[Dialogue] 3/28/19, Progressing Spirit: Lauren Van Ham: Super Natural Sacraments of Spring; Spong Revisited

Thu Mar 28 07:15:36 PDT 2019

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0884313230 #yiv0884313230templateBody .yiv0884313230mcnTextContent, #yiv0884313230 #yiv0884313230templateBody .yiv0884313230mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}  }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0884313230 #yiv0884313230templateFooter .yiv0884313230mcnTextContent, #yiv0884313230 #yiv0884313230templateFooter .yiv0884313230mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }  This week (in the Northern hemisphere), we are celebrating the Spring Equinox.   
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Super Natural Sacraments of Spring
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|  Essay by Lauren Van Ham
March 28, 2019A few weeks ago, in her compelling Progressing Spirit article “Lost in Translation,” Rev. Gretta Vosper challenged us to look honestly at both the attrition of church attendance and community engagement. Carefully, Rev. Vosper detailed how the theological scholarship happening in the late 60s lead to a giant unpacking of the previously held practice of putting our belief in a supernatural divine being. She pointed to the confluence of this growing awareness happening parallel to “the American Dream,” which instructed every individual to play (& win) for themselves … and to feed a growth-dependent economy. It is in this space – a sense of no longer needing religious practices, combined with a pressure to “arrive” materialistically – where Gretta urged us to reflect upon our current seesaw. In short, our species has ascribed to a story that when we are not measuring up (house, job, car, clothes, etc.), our reflex is to quickly cry out, making petitions to the supernatural supreme being for an intervention or bail out. In this story, there are Either-Or poles: the appearance of success, or the perception of “try harder,” “pray harder.”It’s a story of extremes, and our natural instincts have fed this story really well. Quite readily, our species rallies at the chance to climb, to consume, to conquer. Of course, we embody many other characteristics, too, like caring, contemplating, collaborating.The progressive Christian practice, I believe, is founded on my (our) willingness to listen for and co-create the new story. And let me be clear about this word, “new.” I don’t mean the next bright and shiny object that allows me to toss the frayed one into the landfill. I mean “new,” as in emerging, fertile, and arriving with a willingness to acknowledge what has been before now. I mean “new,” as in the evolution of our universe, reminding us of how love and adaptation, in partnership, have birthed us into this present moment… and that we are all still birthing.This week (in the Northern hemisphere), we are celebrating the Spring Equinox. It is one of only two times in the calendar year when things sit in perfect balance… and for merely an instant! At every other time of the year, we are turning through times of transition, arriving and departing, creating and destroying our way to one pole (Winter Solstice), or the other (Summer Solstice). We humans have been taught that categories are clever and convenient. Spirituality and science are forever reminding us, though, that this tendency is only helpful to a point, and that the real game begins when we embrace what is more true: fluidity, movement, adaptation.The story of our Universe shows us that Either-Or isn’t how things really happen (thank Goodness). I find this incredibly instructive when, all around me, I’m seeing the systems I’ve come to rely upon going through undeniable changes. I want, very much, to “fix” the social systems. I want, very much, to heal the land, water and air. I want, very much, to mend and repair the trust that has been broken by the things we do on both sides of the seesaw. This is our progressive Christian path, is it not? To engage in, as Rev. Vosper clearly stated, “the core challenges of a vibrant Christianity – justice and compassion.”When I catch myself living the current Either-Or story (a daily phenomenon), it’s a radical act for me to imagine other versions of the story. Yes, new stories! Whether capitalism embraces them or not, technologies already exist to implement renewable energy infrastructure that reverses global warming. Whether our moral compass embraces them or not, principles and practices have been developed to guide decisions on behalf of all species that will uphold equality, safety, bio-diversity, and life for generations to come. Humans are so capable of brilliance that the science part is easy. Humans are so vulnerable that the spirituality is scrutinized. Seesaw.In his book, The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times, James L. Kugel observes that, in the Bible, when God speaks to people, they are “surprised, but not exactly bowled over.” Kugel suggests that the premodern self was, “semipermeable.” In other words, people didn’t experience their beings and bodies as fixed or separate from, but instead continuous with the natural world. Kugel also suggests that, not only were we more permeable, but that the Deity was experienced in ways that were far less abstract – at times even visible, accessible.As “premodern” beings, we understood that what we were seeking was not supernatural but Super Natural. Visible. Accessible. Cosmology tells us that 96% of the known universe is comprised of invisible energy. As inseparable parts of the known universe, this means that 4% of who we understand ourselves to be manifests as our physical being, while the remaining 96% is invisible energy. In this light, we are invited to perceive the Holy running through us, surrounding us and coursing throughout the activities of our daily round. The Super Natural isn’t the experience reserved for the most devout. The Super Natural is the experience that is accessible in each moment (visibly and invisibly) as we discern a right relationship with the beauty and complexity before us, and within us. Stunningly simple, and so easy to miss.Have we, in our highly sophisticated, peer-review vetted, post-modern arrogance made the magnitude of the Super Natural more difficult than it actually is? Yes. And it’s messy.The word sacrament is Latin and means “a sign of the sacred.” Enter, Spring! Cold mornings and warm afternoons, daffodils tenaciously appearing in newly fallen snow, mud and slush and flooded basements. This season is a mish-mash of ever-extending daylight hours alongside dramatic storms that flood river beds and paste delicate tree blossoms to the sidewalk. Springtime’s sacraments.The story of life cycles on Earth show us the both-and, push-pull, laboring that is needed to bring the winter into spring. It happens with struggle. The ice doesn’t “leave,” it transforms. It’s Super Natural. May our spiritual practice, then, be to embody our premodern permeability, allowing ourselves to be porous enough to entertain the new story. Let’s partake of this season’s sacraments as a reminder to bring the frayed stories into the present moment, and then let’s engage in the push-pull, calling upon the Super Natural to infuse our actions for justice and compassion, adaptation and love.~ Lauren Van Ham

Read online hereAbout the Author
Born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest, Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute.  Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Her passion and training in the fine arts, spirituality and Earth’s teachings has supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism.  Lauren’s work with Green Sangha (a Bay Area-based non-profit) is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of environmental activism taking place in religious America.  Her essay, “Way of the Eco-Chaplain,” appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women.  Lauren tends a private spiritual direction practice and serves as Dean for The Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, CA.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Laura
Recently my grandmother passed away very suddenly from an illness. I cared for her as she died, and my doctor now thinks I have PTSD. I’ve been experiencing crippling panic attacks about dying. I wish that I could say that I am a person of faith. I was raised in the Church but I don’t know what proof there is to believe. Listening to an NPR article about the vastness of the universe, thinking about my grandmother, or even thinking about the fact that my baby is 5 years old and I don’t know why the time passes so stupidly fast. I guess I was just hoping that you had something comforting to tell me.

A: By Rev. Roger Wolsey
 Dear Laura,First of all let me say that I’m so sorry about your loss. By the time you receive this response (due to our publishing schedule) it will have been several weeks since her death. How I respond to a person during acute crisis, and several weeks after - differs. So, I feel a bit freer to wax theological with you at this point. As a progressive Christian, who understands what that means in the way that I do, I tend to have a view on these matters that is close to how many of our Jewish friends do, i.e., that the main focus of faith is on the here and now – and it’s okay to be agnostic about whatever may happen next (heaven, the afterlife, etc). I don’t follow Jesus in order to go to Heaven later, I do it for the sake of experiencing wholeness/healing/well-being here and now, trusting that whatever happens when I die will take care of itself. 

According to the Gospels, Jesus believed in an afterlife, along with the Pharisees – as opposed to the Sadducees. He conveyed teachings about it to provide comfort and assurance to his disciples. To be honest, I’ve often not been sure about the existence of Heaven - it’s not been central to my faith at any rate - but I recently had the privilege of conducting a memorial service for a trans person who had taken his life. This fellow’s mother had a hard time with his transition from being her daughter to being her son. Two days after his death, she went to visit her very aged mother in an Alzheimer’s unit at a nursing home where she has been residing the past 5 years. For the past 4 years or so, this man’s grandmother wasn’t herself and was not able to interact well with family members who visited her – rarely even recognizing them. When his mother went to visit her mother “to tell her about” her “daughter’s” death she was expecting to pretty much be talking to herself – as her mother has largely not been present or communicable in the past year. But soon after she started talking, her aged mother exclaimed in a burst of lucidity, “He visited me last night! He came to me and he’s beautiful! I mean really beautiful! He wants us all to know that he’s okay, he’s doing well, and he’ll be waiting for us!” And then, just like that, this aged grandmother fell back into her default mode of not being present or responsive. 

Laura, all I can say is that I felt goosebumps as I heard this. I felt the truth of it – in my bones. Even though I’m a pastor, I have times of doubt and uncertainty, even about the existence of God – “God, are you really there or am I just talking to myself?” Hearing this story bolstered both my faith in God (in the panentheistic way that I do)– and in the reality of life/something/presence beyond what we know here and now. I was also reminded of how, when I was younger, I “felt” my grandfather visit me one night a few weeks after he died. I felt resonance. I re-membered.

I can’t explain it. And that’s okay. Unlike the liberal Christianity that progressive Christianity evolved from, there’s less of a need for us to be able to “explain” things. We can just hear them, feel them, and know. I realize that this sort of phenomenon/experience may seem subjective and capricious. As with all things, your mileage may vary. But, I pray that somehow even some portion of the essence of what that grieving mother shared with me might be sensed by you.~ Rev. Roger Wolsey

Read and share online hereAbout the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity; The Kissing Fish Facebook page; Roger’s Blog on Patheos “The Holy Kiss  |

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|  This Rabbi On That Rabbi 
A modern Portland, Oregon rabbi explains Jesus’s messages in a 6-Part Video Series. View this exclusive video content below.

Part 6 - Easter
 This morning, while walking to a local bakery that makes Passover matzah for me, I dialed my friend Christopher on the East coast.

As soon as he picked up, I sing-songed to him, "Kristos Anesti" – "Χριστός ἀνέστη!"
Chris responded, his voice warm with delight, “Alithos Anesti" – "Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!”

Translated into English, my line means “Christ is Risen!”
What Chris said is “Truly, He is Risen!" or "He Has Risen, indeed!"

Chris, still tickled by my annual phone call, continued, “You know, not just anybody gets a rabbi to call him and wish him Easter greetings in Greek.”

I countered, also playfully, “Not everyone, let alone not every non-Jew, wants to talk with a rabbi about God.”

I continued, quickly, “Not everyone understands what ‘God is risen’ means.”

I made the fast, conscious switch, moving the conversation from a personal talk about God to something a bit more academic. Talking about God in one’s life is not something a lot of people are comfortable doing – so it’s safer to talk about God and religion as abstract concepts.

Chris and I had a lovely, jovial, conversation about the words, about how instead of saying, “He is risen,” kids today might say, “He is riz.”

How I understand this
I am not a fan of gendered language to describe the divine, as I find it limits my conceptualization of the divine. To me, defining God as anything limits what is, by definition, beyond definition. And gender, especially as a binary concept, unfortunately, does this.

Here is how I hear the interchange:
"God is alive."
"Yes, of course, God is."

That's what Easter is about. The story of Jesus’s resurrection is a story about living with hope, knowing that no matter how much is lost, love and hope (and faith) will remain. (Note: in my mind, it behooves us to make a distinction between resurrection – which can happen to an idea, an ideal, like love and hope – and resuscitation, which is bringing a body back to life.)

To put the words “God is alive” and “Yes, of course, God is” in non-theological language, the call and response sounds like this:

"I have chosen to live in a world, and I know that I live in a world in which the miraculous exists, a world in which I see the power of love and hope and joy, a world in which I know there are more important things for me to pursue than self. I know that I am connected and I feel connected."
"Yes, of course, I do, too."

A lot of people conflate religious fundamentalists with us rational, intelligent folk who feel spiritually connected and occasionally use religious language (like the words ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’) to express our lives.

The words don't matter.
What matters is the feeling.

No minister or Christian who has said to me, "He is risen" was trying to convert me to Christianity. Nor were they trying to tell me that Jesus is the only way to salvation. They were, on their biggest holy day of the year, sharing with me, in the religious language of their culture "the good news" of Jesus’s resurrection. What they were trying to tell me is that they want to look me in the eye and share with me the notion that life is meaningful, important, beautiful, and holy.

And they want to know if I believe that, too!

That is why this rabbi is glad to say, “Indeed, He is risen.”

I’m not taking Jesus to be my personal Lord and savior – whatever you might imagine that phrase to mean. I’m simply using language – their language – to affirm what my tradition teaches me. That I have been liberated from Egypt.

Were it that Jews were to say to each other – “I was a slave to narrowness, but God liberated me,” and one’s fellow were to respond, “Indeed, indeed, I too, sister; I too, brother!” – that is what these words mean.

To anyone who asks me, "Do you see this life as miraculous?" I am glad to tell them that I do.

To Christopher, I will bear witness to the wonder that he and his family have borne witness to for centuries – Kristos Anesti. Yes, Christopher, I believe that our loved ones, that God, that ideas and that ideal exists, that these things are real and beyond concepts of life and death. Yes, yes, Christopher, Alithos Anesti."

To all who see that God transcends, I say, yes, yes, holiness abounds.
God bless.

~ Rabbi Brian

Rabbi Brian is the C.E.O. of Religion-Outside-The-Box, an internet-based, non-denominational congregation nourishing spiritual hunger. Find out more about newsletter, podcasts, videos, and other good ROTB.org is doing for thousands every week.

This Rabbi on That Rabbi is a co-production of Religion-Outside-The-Box and Progressing Spirit. You may purchase the series here.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Second Fundamental:
The Literal Accuracy of the Virgin Birth

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 11, 2007The story of Jesus’ birth has now been celebrated in pageants, Christmas cards and in hymns for almost two thousand years. The characters in this drama like Mary, Joseph, the Christ Child, the Shepherds and the Wise Men are familiar icons even in our secular society. The star in the East, Bethlehem, the manger and the angelic chorus elicit in almost all western people immediate mental images. Unknowingly we have also, most of the time quite unconsciously, expanded the details of this story so wondrously that we are shocked to discover that many of the things that we have always assumed are in the Bible are not there at all. For example, in the biblical story there is no mention that the Wise Men were three in number or that they rode on camels. The story has no donkey being led by Joseph on which the expectant Mary rode side saddle to Bethlehem. There is no search for a room in the inn, no innkeeper and no stable. There are no animals mentioned since there is no stable, which means that there were no cattle lowing, no sheep baaing, no night wind to say,” Do you see what I see?” All of these details have grown in our imagination as we have acted them out in pageants and sung about them in carols.Were the infancy narratives, which are found only in Matthew and Luke, but not in Paul, Mark or John, written to record the actual events that occurred on the night in which Jesus was born? There is no doubt that the answer to this question among biblical scholars is “Of course not!” All birth stories are by their very nature mythological. They are attempts to interpret retroactively the moment when a great person was born. A life has to become great before mythical details begin to gather about the moment of his or her birth. These details always seek to find signs of future greatness in that person’s infancy, but history they are not. To demonstrate that one has only to look at the assumptions made by the biblical birth narratives.Click here to read full essay.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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Announcements

Congratulations to Deshna Ubeda
Newly Ordained Interfaith Minister

All of us here at ProgressiveChristianity.org  and Progressing Spirit are proud to wish congratulations to our Director Deshna Ubeda who was ordained on Saturday March 23rd in Berkeley, CA by The Chaplaincy Institute as an Interfaith Minister.  

Deshna is Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit, where she has worked since 2006. She is an author, international speaker, and a visionary.  She is a lead author and editor on the children’s curriculum: A Joyful Path, Spiritual Curriculum. She co-authored the novel, Missing Mothers. She is the Executive Producer of Embrace Festival.

Please click here to send your congratulations to Deshna.    |

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Our mailing address is:
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