FATHER'S DAY

Part of the reason we celebrate Father's Day is because of the care they give to children in the context of what we call family. Today, if you are a Father, we celebrate you. But there are families with single moms, people without children, adoptive fathers, non-biological fathers, missing fathers, two fathers, two mothers and more. We are all human and our children, all human children are part of our legacy and are the next step in the long human path. On this Father's Day, I celebrate Father and also all those who care for children, care given by taxes for education, care given by a concerned hand on the fevered brow of a child, and every kind of care in between. We are all part of the human family. Let us all care for our human children. We are family!  May God, our Caregiver, bless you!

REVELATION: SEEING A VOICE

I recently noticed a FB status that referenced the first part of the blblical writing of Revelation, traditionally placed as the last writing in the Christian New Testament.  This writing appears to have been controversial since its beginning.  If not the last, it was among the last of the New Testament writings accepted as canonical by the church.  Some did not want Revelation to be included in Christian scripture.  This writing continues to be controversial.  The imagery and symbolism is bizarre and outside of most human experience.  The writing presents itself as a description of visual and auditory ecstatic experience.

                I can say that I have never had an ecstatic experience anything like what is described in Revelation, although many people report having dreams, myself included.  Some of my dreams have been scary and bizarre; but, I have never been motivated to write down any of my dreams.  I suspect that, if I did, none of my descriptions would be as extensive and detailed as Revelation nor so important or famous.  Even though the study of humans reveals that humans dream, it seems that most of us do not remember most of our dreams.  Although, it seems as I get older and sleep more lightly, I seem to remember more of my dreams.  However, I think Revelation was not exactly like a dream.  Many would interpret it as a result of an ecstatic experience.  If indeed the writing is in some way prompted by ecstasy, I doubt that all of the long, complicated, and detailed imagery was part of the ecstatic experience.  But, it may very well be a writing inspired by a state of ecstasy.  The content provided by a particular literary genre, early Christian culture, persecution, and judgment against a political power both oppressive and claiming more authority and ultimacy than anyone person, organization, or system deserves.

                I am a very rational person, so the idea of ecstasy is hard for me.  Yet, I think I can speak of it a little since I can claim at least two ecstatic experiences in my 58 years.  Other parts of the Christian scriptures and other religious literature report ecstatic experiences.  It seems that many of these experiences are described in terms of an experience of God.  In our secular age some would reduce these experiences to chemical interactions within the human brain.  Many of my Christian friends would not like for me to state that I am quite alright with that interpretation.  But I suspect that the completely materialistic among us humans would also object to me stating that these strictly chemical interactions are still an experience of God.  I view God as in all and for all.  God does not exist, but, in some way, God is existence.  Probably said much better by a famous theologian, God is Being-itself.

                For me, an ecstatic experience-- in times of separation, isolation, experiences of exile, persecution, loss, anguish, despair—can engender hope, assurance, empowerment, and discernment that enables human life to continue.  Ecstasy seems to me to be beyond words.  All of my words above are the result of a rational mind trying to explain an experience of religious ecstasy---an experience of God.  None of the words will do but they still need to be stated.

                For the writer of Revelation, his ineffable experience of God, centered in the Christian tradition, in the context of a real life experience of persecution and exile started with a description of a vision of Christ:

 

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.  The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.  His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

 

The experience provided the writer with hope, assurance, empowerment, and discernment for human life, a completing, growing , transforming life – an adaptive, human experience that advantaged the writer and all the readers up to the present whose reading of the words prompted the experience anew, for the Christian, an experience of God in Christ.  Relax, let go, do not be afraid of your own ecstasy. God might find you.

 

               

               

RELIGION REVISITED

Religion: an inner experience so meaningful it motivates one to action, action that influences others so much that the new awareness and actions become an orientation for transforming life towards a greater humanization. It is an interactive whole of inner awareness, action, and influence, all combined which orients human life. Inner awareness alone can become just narcissism, action alone can become legalism, and influence on others alone can become political expediency.....none of which by themselves has the same power to transform life or make us more human.

Does God Speak?

Does God really “speak”?  Did he speak about slavery?  Christians describe the Scriptures as the “word of God”.  If, as the ancient traditions say, “God speaks”, how does he speak?  Personally, I do not think that God has vocal chords nor does he cause vibrations that activate my hearing so that I can hear him “speak”.  If it happens, I think it happens in some other way.  And, if when we humans write or speak words that in faith we describe as “words of God”, and even in faith adopting the presupposition that they are the “words of God”, do they remain the words of God forever?  Maybe some or much of human words is mixed with God’s words.  Or maybe God’s words are human words spoken for God as best we can.  As we make better choices, the best of the past is no longer any good and “God speaks anew”.  Who decides which words are the “words of God”?  We have the preserved traditions, but I think that they fail us too many times.  I have heard all the reasons why the Bible is “FOR” slavery, and I have heard all the reasons why the Bible is “AGAINST” slavery.  If the Bible is the “word of God”, complete for all time, why would it have been so hard for someone to have it written, “Do not own another human being”?  Even assuming the traditions are true, there seems to be a thousand interpretations of every word.  Some say that the “religious authorities” decide what the “word of God” is.  The pope is an example.  Certainly the religious leaders of the US South said that slavery was endorsed and ordained by God.  Oops, I think they got it wrong or else God got it wrong.  Others say we must submit to the authority of tradition, much like the Greek Orthodox.  The Protestants say the Bible is the authority and when the problem with multiple interpretations raises its ugly head, some Protestants say that the Bible is “self evident truth” and, with passion and zeal and even combativeness, some want to impose their own version of “self evident truth” on everyone else.  Whatever the Bible meant or did not mean about slavery, many Christians in the US felt slavery was a perfectly good thing at least up until the Civil War and some persisted past that tragic history.  Others said that slavery was wrong long before the Civil War.  At least in the US, sometime around or just past the US Civil War, God finally made it clear…..Human slavery is wrong!  So maybe, a gradual building of a community’s inter-subjective consensus, periodically canonized, punctuated by individual and community crisis so strong that the old is cast aside and a new consensus emerges is a description of “God speaking”.  The emergence and creativity of the new becomes the “word of God”.  So maybe in the simplest terms, we make it up.  But for myself, I would add that in the creativity of the new that we make up, truly “God speaks”.  What took him so long regarding slavery?  Or did we take a long time to listen and hear?

CREATIVITY SUPRISE

One:                      God!  Bang? Or Bang! God?  Being Itself.  Heat, expansion, and the arrow of time starts to fly, forward it flies.  God before time, after time, God has time. God in time and more than time.

Two:                      God.  In the falling apart and the pulling together,

is there no big crunch?  God, the structure.  God in and God is and God of non-uniform density hangs the stars, the galaxies, and all the great forms of the universe.  Mystery pervades.

A grounding of all.

Hydrogen, helium, neutrinos, and photons swirl.

Protostars, black-body radiation, fusion begins, matter emerges, creativity stirs, stars are born.  Supergiants. Giants.  Dwarfs. Sub-dwarfs.  Yellow, red, hot white, black.

Elements, discrete associations, chemistry appears.  God’s cauldronic brew of quantum mechanics, electricity, and magnetism.  Everything is changing in ancient, deep time.  Do not lose patience, billions of years to go, God has time

A principle of exclusion, serendipitously, new things emerge. Great complexity. Infomatic matter, emergent of an immanent God.

Three:                   Planetismals circle the protostars, wanderers formed from disks of stardust, waiting to stagger across a great cathedral vault. Solar systems. Suns. A sun.  Emergent suprises.

Earth, our world, it melts.  Uranium and thorium and potassium are captured, boiling the core, heat flows, plates shift, continents drift.  Frozen accidents or frozen minds?

The geosphere, rocks…water….air….life.  Rocks harden, move, explode

Rocks, water, air, life!  Changing, moving complexity.  Small, hot planets with no air….escaped.  Large, cold planets with no air…compressed to liquid or solid.  Amazing earth with ice, liquid, and vapor all held in a narrow range.  Life, a reality of earth itself.

Four:                     Metabolism with unity and diversity.  Among all the chemical possibilities, why life?  Cells, multicellularity, animals, neurons and neural nets.  Noetic features deep in matter.  Behavior with purpose.  More mystery:  knowing, vocation, God.  Symmetry, cephalization.  Fish, bugs, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, hominids.  A long evolutionary process.  All with a place, a purposeful niche in which to compete.

Five:                      Primates, Apes.  Genes proceed but now learning and information and community emerge.  Biological fitness moves toward social fitness.  The bodies slow down and the mind speeds up.  Consciousness warms, grows hot, the bright flame of thought appears.

Homo sapiens survive.  Humankind.

Six:                         Transcendence’s appearance.  God spoke, but no one heard.  God speaks, humans hear.   Beginnings struggle to be understood by those who came from the beginnings.  Many knows the details, no one knows the mind of God.   Creativity races forward on a wave of words.  Good and evil, past and present, shall and shall not.  A place to choose, to fall back or to step forward, to not quite reach our humanity or to reach beyond all that we have been.

Seven:                  God rests in the temple universe.  We stand in awe of the starry vault of the heavens as we fall on our knees on the lands of our earthly home.

Spirituality and Religion

·         Spirituality without words is silent. Spirituality without acts is impotent. Religion without spirituality is false. The entire, complete experience of what is considered to be the most important in all of life is a spiritual experience that energizes the words of those that dare to speak and motivates the actions of those who act for the common good of all. Both the inner experience and the words and actions of the prophet are needed for a vibrant religious faith.

Creativity and Hope

·         49 years ago our family moved to a little town in Florida, Jupiter. We lved in a house on Pinetree Circle. In front of the house was a small hedge of Ixora under the front picture window. As I grew and the Ixora grew, I learned how to care for that little hedge. Making sure it had the right nutrients to have wonderful blooms and trimming it so it looked neat and tidy.

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·         Occassionally, I have the privilege of trimming the small Xiora hedge that grows in front of my house in Miami,FL. That simple act reminds me of the past and gives me hope for the future, ever grateful to be able to cooperate with all of the creativity that surrounds us. Join with me in celebrating the guidance of creativity that draws near to each of us and finds us in these kinds of miraculous moments of remembering andpri privilege of trimming the small Ixora hedge that grows in front of my house in Miami, FL.  That simple act reminds me of the past and gives me hope for the future, ever grateful to be able to cooperate with the creativity that surrounds us.  Join with me in celebrating the guidance of creativity that draws near to each of us and finds us in these kinds of miraculous moments of remembering and hope.