Thirty-three and thirty-three again

April 1, 2024PoetryEastertide, resurrectionRod White

Today, the sun rises again
and the Son again rises with it.
You may want to sleep through it again,
the pillow over your head in dread again.
It may burn your eyelids as it invades your bed,
make you queasy with its sky turning red,
make your dizzy brain reel in the face of new day.
You may resist it all and hit the snooze,
pick up the phone and zero out, or lay
and feel the uneasy knowledge of staying still.

On your road to your Emmaus
you may not spy the bloom among us
right there at the edge of your blinders.
You may not recognize the warming,
the gentle, but binding, binding heat
of burning light in the deep, in the dark,
in the places you are sure no one sees,
in the old pains you feel will never heal,
in the memories you cannot forget,
in the aches you never could forgive.

But there He is again. You
turn your head and catch his eye again.
You take the bread from his hand again
and the moment is an eternity before
he’s gone missing, gone in some fog —
working and loving, God in God,
until he rises from the good earth again,
descends through a thin place again,
connects through a tender touch again,
surprises with that distant voice again.

My new friends call it Eastertide. It
ebbs and flows unstoppable, again and again; its
waves of life, sweet and swelling, wake us up to live again.

Would you like to hear me read it? Here is a link.

Today is John Leonhard Dober Day! He is the first missionary the Moravian Brethren chose to send out from Herrnhut in 1727. He has a remarkable story of faith and courage. Get to know him at The Transhistorical Body.

Emergent identities: The queer future of the church, too

March 25, 2024Life as the church, Psychological growthemergent, gender, identity, LGBTQ, queer, sexual identityRod White

At the recent CAPS conference in Atlanta, Mark Yarhouse and friends again brought me up-to-date on the quickly developing gender/sexual identity landscape. Their workshop centered on three things: a 2019 book by Rob Cover, the re-examination of their own data, and their practical experience with young people and parents navigating the new queer world on the internet. It was enlightening to explore emergent identities with them.

Emergent identities

Cover’s book, Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Genders and Relationships in a Digital Era shows how traditional, binary understandings of sexuality and gender are being challenged and overridden by a taxonomy of non-binary, fluid classifications and descriptors.

He explores how and why traditional masculine/feminine and hetero/homo dichotomies are quickly being replaced with identity labels such as heteroflexible, bigender, non-binary, asexual, sapiosexual, demisexual, ciswoman and transcurious. New ways of perceiving relationships, attraction and desire are contesting authorized, institutional knowledge on gender and sexuality. The digital world in which young people have grown up has played a central role in developing new approaches to identity, individuality, creativity, media, healthcare and social belonging.

Two charts from the presentation show how descriptions of gender and sexual identity have changed since the 1990’s. The “residual” are vestiges of the past terms still in use. The “dominant” are terms widely accepted and presently in use. The “emergent” terms are those rapidly replacing the dominant understandings. If you have a teenager in your life, they might be able to teach you a few things about the emergent terms personally, since they are likely being asked (or pressured) to adopt a way to describe who they are using one of many new “micro-minoritized” identity labels. My seatmate suggested “micro-marginalized” might be better. I came away preferring invited to the “queer smorgasbord.”

The Church is notorious for being at least 20 years behind the dominant culture’s debates about the society being constructed. There are some good reasons for this; the best being that the church sees itself as a dominant culture for its members with an historical and eternal worldview. The worst reason being that the church only listens to itself and is defensive of its power to use words to dominate its population.

The church has been having a fight about “homosexual lifestyles” since the 1990’s and churches are still breaking up over it. Christians in Congress are trying to turn the tide back to some imagined past. The pandemic unleashed a wave of division over racial inequity in the Church (which made sense to me), but those concerns were often supplanted by sexual identity issues. My own former church basically dissolved itself over arguments from which the culture was quickly moving away.

I don’t know if I prefer the chaos and hyper-individuality of the new era dawning. I doubt that 14-year olds can adopt an “authentic” identity in order to find themselves. And I am afraid tender hearts and minds may perform gender and sexual identity and end up with even more doubt and a tragic sense of being alone with an overwhelming, over-scrutinized landscape. I texted my son while I was in the session and said, “Right now I am listening about asexual demiboys.” He replied, “People failing to overcome their anxiety and trusting a pornography-filled society.” He might be right.

Regardless, I think I prefer the “queer” worldview that is emerging. It may never become dominant, but it provides a helpful corrective to the “born that way”/this-or-that views of the past. It is a great gift from the LGBTQ community. Even without a queer theory to describe a common sense approach, my acquaintances and clients would show how gender and sexual identity are much more fluid than us older people were taught. We may have felt that in our own souls and accepted it in others, but we would not have talked about it because we’d be in an argument. Nevertheless, I know more than one man with a wife and children who decided he was gay and left it all behind. I know of a twentysomething transwoman who decided, after a few years, she preferred presenting as male after all. I know a man who left his wife to marry a lesbian who left her partner. If they dare, many straight friends can recount their various gay or lesbian experiences. Life has always been a bit “queer.”

Philosophers with a “queer theory” are talking about more than gender and sexual identity, even if that is where they personally begin. The Q in LGBTQ is becoming an umbrella idea under which the dominant and emerging “letters” find shelter. Even more, “queer” is a lens through which academics and others can approach their disciplines with greater imagination, seeing “outside the box” as so many entrepreneurs like to do. Queer is the anti-binary worldview.

Innately queer grace

As I look back on my work in the church, a lot of what I was thinking could be called “queer.” In terms of sexual identity, I resisted forcing people to choose according to a church policy. I did not win that fight, even though I asked Janelle Paris to introduce us to her book The End of Sexual Identity in 2012. When we finally offered a “policy,” it had a queerness, a both/andness, which did not satisfy everyone, but it allowed for people to find their own ways and stay in grace. I’m not sure we knew what we were talking about, but it was in line with the zeitgeist. That alignment ultimately did not last either, like I mentioned, but I still think it was more about the future than what people fought about.

The church could use a big dose of queering. The biggest reason might be so it can have any hope of listening and speaking to the next generation. Some healthy queering would help theology emerge from its captivity to Eurocentric, Enlightenment/binary, cis-male domination. It would also let the Bible be as honest as it is about humanity, including sexual expression. When it comes to sexual relationships, the Bible is rather queer: there are polygamists, eunuchs for Christ and almost no nuclear families. While there is an assumption a man and woman should covenant and make a family, it seems like there is a lot of room for people who don’t do that (like Jesus!) and lots of room for love that goes beyond whatever the present boundaries might suggest. I wouldn’t put the Bible under the “queer” umbrella, but I do think queer fits easily under the umbrella of grace.

Interspirituality: Finding trust in the swirl of newness

March 18, 2024A life in the Spirit, Building community, Spiritual directionBruce Tallman, David Brockman, David Robert Ord, interspirituality, Kurt Johnson, labels, Maundy ThursdayRod White

The longer we talked about Maudy Thursday, the more it seemed our pastor was thinking, “I’ve got to get this discussion over with.” There was a divide happening between old-old-school members, merely old-school members, the outreaching pastor, and the new people now in the dialogue. I’m one of the new people. Afterwards, a new church friend told me someone had asked her, “So who is the Evangelical?” – meaning me! She thought I would be amused, since she knows I’ve been an Anabaptist dipped in Pentecostalism and only an acquaintance of Evangelicals. She was right, I was amused. I’m not sure I would know what to label me right now, either. I hope I will be trusted in spite of that.

The swirl

It wasn’t too surprising someone was trying to sort things out. Nobody fits the old labels too well anymore, it seems. It is not just Christians, but the Christians are in a swirl — and it is unclear what we’ll look like when we slow down. The internet and now A.I. keep stirring the spiritual pot, so maybe confusion will characterize the future for a while. It characterizes most of the people we meet – even in small discussion groups talking about Maundy Thursday! There are likely to be several ill-defined points of view in almost every person who speaks, when it comes to their spiritual awareness. In the past, religious people were mostly set up for the many becoming one. But these days we are more likely to experience the one becoming many. It can be unnerving.

With a click of the mouse, you can find anything you want about religion and spirituality, positive or negative. The offerings are not just many, they are multitudinous!

On YouTube, the spiritual possibilities are unlimited, for better or worse. You can find videos on everything from the ornate philosophy of Thomas Aquinas to a simple guide for torturing people using Voodoo.
Millions of people find their spiritual life on Facebook. For example, when I checked, the “Power In Prayer” group had 1.6 million followers (and there are other “power in prayer” groups with hundreds of thousands more). “Daughters of Virtue International” has 210,000 followers, and “Today’s Prayer” has 600,000 followers.
iTunes will cull out a selection of the innumerable Christian podcasts to explore. Some of these podcasts and blogs have enormous numbers of followers. The #1 on iTunes is The Bible in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz.

The podcast has become the equivalent of Luther nailing talking points on the Wittenberg church door, only Apple now owns the door and the points are products. If the swirl has not propelled you toward podcasts yet, you might try “Unbelievable?” where Christians and atheists engage in serious debate, or “Winter Faith” for those struggling with belief in a faithless world, or “Hermitix” where smart people tell us how they or famous philosophers approach spirituality. The list of podcasts is endless and can be a source of lifelong theological, scriptural, spiritual, and religious learning – but it can also be a source of “always learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 3:1-7).

Interspirituality

Everything is changing. The more people talk about it, the more evident it becomes that the church is going through a reformation whether it wants to or not. Some people see themselves on the spiritual cutting edge in this new era. They go even farther than labels like interfaith, interreligious, post-Christian, or spiritual-but-not-religious and label themselves “interspiritual.”

In the most recent Presence magazine from Spiritual Directors International (SDI), Bruce Tallman writes about the changes spiritual directors are facing. He brings up that word I heard in my training a few years back to which I paid little attention. But within the swirl of multiplicity looking for some way to cohere, “interspirituality” may have a somewhat prophetic meaning. He writes:

Sister Margo Ritchie, a well-respected nun and national coordinator of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada, recently said at a book launch in London, Ontario that, and I’ll paraphrase, “we are not only going through an era of change, we are going through a change of eras.”

In fact, David Robert Ord and Kurt Johnson have suggested in their book The Coming Interspiritual Age that we are entering a “Second Axial Age” following the first around 500 B.C. when syntheses of Greek philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, and Judaism all simultaneously emerged.

The coming “Interspiritual Age” means that religion and spirituality are going to become ever more ecumenical and interreligious. Indeed, this has already happened to some degree – all the religious denominations and world religions have impacted and learned from each other. Catholics and Protestants have already enriched each other immensely; since the 1960s Westerners have become much more familiar with Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Taoist ideas; and more recently, many are far more aware of Indigenous spirituality than ever before.

As a conservative reaction to all this, there may be a continued growth of “old time religion”, as is currently happening in Judaism with strictly Orthodox practices, in India with Prime Minister Modi’s attempt to restore the primacy and prominence of Hinduism in India, in Russia with the Orthodox Church, and in the United States with the ongoing growth of Protestant fundamentalism and some Catholic bishops trying to take Catholicism back to the 1950s and the pre-Vatican II church.

An ”interspiritual age” might strike you as more Joachimite imagination. But it also might strike you as common sense, since you hear the outlook popping up in conversation at church.

Do you want to adopt interspirituality?

In an interesting review of The Coming Interspiritual Age, Dr. David Brockman, who is deeply involved in interfaith dialogue, helps us sort out their assertions. He’s mainly concerned with how they dismiss the many for the one and denigrate the traditional in the light of their new enlightenment. Here he goes:

Religion, they argue, is imbued with a “mythic-magic” mindset; a paradigm from humanity’s archaic past involving spiritual beings, rules, and “systems of reward and punishment.” In their view, religion’s main role is control, specializing in easy-to-remember notions that are “perfect for the control of partially matured apes like humankind.” Religion, they contend, is concerned about differences, and about which teachings are right and which are wrong. Worst of all, while spirituality is apparently tolerant and inclusive, religion asserts absolute truth and is “exclusive by its nature.”… [I try to rescue the word “religion” here.]

Interestingly, despite their criticism of absolute truth claims, exclusivism, and right-wrong thinking, the authors engage in these very practices themselves, in asserting the superiority of interspirituality over interfaith dialogue (which they call “trans-tradition spirituality”). In interfaith dialogue, they write, “there remains an overriding concern with the differences.” “[T]his religious experience is shallow enough that there’s still mental concern about who’s ultimately ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ When plumbed, this concern is almost always linked to deeply hidden fear about ultimate rewards and punishments.” It would be interesting to learn how the authors can know this (they do not cite a source), and who is doing the “plumbing.”

Their book came out at the beginning of a decade (2012) that ended with many “more advanced” and “golden age” philosophies being applied in a heavy-handed way.

What makes interfaith dialogue inferior to interspirituality, the authors claim, is that interspirituality understands “that there is a common ‘knowing’ at the core of all religious experience… This happens only in a mystical or contemplative understanding.” Here the authors reveal their own exclusivism (perhaps their own magic-mythic mindset?): “interspirituality recognizes a common experience within all spirituality… For interspirituality, this common experience is the ‘absolute truth’.” Interspirituality, it seems, is the one “right” experience.

But is Oneness the way forward? For me, much of Christianity’s power lies in its teaching of the divine Trinity: that the Ultimate Reality is both one and three. Equally paradoxical — and powerful — is the affirmation that the one Christ is both divine and human, without confusion and without division. Neither assertion “makes sense,” in traditional Aristotelian “x cannot equal not-x” thinking. But that’s the beauty. There is a koan-like power in these teachings: the affirmation of Oneness and Manyness simultaneously….

While those of us in interreligious dialogue learn that we have much in common (our Oneness), dialogue also reminds us of our differences, our diversity (our Manyness). Each religion brings different questions, different experiences, different perspectives to the table — and it is in grappling with those differences that we grow, and that our view of the Ultimate Reality — whatever it is — is enriched, deepened. Interspirituality seeks to tune into the signal (Oneness) by filtering out the noise (Manyness). But what if the “noise” is also the signal?

The authors might reply to Brockman’s critique by saying, “When you say things like ‘The noise is also the signal,’ you are making our point that it is all one, both noise and signal.”

Sometimes I think these arguments resemble niche marketing so someone can find your podcast on iTunes. Regardless, it surely represents the swirl and demonstrates how people will be called to commit to a dizzying array of spiritual options. I prefer “the affirmation of Oneness and Manyness.” But I trained with respectable people who were committed to being interspiritual directors, listening for that oneness regardless of who their directee is.

Holy Week requires trust

The way into and through this interesting new era we are entering will take some new thinking and new relationships. I for one have been looking forward to the end of the old era for a long time. It has been slowly dying for a long time. But the death of the old will require finding what to trust in what is new. Even more, it will resurrect our trust in Who is ever-new.

In our simple discussion of how to present Maundy Thursday again — that observance where the Trinity comes together around a table with us and the oneness is handed to our manyness in a cup, we were a good example of how challenging it will be to feel comfortable in our own skins and buildings in the near future. It will take a lot of trust.

The need to trust those in front of us became very clear when one of the members of our table group tried to add our particular contributions to the whole discussion. She started off speaking a bit too-softly to be heard across the room, so someone shouted, “We can’t hear you.” So she gathered herself and gave a short recap in a much louder voice with an almost completely different tone.

I could not help adding when she was done, “I think what just happened is a good example of what we are trying to bring together in this observance. The intimacy of the small group in which we could quickly share a sense of oneness, is different than how we act when we speak to the whole.” On Maundy Thursday Jesus speaks softly and lovingly to his intimates. We want that. But His message now moves around the whole world. We are part of that reality, too. In our discussion we had, and in our future observance we will have: softer and louder, gentler and harder, present and past, crystal clear and in a swirl, just like Jesus and his disciples, just like churches all over the world, and just like our little crew — all in the same meeting, remembering the same event.

Beyond our discussion of labels, we’ll need to trust the Spirit in each of us and the God beyond all of us to trust the experience of receiving the cup and entering into the death and resurrection of Jesus in us, in the world.

What should we do about 2024? : Not enough suggestions

March 11, 2024A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction2024, dialogue, Donald Trump, Kamala HarrisRod White

I guess this is what married Christians do in 2024. My wife came to me after her prayers and wanted to talk. “What should we be doing about this year?” she asked. A sobering question.

We’ve often wondered what we would have done if the Nazis rolled train-fulls of Jews and other targeted people through our town. Would we lay across the tracks? Is this the year we will find out?

US President Joe Biden delivers his third State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, 07 March 2024. SHAWN THEW/Pool via REUTERS

At the State of the Union address last Thursday a feisty Joe Biden tried to rally the dispirited and exhausted electorate with a long list of accomplishments and plans. He sounded upbeat and defiant and his congressional boosters were enthusiastic. But his ambitious speech was a picture painted on a backdrop of half of Congress sitting on their hands — looking a lot like the Speaker in the photo, above.

Biden jumped right into his call to action and returned to it at the end:

My message to President Putin, who I have known for a long time, is simple: We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.

In a literal sense, history is watching. History is watching. Just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.

Many of you were here on that darkest of days. We all saw with our own eyes. The insurrectionists were not patriots. They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power, to overturn the will of the people.

Jan. 6 lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed a great, gravest threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War. [Skipping to the end]

My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas.

Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.

To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done. Tonight you’ve heard mine.

State of the Union 2024 highlights: Biden talks Trump, democracy and abortion in energetic speech It was the best speech I ever heard him make. But I think he gave an even better message as the cameras followed him around the chamber when he was done. He graciously and cheerfully attended to a roomfull of egotists and looked like a regular guy doing it. He looked like a caring adult. He has a daunting task: negotiating with a Netanyahu, speaking to a Representative in a Trump T-shirt (left), spotting George Santos in a crystal-encrusted collar and seeing poor Senator Lankford who thought he had a compromise border bill before Trump pulled the plug to deny Biden a “win.” But there he was connecting and, dare I say, sincerely caring.

Politics will not save us. We know that very well — Christians always have always known that. As a result, Jesus followers have endured every imaginable hostile environment throughout history in almost every culture. Jesus is alive and well in China right now. Putin and Orban will not co-opt all the true believers in their countries. Christians have survived in Palestine since Jesus rose from the dead.

But what should Jesus-loving, compassionate, justice-seeking people do in this very political year — a year when the stakes seem so high? I don’t think we should just wait for the trains to leave the city limits and hope the consequences aren’t too bad. Especially in the U.S., where Christianity has a history of saving capitalists and power-hungry extremists from their worst impact for generations, we really ought to be salt and light; we really should have better solutions than to join a political party or just drop out. Lives and livelihoods are at stake! Planetary war and warming are both constant threats! Children are malnourished, going uneducated, and dying. Wouldn’t Jesus be on the side of the least of these?

Here is what we are up against.

Since 2021 Republicans have blocked the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. Last September, House Democrats reintroduced it. On March 1 it was introduced to the Senate.

Speaking in Selma on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday on March 1, Kamala Harris shared that the first thing she sees when she enters her office. It is a

“large framed photograph taken on Bloody Sunday depicting an injured Amelia Boynton receiving care at the foot of [the Edmund Pettus] bridge…[F]or me, “it is a daily reminder of the struggle, of the sacrifice, and of how much we owe to those who gave so much before us….History is a relay race. Generations before us carried the baton. And now, they have passed it to us.”

Meanwhile in Mar-a-Lago after his near-clinching of the Republican nomination last Tuesday, Donald Trump had much different picture of the baton he would like the voters to hand him. He said,

[The United States] is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.

Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime, and that’s Biden migrant crime. But it’s a new category and it’s violent, where they’ll stand in the middle of the street and have fistfights with police officers. And if they did that in their countries from where they came, they’d be killed instantly. They wouldn’t do that. So the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us.

[The “weaponization” of government against a political opponent] happens in third world countries. And in some ways, we’re a third world country. We live in a third world country with no borders …We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair nor has it been free … The press used to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them….

2024 is our final battle. We will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers from our government—we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Marxists, the communists and fascists. We will rout the fake news media, we will drain the swamp. We will be a liberated country again.

Congress's Only Palestinian-American Lawmaker Hold Up Signs During Biden's Remarks on Gaza — Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, and Rep. Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri. (andrew caballero-reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

It is quite a year

What must we do with the rest of 2024, in the face of the huge feelings of political despair, endless antagonism, a faltering Ukraine and a devastated Gaza (and who knows what is happening with Iran?), SEPTA trying to figure out how to keep transit safe enough to ride, information mistrust, courts that don’t work right, people locked in isolation?

So far, a lot of us are dropping out of the political process and leaving it to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’re avoiding any associations like neighborhood and church, so they are all run by zealot factions or the C Team. Qualified people are deserting local government just when it is crucial for our well-being.
So far, a lot of us are numbing it all with drugs, with overspending on distracting experiences, or with endless screen time.
So far, at lot of us are building a wall around our families or pods like we learned to do in the pandemic if we were lucky enough to have a circle of relationships. If you’re alone, you might be barricaded in your studio apartment.

I know or know of people who are doing all these things. But mostly, I think we are wandering in the dark bumping into walls where there used to be no walls.

I can basically make it around my house in the dark — I wake up early a lot so I get a lot of practice. But if you put a footstool in my way or leave your shoes out, I might end up in the hospital. Many of us have run into so many walls and tripped over so many footstools, we feel we are perpetually recovering from injuries!

What should we do?

So we were talking about all this again the other day. I think the first thing to do is what we were doing: ask the question and talk about it. There are not going to be good solutions without dialogue. Serious conversation is the seedbed of inspiration. Apparently, most of our leaders are not going to make dialogue happen. We’ll have to start somewhere without them and build from there. Here is what I am thinking so far:

Get ready to lay on the tracks. The Nazis had train technology. Now there is the internet and AI all run by giant corporations which are slaves to profit. Don’t forget Exxon made $36 BILLION in profits in 2023. Elon Musk is worth ~$200 BILLION and he claims Putin is richer. That is just to say that the powers-that-be have a lot of “trains.” Tell the truth about them as personally as possible. Use all the means to make noise, show up, don’t get rolled over. But touch real people. Create places where people can gather — at least have a dinner party. We have to stick together. We can’t outsource our responsibility to care. If worse comes to worst we may have to take some risks to overcome evil with good.
Take care of your body and soul.“Depleted” and “exhausted” are terms people often use to describe themselves when I see them these days. But we often discover resources they have been undervaluing. We can rise again. There are so many things we can do to address the mental and spiritual health crises (amazing stats). During and after the pandemic, while churches were dying (mine included) I trained to be a certified spiritual director. One of the things I did was start a direction group for men. Soul care is more than “namaste” or taking deep breaths when you are nervous (both of which are a daily thing for me). Deep problems call us to go deeper and get healthier. We need to seek our truest selves and God’s guidance to find a way through 2024. A serious year needs serious people.
Build community. Last Lent we joined a new church. It has made a big difference, even if Church, in general, is still pitiful. If you can’t stand churches, you could at least begin with Meetup. Or you could take an extra step with the superficial relationships you have. But I hope you won’t give up on the church. Just because the media broadcasts all the corruption church people perpetrate all over the world does not mean every church is corrupt or God is dead – you’re probably not corrupt and you aren’t dead yet either. Are we really going to give over the church to psychopathic and narcissistic leaders? I recently learned of Apollo Quiboloy of the KOJC in the Philippines, who is a prime example of why you might be tempted to give up faith altogether, as well as the church. But it will cost the world dearly if it loses the salt and light of Christian alternativity.
Join up with action organizers. Being part of church counts. Your business or non-profit might count. There are lots of other people doing great things to build a new society and care for people facing great changes. I support the IRC and MCC. I’m allied with Third Act, Habitat for Humanity, Poor People’s Campaign, Philly Thrive and others. Keep taking yourself seriously.
Do something symbolic. Act like you mean something. We’re taking our own trip to the Edmund Pettis Bridge after the Christian Association of Psychological Studies Conference in Atlanta this month. First we will go to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. Our feet need to go directions our hearts want to go for our souls to be strong and our minds to be convinced we matter. Stubbornly insist that who you are and the gifts you give are valuable. They make a difference to God and they save the world. Show yourself and leave the results to God.
Dare to admit it is not enough. You and I don’t have enough, let’s admit it. There is a streak of bad theology which teaches we are never enough, that we are bad and perpetually in need of doing better — we are wrong but we better get it right!! It has worn us out. I know I am tired of hearing about it. The Evangelicals have made it seem like salvation depends on our personal choices; the weight of our failures and the imminent collapse of the world as we know it is on our shoulders! Not so! Jesus is Lord.

But we can sense something more is required right now and most of us have no Idea just what it is. Even though I have laid out some good ideas, they seem kind of old to me. Some ideas are always good, but I’ve got a feeling this year might require a new version of them or something we’ve never even imagined. Even more likely, what is needed will require a new version of me. This post is a small symbol of me talking about it and getting serious. I don’t think we dare watch this year on TV.

Voting for someone who makes more sense than the other someone may be something. But it is not enough. Not voting or protesting against the powers is something. But it is not enough. I have given some suggestions on where to begin, but I don’t think they are enough. But I do think there will be moments this year when a path is laid out and good things need to happen, and you and I will be there.

Arelational: To not wear the label, try this exercise

March 4, 2024A life in the Spirit, Psychological growtharelational, Harvard Study of Adult Development, Relationality LabRod White

“Arelational” is a new word that keeps popping up. It had to be coined to describe the kind of environments in which Americans, in particular, increasingly live. Such environments develop individuals who struggle to make and nurture relationships. As a result, labellers can label them: arelational.

It's official: We stare at our phone more than we stare at our TV

It takes relationships to flourish

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. The original participants and their descendants have provided the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever accomplished. The answer to their original question is simple but profound. The way to flourish is to have good relationships. The only thing you have to do is nurture them.

The latest director of the study and his associate recently wrote a book to expand on this simple truth. In a teaser article in The Atlantic they explain why their conclusion is not just painfully obvious.

Turn your mind for a moment to a friend or family member you cherish but don’t spend as much time with as you would like. This needn’t be your most significant relationship, just someone who makes you feel energized when you’re with them, and whom you’d like to see more regularly.

How often do you see that person? Every day? Once a month? Once a year? Do the math and project how many hours annually you spend with them. Write this number down and hang on to it.

For us, Bob and Marc, though we work closely together and meet every week by phone or video call, we see each other in person for only a total of about two days (48 hours) every year.

How does this add up for the coming years? Bob is 71 years old. Marc is 60. Let’s be (very) generous and say we will both be around to celebrate Bob’s 100th birthday. At two days a year for 29 years, that’s 58 days that we have left to spend together in our lifetimes.

Fifty-eight out of 10,585 days.

Their conclusion is: that’s not too many days to commit to such an important relationship.

Did you make a list of your closest relationships and do the math? It may be a little terrifying to get serious about that subject. It can seem a little daunting to make and keep a friend, but it is one of those things about which we say, “No pain, no gain” and, “It’s worth it.”

Our arelational environments

Bringing this subject up feels dangerous to me. I’m afraid it will wound people further where they are hurting the most. Since the pandemic I have heard story after story of broken relationships which have not been recovered. The British government recently, and famously, created the loneliness ministry and sociologists keep writing articles about how loneliness is literally sickening and killing people.

As psychological researchers begin to explore what has happened to therapy clients, a new literature and new words are emerging to describe what is going on. A few weeks ago an acquaintance used a new word his therapist had given him: “arelational.” The therapist was helping him to see the environment in which he grew up and the institutions that he inhabited in a new light. They were filled with important relationships in which people did not fully connect and change each other. The effects of these environments dramatically impacted his marriage, where he was mainly insisting on a transactional relationship based on mutual benefit.

If you Google “arelational” you won’t find too much. Google will just send you to “relational” (and Word is trying to spellcheck me right now). But it seems like a good word to describe how thin our relational ties are these days. Many of us spend weeks in arelationality. Some of us don’t even go to stores for transactions but rely on contactless transactions to keep fed — we are becoming accustomed to arelationality.

Google did take me to the “Relationality Lab,” however. It was founded after the pandemic in response to the “global loneliness crisis,” the threat to democracies, and the failures of justice movements to address climate change and systemic inequity effectively. I like their logo at the left. In one of their research articles, they use the word “arelational” as if it were in common use. The founder is talking to corporate and governmental settings, where he wants to make the most difference. But I think the word applies to most contexts where we will spend most of our time today. The “Lab” workers say:

Some environments are better at generating and maintaining relationships than others. A community that trusts one another gathering to share a meal is more relational than, say, Twitter. In a relational environment new connections are effortless, conflicts resolve in generative ways, and creative power is unleashed. In an arelational environment all of these things can still happen, but they are a lot harder and a lot less likely.

Creating and maintaining relational environments requires a particular kind of skilled labor. People with this skill can see where powerful relationships could exist and create the conditions to let them emerge. They can see where important relationships are at risk, and provide the care necessary for them to keep them resilient. Relational work might look like planning events and facilitating workshops, or it might look like cooking someone their favorite meal when they are sick. Though relational work often manifests as acts of care, it is the deep understanding behind those acts that makes it effective.

Imagine an elder who is part of a multi-general community that provides meaningful care and support. Now imagine the same elder in a corporate chain of senior homes which provide care based on a uniform set of policies. Both provide care, the care in the senior home may be better resourced and more technologically sophisticated, but the community is providing significantly more relational work.

Effective relational work requires a deep understanding of the local environment and a mind capable of seeing how relationships might change within it. A software platform, even one with the most sophisticated machine learning tools, cannot perform this work (though it might support those performing it), nor can one person perform it meaningfully for a community of thousands. Relational work requires many humans working at a human scale who are accountable to the communities they serve.

When I resigned my last pastoral assignment in August of 2020, one of my exhortations to the staff for which I worked was something like this: “If you love one another, you have a chance to survive. If you don’t, the church will fall apart.” Unfortunately, a small group of leaders took over the system and installed justice in place of love (maybe unwittingly, since I doubt they thought the two did not go together). A relational system had been holding the church together for decades. An arelational system quickly reduced it to nothing. The “deep understanding” went missing. Such stories are not unusual these days.

An exercise to help nurture relationships

Are you still thinking about your own deepest relationships and how you are nurturing them? Your personal health and the health of the systems we inhabit depends on them. If we teach our children the “deep understanding,” they will also be able to see how strong relationships are the glue of everything.

The kids might be hearing more about dissociation from TikTok, or societal meltdown from a news source, or broken relationships from Olivia Rodrigo. Or they might hear more about keeping a safe distance from germ carriers, or avoiding sexual predators and malignant narcissists, or hiding from gun-toting radicals or anyone who takes more than they give. If we demonstrate a relational way to see the world, they might learn not to be arelational.

The Holy Spirit will probably teach you to be relational, in line with who you were created to be: a person born and reborn in love. That’s the deepest understanding.

But in honor of the researchers who are discovering deep understanding by crunching numbers and seeing what helps people flourish and what helps people groups cohere and change, lets makes that list.

Be generous when you list the people who you love, or who give you life, or to whom you feel closest (not necessarily the ideal relationships you want). Spouses and families count, but stretch out beyond them. Try to get beyond twenty people. To do that you will be including acquaintances with whom you have some sense of mutual care, or even acquaintances you would like to see develop into caregivers. Your list might get to 50 or more!

Then rank them in terms of closeness. You could make four columns.

Close: The closest few (you can decide what defines close).
Near: The friends and neighbors on whom you could rely in some way, large or small. “Your people.”
Acquainted: The acquaintances for whom you have affection for or affinity with but have limited interaction with (likely from work or church or other groups)
Known: The acquaintances with whom you feel some connection but who are not “in” relationship with you.

If you follow Jesus, you’ll see how he could have made this list. Ask him to walk you through yours and show you what it means and what you might do about it with his help.

Even if you don’t have the help of Jesus, you can nurture relationships, increase your well-being, and keep your society from falling apart. Like the Harvard studies keep proving, it will take nurturing, which requires effort. Relationships often start like they just “happened.” But they don’t last if you expect them to just keep happening to you. They have to be built and maintained. You may not have the tools to do that work, so you will need to acquire them. There is substantial opposition to relationships these days (screens, capitalism, hedge funds, addiction, you name it) so you’ll have to be stubborn about nurturing and hold on to your deep understanding.

I’m going to avoid thinking about effecting a glorious endpoint full of great relationships and concentrate on taking the next step. I’m going to try making a chart and tracking how much contact I am making with all those people on my list. I am not going to track how much effort they are making with me (unless I am being weirdly and harmfully codependent). I am just going to make sure I am doing what I can to keep from sliding into arelationality.

Grief: Make room to grieve in every way you need

February 26, 2024A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Psychological growth, Spiritual directiongrief, grief bubble, Leeanne Friesen, pandemicRod White

I wonder if what has been making us mean in the last few years is unprocessed grief. Maybe we have not grieved at all, or haven’t considered all the ways our souls are working through the losses and sadness we carry.

Do people in the United States have good ways to grieve anymore? Were you taught anything by your family system that helps you?

I am connected to many people who are not conversant in grief at all. If I suggest we talk about their loss and the grief they feel about it, they almost immediately deflect. They can talk about trauma, anxiety and depression, which are words the therapeutic language we use allows. But the deeper, soulful grief they are passing through and which they will continue to bear is hard to admit. For many men, especially, grieving seems weak, shameful, irrelevant, or just annoying.

You can see grief behind the meanness

It is possible, isn’t it, that not making room for grief is contributing to how mean we are getting. Many people have noticed our agression and disrespect growing, especially if they drive a car, and even more viscerally if they have been to the U.S. southern border. Americans are meaner. David Brooks wrote a great (long!) article about becoming meaner in The Atlantic last fall. But he did not highlight grieving.

Even though we went through a pandemic and even though the death and fear of it is not really over, Americans generally seem to brush off their need to grieve. Our president, at the outset of the health emergency, minimized the disaster and his followers loudly distrusted the vaccines which undoubtedly saved the lives of millions of the 111 million Americans who have been infected, so far — (yes, a full third of the country! and it may be more). Even with the vaccines, 1.2 million people have died from Covid so far in the U.S. — that’s over 1/7 of the estimated deaths worldwide. Donald Trump is famous for appearing on the porch of the White House, fresh from the hospital, still having trouble breathing, pointedly denying anything significant was happening.

I know many of us did not take his lead, but I think the country, by and large, buried its grief. The persistent irritation of unrecognized, denied, or avoided grief could make us mean and even sicker than we might normally be.

Maybe Trump takes his cues from the screen, since he is famous for having a lot of TV time. The screens contribute to our inability to grieve. We often learn how to live from them. And the screens are sketchy about what they teach about grief.

If you see grieving on the screen, it often moves through in a few moments. Some movies are enlightening stories of grief, of course — but even those films tidy things up, generally, after about two hours. Learning grief from film or TV shows may stunt us. They may desensitize us to our personal process because our catharsis happens while watching someone else, and someone who is not real, at that. It is not the same as having our own experience.

Our experiences rarely match the screen. Most screens show grief in stereotypic ways. A Reddit ranter says:

I’m home alone watching Kingsman (I know) and the main character loses the son he spent his whole life protecting and after 3 mins of air time grieving, he’s smacked into reality and goes back to work…. Like, is this annoying to anyone else but me? A close friend can give you a pet [sic] talk to physically hit you and now you’re okay again?!!?!

The boatload of heroic spy and superhero movies we’ve had in the last decade usually include this message about grief: there is no time for it. Besides, we’re too tough to give into it. Heroes tend to say, “I’ll honor your moment of silence for the latest victims, even acknowledge your single tear squeezing out. But then it is back to the work of revenge or raining overwhelming force on our enemies.” For instance, here is Thor dealing with his grief in Guardians of the Galaxy:

He gets slapped. Then he “gets it together” in record time. Grief meets meanness on the screen.

Maybe we need grieving room

Leanne Friesen Last week a book my acquaintance wrote about grieving showed up in my Kindle. I forgot I pre-ordered it. I admit, I was hesitant to open it because I really admire this woman and I did not want to not like her book. But as soon as I read a few pages, I could not put it down. It is a charming, honest, helpful book about grief: Grieving Room: Making Space for All the Hard Things after Death and Loss. In a world that wants to rush toward closure and healing, Leanne Friesen gives us reasons, and maybe more important, gives us permission to let loss linger. She teaches us to give ourselves and others grieving room when the very worst happens.

I wrote a bit about grief last week, too, because I need to give it room, just like anyone else. I was not prepared for loss. I think the most I heard about grief in my family growing up was when my mom shouted “Good grief!” — which isn’t quite the same as demonstrating healthy living or having a serious discussion!

Reading Friesen’s book creates much-needed time to meditate on old, unfinished griefs and space to accept more recent, raw ones. She is mainly reflecting on her own life-changing experience of losing her relatively-young sister to cancer. But I think what she says easily applies to losing several years to a pandemic, to vicariously losing mass-shooting victims or Palestinian children, to being fired from your job, to losing your child to estrangement, or to many of the other losses we don’t think to make room for.

She also focuses on her own emotions, which she can readily access; there is lots of crying, angry outbursts, and tenderness. That does not mean you can’t use her book to help you grieve the way you do. Men who have rarely cried as an adult can read it, traumatized people whose losses are terrifying can enter in at their present level, even Christians who think the Holy Spirit bears all their griefs so they don’t have to can benefit.

The Bubble

One of the most helpful images in Grieving Room comes in the chapter “Room to Never Get Over It: Always Missing the One You Lost.” In that chapter Friesen faces the hard thing we all face when someone asks, “Are you over it yet?” — or when we fear someone might ask that because we should be over it, or when we ask ourselves that question because we want to be over it. She says:

There is a season when you live right inside that big cloud of grief. In the grief bubble, it feels like you live surrounded by grief all the time. This is a normal part of grieving. It is also true that at some point, we transition to a time where we live beside the bubble, instead of inside it. Moving to this season can take a long time. Even when the big cloud shifts, your grief never really leaves. It is still part of us, forever.

It could take years for us to get out of our grief bubble. If we don’t make room for that reality, we’ll probably get mean to ourselves or others — and who knows what else might happen?

This award winning short film reduces the process of grieivng to ten minutes, but it seems more accurate to me than many depictions. You might see the bubble in it.

Jesus in the dust with us

Even though Friesen is a protestant church leader, she realized she might not make room for resurrection. In the chapter right next to the one I just mentioned is “Room for Resurrection: Starting to Find New Life Again.” She writes:

One of my favorite quotations, from Frederick Buechner, says, “The resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” [The Final Beast (1965)]…Had the idea of all of us rising together ever meant something to me before? It had a little but even more now. Until I lived through my very own worst thing, I didn’t know the truth of the idea that the resurrection means the worst thing isn’t the last thing. It took a lot of death for me to start to see resurrection. I had never really needed resurrection until [my sister] died.

Unlike Friesen, many of us are tragically alone in our grief! To hear her tell it, her life is full of family, good friends and caring churches. I think it’s possible she could make room for the many hard things of grief because room had been made for her and her emotions in her family and community. She can look forward to rising from the dead with her family and friends!

That may not be where you are at right now. For one thing, the pandemic killed a lot of churches and the ones left are still recovering. Nothing will ever be the same. So if you had that togetherness it might be hard to find now. On top of that, you may have ended up too alone, locked down, to dare grieving. You’re more like Thor: hyper responsible for everything (but without a hammer) getting slapped. With morality gone, like David Brooks claims, and Christianity taking a nose-dive, you might basically be without God, too. So many of us suffer a deep sense of being completely on our own.

Being alone, or feeling alone, might make it that much harder to to get out of that overwhelming bubble of grief. Grief might become a chronic experience. Resurrection, the other side of the deaths we experience and the losses we carry, might seem like a fantasy.

The New Testament is honest about how slowly resurrection dawns on the grieving disciples. The Lord’s #1 woman, Mary Magdalene, thinks Jesus is the groundskeeper outside his tomb. At one point the risen Jesus finds his irritated disciples gone back to fishing.

The resurrected Jesus can be hard to recognize. He has a different look on the other side of death. We do too. Things look and we look different on the other side of our losses. I think the whole world looks different after the millions of deaths during the pandemic.

Before death comes to us or on us, resurrection can be an easy thing to keep on the outside of us, maybe more like a nice thought or an inspiring principle. Even Peter rebuked Jesus for wanting to go to Jersualem — no death, no need for resurrection, let’s keep things controllable. When death gets inside our defenses, into our heart, resurrection becomes crucial. When grief can no longer be denied or prevented, we have nowhere to go except to the one who holds the words of eternal life.

I think this very short video does a nice job of bringing us to rest in the hope of Jesus being with us, not only in the bubble, but in the challenge of facing death, inside and out, every day. I’ll leave you with it. When you say with the psalmist in Psalm 22,

“My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death,”

may you experience how God lays down with you in your dust.

Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses: A helpful guide through your loss for Lent

February 19, 2024A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual directionboth/and, death, glory, Judith Viorst, Lent, letting go, loss, necessary lossesRod White

Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses (1986) is a book I have recommended many times to friends and clients over the years. If you are ready to meet an honest but encouraging guide as you move through the losses along your way toward development, she is a good one.

Judith Viorst and Alexander (still having a bad, no good day) — Judith Viorst and Alexander (still having a no good, very bad day)

Inevitable loss and glory

Now that I think it is safe to say I am officially “old,” loss cannot be as easily denied as it used to be. My also-old friends are deteriorating with me. And I find it much harder to avoid the yet-unfinished griefs and fears of childhood. There are tender scars of betrayal and failure to bump into. There are unmet needs (and my complicity in keeping them unmet) to feel. And there is the mean old world lapping at the sinking shoreline beneath my feet.

Life is wonderful and difficult at the same time! For instance, we had such a wonderful Valentine’s Day! We rehearsed all the things we like about our relationship over dinner and then found so many reasons to laugh during Mrs. Doubtfire. But it was not long before I watched myself doubt my own fire and long for some intangible thing I felt was missing in me or my life. Difficulties arise daily. As Paul would say,

I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. — 1 Cor. 15:31

Yet in the next letter he says,

Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. — 2 Cor. 4:16-17

Death and glory travel together.

Lessons from Judith Viorst

As I prayed about these things, I remembered I wanted to recommend Necessary Losses to a client. But then I thought my inspiration might really be God encouraging me to pick the book up for myself, which I did. I thumbed through to the final page and was encouraged all over again by Viorst’s frank and hopeful view of how we develop. Here’s some of it for you:

In thinking about development as a lifelong series of necessary losses—of necessary losses and subsequent gains—I am constantly struck by the fact that in human experience opposites frequently converge. I have found that little can be understood in terms of “eithers” and “ors.” I have found that the answer to the question “Is it this or that?” is often “Both.”

That we love and we hate the same person.

That the same person—us, for instance—is both good and bad.

That although we are driven by forces that are beyond our control and awareness, we are also the active authors of our fate.

And that, although the course of our life is marked with repetition and continuity, it also is remarkably open to change.

For yes, it is true that as long as we live we may keep repeating the patterns established in childhood. It is true that the present is powerfully shaped by the past. But it also is true that the circumstances of every stage of development can shake up and revise the old arrangements. And it’s true that insight at any age can free us from singing the same sad songs again.

Thus, although our early experiences are decisive, some of these decisions can be reversed. We can’t understand our history in terms of continuity or change. We must include both.

And we can’t understand our history unless we recognize that it is comprised of both outer and inner realities. For what we call our “experiences” include not only what happens to us out there, but how we interpret what happens to us out there. A kiss is not just a kiss—it may feel like sweet intimacy; it may feel like outrageous intrusion. It may even be only a fantasy in our mind. Each of us has an inner response to the outer events of our life. We must include both.

Another set of paired opposites which tend to merge in real life are nature and nurture. For what we come into the world with—our innate qualities, our “constitutional givens”—interacts with the nurture we receive. We cannot view development in terms of either environment or heredity. We must include both.

As for our losses and gains, we have seen how often they are inextricably mixed. There is plenty we have to give up in order to grow. For we cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.

I may be old, but I am still developing. Letting go of my losses is not the only way I do it. But letting go is an essential skill if we don’t want to run into a psychological and spiritual wall every day. I know this personally. Letting go of some significant losses in the past few years has opened up many new avenues for growth and love for me. My spiritual direction group helped me let go of something just last week and the freedom is still taking shape! It feels great. None of us is finished yet.

Lent would be a great season for meditating through Judith Viorst’s book and letting go of the necessary losses that lead us to resurrection after resurrection.

Lent is another both/and. It is right now and quite deliberate, but it is also a window into the losses of the past and a view into the promises of the future. It is the turning season, a yearly invitation to move into the way of life after death: daily and eternal, out of the old self and into the new, out of the past and into the future. You may or may not feel the immediate results of your Lenten disciplines, but, come Easter, you may come to recognize you feel inwardly renewed, and you will likely come to feel the delight of sensing the glory of God unveiling your true glory.

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Today is Xi Shengmo Day! Meet one of the first modern Chinese church leaders who renamed himself “Overcomer of Demons” @ The Transhistorical Body.

The screens vs. the real intimacy of the soul

February 12, 2024A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Music, Spiritual directionAnam Cara, Celtic wisdom, hollow, intimacy, John O'Donohue, loneliness, Seinfeld, shadow, Tracy ChapmanRod White

When John O’Donohue published Anam Cara: A Celtic Book of Wisdom in 1997, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair presided over the politics of the West. At that time, here in Philadelphia, we were a few years into planting a church. It had a great run until my successors hit the pandemic wall. The 90’s seem like a very long time ago.

Everyone Needs an Anam Cara—or Soul Friend—to Feel Understood and Loved: A Celebration of But in many ways, O’Donohue is even more relevant now than he was in the 90’s. Then, he was just wading in the rivulets of what is now drowning us. When the publishers released the 25^th anniversary edition of O’Donohue’s classic, new readers saw how prophetic his thinking was.

His main intent was to preserve vestiges of the sacred worldview of his Celtic ancestors; he was like Cary Fowler lobbying at the time for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Only O’Donohue’s seeds were spiritual and the fields from which he gathered them were quickly disappearing from Gaelic islands like the Amazon forests from Brazil.

Even more, he was like the prophet Isaiah, who intended to make an old truth present as he spoke for God to to his chosen people. In Anam Cara O’Donohue interprets the past, establishes God in the present, and offers a surprising, prophetic message for us twenty-seven years later.

Let’s listen to just one paragraph that speaks about the sacredness of intimacy. It will give us a chance to examine how we feel and think about relationships these days and how the threat to them O’Donohue prophesied is as real as he feared. The restoration of the kind of intimacy the Celtic church experienced with God, with one other and with Creation is the way to freedom through the shadows that dominate us.

In our culture, there is an excessive concentration on the notion of relationship. People talk incessantly about relationships. It is a constant theme on television, film and the media. Technology and media are not uniting the world. They pretend to provide a world that is internetted, but in reality, all they deliver is a simulated world of shadows. Accordingly, they make our human world more anonymous and lonely. In a world where the computer replaces human encounter and psychology replaces religion, it is no wonder that there is an obsession with relationship. Unfortunately, however, “relationship” has become an empty center around which our lonely hunger forages for warmth and belonging. Much of the public language of intimacy is hollow, and its incessant repetition only betrays the complete absence of intimacy. Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul and the soul is reserved. (pg. 15)

Let’s cut his word into three parts and better see what he is saying to us. I hope he will help us hang on to our souls in this troubled time.

Now people live in the shadows

In 1997 the misanthropic Seinfeld was nearing its last season of nine at #1 in the ratings. We laughed at terrible people unable to connect. Jerry Seinfeld mocked our increasingly shadowy existence and normalized the despair that now dominates our cultural self-image. Here he is on the Tonight Show when Jimmy Fallon was getting started deriding our relationships and the Post Office in his much-imitated way [link].

Meanwhile, in 1997 Friends was spending the third year of its ten-year run at #4. That charming group might be even more insidious. They, in some sense, suggested the world could be united as friends, just like they formed their unlikely, alternative family in the media ether. When Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) died last October from “the acute effects of ketamine” there was a worldwide cry of anguish on the internet — as if they had lost a friend. But technology and media have not united the world, have they?

The prophecy is: It is all shadows. Increasingly, people live in these shadows. The explosive use of artificial intelligence tools has led to the fear of “shadow AI” (that is, AI used outside system protocol) destroying order and normal relationships in a business. Creations like the A.I. Irish forest above are more real to people than actual ones. The colonization of souls by technology causes people to despair of relating and to become acclimated to living in shadow.

Now loneliness is an epidemic

Accordingly, they make our human world more anonymous and lonely. In a world where the computer replaces human encounter and psychology replaces religion, it is no wonder that there is an obsession with relationship. Unfortunately, however, “relationship” has become an empty center around which our lonely hunger forages for warmth and belonging.

Psychology has named loneliness a mental health crisis but generally has little to offer as a solution apart from trusting in individual education to cause individual change. People need something deeper and they are looking for it. One of the newly-popular, albeit usually illegal, paths they are taking is psilocybin/mushrooms; some think their use is outpacing the research.

Regardless of how you search, many of us are feeling and acting desperate. I don’t think we know what the pandemic did to the world yet. But our desperation is evidence something went wrong. An easy-to-see example of the upheaval is how the increasing loneliness of the West has become its own epidemic. Many of us are still not completely out of our lockdown. Not only are we dealing with health issues and death, our social institutions, like the church, took a hit. Many churches have also died in the last few years alongside millions of virus victims. The leaders burned out. The systems proved untrustworthy. One of the results of all this is we’re lonely because we’ve been left alone to fend for ourselves.

But we are obsessed with relationships, constantly foraging around the “empty center” for warmth and belonging. We scroll for intimacy. My heart is warmed for a second by fleeting images of pets cuddling and babies laughing which are fed to me by the algorithms. People who are serious about connecting download an app. According to a Forbes poll in late 2023 “Nearly 70% of individuals who met someone on a dating app said it led to a romantic, exclusive relationship, while 28% said it did not.” Pew’s 2023 survey says “One-in-ten partnered adults – meaning those who are married, living with a partner or in a committed romantic relationship – met their current significant other through a dating site or app.” As usual, any tool can be used to a good end, but the technology often makes the user in its image.

When the new Surgeon General put out his report on loneliness, the media started talking about it. He reported: “In a U.S.-based study, participants who reported using social media for more than two hours a day had about double the odds of reporting increased perceptions of social isolation compared to those who used social media for less than 30 minutes per day.” 75% of social media users reported they would find it difficult to give up their internet foraging.

The prophecy is: We will not find the intimacy we crave by going to an imaginary watering hole for a drink. True intimacy requires a soul language the media can only represent, if it even cares to; it takes humans and God to share it in reality.

Now intimacy is fully hollow

Much of the public language of intimacy is hollow, and its incessant repetition only betrays the complete absence of intimacy. Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul and the soul is reserved.

Watch Taraji P. Henson 'Push Da Button' in The Color Purple | Playbill

As soon as I re-read those lines above, I felt my reaction to The Color Purple (the new film of the musical) all over again. It is so hollow! It has great performances, especially by Fantasia, but the music feels redundant, like it was formulaically feeding on Alice Walker’s masterpiece (1982). Even more so, it feels like Oprah and Spielberg (the producers) are feeding off the movie they made of the book (1985) — in which Oprah was tremendous. The musical opened on Broadway in 2005, and by the time the movie of it was made, the horrific story of broken intimacy had been fully bathed in “neon.” The only interesting song among a series of derivative, banal tunes is the cringeworthy “Push da Button,” the antithesis of O’Donohue’s sense of intimacy.

Likewise, pundits noted how this year’s Grammys were dominated by women whose songs all tell intimate, often excruciating stories — Sza and Taylor Swift exposed to stadiums full of people, and the brilliant Billie Eielish (with her Gaelic name meaning “pledged to God”) singing about Barbie’s search for meaning and connection as a stand-in for countless people who can relate to her yearning. The performers hollow out intimacy, which “never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye.” The under-exposed Tracy Chapman’s reserve at last week’s award ceremony made her seem like a goddess.

The prophetic word is: real intimacy is sacred. It rises from an environment where God is present and honored. There is a secrecy, a mystery to it. We don’t own it, produce it, or control it. We share it. We receive it. We appreciate it. The “voyeuristic eye of a neon culture” is like Sauron’s eye searching Middle Earth for the final ring of power and we dare not placate the eye or wear the ring.

It is as dire and hopeful as Isaiah says it is

In the short run, Isaiah prophesies, the Jewish Kingdom of Judah will be overrun by Babylon, which is deserves to be. But in the long run:

Violence shall no more be heard in your land,
devastation or destruction within your borders;
you shall call your walls Salvation
and your gates Praise.

The sun shall no longer be
your light by day,
nor for brightness shall the moon
give light to you by night,
but the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your God will be your glory. — Isaiah 60

O’Donohue has a similar prophecy. The outlook for the West is grim, but he has a lived message of intimacy with God and of security grounded in Creation. In the shadows “the Lord will be your everlasting light.” A seed of hope has taken root in him. He has seen God in the world and can’t unsee Jesus. The Holy Spirit has enlivened his soul, she has undammed the yearning that flows between heaven and earth and unleashed the joy inherent in that longing.

**********************

Today is Fanny J. Crosby Day! Visit this spiritual ancestor at The Transhistorical Body and subscribe for reminders of future posts.

Is it disobedient to be afraid? (2012)

February 5, 2024A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Psychological growth, Spiritual directionafraid, do not be afraid, fearRod White

In my long stint as a Philly pastor, I often answered “frequently asked questions.” This speech reflects a time when someone asked me, “Is it disobedient to be afraid?” Someone must have asked me for more Bible study, because there is a surprising amount of scripture here.

Is it disobedient to be afraid? We are going to talk about that. The answer is, generally, yes, but probably not for generally accepted reasons.

What are you afraid of?

I am afraid of heights. I’ve done a lot of things to try to overcome this fear, but I am not very successful. One time I got stuck on a ruin Rhyolite, Nevada (like the one above) when I was out in the desert with some friends and could not get down from my climb because I was too afraid to bridge the gap between my foot and the next foothold. They had to come up and rescue me.

But I think I am more afraid of depths. It is hard to look into certain territories inside. I am not alone in this.

But the worst thing might be that I am most afraid of people I am close to, even people I love. I have a nagging fear of you, right now. I am so afraid of the things that might hurt me again, or make me feel too alone, or make me feel smothered or shamed. My reaction is so automatically fearful I am afraid of my reaction! What’s more, I am afraid to be myself because that might hurt someone else. I not only don’t want to do that, I don’t want them to do it to me. Are you as messy as me?

So if the Bible teaches I am being disobedient to God when I am afraid, I am pretty much disobedient a lot. I’ve got sin ready to pop out all the time!

The Bible does say, “Do not be afraid” a lot. Like in the famous account of the resurrection. Some one read it and everyone read the bold part.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” — Matthew 28

Jesus has died, there has been an earthquake, an angel has appeared to the soldiers and they have fainted they were so afraid. The women see the angel (note they do not faint) and he says, “Do not be afraid.” I suppose it is disobedient to not do what a messenger of God tells you to do.

But also note that in verse 8, they are disobedient, still afraid, but they are filled with joy. You might want to hold on to that seeming incongruity for later.

So they are obediently running to tell the disciples the news that Jesus is risen, when they run into Jesus! They fall on the ground. Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

Is it disobedient to be afraid when Jesus says “Do not be afraid?” I honestly think the answer to the question is “Yes.” It is, at some level, basically disobedient to be afraid. It is idolatry, the fear has a bigger place in your worship than Jesus.

People organize their lives around fear every day. Why are our national leaders so afraid of people in Northwest Pakistan? There are a lot of reasons that could be given. But they are not afraid because they trust God!

Why are we so afraid of each other? You get next to someone and suddenly you are afraid of what they think of what you just said. You are so concerned about what they might feel you are anxious and miserable all day. When all the while, if you actually follow Jesus, you are going to live forever, which means even if what you experience kills you, things will work out OK.

What can mere humans do to me?

The writers of scriptures from about 1000 BC to 64 AD have a common memory verse that you might like to add to your thinking: what can mere humans do to me? My spiritual director often asks me, “What can really happen here? Really, what’s the worst thing? Why be so locked in fear?” He does not always succeed in getting me to not be afraid, but he is right to ask.

Four of you read one of these as an invitation to us to give up our fear. Don’t read the reference:

In God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere human beings do to me? — Psalm 56:11
When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; / he brought me into a spacious place.
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. / What can human beings do to me?
The Lord is with me; he is my helper. / I look in triumph on my enemies. — Psalm 118:5-7
What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. — Matthew 10:27-9
God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can human beings do to me?” — Hebrews 13:5-6

So yes, God tells us to not be afraid — and for some very good reasons. If we don’t trust him and are afraid for our usual bad reasons, then it is disobedient. God commands us to act for our best interests. Trusting God is in our best interests.

How to Calm a Fussy Baby: Tips for Parents & Caregivers - HealthyChildren.org

Is there a fearless human somewhere?

All that being said it would be bizarre to find a fearless human. They might be a sociopath. Some Christians seem to be to have some kind of psychological talent that allows them to act like they are not afraid and pretend they have no fear. They are committed to being obedient, they saw that the Bible said “Do not be afraid.” So, by God!, they are not afraid. But I think they might be afraid of being afraid, deep down inside. And they might be so afraid of God that they would shut their feelings down in order not to offend her. They might be afraid their religious house of cards will tumble if they call God “her!”

Contrary to that, I think it is very likely that all those scriptures that say “Do not be afraid,” were intended to be comforting scriptures. Those passages are more like when you are holding your screaming child and you say, “Don’t cry honey.” I think they are saying “God and all his messengers know you are afraid. Don’t be afraid.” They are pointing out our fear, acknowledging it exists and working with it.

We have a strange problem in this era. We think what we feel is who we are. If I feel fear, I am afraid. I think It makes more sense to separate feelings from actions. You can be afraid and filled with joy, too! God and his angels might scare you, but you could respond with worship.

After all, Isaiah says:

Therefore, this is what the Lord, the LORD Almighty, says: “My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians, who beat you with a rod and lift up a club against you, as Egypt did. “

Isaiah is speaking for the Lord, who is telling his children, the people of Israel — the whole nation is like his offspring, “Don’t be afraid of the Assyrians,” even though the Assyrian Empire is huge and is undoubtedly going to take you over, and your King, Ahaz, is trying to make a deal with them instead of trusting God. Be faithful to God.

Isaiah notes however, that the experience of being beaten is installed in the nation’s memory, since that is what happened in Egypt when they were slaves. When they were just a child of a nation God rescued them from their abusive condition, but the fears born of having been in that condition are still real.

When God tells you don’t be afraid, he remembers your beginnings, too. I have a story about why I am still afraid inside, even though I can act fearlessly in many ways. I have an Egypt in my past where I was hurt. Some of you have stories you don’t even want to tell, they are so painful to recall. Some of you have stories you can’t tell because you blocked them out completely. They were being formed when you were just a small human. There is no way God is telling you, “Don’t be afraid,” as if you were never in Egypt. He encourages us to not be afraid because we were in Egypt and we needed to be rescued. And now the Assyrians are coming upon us.

We have a lot to be afraid of

Get a picture of what you are afraid of in your mind. Even make a mental list. I am not going to make you tell us what it is, so don’t be afraid. But I am going to offer the opportunity to a couple of people, so we can be honest, like God is, about carrying things that scare us. Any body want to tell us the first thing that came to mind?

I don’t think being obedient is not ever being afraid. I think being obedient is listening to God’s call and trusting him when we are afraid, which is pretty much all the time. “Do not be afraid,” should be translated, “I know you are afraid. Listen to me. Trust me. This is going to go someplace. I am with you. Act in faith even though you are afraid.” The scriptures suggest ways to live that out.

Meet God in the night

Everyone read this if you can:

Do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight,
preserve sound judgment and discretion;
they will be life for you, …
When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. — Proverbs 3:21-2,24

I sometimes wake up in the night and can’t resist making a list of things that trouble me. I did it last night, because I forgot to do something I needed to do and I was afraid of the consequences. My fears get to me when my defenses are quieted by sleep and they can get out. I hope that does not happen to you. But for most of us, it does happen, at least once in a while.

To be obedient, try some rituals. You might need to get up and pray or get up and deal. You might need to push it off. You might recite the Jesus prayer and re-center. You might use your new memory verse “what can humans do to me?’

When we become aware of our fear it tests our obedience to God’s command. We need to meet him in the fear. The Lord is calling into the fear for us — calling us out. If you experience fear, it is a place to meet God.

Trust in the touch

Let’s all read this in a mysterious whisper:

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. — Revelation 1:17

This is John in Revelation thinking about the end of time. The other day we got a movie out of Red Box called Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. It turned out to be a God-free rendition of John’s revelation! The movie was all about fear and finding someone to touch before the meteor hit. It was touchingly disobedient and lovingly hopeless. I think John’s vision is better. John’s vision is such a wonderful thing he experiences as he is awaiting the end of this age, exiled on his island. He has a vision of the risen, ruling Jesus, and Jesus tenderly touches him. Do not be afraid.

God is going to touch you where you are afraid. But you will have to let him and learn to let him when you are too afraid to let him or too accustomed to not letting him. You learned to be afraid and not let it touch you. You have a tendency to fall down dead in the face of what you fear. The touch of God, who is the beginning and the end, before you began and bringing you to your end, is how we deal. That is obedient.

Take a step

Let’s have a woman be Moses:

See, the LORD your God has given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” — Deuteronomy 1:21

This is Moses telling the people of Israel that the people of the promised land are not too big for them and they should go inhabit what God has given them. They are afraid. We come up against things that make us feel tiny and helpless every day, don’t we?

One of my grandsons is learning to swim. When he is done screaming, he is quite proud of what he can do. He feels better because he has gone through a fearful thing. We don’t get very far if we don’t travel through fear to get there.

One of my directees talked to his father after five years recently. It turned out even worse than he expected. But not talking to him had clogged him up with the fear of not making that connection. He feels like he is getting free. He took a step.

You are not going to be unafraid when you take a step. See what the Lord has given to you. See what those who have taken steps before you are telling you. Go with it.

So is it disobedient to be afraid? Yes, if what you mean is you are ruled by your fear and not by your faith in God. But no, it is not disobedient to be afraid. You are just afraid. It is a feeling, and one that makes a lot of sense, given your circumstances. It will pass through. “Do not be afraid.” Have joy in your fear, Jesus is with you.

Did the devil write The Sound of Music?

January 29, 2024A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Film/TVGospel, The Sound of MusicRod White

“What?!” the Evangelicals say, “The only movie my parents would allow me to watch is being subjected to the latest litmus test?”

Well, if that is how you want to see it, yes. Call it deconstructing, if you like. But the population was fed a lot of hogwash. That’s especially true when it comes to the sweet, romantic, almost iconic scene I want to briefly discuss.

There is some ambivalence about this earworm

I have the misfortune/blessing of having a song in my head most of the day. My mind seems to trap them. The other day this one from The Sound of Music popped up. I was upset, because it had been banished for while due to its terrible theology. But it is a hard earworm to resist.

Before I ask you to give it another look, you might want to give it another look. If you choose to do that, you can hit this link to the YouTube (less than 2 minutes long). I’m going to give it some disrespect. But before I do, it is fine with me if you look beyond its terrible lyrics.

While you are watching it, go ahead and vicariously enjoy being a grieving, angry man who has been re-awakened by the governess who initially irritated him. Or vicariously relish the wonder of being a woman poorly assigned as a nun who has found her place as a wife and mother, loved and accepted as she is. I hope someone has met you in the gazebo! If not, I hope they will. Be glad that love can unexpectedly happen – even when the Nazis are at the door! Good grief! Stop being too cynical for this lovely story!

Feel free to get a little tear in your eye for a second before we cast off the terrible, supposedly Christian, logic that led to this scene in this strangely religious musical.

Here’s the problem with this lyric

It is evangelism for a gospel that is not THE Gospel and believing it lands people in misery.

Richard Rogers (who wrote the music) was reportedly an atheist. Oscar Hammerstein (who wrote the words) said this about his faith is a 1958 interview with Mike Wallace. He was telling a story about an exchange he had with a fan. The fan asked,

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” and I said “No.” “He said are you religious?” and I said, “Well I don’t belong to any church,” and then he patted me on the back and he said, “Ah, you’re religious alright.”

And I went on feeling as if I’d been caught, and feeling that I was religious. He had discovered from the words of my songs that I had faith, faith in mankind, faith that there was something more powerful than mankind behind it all. And faith that in the long run good triumphs over evil. If that’s religion — I’m religious, and it is my definition of religion.

In The Sound of Music Hammerstein is trying to picture what he thinks Catholics would probably be thinking if they were getting into this wonderful love relationship – a bit like he looks into Polynesian culture in South Pacific or Oklahomans in Oklahoma. He’s painting in stereotypes (and often undermining them).

Unfortunately, he got it right when it comes to the mess people make of Christianity, which is why I hate it when this messy song pops up. It has such a lovely feeling and such terrible thoughts!

Let’s go through this once and for all

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth

To be clear, he’s teaching usto beleive: “there must have been a moment of truth” because otherwise I could not deserve this moment. I must have done something right because me doing the right thing is how I get good things and, what’s more, it is how I get into heaven.

I have atonement explanations in the side column over there if you want to revisit what Jesus Christ is all about. He is certainly not about noting our “moment of truth” so he can reward it later by fulfilling our deepest desires. My Christian clients are often tormented by the thought of how unworthy they are of being loved by God or anyone. They may accept that God is good enough to love them but they don’t accept that they are good enough to be loved. Hammerstein captured their dilemma in a song:

For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Yes, you were wicked and miserable (and many times still are), but you were not and will never be responsible enough to be good enough to balance it all out. You will not be able to perform well enough to solve the problem, even if you can sing like Julie Andrews! You did not merit the blessings God delivered out of love in Jesus. And if someone professes their love for you, you should probably just take it instead of evaluating it according to your self-loathing.

I think many people believe the theory of God’s grace. But we still feel it is unlikely, if not impossible, for God or anyone to love the real us. Many of us feel if we were just better everything would be better — that’s the truth we live by and deeply suffer as a result. We never get good enough. Whatever nasty thing you say to yourself when you look in the mirror (or suppress saying, it is so terrible), it is probably spawned by “truth” that pops up like this lyric I’m decrying. We vainly try to control the conditions that led to our lack of love. We’re always sorting things out, “I’m wicked. I’m good.” But inconclusive sorting ends up being the habit of our heart and closes us off to what we need.

A lot of the problem stems from this terrible line of logic I wish I did not remember:

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

If you are a Jesus follower and you believe this nonsense, dash back to your Bible and go directly to:

1 Cor 1:26-30: God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Colossians 1:15-23: [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Romans 4:16-23: [We] share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Everything comes from nothing by God’s grace.

It is the presence of God that matters, not how well you present or whether what you present is good enough.

So did the devil write it?

I don’t know and neither do you. But so what if he did? If he didn’t write it, any one of us might be saying a similar thought in our head right now: “Maybe I did the wrong thing and that is why no one loves me” etc. The fact we are awash in such thoughts is why we need a Savior. When my clients triumph over the wicked, miserable thoughts in their heads, it is still not enough. Ultimately, we are all seeking to live in the presence of God, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist,” who out of great love chooses “what is low and despised.” People also call and choose like that in various gazebos — it is a wonder.

I hate to spoil the lovely scene. But we all know that after the kiss it will only be a decade until the Captain is dead and the von Trapp family is making a living in Vermont as struggling immigrants. Maria von Trapp was not thrilled with The Sound of Music. She thought the stage and screen stars, Mary Martin and Julie Andrews, “Were too gentle – like girls out of Bryn Mawr” (times change, eh?). Her life was tough. You might not be thrilled with how your life story looks on film, either (or how it is torn apart like in Anatomy of a Fall). Our lives are messy.

The Sound of Music certainly got that right. What a mess! Love in 2024 is a miracle, too, and yet it happens all the time. It happens even when a false line in a sweet song threatens to corrupt the whole thing. When the temptation to control the world pops into our minds, we hang on to the faith — of millions living and hundreds of millions dead, in the presence of God in Jesus, “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. “

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Emergent identities

Innately queer grace

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The swirl

Interspirituality

Do you want to adopt interspirituality?

Holy Week requires trust

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Here is what we are up against.

It is quite a year

What should we do?

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It takes relationships to flourish

Our arelational environments

An exercise to help nurture relationships

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You can see grief behind the meanness

Maybe we need grieving room

The Bubble

Jesus in the dust with us

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Inevitable loss and glory

Lessons from Judith Viorst

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Now people live in the shadows

Now loneliness is an epidemic

Now intimacy is fully hollow

It is as dire and hopeful as Isaiah says it is

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What are you afraid of?

What can mere humans do to me?

Is there a fearless human somewhere?

We have a lot to be afraid of

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There is some ambivalence about this earworm

Here’s the problem with this lyric

So did the devil write it?

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