Called From Darkness

I was reading a devotional by Philip Gulley this morning. (He's a Quaker author from the Midwest, who has written a delightful series of novels, as well as non-fiction.) He spoke about the verse in Isaiah 9:2. In The Message this reads "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. For those who lived in a land of deep shadows - light! Sunbursts of light!"

Now as I've said many times, one of my pet peeves is equating darkness with evil and light with goodness, since all life begins in darkness. However, he referred to this passage as one that calls us to a journey, which gave me a different perspective.

Yes, growth begins in the dark. We must have dark to have life. But (with the notable exceptions of the fungi, and such) we also need light. Without light, we do not grow very far. Like so many truths, this is not an either/or, but a both/and. We need both. And that is what we must remember. We need both. Dark is not bad. It's only a necessary condition for growth. The Solstice represents both - the change from light to dark, or from dark to light. So will our lives be.

My most recent own personal solstice was when my best friend died of cancer. The event threw my life into chaos, so I didn't really know how to put it back together again. Then I moved to Klamath Falls, which has been my cocoon. Out of that cocoon and darkness, has been born a new person, with new hopes and dreams - a part of myself which would not have seen the light of day without the darkness in which it was born.

So let us not be afraid of the dark, but learn to welcome it, and look to see what new life it seeks to raise in us. And let us also welcome the light, which completes the growth begun in the dark.

Magi and Shepherds

I am finding myself strangely moved by the Christmas story this year. Perhaps because I am participating in the Advent part of the worship service at church, I feel especially close to the story. I’ve been thinking a lot about what the various actors in the drama represent. Today is the Sunday of the Magi, so I’ll talk about them briefly.

The Magi have always struck me as the most likely to be true part of the Christmas story. Their whole depiction seems to be to be that of astrologers described by those who don’t have a clue how astrology really works. I have no basis for this belief – I’ve never heard anyone else say it, but I like the thought anyway.

Of course in Matthew’s gospel, the Magi represent us, the non-Jews. Because we call them kings, they represent gifts from those in authority to someone they would have considered an equal, or as Matthew pictures them someone they consider more than an equal.

The story also seems to me to indicate that these men from a differing religious tradition understand what is happening when the Jews do not. They and the shepherds both indict the rulers and even the everyday respectable folks who never noticed a thing, or were actively hostile. I like the Magi. They add majesty and mystery to the story. I like the shepherds too, the slightly less than respectable receivers of the angels’ song, who were so eager to go see the reality of the message of they had received.

True or not – likely not, alas – they add a wonderful dimension to the story. Jesus came into the world in an unusual way, welcomed by unusual folks. Everyone would have been welcome, but only the foreigners and the blue-collar workers came. May I now, in the present, have open eyes and an open heart to welcome this child who is the basis of my Christian tradition.

Judgment or Love?

In one of the BBC's thoughts for the day this week, the Rev. Joel Edwards stated, "justice is the bedrock of the Christian faith." He wasn't talking about distributive justice - the justice that makes sure that the powerless are treated fairly by those in power. He was talking in the context of a courtroom setting, what is sometimes called retributive justice.

My first thought was that he was wrong - love is the bedrock of the Christian faith. Yet as I thought about the program afterwards, I realized that all too often he is right. For many Christians justice in the form of judgment is the bedrock of their faith. This, of course, is what Pelagius pointed out as the danger in the doctrine of original sin that his contemporary Augustine was postulating towards the end of the fourth century. It seems to me that for many Christians, the whole idea of their faith is for them to do well enough in the Final Judgment to get into heaven, rather than being chucked into hell. This is also, the whole point of the Left Behind series.

I find myself in Pelagius' camp. I think the doctrine of original sin - the doctrine that leads to judgment being the bedrock of the Christian faith - has not served us well. I prefer the Celtic Christianity before the Synod of Whitby forced Roman Catholicism on the Irish. Their belief was that we are all attached to the divine and no matter what we do, we can never totally eradicate that spark.

For me, the bedrock of the Christian faith is love - the love of God as taught by Jesus. When asked what the greatest of the commandments was, he answered, and I'm paraphrasing, love God, love others. Indeed, we are even to love our enemies, that is, see them as fellow human beings and children of God, and treat them accordingly.

Christmas Cookies

I’ve spent the last two days finishing my Christmas baking (well, almost!) and getting cookies ready for the neighbors. I live in an over 55 mobile park, and most of the residents are widows and so don’t do much baking. Getting Christmas cookies gives them something not only to enjoy, but to share with others who stop by for the holidays.

This has been a tradition for me ever since I lived here (this is my 6^th Christmas). I have learned to enjoy baking, and love sharing my goodies with others. Since I have little money, this is a good way for me to give.

This cookie giveaway has come to mean a lot to me. For the first time in years, I live in something approaching the neighborhood where I grew up, where everybody knows everybody else, and we all help each other. It’s a very special place for me, and I enjoy having the chance to give back. It’s the one time of the year when generosity comes naturally to me.

I’ve also crocheted about 30 tiny little hat ornaments to pass out to friends along with their Christmas cards. What fun!

This is part of my spirituality – the giving of simple gifts to friends and neighbors. I’m grateful for Christmas time when that becomes a priority.

Handel's Messiah

Oh, wow! I just got back from a live performance of the first part of Handel's Messiah. What could be more inspiring than that great piece of music at any time of year, but particularly in December with the first real snow on the ground?

For my little city of Klamath Falls, it was an amazing production. A couple of the soloists could be called impressive, and the chorus had obviously practiced for hours. They were wonderful.

But the real star of it of course is Handel's magnificent music that lifts you up to the skies. From the opening "Comfort ye my people" until the final piece of the first part, "His yoke is easy…" it was splendid. And of courses they added the Hallelujah chorus on the end.

Some things hit me in a new way this year. The singing about leveling mountains and lifting up valleys so the way is flat - I'm asking myself if that is really a good thing. My life at least seems more defined by the highs and lows. Do I really want it all evened out? I would miss those mountain top experiences.

And of course, it covers one of my pet peeves at the moment - the equating of darkness with badness or evil. Like we need both highs and lows, we need both darkness and light. To be forced to live in constant darkness would be bad; to be forced to live in constant light would be too. Growth begins in the dark, continues in the light, and eventually returns to the dark.

But all in all, it was a glorious evening, and I am so glad I went.

Sing Hallelujah

Sing Hallelujah was a nationwide project in England on December 5, the 250th anniversary of Handel's death. People all over Britain joined together to sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. The Rev. Rob Marshall, an Anglican priest talked about it for the BBC's Thought for the Day on that day.

What struck me during his little talk, was that he called group singing the great equalizer. When people sing, class, race, and gender melt away for a moment. I got to thinking about the idea, and remembered Reginald Owen's Christmas Carol that I watched a few days ago. In it, after Scrooge is redeemed, he goes to church. There he, his nephew Fred, Fred's fiancée, Bob Crachet, and his son Tim are all singing the hymn together. Three levels of society at that time, all joining in together equally.

I thought of the singing of the National Anthem before athletic events. Do people get to sing that anymore, or it is always someone professional? I can remember doing it at baseball games when I was a child.

There is that scene in Casablanca, where the woman whose name I can't remember begins "La Marseillaise" and how it affects the different people in the café - the French singing it proudly, the Germans looking irritated. From about the same time is a scene from Sound of Music where Captain von Trapp sings "Edelweiss" and invites the audience to join in, with the German occupiers sitting right there. It's a powerful scene.

And who could forget the singing that was so much a part of the Civil Rights movement? Singing is an equalizer. It is also a powerful way to invoke deep emotions. As I join my voice with others the carols of this season, I am going to be remembering the power of song.

Mythology

I've been thinking about mythology and how it defines a race - or at least the group that believes in it. I'm not an expert in any wide-ranging sense, but want to touch on a few of the ones I do know.

At the beginning of written history, we have the Babylonian myth of the sky god Marduk defeating the earth goddess Tiamat. This myth was retold through many cultures of that time and has a great influence on people's thought in so many ways: the victory of the sky gods, the fact that divine help comes from the outside and wears a male face, the belief that victory comes through force, and so on. We see a version of the myth, changed by the lens of a different culture in the Bible's Garden of Eden story - though the story itself has a different focus. Walter Wink in The Powers That Be argues that this Babylonian myth underlies our whole American frame of thought today, with our heroes being those who overcome the bad guys by force - like Superman.

Moving forward in time we have the story of the Exodus from Egypt - a slave people freed because their god defeated the Egyptian gods. Though modern archeology throws doubt on the historicity of the story, it underlies and indeed underpins Jewish identity. Being God's chosen people through the promise made to Abraham, and the rescue from Egypt defines a people.

Moving farther forward, we have the Christmas story. Though Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan point out in The First Christmas that this was fashioned to be a Christian version of the myths created around the birth of Caesar Augustus, it has a profound meaning for Christians, many (most?) of whom believe it is a factual story. The idea of the sky god becoming human to save his people, because they are incapable of saving themselves, is the Christian version of the Exodus story. The belief that the founder of the tradition was God himself is incredibly powerful, and has led to both the best and worst in Christian history.

There are so many more - the Roman belief that their empire was founded by a man raised by a wolf, the Greeks praising Odysseus, who won over others by cleverness, the trickster myths of Native American cultures, our American myth of manifest destiny and the rugged individualist - we all have our myths to look back on and we respond to the culture they have created - whether that's absorbing it without thought, or rejecting it.

I think our part as mature adults is to recognize our myths and understand the attitudes they have taught us, so that we can intelligibly accept the parts that are helpful and reject those parts that are not.

It's good to have wonder at Christmas time - people have been celebrating Yule for longer than anyone can count - but not to let our own mythology blind us to the wider world. Let's take the good parts of our stories. For me that means that Jesus reached out to all in need, that he teaches us to live with compassion, to search for truth, to respect even our enemies as human beings, to live without fear, and not to make ourselves insular. Let us once again remember that facts and truth are not synonymous and look past the particular stories to the meaning beneath.

Let's keep the wonder of this time of year and lose the pettiness and greed and selfishness and parochialism. Let's move past our tribal identities and into a wider world of the acceptance that we are all brothers and sisters, each with our unique stories and traditions, but family underneath it all.

Blessed are the conservative in Bible translation

Wow, I'm amazed. A friend pointed me to Blessed are the conservative in Bible translation, an article on MSNBC.com. Christian Conservatives feel all the versions of the Bible have been co-opted by Liberals. So they are going to do their own translation. And since they believe all Bible scholars are notoriously liberal, they are going to do a wiki project, with everyone (except scholars and other liberals, I guess) saying what they think a passage means. The driving force behind this is Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com.

One of the things Schlafly complains about is that modern translators translate the word anthropos as person instead of man. Of course person or human being is actually more accurate. Greek has a word for man as opposed to woman. It is andros (root, aner). Anthropos refers to the human race.

I find this both a little scary and a lot sad, and I wonder what it's like to live so far to the right that everything else looks left. We all have our biases, of course. When I read virtually any translation f the Bible, I see the hand of orthodoxy choosing the safe English word, rather than anything more controversial.

Speaking of orthodoxy, I don't suppose most conservatives have any idea why certain things are considered orthodox and others not. I'm sure they are unaware that for its first three centuries Christianity was in a fluid state. People had widely differing views of what it was, and which books and letters were canonical. And how the church leadership should be organized. If Constantine hadn't needed the Roman bishops on his side, a different kind of Christianity might have been declared orthodox, and today we might be condemning those who declare Jesus to be God, for example.

This reminds me of people who declare that the media have a liberal bias. They don't seem to realize that the media express the view of the owners, who are more than likely to be rich white men with a vested interest in keeping the world safe for their kind. Similarly, the doctrines that won out in Christianity had less to do with true theology and more to do with establishing the church's authority and power.

I guess what bothers me most is that those behind the scenes with a very particular agenda are manipulating regular folks. I'm sure this is as true on the left as it is on the right, but right now it is so easy to see that many on the conservative side are frightened. They're convinced their way of life is being attacked, and are in a circle-the-wagons mode. I sympathize with them as much as I blame the behind the scenes people who are manipulating those fears. Too bad we can't all step out from our strongholds and really listen to each other. Then we might be able to lose our paranoia and things like this wiki conservative Bible might never even come up.

Dear John...

There was a short article in the December 1 Christian Century by William H. Willimon called "Dear John," which is a fictitious rejection letter for the Gospel of John. Unfortunately, it's not available on the Web, so I can't point anyone to it. It is tongue-in-cheek, and quite amusing. When I read it, I thought if I wrote this, it would have a very different flavor. So here's mine.

To: John

From: Karen Oberst, editor

Re: Your submission

Although are not rejecting your gospel out of hand, we feel there needs to be some work done before we include it in our larger anthology tentatively entitled The New Testament.

First, before we can consider adding your gospel beside the gospels already written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we need you to add at or near the beginning, a statement that this is not written by someone who actually witnessed the events, but is instead the views held by the leadership of the church in and around Rome now at the turn of the century. We think it will be confusing for people if they were to assume what you have written was actually said by Jesus, instead of words put in his mouth by the church hierarchy.

We like some of your stories, such as the Woman at the Well, and Blind Bartimaeus, but please remove the story of Nicodemus in the third chapter. We feel this could cause untold trouble down the road, with the statement "born from above." (We believe our publication will be in print for many years.)

Please do also indicate that you are not presenting Jesus' life and ministry in anything like chronological order. Readers could be confused by the fact that you put the cleansing of the temple so early in his ministry, for example.

Lastly, while we will allow it to remain in, we do feel that taking the word logos, which has been used to refer to Wisdom, the female part of God, and instead using it to refer to Jesus is rude, but does fit in with the patriarchal views currently held by the Roman church hierarchy.

Likewise, all the places you have Jesus referring to himself in divine terms, we do understand are currently the views of the church in Rome. We feel you are muddying the waters by inserting those comments, but as it is beginning to look likely that the Roman version of Christianity will prevail over all the other types, I don't see how we can insist you remove them, though we would like to go on record as believing it would be best.

We look forward to receiving your corrected manuscript at your earliest convenience.

Adults in the Faith?

Infantilizing Christianity - I hate it. I heard it again recently. "Picture yourself riding on God's shoulders. Picture yourself cradling in Jesus' arms" - since when did remaining babies in faith become something to celebrate?

Okay, I know - sometimes we need that comfort. When we are sick, when we face some terrible trouble for ourselves or our loved ones, when tragedy strikes, yes, we need comfort. But in the normal run of daily life, is it healthy to think of ourselves as babies who never grow up?

I've read Matthew 18:3 too: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children (the Greek often means infants), ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." (KJV). Let me say a couple of things about this passage. First, we may need to become little children to enter the Kingdom, but the verse says nothing about remaining infants. Secondly, I like the way the Buddhists put it better - we need a beginner's mind. It refers to coming to something new with no preconceived notions, being open to what this new thing might teach us. As is often quoted: In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Think like a parent for a moment. Babies are loved and held, and tiny children ride on Dad's shoulders, but would any parent, no matter how much he or she loves the little one, wish it to remain tiny and dependent forever? Don't we rather rejoice with each new accomplishment? Isn't a parent's wish for their child to grow into a fully functioning, happy adult?

One of the rites of passage of my childhood was getting a beautiful blue Schwinn two-wheeler when I was six years old. For a time it had training wheels, then they came off, and my Dad ran beside me as I tried out the new big kid bike. I had no fear, because I knew he was hanging on. And so he did at first. But after a few minutes I looked back, and he was standing at the side of the road, proudly watching as I rode the bike all by myself. Would he have been as proud of me if I instead had clung to him, not wanting to move up to this new experience; not wanting to grow? I don't think so.

Another rite of passage was when I was too big to be carried inside from the car. This was a sad thing at the time, but who would expect a teenager, or mature adult to be carried by a parent?

Do we think God is different? Do we honor God by clinging to God's robe or whining to be picked up and held? Don't we rather make God proud of us by growing and learning - by becoming adult in our faith?

I spent much of the early part of this year going, "I am not a sheep." This is a similar image - we as sheep needing to be taken care of by the shepherd, being led and protected. Again, there are times when we need this, but the trouble with this image for me is that a sheep can never move on - never be more than a sheep. No matter how old a sheep gets, it still needs to be taken care of by the shepherd. I think we need to move beyond that image to that of the eagle flying free. So I declared over and over "I am not a sheep!" And then one day I found myself looking back at the sheepfold from the outside, with the shepherd leaning over the gate, smiling encouragement for me to go on. I was paralyzed - not a sheep, not yet an eagle - but then, ahead of me, I saw mountain peaks labeled with all the amazing things I could become, and I started forward joyfully, leaving the sheepfold behind. Am I an eagle now? I like to think I am earning my wings.

In my Quaker tradition, we used to have what were called "weighty Friends," that is, those folks who had experience walking with God, and could serve as mentors to the younger members of the meeting. Their wisdom was sought and appreciated. I'm not saying anyone ever arrives, or has no more to learn, but shouldn't we be striving to grow into adults in our faith?

Rather than being carried, I like the image of walking beside God, or even having God as a cheerleader as I move on in my journey to become my true self and to share myself with others. I think it's time to lose these unhelpful images and grow up. Shall we agree to become adults?

My Hymn

I'm reading Poetry as Spiritual Practice by Robert McDowell. In it he challenges us to write a hymn of our own in our own tradition, that expresses how we feel about the divine. This is my first stab at such a thing.

My Hymn

God, I see you in the majestic mountains

I see you in the roaring, restless sea

I see you in the incredible beauty of a sunset

I see you in the wildness of the eagle's flight.

God, I see you in the faces of friends

In the innocence of children

In those sharing the pews with me

In voices raised in hymns of praise.

God I see you in the tall sunflowers

In the simple daisies

In the perfumed rose

In the crowd of foxglove.

God I see you in your care of me

In the words of authors I read

In the moving images of poetry

In the words you inspire me to write.

God I hear you in symphonies

In the song of birds

In Christmas Carols

In children's laughter.

God you are very near my heart:

In Advent, waiting for Christ to come

In the rest after a busy week

In the kindnesses of friends

In the creation of things with my own hands.

God I want to see with your eyes:

The sadness of things happening in the world

The horror of incessant warfare

The hunger of children around the world

The needs in my own community.

My God, help me to see

Help me to hear

May I become your hands and feet

To this needy world.

Christmas Thoughts

This is an interesting year for me. It was only last year that I finally admitted to myself that the Christmas story as recorded in the New Testament is a myth. I love the story of the birth in the stable, the choir of angels, the curious shepherds, and the Magi from the East. It was a real wrench for me to let it go. Consequently, it was a hard season for me.

However, this year is different. I've gotten over the idea that a story has to be factual to be true or important, and now I can celebrate the stories of Christmas again, without having to believe they actually happened. I should have remembered from the start that a myth can be a powerful story that teaches us about ourselves and our world - in this case, my spiritual world.

This year I can celebrate the underlying messages - the submission of Mary to God's will, the willingness of Joseph to believe, the angels appearing to slightly disreputable folks who act on their message - even as the ordinary respectable people saw and heard nothing - and the coming of those outside Judaism to see the new child. These are archetypes of not only different kinds of people and their reactions to the story of the Christ child, but part of myself as I relate in different times and different places to this myth of the beginnings of my tradition.

So put up that tree, hang those lights, and put the crèche in pride of place. I'm ready to celebrate Christmas!

The Case for God by Karen Armstrong

I recently finished The Case for God. It's an interesting book and well worth reading. However, there were places where I disagreed with Karen Armstrong. Maybe disagree is too strong a word. I believe she skimmed over some things - made them more simplistic than the complicated events going on.

I particularly noticed this in her description of the fourth century, since I've done research on that time myself. She talks about the big controversy of the time which we now call the Arian Controversy, which was a debate between two groups of Christians, with Arius on one side saying that Jesus was a created being, and therefore not equal to the Father, and Athanasius' group on the other, claiming Jesus was equal with God. To put it simply, the controversy was whether or not Christ was God in the same way God the Father is God, or whether or not Jesus was divine.

This may seem odd to modern ears, where many people would consider the belief that Jesus is God to be a litmus test of a person's Christianity. But the fact is, for the first three centuries, you did not need to believe this to consider yourself a Christian. In fact, it is likely the earliest followers of Christ - and Christ himself - would have been appalled to have it suggested to them that Jesus was God. For the Jewish Christians, Jesus was a prophet.

The Council of Nicaea was called in 325 CE to consider this very question. Constantine had recently declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire. I'll save the long explanation for another time, but basically, the two empire-wide institutions operating at this time were the church and the army, and the army was getting pretty fractured. So Constantine turned to the church to hold the empire together. But in order for it to do as he required, the church needed to be a single system with a single belief. So he called the Council to hash out the biggest controversy splitting the church at that time.

Anderson says about this: "Unfortunately, Constantine, who had no understanding of the issues, decided to intervene... Athanasius managed to impose his views on the other delegates, and the council issued a statement that Christ the Word had not been created, but had been begotten..."

Now I wouldn't say it quite like this. Constantine had as his advisors those bishops who were around Rome. The belief in the divinity of Christ was fairly well split geographically, with the European Christians believing in his divinity, and those in Asia Minor and north Africa not. So Constantine made sure the Council went the way of the Roman bishops, as those were the ones he needed to have on his side. I think he didn't care about the theological implications of either view, but he understood the issue all right - at least as far as it affected him and the empire he was trying to strengthen. I hope to write later about the tragedy of Constantine on the Christian Church, but that's enough for here.

On the plus side, Armstrong confirmed for me what I had long suspected, but had not been able to verify, that the Trinity was a Greek invention. I knew it had to be, but had not tracked down the source, probably because my researches pretty much end with the Council in 325. A generation later, Basil of Caesarea (the brother of Gregory of Nyssa) postulated it, and it entered into church doctrine. A century after that, Augustine of Hippo gave us the doctrine of original sin, a doctrine which nicely increases the power of the church - if you are a sinner by nature and can only be saved by the church, they have a distinct power over you.

I wonder what church history would be like if the fourth century had never happened? What could we have avoided?

What Price Respect?

A friend forwarded an anti-Obama video to me today, wondering what we can do to combat such, well, crap. It is filled with news clips taken out of context, which make the president seem to be saying things which he was not. If you want to view it for yourself, you can do so by following this link.

What makes me the saddest is that some people are so threatened by a man who shows respect for another religion. They have no idea that the people involved in terrorism are an extreme arm of Islam, and don't represent the majority of Muslims. What I see are Christian fundamentalists - who believe all Christians are like them - saying that all Muslims are terrorists, when it is only the fundamentalist wing of Islam.

These are people who not only see the present in a narrow-minded way, but who also have no sense of history. They conveniently forget the Crusades when Christians were the terrorists against Islam, as well as all the other times Christians have been the aggressors, such as how we treated the Native Americans, or immigrant groups, or funded corrupt political groups in Central and South America or ... I could go on to create quite a long list.

Just this morning the Thought for the Day from the BBC was a Muslim woman saying that respect costs nothing. When I was listening, I thought "You're wrong. Show respect and people label you a wuss." Then I got the video. It seems respect will label you as un-American, and someone who condones terrorism.

What really bothers me is that people who want to get Mr. Obama out of office would resort to these scare tactics to frighten ordinary people into believing something untrue. And it frightens me how easy it is to lead ordinary people into this mob mentality by resorting to lies and fear. I know it's how the world is, but it shouldn't be! May we all remember to listen, and to explore the complexities of questions before coming down on the side that speaks to our prejudice. May we all learn respect for others who believe differently than we do.

To Whom, About Whom Do We Sing?

We have a new song leader at church. He just sings choruses, which is something I've come to expect now in meeting for worship. The songs we sang today, however, really got to me.

They were all filled with sky god imagery, the paternalistic god out there, looking down on us poor human beings, while we call out to be taken care of. We need to be taken care of because we are totally incapable of taking care of ourselves. So the all-father in the sky brings us his light and delivers us. And Jesus is come as savior of the world.

So there are several parts of this that annoy me. First is the statement that God is "out there" somewhere, rather inside of us. The assumption that God is someone we have to call on in order to get his/her attention. Quakers say that we seek to speak to that of God in everyone, but these songs seemed to forget that the divine is part of our very being.

Second is that the songs so exclusively see God as male. At the last election, Sojourners had a bumper sticker that said God is not a Republican, nor a Democrat. Well, let me rephrase that: God/Goddess is not a male, nor a female. Or perhaps God/Goddess is both male and female. I get so very tired of the paternalistic speech I hear all the time in church, and not only in the songs.

Three is the exclusionary tone of the songs. Yes, as Christ Followers, we find great meaning in Jesus, in his life and death. But you can't listen long to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others telling how meaningful their traditions are to them before you realize there are many ways to God. I get tired of Christians assuming we have the only truth or a universal truth.

Fourth is the emphasis on light. Yes, light is important, and this time of year has traditionally (for thousands of years) been the time when people would gather to encourage the light to return, for the longer days that herald spring to come again. But we seem to forget that God is also the God of darkness. All life begins in the dark, whether that is a child in the womb, or a seed in the ground or a caterpillar in a cocoon. We need both light and dark to survive. If you stop to think about it, having no darkness ever would be terrible.

And fifth and last is one of the real bees in my bonnet, seeing ourselves as helpless people who need to be taken care of. I'll likely write about this again and again, so let me just say here that God can't be pleased with us wanting to stay dependent. I call it the infantilization of Christianity.

I expect better of Quakers.

Spirituality and Religion

I have friends who equate spirituality with Christianity. I have other friends who would equate spirituality with anything but Christianity. What's the difference between spirituality and religion? I wish I could remember who said this, because it's exactly right: spirituality is something we all have inside us. The various religions are our ways of working out our spirituality.

What is helpful for me is the analogy of a wheel. The various religions and other belief systems are the outside of the wheel - seeming very far from each other. But as you follow the spokes down, they get closer and closer together, until they meet at the axle. So it is with us, I believe. The deeper we go into the heart of our various traditions, the closer we come to the divine and to each other. I have more in common with a deep-thinking, deep-feeling Buddhist, than I have with one who holds shallow beliefs in the doctrines of Christianity - particularly one who is exclusionary in belief, and seeks to keep or even strengthen the walls between Christianity and other religions. Nor do I feel any commonality for anyone who follows a sky-god, paternalistic, judgmental religion, whether that's Christian, Muslim, or anything else.

Recently Karen Armstrong developed the Charter for Compassion, which states "The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect." Her belief is that the Golden Rule: do unto others as you want others to do to you, or as she says it: Don't do to others what you don't want done to yourself is at the heart of all religions, and is something we can all agree on and aspire to. I urge readers of this blog to sign this charter, and seek to live out its principles. The Charter can be found at: http://charterforcompassion.org/.

T-Shirt Death Prayer

I don't intend this blog to be political, but couldn't let this pass.

My friend Shari pointed me to an interview with young Frank Shaeffer about T-shirts being sold that say Pray for Obama (Ps. 109:8). Now in the King James Version, this is rude, but not intimidating. It says, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." Said this way, it could simply refer to someone's term ending, although the next verse is "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." Of course those who are of a conservative bent see this as nothing more serious than the Countdown Clocks which were sold when Bush was in office.

But let me give this verse in The Message, which cuts through the old language and says what the verse actually means in English: "Give him a short life. Give his job to somebody else." Give him a short life. Moves it out of the category of rude and into menacing.

There's a lot being said one way and another about this. It certainly is more threatening than a simple countdown clock until someone's term is over. What worries me is that someone who is more unbalanced or more filled with hate will take this as a call to action.

I also realize that those of us of a more liberal bent politically can condemn this 'til the cows come home and it means nothing. It simply becomes liberal against conservative - or that's the way conservatives see it according to many of the comments I've read on the Web. What we need are conservative Christians - the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists stepping forward and calling this the hate speech that it is.

The other thing that troubles me about this is that it is just another way that Christians turn to the Bible to find hateful things to say. Even if you consider Obama an enemy, what happened to Jesus' command to love our enemies? Why are we being more swayed by conservative talk show hosts and news networks than the words of Christ? If we call ourselves by his name, shouldn't we be following his teachings?

The Purpose of this Blog

I want this blog to be a place where not only can I chronicle my own spiritual journey, but can dialogue with other seekers that we might learn from each other. So please feel free to send postings to koberst@faith-writer.com. Of course, please comment on anything written here.

There are few rules. The postings will be about spirituality. I welcome any true seekers – and of course those who have found a way that works for them. What I do not welcome is proselytizing or a tone that suggests that all people need to follow the way you have found to work for you. I welcome all faith traditions, and also those who are seeking, but have no particular tradition. Again, I’m looking for honesty, and your own story.

I’m particularly interested in the feminine view of spirituality, but just being male does not automatically disqualify you. :-). So let the dialogue and stories and poetry and whatever begin!