Wayside Pulpit

Otherwhen

Last night I attended a taping of the National Public Radio program “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!” The taping took place in Santa Barbara, California at the newly remodeled Granada Theatre. The theatre was packed and much laughter was shared by those on stage and those of us sitting in the auditorium. I’m looking forward to hearing the edited version of the show tomorrow to see which parts of the live show made the cut.

There was one aspect of the evening that I found troublesome. The trouble wasn’t anything about the show, but rather the audience. As I walked into the theatre I was struck with the homogeneity of those bearing tickets for the venue; almost every single person was Caucasian. In fact, the place was so white I found it creepy. I suspect that last night’s attendance was around 1400. I don’t know how long it has been since I was in a place surrounded by that many white people. My life is lived in a much more multi-cultural frame where difference is so normal it ceases to be different.

In a sea of white skin we left the auditorium. As I walked down the stairs I watched the money, the thinness, and set after set of blue eyes pass me on the right and the left. The ornate reconstruction of the theatre followed us out the doors and I had a strange historical displacement. I saw all of us in Germany in the 1930’s; all of us leaving the theatre to get into our black cars, to travel to square row houses, to kiss our little blond children goodnight. This flash of otherwhen struck me bone chilling cold, and even sitting here some twenty-four hours later, I still can’t quite shake it off.

Wilder-Than-This

When I think of the wilderness I am immediately turned off. I don’t know if my dislike of the “outdoors” comes from some bad outdoor experiences when I was child, or from just a more general appreciation of human creation over the “natural” way of things. As a child I was forced to like to go camping and hiking. I lived in the mountains of Colorado and being outside was something that one just did, and did it with joy. I really did despise every camping trip, ski trip, and outdoor excursion. I would much rather have been with a book, on my bed, listening to the birds through the window.

I have, as I’ve grown up, been more apt to be outside in the woods, but not really for long periods of time. I’ve gone camping at camp grounds and tent cabins where I can bring the Colman stove and take a shower down the road for a couple of bucks. I enjoy hiking for the sake of exercise and so I can eat a really high-fat dinner and feel like I earned it. All in all the wilderness remains just that to me, the wilderness; it is a place I may stick a toe or two into, but not a place I can call home.

I will tell you, however, that just because I don’t find much joy in the wilderness, doesn’t mean that I don’t like the unknown. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like to explore and be in situations that are uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to test my wits against forces larger than my simple human self. I feel sometimes that because I don’t want to be in the great outdoors that I am seen as having sold my soul the modernist company store. This is greatly the case in liberal religious environments where there is strong move to see God in nature. In truth I see God much more in the human ways we’ve constructed the world, than in any star or blade of grass.

This intimate truth reflects a large part of my personal theology; a belief system that knows that God is in us. Therefore, when I see the human hubbub on 96th and Broadway, a conversation between mother and son, or a high-speed train rumbling through a station, I know I am in the presence of the Holy.

Some Kind of Healer

Ministry abounds with the concept of the wounded healer; the idea that we bring comfort and healing from those places inside us where we’ve been wounded. I think that this idea isn’t altogether true. I think that comfort and healing come not from wounds, but from the places we’ve been touched. It could be that we’ve been touched by grief, by happiness, by horror, by abandonment, by fear, by love, basically, by really anything.

I feel exposed when I preach. I find myself a few hours after a sermon wondering why in the world I told people all the stuff I did. I think I find writing a similar experience – though not quite as intense. I come forth to the world from the places that have touched me and they are very personal, so personal I don’t know if anyone can ever relate. The underlying fear being, “If you don’t relate, what does that say about my experience of the word? Am I as weird as I sometimes feel that I am? Am I normal?”

Am I wounded? No. Am I not wounded? No. The truth of the matter is, we are not about wounds, as much as theology and psychology would like to think we are. We are about the questions, the aches, the insights and the flashes of knowing and unknowing that pass through our experiences. The energy of this space, the whirling dervish of the soul, this is where healing comes from.

Blessed with Awareness

“One thing that enables servants to love others is their appreciation that the personality is not the person” -- Erie Chapman (from: “Radical Loving Care: Building the Healing Hospital in America”)

Social conditioning creates us; molds our reactions, our dreams, our moods, our responses, our fears and our desires – it creates our personalities. We are each a product of the myriad of ways that parents, peers, religion, rules, politics, beliefs and such have chiseled us through our lives. The fascinating thing, for me, is that all this social conditioning does not touch the core of who we are. It can cloud it, illuminate it, color it, mask it, but it does not change the fundamental spiritual/magical/mystical nature of what burns underneath.

I don’t think that many of us actually ever really get to live from the place of our souls. How can we? Conditioning is set up to stop us from living from this place (Think about it - what would happen to our social systems/structures if we all lived from the core of who we really are?). It is a battle for many of us to step out of the conditioning, the social expectations, the written and unwritten rules to become who we truly are.

Some people get it, they see the conditioning and they can disidentify. They can sit down and watch the movie, knowing that the conditioning is not them, rather what they have been told to be. These people are from all kinds of places, they might be spiritual, they might be religious, they might be old, they might be young, they might be anything. See, awareness does not discriminate. Those that get the gift of this kind of sight are blessed indeed.

I’m not so lucky. I am one of those that struggle, but I’m beginning to have the upper hand. I have moments where I see the conditioning, where I can actually choose to do something completely different than I have been “taught” to do.

It is a freeing feeling, but unsettling indeed.

Indefinitely Christian

Those speaking for Christianity, and those speaking against it, love to use the definite article. In fact, if I were to go back and reread many things I’ve written, I would suspect that I do the very same thing. It seems to come out something like this, “The Christian view of such and such….” I’m hear to tell you, and to remind myself, that there is no one Christian view.

It is often said, “Well, I don’t believe in the Christian God.” What is the Christian God? What defines it? What makes it so definite enough that it deserves a “the” before its capital G? If by “the” you mean the big white guy with the beard in the sky, then I’m sorry to say that many Christians I know don’t hold that view. If by “the” you mean a God that has a hand in how things come to play in our lives, I’d again have to tell you this view doesn’t fit all Christians. Simply, there is no one view that can sum up how God is understood from one end of Christendom to the other.

This same semantical play works for other theological and political statements as well. There is no one Christian view on Jesus, abortion, Christ, sex, communion, LGBT issues, afterlife, the death penalty, peace, war, evolution, marriage, guns…. It isn’t the monolithic structure that appears creeping out of newspapers, court cases, tomes decrying Christian faith and glossy television pulpits. It is infinitely multifaceted and to sum it up in a single “the” takes its beauty and turns it into a beast.

A Declaration

My practice of Zen has finally turned how I hear the ancient writings of Christianity. Many years ago my traditional interpretations of scripture were dismantled, but I wasn’t able to reformulate them. Rather, they were a jumbled mess of, “I don’t believe.” However, now, without really trying to see the texts in a new way, the new ways are revealing themselves.

Theology is not stagnant, it is something that must remain in flux, or it is not theology. I expect to be amazed at the new ways that I see the text, the symbols and even the rituals of Christianity. If I stop being amazed, I have stopped being Christian. See, as I walked through traditional Christianity (or rather slogged through it), there was so little that touched me and allowed me to see the magic that existed within the act of living. Yet, with a theology in motion, the magic never ceases.

As I’ve turned my practice toward a tradition that is not my own, I see the world differently. Not only are the cities different, the cars, the trees, the people eating pretzels in the mall, but Christianity is different. I’m beginning to not only see through the suppositions, the certainties and the beliefs, but I’m able to let them go to be owned by someone else. As they’ve floated away, like a released red balloon, I have been gifted incredible space in which to create something new.

The echo that hits me each time I speak into this space is that, “Christianity is not what you think. It is something completely different.” Yet, the strange thing, for me, is that there is relatively no anxiety within this newly found place. I see not only potential, but the absolute necessity that the time has come for me to add my voice to the New Reformation.

to be or not to be

We must have an identity. It is something that is pushed on us in American society. This identity is how the world knows us, and it is the filter through which we see the world. Our identity is a place to hang our hats; without who we are, who would we be?

So much in our lives is about trying to maintain, create or get rid of an identity. Being a runner is a great thing until you damage a knee and realize that you may never run again. The grief from losing this identity is profound.

You are a smoker and know you shouldn’t be. It’s bad for you, for the kids in your household and it costs a fortune. You constantly beat yourself up for smoking. You think often how you should quit. You even wish, right as you are enjoying a cigarette, that you didn’t smoke. You hate yourself for being a smoker at all.

The woman down your street really wants to be a doctor. She’s been thinking about being a doctor since she was ten. Yet, right now, she’s at home with four kids and no money. She helps her kids with their homework, but isn’t really completely there. Her mind is on what she didn’t do with her life, what she wishes she could do, what she believes will make her happy.

As we search to become something, as we hold on to what we are, as we try to push what we don’t like about ourselves away, we lose something so precious. We lose the present moment. We lose everything about right now. We become so attached to who we are that we forgot everything else about ourselves. We hate something we do and so we imagine what it will be like when we no longer do it. We dislike our lives so we live in a fantasy about what it might be, someday.

Can you, right now, just be who you are? Can you do it without judgment, without hoping, dreaming, wanting to be something else? If you can, even for a moment, you’ll get a taste of paradise.