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8/11/16, Spong: The Unlikely Honored Guest at the Democratic National Convention
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 31 Jul '18
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 31 Jul '18
31 Jul '18
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<div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">The Unlikely Honored Guest at the Democratic National Convention</h1>
<p>He was seated in the VIP box at the Democratic National Convention, held during the last week of July, 2016, in Philadelphia. He was surrounded in that reserved and exclusive seating area by the power-elite of the Democratic Party: A former President, the sitting Vice-President and the “second lady,” the spouses and children of the nominees, as well as those especially invited guests, who were uniquely and politically related to the convention’s eventual nominee. This unlikely guest was in his own way quite unique. He was a Republican, one who had been elected to a state-wide office as a candidate of the opposition party. He served as the governor of Virginia from 1970 – 1974 and was the first Republican governor of Virginia since 1869 in the last days of reconstruction. Later he sought his party’s nomination to the Senate of the United States, losing to another Republican, John Warner, who served with distinction from 1979 until he retired in 2008. The name of this mystery quest is Abner Linwood Holton. He is now, and has been since the day I first met him, an extraordinary man. People, unaware of the history of the Democratic Party in Virginia, find it strange that the man I regarded as the best governor of Virginia during the years I lived in that state would be a Republican. Let me tell you his story.</p>
<p>Linwood Holton was born in 1923 in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a town deep in the heart of Appalachia. He was a Republican from the moment of his birth. He was also bright and ambitious. Being a Republican in Virginia in those days was to be part of a distinct minority, perhaps even an endangered one! The Democrats of Virginia were the only cohesive political force in the state. This majority party was run by Virginia’s senior United States Senator, Harry Flood Byrd, who after serving a term as governor from 1926 to 1930, effectively ran the state until he died in 1966. It was said of Harry Byrd that he and a few of his closest political advisors would sit on the porch at his home in Berryville, Virginia, and pick the candidates for every political vacancy in Virginia from governor on down. The electorate was deliberately kept small by poll taxes, which effectively discouraged both blacks and poor whites from voting. A Byrd loyalist was in every county seat in Virginia to run the party. Racism was deep and “States Rights” was a holy slogan designed to make racism seem socially acceptable. Virginia was a one party state. Frequently the Republicans would not even nominate candidates and, even when they did, no one paid much attention to them because whoever won the Democratic primary seldom even campaigned in the general election, since Republicans simply did not win in this state! Linwood Holton made it his life’s ambition to establish two-party politics in Virginia.</p>
<p>He graduated from Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, and then entered the law school at Harvard University. Along the way he married a Roanoke girl, named Virginia Rogers, who went by the name of Jinks. She was the daughter of Frank Rogers, an upright, but ultra-conservative, successful and well-connected Roanoke citizen, who was the grandson of the first Episcopal Bishop in Southwestern Virginia. In his mind, the two greatest virtues were to be a conservative Episcopalian and a loyal Byrd Democrat. Jinks, the more rebellious of Rogers’ two daughters, chose to marry a Republican and a Presbyterian! Supported by this remarkable woman, Linwood began his life’s task of strengthening Virginia’s Republican Party. This party’s base, such as it was, had always been in the mountains of the western part of Virginia. As a force in opposition to Byrd Democrats, the Virginia Republican party tilted slightly leftward. There was no room to the right of the Byrd machine. The Virginia Republicans were known for their party’s efforts to improve education statewide and to develop better state mental health facilities. Linwood’s organizational efforts were so successful that in 1965 he was the Republican nominee for governor opposing the Southside, Virginia, Byrd Democrat, Mills Godwin, who had emerged as the new leader of the Democratic Party. The sickness, retirement and subsequently the death of Senator Byrd meant that the torch of party leadership had to be passed to the next generation. It is interesting that Harry Byrd, Jr., always known as “Little Harry,” who was appointed to succeed his father in the Senate, did not succeed him in the leadership of the statewide Democratic Party. Holton was defeated in that first run for the governor’s office, but he garnered a respectable total of votes and succeeded in introducing himself to the state. The day after the defeat, he began planning for his second run in 1969. The governorship in Virginia, we need to note, is limited by the Constitution to a single term.</p>
<p>National issues soon began to erode the Byrd majorities. Poll taxes were declared unconstitutional in 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the ballot to people of color. The feminist movement began to galvanize women into an effective political force. A national- thinking Virginia Democrat, named Henry Howell, began to build a liberal political base made up of labor unions, blacks, women and young people. His challenge to the Byrd machine resulted ultimately in his election as Lt. Governor in 1971, but he could go no farther. He remained anathema to Byrd Democrats. In the Democratic Primary of 1969, the Byrd candidate, William Battle, the son of former Governor John Battle, defeated Henry Howell in a bitter contest. The party could not heal this division, so in the General Election, Linwood Holton, supported by many of Howell’s still angry voters, rode to victory with a 65,000 vote majority.</p>
<p>In his inaugural address, Holton called for an end to Virginia’s pattern of racial discrimination and its racist politics. No Virginia Governor had ever uttered such words before. Words, however, were not enough. People looked for actions. They would follow soon.</p>
<p>In the most dramatic step imaginable, the new governor and his wife made the decision not to put their children in the church-related or independent private schools of Richmond, where all governors’ children had previously attended, but to enroll them in Richmond’s public schools which were at that time about 80% black. It was such a startling action for a Virginia politician that the New York Times covered it with a front page story and a picture of Virginia’s Governor Holton escorting one of his daughters into a school surrounded by a host of black faces smiling broadly. In a state where the official response of the ruling Democratic machine to “Brown vs. the Board of Education,” had been to call for “massive resistance to the law of the land,” a state in which some counties chose to close their public schools rather than to integrate them, here was the highest elected official in the state escorting his children into the majority black public schools of Richmond, Virginia. No action could have announced better that a new day was dawning in what had once been the capital of the Confederacy. One of those Holton children entering those public schools on that day was their oldest daughter, Anne.</p>
<p>The white population of Virginia was shocked. They believed and stated that their new governor was sacrificing his children on the “altar of integration.” Many suggested that the “inferior education” that his children would receive in those heavily black schools would cripple them for life. It was a strange argument that gave the lie to the previous white claim that all of its racially segregated schools were “separate, <em>but equal</em>.” Anne, in her early teens, would be an exemplary student. She received a fine education and upon graduation from high school would be admitted to Princeton University, from which she graduated <em>magna cum laude</em>. She seemed not to have been penalized at all in her educational achievements. After Princeton she was accepted into the class of 1983 at the Harvard Law School, from which she now holds a doctor of Jurisprudence degree. From there she went into a legal career that in time would include being a domestic relations judge and Virginia’s Education Secretary.</p>
<p>While at Harvard she met, fell in love with and married a fellow law student, who was born in Minnesota and educated at the University of Missouri. His name was Tim Kaine. She lured him back to Richmond, where his earlier life experiences, including his Jesuit high school education, his year as a volunteer missionary to Honduras and his mastery of the Spanish language, prepared him to begin his Richmond law practice as a civil rights attorney. Then responding to an expressed community need, he entered politics at the most local of levels, running for a seat on Richmond’s nine-member City Council. In a majority black city, Tim not only won that seat, but was also later elected by that majority-black city council to be Richmond’s Mayor. Two years later, in 2001 he moved to the state level, being elected Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor. In 2005, he won the governor’s office. His wife, Anne Holton, became the first person to be at one time living in the governor’s mansion as the child of a Republican governor and then a second time as the state’s first lady and wife of a Democratic governor. In 2012, Tim Kaine won a seat in the United States Senate. In 2016, with two years remaining in his first term as senator, he was chosen by the presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, to be her vice-presidential running mate. Anne Holton was there with him, waving to the crowd on the final night. As Hillary Clinton raised Tim Kaine’s hand high, former president Bill Clinton was at her side and Anne Holton was at Tim Kaine’s side. The crowd roared with approval.</p>
<p>In the VIP section of that vast Philadelphia arena sat the former Republican Governor Linwood Holton, now 92 years old, with his wife Jinks, both still vibrant and attractive, watching their daughter being introduced to the nation. There is sometimes a reward for integrity. Linwood and Jinks Holton, who would not allow their lives to be twisted by the prejudice of racism, challenged the distorting and debilitating social structures of his generation in Richmond, Virginia. Doing what is right sometimes carries with it intimations of transcendence and even immortality. To this day he remains one of my heroes.</p>
<p>John Shelby Spong</p>
<p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">here</a>.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size:18px">Alberto Mejia Aguilera from Mexico writes via the internet:</span></p>
<h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">
Question:</h4>
<p>I am from Mexico and I would like to know your opinion about Liberation Theology. Do you think that this theology is still an inspiration for the struggle against the social injustice?</p>
<h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4>
<p>Dear Alberto,</p>
<p>Liberation theology was, I believe, was born in Latin America, so you should be especially proud of it. I associate the name of Leonardo Boff, primarily, with it, but there were others like the murdered Bishop Oscar Romero. It was born in an attempt to apply the principles of the gospel not just to individuals, but also to the structures of our society, which so often drive the masses into poverty. It identifies God with the poor. For those reasons it tended to be resisted in ecclesiastical circles, especially by the leaders of the Roman Catholic during the years of Popes John Paul II and Benedict, both of whom were so politically conservative that they saw it as another manifestation of Communism. I think they were both wrong in this judgment. Liberation theology, I believe, constituted a call to Christianity to see that its alliance with power, both in Europe and the new world, had corrupted the essential justice that Christianity requires.</p>
<p>Christianity was born among the poor and the outcasts. It rose to dominate society and so became the religion of kings. Liberation Theology was a necessary correction.</p>
<p>I wish you well.</p>
<p>John Shelby Spong
<a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Read and Share Online Here</a></p>
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<div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img align="none" height="262" style="width: 350px;height: 262px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="350" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/e67ac6a0-334…"></a></div>
<h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:26px"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong at the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan September 10th & 11th</span></span></h2>
<strong>Schedule:</strong>
Saturday, September 10, 2016
1:00 pm at the Reynolds Recital Hall, Northern Michigan University
7:00 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Marquette
Sunday, September 11, 2016
2:00 pm at the Memorial Union Building , Michigan Technological University
At each location, there will be an opportunity for Q&A and book signing.</div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top">
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Happy New Year!
I think this year for us was all about heritage and legacies…
Here is a link to some relevant photos from 2017 that will make the prose more interesting (the files are too large to attach). https://www.dropbox.com/sh/522pxtg5y9vfzhr/AAA3uDblmc0i-6C2K3b6DwiIa?dl=0 <https://www.dropbox.com/sh/522pxtg5y9vfzhr/AAA3uDblmc0i-6C2K3b6DwiIa?dl=0>
Jo: I finished Getting to the Bottom of ToP – Wayne’s legacy – which after much work and many challenges was finally published by iUniverse on December 9.
-In January, Jen and I walked with friends in the Women’s March, making a stand for the respect for women in society.
-In May, a lovely visit by John and Elaine Telford sparked memories of our connection with Ngiyampaa people and Murrin Bridge, NSW, Australia.
-In June, Jeanette Stanfield and I traveled to Newfoundland. The L’Anse aux Meadows Viking settlement,on my bucket list for years because of my Swedish heritage, was outstanding. We also saw ancient fossils at Gros Morne National Park, hiked along the sea, saw icebergs and whales from a small tourist boat, visited the Basque whalers’ site at Red Bay, Labrador and the Air Museum in Gander, culminating in exploring St. Johns and more with friends from St. Johns.
-The annual “camping trip for single women of a certain age” turned into a “glamping trip” with 7 women at a lovely cottage owned by a colleague, including a hot-tub soak.
-I discovered in October that my book “Art of Focused Conversation for Schools” in Simplified Chinese has sold more than 3000 copies across China. And a woman director of a wonderfully diverse, inclusive, and participatory community development project told me that a facilitation I had done in 1999 was the inspiration for her work.
Tim: took over a coordinating role for his drum and bass club night on Wednesday nights. In May, he and I stained our Muskoka chairs. In July, he and a friend rebuilt our back deck and flagstones, upgrading our backyard considerably. Most of his spare time is spent creating music and spinning music. In a visit to the Viking Exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, he soaked in all the information about our ancestors that he could, including getting a copy of the Prose Edda.
Aaron: ran a half-marathon, two different length triathlons, and a marathon. He is working up to do an Iron Man in 2019. He is still working in management at an Apple store, but changed positions to keep things interesting.
Jen: is a sought-after art teacher, in both her classes at private and independent schools as well as in her community outreach programs. A big event was getting her driver’s licence, which allows her to take on programs in communities that were previously too remote to get to on public transportation, and to go camping on her own, as well as supporting Aaron on his adventures.
In November, the Reese/Zahrt family had a reunion in Carson City Nevada to celebrate the birthdays of my 80-year-old brother and two brothers-in-law. A delayed flight meant I got to spend 23 hours on my 69th birthday with both my sons, much of it hanging out in the Denver airport.
Zahra: is in her 3rd year of college at Hobart-William Smith. This fall, after training hard, she ran a 50-mile ultra-marathon. We were able to get together at her school for a weekend in early December when classes were out for the break.
May 2018 be a healthy, happy, and productive year for you, your family, and your community!
Jo Nelson and family
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Hello colleagues,
Burna and I watched “All the President’s Men” (1976) last night — the movie about Woorward and Bernstein’s investigative reporting that eventually brought Nixon and all of his henchmen to justice. We watched the movie “Network” (1976) the night before (apropos “reality TV” and “fake news”). Both are stunning. After all of our living, serving, learning, and witnessing-the-politics-of-division, we watched the stories unfold with vastly different, far more deeply informed eyes, than 40+ years ago.
Isn’t that something that both appeared during the year of the Bicentennial celebration!
These two movies in particular seem like must see viewing for people who want a refresh on history to help with eyes to see what’s real and what’s not in 2017 America.
This link will take you to a copy of the Washington Post article online. You can read it online and save it as a PDF.
https://goo.gl/K9pskX
David
—
"Mystery, possibility, and the power to choose"
David Dunn
740 S Alton Way 9B
Denver, CO 80247
720-314-5991
dmdunn1(a)gmail.com
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12/28/17, Fox/Spong: Naomi Klein & Scott Russell Sanders: Birds of a Feather, Two North American Prophets In Search of Wisdom and Right Action; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 28 Dec '17
by Ellie Stock 28 Dec '17
28 Dec '17
HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Naomi Klein & Scott Russell Sanders: Birds of a Feather, Two North American Prophets In Search of Wisdom and Right Action
Rev. Matthew Fox
In dark times like ours one takes delight in those who are still committed to a search for truth and are still busy hunting gathering for what matters. We are blessed still with such figures in our midst and I want to celebrate two in this essay. One, a citizen of Toronto and of Canada, Naomi Klein, described herself by phone one day to me as “Jewish, Feminist and Atheist.” She is a profound author, social activist and filmmaker. The other, Scott Russell Sanders, celebrates his small town existence in Methodist rooted rural Ohio and on this planet and in this universe in a number of wonderful books. The former’s two recent books, Capitalism vs. The Climate and No Is Not Enough, are as on target to our troubled times as any I know; and Sanders book Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, complements Klein’s in a profoundly mystical way.
Both agree that stories lie at the heart of things, yes stories and “myths.” Both ask the question: “What stories are we telling? What stories are we listening to? What stories do we reject? Which stories do we get energized by?”
In answering these questions we are revealing who we are, what we strive to be, where we are aspiring to go, and what values we cherish.
Naomi Klein on Stories
Listen to Naomi Klein on stories. “A great deal of the work of deep social change involves having debates during which new stories can be told to replace the ones that have failed us. Because if we are to have any hope of making the kind of civilizational leap required of this fateful decade, we will need to start believing, once again, that humanity is not hopelessly selfish and greedy—the image senselessly sold to us by everything from reality shows to neoclassical economics.”(1)
Yes, and let me add religion’s stories of “original sin” (stories the historical Jesus, like any Jew, never heard about) and also the stories from patriarchy that reinforce what Adrienne Rich dares to name as a “fatalistic self-hatred.”(2)
Klein invokes stories again when speaking of Donald Trump who in her eyes “is not a rupture at all, but rather the culmination—the logical end point—of a great many dangerous stories our culture had been telling for a very long time. That greed is good. That the market rules. That money is what matters in life. That white men are better than the rest. That the natural world is there for us to pillage. That the vulnerable deserve their fate and the one percent deserve their golden towers. That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protecting. That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after our own. That there is no alternative to any of this.”(3)
Klein sees these stories as “part of the very air we breathe” and therefore she sees Trump as “the logical expression of a culture that grants indecent levels of impunity to the ultra rich, that is consumed with winner-take-all completion, and that is grounded in dominance-based logic at every level.”(4) Stories, I would add, that hold up the reptilian brain (winner take all) as primary.
In Klein’s view, it is these “stories that ineluctably produced” Trump. “The values that have been sold to us through reality TV, get-rich quick books, billionaire saviors, philanthrocapitalists. The same values that have been playing out in destroyed safety nets, exploding prison numbers, normalized rape culture [now being exposed in some very high places in government and the media and etc.] democracy-destroying trade deals, rising seas and privatized disaster response, and in a world of Green Zones and Red Zones.”(5)
Sanders on Stories
Sanders takes to task many “modern” thinkers who believe we have outgrown stories—or ought to have done so.(6) Among such crusaders he cites E. M. Forster who declares disapprovingly that “the story is primitive, it reaches back to the origins of literature, before reading was discovered, and it appeals to what is primitive in us.” Sanders sees a similar “sigh” regarding story “from the likes of Henry James, Gustav Flaubert, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, and Samuel Beckett. Their sighing proclaims them to be civilized, modern, free from illusion; they have left the cave to dwell outside, where stories shrivel in the harsh light of reason.” (151f)
Sanders makes an important connection between a belief in story and a belief in the sacred, citing approvingly that the Apache word for myth means literally “to tell the holiness.” The Sacred is so big it requires story and not just facts. Holiness is of the same ilk. He comments: “By telling the holy, sacred stories ground a people or an individual, not merely in a landscape, but in the power that creates and preserves the land.” (154)
It is special that Sanders dares to invoke an old word, holiness. Rabbi Heschel observes that “holiness is the most precious word in religion.”(7) And Frederick Turner believes that there lies in our times “an unsatisfied and inexplicable yearning, which can now identify as a thirst for things like glory, sanctity, conscience, and heroism, which were forbidden to us by the doctrines of existentialism.” In place of stories about holiness, we have substituted drugs (and other addictions I would add): “As the doctrines of materialism triumphed first among intellectuals, then among the population at large, so did the use of opium, cocaine, mescalin, and cannabis.” But drugs cannot accomplish transcendence for us for they “destroy the tension and the hunger and thus the process of transformation.”(8)
Sanders challenges Mircea Eliade who argues in Cosmos and History “that myth, ritual, taboo, every grasping for a transcendent reality, merely expresses our desire to abolish time, to resist change, to escape mortality.” Sanders accuses Eliade of teaching that “only by detaching ourselves from nature, weaning ourselves form sacred stories, and accepting the terror of history as the sole reality, can we become fully human.” (152) Sanders prefers other voices such as the Aborigines of Australia, Barry Lopez, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, Rene Dubos, Loren Eisley. “In their various accents, these voices declare that a spiritual landscape does indeed flicker and flame within the physical one.” (153f)
He proposes Why these stories are found all around the world, in ancient times and our own. “I believe that this doctrine is widespread because it is true, or at least it is as close to the truth as we have en able to come. Sacred stories arise from our intuition that beneath the flow of creation there is order, within change there is permanence, within time there is eternity.” (154)
The battle that Sanders recognizing as raging in modern literature and anthropology also rages in approaches to Sacred Scriptures of many traditions. It does not satisfy the human heart or mind to be told that only 15% of the words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels were his words. The other 85% of words may contain a lot of wisdom and truth as well. The modern quest for what Snider calls “equations, formulas, numbers” is useful at times; but it is not the final word.
Has science rendered myth obsolete? Says Sanders: “I very much doubt that we can live by statements, and I am certain we cannot live by statistics. Not even scientists can bear a steady diet of numbers….The data themselves only make sense, only add up to knowledge, when they are embodied in narrative…” He sees himself as inviting science back to the full human enterprise, one that is larded with stories and from the stories, values. “In claiming that science is a patchwork of stories, I am not saying it is untrue; on the contrary, I am saying that scientists, like the rest of us, have no way of snaring truth, no way of carrying it around, no way of storing it, except in stories.” (157)
As for dismissing stories as “primitive,” Sanders cites Buddhist poet Gary Snyder that the word “primitive” comes from “primus” or first as in ‘original mind’, original human society, original way of being. Sacred places, and the stories we tell about them, put us back in touch with what is original, to ourselves and in creation.” (156)
Klein and Sanders are both urging us, that if we want to change culture, we must choose to change stories. If we want a world that runs on values, we must choose appropriate stories and reject inappropriate ones. Sanders cites approvingly the observation of Flannery O’Connor that “in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.” (166)
What stories are we telling? What do we choose to tell? And choose to discard? From our answer to these questions, it seems to me, arises new movements and new dreams and new civilizations.
~ Rev. Matthew Fox
Read the essay online here.
About the Author
Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 32 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 60 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the FleshTransforming Evil in Soul and Society, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved and Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest
A new school, adopting the pedagogy Fox created and practiced for over 35 years, is opening in Boulder, Colorado this September. Called the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality it is being run by graduates of his doctoral program and will offer MA, D Min and Doctor of Spirituality degrees. With young leaders he is launching a new spiritual (not religious) “order” called the Order of the Sacred Earth (OSE) that is welcoming to people of all faith traditions and none and whose ‘glue’ is a common vow: “I promise to be the best lover of Mother Earth and the best defender of Mother Earth that I can be.”
____________________
(1) Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014, 461.
(2) Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1976), 215.
(3) Naomi Klein, NO is Not Enough (Chicago, Il., Haymarket Books, 2017), 257f.
(4) Ibid., 258.
(5) Ibid., 258f.
(6) Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put: Making a HOME in a Restless World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 151. Other references are all to this book.
(7) See my discussion on the Thirst for Holiness in a Post-Modern time in my autobiography, Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Berkeley: North Atlantic Press, 2016), 304-316.
(8) Cited in Ibid., 304f.
Question & Answer
John from Tucson, asks:
Question:
First let me tell you I am an atheist. Prior to this I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition and was a member in good standing for approximately the first thirty years of my life at which time I left.
The journey I am on has led me in many directions and I have been comfortable lately with where I find myself. That is until I read a column from Bishop Spong. What brings this uncomfortable feeling is the sentence that reads, "As optimism has died, human beings increasingly turned either to fundamentalist religion or to secular materialism in the constant search for meaning."
Because I value his understanding of the human condition, I took the latter part of the above sentence as an indictment. I know that my search for meaning has often turned to secular materialism. I must tell you this disturbs me. I'm not sure where to go with this. I cannot return to religion, as it holds nothing for me. Yet I do not want to continue to define myself by what I buy and own. Any insights?
Answer: By Rev. Roger Wolsey
Dear John,
I respect where you’re at. Though I am a Christian, as a progressive Christian, we likely share much in common. If it weren’t for progressive Christianity, I’d likely be an atheist too. You were raised in a Christian denomination so I won’t overdo providing “the Christian” answer to your question – though it can be as simple as “You are a beloved child of God”. That something was stirred in you, however, upon reading those words of Bishop Spong is not surprising. His insights tend to be enigmatic and come at things from a non-conventional way that ruffles the feathers of believers and non-believers alike. It’s been said that a preacher's/journalist's job is to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” The good bishop has done his job. You are feeling some discomfort. Good. Now, what to do with it…
As a progressive Christian, I have no need for you to think as I do or to return to being a Christian – even as a progressive Christian. I feel that you are just fine as you are and I believe that Spirit feels the same. I will say that the way you frame things may be a bit limiting. You seem to suggest that it’s either continue to follow the vapid path of secular humanism – or – “return to religion.” I would suggest that there are other options for how you identify and define yourself.
First, there are some practices/modalities that can help people self-identify. These include the Enneagram defense type and the Myers-Briggs personality type surveys/indicators. Highly helpful in understanding our spiritual tendencies. There is also much merit in exploring our “Love Languages” (how we tend to feel and express love), as well as Attachment Theory (massively helpful in understanding our relationship tendencies). I also invite people to write on 10 slips of paper – 10 things that define them. In my case it might be Trumpeter, Writer, Music Lover, Father, Pastor, Lover, Dancer, Liberal, Bald, Runner, Christian, United Methodist, Middle Class, Mystic, Male, White, etc. I then have people rank them in order of most importance, and then take the least important one, look at it, ponder how that is part of them, consider how that is part of their life, then crumple it up and drop it to the floor – imagining that no longer being part of who they are. And then repeat this process with each of the 6 least important slips of paper. Then, after feeling the weight of all of this, pick up all of the slips and re-order them in response to that exercise - with permission to write something else on a new slip of paper, replacing it for something else.
This helps cut to the chase and really get at what’s most essential in our lives.
I will also remind us one can be spiritual without being religious. A person alone on an island can have a very rich spiritual life and have a strong sense of meaning, connection, and purpose. That said, I am both spiritual and religious. Humans are social creatures and we thrive best in community. Here’s a link to something I wrote explaining why I’m “both/and” instead of either/or.
I sense that something happened to you after those “first 30 years of your life” – some trauma, some wounding, that led you to be estranged from your Church. I’m sorry about whatever that was that you experienced. Whatever it was – either an overt action or a felt sense of lacking, it wasn’t the Church being at its best, it was an outlier, an exception, not the religion operating at peak performance. There are numerous religions and numerous kinds and varieties of each religion. Just because one congregation/priest/pastor in one denomination or religion got it wrong, doesn’t mean it’s all wrong. There is a place for religion, good religion, in the world. There’s a place for you in the world too. The world needs both you and religion at your best – and both you and religion can help bring that about.
John, it feels true to me that you are still curious about Christianity and “a Jesus way” to connect to the Divine. You read the Bishop Spong newsletter and you are reaching out to this forum for insight. You wouldn’t be doing those things if you were fully allergic to this Way. It seems to me that Spirit is actively at work in your life in many ways and that you are awakening and blooming in some new and exciting ways.
I wish you well on your journey of discovering and re-claiming who you really are.
P.S., If you’d like to converse further and go deeper, please feel free to send me a private message. You can reach me through the Wesley Foundation at CU Boulder.
~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
Read and share online here
About 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”
________________________________________________
Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Theological Message in the Destructive Tsunami
The earthquake near Sumatra and the resulting tidal wave that have wreaked devastation in many nations on two separate continents was the final major event in the tumultuous year of 2004. The people of the world watched in stunned disbelief as television footage showed us mountains of bodies, some 30 percent of them children, and massive destruction of property caused by gigantic waves that swept over the land far beyond the beaches. Imagine the psychological impact of this event on such nations as Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. To put this trauma into perspective recall the numbing pain inflicted on the psyche of America on 9/11 when this nation of almost 300,000,000 people lost about 3,000 lives in a terrorist attack. The healing of these wounds is still unfinished. Yet a single town in Indonesia or Sri Lanka lost ten times that many in this Tsunami. The estimate of lives lost has climbed quickly each day until it has now reached a staggering total beyond 150,000. I doubt the exact number of deaths will be known for some time, but surely most of those now listed as missing will ultimately come to rest in the deaths column. This event, like all natural disasters, forces upon the people of the world a new and scary consciousness. Once the trauma has passed that new consciousness will frame new, ultimate and very human questions that will be unavoidable.
This planet, our scientists tell us, is some four and a half billion years old. In its life span it has often not been a safe place for any living thing. During its first billion or so years, no life existed on this planet. Instead a constant barrage of meteorites and other particles of an exploding universe relentlessly pounded the earth's surface. Nature's raw violence was visible in the liquefied rock boiling near the center of the earth.
As recently as 200 million years ago, the landmass on this planet formed a single continent. What is now North and South America nestled into Europe and Africa. Australia was the underbelly of India and Antarctica was the southern edge of this single landmass. Over a vast span of time violent earthquakes miles beneath the sea have broken up that landmass into the continents that we identify today. Those calamitous events, however, occurred before there was an inhabitant who could knowingly record or be victimized by them.
No sense of tragedy was associated with the force of nature until some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago when our earliest, self-conscious ancestors finally emerged through the evolutionary process. Only then were there living beings whose minds enabled them to embrace time as a connected flowing whole. They could remember the past and anticipate the future, which meant that the uniquely human dimension of chronic anxiety entered the life of this world. Expanded knowledge enables us to know that yesterday's violence might well return again tomorrow. The natural forces of storm, hurricane and earthquake were so intense that these creatures trembled in fear before their power and sought to placate whoever or whatever was in control of these forces that appeared to victimize them. Human survival required that we become aware of nature's power without being immobilized by it. Had we not been able to make that adjustment the evolutionary step that brought us self-consciousness would have been aborted and life would have devolved back to the beasts of the field existing in a world of unknowing.
Finding a way to deal with this trauma was the catalyst that caused primitive religion to be born. Our vulnerable ancestors survived by envisioning a powerful supernatural being, who was big enough to control the forces of nature and who was our ally. That was when human beings assumed that those devastating forces of nature were either expressions of this God's power or events that occurred at the divine bidding. So, a contract with God, sometimes called a covenant, was formed. Human beings were compelled by their need for security to discern and obey the divine will and to please this supernatural being with respectful liturgies. That is why every human religious system has developed codes of conduct that are said to have been dictated by God. That is also why every human religious system has produced traditions of worship that must be adhered to in the minutest detail. Natural disasters were inevitably understood as to be expressions of divine wrath. Primitive religious leaders devoted their efforts to determining exactly what human beings had done to provoke the divine anger. A consensus would be formed around some conclusions and a reformation would be instituted designed to express both penitence and new resolve to please God in the future. Fortunately, for these human interpreters, natural disasters were widely scattered in time so that the illusion could be preserved, that the adopted changes were successful and God was pleased to be their protector once again.
Our religious traditions still reflect this mindset. God, according to the Bible, controlled the rain, wind, lightning, thunder and all natural disasters, using them to punish sin and to reward righteousness. The psalmists reminded their readers that God set the boundaries for the oceans and rivers. The waters escaped those boundaries only at God's instigation. Even as our ancestors in faith died in the great disasters of history, their deaths had meaning since God had a divine purpose in each tragedy. It was a comforting thought. Our forebears used the structures of their supernatural religion to keep their debilitating fears in check. This idea no longer works for modern people, which means that when tragedy strikes, our peculiar destiny is to wrestle with the new issue of potential meaninglessness.
Nothing reveals this modern dilemma more clearly than the way this current tragedy has been interpreted by the public media. God has not been mentioned once as a causative factor of the Tsunami. This means that far more than we recognize consciously, God understood as the supernatural, controlling presence, is no longer a working hypothesis in our increasingly secular world. Richard Norton Smith on PBS did refer to "the almost biblical proportions" of this disaster. He did not tell us to what he was referring by his use of the word "biblical" but I suspect his reference was either to the flood story at the time of Noah or to the destruction that shall accompany the end of the world that the Bible has projected into the future.
Instead of God being discussed as a factor in this disaster the media introduced us to geological explanations. Earthquakes are caused by the collisions of tectonic plates far below the sea. We learned that this particular tragedy occurred when the displacement initiated by the thrusting of the Indian plate beneath the Burma plate created waves so powerful that they devastated nearby nations and sent 30-foot surges to pound the east coast of Africa half a globe away. We were informed that there is today an active fault line under the Canary Islands off West Africa that has the potential to erupt, sending half a trillion tons of rock into the Atlantic Ocean that could create tidal waves capable of pounding America's shores with water heights larger than the skyscrapers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Miami. Only human beings are equipped to live with the knowledge of their own potential destruction. The sheep will not worry about this pending tragedy. The cows will continue to chew their cuds and the rabbits will keep on breeding. To be human is to embrace our frightening world and to know that we cannot make it secure. Our assertion that God is in charge is little more than another attempt to keep the delusion of our security in tact.
One cannot appeal to the idea of a supernatural deity who controls our destinies in the face of the raw and indiscriminate power of the Tsunami that hurls bodies into a watery grave without rhyme or reason. The modern conclusion is that there is no sky God directing the affairs of nature. So desperate is our anxiety, so deep is our need to believe that such a protector is there that we say astonishingly naïve things about this God. We talk as if we have actually captured the will of God, through an 'infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible.' We know, however, that these relics from the childhood of our humanity do not hold water, that they are nothing but pathetic coping devices to shield us from the terror of being aware that we are at the mercy of forces over which we know that we have no control.
This event, happening west of Sumatra - miles beneath the oceans, makes it very clear that no angry God decided to victimize the world. There is only impersonal, natural power, oblivious to human concerns. This natural disaster reminds us that the military might of a single nation, even one with vast nuclear capacity, is like fools' gold when it comes to protecting the world from nature's fury. It also confronts us with the frightening necessity of abandoning the supernatural God of yesterday, who allowed bad things to happen only if we deserved them. Suddenly all of our attempts to build security are revealed as little more than superstitions. All we can finally depend on in this world is our own fragile humanity and human life is inextricably bound together in a common destiny. The theological challenge that rises inevitably in this crisis is the awareness that we alone are our neighbor's keeper.
Can human life survive without the security of a divine protector? Or will that realization prove to be our Achilles' heel as we turn out to be like the dinosaurs that bloomed for but a moment in cosmic time and then disappeared when they could not adapt to a new environment? The only alternative to this bleak picture is that this tragedy will drive us into a new consciousness that will produce a radically different way to view both God and our own humanity. Those are the issues posed as Mother Nature sends us reeling into the year 2005. I will seek to address these issues in my column next week.
~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published January 5, 2004
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*from Gail and Dick West Dec 25, 2017*
*We are profoundly grateful for 201*
*7 *
*being a year of ~~~*
* Gratitude for amazingly good health*
* Being happily engaged in service and exploration*
* Awe and wonder of the times in which we live*
* Being profoundly addressed and affirmed by the way
life is*
*Being blessed by our friends and*
* *
*community*
in Taiwan and beyond
~~~~~
*Best wishes to you all as we enter another wonder-filled and challenging
year!*
*[image: Inline image 2]*
--
*Gail West, ICA *
*3F, No. 12, Lane 5, Tien Mou W Rd Taipei, Taiwan 111 Ph) 8862) 2871-3150
<02%202871%203150>*
email) icataiw(a)gmail.com
Skype) gwestica
www.icatw.com
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26 Dec '17
Some Christmas poetry shared at Carleton's lectionary group today...
Ellie
elliestock(a)aol.com
IF YOU WANT
If
you want
the Virgin will come walking down the road
pregnant with the holy,
and say,
“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,
my time is so close.”
Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime
intimacy, the divine, the Christ
taking birth
forever,
as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us
is the midwife of God, each of us.
Yet there, under the dome of your being does creation
come into existence eternally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—
the sacred womb in your soul,
as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is
His beloved servant
never far.
If you want, the Virgin will come walking
down the street pregnant
with Light and sing ...
--St. John of the Cross, “If You Want”
translated by Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (New York: Penguin Group, 2002), 306-307.
If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things,
And again with things;
If we consider ourselves so unimportant
that we must fill every moment of our lives with action;
When will we have the time to make the long, slow journey across the burning desert, as did the Magi?
Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds?
Or brood over the coming of the child, as did Mary?
For each of us: There is a desert to travel, A star to discover, And a being within ourselves to bring to life.
by Raymond Hunthausen
Journey of the Magi
Journey of the Magi
'A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways de...
T. S. Eliot reads "Journey of the Magi"
T. S. Eliot reads "Journey of the Magi"
Check out my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/bob_toomey. A rare recording taken from a live interview T. S. ...
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Our wedgeblade/wordpress site has been dormant for a while (originally
created as part of an ICA Archives Sojourn). Occasionally someone posts a
comment. Today someone did in the Social Process section. I'll copy it here
because it contains some interesting links concerning threefolding, which
seems uncannily similar to the Social Process. Does anyone know about this?
Was there some historical cross fertilization?
Tim
Quote follows (check the links)
Travis H
December 23, 2017 at 5:32 pm
I admire the Social Process Triangle effort. Another expression is the
“Social Triarchy” movement:
https://sites.google.com/site/threefoldnow/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_threefolding
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HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Wakey Poem Sermon
Rev. Roger Wolsey
“P” is for Poetry
To better help people understand the difference between liberal Christianity and progressive Christianity, I’ve referred to what I call the “The 11 Ps of Progressive Christianity“:
* Postmodern * Passionate * Poetic * Prophetic/Political * Prayerful * Practical/Practice/Praxis/orthoPraxy * Paradoxical * Pro-LGBTQI * Peaceful/Pacifist * Panentheistic * Pluralistic. It is the third of those three that I intend to convey at this time. Over the years I’ve put forth the following assertions:
“..Christians rightfully honor and celebrate Jesus as a unique and fully incarnate (poetically speaking) manifestation (poetically speaking) of God. We are devoted to him, we cherish him, we revere him, we are endeared to him. But we pray to the God Jesus prayed to, not to Jesus. Being a Christian is putting our trust and reliance (having faith) in the way, teachings, and example of Jesus (that was informed and inspired by the Hebrew prophets before him) and to live with holy boldness as we seek loving and just right relations with ourselves, our neighbors (near and far), all of Creation, and with God.” Nov. 2, 2013
“People today know that theology is poetry – and that it provides meaning – not facts.” – May 14, 2015
“The trinity is a beloved Christian poem of who God is to us. But poems don’t literally define things. Like all art, and theology, they point to what is beyond them.” – May 21, 2015
Fr. Richard Rohr wrote: “All language about God is necessarily symbolic and figurative. ..The Bible uses metaphors for God, such as rock and shepherd. Jesus describes himself metaphorically as the bread of life and the light of the world. The Spirit is portrayed as breath and wind. God is not literally a rock or an actual shepherd on a hillside somewhere, yet we need these images to “imagine” the unsayable Mystery.” – January 11, 2017
And I put it even more simply as “The Bible is poetry. All theology is. The sooner people realize that, the fewer arguments and the less conflict we will have.” Dec. 6, 2017
Granted, a case could be made that this last remark is a bit overstated, but I let it be clear that cases supporting it can readily be put forth as well. Bottom line: progressive Christians are called to error on the side of multi-valent interpretations understandings instead of on the side of legalistic and exclusivistic ones.
I’m going to share a “spoken-Word” slam poetry sermonette that I preached about this time last year. It is as true now as it was then – frankly, even more so. You may notice the other “10 Ps” infused within.
Wakey-Wakey!
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
What in the dickens did he know?
What did he know?
He knew what time it was.
That tale of twin towns was the time right before the French revolution
and all that led up to it…
Do we know what time it is?
I said do we know what time it is?
Some of us thought we did.
We thought it’s the time of the dawning of the idyllic age of Aquarius.
We imagined we’re entering a utopian new age of “higher consciousness”
We dreamed it’s the era of ever-integrating, spiritually elitist spiral dynamics where people deemed “green” are “more evolved” than those deemed orange, blue, red… and so on!
,,,, Ain’t nobody got time for that!
And we fantasized a rise of “Indigo Children” – a new generation of super sensitive more fully evolved humanity present among us!
Yeah right.
The past 8 weeks [12 months] have shown us who we really are and what time it really is.
On the left and on the right – we’re a bunch of freaked-out Henny Penny Chicken Little’s running around with our heads cut off hollering, “The sky is falling!, Abandon ship! It’s the end! Let’s move to Canada!”
All 9 Enneagram types have regressed to our respective stress and fear states — and brother — that ain’t good.
‘Cause if we’re stressing and act out of fear we manifest the monsters that we loathe and despise.
Our demons become self-realizing prophesies and none of us look like the beautiful souls we really are.
Instead, of intentional deep thinking about what time it really is, we react pell-mell!
— Pell-Mell: “In disorderly confusion; rushed with reckless haste.
“The contents of the sacks were thrown pell-mell to the ground”
Like a hyper-reactive human pinball game with deadly consequence…
Pell-mell — we react to the xenophobic rhetoric and scapegoating of Jews and allow them to be sent off to be gassed
Pell-mell – we attack a naval fleet in Hawaii
Pell-mell – we drop atomic bombs on cities in Japan
Pell-mell — we create the modern state of Israel
Pell-mell – we commandeer Palestinian lands and bulldoze Palestinian homes
Pell-mell – we wage war on Israel with volleys of rocks and rockets.
Pell-mell – we fly planes into buildings in New York killing 2,977.
Pell-mell — we invade Iraq without just cause resulting in 251,000 deaths
Pell-mell — we create ISIS to fill the vacuum of leadership that invasion caused
Pell-mell — we react assuming the worst about black citizens who might be criminal suspects, shooting first and asking questions later.
Pell-mell — we ambush innocent cops as vigilante justice for what other cops in other states did to black citizens saying, “if black lives don’t matter, then neither do blue!”
Pell-mell – we rally for white supremacy without white robes and hoods in Charlottesville, and pell-mell – we ironically don we now our black masked apparel seeking to punch Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in the face
Pell-mell – we shoot hundreds of country music fans in Vegas,
and Pell-mell – we buy AR-15s in record numbers and stocks in bump-stocks skyrocket like never before!]
Pell-mell – we elect a human-aggravated blowhard who pledges to unleash more coal-burned global warming gasses into the sky
Pell-mell – we fricken frack turtle island and threaten our aquifers with oil, gas, and fracking fluids containing chemicals they still won’t name.
Pell-mell – we focus all of our energy to prevent one pipeline from being constructed … as an Indian-headed token wooden Burning Man nickel so that we can absolve ourselves from not saying a damn thing about the other pipelines that are being planned and constructed during the time we’ve been virtually standing with Standing Rock with our armchair activism – and as a palliative pill that helps us sleep at night after taking our sweet time to provide clean water to the people of Flint!
The lead sinkered sacrifice of a population of mostly black fellow citizens – mitakuye oyasin (mitakia wahsan) “all our relations”- – on our watch!
On our watch…
on our watch… tic toc tic toc ….zzzzz
…But it’s not time to sleep people. It’s time to wake-up! It’s time to get woke!
Getting woke means gaining perspective – historically and spiritually.
It’s time to get historical perspective – seeing that at 240 years, we’re but a teenager within the global family of nations.
It’s time to wake up to see that our collective torrid twitter tantrum is an adolescent rebellion.
Teens do dumb stuff. They push limits, test boundaries, and act impulsively – with brains that aren’t fully developed. Their frontal lobes haven’t thickened to put a needed check to their hormonal outbursts and eruptions.
The global community looks on with dismay – but they aren’t freaking out.
They raise their eyes and roll them. They’ve seen it all before.
Over the centuries, they’ve seen imperial young bucks flex their muscles, thump their chests, and strut around like cocky red bulls in a china shop with impetuous arrogant swagger saying that they’re Number One & that God Bless Whateverica has a special hard-on for them.
The world wise web knows that we learn and grow through the dynamic process of * thesis * antithesis * synthesis.
Thesis – learning the cultural norms, values, and conventions that are presented
Antithesis – rejecting those norms, values, and conventions
Synthesis – reinterpreting norms, values, and conventions in new ways, with needed adjustments, on our own terms in our own ways that make sense today.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
And are we ever in the midst of antithesis.
We, changed our clocks back for Daylights Savings Time and then we pell-mell voted to set progress back 50 years or more!
And it’s time to get spiritual perspective – seeing that we don’t have to view chaos as unwelcome or to be avoided. Seeing that chaos is an essential part of real authentic life.
We don’t need to numb and distract ourselves with television or drugs of choice to take the constant edges off —
instead we can own and shred the edge!
we can learn to be with it
we can grow toward being a less anxious presence
we can learn to calmly tread water amidst the chaotic floods
we can learn to relax, float, and breathe though we’re surrounded by the dangerous derelict debris of political, economic, and environmental train-wrecks
we can learn to see that “this too shall pass”
we can embrace Sojourner’s truth that “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence — and watching the evidence change.”
I’ve seen things of great value lost – We don’t know what we have until it’s gone … get found again – and then transform into something entirely different and unexpected. “No one saw that coming!”
Can I have a witness?
We can learn to see that we can help hope’s evidence change by applying the theory of Spiritual Relativity
You know it right! E = ??? … E= MC2!
E – the Energy to do what it takes to move us into action toward health and transformation
M – the MASS of US! The collective all of us. Combined we have mass – critical mass. The people together shall not be defeated!
C – the constant.
What’s the constant?
C is L.
The constant is Love — and squaring it is redundant – just a poetic flourish.
And we have enough of it to inspire and move us from freaked … to fine.
and C is also G — God.
God is love. And there’s no fear in love.
And nothing can separate us from the love of God. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below— (Romans 8:38-9) Nor a trumped-up bragadocious oligarchical ginger white-bred Corinthian leather wrapped, faux-wood veneered alt right administration!
Love is what defines us
we were born in love
we live in love
we die in love
and rest assured love is where we’ll find ourselves whatever may happen after that!
We weren’t given a spirit of fear or timidity but of power and love (2 Tim 1:7)
Sometimes love is tough.
And when you’re trying to raise a teenager- it’s time for tough love and logic.
Our self-parenting love calls us to set boundaries and provide a container where we remind ourselves that there is such a thing as facts and facts matter
There is such a thing as lying and telling the truth matters
There is such a thing as nepotism, good ‘ol boy cronyism, and Richy Rich oligarchy and plutocracy – and they’re to be resisted!
There is such a thing as Civil Rights
There is such a thing as the rule of law
There is such a thing as science
There is such a thing as global warming
There is such a thing as good stewardship of Creation
There is such a thing as grace
There is such a thing as God
And when we aren’t perfect in love, when we do fear, when we forget about perspective, energy, hope and love,
may we take turns reminding each other of who and Whose we are.
We have the time. The time is now.
Like Jesus’ mother Mary, let us ponder these things in our hearts and may we know when it’s time to become great with child and know when it’s time to give birth to who we really are — and grow past our adolescence into the full maturity of God’s people
– God’s grown-ass men and women.
Amen.
~ Rev. Roger Wolsey
Originally preached Dec. 4, 2016 at Wesley Chapel, Boulder, CO
[Updated Dec. 11, 2017]
Read the essay online here.
About 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”
Question & Answer
A Reader from the Internet, asks:
Question:
What does the Advent season call us to do in troubled times?
Answer: By Rev. Irene Monroe
Dear Reader,
A Trump presidency is what I can best depict as a “disastrous opportunity,” because it encourages an intersectional dialogue as well as activism against potential erosion if not dismantling of decades-long civil rights gains. Americans on the margins have the most to lose in a country pivoting away from their full protections and participation in a multicultural democracy.
However, while I am nervous I am also reminded of the 1960’s.
During the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960's, "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness" was the clarion call for justice. The voice that was heard articulated the trials and tribulations of black suffering under an unyielding reign of white supremacy in the United States. One voice in the movement was occasionally heard more loudly than others: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who represented African Americans' collective voices crying out in the wilderness of America's racism.
In the inimitable rhetorical style of the African-American jeremiad tradition, King's voice crying out in the wilderness of American racism is most remembered from his "I Have a Dream" speech. Like John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus' public ministry in this gospel, the force and the momentum of the Civil Rights movement prepared the way for King's ministry. And like the way that John the Baptist's public preaching is most remembered and revered in this gospel where he quotes the prophet Isaiah, King, too, quoted the same words of the prophet Isaiah. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, speaking to a crowd of over 200,000, he said, "I have a dream that one day . . . 'every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.'"
King saw America "in the wilderness" in that time when life was divided along a color line into distinctly black-and-white terms. And the wilderness experience of the 1960's for us Americans was due to racism.
As a geophysical reality, the wilderness was the U.S. South. And the South represented a place unsuited for human habitation. It was a place of danger, inhospitality, marauding Ku Klux Klansmen, and ongoing chaos.
During the time of King's address, the Southern states had long systematized a peculiar brand of justice with its "separate but equal" laws that allowed for separate drinking fountains, restrooms, restaurants, hotels, etc. The South was a place where the entire country could watch African Americans being subdued by blazing-water hoses or being charged by aggressive German shepherds on national television. But at night, when no one was watching, the Ku Klux Klan rode through black neighborhoods to burn their property and/or them, brandishing fire and terror as symbols of white supremacy.
However, racism did not just situate itself unabashedly in the South, it also colored life in the North, albeit differently and less visibly. And although segregationist practices directly violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government exerted little to no effort to enforce these amendments -- in either North or South.
The wilderness, therefore, functions as multiple sites, and it can heal us as a people -- both the oppressed and the oppressor.
The wilderness should not be seen as a permanent place in which one resides or into which one falls and gets stuck, but rather as a place of transition and growth, where radical transformation can take place. It should be used as an interpretative lens to look at reality from an involved, committed stance in light of a faith that does justice. The wilderness is where you see the face of the damned, the dispossessed, the disinherited, and the disrespected, and know that is your starting place.
And for those in the wilderness, it is a space where liberation begins. The wilderness gives you the agency to effect change on your own behalf. It offers an oppositional gaze from which you can honestly critique the oppressive structures in society that keep us separated from who and what we are as the body of Christ.
Advent invites us to journey into the wilderness. It does not invite us into the wilderness to put us on a road without signposts or a road map; instead, Advent invites us to journey into the wilderness as a shared experience of struggle, discovery, enlightenment, community, and liberation. It is only in a shared wilderness experience that the "voice of one crying out in the wilderness" becomes many and is heard.
The Silence Breakers are the TIME person for 2017. It started with one voice that is now many and a worldwide #Me Too movement speaking out against sexual harassment and assault.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read and share online here
About the Author
The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) - Detour
Monroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.
Monroe stated that her "columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Meaning of the Christmas Myths
It is a beautiful time of the year. The celebration is in full swing. The symbols, some sacred, some quite secular, mingle in the market place: Bethlehem and the North Pole, the Angel Gabriel and Rudolf, the Heavenly Host and Santa's reindeer, crèche scenes and Christmas trees. It is also a season in which light hurls back the darkness of the winter solstice. Christmas captures our imaginations as few things ever do. Unfortunately the religious minds of our generation believe that these traditions can be protected from erosion only if they are literalized. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The deepest meaning of this season can never really be understood until literal claims have been laid aside. Jesus' birth was not something that occurred on a silent and holy night in the little town of Bethlehem. No star announced his birth and no angels sang of peace on earth. These mythical details rather embody a beautiful and eternal human dream that we enter symbolically year after year. Let me briefly analyze the data.
Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus was a late developing part of the Jesus story that did not appear until the writing of the Gospel of Matthew in the 9th decade of the Christian era, when people began to claim that since Jesus was the anticipated messiah, he had to be the heir to the 'throne of David.' That idea carried with it the assumption that this future leader had to be born in the "City of David." The early Christians found scriptural authority for this claim in the prophet Micah, an 8th century BCE figure, who had written " But you O Bethlehem, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, but from you shall come forth from me one who is to be the ruler of Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days."
Matthew had the scribes of Herod quote this text to the Wise Men as he directed them to Bethlehem. So important to Matthew was Jesus' royal lineage that he opened his gospel with a long genealogy, that we call the 'who begat whom' chapter, to document this claim. So Matthew tells his readers that Mary and Joseph actually lived permanently in a house in Bethlehem. It was such a specific house that a star could stop and shine directly on it to guide the wise men to their destination. It was a house that Matthew says they had to abandon when informed in a dream that their child was at risk from King Herod, who like the Pharaoh of old, was destroying Jewish male babies in an attempt to wipe out the promised deliverer. It was a house to which this family could return from Egypt when they heard that Herod had died. It was a house they abandoned once again when they learned that Herod's brother, who was equally dangerous, was now on the throne. This time they fled to Galilee and that, Matthew implies, is how Jesus just happened to grow up in Nazareth and why he became known as a Galilean and a Nazarene. Matthew's myth of Jesus' birth presents him as a new Moses, so that as God once led the chosen people out of Egypt, so God could now lead the chosen messiah out of Egypt. This narrative so clearly serves Matthew's apologetic purpose that it cannot be confused with history. The overwhelming probability is that Jesus was born in Nazareth, which is the clear assumption in Mark, the earliest gospel. Matthew, who had Mark before him when he wrote, is the one who altered the tradition.
Luke, writing near the end of the 9th decade or perhaps even early in the 10th decade (88-93 CE), treated the developing Bethlehem tradition quite differently. Like Mark, Luke is quite clear that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth. However, he too must address the growing idea that Jesus, as messiah, is the heir to the Royal line of David. So Luke seeks to temper his story of Jesus' Nazareth origins (which were becoming too humble a place of birth for so great a person) to accommodate the Bethlehem tradition. His literary device for doing this was a census that he dates by saying it was ordered by Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor of Syria. This census, by which "all the world was to be enrolled," required, according to Luke, that every male person must return to his ancestral home to be registered. This meant, said Luke, that Joseph had to go to Bethlehem, a 94-mile journey from Nazareth, for he was of the house of David. So Joseph just happened to be in Bethlehem when his wife delivered her first-born child. Through this accident of history, Luke argues, the scriptures were fulfilled in Jesus. It was a very ingenious solution indeed since it enabled Luke to combine Jesus' obvious Nazareth origins with the fantasies building around Jesus, proclaiming him the Messiah born in the city of David.
The most preliminary study will reveal, however, that the story is not history. Luke and Matthew, for example, both say that Herod was king at the time of the birth of Jesus. Since secular records reveal that Herod died in 4 BCE, this means that Jesus had to be born before this date. Luke then says that the enrollment, ordered by Caesar, came when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Secular records, however, reveal that Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6-7 CE, by which time Jesus would have been at least 10-11 years old. History begins to wobble visibly.
Luke's theory required that this worldwide enrollment had to occur in the male person's ancestral home. This was the strangest literary wrinkle of all and would have required a massive dislocating migration. David, who had 300 wives, died about the year 960 BCE. Luke was asserting that all of the descendents of King David, whose number some 960 years later must have been legion, not only had to know this ancestral detail about themselves but they also had to make their way back to Bethlehem. This was a time in which human longevity made three generations a century normative, so we are talking about 27-30 generations of keeping family lines alive. To my knowledge no one, in that time when there were no birth or death certificates, to say nothing of marriage licenses, was that deeply into ancestor worship. It is also of interest that the genealogies of Jesus in both Matthew and Luke do not agree in almost any detail, including which of King David's sons constituted the royal line: it was Solomon says Matthew, Nathan says Luke. No one knows who Nathan is but if a man had as many wives as David, certainly one of his sons might have been called Nathan, or anything else for that matter. These genealogies also disagree on who Jesus' grandfather was: Jacob, says Matthew, Heli, says Luke.
A final note that makes Luke's story clearly not history is that on this journey to Bethlehem Joseph was said to have taken his wife, who was "great with child." Why? To be enrolled? Women were not counted in a census, or registered for tax purposes. Women also did not normally travel. Given the mode of transportation available in that day, walking or riding a donkey, what man in his right mind would take an eight months plus pregnant woman on a 94 mile walk or donkey ride, that would normally take seven to ten days and in a world with no restaurants or hotels? One woman biblical scholar, on reading this observed, "Only a man who had never had a baby could have written such a story." No, the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus is not history. It is part of the later developing mythology that gathered around the origins of Jesus. A person as significant as Jesus was believed to be when these later gospels were written could not have had an ordinary birth; so Matthew and Luke, 50 to 60 years after the crucifixion, freed their imaginations and created these miraculous tales that form our Christmas stories.
Once the mythical content of the Bethlehem birthplace is established, all the other details of these birth narratives fall as literal history. Ancient astrologers did not follow a star announcing the birth of a Jewish king, especially one that no one recognized as a king until well after his death. Recall that Matthew says later that this king was also a carpenter's son. Nor do angels sing to hillside shepherds, propelling them on a similar journey to search for a baby. Luke gives the shepherds only two clues. The baby would be wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. We do both the Bible and human scholarship a grave disservice when we try to literalize and make history out of these interpretative myths, created by the second or third generation of those who were the disciples of this Jesus. No reputable biblical scholar in the world today, Catholic or Protestant, treats these narratives of Matthew and Luke as history. It is time the church said that publicly.
Why do we then keep these stories and repeat them every year if they are not factually true? That is usually the question of an adult who has had his or her fairy tale religion shaken. The answer is simple. Truth is so much bigger than literalism. The meaning of Santa Claus, who receives his greatest joy by giving gifts to children, is not dependent on there being a literal fat elf dressed in red who lives in a place to which we can never go. Some human experiences are so large, so real, so life changing and so defining that the words used to describe those moments must break open the imagination if they are to capture this kind of truth. That is what myth does. That is what the biblical stories of Jesus' birth are all about. There was something present in this Jesus, they said, that opened human lives to new dimensions of reality. Human beings could never have produced what we have experienced in Jesus. In him, they exclaimed, we believe that we have met eternity breaking into time, transcendence entering the mundane, the divine in the life of the human. If that is our experience with the adult Jesus, then his birth must have been marked with heavenly signs that drew people to him.
That is what these stories are trying to say. Our task is not to master the details or to pretend that myths are history. It is rather to enter the experience that caused the myths surrounding his birth to be born, to be transformed by that life and to become a new creation through that experience. If that occurs, these early Christians were saying, we too will see the star of Bethlehem, hear angels sing, and like the wise men and shepherds of old, begin our journey toward the mystery and wonder of God. Bethlehem, the symbolic town where God and human life come together, is finally our human destiny. That is the meaning of Christmas.
~John Shelby Spong
Originally published December 22, 2004
Announcements
Why Christianity Is No Longer Believable – And How We Can Change That
Pre-order John Shelby Spong’s final book, "Unbelievable"
Five hundred years after Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the Reformation, bestselling author and controversial bishop and teacher John Shelby Spong delivers twelve forward-thinking theses to spark a new reformation to reinvigorate Christianity and ensure its future.
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14 Dec '17
HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
Finding Home for the Holidays
Rev. Irene Monroe
The holiday season is a difficult time of year for many.
Too often we see the glitz and glamour that this holiday brings, and we miss its spiritual message. The underlying message in celebrating the season-Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and the winter solstice- is the full embrace of human difference and diversity.
I believe if Americans stayed more focused on the message and teachings of this holiday season, many LGBTQ youth and young adults would not have the annual angst of searching for a home for the holidays.
However, LGBTQ people like the Early Christians struggle for full acceptance in society.
For example, until the 4th century C.E., when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Christians were despised as much in those days as LGBTQ are today. As a matter-of-fact, to be called a Christian was considered a religious epithet, and it subjected Christians to ridicule, hate crimes and Christian-bashing in much of the same way as us queers are today. Just as Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old first year student at the University of Wyoming in October 1998 was bludgeoned and then nailed to a wooden fence, like a hunting trophy, because he was gay, Stephen, a follower of Jesus was stoned to death in 35 A.D. because he was a Christian, becoming the first Christian martyr. And, Apostle Paul, before he saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and stopped his Christian-bashing, was one of the many approving bystanders at Stephen’s stoning.
Also, just as LGBTQ people transformed the pejorative term “queer” into a positive word of self-reference,Christians transformed the word “Christian” into one of self-reverence. Having known this history, I found calling myself a queer Christian neither blasphemous nor an oxymoron, because both are tied to the unending struggle for acceptance, just at different times along our human timeline.
For example, I come out of a black religious tradition born of struggle for acceptance. When slave masters gave my ancestors the Bible, their intent was not to make us better Christians, but instead better slaves. The Bible, at least according to slave owners, was one of the legitimate sanctions for American slavery. However, my ancestors took this authoritative text that was meant to aid them in acclimating to their life of servitude and turned it into an incendiary text to foment slave revolts, abolitionists movements, and also this nation’s civil rights movement. The Bible told African Americans how to do what must be done. And, in so doing, Nat Turner revolted against slavery, and Harriet Tubman conducted a railroad out of it. My ancestors expanded not only the understanding of what it meant to be human but also the parameters of what it meant to be a Christian. Having known this history, I found calling myself a queer African-American Christian to my community neither less black nor less Christian.
Jesus’ birth comes at a difficult time along our human timeline. Viewed as a religious threat to conservative Jews because of his iconoclastic views and practice of Jewish Law, and viewed as a political threat to the Roman government because he was a Jew, Jesus was nailed to a cross at Calvary because of the struggle for acceptance.
When I think of the birth of Jesus, one of the themes that loom large for me is LGBTQ homelessness.
Why homelessness?
Because many of us do not have a home to go to where we can sit at the family table and be entirely out — or if out, fully accepted. As with Mary and Joseph during the time of Jesus’ birth, we travel from inn-to-inn to only find there is no room.
“I’m Queer. I’m Homeless. I’m Hungry. I’m Scared. I’m Tired,” was the ad one year by New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth asking the American public to give the gift of $10 during the holiday season to help their homeless.
While homelessness of teen and youth populations are often attributed to family neglect, family tragedy, poverty, AIDS, drug abuse, eviction, or being aged out of foster care, our LGBTQ teen and youth populations that are homeless are, first and foremost, if not solely, because of their sexual orientation. And sadly, it sends a message that these homes rather have no child than a queer child.
According to a 2011 study from Boston’s Children’s Hospital, published online on the “American Journal of Public Health” website it stated that when it comes to the private institution of the home, our LGBTQ youth are disproportionately thrown out of theirs, more often than their heterosexual peers, especially in communities of color like the African Americans one.
Some years ago when I wrote about homelessness of African American LGBTQ youth, this was a typical type of response I received from an irate blogger who read my piece on “Black Commentator’s” website.
“Given that our resources are tight & these youth are not at all psychologically prepared for our liberation struggle, they are expendable. Such are the realities of war. It’s going to take all of our resources to salvage the heterosexual youth, who will hopefully form strong, loving, heterosexual relationships & produce healthy children. This is how we will produce a strong black nation/community. The dysfunctional youth you are asking us to rescue cannot/will not be able to make the contribution we need, so they are expendable.”
The perception that African American families and communities do not throw away their children because of the much-touted old African adage that espouses black unity – “It takes a village to raise a child” – rings false, it seems when it comes to our LGBTQ youth.
In Luke 2:6-7 it states “While they were there the time came for [Mary] to have her baby, and she gave birth to a son — her firstborn. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Our birth, as individuals and as a movement, mirrors that of Jesus. It comes at a time where there is still neither room nor tolerance for us – even with U.S. Supreme ruling in favor of marriage equality in 2015- in some homes and families – especially churches that have both unapologetically and unabashedly closed its doors to its LGBTQ population. And, despite the fact, these kids looked to the church for help these youth have neither a chance nor a prayer for assistance.
“I believe that one day, the Lord will come back to get me. Halleluiah all my trials and tribulations, they will all be over,”Ali Forney, a black gender-nonconforming teen stated at Safe Space, a program homeless youth in NYC, before being murdered in December 1997. In 2002 the Ali Forney Center in NYC, the nation’s largest LGBTQ youth homeless services center, was founded in Ali’s honor.
“Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” bills that codify LGBTQ discrimination are springing up around the country in many states. They justify denying services to same-sex couples.
For example, a Christian conservative family-owned bakery in Gresham, Oregon called “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” wanted to “practice their Constitutional right to religious freedom to not serve LGBTQ patrons. When fined $135,000, Sweet Cakes closed the family shop and moved the business to their home making it clear LGBTQ dollars are not wanted.
And, just this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a baker’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding on religious grounds ― claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. Shockingly, however, the Trump Administration doesn’t see a problem with businesses hanging up a “No Gays Allowed” sign, which is reminiscent of America’s Jim Crow era. The intolerance from shopkeepers like Sweet Cakes and Masterpiece Cakeshop heightens LGBTQ youth and young adults sense of homelessness.
Many of our homeless LGBTQ youth and young adult across this country this holiday season will not have a queer-friendly shelter to go to. And too many will spend the time alone even where homeless LGBTQ shelters across the country will be open because they gravely miss their families and communities.
As we gear up for this holiday season, let us enjoy the time. Let us make home -if not with biological family -then with beloved friends. However, let us also not forget the continued struggle of LGBTQ homeless youth and young adults searching for a home for the holidays.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read essay online here
About the Author
The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) – Detour
Monroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.
Monroe stated that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.
Question & Answer
Stephen from Westmere, Australia writes:
Question:
If, as you say, the stories of Jesus' miraculous birth are pious legends, what are the implications for staging a children's Christmas pageant in a small suburban church?
Answer: Rev. Gretta Vosper
Dear Stephen,
Ah, the Christmas pageant! A delightful opportunity for intergenerational engagement that shares a story of magic and wonder. Its appeal is rooted in our own wistful memories and we love to see children caught up in the same exuberance as we once felt, lo, those many years ago.
Often, the story brought to life includes the three wise men (sic) and shepherds, crowded together in the small stable. Angels hover on the sidelines and baby lambs and donkeys provide opportunity for costume variety. The congregation’s youngest child or a substitute doll (we once used my daughter’s black Cabbage Patch doll), lies in a manger. We can see it all. But perhaps the most dramatic part of the story displayed when all are in their places – a challenge for stage managers dealing with excited, and often unruly children – is how wrong it all is.
Not only is the central story of the virgin birth a myth, there was no inn (and no surly innkeeper), no stable, no animals. The shepherds and the magi were nowhere near each other in the gospel accounts, the latter showing up at a house, not a stable, at a considerably later date. Even the shining star which rises in Matthew’s story, is not associated at all with Jesus’ birth, but only with the (likely Zoroastrian) magi who noticed its rise, and, so the story goes, followed it to find him and offer their gifts.
While there may have been animals in close proximity to a manger (there is no mention of them in the gospels), if your pageant has them talking at the stroke of midnight, the virgin nodding to the little drummer boy so he can play a solo for the smiling baby Jesus, or three majestic Kings with gifts, you are tragically deep in the magical thinking that has fed the Christmas story for two thousand years.
What to do? The story of Jesus’ birth seems so central to the Christian narrative that we feel compelled to tell it even when we know it isn’t true. But this can be deeply problematic, particularly when we are entertaining members of the public who are very likely not in attendance when the story is deconstructed with contemporary (and not so contemporary), critical scholarship in bible studies or sermon series. We live in a time when the once crucial distinctions that religions provided us are no longer helpful. Our recognizable differences – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the symbols we drape and tattoo on our bodies – once sheltered us safely amongst those who were like us. But now, armed as we are with twenty-first century weaponry, religious intolerances can quickly turn deadly. Even when religion is not the reason for war and violence, it is often the fuel used to stoke political, economic, and civil tensions. We can no longer afford to fire the imagination with beliefs that privilege one group of humans over another.
The Christmas story, then, must be told as myth so that all who witness it in pageant form, go away with smiles on their faces knowing that it is not a story of privilege or power, but a story that invites us to explore our own lives in the light of the possibilities into which each human being is born. Well, maybe that’s a bit deep for audiences laughing until they cry when the angel trying to see his wings twirls so fast in pursuit of them that he collapses in the hay from dizziness. Perhaps the best we can do is be clear that the story is a myth and let the questions percolate.
Living the Questions created a pageant called “Matt and Lucy’s Version Births” in which two children were given directorial responsibilities, each provided a different gospel narrative from which to work. That is sure to raise questions for both participants and audiences. But it is important to acknowledge that there are answers to many of the questions raised and they need to be shared. Be prepared to provide some of them, perhaps even in a question and answer form in a handout you can distribute as the audience disperses. “Was Jesus really born in a stable? Not likely. ...”
Or, if you don’t want to tamper with the cultural accretions that make up some of the cuter pageant possibilities, at least be honest about the story itself. In addition to a simple handout, you can begin the wonder in the opening moments of the pageant, situating this story amongst the fabled tales we’ve shared throughout our history. Begin it with the simple but telling words, “Once upon a time ....”
~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
Read and share online here
About the Author
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Gospels and Punctuation
Elizabeth Robinson, a friend of mine who teaches English as a second language to the children of immigrants in New Zealand, recently sent me an exercise on the importance of punctuation that she has used in her class. Please note that the words in these two examples are identical, only the punctuation has been changed.
1. Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours? Gloria
2. Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we are apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria
Why would I use this column for a lesson on punctuation? Because it illustrates a primary problem we have with biblical fundamentalists who make excessive claims for the accuracy of the Bible. Stick with me to the end of this column and the connection will be clear.
Recently, I had a television debate with Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky. In that debate, he proclaimed, "I believe that every word of the Bible is the inerrant word of God." It was such a astonishing statement that I responded by asking him if he had ever read the Bible! Yet his words are not dissimilar from those voiced by such fundamentalist media evangelists as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson. They are also regularly recited in the belief system of that part of the country called the 'Bible Belt,' in which I was reared as a child. This claim is not, therefore, unfamiliar to me.
Yet when I hear this evangelical rhetoric today, I am still stunned. It is so uninformed that I cannot believe that people who make this claim actually read the same Bible I read. Is it the word of God when Paul writes to the Galatians, "I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves (Gal. 5:12);" when women are ordered "to keep quiet in church (II Cor. 14:24);" or when the Bible calls for the execution of all homosexuals as it does in Leviticus (20:13)? Do fundamentalists not know that the Bible has been quoted to justify slavery, to encourage war, to diminish women and to vilify Jews, among many other evils?
The claim is even stranger when one inquires about which version of the Bible is the inerrant one? Is it the New International Version, clearly the favorite among the fundamentalists? Or is it the Jerusalem Bible that Roman Catholics prefer because it does not challenge the dogma of that Church in regard to the Virgin Mary? Is it the King James' Version, that the traditionalists so love or the Revised Standard Version, that scholars seem to prefer? Is it the New Revised Standard version that attempts to remove sexist language from the various texts? How can there be an inerrant Bible if there is such variety in the available translations?
When pressed, the fundamentalists will generally say that inerrancy is in the original text not in the translations. Fair enough, I respond, so now allow me to examine that claim. Does anyone have a copy of the original manuscript of any book in the New Testament? Perhaps fundamentalists do not realize that though we have earlier fragments, the oldest full text we have of any book of the New Testament dates only from the seventh century C.E. In those days, without printing presses, the Bible had to be hand copied by a scribe. Is it possible that no scribe in seven hundred years of copying ever made a mistake or added a clarifying word? The fact is that in various ancient texts of the Bible, there are thousands of places where the oldest texts we possess disagree with one another. In the notes at the end of the chapters in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, time and again there is a statement informing readers that other ancient manuscripts differ on this particular word or passage. John 7:53 - 8:11, in most Bibles is, for example, the story of Jesus rescuing the woman taken in the act of adultery. Yet this story does not appear in manuscripts of John's Gospel until very late in medieval history. In other ancient documents it comes after Luke 21:28, but with a number of variations in the text itself. In Mark 14:24, where Jesus is described as instituting the Last Supper, he says, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." Some ancient texts, however, add the word "new" before covenant. A minor change, one might say, but an example of how a word might have been added by a scribe, to address a later conflict between the followers of Jesus and the traditionalist Jews. Does the original text of Mark's Gospel open (Mk. 1:1) with the words, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," as the majority of our available manuscripts suggest or does it say, as others argue, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?" I can think of far more reasons why that phrase would have been added than I can for a scribe leaving it out. Surely some scribes took liberties in their copying by inserting words to make the text conform to later teaching. No passage from any book in the Bible can be guaranteed to be the exact copy of the original author's work. How then, knowing this, can anyone claim inerrancy for a text, the accuracy of which could never be guaranteed?
Beyond these truths, fundamentalists must contend with the fact that Jesus' earthly life seems to have ended around the year 30 C.E. Mark, however, wrote no earlier than 70 C.E. and John the final Gospel is dated at the turn of the century, so every word attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and every gospel story about Jesus, floated in oral transmission during that 40 to 70 year period. Were the words or stories always repeated identically? Hardly! The gospels themselves are not even in agreement with one another. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark in front of them when they wrote their later narratives. Yet they omit some things that Mark had included, change others with which they do not appear to agree and add new things to Mark that perhaps he had not known. Where there is a clear textual disagreement in the gospels themselves, can the claim be made with any credibility that any particular version is the inerrant word of God?
The difficulty does not stop there. Jesus spoke Aramaic, yet all the gospels were originally composed in Greek. So every word of Jesus that we have has undergone a translation. Is there such a thing as a perfect translation? Of course not! Every language is deeply acculturated so that few words in any language can be translated exactly into another language. Anyone ascribing inerrancy to the Bible apparently has no knowledge of these elementary facts.
Now let me come back to the punctuation exercise with which I opened this column. The final thing that fundamentalists do not seem to understand is that in the earliest manuscripts of the gospels, there is no punctuation! They have no chapters, no verses, no paragraphs, no capital letters, no commas and no periods. There is not even a space between the words. These manuscripts are simply row after row of Greek letters. If a word could not be completed on a line, it is simply broken wherever the space ran out, without a hyphen, and the remaining letters of that word continued on the next line. There is nothing to indicate to the reader that a word has been broken. So when we read the gospels today, we need to be aware that every paragraph, every comma, every period and every word division that we find in the New Testament today has been imposed on the text hundreds of years later by interpreters. Did those interpreters always get it right? The suggestion that they always did defies rationality. Punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence dramatically as we saw earlier.
This brief analysis of textual problems we have with the Bible is not designed to be an attack on the Bible that I treasure. It is rather an attack upon an idolatrous, irrational attitude by which fundamentalists seek to transform the words of the Bible into some magical, inerrant authority for their religious claims and thus to be able to use that authority as a weapon with which to attack their religious enemies.
One can only hold to a fundamentalist view of the Bible if every rational faculty is suspended. This mentality also requires a refusal to acknowledge any idea that destabilizes one's prejudices. That is why fundamentalism is always marked by hysteria, defensiveness and hostile attacks on those who do not share that point of view. Fundamentalist religion is ultimately a search for security, not a search for truth. This is what makes real dialogue with fundamentalists, whether it is over evolution or homosexuality, so unbearably difficult. No rational basis exists upon which to explore an issue, if one believes that quoting the Bible is the way one arrives at conclusions. Those who are convinced that they possess the whole truth of God will always be imperialistic. For those who disagree with fundamentalists are, in the minds of the fundamentalists, disagreeing with God. That is also why fundamentalists will ultimately employ violence - whether that violence is expressed in 'Holy' Wars, by burning heretics at the stake or by using suicide pilots to destroy the World Trade Center. I wish our world could understand this very simple truth, since it is that mentality that operates today in the flames of Iraq, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, in Ireland, in Bangladesh and in the murders that take place at family planning centers or in other hate crimes in the United States.
~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published November 3, 2004
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13 Dec '17
At this time of year, people in Nicaragua celebrate "La Griteria", to me a combination of caroling and trick or treat. Folks walk from house to house and shout out, "What is the source of the overwhelming joy that is flooding our hearts?" And the reply is, "The Virgin has conceived!!" Then they share treats, socialize, sing together, and on to the next house. . . . keeps going until the treats are all gone.
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> So. here's hoping, in the midst of all that is flooding your heart these days, that you recognize some overwhelming joy and, maybe even shout out, "What is the source of this overwhelming joy that is flooding our hearts?"
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> . . . and maybe, even someone replies, and you share treats, socialize, sing together.
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> . . . not to ignore all else that is flooding our hearts, but to recognize the joy as well.
>
> The Wiegels
>
> Jim Wiegel
> “That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." Nikos Kazantzakis
>
> 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> 623-363-3277
> jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
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