hopeful, more tolerant, and more healing for themselves and for their children.
They need a scrupulous, honest guide to spirituality that respects the traditions but does not regard them as necessarily binding or inviolate in their lives. They want guidance in order to share their spiritual yearnings with others that make some sense against the sectarian chaos and conflict that prevails in this country. They want gentle rituals that flow within nature and that they can actually understand. They don’t want to live in a world of “all good” or “all evil” because they are sophisticated and recognize that life is nuanced. They want sensible answers, and they don’t want to feel guilty because they have questions, such as:
One reason I know organized religion has generally failed is because it is declaring this failure itself by diverting attention from its dogmas via social gatherings, retreats, initial complimentary memberships, free food, religious rock music festivals, and a variety of other improvisations. Despite the efforts and energy invested in these venues churches and synagogues are merging or closing down, clergy are retiring early and not being replaced, and budgets are being slashed. Only the fundamentalists and zealots, the ones who maintain that it’s their way to heaven or you are going to hell, well, only they survive and dig in.
This book is not concerned with the future of churches or temples or synagogues or mosques. This book is concerned with the people out there, decent, hardworking, caring folks who want to be included in a life enriched with spiritual meaning and devoid of judgment. My hope is that they will benefit from an established religious leader telling them why and how they are as much God’s children as anybody else.
The text is not our homeland; life is. God is not to be determined; God is to be discovered—like dawn is a personal experience and the moon is seen in as many ways as there are eyes that can look up.
I have written this book after decades in the pulpit life, in one form or another, and this book is not an argument with tradition. It is an argument for transcendence. My own faith community long ago established that God created the world, but people are creating it. Not Jews—people. We human beings are God’s partners. We invented these religions, not God. The Bible starts out with absolutely no reference to creeds.
The creation story begins in a garden and the name of the first man, Adam, means “humanity.” Then Adam and his mate Eve departed the garden because they had painfully learned wisdom and awareness. Some say they were banished—much too harsh and inconsistent with the kindness of heaven, the tenderness of Jesus, or the best liturgies of any mosque or pagoda. They left because it was time for them to grow and to find a way to balance belief with reality.
This book will present several categories of belief and action that don’t belong to anybody but you. These range from the meaning of creation to the question of how to live with the Bible to what all the faiths absolutely agree upon when it comes to defining a good person. This book is not going to stop the insanity of jihad, the insensitivity of rabbinic cabals, or the extremism of Christian evangelism. It’s not going to prevent Hindus and Muslims from killing each other in India or Muslims from exterminating Coptic Christians in Egypt. This book will not bring peace to the city of Jerusalem.
This book, however, using a philosophy I call “spiritual pragmatism,” will show you how to believe in what you choose to believe and not feel tainted, condemned, or excluded. Spiritual pragmatism means knowing religion works best when it doesn’t tell you what to think, but rather to think. Nobody in the Bible who is considered a heroic figure got that way without thinking, questioning, and even doubting.
Like you and me, these men and women didn’t simply comply. They came to conclusions after life threw them some real challenges. Some days they felt good about God; other days not so much. They didn’t always know what to believe. They relied on their instincts and none of them ever held a prayer book in their hands. They did the best they could, and we acquire insight from their stories exactly because, as we shall see, each and every one of them had flaws, committed offenses, and grappled with family dysfunctions. Jesus wrestled with temptation; Moses had anger-management issues; and Mohammed betrayed a prejudice against the blind. Sarah dreamed of becoming a mother and put up with an insensitive husband. Rebekah was a deceiver, and Mary Magdalene was a seductress possessed by demons.
These people are interesting because they were hardly perfect. We learn the most from them when we realize they were real people—parents, children, spouses, friends, enemies, neighbors, and coworkers—just like you and me. The struggle to make peace with your religion is as old as the Bible and as new as today’s newspaper.
THE HOT BREEZE WAS blowing across the rocky terrain south of Jerusalem, bending the nearby olive trees and sending dust upward toward the purple sky. The farmer knelt carefully over the slight hole he had just dug in the stubborn earth with a wooden spade, a small pail of water set down to his right. His hands were firm and covered with soil, a mixture of sand and gravel and clay that caked on his dark palms and looked pink in the afternoon light.
He thought he heard the wail of a ram’s horn coming from the walled city in the distance but focused instead on the fragile green sapling he had laid down on the ground a few moments before. He was almost prayer-like, keenly aware of the sapling’s vulnerability, its need for moisture and tenderness, its longing to be set into the ground and drink in the rare rain and then, in time, give shade to someone. The man hummed something to himself—a wordless melody that was old and unidentifiable and yet as familiar to him as the wind.
There was nothing else happening in the world for this grizzled farmer, his brownish head protected under a smudged woven cloth keffiyeh, the headdress held tight with a string cord, shielding him from the sun as his long and
