HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Standing on the Boundary Between Death and Life.
Charles Robinson 1931-2014 R.I.P.
His name was Charles. His wife of 57 years, and now his widow, was named Cynthia. He was a lawyer who, after ten years and with a wife and three small children, gave up the practice of law to follow his heart. He became an artist of some note and an illustrator of many books. Both Charles and Cynthia were lifetime members of our church. They were even married by a bishop with whom they were close friends. They both possessed vital and engaging minds and they used them not to build systems of security, but to walk the edges of the Christian faith. Perhaps that is why I felt close to them. They had appreciated my own journey into the heart of Christianity, since it was not unlike theirs. So, when Charlie died, and the funeral was being planned, Cynthia asked me to deliver the homily in St. Peter’s, Morristown, New Jersey, our parish church. I was touched to be asked and pleased to be part of that event. Following the funeral, there was a reception in the Great Hall of our church where family and friends could gather and greet each other. Many came and the room was filled. All over that great hall were easels and tables on which Charles’ works of art and book illustrations were on display. The homily was designed for that very specific setting. I share it now with my readers.
“It was an 18th century English poet and hymn writer named Isaac Watts, who in one of his best known poems, which was destined to become one of the church’s favorite hymns, wrote these words: “Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away.“ I am confident that if Isaac Watts had lived in our day, his words would have been more inclusive, since time in fact bears all its sons and daughters away. We must, however, take Isaac Watts for what he was, a child of his own time. It is never fair looking back in time to judge a person’s life by the standards and values that would evolve in the future. If we did that we could come to the conclusion that Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator of African-Americans from slavery, might himself be called “a racist.” In Isaac Watt’s words, however, he pointed to the universal truth that all life is lived in transition. We are in fact linked both to our ancestors and to our progeny by a biological chain. It is a thin chain, however, for few people in all of human history are remembered by anyone after three generations.
Since this is demonstrably true then human life will always suffer from what theologian Paul Tillich called “the threat of Non-Being.” All of us must learn how both to cope with and even to transform that threat, which is for self-conscious people a frightening reality. The force of this reality comes in the implication that there is little that is permanent about our lives. This is the nature of transitory life and no one can finally ignore it. So questions of meaning plague us human beings at every stage of life. Does our existence as self-conscious human beings have any ultimate meaning beyond being a link in the human biological chain? Can we claim anything that is eternal about ourselves? Is the meaning we think we find real or is it illusory?” In the words of Isaac Watts, does meaning, like “a dream,” vanish “at the break of day”? If we decide that meaning is real, then we have to answer other questions. Where is that meaning found? Out of what does it arise?
The two most popular human ways of dealing with these ultimate questions appear to be either hedonism, that is, opting to serve the pleasure principal alone; or developing an external religious authority to which we commit ourselves as that which answers all of our questions. The first choice is to do the things that are attributed, falsely I believe, to the Greek philosopher, Epicurus (it was actually the work of Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates), namely to “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.” The other choice is to seek to conform our lives to the expectations of the source of our religious system. The former choice dooms us to shallowness. The latter choice destroys our freedom. When ultimate authority is invested in an external religious system we will inevitably write and impose creeds, create doctrines and dogmas and adopt binding liturgies. The claims for this kind of external religious authority are familiar. We hear them all the time: “Our Pope is infallible.” “Our Bible is inerrant.” “Our religion is the only true religion.” “Our church is the one true church.” “No one comes to God except through my religion.” These appear to be the bromides of organized religion. They are in fact, however, little more than attempts on the part of frightened human beings to drug themselves against the possibility that life ultimately might be empty.
I want to suggest today that there is another possibility that lies between an empty hedonism on one side and an authoritarian religious system on the other. It is an alternative that I have tried to live out and the one that I think Charles also sought to express in his rather amazingly creative life. Though he and I had limited conversations together in the course of our lives, it was surely this shared connection that gave us the rapport we shared.
I start with a statement that seems true to my experience. Meaning is internal not external. Meaning is something we give to life not simply what we find in life. Meaning comes from our ability to love one another. It comes from our willingness to invest in someone else or in things outside ourselves. It comes when one discovers a way to take that which is deep within us and to lay it out for others to see. That it seems to me is what Charles did in both his life and his career.
He was married to Cynthia for 57 years. It was a relationship that created and re-created each of them many times. No one today could separate that part of Cynthia that Charles created from who Cynthia is today and still recognize her. No one could take that part of Charles that Cynthia created out of Charles and still recognize him as the person we knew him to be.
That realization leads us to another operative insight. None of us is self-made, not Charles, not Cynthia, not you, not me. Neither is any of us an isolated self. We are all deeply bound together with those we love and those who love us. So Charles gave his love to Cynthia and Cynthia gave her love to Charles and together they created something original, something that had never existed before.
Charles did the same thing as a father. We have listened this day to the recollections of Charles and Cynthia’s three children. Of course, they share a biological kinship, but is it not also obvious that they have shared so much more? They all have similar passions, similar expressions of artistic talent and similar values.
Then one looks at the body of Charles’ professional work. From where did his artistic creativity come? Out of what did his ability to illustrate life so deeply arise? The answer is simple and clear. All of that came from within Charles. His work is an expression of his soul. He poured his art out from within himself and onto objective containers, which then allowed the world to see and to respond to his creations.
This man made a difference in life because he knew that what ultimately natters is always internal, it is never external. If the word “God” refers to an external being; one who needs our worship; one who relishes our praise; one who keeps record books and who stands in judgment on our lives, does that God and that belief ever serve to free our creativity or to transform the world? I am still waiting for that assessment to be confirmed by anyone.
If, however, the word “God” refers to the experience of recognizing that the Source of Life, which flows through the universe in limitless forms, but which comes to self-consciousness only in human beings, then the only way we can worship that which we call God is by living, living fully, and the more fully we live the more that which is ultimate, real and holy is seen in us. If the word “God” can be identified with the Source of Love that flows through the universe, always enhancing life, for that is what love does, but only coming to self-consciousness in human beings, then the only way we can worship that which we call God is by loving, loving wastefully. Wasteful love never stops to ask whether love is due or deserved, one simply gives it away. The more we can give love away, the more that which is ultimate, real and holy will be visible in us. If the word “God” can be understood to refer, not to a being, but to the Ground of Being in which everything that exists is ultimately rooted, but which comes to self-consciousness only in human beings, then the only way we can worship that which we call God is by finding the courage to be all that each of us can be, and then by allowing, indeed encouraging, others to be all that they can be. The more we can be our deepest, fullest selves and enable others to be their deepest, fullest selves, the more our lives will reveal that which is ultimate, real and holy. That then becomes the moment, I believe, that you and I can be said to have discovered what the ultimate purpose of religion is. True religion is, at its core, nothing more or less than a call to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that we can be. Charles understood that and because he did, he not only lived well, but he also participated in eternity. He loved and was loved. Out of that love, he created. That is finally where life’s meaning is found. All else is background music.”
John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
Ann Fuhr of Clemson, S.C., writes:
Question:
Bishop Spong spoke at Clemson United Methodist Church in Clemson, SC. He asked if we had questions. We were to write them down and get them to him. Situations arose that prevented getting my question to him. This is my question, because it is a question that my granddaughter asks regularly: WHAT is God?
Answer:
Dear Ann, You did not tell me your granddaughter’s age, but her question reflects so well the modern world. Unable to answer the “Who” question satisfactorily, we have moved on to the “What” question. The trouble is that whether asked by children or adults, it is an unanswerable question and even a rather arrogant one, for what human being can claim to be able to define God? So my first response to you is not to feel threatened by your granddaughter’s question or to feel inadequate that you cannot answer it. Neither can anyone else and those who pretend that they can are fooling themselves and anyone who listens to them. Whatever God is or isn’t, the human mind can only talk about the human experience of God, not about God. There is a difference between the two. God, by every definition, is not bound by the human experience. We are all tempted to literalize our own perception of whatever ultimate reality is. That is why the gods of human beings all tend to look like enlarged and unlimited human beings. We talk about ourselves as being created “in the image of God,” but the fact is that God is always created in the human image. Does that mean we have nothing to say to questions like the one your granddaughter has posed? No, but it does mean that we should be aware of our limitations. I can tell no one who God is or what God is. Neither can anyone else – from the Pope to Pat Robertson to the Dalai Lama. That is simply an aspect of human pretending. What I can tell you and your granddaughter about with some integrity is how I believe I have experienced Transcendence, Otherness, and the Holy. Because I have experienced it also does not make it so, since I may be delusional. I don’t think so, but people do see and experience things that are not there. The human mind will play tricks on us at every stage of life. So I have to test my experience every day in the light of all that I determine to be real. Having done that for a life time I can say, I hope with integrity, that I believe in and experience God as the Source of life calling me to live fully, as the Source of love empowering me to love wastefully, and, as the Ground of all Being (to borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich) giving me the courage to be all that I can be. It is in this process of living fully, loving wastefully, and being all that I can be, that I expand the limits of my humanity and believe that I begin to move beyond those limits and experience that which is ultimately real. The reason I am a Christian is that I see in Jesus of Nazareth a life fully lived, a love wastefully shared and one who can be who he is under every set of human circumstances. So I join St. Paul in the acclamation that somehow and in some way all that I mean by the word God I believe that I have encountered in the life of this Jesus. If your granddaughter is young and this is too convoluted for her just tell her that God is the experience that she is loved, that she has ultimate value and that her job in life is to be all that she can be. All else is background music.
~John Shelby Spong
Announcements
Join us at Be|Art|Now: Earl Lectures 2015
a public conference for activists, artists, & progressive people of faith.
Thursday-Saturday January 29-31, 2015
Berkeley, CA
Click here for more info!
