[Dialogue] 5/18/17, Spong/Forrester: Holy Wisdom; Spong revisited: Terrible Texts

Thu May 18 07:29:55 PDT 2017

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Holy Wisdom
By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.

Over these past several weeks, I’ve been reflecting anew on what it means to be a wise person. This is due in part because in the congregations I serve, we describe the spiritual journey of Holy Week as “The Wisdom Way of Christ,” exploring the stories and experiencing the reformed liturgies as a holy path for 21st century seekers. As human beings, we long for wisdom and it is extolled in poetry, song, and art. But what is wisdom, particularly in the spiritual tradition and how does it differ from what we might describe as the “wisdom of the world”?
When we are held in our mother’s womb, we experience life for the most part as good enough. We are fed as needed through the umbilical cord. We are kept warm as needed through our mother’s thermoregulation. We float nestled in our amniotic sea, our tiny body suspended and trusting in the wise capacity of fluid Reality to provide. This trust is kinesthetic; we haven’t reasoned to it as a conclusion. We know trust as a somatic truth.
We can see this bodily trust in ourselves as newborn infants, lying languidly in our mother’s arms. When we are hungry – mom feeds us. When our bowels are full – we relieve ourselves. When tired – our tiny being slumbers. Reality simply and sufficiently provides, and our infant’s sense of trust is visible in our relaxed mouth and eyes; in our tranquil arms lying loose upon our undulating and soft belly. We live with – no it is even more intimate – we live as a basic trust in the Wisdom of life to provide.
With the slow passage of time, however, inevitable disruptions occur and this basic trust is gradually whittled thin. We hunger and are not fed enough or not in a timely fashion. We are cold or too hot. Our tummy is upset and no amount of holding is an effective remedy. We get a fever. As we become toddlers and venture forth, sometimes when we look back for mom or dad, they are not there. Or they are there but seem to be looking right thru or past us. We fall. We experience betrayal and loss. Life seems anything but wise. The hurts and bruises to body and soul continue to accrue and the whittling of basic trust continues.
This relentless thinning of trust takes its toll upon our soul. We become convinced that our being’s survival depends upon the mind taking charge. A very specific delusion arises: since Reality seems all too unreliable, we will undertake the responsibility for directing our life’s, our soul’s, unfolding. Our breathing quickens as body and belly contract and harden. Our brow furrows as mind kicks into overdrive. Our pace of life shifts into third gear. Limbs tighten and withdraw. Life is no longer a mystery we receive, but a problem we must solve to survive.
We become beings who mistrust Reality. We perceive ourselves as objects separate from and at the mercy of an arbitrary or even capricious external Force. By the time we are self-consciously aware persons, we simply take for granted as common sense this perceptual framework. Only a fool would trust, and we will not be fooled. And yet, we don’t know what work we ought to be about into order to surely and certainly direct our soul’s unfolding. Which path is the correct one? Do we turn left, or right? Do we go forward or backward? There is a desperate quality to our mind’s frantic search for the correct path; believing all the while that there is such a correct path.
Our specific reaction to the loss of trust in Reality is to step into the perceived breach and become beings who plan – constantly. Within the delusion that we, as human beings, must direct and control our soul’s unfoldment, Wisdom devolves into wisdom-as-egoic-planning. Basic trust remains, but as a foggy somatic memory, and so we turn to the machinations of our own mind to control the vagaries of life and secure, as best we can, a course and outcome we prefer.
We tire. We become disillusioned. We try even harder. And perhaps we begin to wonder: What does it really mean to live a wise life? To be a wise person? We experience the wisdom of the world, which has replaced Holy Wisdom with incessant human planning, as less and less convincing. On a simply practical level, ceaseless mental activity does not satisfy the human heart. What we don’t realize is that our personalities, or egos, in all their strategizing, are themselves a mimicking of an authentic soulful wisdom that lies dormant awaiting rebirth.
There is much to be learned by understanding the life of Jesus as a story of the birthing of Wisdom, emerging in and through the same dynamics of those I’ve just described. Jesus is the child of a young woman in a small village, whose paternity is in question, and where tribal lineage remains vitally important. He is a Jewish child whose questionable status leads to being treated with suspicion, some ridicule, and perhaps more than a shadow of shame. A child raised in a holding environment that he could easily have experienced as dropping him on a regular basis; a child hurt and bruised and thus suspicious of the Wisdom of Reality. Here is a child that grows into an adolescent who could have readily questioned the tacit Wisdom of Reality. A boy who matures into a young man, likely drawn to the purported certainty embodied in the apocalyptic plans of the Essenes at Qumran; where the sons of light and the sons of darkness were believed to be preparing for the final spiritual battle. This is a budding Rabbi who is initially captured by the clear, bold, and prophetic plans of John the Baptist.
When the basic trust of the soul is “lost,” the searing absence must be filled, and we do it, as best we can, with our egoic planning. We try to direct the soul’s unfolding because we don’t know what else to do and feel compelled to do something to survive. We are afraid to relax and be, precisely because of our history of pain and suffering. We pull back more and more into the small prison of the head. But – our hearts know there is more. Our hearts continue their search. We long to experience true rest in the home of our soul.
The labyrinthine human journey, amazingly enough, can bring us right where we need to be. Taking charge is not bad and moral judgments are of no use here. The search leads us to waters of new birth, or rebirth. The soul’s question is whether Reality, washing over, in, and through us, moment-to-moment, is a really womb of life in which she might trustingly rest.
It is no accident that the story of Jesus’ adult ministry begins with the account of his initial awakening in the waters of the Jordan. These waters are the ebb and flow of life; they are the current of Reality, which we fear will overwhelm and destroy us. Jesus steps into their depths. He releases his guarded heart to receive the flowing force of life full upon his soul. He chooses to be vulnerable. Although his person is not destroyed, the annihilation of his planning mind begins. How? His heart realizes that its very substance is Belovedness; Boundless Love is the fabric of Reality.
Love is the womb of trust and relaxes our constricted heart and feverishly strategizing mind. In this trust, our chest and abdomen relax and soften, and our brow loosens its vise grip around our fearful eyes. We need to appreciate the vitality of the heart-mind connection. As our heart ceases to be a fortress guarded by all manner of defenses, it provides a soft, certain, and sure base upon which our mind may settle in ease. Constant planning is a heavy burden, which weighs down the spirit in darkness. The rebirth of basic trust allows our mind to lay open, allowing living daylight to suffuse the soul once more. The gospels convey this human truth in the lovely imagery of the heavens opening as Jesus realizes that he is the beloved of Reality.
Thus, Holy Wisdom is born anew. This Wisdom has nothing to with planning. What is Holy about this Wisdom is that it reflects a loving Reality that does not work by some “divine blueprint”; no, Reality unfolds spontaneously, moment-to-moment. The work of spirituality is learning how to participate fully in this unfoldment; no one and no thing directs it. Holy Wisdom speaks of the objective truth that each and every manifestation of Reality is an expression of the Holy Mystery. Einstein asked whether the universe is for or against us. If that remains our question then the soul will never relax in basic trust. The more basic question – the answer to which is found only in our direct experience of Reality – is whether we realize that all that is is the Holy Mystery.
What our soul longs to know is that Reality, like the womb of our mother, is itself a beloved Wise womb; a womb so Wise it embraces and holds our wounds and losses and even our body’s death; a womb so absolute that nothing escapes its Reality. This womb of Holy Wisdom draws our soul forth to live and work in trust, regardless of what befalls us. We don’t plan life, we participate in it, realizing that whatever path we are on is the only path that matters.

Beloved,
You are the deep and the shallow.
You are the fertile as well as the fallow.
You are the honey and the bitter.
You are the fire as well as the winter.
You are the center and the edge.
And in truth all between.
You are I am, and I am, too.
I am your shadow and my soul lives as You.

Resources on Holy Wisdom: A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas. Sandra Maitri, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul. Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey in the Heartland. D.W. Winnicott, Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development.
~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester Ph.D.

Read the essay online here.

About the Author
Kevin G. Thew Forrester is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“.

Question & Answer
Albert Gentleman from Pakse, Laos writes:

Question:
As a recent evolving Progressive Christian I have started reading Marcus Borg’s “Evolution of the Word”. Wonderful book. But as I was reading I noticed many scriptures that made reference to Jesus dying/sacrifice for our sins. Where did all these scriptures come from and when were they written? How do we understand them?
Answer: By Fred Plumer

Dear Albert,
Yes, the idea the Jesus died for our sins, or sinful nature, is really one of the causes for so many people turning their backs on Christianity today. The truth is that the word atonement was hijacked my Paul primarily from the Book of Leviticus where it is used 52 times.(It shows up briefly in seven other books in the Old Testament) The Book of Leviticus was in large part a guide for Leviticus Priest who were expected to be very pure. However atonement is clearly an opportunity to clear one’s name if you have broken one of their rules. Over the years the Conservative Jews have adopted the rules of Leviticus to live by and in my opinion, fail to understand how the Leviticus Priest followed the law and how it was to be used. (This is another story.)

Paul was a contemporary of Jesus but never knew him and frankly had huge battles with Jesus’ disciples. I suppose, Paul was trying to figure out why Jesus had to die and possibly came up with the idea that it was for the sins of society. This was a very different idea than the established use of atonement where only individuals could atone for breaking one of the Jewish laws.  This could be satisfied by offering a sacrifice. But according to Paul, it was a done deal. Our sins are atoned when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord. He did not believe, however, in the physical Resurrection.

However, over the next 60-70 years as the other writers of the New Testament were developing their own versions of the Jesus story, all different by the way, some of them developed another idea. That was that we would “saved” by believing the Jesus story the way they told it. That included the bodily resurrection by a couple of writers. But none of the gospel writers believed that there was atonement of society or believers or for an unlawful act. You have to remember that the people of the Old Testament were living in a very different world than the people of the New Testament. Granted both had hard lives, however, Jesus does not speak of atonement nor was it part of Jewish life, except once a year during the holidays, for righting a wrong with a sacrifice in the Temple. 

That is why you have to read the stories with an openness and understanding of how they were living, what did the people know and what did they believe. That is why I focus first on understanding their conditions, their wants, and what information they had. They were still living on a flat earth, walked or rode donkeys wherever they went, most of them were terribly poor and lived in a very small area. However, Jesus managed to see beyond all of that. He did not agree with the Leviticus Priest, was not a big fan of the Temple and lived far away from the city. And, he never mentions atonement, nor did he believe in it, certainly not as the reason for his death.

Now fast forward approximately 300 hundred years and the Catholic Church was born, under Constantine's watch. The Priests were masters of manipulation and battled to ultimately settle on something like the Nicene Creed or the Constantinopolitan Creed.  Frankly, little has changed in “Rome.” Jesus dying for sins became the “law.”
~ Fred Plumer, President
ProgressiveChristianity.org

Read and share online here
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Terrible Texts: Be Fruitful and Multiply and Subdue the Earth

When I was a young theological student, I was assigned the task of reading a book entitled "Ideas have Consequences." I do not recall the author but the title has always impressed me. History is full of episodes that demonstrate its truth.
The ideas in Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" or Karl Marx's "Das Capital'surely had consequences. Ideas like those developed by Galileo opened frontiers in our ever-expanding world; while those arising in Osama Bin Laden' mind now terrorize the world.
One religious idea that has had both profound and, I believe, destructive consequences occurred when the first human being defined God in theistic terms. By theism I mean the assumption that God is a Being, sometimes called the Supreme Being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere outside this world and periodically intervening in human history to accomplish the divine will. This understanding of God informs our language, scriptures, liturgies and hymns, and is omnipresent in our theology. To challenge this concept of theism is so threatening that most people assume that the challenge must originate in the godlessness we call atheism, which has been thought of almost exclusively as theism's only alternative.
The way we human beings define ourselves has also been molded by this theistic definition of God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is stated that human beings were created in the "image of God." Interestingly enough, this reference is to a late developing idea in Jewish thought. Although found in Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 5:1 and Genesis 9:16, these verses were all written during the Babylonian exile in the late 6th century as part of the priestly writer's editorial expansion of the Jewish Sacred Story. This means that they are among the last strands of Old Testament material to be woven into the Torah. Once this idea entered the text, however, it quickly won the day, and appears with frequency in the Psalms and the Wisdom literature. We defined ourselves as God's surrogates, God's stewards who were to exert dominion over all living things, both animate and inanimate. God was portrayed as handing over to those claiming the divine image, free reign to rule the earth that was created, we assumed, primarily for our benefit. We, who were but "a little lower than the angels," thus became radically anthropocentric. If it seemed to be in our best interests we could clear the forests, obliterate other species and use up the natural gifts of air and water because God had given us that right. If we destroyed the fragile ecosystem by over breeding, so be it.
We live today with the consequences of these ideas. The resources of this planet are strained to the breaking point. The environmental disaster that threatens to end human life has been fueled by the theistic claim that God is external to our world and that we, who think of ourselves as created in God's image, can act as if we are also external to that world. Our right to breed irresponsibly has been supported by major parts of western religion. We do not seem to recognize that the resources of this planet are finite. We appear not to comprehend that the air we pollute is the same air that we breathe or that the water supply that industrial wastes make toxic is the same water we drink. We deny global warming even as we watch the polar icecaps melt. We are not creatures who are like God, somehow external to the world; we are part of nature itself. If our goal is to restore a balance to nature, then perhaps our first step must be to redefine God in non-theistic terms. This means that we must jettison any sense that the God we worship is external to the world we inhabit. The supernatural invasive deity has got to go. That is a threatening path to walk for religious people, but there is no other.
To begin the process of overcoming that threat, we need to recognize that in the Judeo-Christian faith story, theism is the dominant but not the only definition of God. Perhaps it is fair to say that theism has been the more satisfying definition. It related us to a God who was our "all powerful protector." It helped us to develop our exalted sense of human importance. It built up our presumed security. There are, however, seldom-noticed images of God in the biblical story that portray God, not as an external supernatural creator, but as a divine presence in the midst of our world. This God image has never been as appealing because, rather than functioning a divine protector, this God is experienced as an immanent life force operating in and through us, calling us to take responsibility for our world, to be accountable for our actions, to exercise mature judgment and to escape our radical human self centeredness. This image produces for us a very different perspective on both God and ourselves but it might just be the idea we need to develop if we wish to escape the consequences of that potential genocide, which surely appears to be our destiny if the present pathway human beings walk is not altered dramatically and quickly.
Is it possible that we have misread our own sacred story when we used the theistic definition of God to exclude all other possible God understandings? Is it possible that we have also misread our scriptures when we pretended that the well-being of human life is all that matters in this anthropocentric universe? Perhaps it is now time to look at those sources again in search of alternative images of God that might lead us to different conclusions?
The creation story in Genesis portrays the creating presence of God as "Spirit".
~John Shelby Spong
Originally Published September 2003

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