| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We are Wonder-FULL | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Lauren Van Ham March 25, 2021 In many places around the world, in an effort to address one issue, a list of others are brought into the conversation.  We’re seeing this in our approach to education, healthcare, civil service, food and agriculture, and so on.  This convergence isn’t surprising and it’s inviting something important from us.  And yet, the dominant system continues to try something that isn’t working very well.  The phrase used to describe it?  Whack-a-mole.  Have you played?  It’s the amusement park game where, while holding a padded mallet, the player is to watch for the plastic mole, popping out from its hole, and to whack it back down.  Just as soon as one mole has been hit, another appears from a different hole – or sometimes two! Depending on the player, the exercise is energizing, overwhelming, maddening; but the overall goal is to keep at it and make those moles stay in their holes.  It’s an apt metaphor, no?  There is a strange seduction in the story of progress to, “stick with it,” “work hard.”  We routinely do these things without considering that there ARE other activities in the amusement park.  Recently, I was listening to cosmologist Brian Swimme.  He was talking about “neoteny.”  Do you know this word?  Neoteny, is defined as, “the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal.”  Humans have neoteny. In fact, we’re arguably one of very few species who do.  Unlike many creatures, even after our reproductive and nutritional needs are met, we have excess curiosity and energy for play, learning, wondering. Isn’t that wonderful?!??  Like many of you, I’m sure, I take delight when scientists wistfully respond to vexing questions with, “We don’t know!”  Not knowing doesn’t mean that we stop asking.  On the contrary, our neotenic tendencies sustain our ability to keep searching.  In short, neoteny  - the spiritual state of Wonder – is a saving grace that lives in each of us.  Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, philosopher and psychologist wisely asks:  “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?”  Bayo is wondering.  He’s wondering about the Whack-a-Mole approach that pulses in our bodies.  It moves us from our beds to our jobs, to the store.  We purchase energy bars and move on to our volunteer work and taxes.  Admittedly, many of us have found a certain comfort in the busyness, but the pandemic has also shown us that we’re tired… and many of our ideas feel tired, too. Some pockets of society are asking questions that come from a less caffeinated section of the amusement park, where the merry-go-round music is faint and “whack-a-mole” is absent.  There might be some tire swings or a field with kites.  It’s definitely a place where we feel our neoteny. Dr Akomolafe also says, “The time is urgent, let us slow down.” Slowing down isn’t a new thing for those who follow Jesus or walk other spiritual paths.  We’ve repeatedly been taught the importance of Sabbath.  Admitting our societal exhaustion also clarifies what has happened:  we have co-created and sustained a culture that has increasingly become more transactional than relational.  Ouch.  We navigate each transaction (at the post office, on the freeway) all while we’re feeling a little tired, a little empty, a little (or a lot) confused about how to live well, how to help others, how to embody a Spirit-filled life.  When did the transactional become louder than the relational?  Some blame Genesis, interpreting the teachings as God giving humans permission to take from Creation: extraction and transaction.  But upon careful review, Genesis places humanity within a living family of relationships.  In Genesis 1, verse 3, we read, Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  God continues, for a couple days with the, “Let there be” language to create the sky, waters and Earth.  And then… the language grows more interesting!  In verse 11, God asks Earth to be a co-creative partner when God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And on the 5th day, God asks the water to create, too, when God says, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…” AND God goes back to Earth, inviting Earth to bring forth all the living creatures.  And then, in verse 26, God goes all out and says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” Do you feel what’s happening here?  Call it evolution, call it panentheism or mystery, but with every act of creation, God calls upon Creation itself to birth forth a cascade of Life, calling it Good. And then, in a grand invitation, God calls upon Everything – the first spark of light, the sea, and the life animating every species to collectively birth us, the two-leggeds: “Let US make humankind in OUR image, according to OUR likeness.” We, my friends, are made in the likeness of all of it. One giant act of relatedness!  Where is your neoteny in this moment?  Do you feel some wonder?  I sure do! Divine Creation needed everything before us, in order to arrive at the creative instant where our incarnation became possible.  13.8 billion years of birthing one interdependent relationship after another.   Verse 26 goes on to read that God, “let us have dominion” over this living family of Creation, and in Genesis 2, verse 15, we read, “ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it,” or in some translations, “to guard it.” Biblical scholars would no doubt suggest that “dominion,” holds several meanings in Hebrew and in Greek; but even when looking up “dominion” in the English thesaurus, the word “management,” appears.  Economy.  Eco = home, and nomics = management.  God granted us – in the spirit of relatedness - the management of Creation.  This is our BIRTHRIGHT!  A clear and beautiful instruction.  And yet…. Why, in all of this relatedness, do we feel so disconnected?  Depleted?  Empty?  Because we mistakenly turn that which is divinely relational, into something inhumanely transactional.  And, to make this sin livable, we turn our heads and forget our neoteny.  Children don’t allow this sort of behavior.  We are born into relatedness and unity.  It is only over time that we learn transaction and separation.  And this is why Jesus’s teaching in Matthew is so helpful: when we become like children, we enter the kin-dom.  Feeling our kin-dom is Heaven on Earth!  What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?  Some of us are catching ourselves in transactional patterns, and we’re admitting that we’re over it.  Whack-a-mole is an endless, aggressive transaction, not our divine birthright.  Our mentors and teachers are the Trees, the Plants, the Water molecules.  Our life lessons are the divine task we’ve been given to guard all of them, to become fire-tenders, and water-protectors, and to observe and develop honorable harvesting relationships with the ones who generously offer themselves to us so that we can support their continuation.  This is not a quick, transactional process, but rather a relational practice of wonder.  When you’re feeling empty, afraid, tired, go in search of your wonder.  Do it before you watch the news; follow its instructions as you shop for your next car or discern the best way to invest your money.  Consider that the person or thing causing you so much discomfort just might carry the thing you need to find more connection, not less.  We are Wonder-FULL.  The health of our Creation family relies on your willingness and mine to tend the garden the way children do, in acts of relational kinship.  It necessitates slowing down.  And that’s ok.  Children hate to rush and we make fewer mistakes when we allow ourselves time to wonder and consult with our mentors.  What will we learn about vaccines, anti-racism, education, food security, by checking-in first with our teachers?  It takes longer, but the reward is far greater than whacking a robotic plastic mole.  The time is urgent, let us slow down, and enact Wonder. ~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham  Read online here About the Author Rev. Lauren Van Ham was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest.  Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute.  Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings have supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism.  Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice; and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.   | | | | | | | | Question & Answer   Q: By Evelyn I am an Anglican, but having accepted the concept of a non-theistic God, I feel uncomfortable attending church with all its outdated forms of worship. To leave the church, however, is to lose my "church family" and the human contact, as well as my part in the church's ministries, all essential to the expression of God's love. What shall I do? A: By Rev. Gretta Vosper   Dear Evelyn, It is so hard to realize that you are no longer drawn to a community of faith by the faith of the community. When your discomfort makes it hard to attend, it can create loss that goes far beyond the time you would have spent in the pews. My guess is that your question preceded COVID and its restrictions on human contact which, themselves, will have disrupted your relationship with your “church family”. There are many ways to connect online with communities from around the world. I’d invite you to take this opportunity to reach out and see if there is one out there that matches your beliefs and introduces you to people who may not live close to your home but feel much more closely aligned to your perspective. West Hill gathers people from across North America, the UK, and Africa. The world, as they say, is your oyster right now. Many congregations that are meeting virtually, because of their newfound reach, will be remaining online when gathering restrictions are reduced or ended. My next guess is that you have a deep desire to be involved in life-giving ministry. Up until now, that has happened through your church. Many church ministries, outside of worship and Christian education, don’t deal with the language or doctrinal beliefs of the congregation and are undertaken in a more fellowship-oriented manner. If those kinds of ministries remain available to you, stick with them. You don’t need to give up what it is that provides you the opportunity to spread joy and find meaning in the process of doing so. Your friends, with whom you have been doing these things for many years, will welcome the opportunity to be with you. If being with those friends or participating in your ministries is problematic to them, you, or the church, simply turn around and look at the community outside the church doors. There are so many places that need a helping hand from food banks to women’s shelters to garden centres and reading programs. Any one of them would lift your heart and connect you to that great power of love by which so many needs in the world are filled. In the process of finding that new ministry, be open to the new friends to whom it will introduce you. They may not look like what you’re used to, but your heart, next to theirs, will soon beat with a common rhythm. All my best and do keep us up to date on your journey of discovery. ~ 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. Visit her website here | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org relies heavily on the good will of donors. We want to continue to bring you the messages of progressive Christians via our Progressing Spirit Newsletter; however, the fact is, the cost of a subscription goes towards paying our authors. We therefore rely your generosity - specifically, if you are in a position to contribute to our efforts, we would be grateful for your donation.    Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary.  | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited   The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXIV: The Raising of Lazarus and the Identity of the Beloved Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong August 19, 2010 We began this study of John with the assertion that the author of this gospel was writing a highly symbolic, interpretive account of Jesus of Nazareth. He created this account some 65-70 years after the events he is describing, which marked the end of Jesus’ earthly life. He tells his readers time and again that his words are not to be treated literally; indeed, he mocks the literalizing tendencies that he finds in the religious community of his day. To bring this theme into an even clearer focus, I turn now to two uniquely Johannine narratives, not even alluded to anywhere else in the Christian tradition, other than in the Fourth Gospel. The first of these is the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the second is the series of stories through whom the introduction of the strange and enigmatic figure, known only as “the beloved disciple” or as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” comes into the tradition. In an interesting way these two apparently separate narratives are significantly interconnected. Note first the dramatic place in his drama to which the author of the Fourth Gospel has assigned the story of the raising of Lazarus. It is for John the catalyst that leads directly to the crucifixion. He then both compares and contrasts this Lazarus story with the raising of Jesus from the dead, which will be the grand climax that will conclude his gospel. We begin our probe of this story by raising the question: Is it possible that the author of the Fourth Gospel ever entertained the possibility that there was even a shred of historical data underlying his account of raising Lazarus from the grave? The answer to that question is simple. Not a chance! Consider these facts: Mary and Martha, two sisters who lived in Bethany, have been figures in the Christian memory for quite a while, even starring in the gospel of Luke. Nowhere in that earlier tradition, however, was it recorded that they had a brother named Lazarus. John has clearly created Lazarus for his own literary purposes. Next John describes the raising of Lazarus from the dead as an event that was quite public. Crowds, consisting of both the friends and enemies of Jesus, have gathered to mourn the passing of Lazarus. This was not a miraculous event done in private, the details of which might, in the course of time, be exaggerated. There were eye witnesses galore. The lead-up to this story sets the stage for this event to be the source of great wonder. Jesus, we are told, postponed his journey to Bethany until the news came that Lazarus was actually dead. When he finally does arrive, the burial of Lazarus has been completed since it was the fourth day after his death. Both Martha and Mary express their displeasure by berating Jesus for not coming earlier when, they suggest, he could perhaps have used his powers to save Lazarus and to restore him to health. There is no hint anywhere in the Christian tradition that anyone anywhere had ever heard about this episode before. Embrace what that means. Here is a public event attended by a great crowd in which a man, dead for four days, has already been buried in a cave with a great stone covering its entrance. Jesus, the itinerant preacher, now proceeds to reverse this death even though the corpse was already in the decaying process. To accomplish the miracle this teacher, over the protests of the sisters of the dead man (“already he stinketh,” the King James version has Martha say), orders the stone removed and he calls Lazarus to come forth. The mesmerized crowd then watches as the corpse of Lazarus, bound in the burial bands of cloth that secured both his hands and his feet and into which the burial spice of myrrh had been generously poured, comes staggering out of the cave. Jesus then orders them to “unbind him and let him go.” If this were history, can you imagine how the account of this event could have been so deeply suppressed that no hint of it would have appeared in any Christian circle until John decided to write about it some three generations later? No, the raising of Lazarus is not an event that occurred in history. Then how are we to read this story? What was its origin? There is only one other figure named Lazarus who appears in the New Testament. He is a character in a parable that only Luke records. We call it the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who is sometimes named Dives. This Lucan parable is about judgment. Lazarus, a beggar at the gate of the rich man, dies. So does the rich man, who apparently never “sees” this beggar. Lazarus is carried into the “bosom of Abraham” and the rich man is removed to the tortures of the condemned. In torment, Dives asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water to ease his thirst. Abraham responds that one cannot get to Dives from where Lazarus is. Then Dives asks him to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers to amend their lives lest they too come to this place of torment. Abraham replies, “They have Moses and the prophets to warn them.” If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, “they will not listen even if one is raised from the dead.” John takes this Lucan parable, historicizes it and demonstrates its truth in the life of Jesus. The raising of Lazarus does not create faith or change behavior; it actually serves to make the crucifixion of Jesus inevitable. The character we call Lazarus is a literary creation of the author of the Fourth Gospel, based on a parable, which John uses to stand as a symbol for those who see God in Jesus, respond to that experience and move from their religious past into the new consciousness that became available in Jesus. Moving on now to look at “the beloved disciple,” we note several other crucial items in this narrative. First, this character called Lazarus is the only person whom the author of the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus loved. The message that comes to Jesus from Mary and Martha, notifying him of their brother’s illness and urging him to come quickly, is this. “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Next this text says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Later Jesus is portrayed as weeping as he makes his way to the tomb, causing the crowd to say, “See how he loved him.” If Jesus had a single “beloved disciple,” it is interesting that this gospel never suggests that it could be anyone other than this literary character known as Lazarus. Second, it is also true that the designation of “one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved” does not enter the Johannine narrative until after the story of the raising of Lazarus. Only then is the “beloved disciple” pictured as present at the Last Supper “lying close to the heart of Jesus.” He is the one whom Peter implores to ask Jesus to identify the name of the traitor. We next confront the beloved disciple in John’s text at the foot of the cross and hear the dying Jesus commend his mother to the care of this person. Could the mother of Jesus be a symbol for Judaism, the mother of Christianity, and could the beloved disciple be a symbol of one who sees the meaning of Jesus so deeply that he can carry Jesus’ message into a new context in the Gentile world without losing “his mother” Judaism in the process? Rudolf Bultmann, probably the greatest New Testament scholar in the 20th century, seems to think so and has advanced this possibility in his monumental commentary entitled simply: The Gospel of John. The next time “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is mentioned in this gospel is in the Easter story. There we are told that he comes with Peter to the tomb that Mary Magdalene has reported to be empty, her suspicion being that the grave had been robbed, which would represent the final insult to the memory of Jesus. Peter and “the beloved disciple” run together, Peter the older, the one who is rooted in the tradition of Judaism, runs more slowly. The beloved disciple is younger, the one who will guide the Jesus message into its universal future, so he runs more quickly and arrives at the tomb first. He does not go in, but pauses at the entrance. Judaism must enter the new place before the Christian movement can do so. The new tradition must be built on the old. It cannot be born except out of the old. Religion always evolves by transcending the limits of the past and giving birth to a new consciousness. So Peter, arriving later and presumably out of breath, enters the tomb. He sees the signs. The grave clothes are neatly lying in place exactly where the head, the hands and the feet of the deceased Lord would have been. This resurrection was not to be like that of Lazarus, a resuscitation back to life in this world and still bound by the grave clothes. This was a transformative experience in which death is transcended, limits are crossed and new life is achieved. “The disciple whom Jesus loved” then follows Peter into the tomb. Like Peter, he also sees, but he takes the vital next step — this seeing causes him to believe! They both return home and that evening John’s gospel says that Jesus appeared to them, along with all of the other disciples. This raised Jesus was portrayed as being intensely physical, but at the same time we are told that he entered the house despite the fact that the doors were shut and the windows barred. Once inside, we are told, he breathed on them the life-giving breath of God. It was that same breath that had brought Adam into being at the first creation. This was the new creation and it was the beloved disciple who first steps into it. The beloved disciple is clearly a symbol, not a person. He represents those lives in which the meaning of Jesus leaps the boundaries of yesterday’s religious understanding, by which people have always sought to control the wonder of the being that Jesus came to bring. This beloved disciple is mentioned once more in the Epilogue to John’s gospel. By the time this chapter was written and added to the text of this gospel, the literalizing process had already begun and John’s symbol of the “beloved disciple” is identified with a particular one of the twelve who has clearly died. The theory apparently had developed that this beloved disciple was supposed to live until Jesus’ second coming. So his death had to be explained and the Epilogue seeks to do so. The point is then made that Jesus does come again every time another person enters the new life, the new consciousness that Jesus came to bring. Lazarus and the beloved disciple are one and the same, symbols of those raised to new life, those who in Christ are able to step beyond traditional religious thinking into a new consciousness. ~  John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Good Mother Workshops Learn the protocol for internalizing a Good Mother for your emotional health & well-being. Identify  “good emotional food” and “bad emotional food”, healthy emotional digestion, positive attachment, positive mirroring and steps to fiercely protect your Inner Child. April 10th  and April 11th – Online both days from 10-4pm Pacific time. Take one day or both days!  READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |