[Dialogue] 8/12/2021, Progressing Spirit, Toni Anne Reynolds: Don’t Pay Them No Mind; Spong revisited

[Ellie Stock]

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Don’t Pay Them No Mind
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|  Essay by Toni Anne Reynolds
August 12, 2021
I have been in the midst of several transitions over the past few weeks. A dear friend called to check in with me about how things were going. I shared with her what was on my mind, nothing too intense. I’m settling into the new spaces well enough, but that day I shared about some anxiety that was coming up around a potentially problematic dynamic with a new character in my life. My friend happens to know this person, too, quite a bit better than I do. She simply mentioned that this character can invite complications from time to time but ultimately there’s nothing to stress about. We moved on to other topics and eventually began to approached the end of our conversation.  As we briefly recapped the topics we covered, wishing each other well on the most pressing issues, I heard my friend mention this new character and say, “…don’t pay them no mind”. I giggled to myself. It was great advice, a simple way to say “chill out, Toni.” What made me laugh is that I hadn’t heard that phrase since my aunt passed away years ago. In general, I’m not sure I’ve heard many peers use the saying. In my mind it’s one of those wisdom gems that elders typically gift to young ones. My aunt was one of those elders who shared the treasure of this phrase. She was the champion of not paying “them” any mind, keeping herself focused and free of unnecessary worry.
 
The gravity of the phrase intensified a few days later. I was talking with yet another friend about life these days. We explored a whole separate set of topics, life is vast, after all. And still, I heard friend number two offer, “don’t pay them no mind”. I had to laugh again. I talk to these friends often. They have heard two too many anxious reports from me as I pretend to be an adult, but never have I heard them say this particular phrase to me. Now, here it was popping up twice in three days.
 
Hearing the phrase again helped me get clear about why it’s such a precious piece of advice. Suddenly it was the word “pay” that helped me sink into the impact this phrase can have. My partner and I have been using the word a lot lately. “Did you pay the electric bill?” “Want to replace the couch when we finally pay off the credit card?” It’s always relative to money, obviously, but I think that’s why I heard it differently in this saying. Instead of talking about dollars that become precious because they are hard earned, my friends, and aunt, were talking about precious attention.
 
“Don’t pay them no mind.” 
 
It’s been an interesting experiment to consider my attention as a form of currency. Though I’m not exactly thrilled with the capitalist framework, I’ve benefited from considering my focus as a resource, and my general head space as a bank of its own. How I “spend” from it matters not just for myself, but also for the people around me.
 
It is not the idea of the mind as a resource that is novel for me. It’s the truth that experientially, the mind is in some sense always turned on. It functions as one of the lamps with which we make sense of our walk in this world. Its finite nature as well as the real-time decisions we make about it can be missed. Just like we can pay attention to our habits with our financial resources, attention to our mental faculties, and what we focus it on is important. However, doing the latter takes a bit more “stepping back”; the kind that is afforded us during those “Eureka” moments wherein seemingly common, old and mundane pieces of advice – like this one – take on a new life.
 
Two major questions arose for me in this lightbulb moment that I want to re-emphasize for us, since they will not be new to many. We know we have choice about our mental exertions to some extent. But, how much do we remain in awareness of that? Especially in the moments when we can actually make decisions about them. How much do we remain in enough awareness to make the choice? And, what are we doing to address any deficit therein?

The other question, which seems to have more to do with our power of living life and learning is this: How much power do we actually have to make the choice about what we ‘pay mind to’? Just as life circumstances can take away the power, we have to make decisions about our financial resources, how does this same life, especially the aspects that have to do with our inner health, our spiritual growth and our relational well-being, also dictate what our mind must be paid to? In what cases does resisting such calls of nature lead us to more harm than good? In what cases are we supposed to push back at the wheel of life for better sanity? The specifics of these answers will differ for each person, their needs and their spiritual make-up. But it is definitely worth further exploring – there may be more eureka moments adding flesh and deeper meaning to the mundane answers that have been dangling before our faces.
 
I truly didn’t think I had been giving a lot of mental attention to the things I shared with my friend. But when pressed to stop myself from paying with my mind that’s the sneaky, and equally powerful, aspect about our minds - there’s always something going on. Without careful attention to observe the mind, to learn how it prefers to wander and what it likes to stick to, we can go a full day paying attention to things that either 1) don’t deserve our attention or, 2) we don’t truly desire to invest in. As was the case with me, I didn’t even realize I was pointing that much of my headspace in a direction that was inconsequential.
 
I don’t enjoy pointing out problems or concerns without finding practical means to address them. Even if the practical options are inadequate, making some movement toward balance is important. In the realm of this issue of “paying mind” I’m reminded of the Christian practice of reading the Psalms. My dad reads one psalm every day for a week before he leaves for work, and the same one before he goes to sleep. I recently learned this about him, and I respect the practice. Not as a way of evading any issues, but as a way of settling the mind, making space for new understandings. A more recent practice of my own has been to do morning pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Being able to read previous entries helps me see undercurrents to my mental patterns that I just don’t catch the same way with meditation. There are so many paths to peace of mind, these are just a few I know to work for myself or loved ones. Whatever your preferred method is, I hope it helps you to spend your attention with the most return on investment.

~ Toni Anne Reynolds


Read online here

About the Author
Minister Toni Anne Reynolds is committed to singing flesh onto the bones of the Christian tradition by incorporating recently found texts of the ancient world into liturgy, sermons, and poetry. Toni’s Christianity forms a holy trinity with the psychological medicine of Tibetan Buddhism and the eternal Life found in Yoruba traditions. Balanced in an eclectic faith and focused in theology, Toni’s ministry offers a unique perspective on life, theology, and spirituality.
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Question & Answer

 

Q: By A Reader

How can mainstream churches be more inclusive of  Rewilding?


A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal
 
Dear Reader,

As a pastor of a mainline church and as a nature-based human development guide and founder of a Wild Church, I ask myself that question everyday.

In part, your question depends on what you (we) mean by “Rewilding”? There is the sort of “conservation language” sense of rewilding — protecting wild places and letting the land return to its original, undomesticated state. There is also a human developmental sense of Rewilding, which is to say cultivating deeper authenticity and wholeness as individuals and communities, including renewing a deeper connection with the land itself that moves beyond classical “stewardship” of the Creation (still rooted in a separation or split of humanity from nature) toward something like a “participation with” the Creation.

>From my own experience with Seminary of the Wild as an edge-walker and bridge between institutional religion and new, emerging visions of eco-spirituality, faith and action, there are many layers of support that can contribute to the larger work of Rewilding.

The first is the conservation layer, or “Creation care” — stopping destructive practices to the ecosystem through education, awareness and advocacy work. This is a really important layer. Many churches never learned (and faith leaders never equipped) or had the language to connect our theology with the greater ecology in a way that produces deep and sustainable change in our congregations and communities - not just change in theology and practice, but a comprehensive change of consciousness. Unfortunately seminaries are still largely geared toward engaging the mind (rather than the body, emotions, natural world, and psyche) to effect change which is really the very upper layer. Mainstream congregations need to create a container of leadership to explore what “rewilding” really means, how to translate it to the congregation in a way that speaks broadly to both conservative and liberal elements, and why it is the greatest and most urgent act of Christian love in our times. From the perspective of Scripture, how is “rewilding” core to the gospel (i.e. Romans chapters 8 and 12), how is it exemplified in Christ and part of the “new wineskins” needed to contain this new consciousness?

The second layer of “rewilding” is how we experience the Self, God and Earth in the first place. This “rewilding” work is deeper than education, sustainability and conservation practices. It is moving into what Norwegian philosopher Arne Ness calls, Deep Ecology. It entails a rewilding of the Self through community and practices that can get at the underlying psycho-spiritual structures while cultivating greater wholeness, aliveness, and leadership capacities. Again, in a mainline church, a small group of thoughtful and dedicated individuals might be tasked with exploring a growing number of organizations that already do this work and plan how to introduce a viable vision to the leadership of the church. 

~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Matthew Syrdal MDiv. lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology, Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt is a coach and a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited


Examining the Story of the Cross, Part II:
Did the Crucifixion of Jesus Occur at Passover?

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
March 9, 2011
It is a common assumption that the crucifixion of Jesus took place in the context of the Jewish observance of Passover.  That is certainly the point of view developed in each of the four gospels.  Mark portrays the journey of Jesus and his followers to Jerusalem, which eventuated in the crucifixion, to have been for the sole purpose of celebrating the Passover.  Matthew and Luke leaning on this Marcan source repeated that tradition and thus together they tended to set this connection in stone. Mark later portrays Jesus in Jerusalem as making elaborate preparations for eating the Passover with his disciples.  From the time of the Deuteronomic reforms in the latter years of the seventh century BCE to the time of Jesus, Jerusalem has been the setting in which the Passover was traditionally to be observed.  Each of the first three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) goes to great lengths to identify the last supper with the Passover meal, making this assumption to be an almost unchallenged one in Christian history.  Recent scholarship has, however, begun to loosen this connection and to raise lots of questions about this tradition.

The first biblical detail that raised a challenge was found in the Fourth Gospel.  John separates himself from the conclusions of the earlier gospels by stating quite plainly that the last supper was not a Passover meal.  It was in this gospel alone a Kibburah meal, that is, a fellowship meal observed in anticipation of the Passover.  John suggests that the Passover meal that year came not on the night before the crucifixion, but on the evening of the day in which the crucifixion occurred.  In this way, John was able to identify the death of Jesus more closely with the killing of the Paschal Lamb, since both executions took place on what came to be called Good Friday.  This was only a slight shift in John, but it was the first destabilizing observation.

When we go back and read Paul’s story of the institution of the last supper (I Cor.11), we note that Paul dates this meal only with the words, “On the night in which he was handed over.”  We have read Paul for so long through the lens of the later gospels that we have simply made the assumption that the “handing over” of Jesus was done at the time of the Passover.  Yet nowhere does Paul make that identification.  Perhaps the time has come for us to follow the historical order and to read the gospels through the lens of Paul and not the other way around.

Paul, in this same epistle, does identify Jesus with the Lamb of Passover (I Cor. 5:7) when he says that “Christ, our new Paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.”  That seems, however, to be more of a homiletical device than it was a liturgical practice. It was clear that by the time of Paul the death of Jesus had been identified by the Jewish followers of Jesus in terms of the two lambs that were put to death as important elements in Jewish worship.  One of these lambs was the Paschal Lamb of Passover, whose blood protected the Israelites from death in Egypt when the last plague, the death of the first born in every household, was carried out in God’s plan to free the Hebrews from slavery at the hands of the Egyptians.  The second was the animal (normally a lamb without scratch, bruise or broken bone, i.e. physically perfect) sacrificed to take away the sins of the people in the liturgy they called Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.  These theological identifications with the death of Jesus appear to have been made early, but that original interpretive process did not imply or even suggest that the crucifixion occurred in the context of either the Passover celebration or Yom Kippur.  It also doesn’t rule it out, I might add, it only loosens the connection and leads us to search for additional clues.

We look for those clues beginning in Mark’s gospel which was the first place in which the story of the crucifixion was told in the context of the Passover celebration.  In this Marcan narrative a couple of details quickly grab our imagination.  First, Mark suggests that a triumphal procession into Jerusalem occurred on the Sunday before the crucifixion took place on Friday.  As part of that procession, Mark tells us that the crowd waved “leafy branches” as they walked.  Passover, however, was celebrated on the 14th and 15th days of the month of Nissan, which would place it on our calendars somewhere between late March and early April.  This means that if this triumphal procession was historical it would have occurred a week earlier, which would run the date of the procession back deeper into March at the earliest and earlier in April at the latest.  Where at that time of year did these followers get leafy branches?  There are no leafy branches that early in the year in the Middle East where Jerusalem is located, so the date of Jesus’ crucifixion and its connection with the Passover begins to wobble visibly.

When Matthew incorporated Mark’s story into his own gospel about a decade later, he omitted the word “leafy” from his text.  Perhaps Matthew recognized that the presence of leafy branches in late March was a problem, so he has the disciples all wave only branches, not leafy branches.  Sticks, however, don’t wave.  It is only the leaves that give one the wavy sensation.

About a decade after Matthew, Luke wrote his gospel.  Once again, like Matthew, he had Mark in front of him and he too seemed to recognize that leafy branches in late March were a problem.  So he omitted not just the leaves but also the branches, telling the story only of the people laying down their garments on the path in front of Jesus.  Even that detail, however, probably assumes a warmer climate than would be normal in late March in Jerusalem,  People do not shed their outer garments in cold weather.

It is interesting to note that only when we reach John, who wrote his gospel between 95-100, which makes it a late tenth decade piece of writing, do these branches become palm branches with evergreen leaves.  That was John’s way of solving the problem.  So, our first clue is that at least in this detail, the original passion story suggests that the date of the crucifixion might have been different from a Passover setting in the late winter to early spring.

A deeper search of Mark reveals that he gives us yet another clue.  It is found in a strange narrative that Mark places on the day after the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem.  In Mark’s story this Sunday procession went to the Temple where Jesus only looked around at the money changers and then he and his disciples went to Bethany, a couple of miles outside Jerusalem to spend the night.  Bethany is identified elsewhere in the New Testament as the home of Mary and Martha, so perhaps they spent the night there.  The next morning Mark says that Jesus and his followers returned to Jerusalem.  This was to be, Mark proceeds to tell us, the day of the “Cleansing of the Temple” when Jesus drove out the money changers.  On his way to the city Mark says that Jesus was hungry and, seeing a fig tree in the distance, he went to it in search of fruit.  The fig tree, however, was bare.  Fig trees in the northern hemisphere do not bear fruit in late March.  Disappointed that his hunger was not satisfied Mark says that Jesus laid a curse on the fig tree.  When they returned to Bethany that evening following the cleansing of the Temple episode, they noted that the fig tree had in fact shriveled up and died.  To say the least this is a strange story and for Jesus to lay a curse on the fig tree for not producing fruit in March is quite un-Jesus like.  Is it possible that that this story was originally located in the fall season when figs should appear on fig trees, but as the crucifixion was brought liturgically into being observed at the time of the Passover, this story was dragged along with the crucifixion story creating this strange anomaly?  We file that clue and press on.

Next, we examine a Jewish celebration about which most Christians are uninformed, but which seems to be reflected in the Palm Sunday account in the gospels.  The Jews observed in the fall of the year a festival called Sukkoth or Tabernacles.  It was an eight-day harvest celebration marked by a liturgical procession to and around the Temple.  The people in the procession normally carried in their right hands something called a lulab that they waved as they walked.  This lulab was a group of branches tied together, made of willow, myrtle and palm. These fall branches were leafy and they waved.  As these worshipers marched, they recited Psalm 118 that says “Hosanna – Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  It is clear that the Palm Sunday story, as we have received it, is closely associated with and draws some of its content from Sukkoth, a harvest festival celebrated in the fall of the year when fig trees do bear fruit.

Perhaps these bits of data suggest that the crucifixion of Jesus actually occurred in the fall of the year at the time of the harvest and not at the time of the Passover in the early spring.  When, however, the death of Jesus began to be interpreted in terms of the death of the Paschal Lamb then the two events were slowly drawn together until the crucifixion of Jesus came to be interpreted as having occurred in the context of the observance of the Passover itself. This connection certainly heightened the identification of the crucifixion of Jesus with the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb.  Both deaths were said to have had the power to hurl back death itself.  So we entertain the possibility that the Passover originally might not actually have been the historical setting of the crucifixion, but rather that over time, the Passover became the focus through which the crucifixion was interpreted.  This would mean that the connection between the two was liturgical rather than historical.  This might further suggest that if we wanted to read the passion story properly we should interpret it as liturgy seeking its meaning, rather than as history, which would lead us to speculate on whether or not it actually happened the way it is described.  That opens us to all kinds of new possibilities.  It is a theory worthy of consideration.  We will press this inquiry even deeper as this series continues.

~  John Shelby Spong
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Announcements

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Online + Free - August 19, 2021 - August 21, 2021Global Ministries University is collaborating with the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue and Islamic Studies (IRDIS) and State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Indonesia in the “Building Human Solidarity in the Light of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter, Fratelli Tutti ” international interfaith conference.  READ ON ...  |

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