[Oe List ...] 4/22/2021, Progressing Spirit: Toni Anne Reynolds: Habits Can Help or Hurt…; Spong revisited

Fri Apr 23 15:35:23 PDT 2021

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Habits Can Help or Hurt…
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|  Essay by Toni Anne Reynolds

About a year ago my partner and I relocated. The tale of doing so in the midst of a global pandemic makes great content for an SNL episode. Some of the scenes were tragic, some definitely hilarious, and others would include some profundity. One of the striking moments in the move happened as we traveled the road that leads to our new home. Surrounded by water, we saw all sorts of water fowl, most of which cannot be found on the mighty river Hudson where we had recently departed. Just off of this road we spotted two nesting Ospreys. Right off of the dock of a lonely bed and breakfast, we watched these two birds tend to their giant nest. As days went to weeks, extra heads popped up just over the edge of the nest. The locals say that this couple of hawks have been returning to this dock for at least the last three years to hatch more chicks. Despite the roar of pick-up trucks, hurricane winds, and dozens of fishing boats, these precious birds are left alone to do what they do. The environment in which they build their yearly home seems to support them well.

The nature that dwells around our new home is just as beautiful to us. However, there are some challenges. Living below sea level, surrounded by water, means there are water moccasins, snapping turtles, and even occasional alligators. We’ve yet to come face to face with the most intense creatures in nature’s roster, but there have been less dramatic encounters with some other-than-human neighbors that are worthy of note. It took us about two weeks to realize it, but a wasp had been nesting in the gap between our back door and the screen door. Sneaking in through the smallest crack in the screen door, this wasp had managed to build a nest about the size of a golf ball. I was immediately conflicted. Though I do not like flying or crawling things in my living space, I am the kind who will find a cup and a piece of paper to capture the critter and escort it outside of our home. In this case, I didn’t know what to do. “We can manage without using the back door”, I thought. “A wasp nest can get to be the size of a basketball, or even bigger in some cases,” said Google. So, there it was decided. The nest had to go.

These two examples get me thinking about a number of things. As I watch the United States begin to “reopen” after an already clumsy response to COVID 19, I’m mostly thinking about the decision-making process behind our regular habits. We have experienced a great disruption to our habits as the pandemic required a variety of shifts. Whether we liked the changes or not, they forced us to make new habits. Some of those habits have led to incredible bursts of innovation, and others have created a new kind of strain and suffering. Though it’s been only one year of our lives, we are likely to be responding to this past year of intense change for the foreseeable future. This means we get to be strategic about how we build habits as yet another shift is beginning to take place.

While I am not personally optimistic about the idea of opening things up with the speed I see in my local community, it is happening. Without much help I find myself questioning if I will be more like the Osprey or the wasp.

These ospreys have return to this particular dock because it works for them, even through difficulty. For a few years they have successfully reared the next generations of osprey. It makes sense for them to return to the dock again this spring for another round of generating. Despite the disturbances of two hurricanes, they found a way to push through and be well in doing so. The wasp, though it may not be the same wasp as last year, has returned to the space between our back doors. It is still not a good place to build a giant complex for baby wasps. If no one lived in the building it would be a different story. My grandmother, who has lived in the house for the last 30 years, said she’s been removing wasps from that door way for “a long time now”. She has three kinds of wasp killer under her sink, which seems excessive to me but they seem to persist. I wonder how many times it, or other wasps, will return to this 2-inch gap only to be forcibly relocated. It seems that there’s a wasp realtor spreading the word about this location without sharing the fact that it is a very temporary rental location. I know it’s not quite fair to compare the habits of two very different creatures. But I needed some way to illustrate the way our choices can affect our livelihood. I also needed some way to situate that illustration inside the very real context of our shared pandemic environment.

We may very well be on the upswing. I hear lots of reports and celebrities talk about the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, but the habits we employ will make the way there. We can be osprey, returning to sites, employing practices that can withstand adversity. We can also be wasps, returning to gaps that are too small for us, in environments that do not serve our best interests. While most of life holds moments that we do not control, the habits we live by are most definitely within our reach.

Despite the very wild hurricane year we have endured, we are still here to see another day. The choices we make, the relationships we nurture, the environments we spend our time nesting in, will make all the difference in our outcome. Knowing that the hammer of the pandemic landed harder on some communities than it did others means that each of us will have to navigate this transition with a personal type of discernment. The harder it was to survive the past year, the more support you may need as this so called “light at the end of the tunnel” approaches. Find the organizations, online communities, hotlines, resources that are available to help you out of the tunnel. If you feel like you fared it pretty well, consider how you can solidify the stuff that’s going well for you at the moment. The more stable you are through the upcoming/currently happening shift, the easier it will be to serve your community in meaningful ways.
~ 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 Alex

God, as viewed in the Old Testament is a God who demands that we please him. He was a God of Punishment, and reward. Those who pleased him were rewarded and those who offended him were punished. Because they lived in a pre-Newtonian age God also controlled the weather and disease. Jesus came to teach us that this isn’t so. God loves us unconditionally. We do not have to please him in order to be accepted. God’s world is one of natural consequences. But the Church continued to operate in OT ways, salvation had to be earned and we were all sinners. Parents also use punishment and reward even though studies establish that punishment does not work, NEVER. When will the Church follow and show the teachings of Jesus and teach parents to discipline by using consequences within the limits of safety?

A: By Rev. Fran Pratt
 Dear Alex,It sounds like you have some pretty definite ideas about parenting, which I appreciate and mostly agree with. I am trying to raise my own children to understand the natural consequences of their actions, and to move away from the “good behavior = acceptance” parenting paradigm. I’m trying to raise them gently, intuitively, and to validate their authenticity and inner voices.

I even agree with you that there is a theological basis for making some parenting decisions, and that bad theology translates to bad (harmful) parenting practices. I myself was raised in the authoritarian way typical of Evangelical patriarchal churchy people in the 80’s and 90’s. I sustained much harm and have had many, many broken paradigms and patterns to break free of, despite the fact that I was well-cared-for by loving parents who did their best. But your question of WHEN your ideas as presented might be adopted by the larger Church, or even the smaller stream of Progressive Christian Churches … I could not possibly conjecture. 

I’ll tell you this: I’m hopeful. In my generation and pastoral work I see and interact with LOTS of thoughtful, kind, attentive, intuitive, gentle and intentional parents. I have so many friends whom I look up to as parenting models and whom I call when I’m in a parenting quandary. If you knew my friends you’d be hopeful too. I’d venture to guess that my own generation is parenting more diligently and more thoughtfully than any generation before - they/we have learned psychology, read studies and data, hire therapists, do our inner work, own our mistakes, apologize to our kids when we get it wrong. We expect ourselves and our kids to be imperfect and go with that perfectly imperfect flow. 

I’d encourage you to a) be encouraged and b) be non-judgmental. You may consider yourself an expert and your ideas about parenting may be the best ideas. But that doesn’t mean everyone else is going to be ready at the same time to adopt them, nor that that is their particular path, nor have you met every kid or parented through every tricky situation. You’ll probably have to be patient with people. Parenting is hard and Covid Parenting is even harder. These major paradigm shifts take time but they ARE happening. ~ Rev. Fran Pratt

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas.  |

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|  Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook!  |

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|  This Week's Featured Author
 Brian McLaren
A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith

A New Kind of Christianity is Brian D. McLaren’s much anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough work of the emergent-church movement, A New Kind of Christian. In this controversial and thought-provoking book, McLaren explores the questions that will determine the shape of Christianity for the next 500 years.   
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 Thank you for enjoying our free Q&A each week. We would like to introduce you to our subscription newsletter with thousands of subscribers around the globe.  Learn more about our history here.Progressing Spirit challenges the authors whom you have enjoyed reading in the free Q&A, who are some of the world’s top thinkers, to offer their best insights about what’s happening on the leading edge in an exclusive column sent weekly. Whether it’s about what will happen with the currently declining Church, what new models of intentional spiritual community may look like, or how we take part in the quest for equality and inclusivity, these conversations and many more are deeply explored by best selling authors, social leaders, and cutting edge innovators. 

To sign up is only $3 per month or $30 per year - this helps offset the payment to these wonderful authors.  In addition to the exclusive column, you will receive a weekly Q&A based on questions from our readers, plus a Bishop Spong revisited column, as well as access to the full Archive of Bishop John Shelby Spong and our other authors!    |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

China Revisited, Part III

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
September 23, 2010There are no Gideon Bibles in the hotel rooms of modern China. There are not even books expressing the beauty of Buddhism, Taoism or the writings of Confucius. There is not even the last will and testament of Conrad Hilton! The emphasis of this nation is almost totally on material well being. I experienced religion in China as almost non-existent at best, still viewed with hostility at worst. In our time in this ancient land, I saw only two pagodas and both were places for tourists to visit and not places in which people might worship. I saw no Buddhist temples and no statues of Buddha to which human yearnings might be expressed. The only Buddhas I saw were in the tourist shops and they were icons of the fat Buddha, the laughing Buddha. One Chinese guide referred to obese American tourists as having “Buddha bellies” and told us that the purpose of the statues of the fat Buddha was that by rubbing the Buddha’s belly one could have good luck. That was as close to a religious motif as I experienced. In Thailand several years ago, Buddhist monks in their distinctive orange garb were a familiar public sight and occupied an honored position in the culture’s fabric. During the latter stages of the Vietnam War, the public immolation of Buddhist monks was a powerful, intense and effective protest against that war and became a world wide story.

In all of the lectures and briefings heard while in China, religion was mentioned only once and that was pejoratively. The Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation, we were told, has served only the purpose of keeping people content with their then dismal status, since Buddhism promised that by being content with their lot now, they would gain for themselves a more favorable status in the next incarnation. Religion, they said, had been nothing more than a tool of the wealthy with which to control and to pacify the masses. It was an opiate for the people, which they were eager to erase from their memories.

>From time to time an allusion to religion would come up tangentially. In a presentation on China’s “one child per family” policy, the government, we were told, made birth control devices, principally the contraceptive pill and condoms, universally and freely available without any protest from any religious source.

In the discussion about determining the health and sex of the unborn, we were told that abortion for either a defective fetus or an unwanted gender was both government-sponsored and freely available. Once again, there was no debate, we were told, from any religious source. We also learned from background reading that during the implementation and enforcement of this one child per family policy, forced sterilization of women was widespread. When second pregnancies occurred, forced abortions were ruthlessly carried out even in the third trimester or at near term. The state’s right to control the population of the people was not treated differently from its controlling the use of the land or engineering the growth of cattle or sheep. The goals might well be laudatory but the tactics used were frequently a violation of the most basic of human freedoms.

I met one person who admitted to being a Buddhist only to amend that statement quickly by saying “I was raised as a Buddhist.” When asked what she meant, she replied, “Buddhism is an internal thing. It is no longer an external religion. No one attends a Buddhist temple or participates in Buddhist worship.” The closest thing to a cultural religious celebration, she said, was the observance of the Chinese New Year. It appeared that religion had become so benign that no government energy was needed to oppose its influence. I found China to be the most secular, post-religious culture I have ever encountered.

On an earlier trip to China in 1988, I had actually felt encouraged by what I saw of the Chinese Christian movement. It was small and statistically irrelevant as a force in China’s burgeoning population, but it seemed to me to possess integrity since it had shed its ties to western powers, abandoned western denominational structures and was well on its way to becoming indigenously Chinese. In that year I preached in a packed Chinese Christian church in Shanghai and visited a theological seminary where candidates for ordination were being trained.

During its enforced exile, Chinese Christianity had become primarily a lay-led, largely non-institutional movement. On this trip, however, I saw no evidence of its presence. I am aware of the Vatican’s continuing struggle over who has the right to name China’s Catholic leaders, but while that might be a big issue in Rome it is not significant in China. The government officially is not anti-religious, but it is anti-any outside authority being imposed on anything Chinese.

Two things came to my mind as I tried to understand China’s emerging future. One was a reference in Colleen McCullough’s Australian novel, The Thorn Birds, in which she described the attitude of outback sheep herders toward their flocks. Australian outback ranches would contain literally thousands of acres and tens of thousands of sheep. The flocks were indeed so numerous that one individual sheep seemed to be of little value. The process of castrating the lambs to ensure their use for eating needed to be done quickly and efficiently so these herders would accomplish this task simply by biting off the animal’s testicles and spitting them out. She compared this to the way pet dogs were treated in New York City where, in their scarcity, they were dressed for the weather, fed a healthy diet and cared for by a host of veterinarians. Her point was that great numbers of animals create an attitude in which no individual animal was valued while scarcity causes pets to be treated with almost excessive pampering and caring. Perhaps the same thing is true in regard to human beings. In the west, that has only recently begun to be aware of overpopulation, the individual and individual rights have generally been respected. In a massive population like China’s current 1.3 billion people individual rights can no longer be protected if they are in conflict with the needs of the whole society. Maybe it is inevitable that with overpopulation, individual rights will always be sacrificed for the well being of the whole. If that is so, the human rights violations visible in China today are simply the prelude to what the whole world faces if human population continues to expand uncontrollably, as it has done in the last century. It is a scary, even a sobering thought, but I suspect a real one.

The other image that came to my mind was the famous kitchen debate that took place in 1959 in Moscow between Vice President Richard Nixon of the United States and Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. The debate was about which system, capitalism or communism, could produce the higher standard of living for its people. It was conducted at a World’s Fair that had all the most modern kitchen, labor-saving devices on display. It was also basically a materialistic debate. The goal was for each leader to tout the material splendor that provided “the good life” for the majority of its citizens. America’s ingenuity was at that time clearly superior to that of the leading nation in the communist world. Certainly, at that time, the average American standard of living clearly topped that of the Soviet Union. Even then, however, the material wealth in the west was unevenly distributed. In the richest land in the world, people at the edges were still homeless and still hungry and literally millions had no health care. In the Soviet Union, the wealth at the top was clearly capped, but the poverty at the bottom was also being addressed. What worried me in that debate, however, was that free enterprise capitalism was being advocated only for its ability to create material wealth.

China has today combined communist control with market capitalism to create the most dramatic rise in the standard of living of a major nation that I have ever witnessed. They might even demonstrate in time that total state control of market forces for the benefit of the people might well win the contest for material plenty. What I saw in China would never convince me, however, that the sacrifice of human freedom for material plenty represented a superior system.

It is the deepest principles of my religion that for me stand as the front line of defense against the violation of human dignity. Is self-conscious human life holy? I think it is. Is self-conscious human life made more deeply and fully human by the experience of being loved and infinitely valued? I think it is. Is the call of self-conscious human life to be all that each of us can be an ultimate value around which society must be organized? I think it is. I do not know how else the dignity of human life will ever be preserved if producing material plenty for all is the only and ultimate value affirmed by any government or any economic system. Human value rests, I believe, on a definition of human life as of infinite worth. I do not believe that value is one that can be sacrificed in the achievement of economic plenty. It is also not achievable unless the political and economic system contains a dedication to the idea of the sacredness of life.

Free enterprise capitalism has its faults. It is propelled far too often by greed and ignores the plight of the poor. It shares its wealth with the masses too unfairly, but it nonetheless does not allow the individual to be totally dehumanized by the state and treated only as a cog in a great economic wheel. It still salutes individual rights grounded in a religious definition of what it means to be human. I will fight to maintain that value even as I fight to make the economic system of the west more fair and more compassionate. If we compete with the communist world only on the basis of which system can create the most wealth, China may very well win that contest in the future. Indeed today China finances America’s way of life by being the primary holder of America’s debt. Yet the value, the sacredness of human life, is so central and so important to me that it should trump economic plenty every time. It is that which I believe that only a religious understanding of life can ultimately provide. This is why I am a Christian. ~  John Shelby Spong  |

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