life’s problems. However, the danger exists for any theological project. We are tempted to think our way to God, rather than reflect from our lived experience of God. The danger is that our theology becomes merely another ideology that keeps hidden the primary idols (false centers) that drive our lives and undermine our relationships. Theology replaces experience rather than reflecting it. Essentially, this is the cause of so many forms of Christianity revealing little or nothing of Christ.

Jesus speaks to this when he prays, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” And when he says, “Let the little children come to me…for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” And “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Therefore: Leave aside all your thoughts, your intelligent and well-formulated answers. Become like an infant, not knowing, open to receive. Be silent. Be still. “Be still and know.” (Psalm 46) Wait. “Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” (Psalm 37) Release your thoughts and yield to Incomprehensible Mystery. Be open to the One you can never wrap your thoughts around. You have put your faith in your thoughts; now trust the Mystery. The One you cannot comprehend will bear you up and secure you. In silence and trust, the eyes of your heart will be opened, so that you become aware of both your great need for God and God’s gracious acceptance. In that awareness, you may find that you are discerning your next steps. Your next steps, as God gives them, are prior to and greater than your reflections. Knowing and doing God’s will are preeminent over any theology.

As a response to God, the steps you take grow your true self. This experience gives rise to reflections so that you are not merely repeating what you heard from others or read in the Bible, but rather you are witnessing from your own lived reality.

Furthermore, you find that you are not bound to any one formulation of reality, but you are free to find new ways to express your experience as you change and grow. You increasingly become open to the many ways God comes to us and the many ways others have expressed this reality. You discover that, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “God is the great iconoclast.”(A Grief Observed) God keeps breaking up our images of God (for new images) lest we make any one image that in which we place our trust, our security being in God alone.

Filed under: Faith, Grace, Prayer, SpiritualityTagged with: , , , , ,