On Gratitude

It does not take wizard level perception to notice that we just celebrated the high feast of gluttony and consumption. And by mocking it please know that I am not taking your inventory - but mine. We baked, we cooked, we uncorked wines and even smoked a very nice cigar outside in the waning afternoon sunlight - and yes we said "thanks" over a sumptuous meal with friends and family. It was wonderful and filling, and for it all I am grateful.

But I have been practicing a different level of spiritual awareness of late - one that looks to find faith when there is no reason to believe, and one that celebrates gratitude when there in nothing on the plate in front of me. And I must admit with chagrin that I find this discipline very difficult. I am privileged. I am gifted with abundance - affluence, really (on a world scale what would be called wealth). I am blessed with a life without pain or threat of daily violence. In short, I am not challenged.

How then can I claim to develop and advance my faith? How can I exercise true gratitude? Do I really want to pray for this all to be stripped away? (No freaking way!!) Do I really want to volunteer for the Job experience? (Hell no!) And yet, devoid of these litmus tests of faith and gratitude, I am but a clanging gong or a noisy cymbal.


I have been contemplating the idea of going on a fast - like a five day or seven day fast. But then even that occurs to me as a luxury that I enjoy. Like I can even "choose" to go on a fast, the hardest part of which is that I can choose to break it at any point. There are those who can choose neither - whether to fast (as it most often occurs with the regularity of a neighbors visit) or to end the fast (as if they even know when the next hunk of bread (forget about a meal) is going to come. So fasting just seems like some arrogant, elitist Uncle Tom-ism to me.

All I really want and pray for is to know my god more completely, to strip away all that stands between me and my maker and source. It is just a quest, my quest, and for all of the challenges in trying to fulfill that quest..
...I am most grateful.
Happy Gratitude Day

Eschatological or Scatological

Oh - I know I am going to hell for this one!

I heard in a lecture the other night (see Rock Concert, November 20) that the only way one could serve in a priest or prophet role - that is, to coach leaders in spiritual discernment, is to start with a clear eschatological frame of reference. In other words - to what end am I or are you coaching your client? Max makes his case that for example globalization is a god-inspired process moving toward the New Jerusalem. This is the coming kingdom where all live in harmony and the trees grow again and produce clean ripe fruit, and the lion and lamb play Scrabble without thoughts of blood or lusty feasts, and yada yada yada. But that anyway we must have that vision in order to know where we are taking our client.

Oh Scat!

Literally and figuratively! With all apologies to Dear John’s vision, I do not buy it. But not because it is silly or pure fantasy or, as some suggest, drug induced. I don't buy that we - any of us - can know what god has in mind nor do we have the capacity to understand it were we to have access to it. It is our ego-driven need to pretend that we can discern the "will of god" or the end of time and it has been a quest of human's kind since the beginning of thought - "Where is this all going to?" But that takes us down the wrong path. We have to make up a lot of scat to even get in the ballpark. And in my book that is wasted time.

Rather we need to let go of that ego-bound self importance and let god become manifest in and through us without our help or interference. What if we are to let god flow through us in to the spaces between us and the others? What would happen if we entered the discussion not presupposing but letting god manifest a future before us that none of us could ever imagine? Now that sounds like the way god works!

Look it is all well and good to have myths about creation and the end of time but Jesus and every prophet of every major religion has always entreated us to live now – the Kingdom is here now… if only we let it happen in god’s way and on god’s terms. Everything else is scatological.

Rock Concert

Last night at school I experienced a edu-nerd's delight. The class was set up to be a lecture and discussion with Max Stackhouse, one of the most prolific writers in the field of theology. Max's specialty is the ethics of globalization and creating "moral business." But Max brought with him one of the foremost legal ethicists to critique and cross-examine him. And following them were a cadre of Boston's finest theological and legal minds.

And just when we were getting seated, in walked another, and I should mention, unsuspected icon; Harvey Cox. I know that might not mean much to some of you, but for me it was like being at a Bruce Springsteen concert and having Jackson Browne walk on to the stage, just for fun, to jam with his old pal.

Now Max has written over a hundred books and is without question an authority, but none has ever made the NYT Bestseller list. Harvey has done it three times - The Secular City, Feast of Fools, and Seduction of the Spirit. I was in geek heaven! I got to listen and then ask questions of some of the greatest thinkers in my beloved field.


Interestingly one of my classmates asked me afterward why I had not challenged Max like I do so often in class - Was I worried or just respectful? My answer came from my dad - "when you are in the presence of a master, shut up and take notes!" I say, when you are at the concert with The Boss, listen and enjoy the music!

Rock on!

Breathing

I have a friend who is tremendously giving. The only problem is that she is not too terrific at taking in compliments or receiving gifts from others. So i wonder about her health. Giving without receiving is a lot like exhaling without inhaling - eventually you will pass out from lack of oxygen. And by the way, the opposite is also true - all receiving with no giving is like inhaling but never exhaling; eventually the build up of carbon dioxide will cause you to pass out as well.

So what we really have to pay attention to is breathing god's abundance. We can not do one without the other. It is not better to give than receive - nor is it better to receive than to give. Life and the abundance of the creator are like the air we breathe - to be taken in and given out, in full and measured balance.

My Lutheran stoic heritage would have me believe that I am to be self sacrificing and self-effacing. I should feel guilty for even asking for help but should never turn another's request away. But that is not the breath of life god meant for us to share. Isn't it funny how distorted we have made the gifting of the almighty.

Giving and reciving - like inhaling and exhaling - are the basic elements of life. Do both or suffer the consequences of losing consciousness!

Meeting The Challenge

"Nature does not do bailouts!" I was reading a recent article by Al Gore (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584367114799137.html) where I came across that line. It is so true, and it is what has been bothering me about this whole damned fiasco since the beginning of the discussions. It is the drug mentality all over again! We live in a society that has come to expect a quick fix for any ailment that besets us. More Valium, Prozac and Xanax are prescribed and used in America than all other over the counter and prescribed drugs totaled. We have an industry built on surgical procedures to alter obesity. We want instant gratification, instant solutions, and, yes, bailouts.

Sorry, that isn't how it works! Development and maturity are the result of meeting challenges and adapting our childish need for "having it our way" into some other way that lives in harmony with the world. It is critically important for us to learn to live life on life's terms, not ours, and that seems to be where the train derailed some years ago. Part of the science that started engineering our planet in an effort to provide for improvements and cures grew into a larger-than-life Frankensteinian monster that now stomps about out of our control. We (collectively) learned that we don't have to suffer and that generalized into anything that might be even the slightest bit disconcerting. Continuing down this line, we will atrophy our ability to create any true solutions and adapt to our surroundings, and that just reads like a bad sci-fi novel.

It is time that we reverse the trend and face the music. Meeting this challenge (market correction) head-on for the truth it teaches us won't be easy. Our "problems" carry a truth - a lesson - in them that is important to capture and which is conveniently stepped over when we get bailed out. Overspending, gluttony, consumption, leveraged credit all are lies, the consequences of which we have to face. And there is always a consequence, you don't get away with anything - even though you think you can. Life does not work that way! This is hard, it is not easy to meet such challenges head on, but bones become brittle and porous if they don't carry a load, muscles weaken and shrink it they aren't exercised, and minds go senile if they aren't sufficiently challenged. The consequences of a bailout may be more severe down the road than those of sticking our faces in the mess and working through the painful process of dealing and adapting. But the result of the latter is nature's way, and life's process of healthy living.

Why Do You Call Me Good?

Can you say humility, Neighbor? I knew you could! (I miss Mr Rogers) Today's scripture lesson in church was the story of the rich man who asked "Good Teacher, what do I have to do (yada yada yada)?" and is often the springboard to a homily about not being attached to worldly possessions, and so on. But did you ever notice Jesus's response starts with a simple and confusing question: "Why do you call me good?"

'Scuse me? The speaker of that phrase is either the Messiah (if you believe in him) or at the very least one of the most value-driven, ethically pure and selfless men to walk the planet. What is wrong with this picture? Why would he say that? He is the good one and I am allegedly the bad one. So it is I who should say, "aw shucks, don't call me good. I'm just a worm." But that is the problem. You see, I don't say that. In fact I do wish people would recognize the good things that I do. I try to do good in the world, hopefully to offset the not-so-good I also do. But deep inside I hope and pray that the good outweighs the bad enough so that at least someone will notice and call me good.

And then I read this, and there is a hollow in the pit of my stomach. Who am I to be called good, to wish to be called good when he won't even allow that adjective for himself. Oh don't hear that as some in-bred Lutheran or Calvinist guilt. It just hits me like this huge lesson in what humility is really supposed to be like. It is doing all those same things without ever thinking of or wishing for praise. I can and often do all the right things for the wrong reasons. What I have to get to is that station where I just do them because they are what I do. Oh my, I do have such a long way to go on this road!