Giving Allows Each of Us To Practice Generosity . . . . Robert Taylor . . . .

One writer suggests that the greatest crisis in any of our lives is a crisis of imagination. He says that every crisis, at its core, is a crisis of imagination.

"The power of imagination is its ability to give form to the deep truths and visions of the inner divine realm. Imagination gives expression to the to the higher visions of reality that derive from our divine selves. Language and rational thinking are generally unable to access this higher truth. It is the imagination that is our prophet, bringing us the world of the divine that speaks both through us and from beyond us."

-- Rabbi Marc Gafni, from "Imagine That…," Parabola, Fall 2006, pp. 36-42.

On 10/29/06, SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com <SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com> wrote:

In last Sunday's homily my friend Robert Taylor taught the principles of a giving heart. When we give, in whatever form of giving we choose, we are practicing our generosity and showing our love to whom or to what we are giving . . . . Sky

---

Sermons at Saint Mark's

The Very Reverend Robert V. Taylor

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 22, 2006

Isaiah 53:4-12; Hebrews 4:12-16; & Mark 10:35-45

                                                                                                                                                           

Practicing Generosity

Three Sundays ago Ben Porter, Susan Payne and I stood here to preach a sermon that kicked-off the annual campaign to fund Saint Mark's Cathedral for 2007.  We spoke about this as a critical time in the life of our Cathedral community.  The responses that have come in so far have been generous and magnificent.  I stand here today filled with thankfulness and enthusiasm over your response, our response.  Thank you.

 

The question that we're asked to think about in this fourth week of the Annual Campaign is "What are the benefits of pledging?"  The question engages me, annoys me, amuses me and makes me wonder who has been thinking about "cost-benefit" analysis!  I could tell you that the life of this Cathedral exists because of every single pledge and financial commitment that is made.  But you know that already.  We could talk about tax deductions or some program that you really enjoy in the life of Saint Mark's. But that would miss the point.

 

Instead, I'd like us to look at today's Gospel.  The Zebedee Boys, James and John, have been called "The Sons of Entitlement."[i]   The Zebedee Boys want to be at the center of power:  just tell them what to do to get there!  The Zebedee Boys want to bask in the glory of being close to Jesus.  They will make a pledge, so long as God will do whatever they want.

 

This week as I listened to Carlene Cross talk about her new book, Fleeing Fundamentalism,[ii]  I was reminded that, for her and for so many of us who have spent time in certain other faith traditions, the asking of questions was not an option.  It upset the very power structure and the nature of a community in which faith was absolute and where questions where therefore an affront to those in leadership and perhaps to God!  Questions might lead to doubt. 

 

Do you remember last week's Gospel?  The rich man who came to Jesus with a question went away sad.  Jesus did not judge him or ask anything of him that he would not ask of any other person.  The story told us that Jesus "loved him."  We learned something about the way Jesus interacts with people.  He asked for a commitment that demanded a lot.  Through it all, he loved him. 

 

Today's Gospel story gives us more questions, asked of Jesus and by Jesus.  It also has some lively emotions and responses to those questions.  The other ten disciples get angry at the Zebedee Boys.   There is a self-righteousness; "How dare they ask to sit at God's right and left hand?"  Perhaps they're just peeved because they didn't think of asking the question first!  Perhaps they're angry because Jimmy and Jack seem so ambitious, so quick off the mark.  The pledge of these ten disciples seems to be a pledge to get caught up in whatever lets them vent their anger or frustrations.  They miss the point. 

 

Jesus makes a pledge to James and John about what life with him means.  And he even offers some answers about the benefits of that pledge in today's Gospel.  If you listen to the story, Jesus does not buy into any of the whispers or innuendo that probably went on among the disciples.  He doesn't humiliate or demonize James or John.  He doesn't even make fun of them. He does invite them into practicing and living a certain way of life. 

 

When I think about what it means to be a friend of God and a follower of Jesus there are for me a few core things that draw me in.  I suspect that is true for you too.  There are a few core practices that I will spend a lifetime learning, refusing to learn, re-learning, being stubborn about and being surprised by.  Those core things each express some of God's wild, gentle, surprising and boundless love.  One of them is the practice that we see Jesus model in today's Gospel—the practice of being generous. 

 

Jesus knows that clutching at life keeps everything we care about shut off and shut out from life itself.  So he asks James and John if they are able to imagine death and the new life that comes from it. We know that their quick response of "We are able" is a response from someone put on the spot.  They have no idea of what they're being asked to do or of what they are saying.  Yet, as you watch the story being played out you see generosity of spirit and of life being practiced right in front of you by Jesus.  His way of being offers some spaciousness, some way to imagine living and practicing the sort of life Jesus talks about.

 

One writer suggests that the greatest crisis in any of our lives is a crisis of imagination.[iii]   He says that every crisis, at its core, is a crisis of imagination.  Jesus offers the way of life passing through death, of dying in order to be re-born.  Imagine practicing such a journey through this life as a friend of God. 

 

Jesus knew the fear of James and John; he knew their superficial desires for power.  He knew how the other ten clutched and held on to anger as a way of avoiding the real question of that moment.  Yet Jesus was clear and generous with them, giving them room to even imagine his promise.  He is just as demanding, clear and generous with us. 

 

Imagine members of an Episcopal congregation in the Seattle area getting ready just a few weeks ago to listen to their church treasurer speak about making a financial pledge to the church that was a percentage, or a proportion, of their income.  Imagine their complete surprise when he spoke about his own financial commitment:  "Giving" he said, "allows me to practice being generous."

 

That treasurer understood something about pledging that has a much broader focus than anything to do with only money.  Giving allows him to practice being generous.  My pledge is to practice a way of life that is generous.  My benefit is to be part of a community of friends of Jesus who teach me of the joys and struggles of practicing generosity in everything I do.  The pledge of the Gospel story is that our life will be transformed when we walk with Christ.  That means pledging to live a life that is generous in every possible way.  Are you able to imagine a life of such generosity, grace and love with God?  Are you willing to pledge the practice of such a life?

---

[i] Stephen B. Chapman, "Living By The Word," Christian Century, October 17, 2006, p. 20.

[ii] Carlene Cross, Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister's Wife Examines Faith (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books).

[iii] Marc Gafni, "Imagine That…," Parabola, Fall 2006, pp. 36-42

--
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
    Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Things do not change; we change.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Walden (1970)

Fwd: Primal Language Is The Root Of Prayer . . . . I Am Who I Am . . . .

Thanks to David Enroth (Sky) for forwarding:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com <SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2006 4:44 AM
Subject: Primal Language Is The Root Of Prayer . . . . I Am Who I Am . . . .
To: SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com

A Great Longing

Pat Twohy, S.J.

 

There is an extraordinary peace

that comes

when we at some early or late

moment in our lives,

realize that we don't have to be

anyone else

than ourselves.

 

We suddenly discover that it is

sufficient, enough, more

than enough to simply be who we

are with our face,

our voice, our body, our thoughts,

our feelings, our loves,

our choices, our walk. There is no

need for pretense

or apology, no need to follow

another's road to find our value.

 

Our limitations as much define

our way of being in the world

as our virtues do. There is no need

to keep going back

and forth over the sum of our

lives, searching for what

was simply never there. What is

there, what has happened,

what will happen, are the lessons

that have brought us

to this day.

 

There is a great thirst, a great

longing within us

that reveals our true nature.

This longing is not the desire to be

like someone else,

which leads only to the madness

of competing

for attention, for honor, for

pleasure, for control.

 

This longing reveals the openness

of our heart and mind

toward everything that is good, not

only for ourselves

but good for everyone. Such

longing reveals the fragile

nobility of our human nature,

limited and unlimited, suffering,

struggling, concerned, respectful,

full of the release of laughter.

 

This longing is the base of the

energy of our awareness,

which is like a door opening and

closing,

a door opening to the

understanding and compassion

around us,

both coming into us and traveling

out from within us.

 

When this door of our awareness

opens for ignorance

and envy to travel in and out, we

try not to hold and nourish

this madness, but instead let the

Ignorance and selfishness

that wants to make a home in us

be transformed

Into something new.

 

In this way gradually only

understanding and kindness

travel in and out on the wings of

our awareness,

and like some of our great-

grandmothers we begin

to wish only blessing for the

breadth of the world.

--
One writer suggests that the greatest crisis in any of our lives is a crisis of imagination. He says that every crisis, at its core, is a crisis of imagination.

"The power of imagination is its ability to give form to the deep truths and visions of the inner divine realm. Imagination gives expression to the to the higher visions of reality that derive from our divine selves. Language and rational thinking are generally unable to access this higher truth. It is the imagination that is our prophet, bringing us the world of the divine that speaks both through us and from beyond us."

-- Rabbi Marc Gafni, from "Imagine That…," Parabola, Fall 2006, pp. 36-42.

Fwd: The Power of Forgiveness . . . .

Thanks to David Enroth (Sky) and Patricia L. Hunter for the following:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com <SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com>
Date: Oct 17, 2006 9:01 AM
Subject: The Power of Forgiveness . . . .

How many times has a friend taken you to a place where you've said to yourself, "I have one nerve, and you're getting on it." Just before the spirit of Jesus left him for the cosmos, he said, "forgive them father for they know not what they are doing."

Insults of whatever source call each of us to a new place of potential conversion, of acknowledging our own ignorance, of awakening to our misunderstanding, or to a long ago wound of our hearts. My friend Jerry Sutton says forgiveness is "simply the acknowledgment of our humanness." We all need forgiveness for something, don't we? Saying let's talk about it is better than erecting yet another barricade, don't ya think?

As we continue to live out our agonies and ecstasies on this journey called life may we continue to wake up to our need for forgiveness and our need to forgive . . . . Sky

---

Saturday, October 14, 2006

The Rev. Patricia Hunter

Tragedy tests, and shows, the power of forgiveness

By The Rev. Patricia Hunter

Special to The Seattle Times

It is often said that those who are closest to us can hurt us the most. No one knows how to hurt us more than our siblings. Our sisters and brothers know exactly where our vulnerabilities are. Our trusted best friends know our weaknesses as well. We have made them privy to our embarrassing or shameful stories that took great courage to share. Spouses and partners know how to hurt us with words when in the midst of a heated argument.

When our confidences are betrayed, or when someone has maliciously hurt our reputation or career, we want those who harmed us to see the error of their ways and to come asking for forgiveness. We wait for a letter, visit, or call of remorse to come, yet many times it never comes. Sometimes we have to forgive even when forgiveness has not been requested.

The tragedy that has befallen the Amish community in Pennsylvania has been incomprehensible to many of us. The loss of life for five innocent girls and the injuries of five others by a man angry with God makes no sense. Yet in the midst of this horrible incident, members of the Amish community offered their forgiveness to the family of the gunman. Gentle, caring Christians offered forgiveness before it was even asked.

It was an awesome act of grace. Instead of retaliating with angry words and in violence, this community offered words of peace and forgiveness.

The offering of forgiveness may have been as much for the Amish community as for the family of the gunman. Living for years with anger and sorrow takes enormous energy. We must frequently remember and rehearse the circumstances that led to our pain. Choosing to break the grip of debilitating rage takes courage. It is possible to come out on the other side of hurt and sorrow. The key is forgiveness.

How different life would be if the gunman in Pennsylvania had been able to forgive the universe, or whoever he felt was responsible for the death of his premature daughter on the day she was born. Her death, he said in his suicide note, changed him forever and filled him with hate.

Forgiveness is not easy, yet living in general is not easy these days. We live in a challenging world complete with shouting matches at school-board meetings, threatened closures of health clinics for the poor and all-too-easy access to guns. The misuse of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, has led to senseless death after senseless death in this country.

We forgive because we have been forgiven by others and because we must forgive in order to move on to the next chapter in our lives. I do not subscribe to the cliché forgive and forget. One can forgive and remember the situation that caused harm so as not to fall victim again.

When I have been hurt by others, my gut reaction is, how can I get even? While that thought is understandable, getting even is hardly an appropriate Christian response. Jesus reminded his followers that an eye for an eye was no way to settle a wrong. A conversation about the wrong and how to fix it is much more satisfying in the long run than revenge.

As hard as it is to forgive others, it is equally tough to forgive ourselves when we have missed our expectations. Missing the mark of self-imposed expectations can put us in an emotional tailspin. Offering forgiveness to ourselves is grace at its best.

I have learned a lot about forgiveness in the past two weeks. I thank my Amish sisters and brothers for letting me see what real forgiveness looks like. It looks a lot like love. Forgiveness does not depend on anyone else. The power to forgive in the most unforgivable situation rests solely with me.

The Rev. Patricia L. Hunter is an associate in ministry at Mount Zion Baptist Church and an employee-benefits specialist for American Baptist Churches in the USA. Readers may send feedback to faithpage@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Fwd: Dominionist Escapee Talks About 'Jesus Camps'

Thanks to Dennis Brumm for this article about 'Jesus Camp' brainwashing of young kids:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dennis Brumm < brumm@brumm.com>
Date: Oct 14, 2006 6:38 AM
Subject: Dominionist Escapee Talks About Jesus Camps

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/12/105122/66

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fwd: My Fundamental Friend, Rod Romney . . .

Thanks to David Enroth (Sky) and Rod Romney for sending the following:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com <SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com>
Date: Oct 15, 2006 2:20 AM
Subject: My Fundamental Friend . . . . Rod Romney . . . .
To: SpiritWarriorSky@aol.com

In her terrific new book Fleeing Fundamentalism, published October 6, Carlene Cross, a pastor's former wife, eloquently outlines why religious fundamentalism is a culture to flee from, as I have been doing all my life.

Retired pastor and friend Rod Romney has created a wonderful new vision for rethinking fundamentalism's meaning and message . . . . Sky

---

This is a copy of the talk I would have given in Dayton, Ohio at a gathering of clergy and physicians, if the weather had only cooperated. I sat in the O'Hare airport in Chicago for 12 hours waiting for storms to lift and never made it to Dayton. This material may be old to some of you who have heard or read it in some of my other talks. Blessings, Rod Romney

RETHINKING THE MEANING OF FUNDAMENTALISM

Rev. Dr. Rodney Romney
October 3, 2006 - Dayton, Ohio

Fundamentalism in recent times has become a word both revered and hated. Originally anything fundamental meant that which is basic to life or sound thinking. In more recent times it has come to be associated with a conservative mindset among religious folk, and has been both honored and decried, depending which side you're on. Today I would like to invite you to rethink with me the meaning of fundamentalism and perhaps to reclaim it as a word which represents our own basic religious convictions, whether they be conservative, liberal or somewhere in between.

The word fundamentalism in Webster's International Dictionary has exactly twenty-seven different definitions, yet in the minds of most people today it represents only one thing: a conservative approach to religion rather than a liberal one. Fundamentalism is a comparatively recent movement in American Protestantism, developed in opposition to what was once called modernism. It emphasizes certain doctrines as fundamental to Christianity, such as the inerrancy of the scriptures, Biblical miracles, particularly the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, along with the theory of substation- ary atonement, meaning Jesus Christ died for our sins, and only those believing in him will make it into heaven.

Many of us grew up with that kind of religion, and possibly some still hold to it. Others may say they were once religious fundamentalists but now prefer to think of themselves as spiritual beings in search of universal truths. I am not trying to persuade anyone to think as I do. My goal today is not to denounce fundamentalism, but rather to redefine it in a way that will perhaps give it new meaning and also revitalize the religious movement. whether liberal or conservative.

What do we mean by the terms liberal and conservative? To be liberal means to possess a free and generous heart, as well as an enlightened mind that is free from narrowness, bigotry, or bondage to authority or creed. To be conservative generally means to adhere to a strict order of things and to subscribe to a particular strain of belief or ideology.

In a recent interview of former President Jimmy Carter concerning his latest book, he made this reference to fundamentalism: "The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that their ideas are God's ideas. Therefore, by definition, since they are speaking for God, anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is this: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases-as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world-it makes your opponents sub-human, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them, because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality."

Carter goes on in this interview, conducted by Der Spiegel, to show how Christian fundamentalism in this country has manifested itself politically today and how fundamentalism in world religions has damaged efforts to establish world peace.

In contemporary Christianity, a conservative is one who accepts the Bible as fundamental to faith and holds to the view that every word in the Bible was divinely inspired. A liberal, on the other hand, views the Bible as helpful in many ways but basically as a series of books and letters which should not to be taken literally or dogmatically. Conservatives are often labeled as evangelicals, while liberals are usually branded as skeptics. Liberals are generally identified as being free-thinking and open-minded, while conservatives are fixed on certain conclusions and are usually closed-minded. Those are generalizations, and they are not always accurate. I have been and am still today both liberal and conservative, depending on the definition and the situation.

My spiritual pilgrimage began about sixty years ago in a very conservative setting: a little Baptist church in Arco, Idaho, where a visiting evangelist said that the only way to escape hell (which was where all humankind was destined to go) was to walk down the aisle and give your life to Jesus Christ, who would save you from your sins and give you a place in heaven. After a great deal of inner struggle, I finally went forward. I came from a religiously divided family with Mormonism on my father's side and a mild form of Protestantism on my mother's side, but essentially we were a family with no particular faith. I needed that little Baptist church when I was a fifteen year old lad. It gave spiritual meaning and substance to my life, and in that church I preached my first sermon at the age of 16 and at the encouragement of members there I began to sense my call to be a minister.

During my years as a minister I often struggled within myself to honor my background and at the same time allow my spirit to follow its own pathway. Increasingly that pathway led me away from the kind of fundamentalism that combs through the Bible, picking out the condemnations that fit a specific agenda, and ignoring the rest of the book. History has clearly shown that the New Testament is not an errorless book dictated by God, but rather a group of writings and letters that were compiled in the fourth century A.D. Liberals want to look honestly at the way the Bible came to be, while conservatives believe that the process, no matter how it was carried out, gave us a book that is infallible and which must be followed.

While it is true that conservative groups are generally more suspicious and fearful than liberals, it is also true that some conservatives look at themselves with unsparing honesty and change their minds and their behaviors when it seems to be warranted. On the negative side liberals occasionally tend to be a bit smug, quite sure that their views are progressive and advanced, while viewing conservative views as totally outmoded. However, some liberals also look at themselves with unsparing honesty and are not afraid to change their minds and behaviors from time to time. Christian conservatives place a priority on nurturing an intense personal relationship with Jesus Christ, while Christian liberals would honor that but might also seek to learn from all faith traditions.

Yet despite a shared belief in freedom of conscience, conservatives and liberals alike are often inclined to batter each other with their differing perspectives, particularly when it comes to doctrines surrounding Jesus Christ and biblical interpretations. Only on rare occasions do they pool their efforts and unite their energies in trying to make the world a better place for everyone.

I think there has never been a time in my lifetime when I felt we needed religious coherence and agreement as much as we need it today. I would like to suggest an alternative method by which this might be accomplished: interspirituality. This is a word developed by the late Wayne Teasdale in his book, "The Mystic Heart," and it suggests a new way of seeking union with all religious groups and as a way of bringing the human family together in a world that has become increasingly divided.

Teasdale attaches spirituality to ecology. The Hindu and Buddhist, the Sufi, the Jewish, the Muslim, the Christian, and indigenous peoples-all are slowly but surely becoming united in a movement that links ecology and spiritual traditions together in a common enterprise that today is called interspirituality. An aphorism from the Hindu tradition says it well: "The paths are many, but the goal is the same." We are trying to save our earth and expand our sense of spiritual connections at the same time.

Teasdale wrote this in his book, "In experiences of tragedy, in the death of a loved one, for example, we leave our local awareness for a while and are brought into a higher realization…it takes us beyond ourselves, into a mystical experience, where we are touched by something ultimate." (page 70)

I had that experience recently. Before my older brother died about a year ago, he asked to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered in a canyon in the Little Lost River Valley in central Idaho, where we had grown up. We agreed to do that. So this past summer about thirty members of our family met drove over the rough, nearly impassable mountain road leading up to Bell Mountain canyon to carry out his last wishes.

II was totally unprepared for what happened to me when we went back to that canyon recently to carry out the last wishes of my brother. As we stood in front of the cabin which my dad had built, where my brothers and I had grown up, and which was now starting to fall down, I felt an emotion welling up inside of me that left me totally speechless. The family was gathered around, waiting for me, the only minister in the family, to say the appropriate words. But instead of words, all I had were tears. Tears for the broken dreams of my father, who had lived all his life in a futile search for gold in that wilderness canyon. Tears for my parents, whose marriage had lasted only a few years. Tears for the brother who was no longer with us. Tears for that tumble-down cabin that had once sheltered all of us. Tears for that rough mountain trail where I had taken my first steps as a child and where I had awakened to the beauty and mystery of this world, as well the pain and separation that often marks the human path.

When I was finally able to speak, I tried to share a bit of what it had been like to grow up in that wilderness, where all we had was each other. I tried to pay tribute to my brother who had asked to have his final remains brought to that place. But no words could express all that was in my heart at that moment. I remembered an old Hindu aphorism came back to me, "The paths are many, but the goal is the same." We are all trying to go home. I was finally able to say a brief prayer of commitment and scatter the ashes of my brother around that old cabin that had been our first home.

We all want to go home, to the place that resonates with our past, our understanding, our temperament, and our capacity. We all want to be where we know we belong, the place where we are fully loved and where we can love fully. For a moment in that wilderness canyon in front of that old tumble-down cabin, I felt I had touched a piece of the home that we all seek.

Wayne Teasdale said that spirituality is the whole inner movement of the heart to seek the divine. It is a homecoming and a commitment to the process of inner change, and a personal attachment to a spiritual way of life and the transformation it brings. Spirituality is a way to travel, not a place of arrival.

Interspirituality is the common heritage of humankind's spiritual wisdom: the place where we share mystical resources across boundaries of different religious traditions. Teasdale said that we are now entering an interspiritual age, where more and more people are no longer isolated within their own homes or native traditions, but are exploring other traditions, finding what is useful in their individual growth. Life, I think, always seeks to change us into more compassionate and concerned human beings.

I was interested to read recently that Billy Graham, the famous conservative evangelist, in his final years has now become more moderate and inclusive. He is no longer a literalist, believing that every jot and tittle in the Bible has come directly from God. He now believes that God loves everybody, regardless of what label they have. As he has come to his journey's end, he has found refuge in a new hope and humility. This marks the beginning of interspirituality for him, whether he calls it that or not. It is a journey I believe we will all take sooner or later, if we keep our minds and hearts open.

Jesus said when we become one and treat each other with love and compassion, we have reached the inner kingdom of God, the highest attainment in life.

As you may know, the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, exists in every religious culture. Confucius speaks of it. The Buddhists speak of it. The Bhagavad-Gita speaks of it, and Jewish and Christan teachings speak of it as central to life. What would happen if we would more fully and consciously honor that rule as the fundamental and universal mandate of all faith traditions? We would see a dramatic improvement and change in the world. Wars would end, and we would find our way home to each other and to the essential truth of universal being.

I wrote these resolutions a few years ago, as I took inventory of my life and what I wanted it to represent in the years I have left. I leave them with you today as an expression of what has become fundamental to my life and faith.

1. I resolve to live as a citizen of the world. I can no longer submerge myself in a pious patriotism that sees my nation as the only nation that God cares about. It is the world God loves. I may love my country and be grateful for the legacy of freedom it offers, but I must not let that love cut me off from others who have a different heritage. We are all citizens of the one world in which we live.

2. I resolve to live in a spirit of kindness and gentleness toward the earth and all its creatures. I need to protect the land, the water, and the natural environment in which we live and live in solidarity and respect of every species that inhabits the earth with me.

3. In the conviction that life is a sacred gift from God, I resolve to work against all systems that systematically destroy and take life. That includes capital punishment and war. We must find a better way to settle our disputes than killing each other's children, if we are ever grow up into the image of the Creator who has bestowed life upon all.

4. I resolve to be a part of no institution that excludes others or that views itself as the only way to reach God. Every person is a child of God, and to deny full acceptance and unconditional love to anyone is to deny God. That includes homosexual persons, currently the focus of warfare in many denominations. Sexuality is not what we do, it is who we are. It is a gift from God. Since this resolution is problematic for some, let me expand on it slightly. We don't choose to be white, brown or black, male or female, left-handed or right-handed, gay or straight. Homosexual-ty is not a sickness nor a distortion. It simply is. Wholeness never comes to anyone who tries to suppress his or her deepest identity. I am confident most of the physicians here today will support this idea, even if the clergy do not.

5. I resolve to live as open as possible to the divine, rather than limiting myself to the temporal or restrictive systems of our time. I will daily seek fresh vision and new energies from God for the work that I am called here to do.

6. I resolve to support those institutions or enterprises that support these resolutions with both my energy and my money. It is a matter of giving feet to my prayers and being a good steward of what I have been given.

7. I resolve to be a peacemaker in this world, and inasmuch as humanly possible to live as a follower of Jesus Christ, at peace with myself, and with all who share this world with me. If I hate anyone, I invalidate all of the above resolutions. While I may not like what certain people do, I cannot be an instrument of peace and be at war with anyone. To that end I resolve to live in this world at peace with God, with myself, and with all who share this world with me.

These resolutions are fundamental for me. To that end I dedicate my life, to be a fundamentalist seeking to express peace, love and good will to all that is.

Thank you for letting me share this time with you. Together in small but important ways, we will yet create a safer and better world for all.

--
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Re: Richard Dawkins in Salon -- What do you think of my 'response'?

Good article -- very interesting. However, I am unclear as to what he would suggest. I think of the 'supernatural' as something unexplained which may or may not be true -- if it's true, then it becomes 'natural' in some way we don't yet understand. The concept of God (or of gods) is just that --a human construct -- for which the [English] word g - o - d is often used. It is an evolutionary development in the naturally occurring 'quest for meaning' re existence and 'what comes next.'

In his last paragraph, Dawkins says: "Now, suppose science does have limits. What is the value in giving the label "religion" to those limits? If you simply want to define religion as the bits outside of what science can explain, then we're not really arguing. We're simply using a word, "God," for that which science can't explain. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with saying God is a supernatural, creative, intelligent being. It's simple confusion to say science can't explain certain things; therefore, we have to be religious..."

This seems to be almost semantic in its refusal to accept the nomenclature that has been traditionally used to describe this area of experience (the experience of not knowing and of not being able to use scientific principles, yet, to approach questions such as 'meaning'). If people use the words, 'religion' and 'God' in mythical constructs to express (if not explain) them, then that would appear, historically, to be human nature. What good is accomplished by refusing to use the words, and what confusion is averted by ignoring the explanations of many people -- used for so long that most people know that unexplained or unknown areas of experience (or anticipated experience, such as death) are being spoken of -- in mythical terms, perhaps -- but spoken of, none the less, rather than being avoided and swept under the collective rug of our consciousness.

Jung and other scientifically trained thinkers have contributed to lifting this whole subject out of the mythical -- by explaining how we have mythologized these areas in, apparently, a quite natural way.

I may be well out of my depth here, but I just don't see what's gained by Dawkins' position as quoted above.

His last statement, "To equate that kind of religiousness with belief in a personal, intelligent being, that's confusion" is more understandable to me, and I share in its alarm, out of personal experience even. But I also realize that it arises (again, perhaps in a quite natural manner) out of our being 'personal' creatures. Thus, we tend to anthropomorphize. And, I agree, it is confusing, especially to people who aren't able to discern what kind of process is really occurring. Whether or not it is 'pernicious' depends on what purposes or uses it is put to -- certainly I would agree that the Falwells and Robertsons are pernicious in their purposes and uses of the common understandings of religion -- by common people.

To quote Shakespeare (completely), "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing... therefore, drink deeply from the font of knowledge and learning [paraphrased]." I think that a serious discussion of religion will not dismiss it out of hand but examine what is being referred to, discussed, and yes -- hoped for -- through the use of and appeal to such language.

Of course, you might expect such a point of view from someone who has taken four years to go to theology school, eh? :-))

-- Rick


On 10/13/06, Dennis Brumm <brumm@brumm.com> wrote:

A new definition of child abuse below.

The flying spaghetti monster

Why are we here on earth? To Richard Dawkins, that's a remarkably stupid question. In a heated interview, the famous biologist insists that religion is evil and God might as well be a children's fantasy.

By Steve Paulson

Oct. 13, 2006 | In the roiling debate between science and religion, it would be hard to exaggerate the enormous influence of Richard Dawkins. The British scientist is religion's chief prosecutor -- "Darwin's rottweiler," as one magazine called him -- and quite likely the world's most famous atheist. Speaking to the American Humanist Association, Dawkins once said, "I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."

Not surprisingly, these kinds of comments have made Dawkins a lightning rod in the debate over evolution. While he's a hero to those who can't stomach superstition or irrationality, his efforts to link Darwinism to atheism have upset the scientists and philosophers, like Francis Collins and Michael Ruse, who are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion. Yet, surprisingly, some intelligent design advocates have actually welcomed Dawkins' attacks. William Dembski, for instance, says his inflammatory rhetoric helps the I.D. cause by making evolution sound un-Christian.

Dawkins' outspoken atheism is a relatively recent turn in his public career. He first made his name 30 years ago with his groundbreaking book "The Selfish Gene," which reshaped the field of evolutionary biology by arguing that evolution played out at the level of the gene itself, not the individual animal. Dawkins now holds a chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Thanks to his tremendous talent for clear and graceful writing, he's done more to popularize evolutionary biology than any other scientist, with the possible exception of Stephen Jay Gould. Dawkins has a gift for explaining science through brilliant metaphors. Phrases like "the selfish gene" and "the blind watchmaker" didn't only crystallize certain scientific ideas; they entered the English vernacular. And his concept of "memes" -- ideas themselves evolving like genes -- spawned a new way of thinking about cultural evolution.

Dawkins' latest book turns to his more recent passions. In "The God Delusion," Dawkins fulminates against religious moderates as well as fundamentalists. He argues that the existence of God is itself a scientific conjecture, one that doesn't hold up to the evidence. And he dismisses the entire discipline of theology: I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all."

I spoke with Dawkins by phone in Oxford shortly before he launched his American book tour. We talked about the dangers of unquestioned faith, the politics of the evolution debate, and why atheists are among the most intelligent people in the world.

You've written about going to church as a boy. When did you become an atheist?

I started getting doubts when I was about 9 and realized that there are lots of different religions and they can't all be right. And which one I happened to be brought up in was an arbitrary accident. I then sort of went back to religion around the age of 12, and then finally left it at the age of 15 or 16.

Did God and religion just not make sense intellectually? Is that why you turned against religion?

Yes, purely intellectually. I was never much bothered about moral questions like, how could there be a good God when there's so much evil in the world? For me, it was always an intellectual thing. I wanted to know the explanation for the existence of all things. I was particularly fascinated by living things. And when I discovered the Darwinian explanation, which is so stunningly elegant and powerful, I realized that you really don't need any kind of supernatural force to explain it.

Why do you call yourself an atheist? Why not an agnostic?

Well, technically, you cannot be any more than an agnostic. But I am as agnostic about God as I am about fairies and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You cannot actually disprove the existence of God. Therefore, to be a positive atheist is not technically possible. But you can be as atheist about God as you can be atheist about Thor or Apollo. Everybody nowadays is an atheist about Thor and Apollo. Some of us just go one god further.

When you're talking about God, are you really talking about the God of the Bible -- Yahweh of the Old Testament?

Well, as it happens, I am because I have an eye to the audience who's likely to be reading my book. Nobody believes in Thor and Apollo anymore so I don't bother to address the book to them. So, in practice, it's addressed to believers in the Abrahamic God.

In your book, you say atheists are widely reviled, especially in the United States: "the status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago." Doesn't it all depend on where you live? I know various cities and academic communities in the U.S. where it would be a lot harder to be an evangelical Christian than an atheist.

Yes, I should have qualified that. As you rightly said, it is highly respectable to be an atheist in Britain and most of Europe. In America too -- of course I should have acknowledged, and I apologize to my American friends -- large parts of America, just about 50 percent of the United States of America, is intelligent and atheistic. Although the figures won't necessarily show that.

It's interesting that you link those two words -- intelligent and atheistic. Are you saying the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist?

There's a fair bit of evidence in favor of that equation, yes.

That sounds like an elitist argument. Do you want to cite that evidence?

It's certainly elitist. What's wrong with being elitist, if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive? I'm very, very keen that people should raise their game rather than the other way around. As for citing the evidence, a number of studies have been done. The one meta-analysis of this that I know of was published in Mensa Magazine. It looked at 43 studies on the relationship between educational level or IQ and religion. And in 39 out of 43 -- that's all but four -- there is a correlation between IQ/education and atheism. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist. Or the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist.

You are quite upfront about your goal with this book. You are hoping that "religious readers who open it will be atheists by the time they put it down." Do you really think that will happen?

No, I describe that as presumptuous. It's an ambition. I was hoping, in the best of all possible worlds, that would be the consequence of reading my book. I'm too realistic to think that it's going to happen in very many cases.

What is so bad about religion?

Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. Plenty of people never get exposed to the beauties of the scientific explanation for the world and for life. And that's very sad. But it's even sadder if they are actively discouraged from understanding by a systematic attempt in the opposite direction, which is what many religions actually are. But that's only the first of my many reasons for being hostile to religion.

My sense is that you don't just think religion is dishonest. There's something evil about it as well.

Well, yes. I think there's something very evil about faith, where faith means believing in something in the absence of evidence, and actually taking pride in believing in something in the absence of evidence. And the reason that's dangerous is that it justifies essentially anything. If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die -- anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed -- that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith. They don't have to say, "Well, here's a very good reason for this." All they need to say is, "That's what my faith says." And we're all expected to back off and respect that. Whether or not we're actually faithful ourselves, we've been brought up to respect faith and to regard it as something that should not be challenged. And that can have extremely evil consequences. The consequences it's had historically -- the Crusades, the Inquisition, right up to the present time where you have suicide bombers and people flying planes into skyscrapers in New York -- all in the name of faith.

But don't you need to distinguish between religious extremists who kill people and moderate, peaceful religious believers?

You certainly need to distinguish them. They are very different. However, the moderate, sensible religious people you've cited make the world safe for the extremists by bringing up children -- sometimes even indoctrinating children -- to believe that faith trumps everything and by influencing society to respect faith. Now, the faith of these moderate people is in itself harmless. But the idea that faith needs to be respected is instilled into children sitting in rows in their madrasahs in the Muslim world. And they are told these things not by extremists but by decent, moderate teachers and mullahs. But when they grow up, a small minority of them remember what they were told. They remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue. And it only takes a minority to believe what it says in the holy book -- the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, whatever it is. If you believe it's literally true, then there's scarcely any limit to the evil things you might do.

And yet most moderate religious people are appalled by the apocalyptic thinking of religious extremists.

Of course they're appalled. They're very decent, nice people. But they have no right to be appalled because, in a sense, they brought it on the world by teaching people, especially children, the virtues of unquestioned faith.

Are you saying if parents belong to a particular church, they should not teach their children about that religion?

I would say that parents should teach their children anything that's known to be factually true -- like "that's a bluebird" or "that's a bald eagle." Or they could teach children that there are such things as religious beliefs. But to teach children that it is a fact that there is one god or that God created the world in six days, that is child abuse.

But isn't much of parenting about teaching values to children? Just as a family of vegetarians will teach their children about the evils of killing animals and eating meat, can't parents who believe in God teach their children the values of a religious upbringing?

Children ask questions. And when a child says, "Why is it wrong to do so and so?" you can perfectly well answer that by saying, "Well, how would you like it if somebody else did that to you?" That's a way of imparting to a child the Golden Rule: "Do as you would be done by." The world would fall apart if everybody stole things from everybody else, so it's a bad thing to steal. If a child says, "Why can't I eat meat?" then you can say, "Your mother and I believe that it's wrong to eat meat for this, that and the other reason. We are vegetarians. You can decide when you're older whether you want to be a vegetarian or not. But for the moment, you're living in this house, so the food we give you is not meat." That I could see. I think it's child abuse not to let the child have the free choice of knowing there are other people who believe something quite different and the child could make its own choice.

Now, there are an awful lot of people who call themselves religious -- or some people prefer to use the word "spiritual" -- even though they don't go to church. They aren't part of any organized religion. They don't believe in a personal God. Some don't even like the word "God" because there's so much baggage attached to that word. But they still have some powerful feeling that there is a transcendent reality. And they often engage in some spiritual practice in their own lives. Would you call these people "religious"?

That's a difficult question. I probably would call them religious. It depends on exactly what they do believe. The first chapter of "The God Delusion" talks about Einstein, who often used the word "God." Einstein clearly was an atheist in the sense that he didn't believe in any sort of personal God. He used the word "God" as a metaphoric name for that which we don't yet understand, for the deep mysteries at the foundation of the universe.

But I think most people would call Einstein a deist. He suggested that God may have created the laws of nature, the laws of physics, to get the universe started.

Some people have maintained that position. My judgment, reading what Einstein said, is that he was not a deist. He certainly believed in some sort of deep mystery, as do I. And it is possible to use the word "religious" to describe such a person. On that basis, one could even say that I am a religious person or Carl Sagan was a religious person. But for me, the divide comes with whether you believe there is some kind of a supernatural, personal being. And I think deists, as well as theists, believe that. By that criterion, I don't think Einstein was a deist. He certainly wasn't a theist, although the language he used might lead you to think he was. I think it's misleading to use a word like "God" in the way Einstein did. I'm sorry that Einstein did. I think he was asking for trouble, and he certainly was misunderstood.

Your definition of religious belief seems to involve a personal being. I think a lot of people would disagree. They may consider themselves strongly religious, but they would regard the whole idea of a personal God to be an outdated notion of what religion is.

Well, then I would want to know what they did mean by it. I would take my stand on whether the god or the being -- whatever we're talking about -- is complicated and improbable and has those attributes of a person -- intelligence, creativity, something of that sort. If you believe that the universe was created by a designing intelligence, whether you call that personal or not, that seems to me to be a good definition of God. That's what I don't believe in. And that's what Einstein did not believe in.

Once you get past the biblical literalists, I think most people assume that science and religion are actually quite compatible. Stephen Jay Gould famously argued that they were "non-overlapping magisteria": Science covers the empirical realm of facts and theories about the observable universe, and religion deals with ultimate meaning and moral value. But you're very critical of this argument, right?

Yes, I think religious belief is a scientific belief, in the sense that it makes claims about the universe which are essentially scientific claims. If you believe the universe was created and inhabited by a supreme being, that would be a very different kind of universe from the sort of universe that wasn't created and does not house a creative intelligence. That is a scientific difference. Miracles. If you believe in miracles, that is clearly a scientific claim, and scientific methods would be used to evaluate any miracle that somebody claimed evidence for.

Suppose, hypothetically, that forensic archaeologists, in an unlikely series of events, gained evidence -- perhaps from some discovered DNA -- which showed that Jesus did not really have an earthly father, that he really was born of a virgin. Can you imagine any theologian taking refuge behind Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria and saying, "Nope, DNA evidence is completely irrelevant. Wrong magisterium. Science and religion have nothing to do with each other. They just peacefully coexist." Of course they wouldn't say that. If any such evidence were discovered, the DNA evidence would be trumpeted to the skies.

What about the old adage that science deals with the "how" questions and religion deals with the "why" questions?

I think that's remarkably stupid, if I may say so. What on earth is a "why" question? There are "why" questions that mean something in a Darwinian world. We say, why do birds have wings? To fly with. And that's a Darwinian translation of the evolutionary process whereby the birds that had wings survived better than the birds without. They don't mean that, though. They mean "why" in a deliberate, purposeful sense. So when you say religion deals with "why" questions, that begs the entire question that we're arguing about. Those of us who don't believe in religion -- supernatural religion -- would say there is no such thing as a "why" question in that sense. Now, the mere fact that you can frame an English sentence beginning with the word "why" does not mean that English sentence should receive an answer. I could say, why are unicorns hollow? That appears to mean something, but it doesn't deserve an answer.

But it seems to me the big "why" questions are, why are we here? And what is our purpose in life?

It's not a question that deserves an answer.

Well, I think most people would say those questions are central to the way we think about our lives. Those are the big existential questions, but they are also questions that go beyond science.

If you mean, what is the purpose of the existence of the universe, then I'm saying that is quite simply begging the question. If you happen to be religious, you think that's a meaningful question. But the mere fact that you can phrase it as an English sentence doesn't mean it deserves an answer. Those of us who don't believe in a god will say that is as illegitimate as the question, why are unicorns hollow? It just shouldn't be put. It's not a proper question to put. It doesn't deserve an answer.

I don't understand that. Doesn't every person wonder about that? Isn't that a core question, what are we doing in this world? Doesn't everyone struggle with that?

There are core questions like, how did the universe begin? Where do the laws of physics come from? Where does life come from? Why, after billions of years, did life originate on this planet and then start evolving? Those are all perfectly legitimate questions to which science can give answers, if not now, then we hope in the future. There may be some very, very deep questions, perhaps even where do the laws of physics come from, that science will never answer. That is perfectly possible. I am hopeful, along with some physicists, that science will one day answer that question. But even if it doesn't -- even if there are some supremely deep questions to which science can never answer -- what on earth makes you think that religion can answer those questions?

At one point in your book, you say you don't like confrontation. That will surprise a lot of people because you have become the lightning rod in the science and religion wars. Why do you think you evoke such powerful reactions?

Well, I don't relish confrontation for its own sake. I don't spoil for a fight. I'd much rather have an amicable discussion. But I am a professional academic, and professional academics are used to arguing about all sorts of things. And we argue in a robust way, bringing forth evidence where we can and using our skills of argument to use that evidence. So I may come across as passionate. But that doesn't mean I go out of my way to have confrontations in an aggressive way. I don't.

I have to ask you about a letter that I've come across from the intelligent design advocate William Dembski. He thanked you for your outspoken atheism. His letter to you said, "I want to thank you for being such a wonderful foil for theism and for intelligent design more generally. In fact, I regularly tell my colleagues that you and your work are one of God's greatest gifts to the intelligent design movement. So, please, keep at it!" What do you make of that?

Yeah, I get that quite a lot. It is a very difficult political dilemma that we face. In the United States of America at the moment, there's a big battle going on, educationally, over teaching evolution in public schools. Science is definitely under attack. And evolution is in the front-line trench of that battle. So a science defense lobby has sprung up, which in practice largely means an evolution defense lobby. Now, it is true that if you want to win a court case in the United States where it's specifically on the narrow issue of should evolution be taught in the public schools, if somebody like me is called as a witness and the lawyer for the other side says, "Professor Dawkins, is it true that you were led to atheism through the study of Darwinian evolution?" I would have to answer, "Yes." That of course plays into their hands because any jury is likely to have been brought up to believe that atheists are the devil incarnate. And therefore, if Darwin leads to atheism, then obviously we've got to throw out Darwinism. Well, that is exactly what Dembski is getting at. He claims to like the things that I say because I am playing into his hands by allowing people like him to make the equation between Darwinism and atheism.

But it's not just Dembski. I've heard this from various scientists -- hardcore evolutionists -- who wish you would tone down your rhetoric, quite frankly.

That is absolutely true.

They say this hurts the cause of teaching evolution. It just gives fire to the creationists.

Exactly right. And they could be right, in a political sense. It depends on whether you think the real war is over the teaching of evolution, as they do, or whether, as I do, think the real war is between supernaturalism and naturalism, between science and religion. If you think the war is between supernaturalism and naturalism, then the war over the teaching of evolution is just one skirmish, just one battle, in the war. So what the scientists you've been talking to are asking me to do is to shut my mouth. Because for the sake of what I see as the war, I'm in danger of losing this particular battle. And that's a worthwhile political point for them to make.

Well, I think a lot of these scientists really do accept Stephen Jay Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria. These are hardcore evolutionists, but they say religion is an entirely different realm. So you, with your inflammatory rhetoric, just muddy the waters and make life more difficult for them.

That is exactly what they say. And I believe that actually is the political reason for Steve Gould to put forward the non-overlapping magisteria in the first place. I think it's nonsense. And I'll continue to say that I think it's nonsense. But I can easily see, politically, why he said that and why other scientists follow it. The politics is very straightforward. The science lobby, which is very important in the United States, wants those sensible religious people -- the theologians, the bishops, the clergymen who believe in evolution -- on their side. And the way to get those sensible religious people on your side is to say there is no conflict between science and religion. We all believe in evolution, whether we're religious or not. Therefore, because we need to get the mainstream orthodox religious people on our side, we've got to concede to them their fundamental belief in God, thereby -- in my view -- losing the war in order to win the battle for evolution. If you're prepared to compromise the war for the sake of the battle, then it's a sensible political strategy.

Throughout the ages, one has resorted to that kind of political compromise. And maybe it would be a good thing for me to do as well. But as it happens, I think the war is more important. I actually do care about the existence of a supreme being. And therefore, I don't think I should say something which I believe to be false, which is that the question of whether God exists is a non-scientific question, and science and religion have no contact with each other, so we can all get along cozily and keep out those lunatic creationists.

Let's stay with the battle over evolution for a moment. Why do you think Darwinian evolution leads logically to atheism?

Well, I'm not sure it's a logical thing. I call it consciousness raising. I think the most powerful reason for believing in a supreme being is the argument for design. Living things in particular look complicated, look beautiful, look elegant, look as though they've been designed. We are all accustomed to thinking that if something looks designed, it is designed. Therefore, it's really no wonder that before Darwin came along, just about everybody was a theist. Darwin blew that argument out of the water. We now have a much more elegant and parsimonious explanation for the existence of life.

So the big reason for believing in God used to be the argument for biological design. Darwin destroyed that argument. He didn't destroy the parallel argument from cosmology: Where did the universe come from? Where did the laws of physics come from? But he raised our consciousness to the power of science to explain things. And he made it unsafe for anyone in the future to resort automatically and uncritically to a designer just because they don't immediately have an explanation for something. So when people say, "I can't see how the universe could have come into being without God," be very careful because you've had your fingers burned before over biology. That's the consciousness-raising sense in which, I think, Darwinism leads to atheism.

I want to turn to what you would call "the real war" -- the war between supernaturalism and naturalism. A lot of religious people call you a reductionist and a materialist. They say you want to boil everything down to what can be measured and experimentally tested. "If you can't measure it, if you can't test it, it's not real."

The words "reductionist" and "materialist" are loaded. They have a negative connotation to many people. I'm a reductionist and a materialist in a much grander sense. When we try to explain the workings of something really complicated, like a human brain, we can be reductionist in the sense that we believe that the brain's behavior is to be explained by neurons and the behavior of neurons is to be explained by molecules within the neurons, etc. Similarly, computers. They're made of integrated circuits. They're nothing but a whole lot of ones and naughts shuffling about. That's reductive in the sense that it seems to leave a lot unexplained. There is nothing else in computers apart from integrated circuits and resistors and transistors. Nevertheless, it's a highly sophisticated explanation for understanding how the computer does the remarkably complicated things it does. So don't use the word "reductive" in a sort of reducing sense. And ditto with "materialist."

But this seems to discount personal experience. It discounts the mystical experiences that people talk about -- that oneness with something larger. Are some of these things just beyond the explanatory power of science?

As I've said, the brain is highly complicated. And one thing it does is construct remarkable software illusions and hallucinations. Every night of our lives, we dream and our brain concocts visions which are, at least until we wake up, highly convincing. Most of us have had experiences which are verging on hallucination. It shows the power of the brain to knock up illusions. If you're sufficiently susceptible and sufficiently indoctrinated in the folklore of a particular religion, it's not in the least surprising that people would hallucinate visions and still small voices. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it happened to me.

It seems to me this is actually one of the key questions in the whole religion and science debate. What do you do with consciousness? I mean, do you really think the mind is totally reducible to neural networks and the electro-chemical surges in the brain? Or might there be something else that goes beyond the physical mechanics of the brain?

Well, once again, let's not use the word "reducible" in a negative way. The sheer number of neurons in the brain, and the complication of the connections between the neurons, is such that one doesn't want to use the word "reducible" in any kind of negative way. Consciousness is the biggest puzzle facing biology, neurobiology, computational studies and evolutionary biology. It is a very, very big problem. I don't know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. I think one day they probably will know the answer. But even if science doesn't know the answer, I return to the question, what on earth makes you think that religion will? Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous. Nobody has an explanation for consciousness. That should be a spur to work harder and try to understand it. Not to give up and just say, "Oh well, it must be a soul." That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't explain anything. You've said absolutely nothing when you've said that.

A lot of what we're talking about comes down to whether science has certain limits. The basic religious critique of your position is that science can only explain so much. And that's where mystery comes in. That's where consciousness comes in.

There are two ways of responding to mystery. The scientist's way is to see it as a challenge, something they've got to work on, we're really going to try to crack it. But there are others who revel in mystery, who think we were not meant to understand. There's something sacred about mystery that positively should not be tackled. Now, suppose science does have limits. What is the value in giving the label "religion" to those limits? If you simply want to define religion as the bits outside of what science can explain, then we're not really arguing. We're simply using a word, "God," for that which science can't explain. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with saying God is a supernatural, creative, intelligent being. It's simple confusion to say science can't explain certain things; therefore, we have to be religious. To equate that kind of religiousness with belief in a personal, intelligent being, that's confusion. And it's pernicious confusion.

-- By Steve Paulson

Jesus through the Eyes of Thich Nhat Hanh

by Rev. Cathy Fransson

Jesus through the Eyes of Thich Nhat Hanh


October 8, 2006
Mark 8:27-38

---

What does Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh think of Jesus? What difference does that make to me, to you? How does his opinion inform our lives, our struggle with the war, the regime, the homelessness and lack of basic social services on every corner?

It's much too easy to bury ourselves in our own problems, challenges at work and home, even church. In fact that's why some of us come to worship: to get our nose out of our navel. To remember the big picture, the larger truths, the transcending wisdom of the ages that lifts us out of our smallness and gives us hope.

Can a monk whom Martin Luther King Jr. nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize give us hope? King said, "Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brother [and sister]hood, to humanity."

In the introduction to Nhat Hanh's book Living Buddha, Living Christ [Riverhead 1995], Brother David Steindl-Rast comments that Nhat Hanh believes it "safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through theology…." And this Buddhist, this Nhat Hanh speaks of God out of his own experience. He writes, "Discussing God is not the best use of our energy. If we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch God not as a concept but as a living reality." [Foreword xvi] Some Christians aren't yet conversant with the Holy Spirit themselves.

Who cares what Thich Nhat Hanh says about Jesus? I ought to care. You ought to care. Because as Jesus challenges us in today's scripture, what we say of Jesus, what we believe of Christ, determines how we live our lives. Turning and looking at the disciples, Jesus rebukes Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." [Mk 8:33] To set our minds on divine things is to care about how everyone answers the question, "Who do you say that I am?" Because the answer is the heart of the matter.

 

For Jesus, this encounter with Peter is the beginning of the end; he calls everyone's bluff. He turns his face to Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets, the city that made him weep. The answer to his question, "Who do you say I am?" was the key to the rest of Peter's life. It is the key to our own lives. It calls our bluff about all the things we say our lives are about. All the things we say, but do not do.

When historical people like the Buddha and Jesus, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. live out the call of who they believe God to be, the world knows it. If you and I live out the call of who we believe God to be, the world will also know us. Who we say Jesus is inspirits our lives. Who Episcopal Bishop John Spong says Jesus is, is the essence of Christianity beyond the scriptures written well after the life of Jesus, beyond the creeds of the 3rd and 4th centuries, beyond the formulas of liturgy prescribed in the middle ages. [Spong's response to an inquiry on-line last week]. He writes of his relationship with the living God. Spong said, "I do not believe that God is a Christian or a Buddhist. Yet both Christianity and Buddhism have pointed hundreds of millions of people toward the mystery of God."

Seeking faith is not about dogma and the mind alone, though it is about that. It is about the heart. It is about living as God inspires us to live.

I'm glad we have dispensed with certainty in this community. We dare to ask the questions, debate them, and allow each of us to find our own way to Jesus. We have much in common, else we couldn't worship the way we do. But we agree to allow us all to develop our own answers to some of the tenets of our faith. That's dynamic and real. That's Baptist freedom.

Dialogue is a good thing among believers—of any stripe. In a recent Christian Century article (9/5/06) the topic is spiritual reasoning: a process of gathering Christians, Muslims, and Jews together in a neutral space to compare scripture passages from the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, related by theme. "People assume that problems among religious groups arise out of religious differences …." writes Peter Ochs, professor of Judaic studies at the University of Virginia. "Our assumption is the opposite: that religious people like each other because they are religious. They are moved by piety, discipline, and love of God to  pursue similar ends and find solutions." ["Sacred Book Club," p. 36.]

 

Religious people ought to be comfortable with one another because we all believe! We have God in common. What of a few differences in rubrics? Isn't the practice of truth the same?

It is a sad reality for me that when I attend a conference with American Baptist ministers as I did last spring, where I ought to find liberating discussion among colleagues who love God, I spend the first several hours looking for familiar faces or for tell-tale signs of open minds. There are fundamentalists in our ranks, and I am not eager to be an outlaw. Last April I sat in the back row and scanned for signs of the enemy. But by the next morning, I, or more precisely, my prayer had moved me beyond my fear. I decided to be just myself and risk the outcome. How would you do it? The only way I know is to trust God knit me together in my mother's womb, called me by name, and made me God's own. No one can argue that is not so for me. Or for you.

Interfaith gatherings don't frighten me as much. The faithful who take the time to venture outside their boundaries know all of us will not look and act the same. Rod Romney wrote in a recent sermon that when he met Wayne Teasdale, author of The Mystic Heart, their mutual friend Jamal suggested, "You both have a great deal in common. You have each outgrown your religious traditions for something more universal."

Interfaith gatherings attract many who have outgrown their traditions and seek more universal truths. Interfaith seekers have faith in common. We like each other because we share the practice of seeking. We look for bridges instead of walls, connections instead of  barriers. Teasdale created the concept of interspirituality to describe the phenomenon.

What helps us see this larger human vision, embraced as we are by Earth and the stars, but largely buried in minutia? Moments of high drama, even trauma, moments of birth and of death. As many of you have done and will do, I sat by my father for three and a half years, years that were no match for the sixty years we had been father and daughter up to then, but years so significant to my knowing him, that he expanded my world and my compassion beyond anything I could have imagined.

In those awe-filled moments when I saw him as solicitous of the nursing home staff as they were of him, I saw in him someone I never knew. Someone his parenting never permitted. When I took the time, changed my routine, became present to him, and began to care for his personal and emotional needs, then he gave me the gift of his heart.

Buddhist Nhat Hanh said, "The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive." He wrote, "Mindfulness, if practiced continuously, will be strong enough to embrace your fear or anger and transform it. We need not chase away evil. We can embrace and transform it in a nonviolent, nondualistic way."

Christ said, the wheat and the weeds grow up together. You will not know until the day of harvest how to separate one from the other. So if we can't separate evil away from us, we are going to have to live with it, to love it back into life, one thing, one person at a time. It's possible this human experiment will not end until we have all put down our swords and begun to look into each other's eyes. It may take millennia more than have already been counted. But then there will be no more weeds.

Yosh Nakagawa was sitting with Tracy and me a few weeks ago in a labyrinth workshop at Japanese Baptist Church. He said, "this gym is where, in the spring of 1942, our families stored as many of our belongings that would fit before we were moved to Puyallup. This room was full to the ceiling, with each family having only a small share of space. The doors to the church were barricaded with iron bars."

 

He said, "9/11 terrorized all of us, but 9/11 gave me back part of my life. Before then, I was a terrorist. I was uprooted, imprisoned, and moved finally to Idaho, lest I be too great a threat to my own country. I had been afraid to leave my home on December 7th. But now I watch while we imprison others because of their religion and language, and know my country has not learned the lesson of 65 years ago."

Because of our new region, and our commitment to multiculturalism in fact, not just in rhetoric, Yosh is finally unafraid to talk with us about the faith that sustained him in those difficult years. Tears fill his eyes as he dares to tell how God, and who he knew God was, got him through the time when he was an enemy in his own country. He was just 9 years old.

When we sit down with one another across cultures, when we stop to care for our parents and elders, then the enemy others seemed at one time to be dissolves into a recognition of common imperfection. We move beyond dogma, beyond race, and beyond politics to the loss of our illusions, to recognize and live in the present. Dad did the best he could. And only after many years of practicing my own faith, my love of God, and being in the now, was I able to see his efforts whole, as if for the first time as a fellow human being, and not a hard man bent on control. I was able to see beyond myself into a mystical experience, "…where [I was] touched by something ultimate." [The Mystic Heart, p. 70]

The Buddhist teaching I find most helpful is practice. Christians have too long thought once we're baptized, we assume perfection and can point our fingers at others outside the fold. But we are all imperfect. Accepting our imperfection is the beginning of growth, of actually practicing Christian life.

Nhat Hanh says, "If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus. We must practice living deeply, loving and acting with charity if we wish to truly honor Jesus. The way is Jesus himself and not just some idea of him. A true teaching is not static. It is not mere words but the reality of life …. When we understand and practice deeply the life and teachings of Buddha or the life and teachings of Jesus, we penetrate the door and enter the abode of the living Buddha and the living Christ, and life eternal presents itself to us." [p. 56]

We will never arrive, but if we accept the love God showers upon us, we will learn to accept ourselves and grow toward wholeness. Once we place our faith in God, then we can practice following him in all the ways life presents to us, in complete confidence that Jesus' own life, as well as the lives of others, will show us what we need to know.

 

We can learn from anyone. Jesus' way is not a list of rules, it is a relationship. Thich Nhat Hanh's relationship with the Buddha doesn't prevent him from developing a relationship with Jesus. Or any other holy teacher. Jesus did not need exclusive rights to his teachings. And since his Abba was his teacher, I suspect he knew intuitively that there were already then, and would be even more teachers in many cultures and languages, faiths and practices, teaching the truths of the cosmos to human life on the planet.

Else how would any of us learn from any other?

These great transcending truths of the world religions all come down to simple things like water, bread and wine. Like being kind. Like making room. Like sharing.

But more, these truths come down to your own awakening every morning, and mine, whether we roll out of bed with hope and gratitude, or with fear and suspicion. They come down to who we say Jesus is. They come down to how we befriend ourselves, whether with love and compassion or fear and loathing.

Jesus said, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors. We are called to love God. We are called to love ourselves. And we are called to love others. Who knows but that such love encompasses Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and all eternal truths humans conceive of to explain the mystery of God in every time and culture? We share the journey; we are kin with the whole created order.

 

If you doubt that, listen to this—a selection about low tide on a tiny island in the dark of night: "…if you sit still in the dark, breathing quietly, the world will come to life around you. Astonishment will rise in you like the slow tide, sliding in under the soles of your feet. And then you will understand: you are kin in a family of living things, aware in a world of awareness, alive in a world of lives, breathing as the shrimp breathe, as the kelp breathes, as the water breathes, as the alder breathes, the slow in and out. Except for argon and some nitrogen, every gas that enters your lungs was created by some living creature—oxygen by plankton, carbon dioxide by the hemlocks. Every breath you take weaves you into the fabric of life." [Kathleen Dean Moore, The Pine Island Paradox. Milkweed Editions, 2004 p. 54]

We, creatures also, know too little to insist there is only one way. In Nhat Hanh's words "The lack of understanding brings about the lack of tolerance and true love, which results in the alienation of people from the church. True understanding comes from true practice. Understanding and love are values that transcend all dogma." [198-99]

When I moved from my adversarial position as my mother's protector against my patriarchal father, when I became my father's care giver, sitting knee to knee in his small, spare room, I moved from dogma to mindfulness, from politics to practice. And it was only then that I began to love him with my whole heart.

[Thanks to David Enroth (Sky) for forwarding. He is a member of the Seattle First Baptist Church, where Rev. Cathy Fransson is one of the pastors.]