Reflections on the Journey
August 2007
Essential Perfection
In his book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche writes: “For all its vaulted celebration of the value of human life and individual liberty, our society in fact treats us as obsessed only with power, sex, and money, and needing to be distracted at any moment from any contact with death, or with real life. If we are told of or begin to suspect our deep potential, we cannot believe it; and if we conceive of spiritual transformation at all, we see it as only possible for the great saints and spiritual masters of the past. The Dalai Lama talks often of the lack of real self-love and self-respect that he sees in many people in the modern world. Underlying our whole outlook is a neurotic conviction of our own limitations. This denies us all hope of awakening, and tragically contradicts the central truth of the Buddha’s teaching: that we are all already essentially perfect.”
I would hasten to add that essential perfection is also the central truth of Christ’s teaching. We are all essentially perfect. Essential perfection says that in our essence – just as we are – we are perfect. Yes, we make mistakes, yes there is room for growth, but none of that can obscure the fact that we are perfect. We are God-bearers, each and every one of us. That is the central mystery of the Incarnation and the essence of concepts such as Buddha nature, which suggest that we have all we need within us.
I would argue that our society – particularly corporate
You might think that religion would help us to see this essential perfection, but religion (as opposed to spirituality) as it exists today has a vested interest in perpetuating the illusion of imperfection. If we were to examine the pious declarations of most mainline religions today, we would find they are steeped in a perspective of lack. The Roman Catholic Church tells us they are the one true Church – that we need them for us to be acceptable to God. Just about everybody but the United Church of Christ tells us that we need to look to them for validation of our sexuality in order to be acceptable to God. The United Church of Christ, while having a better perspective, lacks the will to enforce it across the denomination and so isn’t any better than anybody else. In fact, in some ways they are worse, for they give false hope. Across denominations parishioners and clergy threaten to take their ball and bat and go home whenever their denomination doesn’t find enough wrong with other people. What in the world is that?
What does Jesus say? “Your faith has healed you, go in peace.” He criticized the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, for adding rules and regulations and practices that added to people’s burdens. We cry “Yes, bad Pharisee!” and substitute Church Conventions and District Superintendents and Bishops and Popes as the new Pharisees. Caught in the middle are the Pastors and Priests and Ministers, for even those who realize the truth or essential perfection must balance their need to spread the truth with their need to feed their families.
The solution is a grass roots movement. You must be unwilling to accept the notion that you are anything less than essentially perfect no matter where that message originates. You must encourage your friends and family to be equally unwilling. After all, you wouldn’t stand for your neighbor calling you, your spouse, your family, or your friends stupid or inadequate – why should you tolerate religion telling you the same thing? More importantly, when you buy into the messages religion sends you about lack, aren’t you really agreeing that you are inadequate?
What are the implications of having essential perfection? The first is that you are exactly where you are meant to be. You may decide to change that, but wherever you are in your life is ok. God is not invested in moving you anywhere else and God is not disappointed with where you are today. You cannot disappoint God wherever you are tomorrow. There is no single path which God wants you to follow, no single vocation which God wants you to participate in. Because you are blessed with essential perfection you are entrusted with the ability to make your own choices and follow your own path and there is nothing which can take essential perfection from you – not even bad choices.
Under the old system of essential lack, we become very tied up with destinations. We ask, “When will we be acceptable?” and, “when will we be saved?” We spend all our time worrying about what God wants, when in reality God is complete and neither wants nor needs anything. With essential perfection we are allowed to focus on the journey because we already know the destination. Essential perfection not only leaves room for growth and development but frees us to pursue it – or to choose to enjoy life just as we are! What a liberating notion! We are free to live our life knowing that God grants us total freedom and is totally supportive of our choices. Now that really is Good News!
Peace,
+Craig
.
Reflections on the Journey
July 2007
“Are you a Christian?”
I absolutely hate that question. Invariably it is asked by some moderately to severely wild eyed zealot who has been convinced that they are somehow not only personally responsible for my “salvation” but also entitled to be socially inappropriate and intrusive in the name of securing that salvation through argument and debate – against my will if necessary. In the past, I would have said that these people mean well – but, in fact, they don’t. Nobody who seeks to impose a belief system on another through manipulation or coercion can possibly mean well, but that’s an argument for another time.
For a long time I thought it was a good idea to attempt to reclaim the name “Christian”. It is, after all, a good and valuable name that has been corrupted by fundamentalist extremists. The truth is that the Fathers and Mothers of the Church would not recognize much of what passes for Christianity today. Among other things, they would not recognize biblical literalism, the notion of the “rapture”, the “salvation decision”, nor any of a host of other 19th century dubious theological inventions that fundamentalist extremists attempt to pass off as orthodoxy. Despite that, I have come to the conclusion that arguments about the name “Christian” do little more than increase the fanaticism of the zealots and waste energy that could be more productively used to get on the with work God has given us to do – beginning with serving the poor and the marginalized, to whom 3000 verses of scripture are dedicated.
So, after a rather long period of time during which I would provide some sort of qualified answer to the question, “Are you a Christian?” or ask for clarification before responding, I have now decided that I must answer that question, “No, I am not a Christian”. Obviously, for someone who is a bishop, priest, and spiritual director, that is quite a statement, and it begs the question, “If I am not a Christian, what am I?” Of course, the other challenge implied by this question is finding a way to express what I am in as few words as possible.
I recently came across the website of a group called the Interspiritual Dialogue ‘n Action (ISDnA) at www.isdna.org . This is a group dedicated to carrying on the vision of Br. Wayne Teasdale, whose book The Mystic Heart should be read by every person of faith. The website suggests, through the work of the Snowmass Conferences, the following nine points as guidelines for inter-religious understanding:
- The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality to which they give various names: Braham, Allah, (the) Absolute, God, Great Spirit.
- Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept.
- Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization.
- Faith is opening, accepting, and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system.
- The potential for human wholeness - or in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana - is present in every human person.
- Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships, and service to others.
- As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance, illusion, weakness and suffering.
- Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life; yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one's own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness (unity) with Ultimate Reality.
- Prayer is communion with Ultimate Reality, whether it is regarded as personal, impersonal (transpersonal), or beyond them both.
What wonderful points of agreement and convergence between traditions! This is a place from which I can begin. I can wholeheartedly claim these nine items as completely consistent with my own beliefs and experiences and as a starting point for dialogue with people who seek to encounter the Holy in their own lives and experience. Equally important, these nine points are broad enough that they allow for expressions of faith from a number of different traditions.
So, am I a Christian? No. I will identify myself as a Post-Christian and an Interspiritual Priest – who encounters and experiences God primarily (but not exclusively) through the Christian experience, but not through the traditional Christian religion, which has become so corrupted as to become unrecognizable.
My new friend, The Rev. Dr. Joan Salmon Campbell, is writing a two volume book on the Church. In the first volume, she argues that the Church has a terminal dis-ease. As with any other terminal process, Dr. Joan argues that the Church as we know it must be allowed to die so that something new might come out of it, that resurrection might occur and rebirth take place. I couldn’t agree more.
As evidence of the terminal dis-ease in the Church, I offer the following brief examples from the American experience. The Roman Catholic Church continues to insist that birth control is wrong, despite the fact that most of her members disagree and use birth control anyway. They also refuse to ordain women or non-celibate men, despite the fact that they have a critical shortage of priests and most of their members are in favor of both female and married priests. Most of the Protestant world continues to fight over human sexuality, despite the fact that both public opinion and civil legislation are moving toward full inclusion of same gender loving people. The Anglican Church worldwide is more concerned with unity of the Anglican Communion than ministering to the needs of her members. The Southern Baptist Convention and her allies have become more concerned with political action and lobbying than with spirituality. I could go on, but the trend is apparent.
In the past, some – particularly the religious right – have used the term Post-Christian in a derogatory way, as if to imply that we live in a Post-Christian society that has rejected Christianity. A brief examination will reveal that rejection is not the meaning of “post” at all. In fact, each of us is post a lot of things. We are post-diapers. That doesn’t mean that diapers didn’t serve a good and valuable purpose for us. We are post-high school, but our high school experience was very formative and very good for us. To say we are post-high school is not to reject the high school experience, but it is to say that if we were to return to high school tomorrow, it would be awkward and inappropriate. I am post a 32 inch waist (very post!), but that doesn’t mean that person with the 30 inch waist is not still a part of who I am today. To say that I am Post-Christian is to say that the forms in which Christianity is currently contained no longer fit me.
Of course, declaring oneself a Post-Christian is just a starting point. The next phase of the journey is to live into the meaning of Post-Christian, to examine our beliefs and practices to see if they make sense in light of the 21st century experience, and to see if what we have brought forth is life giving or life denying. Those things that are life giving we retain, but the things that are life denying we must reject. As we do so we move toward a fuller and more accurate expression of the God of our experience, and free ourselves to assist others who feel trapped in or estranged from the God of the past. What could be more important?
Peace,
+Craig
.
Reflections on the Journey
May, 2007
“The Purpose of Church”
Why in the world do we “do” church? There are probably almost as many answers to that question as there are people who attend church. Nevertheless, the question remains. It is always instructive to explore some of the answers.
Some would say that church exists to “bring people to salvation”. Now that is an auspicious goal! Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach. The first is that particular goal has already been accomplished. The second is that even if it hadn’t, “salvation” is a function of God, not a human institution.
Others would say that the church exists to serve her members. To a certain extent I would agree with that statement, but it can be taken too far. Certainly we come together as church and find community in our togetherness. We care about one another and want to help one another when we are in need. These are good and valuable things. If this is taken too far, however, the church turns into a kind of country club. To be quite honest, we can see this in many mega-churches. When the church building becomes a sort of one-stop shopping center where I come to worship, attend aerobics, go to Bible study, get a cup of Starbucks, pick up my dry cleaning, get involved in a small group, meet weekly for dinner with members of my small group, and a host of other things, the church building becomes the center of not only my spiritual but also my social life. If only they would put in a grocery store and a clothing store, I could almost live my entire life between my home, my place of employment, and my church. Certainly that’s convenient, but the truth is that Jesus called us to serve other people – and those people were most definitely not the members of the local synagogue, but were the outcast of society. Church as country club insulates us from the very people we are called to serve.
Some would say that the church exists to do outreach. Great! But, if our outreach consists entirely in providing financial assistance, we create the same insular situation that exists in the country club church. For financial outreach to have any kind of meaning, we simply must enter into relationship with the people we serve. If we choose not to do that, we must be honest and confess that our outreach is really self-serving and exists only to assuage our guilt – whether that guilt be real or imagined.
It is interesting to note that Jesus very often met people where they were – and not just emotionally or spiritually, but physically as well. He didn’t lock himself up in a building and then wait for people to come to him. He met them out “on the streets”, in the course of their daily life and daily activities. How far much of the church has retreated from that practice! I believe that the reason for that is this notion that somehow the “world” is dirty and the church is sacred. That notion would have been completely alien to Jesus! The truth is, the Incarnation means that the world is sacred – every corner of it! The separation that the Church has maintained exists between humanity and the Divine is, quite simply, a lie we have been sold to control our behavior, fill us with guilt, and keep us coming back to church in hopes of closing a gap between humanity and God that doesn’t exist! It’s a very effective way to keep people contributing. The problem is that it denies people the fullness of life God has already granted each and every one of us.
I believe that the churches of the future simply must acknowledge the truth that God loves and is intimately connected with each and every human being – and all of the rest of creation as well. A church that recognizes that will naturally reach out beyond its walls to spread this truly good news to the literally millions of people who have been told they are unacceptable to God. Such a church would meet people on the highways and byways, in the grocery store, at the gas station, where the fishing boats dock, and in the places where business is transacted. It would seek to show through word and deed that all people are truly loved not only by God but by the Church as well.
Sort of sounds like what Jesus did, come to think of it!
.
Reflections on the Journey
April 2007
“Separating Person from Behavior”
As I write, it is the Wednesday before Holy Week. As I have been reflecting on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, I have been particularly impressed that the people of Jesus’ time – or, more accurately, the leaders of the people – had a very hard time separating the behavior of Jesus from the person of Jesus. I believe that is what led to Jesus’ execution. The powers of the day were terribly inconvenienced by Jesus’ life, teachings, and example. I would suggest that it is precisely because they were unable to separate Jesus’ behavior, which they found embarrassing, from the question of Jesus’ status as a human being (which is, after all, how they understood Jesus), that they found his execution an acceptable option. Before we are too critical of that shortcoming, let’s examine the principle as it operates in our own lives.
On Saturday, March 24th, I had the privilege of participating in an ecumenical prayer service held in response to the beginning of the fifth year of the war in
I found Archbishop Dolan to be a tremendously gracious host with a delightful sense of humor. He and I had the opportunity to exchange a bit of good natured kidding that I found to be wonderful. I noticed with great interest how he acknowledged all those present not only through a group greeting but in other, more subtle, ways as well. He is, in my opinion, an immensely likeable individual. I would imagine that more than a few of you are shocked that I feel that way, particularly given that I wrote in the last paragraph that I have more in common with the ELCA and Methodist Bishops than with Archbishop Dolan – but bear with me.
It is entirely possible, and I would suggest necessary, to like and respect someone with whom we disagree. We aren’t necessarily very good at it, but I believe we need to become good at it. For example, when Archbishop Dolan does his job and upholds the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, people who have some quarrel with those teachings often decide that they don’t like Archbishop Dolan. That’s about as rational as deciding that you don’t like the manager of the local Burger King because you don’t like their hamburgers. It’s that manager’s job to make and sell those hamburgers, and the fact that he does his job has absolutely no bearing on the kind of person he is. The manager of the Burger King has about as much ability to change the recipe on his Whoppers as Archbishop Dolan does to change the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. When we dislike people because of their job, we effectively take their humanity away. They become not people, but positions, and as anyone who has ever been laid off knows, it is very easy to eliminate a position. Just ask Jesus.
If we are to work together effectively and responsibly to make the kinds of changes in our society that God is calling us to make, we have to move beyond the temptation to label anybody. We need to see the value in every human being – not just the marginalized whom we intend to serve, but also those in power with whom we disagree. As we strive to be loving and compassionate to every human being, we must be willing to recognize that every individual to whom we fail to extend our love and compassion limits our ability to become loving and compassionate people.
Here is another example. I believe that Bishop Miller’s (the Episcopal Bishop of Milwaukee) position on human sexuality is absolutely wrong and I find his willingness to sacrifice same gender loving individuals on the altar of unity within the Anglican Communion to be nothing short of idolatrous. However, that doesn’t mean that I find him to be a bad person. I would never suggest that he be flogged and crucified! I believe he is wrong, but I also believe that his blindness in the area of human sexuality does not disqualify him as a human being who deserves my love and compassion.
It is only when we label people as somehow defective and undeserving of our love that we can do them harm. It is only when we become so threatened by another’s beliefs that we confuse their beliefs with their value as a child of God that we become able to kill them for those same beliefs. When that happens, we – with the crowd outside Pilate’s window – become only too willing to shout, “Crucify Him!”
Reflections on the Journey
March 2007
I have been reading George Weigel’s biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, over the past few months. It’s one of those books, at 880 pages, that I find work best for me when I read it slowly, a few pages at a time. The book is fascinating on a number of levels.
As a history of
Equally fascinating to me is the account of John Paul II’s time as Pope. I acknowledge that any biography is necessarily biased. I would never suggest that I agree with all of the positions of the
My first insight is that no leader of a world wide Church will ever be able to please progressive folks in the
My second insight, and the one most relevant for me as both a Bishop and as a Pastor/Spiritual Director is that John Paul II lived a faith that was very well integrated with the life he lived. He did not subscribe to the popular false distinction between sacred and secular. He saw God as active and moving both in history and in the contemporary world. He believed that as the spiritual leader of a large number of people he had a duty to be preset to those people in a very real way. More importantly, he acted on that belief. While I may not agree with every position he held on every issue, I am profoundly moved by both his worldview and his pastoral sensibility.
All of this has led me to a very important realization. It is very easy for moderate to progressive folks to become so wrapped up in issues – both social issues and theological issues – that we fail to remain open to the experience of God as moving and active in the world about us. Compounding that problem is that many people misinterpret the notion of “God within.” Certainly, God is present in every human being. God is also present in the created order, in our thought and prayer life – in fact, there is no place where God is not present. However, as Joan Chittister rightly points out, while God is present in every person, no person contains the totality of God. Put another way, none of us are big enough to capture all of God inside us.
That is a very important concept because it is easy to turn the notion of God within into an exercise in navel-gazing. We can become so inwardly focused that we fail to be open to the presence of God acting in our world. In so doing we reduce God to someone who can ultimately be manipulated by human beings. While I certainly don’t subscribe to a view of God that would suggest God is some sort of cosmic chess player who moves people around according to whim and sometimes has to sacrifice a pawn to achieve a larger objective, neither do I believe that we can do that to God!
Process theology suggests that God is constantly bringing opportunities before us. Some of those opportunities we see and are able to take advantage of, others we are blind to. Regardless of the opportunity before us at this moment and regardless of our response to it in, another opportunity will surely follow. I believe the way that we make the best choices is to see our spiritual life as completely integrated with our daily life. The people who come before us, the opportunities that arise, even the losses we endure are all opportunities to learn valuable lessons for our lives. What that lesson is may not be clear in the moment, but it tends to become clear over time.
Allow me to share a concrete example of this from my own life. About eight years ago I encountered some financial hardship. As a result of that I took a second job. At times it felt like all I did was work! However, it was while I was working at that second job that I met my wife. I have been blessed with a life partner who is not only a loving and supportive spouse but who also is very supportive of my vocation. Looking back, it is clear that what was at the time a hardship also contained opportunities and blessings. I believe life is full of just that kind of situation, that God is constantly moving and affording us opportunities for growth. Our job is to be open to the possibilities.
Reflections on the Journey
February 2007
The Bible is a dangerous book. Unfortunately, most folk seem to spend most of their time trying to tame the Bible, to rob it of its power and ability to change lives. Very often, attempts to understand the scriptures more thoroughly become a two edged sword – they provide some insight while also providing some distraction.
Certainly biblical literalists provide more than their fair share of distraction. Their drive to understand and explain the scriptures literally necessitates spending a fair amount of time trying to make the “apparent” contradictions go away. One example of this would be the difficulty encountered when one insists upon the inerrancy of scriptures and then encounters the statement in the Psalms that the earth is flat and supported on four pillars. Another example is the contradictory statements of Jesus in the Gospels, “Whoever is not for us is against us,” and, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” The secondary agenda of trying to support the theory behind one’s reading and interpretation of scripture gets in the way of actually living the scriptures.
The same can be said of more progressive biblical scholars, however. Historical critical scholars have done us a great service by reminding us that to interpret the scriptures properly we need to understand the time and culture in which the authors of scripture lived and wrote. They have reminded us that the Bible was never intended to be a 21st century newspaper account of the life and times of Jesus. The distraction they have introduced is an application of 21st century scientific method to the biblical miracle stories. If these scholars cannot explain how a miracle might have happened, then they develop alternate explanations for what “really” happened. It is easy to fall into the trap of spending so much time trying to decide what “really” happened that one never gets around to actually living the scriptures!
Harvard educated lawyer and lay theologian William Stringfellow asserted that the Bible must be read through the eyes of the poor and oppressed. He claimed that the scriptures were written for and addressed to the poor and oppressed, and to impose another perspective on them is to distort them. I believe he was absolutely correct. The challenge before each of us is to get in touch with our poverty and oppression and read the scriptures is that light.
I readily acknowledge that reading the scriptures through the lens of the poor and oppressed is a tall order for 21st century Americans. Most of us, even those of us who struggle financially, are far from poor by contemporary (or historical) world standards. On the grander scale of oppression, it may seem that those of us who are Caucasian have very little chance of truly being oppressed. However, if we pause for a moment to reflect, all of us have had experiences of oppression and poverty (need) many times in our lives. I believe the key to reading the scriptures through the lens of poverty and oppression is to get in touch with our own experiences of poverty and oppression – and begin by acknowledging that we all have those experiences. We do not have to be as poor or as oppressed as folk in biblical times were to understand the experience. Placing ourselves in this position is not comfortable, but the truth is that we all have these feelings and denial does not resolve the issue.
The New English Bible translates the first Beatitude in Matthew chapter 5 (traditionally translated “Blessed are the poor in spirit”) as, “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” Who among us has not known that feeling? Is there anyone, when faced with impending loss – perhaps the ending of a relationship, the death of a loved one, or receiving a serious medical diagnosis – has not cried out with the words of the Jesus from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” More contemporarily, we may have found ourselves crying out to God, “How could you let this happen?”
Who among us has not had an experience of oppression – an experience of being excluded or marginalized for reasons beyond our control or through circumstances not of our own construction? Whether the barrier has been race, gender, sexual orientation, relationship status (it often seems any relationship status other than married is an invitation to oppression), physical appearance, religion, ability, limitation, violence, sexual assault, child abuse, or a host of others, the effect is the same – a profound feeling of helplessness, a certain loss of innocence that can never be recovered.
Now that we are in this place, let’s take as an example the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand (Mark -44). Place yourself on that hillside – hungry, without money, without the means to secure something to eat. You are on foot, your car has broken down, you have wandered into the wilderness following this Jesus and now find yourself outside the reach of public transportation. There are no taxi cabs. Imagine yourself surrounded by other people in the same position. What would happen if suddenly Jesus told you to sit down in groups on the grass and then fed all of you? How would that experience impact your life? How would that change your experience of God?
Did it really happen that way? Did Jesus really feed over five thousand people from just a few fish and a few loaves of bread? I don’t know – and the truth is nobody does. Those who seek alternate explanations, who become consumed with how Jesus fed those people, miss the point entirely. What’s more, none of those people on that hillside cared the least little bit about how Jesus provided food for them, they only knew that they were hungry and now had been fed. In their poverty and oppression, someone had cared about them enough, loved them enough, to meet their needs. Imagine the power of that experience!
In the end, it is in the experience of God that we grow spiritually. Intellectual exercises are wonderful, but if we spend all our time in our heads and never take the admittedly uncomfortable journey into our hearts, we will miss God entirely. Many authors today, among them Wayne Teasdale, assert that the title “mystic” has wrongly been reserved only for religious professionals. The truth is that a mystical experience (which is nothing more or less than a direct experience of God) can happen to anyone at any time, assuming that person has cultivated something of a prayer life in which they have learned to listen for God. Those who have had legitimate mystical experiences universally assert that such experiences are beyond the ability of words to capture them. They are experiences of the heart. The Bible is filled with such experiences for us to rest in, if only we will move from our heads and experience the stories from our own poverty and oppression. Only then will we discover where God is calling us to be.
