Liberty or License?

Palm Sunday is God's way of reminding us what authority and responsibility are really all about. We have the mistaken idea that public acclaim, spectacle, the  facade of leadership is all that is necessary. In the same way that Jesus used all the traditional associations with a ruler entering into Jerusalem, we mistake fidelity to religious practices (something forever in flux) with a deep spiritual commitment. We see how deep and true the people's belief in this latest messiah by how quickly the cries went from "hosanna" to "crucify Him!"
And people's attitude toward faith is being shown, alas, in the current use of "religious liberty" as a way to show hatred against others. Apparently, some people (are you listening, Gov. Pence?) seem to feel that simply claiming any kind of faith is enough to justify discriminating against others. Well, not any faith; more specifically, conservative Christian. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, need not apply.
Actually, there are Muslim restaurants who refuse service to any woman not dressed according to their standards. But that's another issue.
The problem with all this is not that some of my brother and sister Christians are unclear on the concept. There have been limits on faith expressions in this country for years and years. Christian Scientists are required to provide medical care to their children. Jehovah's Witness go through a complicated series of maneuvers when they need a blood transfusion. And Mormons have been legally prohibited from polygamy.
We won't go into the complicated issue of faith healers.
Of course, much of this new idea of dressing up discrimination as "religious liberty" comes from a comparatively small group that don't want liberty for anyone but themselves. The fact that this is showing up in state after state smacks more of a concerted effort than a spontaneous movement. But still it is the same old behavior in certain faith communities that demand you follow their restrictive code or be penalized.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the crowd cried "hossanna," which loosely translates as "save us." But Palm Sunday is not about salvation in any sense. That would only happen through love and resurrection, aka Easter. So when anyone claims they will save anything through hatred and discrimination, they obviously seek license, not liberty.

The value of a silent example

This is to my conservative  Christian brothers and sisters; please stop!
There was a time in my life when I was so sure of my faith that I had to, simply had to tell everyone about it. In the same way that someone who is newly in love is only  able to talk about the beloved (have I shown you the photos of my grand children?), Some believers feel compelled to tell others- at great length, in boring cliched sentences- about this incredible God they have found.
The amazing experience of a close relationship with the Ground of all being can be quite heady. And because some in that community have chosen to ally themselves, for reasons I can only guess at, with a particular political stance which, ironically, is quite antithetical to faith in general and Christianity in particular. (Are you listening, Ayn Rand?)
But the issue here is that the way our brothers and sisters are acting is driving people away from the community of faith. It is no coincidence that atheism as a mainstream phenomenon has been growing as conservative Christians have been more visible. If one's first  exposure to any kind of Christianity is the toxic forms most people see today, it is understandable that one might recoil from it.
Please understand: if someone chooses to show their faith in a particular way, so be it! I was there at one time, as I said. But, in some parts of the world,  missionaries are forbidden to talk about their faith unsolicited. Only their actions may speak. So, my conservative brethren, let your good acts speak of what you believe. Spare me from the Bible tracts and the televangelists and the demonstrations. As I said: just stop!
Show me this God of love you say you are following.

One Day at a Time

Today is all we've got. Yesterday is gone, and no matter how hard we try, we can't go back and change what happened. Tomorrow isn't here yet, and all our worrying and frantic preparations don't guarantee anything.
So live for right here and right now. Yes, we need is to be aware of where  we have been. Of  course, we should think ahead to where we hope to be. Those things may orient us, but they should not define us.
The problem lies in the way we live today. So many live lives that are dull, shallow, uneventful. The present for such holds nothing, so constant review and attempted revision of the past, or persistently seeking some presaging of what is to come, becomes more interesting than the humdrum of our daily routine.
There is a danger here, of course. Living in the now can become a way of avoiding responsibility for our lives, rather than taking the reins of life in our own hands. We must tackle all the things each day may hold, no more and no less. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:34)
And once you choose to live in the now, seek to live your life to the full. Remember, that's the only one you get, so live it to the full!

So sorry

Everyone has things they regret. (Well, maybe not everyone, but you know what I mean.) The words that shouldna been said. Things should/shouldna been done. From when we were all very young, and didn't know any better, but that didn't matter. (Tell you sometime about a very young me and my Aunt Claire.) So one of the first things we learn is saying we're sorry. Even forgiveness is given but not believed or forgiveness is not given or given conditionally, or... You know the story, don't you?
But lately, apologies and forgiveness have taken a new sphere. We have assumed a global form of cynicism. We hold all apologies as suspect automatically, and forgiveness is given too easily or not at all/
Now, granted, with many in the public/political arena, the practice is to speak/act first, apologize after. It is akin to the courtroom practice of asking the witness a question that will be objected to, but the very act of asking it will hopefully bring up a forbidden subject. The idea is: I will say this or that, and the audience I am aiming at will hear only that and pay no attention to the apology.
This has contaminated the very concept of sincere repentance, much less forgiveness. Even though we Christians are supposed to pray regularly that we forgive and are forgiven, we seem to have difficulty receiving, much less giving. And the category of the unforgivable has become broader and broader.
The deeper problem is that we are unwilling to accept others. We cannot forgive because we do not want to open ourselves to others. Or we may be overly aware of our own flaws and failures so that we expect them in others/fear others will know them in us.
It is sad but true that we do not trust others now. There are people who can be bad, but we tend to go beyond that to include people we disagree with politically, spiritually, geographically, even what baseball team you root for. (Uh, go Red Sox?) Yet there are people I love that I disagree with about some or all of the above.
There was a time in my life when I hurt some of the people I love. (Story for 'nother time.) And I apologized. Boy, did I apologize. Over and over. Finally, a person I loved and had hurt told me: stop. The very act of repetitive contrition was having the opposite effect from what I intended. The point is we need  forgiveness but we also should forgive ourselves. And we should forgive others, not worrying if they accept our forgiveness. (Or even feel they need it.) The whole point is letting go.

Tell Me About the God You Don't Believe in...

Yeah, I know, I said I would stop, but someone pushed one of my hot buttons, so what the hell?
It has become "in", of late, to claim to be atheist. Understand, I am not talking about the increasing number of unchurched, "spiritual" people  who repeat endlessly, "Yeah, I believe, but I don't to go to church or anything like that; I'm spiritual but not religious."
No, I'm talking about the can't-tell-the-difference-between-atheist-and-agnostic person who was turned off by some of the horrors of the Church, whether fundamentalist, Roman Catholic, charismatic or other variety of authoritarian, closed-minded Christianity. (Why just Christianity? Surely there are some born-again atheists from Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds. Come to think of it, I know one!)
The trouble here is that such are not really atheists per se. Their vehement and evangelistic style for promoting their non-belief (pause here for necessary reflection on irony involved) seems to consist more of anti-theism. They are so focused on what they are rejecting that they become rather unclear as to what they do, in fact, believe.
No one can go through life without a place to stand, a set of values, some understanding of right and wrong. Well, ya could, but you'd end up in jail or dead or in a mental hospital. A sense of right and wrong can't grow just from human logic or common sense, any more than an infant can become a complete human being without guidance and learning.
A person without any recognition of Something Greater, whether we call that God or a Higher Power or some dream to follow, is a very sad person indeed. As the old Zen saying goes, if you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else. That doesn't mean being rigid about life, or insisting that everyone else do what you're doing. It means knowing what is important to you, and following that.
When I was in college, my closest friend was an avowed atheist (even though I was even then preparing to go to theological school.) But our endless debates would end in stalemate when I asked him, "Tell me about this God you don't believe in." Not the God that others taught, but what exactly was he rejecting? Too often he would bog down when he would repeat some conservative doctrine that I didn't believe in either. Even today, he can't really answer that question because he is so fixed on what he doesn't believe that he has no notion of what he does.
Yes, it is easy to attack the straw man of certain forms of established religion, to lift up the flaws and atrocities done in the name of a given faith. But can this group proclaim something that they believe that separates them from most believers? Science? Logic? Who do you think kept them alive during the centuries? Recognizing the value of people? Hello, this is a faith teaching unconditional love. The arts? Medicine? Religion.
So tell me, my atheist friend, tell me about this God you don't believe in.



This is for Jon.

Adieu and Farewell

Two old Yankees are sitting in the back of a political  rally. This was the days before PA systems, and the speaker has a low voice. Finally, one of the old-timers turned to the other in frustration. "Whut's he sayin?" he asked. His compa triot leaned forward, straining to hear. Then he leaned back and turned. "He don't say!"
Many people with nothing to say still find much to talk about. That has been the biggest obstacle to writing this blog in an on-going way At first, it was a marvelous format for venting that had been lost when weekly sermons were no longer available. And it appealed to that inner child who enjoyed the attention, the showing off before others. But then I began to run into my own limits. Writing even a short blog takes time. I was constantly reminded how little I knew about so much. And I had little feedback, so the necessity of an audience became more and more obvious.
There is much recognition today of the importance of silence. People spend much time sitting in silence, go on silent retreats, encourage silence as the unanswerable argument. As I was told back in Vermont, it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and  remove all  doubt.
I have never been good at silence. Maybe it is time I found the wisdom of that Still, Small Voice. So this blog is going on hiatus. I appreciate those of you who read it (both of you) and wish you well. I reserve the right to speak up if there is some issue that demands a comment.
In the meantime, I will seek other ways to express myself.

Sticks and Stones

It seems that more and more people are coming forward with stories about being bullied in school, even the bullies themselves! Hesitating to participate in a mass movement that, lemming-like, doesn't accomplish much more than a communal purging, I nevertheless would tell my story of abuse.
My father was an ambitious man, and he was promoted over and over during his career. This resulted in my family moving many times in my childhood, sometimes staying in any one place only for a matter of months. We moved up and down the East Coast, and even overseas.
I was a quiet and bookish child, believe it or not, and made friends slowly and seldom simply because I never knew when we might move again. My classmates in the various schools I attended treated me as the outsider I was. My rapidly deteriorating eyesight made things worse, as I couldn't make up for my lack of social experience by any athletic skills.
Teachers in those days didn't know how to bring newcomers into the closed world of an elementary school. I can remember vividly one time when the class was to copy a picture from one of our classbooks. The teacher gathered these drawings and put them up for all the class to critique (presumably some sort of art lesson.) I am no artist, to be sure, but it quickly became obvious who was the class goat. As the teacher stood by, student after student picked out my picture- and mine alone!- to point out flaws.
Not until high school did I begin to fight back, futilely and franticly. Of course, I was disciplined when I reacted to the whispered teasing from the kid behind me in class by overturning his desk. Of course, I showed up at parties I thought I had been invited to only to find no party there. And we will not be distracted by talking about the young women who ignored me, denied any offer of a date, even plotted with my classmates to make me look ridiculous in public.
Two things saved me, and they are strangely linked: my faith and my acting. In my home church I found the acceptance I found nowhere else. And it was also there that I discovered an ability to act on stage, to transform into someone else.
That does not means the teasing, the nasty words, the rejection stopped. It took years before I came to terms with who I am, regardless of what others thought or said.
But it did leave me with this: because of all the hurts I have suffered, I can recognize and empathize with the hurts of others. Not that I would recommend that path to such a goal; As Mark Twain reported when he interviewed a man who had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail: "If it weren't for the honor, I'd just as soon have walked."