of Hinduism, or perhaps even Confucianism or Shintoism, all merely point vaguely and unauthoritatively in the vague direction of whatever it is that we may call God.
So this morning, instead of wondering what was happening within my circle of standing stones on this Sunday morning, I concluded that I am present with these others within this circle of stone precisely because it is the circle of standing stones that I have chosen, not because of what is going on there this morning, or any morning, but because this Christian stuff is indeed my circle of standing stones; and I have chosen it, not consciously or deliberately, but culturally, because it is my birthright, because I was fed it from age eight (and earlier) and because it has fed me through all these decades. And because I have suddenly come to recognize that it is merely one among several dominant religious metaphors, that does not make it any less my metaphor, the only one I know well, the one that has gotten me this far in life, and the only one so far that is pointing me beyond itself. I am much more comfortable intellectually with the few, feeble understandings I have of Buddhist thinking than I am with traditional, orthodox Christian rationalizations; and much of the Christian metaphor is repugnant to me, less than useless; certainly many of the rabidly reactionary, far-right ravings of self-proclaimed Christian groups/cults/denominations/sects are positively demonic to me, so far off-target and misdirected as to be dangerous, both to themselves and to others. Still Christianity is my metaphor; Buddhism, however desirable it may look to me, is not my metaphor, nor could I ever make it mine. I might like it, might become enamored of it, but it can never become my metaphor, at least not in this lifetime. So for now, I stand within this circle of standing stones, and know it to be mine; and within this circle I am able to wrest my freedom to wander spiritually in the directions many different winds are wafting me. Many breezes are gently pushing in many different directions, but all (my metaphor tells me) are the breath of God.
This morning I listened to what of the guest preacher’s sermon I could tolerate, knew it was far, far too literal and embracing of Scripture and orthodoxy for me, and could only wonder “Has she nothing of her own to say? What does she see out there where she lives? Or is she simply too young, too inexperienced to have anything yet to offer?”
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Easter IV—April 25, 2010
At coffee hour we talked about John’s Revelation and were fascinated with the details. And that’s the trap! The devil is in the details! The message is not in the details, but in the overall tone. I realized as I listened to it read during the service that this book almost more than any other, needs to be listened to, not read. Stay away from the details, listen to the tone. Listen broadly, without questioning. The devil (temptation, misdirection) really is in those details, they will lead you astray.
And then, keep in mind that this corpus was penned in the first century, under Roman oppression, by one who thought himself sorely oppressed, and was written about that time and oppression. But it is merely a curiosity today, has no relevance! It is not future-telling. It is hope, it is vengeance, it is a dreaming. But John foresaw nothing that others were not hoping, dreaming, yearning for “Vengeance on these fucking Romans!” My theory: either John had some mystical experiences which he seethed in his hatred of the Romans and Roman oppression, and shaped them as predictions about God’s coming vengeance; or they were pieces copped from existing Hebrew writings and cobbled together into this format and given a very vaguely Christian overlay (in as much as the book shows no knowledge of the Jesus of the gospels or his God). But whichever of these two (or any other option you want to offer), this revelation is dead and irrelevant now, and was so when it was adopted into the canon by Athanasius in 374 AD at which time Christians were legal and pagans illegal, irrelevant even then! So, it was a mistake to include it.
And, I reflect farther afield, it must be nice, for some, to hold the certainty and sureness of this gospel (i.e., the good news of Jesus the Christ), but I think the details of that, too, are often misleading, misdirecting.
Susan loves the stories (Hebrew and Christian), and trusts them to tell us about human nature, about who we are and what this world is. And I agree with her that they are good stories. However I think they are Rorschachs, ink-blots, projective images onto which we project our own sensibilities, our moral directions, our own sense of the direction in which morality points. I do not trust the stories, but use them as tools, to elicit out of myself and help others elicit out of themselves their hunches, their sense of the moral axis of the universe, the only thing of God that we can lay hand on.
While not a mystic, and even less a student of the mystics, I think I trust the mystics’s mystical experiences, but hold their expressions (verbal or visual) to be shaped by time and culture, the crudest and most inexact statements of what the mystic experienced. Once again, the devil is in the details, misleading and misdirecting.
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Pentecost VI, 4th of July—July 4, 2010
Reciting the Nicene Creed today, I found myself asking “What mean these words? What this ceremonial, what these formularies? What means all this? These words? These gestures? This fish-wafer dipped in red wine?” And I was driven back to several weeks ago when something out of my fantasizing asked me,
Q. Is this the true faith? Should I believe it? Can I receive it as valid?
A. If it works for you. Does it urge and enable you to be a better person, and to align yourself more closely to the moral axis of the universe? Does it help you see reality more clearly? Does it put in your mind the presence and compassion of the others around you? If it is yours, then it is true, believable, valid.
Q. Is it all relative? no absolutes?
A. Misstated question! For you it is absolute, if it works, if it’s yours, if it aligns you. For you it may be Christianity, for someone else Islam, or Judaism or Buddhism.
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Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist—October 18, 2010
Patron Day, with a full house, thirty in the choir, a brass quintet accompanying the organ for the festivities and the rededication of the building after all the work. But earlier this morning I considered that, given all the craziness, greed, power-mongering, senselessness, amorality and madness rampant throughout the world, I could easily conclude that man is nothing more than an evolved mammilian, no soul, no more immortality than the fish in the ocean from which we probably evolved, even though we might have a touch more self-awareness or self-consciousness, albeit we have no clear evidence; it may be that some other creatures may have some degree of self-awareness as well. The evidence Robert Wright sees which suggests there is a moral axis to the universe is so sketchy and vague to my eyes, so unreliable and inconclusive that I have to stretch my credulity in order to concur. And when that is stacked against the horrors and amorality in this world that seem unchecked in any way—given the amorality of even our own leaders (their only ethical yardstick is to get re-elected). Then I wonder if there is any moral force for good to be reckoned with. Or are we as a species morally adrift completely, unanchored, wafted by any breeze, any whim?
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Susan suggests that Freud thought the first stage of development is the naive, unknowledgeable innocence before the child begins to differentiate. Could then the mystic be doing naught more than remembering his intra-uterine experience, which most of us cannot recall?
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Pentecost XXII—October 24, 2010
At the Grounds for Discussion Coffee Hour Stephen started to share his learnings from the courses he took on sabbatical. He titles his presentation “The Once and Future Church” and intends to lead the conversation into the issues of how we should be reshaping St.
