Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
June,
2002
|
Rolheiser on pornography |
|
|
Hugh Thompson’s simple story |
|
|
Brueggemann on Biblical interpretation |
|
|
Peterson’s fart in the spirituality salon |
|
|
Mogabgab’s Sklerodardia |
|
|
Bonhoeffer on God’s interruptions |
|
|
Matthew Fox on Eco Crisis |
|
|
Daloz Parks on Household Economics |
In my hotel room in Chicago a couple of weeks ago I had a disturbing experience. My buddy and I were flipping through the channels on the TV and we came upon some very explicit sexual material. I was thankful that it my buddy in the room with me and not my 7 year old son! The experience prompted my buddy (Rev. Shel White of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church of Pleasant Hill, California) and I to have a good discussion of sex, internet sex and the Christian perspective. I told Shel of something I had read in Ron Rolheiser’s book “The Holy Longing,” Doubleday, New York, 1999. Rolheiser talks about the energy of sexuality and how it can be both healthy in marriage and unhealthy in something like pornography. He is speaking about a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) broadcast of a drama about three middle-aged couples who witness a youth sex, drugs and rock and roll orgy at a campsite. Here is part of what Rolheiser says.
They had had a firsthand experience of what Jung (Carl Jung, the psychologist) meant when he said that energy is not friendly. In this case, it was an experience of the negative effect of pornography. What is wrong with pornography is not that there is something wrong in seeing the sexual act. Sex is not dirty or sinful. What is wrong with pornography is that it overstimulates our archetypal erotic energies, leaving us no choice but to act out those energies (as a mythical god or goddess might, without restraints and limits) or go into a depression, namely, to turn on the cooling mechanisms inside of us, restrain those energies, and then sizzle in inchoate frustration as they slowly cool.
Energy is imperialistic, not with the tyranny of a bad dictator, but with the overpowering force of a divine agent. The energy inside us is simply too much and when we attempt to handle it without the proper reverence, safeguards, taboos, and mediation, we will soon find ourselves stripped of all joy and delight. Channeling eros correctly is not, first and foremost, about sin and morality, it is about whether or not, like those Ontario couples (in the TV drama mentioned above – GN) we sit in delight or depression while eating our suppers at night.
Here is where the connection between sexuality and spirituality is made, in the energy that God has given each of us. Rolheiser’s insights are valuable for us in a age where the boundaries of what is right and wrong, appropriate and not, get pushed and challenged on a regular basis. Our Christian faith has lots to say about healthy handling of this God-given energy.
May you find insight and help as you face the challenges of your spiritual life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the speakers at the Festival of Homiletics conference I attended in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, Rev. Tom Long, spoke about a commencement address by Hugh Thompson. My first response was “Who is Hugh Thompson?” Turns out he was a helicopter pilot who happened upon the Vietnamese village of My Lai just after or during the massacre of civilians by American troops under the command of Lt. William Calley. Thompson’s story is a fascinating one, which you can read about here http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/guides/debate/chats/thompson/ and here http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/mylai.htm. This latter website will link you to a fascinating web page (www.umkc.edu/famoustrials) of famous trials maintained by a professor at the University of Missouri Law School.
Back to Hugh Thompson. He stepped in and protected and rescued some of the civilians and later testified at the trial of Calley. He went 30 years before being recognized as having acted courageously. It’s a wonderful yet sad story and I encourage you to read it at the links above.
Rev. Tom Long heard Thompson speak in response to a question about why he did what he did. Thompson said “My parents told me to simply do what Jesus said. That is all I can say to you.”
I only hope and pray that when I find myself in a difficult situation I can remember simply to do what Jesus said. May you find the courage and the recall you need from your faith heritage when it counts.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of the speakers at the Festival of Homiletics that I attended in Chicago a couple of weeks ago was Walter Brueggemann, one of my favorite writers and Bible commentators. In an article (January 3-10, 2001) in Christian Century Magazine, Brueggemann writes of the importance of Biblical interpretation.
“…the reading of the Bible is now especially urgent because our society is sore tempted to reduce the human project to commodity. In its devotion to the making of money it reduces persons to objects and thin human communications to electronic icons. Technique in all its military modes and derivatively in every other mode threatens us. Technique is aimed at control, the fencing out of death, the fencing out of gift and, eventually the fencing out of humanness.”
Funny how control keeps popping up in these emails isn’t it? One of my friends on this email list says that control is perhaps the greatest problem we Americans have to deal with. How do we manage control in our lives? How much do we let God be “in control” as our faith would direct us to do? Big questions, but important ones for our spiritual lives and for all of our life.
May you find the ability this day to surrender some control to God.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Spirituality is what these emails are all about. One of the problems or temptations with spirituality is that of idolatry, seen in a variety of ways. Spirituality can become an “in” thing, a preoccupation that takes over ethical behavior, or an end in itself. All of these uses, and others, of spirituality are brought under the spotlight of scripture in several places (Psalm 50 & 51, Hosea 6:6, Matthew 7, to name a few). In his wonderful book on the Psalms, “Answering God,” Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1989, Eugene H. Peterson talks about the language of the psalms as a great check on our tendencies towards idolatry. In the chapter on metaphor he says:
“In prayer the task is not to rarify language into an abstract spirituality but to thicken it with the metaphors of weather and geography and enmity into a spirituality of honest and actual experience.”
He then talks about the tendency to make spirituality more spiritual than material. For those of you theologically trained, he is talking about gnosticism here. The tendency is to think one’s insights and special knowledge makes one better than others or to make spirituality all pretty, attractive, and serene, like a Thomas Kincaid painting perhaps. Here is Peterson’s word on that:
“…for metaphor is an affront to their gossamer immaterialities and inner-ring whispers, a loud fart in the salon of spirituality.”
There’s an earthy image for you! Ever since reading that phrase whenever I’m in the middle of some pompous presbytery speech or psuedo-pious speech somewhere, I’ve thought how appropriate a whoopee cushion might be!
If you do not already use the psalms at least occasionally in your prayers, why not give them a try? You will find a richness in prayer language that has fed the church’s spirituality for millennia.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I’ve mentioned the journal “Weavings” before in these emails. You can get more information at http://www.upperroom.org/weavings/ It’s a great journal edited by John S. Mogabgab. Here are some of his words as he introduces the September/October 1995 edition.
“…scleroderma…is a progressive disease that involves the growth of fibrous connective tissue in the skin and internal organs. (It)…causes a hardening of the affected area.
….Sclerokardia….is a term biblical writers use to describe the human heart hardened toward God. (see Deut. 10:16; Prov. 28:14; Ezek. 3:7; Mark 10:5; Acts 7:51, Rom 2:5) In the Biblical view of what it means to be human, no more exact or more chilling image is conceivable. As human skin is the external meeting point between a person and the world, so the human heart is the internal and central point of encounter between a person and God.
….Sclerokardia is a progressive disease of the spiritual life in which interlacing attachments to things that are not God slowly encase our innermost being in a rigid cocoon of stubborn, tragic alienation.”
That is a good image to use as we analyze our spiritual condition. How do you measure up? Do you have a progressive disease that increasingly keeps you far from God? Or is there enough courage to confess and repent before God and come back into fellowship with God? Part of the good news in Jesus Christ is that the way is ALWAYS open back to God. The only thing blocking it is our level of sclerokardia.
May you find the courage you need today to get you back into God’s
Grace & Peace
Geoff
Our time and schedules are important to us and we are always seeking better ways to manage both. This is a spiritual concern too, but with a twist. Here are some words of the German pastor, theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer on this topic from his book “Life Together”, Harper and Row, 1954..
“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”
How do you manage your time and schedule? Are you able to give it to God? On my best days I can go with the flow of things around me, trusting that things will all work out in the end. On my worst days, well, you know! A goal for those of us in the Christian spiritual life is to let God’s will be done in our lives. We pray that as often as we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Bet when it comes to our schedules, well, often that is a different matter. Can we allow God to arrange our schedules? Let us challenge ourselves in that direction.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
In a discussion with my son in law the other day, I was reminded of Matthew Fox, one of the leaders of what is called the “Creation Spirituality” movement. Fox has written extensively about the need to rethink the way we view the world around us and the theology that underpins that view. In his book “Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh,” Harmony Books/Random House, New York, 1999, he gives a terse example of why we need to pay attention to the world around us. He says
"The eco-crisis is a flesh crisis. The diminution of fourteen of our seventeen fisheries in the oceans, the annual disappearance of 26 Billion tons of topsoil, the more-than-one-acre-per-second loss of the rain forests, the extinction spasm of 26,000 species yearly, the diminished vigor of the food we eat, the pollution of the waters, the failure of immune systems—all this is about flesh in crisis, flesh disappearing, flesh losing its powers, flesh under attack. Sacred flesh is being offered anew on an altar of sacrifice.”
In my sermon last Sunday I listed some of the things we might fear in our life and ecological disaster was one of them. Where I live, in Southern California, we have not yet suffered a major ecological disaster and the relatively minor environmental inconveniences we have experienced don’t seem to have changed our behavior much. Fox’s words are yet another pointed reminder that we may well be “whistling past the garbage dump” to adapt an old metaphor.
What does God expect of us as stewards of the earth? How do you pray about ecological or environmental concerns?
May you find wisdom and inspiration in this area of crisis in modern life.
Grace and peace
Geoff
Tuesday’s email pointed towards ecological concerns. In thinking about how we are to respond to such ever-present issues, I ran across an article in the book “Practicing Our Faith,” edited by Dorothy C. Bass, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1997. The article is by Sharon Daloz Parks and is entitled “Household Economics.” Here are selections from her article.
“Like the words ‘ecumenical’ and ‘ecology,’ ‘economics’ is rooted in the Greek word OIKOS, meaning household, and signifies the management of the household, arranging what is necessary for well-being. Good economic practice, positive ways of exchanging goods and services, is about the well-being, the livelihood, of the whole household.
…Once we only WENT to market. Now the market comes to us, to our homes, workplaces, and the public spaces though television, telemarketing, magazines, catalogues and online services. We wear advertising on our clothing and plaster it on every façade of our common life. And it words. Americans now spend more time shopping than citizens of any other nation, and we spend a higher fraction of the money we earn.
….It appears that we must compete in a world of scarce resources, continually fearing that we do not have enough, even though we feel bloated with cumber and guilty about a standard of living well above that of most of the OIKUMENE, the whole inhabited world.”
More food for thought. Next Tuesday’s email will include more from Parks’ article on just what we might do as Christians about all this.
How does your spirituality impact your economic thinking? And vice versa? May your spirituality be incarnated into the world around you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
