[Dialogue] 7/08/2021, Rev. Lauren Van Ham: The Mother Religion; Spong revisited

Thu Jul 8 05:28:41 PDT 2021

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The Mother Religion
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|  Essay by Rev. Lauren Van Ham MA
July 8, 2021A month ago, my husband and I were in the car at 4:30 in the morning.  We were returning to San Francisco from San Diego, and attempting to get ahead of the traffic that would be in L.A.  I was driving.  To my left was the Pacific Ocean spanning left-to-right; and shining from above?  Luna!  The full moon was reflecting a steady, kind glow saturating the water’s surface.  I was without words and Valentino, in his half-asleep state said, “Isn’t it amazing how gentle Earth is with us?  She’s so patient.”

In Her 4.5 billion years of being a planet, Earth has known great drama illustrated in superfluous gestures of creativity and supreme acts of destruction.  If we used only this as our backdrop for religion what would our religion consist of? 

Edgar Morin, a French philosopher and sociologist has thought a good deal about this and writes, “Such a religion would lack any providence, any shining hereafter, but would bind us together as fellows in the unknown adventures.  Such a religion would not have promises but roots: roots in our cultures… in planetary and human history; roots in life  and the stars that have forged the atoms of which we are made; roots in the cosmos where the particles were born and out of which our atoms were made….  Such a religion would involve a belief, like all religions but, unlike other religions that repress doubt through excessive zeal, it would make room for doubt within itself.  It would look out onto the abyss.”

Driving north that pre-dawn morning, Valentino and I were looking out onto the abyss.  As abysses go, it was a friendly one.  We were together and we were safe with no presenting threats.  But to see the moon and ocean in their untamed vastness brought us instantly out of our separateness into intimacy with Mystery.  We were sharing a moment in the unknown adventure that knows its roots, and makes room for doubt. For those few dazzling moments, we felt Earth’s fierce love and grounded equanimity. She was witnessing us and we were witnessing Her.  Being seen in this way, feels to me like Psalm 139:15-16: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.”

In a previous Progressing Spirit article, I mentioned the work of religious scholars who have tried to better understand the earliest mentions of “Original Sin.” In their careful review of etymology and translation, original sin might best be described as a place inside every single one of us that aches for the cosmic unity we left when we fell from the stars and took form as an embryo.  Our profound homesickness and efforts to restore the fragments (Tikkun Olam), define how we live, for better or for worse, consciously and unconsciously.  This beautiful and insatiable heartache makes me want… my Mom.

In 2016, research was shared reporting that dolphin mothers[i] sing to their infants while they are in the womb and for some time after so that the babies can learn their names.  Apparently, the rest of the pod encourages this learning to happen by quieting their own usual sounds.  Did your Mother sing you your name? 

The religion that Morin describes, suggests there are ways to feel our cosmic roots, or put differently: to tap the deeper knowing we carry about our Mother.  Not only our biological Moms, our adopted Moms, or our symbolic Moms but our Great Mom, the one described in Genesis 3 as, “the mother of all living.”  You know, the one, “who beheld our unformed substance even as we were woven in the depths of earth?”  That one.  Whether or not your biological mom sang your name to you in utero, the mother of all living did.  And do you know what?

She is singing to us still.

She is singing our names and inviting us to be part of the living religion –- the Mother Religion -- that does not repress doubt with excessive zeal.  Our Mother Religion is living, loving, generous, patient, interdependent, ebbing and flowing.  And did I say patient?  Doubt comes, doubt goes.  It’s the repression that erodes us.  It’s the oppression that drowns out the mother’s song.  How do we hear the notes again? 

Honor your mother. 

It’s mentioned a number of times in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but what does this instruction mean really? Well, we honor Her by buying organic and composting.  We honor Her by dismantling systemic injustice.  We honor Her by voting for climate emergency resolutions and attending shareholders’ meetings to demand equity for all people.  We honor Her by repairing painful stories in our families as and where we can. We honor her by planting flowers for the pollinators, and harvesting rainwater and driving less.  We honor Her by calling our Mothers and by listening to the next generation.  We must do all of this -- and whatever else is within our capacity, too -- but “honor your mother” isn’t a list of activities or boxes to check; it’s a religion to practice.  A talk to walk. 

I don’t know a whole lot about dolphins and the vigilance required to stay safe in the open seas.  I know that they travel together and, now we know that the pods support the young ones in learning their names.  Perhaps this is the most important thing – to travel and rest together, to play and eat and look out for each other, and if you become separated or danger befalls you, to know your name.  To carry your mother’s song within you, so that – no matter what -- you are always at home.  Maybe Jesus, walking in the sands of the Middle East, felt this marine mammal wisdom in his own DNA.  Maybe Harriet Tubman, could hear the honking of geese, pointing her North on those moonless nights. 

Today, in their distracting and seductive way, modernity and progress have sometimes convinced us that we can avoid our fragile existence, or that technology can replace the song, improve the song.  But our temporary lives and our deep longing is still there.  What can we learn from our more-than-human relatives about vulnerability and death?  Isn’t this the rub that all religion is trying to soften?  Honoring our mother, is about understanding our essence as fleeting and eternal.  We are held.  We are named.  It cannot be otherwise.

Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu and so many other wise teachers and mystics remind us to find our way home by seeing ourselves in all that is living, animate and inanimate.  Messages of scarcity and superiority take us down paths of fear and separation.  We can behave so badly, but that is not the song our Mother sings us.  The words of Her song are medicine just like the lyrics in Ysaye Barnwell’s piece, Wanting Memories:

I thought that you were gone but now I know you're with me.
You are the voice that whispers all I need to hear.
I know that I am you and you are me and we are one.
I know that who I am is numbered in each grain of sand.
I know that I've been blessed again and over again.  

We have so much to learn and evolutionarily speaking, we are barely in elementary school.  Honor your Mother is about showing up for class with the willingness to be seen and taught by the ones who don’t look like us.  When we listen, really listen, we honor our Mother because we hear all that lives.  It is moving in Her, and you and I – we – belong, doubts and all.  In our Mother, we are fearfully and wonderfully made and we cannot ever fall away from our eternal, cosmic home.

~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham MA

Read online here.

About the Author
Rev. Lauren Van Ham, MA was 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). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings have supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism.  Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Her ideas can be heard on Vennly, an app that shares perspectives from spiritual and community leaders across different backgrounds and traditions. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice; and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.[i] I learned about this study reading a book I have loved and recommend: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2020, AK Press)
[ii]   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UJLJOaKW_0  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Terry

Is the Church ever going to address the antisemitism in our liturgy? The Jew hating is both blatant and subtle in the scriptures we read from Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and early Paul. You’d think 2,000 years of accusing the Jews of killing Jesus, being money grubbers, etc. was enough of this ugly stereotype. It is time the Church confronted its role in perpetuating all the antisemitism the first century Church created and the Church has perpetuated since.

A: By Rev. Roger Wolsey
 Dear Terry,Thank you for your question. It is a deeply pastoral one coming from a true place of awareness and concern. Indeed, many of the liturgies utilized in the regular worship services in quite a few denominations contain language that’s offensive to our Jewish friends. This is particularly noticed in certain Calls to Worship; Words of Institution and the Great Thanksgiving that are part of the sacrament of Holy Communion; and especially evident in many of the readings shared as part of special services during Holy Week prior to Easter Sunday. Good Friday most notably.

One piece of this is the readings from the Bible assigned on given days from the Lectionary. When the Gospel of John is featured, this is even more evident still.

The way John puts it, Pontius Pilate and Rome didn't really want to kill Jesus, it was the Jews who wanted Jesus dead. As Dr. Elaine Pagels has indicated, as each of the Gospels were written chronologically they became increasingly more anti-Semitic in that they started shifting the blame away from Rome for the death of Jesus and onto the Jews. The Gospel of John is the zenith of this - with Pilate seemingly not really wanting to kill him – he’s portrayed as reluctantly allowing the execution due to the alleged pressure from “the Jews.” This is what led to Luther being so anti-Semitic. Which is in part what led Hitler to do what he did. This is demonstrated in several books and articles. For the record: Pontius Pilate was a ruthless killer and he wouldn't've bothered to meet in person with anyone slated to be executed, let alone be concerned about any public pressures or preferences.

I know of quite a few progressive Christian congregations that are modifying the language used in liturgies – taking care to not blame “the Jews” for Jesus’ death. If they work with the texts from John for Good Friday, they’ll modify the wording to instead say “the public”, “the citizens”, “the mob”, “the masses”, etc. Some churches avoid using the texts from John re: Jesus death all together. In the same way that some churches modify the lyrics of old hymns to avoid condoning the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, pastors and lay leaders should feel empowered to modify the texts for the Words of Institution and the Great Thanksgiving, as well as all denominational liturgies. Moreover, we’d do well to have a revision denominational liturgies all together, as well as calling for another revision of the Revised Common Lectionary. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

A Letter From Bishop Spong

Bishop John Shelby Spong
July 8, 2021My Dear Friends,

Please accept my sincere thanks for the cards and letters sent to me on the occasion of my 90th birthday. I experienced the joy of reliving moments of my life in reading them.  They were more than 500 in number and came from every continent of this earth except for the Arctic and Antarctic regions!  I read them with joy.  I soon realized that I could never respond to them individually, so I hope you can accept this communication.

Many of you asked for an update on my health. I had the stroke on September 12, 2016 in Marquette, Michigan, where I  was lecturing.  The right side of my body was paralyzed. I could not walk nor use my right arm or hand. Fortunately that did not last and by a host of physical therapies, I can today walk (with a cane) and I can use every part of my body save my right hand. It feels asleep all the  time.  I can not write in a legible fashion and 
cannot even sign a check. It is a stage of life that seemed strange at first -- not able to write even a letter, but I have accepted my limitation and I live in the love of my wife Christine and my daughters and grandchildren.

A number of you inquired about my last book Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today.  It was due at Harper/Collins on December 31, 2016. I had yet to do the task of writing the conclusion and doing the editorial work that separates the wheat from the chaff!  Not being able to write legibly was a problem. I dictated the final chapters to my wife and she typed them and we edited it together.  We got it in on the deadline and it was published in 2018! The downside came when I could not go on tour with the book.  We had already stated that this was the final book of my career.  I hope it was a fitting conclusion. It has had to grow by word of mouth, but that is not all bad. I am proud of it! I feel completed. Thanks for asking.

Sincerely yours,

John S. (Jack) Spong   |

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Announcements

Letting Go - 2021

Our consumer culture teaches that getting more stuff and holding on to it is the way to riches. Our ego-driven society encourages us to seek power and enjoy being the center of attention.But the spiritual life emphasizes other things.
Online July 12, 2021 - August 1, 2021  Read on....  |

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