cairns

There is another reason I decided against another term for a person of all people.  We already have the word disciple used by Jesus.  Or in the book of Genesis we are told that God originally called both the man and the woman Adam as they were given the command to be and to spread throughout the Earth.  Then the story is repeated in the family of Noah remembered by God and rescued from the chaos (represented by water again) and then sent forth with the animals to spread life throughout the Earth.  And again in the story of Babel we hear God demanding that mankind spread out and become all the peoples of the Earth for God’s glory rather than their own.  Man is to be everywhere on the planet in communion with the Creator and Creation (including each other).

When the covenant is made with Abraham, (even tough often applied to one half or the other of his descendants to the exclusion of all others), the narrative indicates that the blessing was already intended to be for all people.  The slaves in Egypt (the first of many Empires condemned for exploiting the other) cry out and are heard by God, rescued, blessed, and told again to welcome and bless all people.  Solomon built a great temple and dedicated it to the purpose of blessing all people with the knowledge of God.  Having reverted to Empire themselves, they fall and are carried of into exile where the new prophets, and recorders of much of what we call the Bible, emerge.  This time the prophecies are so obviously intended for all creation that gentile (non-Jewish, pagan, “other”) Christians have never doubted these beautiful passages apply to themselves.

(Sadly many chose a broken logic which said the promises no longer belonged to Israel, to whom they were spoken, or the rest of the world as is obvious in the passages.)

Jesus came and declared that God was in our midst, that we would now worship not in one place or another but everywhere in Spirit and in Truth.  And he directed his followers to take the news to the ends of the Earth.  Then John wrote a letter of amazing symbols, images, and poetry to some of the early churches (which many again stole and found a broken logic to apply only to themselves on some magic future day) declaring that after the times of suffering would come a world predicted by the prophets where all the people of the earth worship God in song completing the order intended since creation…

The term for a person who belongs to all people is Adam, human, Jesus.  The term for a person learning to follow this Way from Jesus is disciple.  It has always been intended as the Way for all — to walk humbly upon the Earth loving justice and helping the helpless.  It is what “human” should mean.

But we have twisted the narrative, cut and pasted the passages, stolen the heritage of others and applied them as solely our own.  In my own country we still cling to our pride of Empire claiming like the Romans that we bring peace to the world by conquest.  At times each street corner church seems to believe the descriptions of man in right relationship with God will come true in a special way for only those exactly like themselves.

And, my own country led the way in developing the capacity to destroy the world at one unspeakable command.  Now, we see that our excessive consumption and overuse of the ancient substances from deep within the Earth threatens to bring about nearly the same result more slowly and painfully.  And we, with hubris beyond any the world has yet seen, declare that we do not care as long as we can defend our borders, take other’s resources, and live our lifestyle as long as possible.  We choose ignorance of the facts as our claim of innocence while continuing to make war when and where we choose through both our military and our dollars.  But the fruit was eaten long ago and we are neither ignorant nor innocent.  We have placed all creation in peril by intentional acts of the will.

And still!!  There is a Spirit moving upon the face of the deep!  The voice of the oppressed is always heard and the time for revelation of Truth draws near.  People across the globe, many of them young, are waking up to the joy of each other, to a Spirit larger than their family, houses of worship, cultures or nations.  They are spreading the hope, truth, and love like fire.

Many of us have experienced the joy sung by the prophets in worship with those of other places, colors, and languages.  Join together with global friends in worship of the One beyond all the mind can comprehend and realize that difference makes no difference as voices raise in orchestral harmony, and you are forever changed.

We are outnumbered.

But, we are aligned with the power that holds the universe together.  It is time to unify with each other to pray, to hope, to sing, to dance until the walls again tremble and fall and people are free to be

HUMAN.

peace

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Friday morning I drove East through fog into the rising sun.  The air was a golden mist more real than the phantom possibility of trees and hillsides beyond.  Then, gradually, the light grew.  The mist became water for very real green hillsides and woodlands under blue sky and bright sun.  It is a divine gift to watch the world come to be.  peace

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Stop our dependence on foreign oil, walk.

(That will be the eventual outcome regardless.  Oil is a non-replenishing resource.)

Global warming is not our fault, die guiltless.

(How comforting, not!)

Limit abortions, celebrate gay lifestyles.

(Very offensive to my conservative friends I know, but it is logical!)

Stop illegal immigration, welcome the world’s huddled masses.

(or tear down the statue!)

Stop government tyranny, impeach the Supreme Court.

(all of the most volatile changes to our beliefs and constitution originate and end here, not Congress or the White House!)

God so loved the world that He commissioned us to bomb them.

(Don’t we act like it?)

Love those in need, send your money there instead of the church building fund.

(Tents or seat cushions and chandeliers?)

Or any that proclaim this ancient advice:

⁹ Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹ Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ¹² Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ¹³ Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. ^[c] Do not think you are superior.

¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” ^[d] says the Lord. ²⁰ On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” ^[e]

²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

peace

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People who stay in people jobs long after they have given up on people, especially ones who work with children –

Conservatives criticizing government for siding with big business after chanting my whole life that what is good for big business is good for America–

Republicans after the Bush/Cheney years claiming the Democrats are too friendly with big oil –

Democrats who are still running away from the label of liberal and trying instead to present themselves as a “reasonable” version of the Republican platform –

How we keep believing that electing people who say they hate the system, but spend a fortune to get into it, will change our lives –

People who trust any talking head of any ilk to speak the Truth when their obvious agenda is building their listener base and advertising take –

People who believe that government, the church, a protest movement, education, or any other organization of man can solve the world’s problems, or even tries to do more than protect and promote itself –

People who believe that multinational corporations are more interested in their well being than their own elected government–

People who still believe there is AN answer to be found that will work for everyone in politics, education, religion, or any other life category–

People who believe school accountability programs which are based on the premise that everyone can be in the top half of any type of category (and after passing fourth grade math class!) –

People who believe that education is the problem with business while all of the jobs are being outsourced to uneducated sectors of the world willing to work as slaves–

Well, most of today’s realities :-/

Things I do understand:

Children love to learn, learn to love by being treated with loving respect, and grow up to be our future.

People deserve the right to be who they really are; their narratives are unique, life giving, and deserve to be honored.

God loves them both, and we have no right to do less.

peace

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Israel’s articulation of creation faith is marked by God’s gift of the power for life, which has a relentless ethical dimension. Thus we have seen that creation is marked by justice, righteousness, and steadfastness, and that it is aimed at needy Israel in exile and, more generally, to the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.  How could it be otherwise?  For the God who is the subject of these verbs of creation is also the subject of more particular verbs in Israel’s own life.  Yahweh’s work in creation is the subject of more particular verbs in Israel’s own life.  Yahweh’s work in creation is never an act of raw, sovereign power, but is an act saturated with covenantal, ethical intentionality.  Yahweh characteristically intends not only to have a world, but to have a certain kind of world, one that generously and gladly attends to the goodness and extravagance of life.

Theology of the Old Testament.  p. 158

A little more emphasis on this nature of Creator and creation might result in far different treatment of friend, enemy, and planet.

peace

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What if the story recorded in Genesis, and explained to us as “The Fall,” was from some other culture?

Would we interpret the story as centered on the specific event, or the man vs nature conflict it explains?  If it was not part of our traditional explanation of man’s need for a savior, would we not see in it primitives explaining the difficulty of deriving a living from the soil?

What if that culture was newly emerged from the more lush Rift Valley to the south and now trying to live in the harsher portions of the planet to the north?  Would we see it as cosmic cataclysm, or an attempt to explain how their daily lives had changed from one of easy access to food in a tropical climate, to a the labor of survival in a harsher time and place?

Doesn’t the best evidence now indicate the mankind arose in the Rift Valley of Africa and migrated north into the areas of the Middle East?

I wonder how much of the Old Testament would be clearer if we read it with the same literary lenses we apply to a cultures we do not consider to be the beginnings of our religion?  If we were reading the tribal tales of some other culture would we not explain people with a fear vs power world view working to explain the events of their lives and history?  It seems to me that a great deal of the Old Testament reads very much like primitive fear vs power explanations of personal, family, national, and intercultural events.

I also wonder how differently the New Testament interpretations become if we read them as part a culture that has grown from fear vs power to one of shame vs honor.  Much of what we read as matters of eternal guilt, punishment, and pardon become very different when read through a lens of behaving in a manner which brings shame or honor.  If salvation comes to all through the loving pursuit of man by the Creator, then behaving in an ungrateful manner would surely be seen as a manner of great shame.  And, the parables seem to point to a God who deals with even that shame by rushing out to reclaim us once again and invite us into a party as honored guests.

I am contemplating it a lot lately.  I am re-reading familiar passages through these new-to-me lenses.  And so far, the God I am finding seems a lot more like the One who accompanies me day by day than does the Old Son-Sacrificing Judge I was taught about in my youth.

peace

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Paraphrased from two songs, over played and under lived:

Pray for the other ones
Who know all life is hard
While we feast, remember

There is a world outside you

A world of dread and fear
Where the only living water is the bitter sting of tears
The only bells that ring, toll the clanging of doom
Thank God it’s them instead of you

Until we learn they are really us

Waiting for the chimes of freedom flashing.

peace

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It is time for us to pray.

Brothers and sisters are being imprisoned, tortured, and killed in many places around the globe.  Some of them go by the name of Christian.  Folks in “safe” countries of the west are being tortured through disease, faithless friends and spouses, temptation in their own lives, and the worship of money and power.

The church is constantly doing the work of its enemies by criticizing, attacking, or refusing to fellowship with any other sect that hears the Word of God in a different key.

War continues rampant around the globe, often in the name of the “good” bringing “justice” to “the evil doers” in the form of death and destruction.  Some of the attackers are us.

We remain alienated from the earth we are made from, polluting and destroying the very stuff and sustenance of our physical being  (and since I am not a dualist, I would add that in ways we do not understand, our very souls).

We have given our minds over to trivial nonsense in entertainment, violent crimes against humanity as entertainment, and simple have-no-fears-you-can-understand-everything (what we do is right, what they do is wrong) theologies.

Our churches serve the same gods as our societies.  It is time to pray; for our neighbors far away and near, for our leaders (yes even from the opposition parties), for our world including the Earth herself, and for our very souls.  It is time to pray.

Thanksgiving week in the States is a good time for prayer.  Our work week is usually reduced.  Our minds are turned somewhat in the direction of gratitude and nostalgic images of people who lived closer to the Earth and to God.  Let us also shut up and sit silent in the presence of the mystery that gives us life and hope.  Let us listen.  Let us be grateful.  Let us realize how many brothers and sisters we have among people who have been labeled our enemies both near and far.  Let us take our eyes off the food, and the rest of our selfish desires, and pray.

May God answer our prayers with strength and wisdom to continue making small moves against the darkness, small steps toward finding ourselves home together.

peace

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My good friend and cousin posted on Facebook about how everyone should remember the giant government takeover and slide toward socialism next election.  I understand his point of view.  But, I know too much.  I know too many families, including both the uneducated working class poor and my own adult college graduate daughters who are without health insurance when the world is left to the “good will” and “justice” of for profit companies getting the most for the least in both goods and workers.

The takeover that concerns me, and has already changed my vote to one in favor of one Republican that I had sworn never to vote for, is the takeover of foreign countries.  History is filled with accounts of powerful empires that found out you can conquer another country but you cannot rule it.  I suspect even Rome would have been in trouble if those zealots of Jesus’ day had explosives.

It has nothing to do with whether their governments were good or bad by our standards.  It has to do with whether we have the right, or the ability to decide that for them.

It has nothing to do with “justice” for 9/11 as Iraq had nothing to do with it, and our take over of Afghanistan has not enabled us to capture those who did.

It does have to do with loyalty to our brave and loyal sons and daughters who answer the government’s call to serve.  Are we more loyal to them to continue a hopeless, and in my view immoral, set of wars we cannot win; or to bring them home with honor for doing everything within human power that we asked of them and allow them to rejoin their families and get on with their lives?

And it does have to do with taxes.  My conservative friends (yes I really have them even though we disagree on specific topics) hate the idea of tax funding for health care, education, and social services.  Why don’t we hate the use of our tax dollars ($6,000,000 a missile for “shock and awe!?”) to fight wars that have no reasonable end in sight, cost the lives of our most patriotic children (even if you don’t give a damn about the lives lost on the other side, a great number of whom who are just everyday people trying to live — not to mention Christians caught in the crossfire), and are setting us up for decades of care which must be provided to unbelievable numbers who are coming home wounded and brain damaged.  Maybe if we quit spending our money to kill, it wouldn’t seem so expensive to spend it to help people live.  But, that’s just me.

I sure wouldn’t want us to become socialist like those peace loving communists in Russia and China, Vietnam, and Korea.  OK, that was snarky.

But, which way should we be more concerned about appearing like them — killing people or caring for them?  I choose the path laid out by Jesus, not George Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, et al — all of whom offend me by promoting views there is no gospel support for in the name of my beloved savior.

peace, please, for your wallet and hatred of socialist methods if not for grace and love?

peace

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Frank Schaeffer writes about our deep longing for something we have not found.  And with vicious humor of our waiting on “spaceship Jesus!”   Sojo’s quote of the day is about how we all can experience the feeling of exile.  I have written that the moment of alone-ness gets my vote as Jesus’ most human moment.  Dorothy went looking for her heart’s desire….

It all takes me back to thoughts on our unity with the soil from which we are made.  T has led me here with many insights on eco-theology, S has led me here with his respect for native traditions and beliefs, D and L lead me here with their love of just being there in the outdoors.  (By the way DB, you should really write your description of being in the woods during a cold mist — a description of paradise in the very time and place many would picture torment — it deserves to be published and wants to be read!)  It takes me back to how much of the Bible is actually written in celebration of the earthly context in spite of all our other worldly projections.  So I am wading farther into old territory.

What if our unexplained longings, our common feelings of alienation, and our common desire to go home again are all pointing to the very dirt beneath our artificial surfaces?  I have been thinking a lot about my departed atheist friend John Elliot — a sharp witted but gentle man.  I remember his calm assurance that he was part of the farm he grew up, enjoyed life on, and would rightfully return to when he died.  He was one of the most convincing people I ever met not because of acidic arguments, but because of his assurance of his own place in the universe.  He was still connected to his soil and comfortable with the idea of returning to it.

Science tells us we are made of the common elements.  We teach young children to eat healthy foods to build their physical bodies well with the substances of earth their body needs.  I have often pondered how many generations it takes for a people to honestly say like the Native Americans, “We came out of this Earth.”  Arlo has joked about cells having memory.  I have written before, only partly with tongue in cheek, about the possibility of carbon memory.  (metal workers and sales people speak of materials having memory as if its fact.)  I am now pondering how very true it may be that we are longing for reunion with the dirt we are made from.

A side note on psychology: the most alienated I ever was from my father was any time I offended my mother.  If I was alienated from her, I was automatically alienated from him.  I know this flavors my thinking here.  Thoughts on alienation from Father God, take me immediately to our separation from Mother Earth.

I think it is interesting to look back at the Genesis account in this light.  Our ancestors are said to be in constant communion with God while they are in full communion with life in the garden.  The “fall” removes both.  What if we consider a non-traditional read.  The “sin” committed in the story occurs when they eat a fruit of the garden, but not for its own sake.  Instead of experiencing the joy of the natural nourishment of plant body to animal body, they seek to use the fruit as a means to knowledge — something other than its own identity.  What if the “fall” can be understood as our primeval moment of separation from our mother?

Looking through the lenses of Michener’s beautiful book The Source, perhaps it was the advent of intentional farming.  He does an excellent job of describing how man begins to feel separated from and threatened by nature when his family begins to depend on cultivated crops.  Michener took this further into the need for god’s to control nature.  I would take it backward to God using Genesis.  I can now read the story as the Creator placing humankind in the natural world as benevolent kings and queens of holy subjects, (mental image here of Lewis’ founding scene in Narnia), not dominators and abusers.  When they start to place their subjects (yes including plants) into slavery by seeking the knowledge which will bend life to their plans and desires it reminds me of wizards in Middle Earth producing orcs as “improvements” on the original creatures.  What if this is one read of the fall — the moment when humanity stepped out of the natural order to seek a world under human control?

Then our longing for return and unity with Creator could rightly be the desire for reunion with Creation — the love of the natural world which comes from every molecule of our being.  Perhaps our collective salvation depends upon our return to unity to with the creation.  I believe science fully supports this position.  And it doesn’t mean I deny the existence of the spiritual.  I am exploring the conclusions of rejecting the duality of the material and spiritual worlds.

I think this is fodder for the book I am longing to finally write.  I hope it isn’t just fever induced rambling! Let me know.

peace

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