Death, Resurrection, and a Gran Torino

[If you enjoy this blog, please SHARE it with your friends and others who might be interested.  You can click in the column to the right and choose how you want to share this.] A RECAP FROM MY LAST POST:  Remember Walt Kowalski (from the movie Gran Torino)?  Walt is living a lonely, isolated life in a world that looks so different from his past.  He's turned himself into a gruff, crude, angry old man who pushes everyone away.  His defense mechanisms (his ego defenses) are so strong that he's placed himself on a trajectory toward a lonely, painful ending.  His only legacy will be the perfectly kept, spotless car from his past - a Gran Torino - which has come to symbolize the way he wished life still was - something good from the past he religiously hangs on to.

Is there any hope for a man like Walt Kowalski?  Is the Gran Torino all there is?  Here-in lies the power of this contemporary story, especially in light of this Season's theme of death and resurrection.  There are two spiritual traditions centering on two powerful stories that both Jews and Christians celebrate this time of year.  Both stories have a lot to say about the important dynamics of spiritual growth and transformation.  Both center around the experiences of death and resurrection.

Notice THE STORY OF THE JEWISH PASSOVER.  There’s an existence of bondage and slavery in the foreign land of Egypt (with an accompanying loss of a sense of true identity and purpose) – there’s weeping and wailing and death and status quo and survival.  The people have gotten use to living with a certain frame of mind (with strongly developed defense mechanisms) and a corresponding way of life – victims, hopelessness, death – as the chart in my last post shows, fear-anger-shame.  Then there’s an appeal by Moses on behalf of their God to exit this life of slavery and bondage and enter their true Life (a life promised by God that will be lived out in the Promised Land).  And God will provide a way of escape.  How?  They must choose to trust in this Life-giving, Nourishing God by spreading the blood of a killed lamb over the doorposts so the angel of judgment on the Egyptian slave empire will “pass over” their homes; then they must leave their homes and follow Moses out of the country; then they must willingly escape across the Red Sea (once God divides it) in the face of the enemy army to “pass over” to the other side away from their land of bondage and into their resurrected new life.

Notice the process:  God promises – they choose to trust – they follow specific directions – they walk away from their old life – they go into the unknown, face pain and danger – and they finally choose to keep going, all the while learning about their reclaimed Identity, until they arrive at their New Life (the Promised Land) where they can finally live in complete alignment with their God-given identity.  Cross – Resurrection.  All along the way, their egos are dying on the cross as they follow God and God provides what they need to make intentional choices.  And the result is a resurrection to their New Life.  The point is, you can't have a resurrection to a new life without also choosing to leave something else behind.

NOTICE THE STORY OF THE CHRISTIAN EASTER.  In this Christian story, the Way of Jesus is all about the confidence with which he lived his life all the way to the end.  In spite of all the voices trying to tell him who he was, who he should be, whom he shouldn’t be, he developed a powerful security in his identity as God’s beloved son.  Only a really secure person can serve so unselfishly and compassionately and courageously.  Right?  That’s why the Gospel of John (chapter 13), when it describes Jesus in the upper room the night of his betrayal celebrating the Jewish Passover service, says about Jesus, “And Jesus, knowing who he was, where he had come from, and where he was going, took off his outer garment, took the servant’s pitcher of water and a towel, and washed his disciples’ feet.”

Only a really centered person, who has learned to move from a small-s “self” to capital-S Self, who has learned who he truly is, who God has called him to be, can face the powerful religious and political systems of his day and oppose them for all the right reasons – in spite of their vigorous persecution and vitriolic aggression against him.  Only a truly centered and secure person can deliberately break the unjust rules and boundaries of his time and proclaim a message about the Kingdom of God being a world of justice and compassion for everyone, knowing that this message, along with all of his courageous acts of love, will be dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

Here’s the way one author puts it:  “The way of Jesus involves not just any kind of death, but specifically ‘taking up the cross,’ the path of confrontation with the domination system and its injustice and violence.  His passion was the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth if God were king and the rulers and systems of this world were not.  It is the world that the [Hebrew] prophets dreamed of – a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough, in which war is no more, and in which nobody need be afraid … Jesus’ passion got him killed.  But God has vindicated Jesus.  This is the message of Good Friday and Easter … The way of the cross leads to life in God and participation in the passion of God as known in Jesus.” Marcus Borg, Jesus, pp 291-292.

The Way of Jesus shows what can happen when a person is so centered on God and God’s passion, is so centered on God’s calling and one’s true Identity, that they are empowered to let go of every image and defense mechanism that isn’t the truth about themselves, and then live with courage and boldness to love and give no matter what and no matter who they’re confronted by.

The power of the Jesus story is how it illustrates the Way to New Life, the abundant and joyful life, the divine life that we’re designed to enjoy.  Two powerful symbols that describe this Way:  the Cross, and the Empty Tomb; death and resurrection; the laying down of the ego, in order to find, to reclaim the Essential Self.

It’s interesting how so many of us want the new life without the pain of the cross.  We expect there to be a “silver bullet” that suddenly launches us into our true Selves without having to go through the “grave” of the ego.  We are constantly tempted to project a certain image of ourselves in order to protect ourselves – so we make choices to protect that image at all costs.  Instead of living out of our core truth, instead of having the courage to be who we really are, to live in alignment with who God has created and called us to be.

BACK TO “GRAN TORINO”

So how does this way of the cross and resurrection, this sacred portal and thin place, get lived out by Walt Kowalski in the movie “Gran Torino?”  What happens with the central metaphor of his prized and perfect Gran Torino, that symbol of escape from the real world into his safe, secure, predictable fantasy world?

Walt has spent multiple decades shining and polishing and nurturing his Gran Torino – he has invested himself in this car because it has come to represent the way he wished life still were.  That car has become his ego defense mechanism and he continues massaging it, hoping for a better world.

But haven’t you noticed that often the very things we do to get what we’re really looking for are the very things that keep us from getting it?  Walt’s anger, shame, and fear – and the ways he lives those feelings out – are not helping him get what he’s really seeking – autonomy, security, and positive attention.  His Gran Torino is a powerful symbol of misguided focus.

Until that prized Gran Torino one night almost gets stolen by who Walt thinks is one of the local gang members – and then finds out that it’s his next door neighbor’s teenage son.  Which then catapults Walt kicking and screaming into the whole life of this Asian family who has been to him up to now a foreign enemy.  As they respond in humility and kindness and graciousness, mortified over the shame from their boy’s actions, Walt begins to get to know them.  In ever so slight ways, he lets his guard down and his heart opens up to this new world around him.  He ultimately begins trying to mentor this boy who has no father at home, bringing him into his world as well as going into the boy’s and his sister’s world.  Walt begins to see that there’s another way to look at and experience life in this new reality – that there are people who can see him for who he really is – who accept his grumpiness and crudeness as just an exterior he’s gotten use to using that in truth masks a gentle and kind heart, a grandfather’s heart.

Their love and kindness pursue him in spite of his angry attempts to deflect them.  Love wears him down.  And what he begins to feel, he begins to like.  What he sees of himself when he looks through their eyes, he begins to like.  He finally finds his true Self evidenced by his final act of selfless giving.  True to what Jesus once said, "The one who gives up his life for my sake will find it."

In the end, Walt’s Gran Torino, the very symbol of his insecurity, becomes a symbol of his resurrected life.  He gives this prized car to this Laotian boy – the very boy who tried to steal it now gets to use it and then ultimately own it.  Walt has gone through the cross of letting his ego be transcended by his truer Self and has experienced a resurrection of love, compassion and kindness.  The very Gran Torino he hung on to as his old way of survival and security becomes transformed into a symbol of his expanded life – a sacred portal, a thin place.

QUESTIONS:  So where might you see yourself in Walt Kowalski’s story?  What are your ego defenses – how do you tend to respond when you don’t get your way or when you feel threatened?  What is your Gran Torino that you’re using to protect your ego?  What do you tend to hang on to that symbolizes your desire for security, autonomy, attention?  Where in your life do you need the resurrection of your true Self?  What does the cross look like for you – where does your ego need to die so that your truest Self can be resurrected?

Gran Torino and the Process of Spiritual Alignment

[If you enjoy this blog, please SHARE it with your friends and others who might be interested.  You can click in the column to the right and choose how you want to share this.] According to every spiritual tradition, we as humans, human nature, are divided – we are divided against ourselves (our truest Self), and we are divided against the Divine.  This lack of unity is in fact more characteristic of our “normal” reality than our Essential unity.

Understanding this division in us is crucial to recovering our Essential Self and becoming the people we were made by God to be, where we experience the highest level of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.  The process of spirituality is about recovering and reclaiming our true Self and re-connecting with God.

According to the experts, we all are seeking specific needs to be met (based upon our upbringing and subsequent woundings).  And there are primary underlying feelings associated with each of those needs.  This primary need with its underlying feeling is what tends to drive us and motivate us – it describes how our ego tends to manifest itself when it doesn’t get its need met.  And therefore knowing this helps to give understanding about what we’re battling against and what we need to deal with in order to learn how to live out of our true Self.

OUR CHIEF EGO IMBALANCES AND DEFENSES

Let's look a bit more closely at this triangle of circles so we understand what it's describing.  There are three basic needs that all of us tend to gravitate toward and seek more of:  autonomy (the need to protect our "personal space," to be given our freedom, and maintain a felt sense of self), attention (the need to be validated in meaningful ways, to feel valued, to maintain a personal identity), and security (the need to find a sense of inner guidance and support, to be able to know the future clearly enough to survive and be cared for).  Each circle then reveals the default response or defense mechanism that kicks in when that specific need isn't met adequately:  no autonomy ... anger and aggression manifest either toward self or others; no attention ... feelings of being unvaluable, shame, a sense of being defective are manifested; and no security ... feelings of insecurity and fear emerge.

According to experts, we all experience all of these at various times, in various ways, and with varying intensities.  But we tend to have a primary default - our most common, easy-to-go-to, natural defense mechanism when our primary need isn't met.  These responses are the "artificial fillers" of our personality - imitations - ways we try to get our needs met that are not flowing from our Essential Self but rather from our wounded self.  So rather than helping us, they actually hinder us from receiving what we really want and need.  This causes the lack of internal and external unity all spiritual traditions describe human nature experiencing.  So every tradition has developed various spiritual practices that help a person come to greater alignment and congruence with their True Self - tools to practice, disciplines to engage in that facilitate spiritual development toward becoming the people God designed for us to be.  Spirituality, then, is the intentional process of becoming who you truly are (your Essential Self) rather than the imitation.    Spirituality is about your true Self connecting with God and reaching your ultimate potential as a child of God.

APPLICATION:  Circle the word in any of the three circles which you feel most protective of in your life right now, or most defensive of – your gut reaction.  Which word describes what drives you the most – what you’re truly seeking and feeling as you go through life’s experiences these days.

A Contemporary Story

Let's notice how these dynamics are played out and experienced in the story Gran Torino which came out in 2008.  The movie Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood, describes the weather-beaten yet poignant story of Walt Kowalski, an aging retired auto worker at Ford Motor Company in the now industrial graveyard of Detroit.  In the beginning, the film has the feel of a requiem. Melancholy is etched in every long shot of Detroit’s decimated, emptied streets and in the faces of those who remain to still walk in them.

Sort of like Walt’s life.  A veteran of the Korea War of the 1950s, Walt has been watching his “world” drastically change through the years into something he hardly recognizes much less feels a kinship with.  Everything to him is falling apart all around – the neighborhood has been taken over by “aliens,” foreigners – “Chinks-Gooks-Swamp Rats” he shamelessly calls all of them, no matter what country they’re from in Asia.  In reality, his neighbors are Hmong, the hill tribe people in Laos who allied with the US troops during the Vietnam war and then had to flee when the North Vietnamese took over.  Many of them fled to the US and settled in communities like Walt’s.  But to him, they’re still the “enemy” who don’t belong here!

He has just buried his wife and he’s basically estranged from his two sons and their families who have come to “put up” with a father and grandfather who seems crude, gruff, and uncaring.  So he pretty much lives his life alone with his dog Daisy.

And alone with the central metaphor of Walt’s life, his cherished pride – a pristine 1972 Ford Gran Torino.  He has invested all of his desires in this car – it represents to him the best days – the past – when life was more predictable, more secure, more unified, more white, success was everywhere, everyone had a chance to make it if you just worked hard enough.  The glory days.  People were patriotic then!  Like he has hanging on his porch, everyone flew the Stars and Stripes to show their pride in life and country.  So he pours himself into keeping his Gran Torino in spotless, perfect condition.  It’s his refuge from the painful, disorienting reality of this new world.  And it’s his artificial filler, his imitation self.

Interestingly enough, the writers of this movie have portrayed Walt as the Everyman who represents all of us in some ways.  His ego defenses are being threatened – he’s desperately seeking SECURITY (the safe and predictable and comfortable ways of the past).  But the changes in his personal life (losing his wife, estranged from his kids, and isolated from his Ford company past) and the radical changes in his environment (the gangs terrorizing the neighborhoods, the foreigners with their strange and distasteful customs who have moved in next door and up and down HIS street) have all threatened this security.  So he’s reacting in FEAR – inside he’s not sure how to really cope with FEAR – so he defaults to what he knows best:  prejudice, resentment, portraying a gruff, swearing, beer-guzzling, smoking hardass to everyone (including his family).

He’s also desperately seeking AUTONOMY – just leave me alone and let me live my own life!  Don’t try to tell me what to do or manipulate me or try to control my future (if you’re my kids and grandkids)!  Don’t encroach on my space!  Get out of my yard and my life!!  So he threatens his neighbors away from his yard no matter what their acts of attempted kindness and neighborliness; he threatens the gangs by pointing his Korean War U.S. Army-issued rifle in their faces; he growls and scowls at his kids and refuses to engage; he berates and castigates the local Catholic priest who keeps coming by to check on him because of a promise he made to Walt’s wife before she died.  His anger pushes him and empowers him to shove everyone away.

But in very poignant ways shown in the story, Walt also seeks ATTENTION – deep inside he doesn’t want to be alone, he simply doesn’t know how to go about connecting meaningfully.  He’s being driven by SHAME, which is ultimately unveiled in the movie when he finally reveals his painful war-time past.  The images of killing young enemy soldiers continues haunting him like ghosts from his past.  And as he gets older, he begins to realize that he’s failed as a parent, too – he’s treated his kids poorly and now he’s reaping the consequences of estrangement.  He’s a prisoner to his feelings of shame and doesn’t know how to get free.  So the only way he knows how to get ATTENTION is by being gruff and difficult and downright mean at times.

Walt Kowalski has built some strong, powerful defenses to his ego.  He’s really alone and in slavery to his misguided attempts to experience life – he’s caught up in the only way he knows how – and in a sense, he’s simply living out his life until he dies a very lonely and angry old man.  Every once in a while, he breaks into a coughing fit and begins to see blood coughed up.  After finally going to a clinic for blood tests, he informed he’s dying of lung cancer.  With no one really around him anymore because he’s driven them all way, he’s having to face an isolated and painful ending.

Is there any hope for a man like Walt Kowalski?  Is the Gran Torino all there is?  Here-in lies the power of this contemporary story, especially in light of this Season's theme of death and resurrection.

APPLICATION:  So go back to the word you circled in one of the three circles.  Spend a few moments reflecting on why you chose that word.  What examples in your life or in your experiences illustrate that word for you?  How is that word manifesting for you?  What’s the “Gran Torino” in your life that you’re using to protect your ego and that represents the “safe place” or default for you?

In my next blog post, we'll take a look at what it is that ultimately brings Walt Kowalski to a kind of personal transformation and how that applies to our lives, especially in our spiritual journey of alignment and development into who we were meant to be.

Developing A Faith That Works, 5: Faith, Vision, and How You See the Universe

[Thanks for SHARING this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] We've been talking in this series about the nature of faith and spirituality - how faith is something more than simply believing doctrinal statements about Reality, God, and life - it's about the heart, an experience that goes deeper than the mind and thoughts and impacts the deepest part of our selves and works itself out in acts of compassion and love and unselfish service.  We've seen that the original words for faith describe more than reason and propositional beliefs (read the last several blog posts to see the whole picture here).  Fiducia is about a relaxed, worry-free trust and confidence in God.  Fidelitas emphasizes a deep loyalty, allegiance, and faithfulness in heart, soul, mind, and body to God - a desire and choice to stay on the journey no matter what.  And Visio is vision, a way of seeing – a way of seeing “what is,” of seeing the whole - a choice to see Reality, God, the Sacred as life-giving and nourishing (as opposed to hostile and threatening or indifferent).  So let's unpack Visio a bit more and notice how vision (how you see the whole) impacts personal faith and spirituality.

Faith As Vision (Seeing What Is)

There's an ancient story about Jesus and a blind man that illustrates the nature of faith as Visio and how that impacts life:

^35-37Jesus came to the outskirts of Jericho. A blind man was sitting beside the road asking for handouts. When he heard the rustle of the crowd, he asked what was going on. They told him, "Jesus the Nazarene is going by."  ³⁸He yelled, "Jesus! Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!"

³⁹Those ahead of Jesus told the man to shut up, but he only yelled all the louder, "Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!"

⁴⁰Jesus stopped and ordered him to be brought over. When he had come near, Jesus asked, "What do you want from me?"  ⁴¹He said, "Master, I want to see again."  ^42-43Jesus said, "Go ahead—see again! Your faith has saved and healed you!" The healing was instant: He looked up, seeing—and then followed Jesus, glorifying God. Everyone in the street joined in, shouting praise to God. (Luke 18)

Notice the contrasting visions of Reality, God, and life between the crowd and the blind man.  Placed in the context of theologian H. Richard Niebuhr's description of the 3 ways of seeing "the Whole" - Reality and Life (as I described in my last blog post) - it's interesting to see how those differing "visions" play out in this story.

THE CROWD	THE BLIND MAN
Who Jesus is:  the Nazarene – a local religious dignitary at best; so he's being seen as too busy to help a blind man; plus this view says that blindness is a punishment from God so why would a religious leader help?  The blind man is under divine judgment.	Who Jesus is:  Son of David – a designation for Messiah, chosen of God; Jesus is God's representative.
How Jesus will respond:  don’t bother him – he’s too busy, too important	How Jesus will respond:  if I can just be noticed or make myself heard, Jesus will listen and do something for me; God is on the side of sinners
The Universe:  conditional; you get only what you deserve, and you deserve only what you put it; different “layers” or stratas in life based upon worthiness, value	The Universe:  capable of giving mercy; responsive to need
Life Response:  structured and ordered – must follow by the rules of those structures – must act appropriately (keep yourself in your designated place)	Life Response:  courageous; break the rules at times when the need is greater than the system; some confidence of being heard; live life with passion and desire; express it

There are some significant implications of these contrasting visions for our faith journey:

• Notice how Jesus connects the issue of faith with “seeing” in the blind man’s experience.  In contrast to the crowd who “sees” Jesus in a very limited way (a local man, albeit a religious dignitary), this blind man, even before he’s healed of his physical blindness, in fact already “sees” – Jesus affirms to him, “You’re actually 'seeing' more than these other people who have their eyesight.”  The man’s faith in Jesus as the Chosen of God (the anointed Messiah who comes to deliver captives and bring wholeness to the broken of Israel) reveals his "enlightenment" and ability to "see."  This man’s “vision” of Jesus is as one from God who will bring him healing or at the very least is interested in his well-being and state in life.  If nothing else, Jesus will at least give him some alms for his next meal.  His view of God’s Kingdom is one of well-being, being nourished and sustained – the God of this Kingdom is gracious.  And this kind of faith empowers the man with courage, with boldness, with persistence and tenacity in the face of obstacles and social rejection.  The point illustrated here is, how you “see” the whole impacts your experience!
• Jesus says to him, “Your faith has saved you and healed you!”  Those are the words for wholeness and salvation and completeness – before he has received his physical eyesight.  Seeing – vision – this kind of faith – is a matter of the heart, the perspective – a choice you make about how you want to look at life, the world, the universe, God.  You may not be able to prove it all, but you choose to live with a paradigm of grace, confidence, compassion, and self-forgetfulness – a belief in God as a gracious, supportive, compassionate, faithful Force in your life that empowers you to not live in fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and insecurity.  One whom you’re willing to follow even when you might not feel all the reality of it.  It’s still truth to you and you shape your life around it.  As Neibuhr said, How we see the whole radically affects how we respond to life!

So here are some personal questions for your reflection:

1. Where are you in the three differing views of Reality Niebuhr describes (see my last blog post) with your VISION for Life and Faith?  Which “reality” tends to be what you SEE?  Why?
2. What do you tend to do to cultivate that VISION?
3. In this series, we’ve talked about FAITH as confident trust, faithfulness/loyalty, and vision of a gracious God. Which of those words for faith do you relate to the most (tends to be your "normal" faith experience)?  Which one would you like to possess the most?

Conclusion

Remember Mother Teresa and how her diary reveals the deep doubts and frequent sense of abandonment by God she experienced in her life?  And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, she continued living her life, following the Way of Jesus of self-forgetfulness and abandonment to God, by giving herself tireless and compassionately to the forsaken ones in Calcutta.  In reality, she was empowered to live this powerful life because she made a choice to “see” all of Life, including her faith in God and her view of others, in the context of goodness and graciousness.  She made a commitment to that Vision.

In an undated diary entry written to Jesus, she wrote, “If this brings You glory — if souls are brought to you [because of my struggling with personal darkness and pain from not feeling your Presence] — with joy I accept all to the end of my life.”

TIME magazine, in August 2007, did a cover story titled, “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith,” after her diary was published.  They told the story about her encounter in 1968 with the British writer-turned-filmmaker Malcolm Muggeridge who visited Teresa. Muggeridge had been an outspoken agnostic, but by the time he arrived with a film crew in Calcutta he was in full spiritual-search mode. Beyond impressing him with her work and her holiness, she wrote a letter to him in 1970 that addressed his doubts full-bore.  It was almost like she was talking to herself and describing her own journey of faith.

She wrote:  "Your longing for God is so deep and yet He keeps Himself away from you," she wrote. "He must be forcing Himself to do so — because he loves you so much — the personal love Christ has for you is infinite — The Small difficulty you have re His Church is finite — Overcome the finite with the infinite."

Muggeridge apparently did. He became an outspoken Christian apologist and converted to Catholicism in 1982. His 1969 film, Something Beautiful for God, supported by a 1971 book of the same title, made Teresa an international sensation.  And Mother Teresa apparently heeded her own advice - she walked through the darkness by overcoming the finite with the infinite.  She chose to maintain her faith in the God of her Beloved Jesus even when she couldn't feel the love.  She chose to give the Love anyway, in acts of profound self-forgetfulness and compassion, to those who needed it.

Faith as vision chooses to see the Whole of life in a very profound way – that Life is nourishing and life-giving, that God is gracious, even in the midst of not experiencing it that way all the time.  Because in the end, that vision is the most empowering for a life of compassion, giving, and unselfish serving and blessing to the world.  Faith isn’t just a matter of the head – believing certain propositional statements about God – faith is a matter of the heart – a deliberate choosing to allow your heart to trust, to have confidence, to be faithful and loyal to the best in Life – and yes, to believe (which before modern times literally meant to belove) – to believe that God is gracious – to belove God and to belove what God beloves.  That’s the kind of faith that produces an empowering and sustaining spiritual life!

So how’s your vision today?  How about joining me in the following personal prayer.

MY PRAYER:  “If Jesus were here in front of me today and asked me what I wanted, like the blind man, I would say, ‘Master, I want to see again!’  I confess there are times when I look at life through the lens of fear, anxiety, self-preoccupation and lack of confidence.  But today I choose to see the Universe as life-giving and nourishing.  I choose to see beauty and feel wonder and awe and gratitude for life.  I choose, God, to see you as gracious and compassionate.  I choose to be willing to live beyond myself, to spend and be spent for the sake of others.  I choose to live in freedom, joy, peace, and love.  O God, I want to see!  Amen.”

Developing A Faith That Works, 4: A Way of Seeing

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] In August of 2007 the New York Times reported that in her collection of letters, Come Be My Light, Mother Teresa (1910-97) confessed that for years she had harbored deep, troubling doubts about the existence of God, even as she worked tirelessly to relieve the pain and suffering of the sick and dying in Calcutta.

In one of her journal entries, she cried out, "Where is my Faith - even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness - My God - how painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith - I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart - & make me suffer untold agony.  When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. - I am told God loves me - and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"

Her honest confession evoked a wave of criticism.  Was she a hypocrite?  Had she been faking it all along?  Or was she, as atheists are now claiming triumphantly, simply a self-deluded person trying to have a faith in something that obviously doesn't exist?

But in the flood of public comments that followed the publishing of her diaries, a student named Krista E. Hughes made the most telling comment in a letter to the editor.  "Mother Teresa's life," she wrote, "exemplifies the living aspect of faith, something sorely needed in a society where Christian identity is most often defined in terms of what a person believes rather than how he or she lives.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Krista Hughes speaks truth, and Mother Teresa illustrates that truth:  faith is not just about what you believe, whether you give mental assent to a propositional statement about what Reality is or isn't; faith isn't simply believing that God exists.  Faith is, as Harvey Cox (emeritus professor at Harvard Divinity School) in his book The Future of Faith puts it, "more a matter of embodiment than of axioms ... a way of life, a guiding compass ... the experience OF the divine displacing theories ABOUT it." And sometimes the experience of the divine is more an action in harmony with the Presence than a feeling of Presence (as Mother Teresa showed).

There were times Mother Teresa wasn't even sure God existed, at least for her.  But she continued living the Way of Love to the suffering and dying poor in Calcutta.  She continued the practice of compassion regardless of her doubts because of her love for Jesus not just her experience of Jesus.

That's why Jesus called himself "The way, the truth, and the life."  And to illustrate an experience of Jesus in this reality, his disciples were called followers of The Way.  Following Jesus meant walking the path of Jesus, the path of self-denial and unconditional compassion and justice.  Spiritual practices and disciplines emerged to help empower followers to walk this Way of Jesus.  Following that was known as a life of faith – a way of the heart, not just the head.

SO IN THIS SERIES, we've been taking a look at three words that are translated as "faith."  We're unpacking each word and exploring what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that defines ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.  It's a return to the core of what religion was always meant to facilitate but has too often lost along the way:  a transformation of the heart.  So far, we’ve looked at FAITH AS fiducia – trust, relaxed confidence, fidelitas – faithfulness, loyalty, allegiance.  The third word is visio.

Faith As Vision

The third Latin word for faith is visio which literally means “likeness, face, visage."  It's our English word for “vision.”  This is faith as a way of seeing – a way of seeing “what is,” of seeing the whole.  The Christian New Testament often connects faith with seeing a certain way.  H. Richard Niebuhr, a mid-twentieth century theologian, in his book The Responsible Self, speaks of the central importance of how we see the whole of what is, for how we see the whole will affect how we respond to life.  He describes three contrasting ways of seeing life and reality.  Notice the corresponding attitudes and responses to life with each life vision.

REALITY 1:  Life is hostile and Threatening.  Corresponding attitudes:  Paranoia; “None of us gets out of here alive”; Life is filled with threats to our existence.  Response to life is:  Defensive; Seek to build systems of security and self-protection to fend off hostile powers; God is our Judge - God is going to get us – unless we do the right things to secure His favor.

REALITY 2:  Life is indifferent.  Corresponding attitudes:  “What is” is simply indifferent to human purposes and ends and meanings; Universe is neither hostile to nor supportive of our lives and dreams.  Response to life is:  Less anxious and paranoid than the first vision; But still likely to be defensive and precautionary; We build up what security we can in the midst of an indifferent universe; Though we may enjoy times of rich aesthetic to life, ultimately, we are likely to be concerned primarily for ourselves and those who are most important to us.

REALITY 3:  Life is life-giving and nourishing.  Corresponding attitudes:  Sees reality as gracious; It has brought us and everything that is into existence; It is filled with wonder and beauty, even if sometimes a terrible beauty; Jesus’ theology:  God feeds the birds and lilies, clothes them; God sends rain on the just and unjust; God is generous.  Response to life is:  Faith as a radical trust in God; Frees us from the anxiety, self-preoccupation, and concern to protect the self with systems of security that mark the first two viewpoints; Leads to a “self-forgetfulness of faith and thus to the ability to love and to be present to the moment”; Generates a “willingness to spend and be spent” for the sake of a vision that goes beyond ourselves; St. Paul:  leads to a life of freedom, joy, peace, and love.

Niebuhr's point is that the way we see the whole radically impacts the way we live life.  Vision makes a transforming difference.  And since faith is about vision, how we see, the quality of one's faith directly affects the quality of one's life.  This is why Albert Einstein made the provocative observation, "The most important question you'll ever ask yourself is, Is the universe friendly?"  With all his scientific knowledge, along with his growing spiritual awareness, he began to put the two "worlds" together and realized that one's perspective on the universe and the cosmos and the Force behind and in it all was a hugely important issue.  Is Life, is God, is the Universe friendly or not?  That starting point affects everything.

But to develop a vision of reality as life-giving and nourishing is not to be naive or to turn a blind eye to the darker side of life.  Here's the way Marcus Borg summarized it:  “Niebuhr was no Pollyanna.  He knew about the Holocaust and all the terrible things that we are capable of doing to each other.  The point is not that reality is simply ‘nice,’ or that one can demonstrate that it is gracious.  Rather, the point is that how we see reality matters, for how we see ‘what is’ profoundly affects how we experience and live our lives.” Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, p. 36

Faith then is a choice for how you want to see, what lens you want to look at life through.  As quantum physicists are saying these days, your perspective helps to create and shape your reality.  You end up seeing what you choose to see.  The depth and quality of your spirituality and faith is a lot about making choices about vision and sight and a view of reality.  And what you decide impacts what you experience.

So of the three realities Niebuhr describes, which do you tend to live in the most?  How has that impacted your life experience?  Do you see yourself as being able to change visions and lens?  Or are you simply stuck where you're at?  Are you living out of an expansive and liberating life view or a constricted and confining view?  Are you caught up in your own little world (preoccupied with self survival) or are you living life with a clear vision of the whole, an ability to live beyond yourself in loving response to others?  Or like many people, perhaps you're somewhere in the middle between those two poles, leaning toward one side or the other depending on your current life circumstances?

I'm amazed at Mother Teresa's honest recounting of her often painful spiritual journey.  But I'm also comforted.  I can relate to pieces of her journey.  Faith isn't about never doubting God or about never questioning or about having all the right answers.  Faith is about staying on the journey even in the midst of uncertainty, about hanging on even when you can't sense the divine.  And that comes from a certain vision, a way of choosing to look at life and what's most important.  Mother Teresa, though not feeling God's direct comforting presence, chose to hang on, continually addressed her journal to her Jesus,  expressed honestly her doubt and pain, and kept on working for the poor and suffering in the world anyway.  She chose to live compassionately as her highest value.  Which of the above 3 Realities was she choosing to see and live from?

In my next blog post, we'll look at an intriguing story from ancient scripture showing how these contrasting views of reality impact life experiences and how this Latin word for faith (visio) plays out.  Maybe you'll see your current faith journey illustrated somewhere in the story.  Stay tuned.

Developing A Faith That Works, 3: Two Metaphors

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] We're talking about faith and the different meanings attached to that word.  We've discovered that faith is more than just a matter of the head - what you believe about God and life - notional propositions.  Faith is a matter of the heart.  And there are three words for faith used to describe this picture.  The first word is "fiducia" which means "trust, confidence."  See my blog entry about that word. Now we're dealing with the second word for FAITH, "fidelitas" - which literally means fidelity, allegiance, loyalty, faithfulness.  How does this word define "faith" as a part of the spiritual journey?  What nuances does this word "fidelity" suggest about the faith life?  Scripture uses two intriguing and very personal metaphors to describe the faith experience.  These metaphors provide a glimpse into what genuine faith is not.  The first is adultery and the second is idolatry.  Let's consider these a bit.

Fidelity vs. Spiritual Adultery

Here's the way one author describes this metaphor:  “When the Bible speaks about adultery, most often it is not speaking about human sexual relationships.  Sometimes it is, as in the Ten Commandments and in some other passages.  But when the prophets indict the chosen nation of Israel as adulterous or Jesus speaks of ‘an evil and adulterous generation,’ they are not saying that there is a lot of spouse swapping going on.  Rather, they are referring to unfaithfulness to God and God’s covenant [which involves their personal and corporate calling and identity].” (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity)

So what does this say about faith?  Let's unpack the metaphor.  I have a bit of credibility with this since I can speak from a very painful personal experience.  But the lessons I've learned are hugely significant to life and spirituality.  I can understand more clearly and deeply why scripture uses this metaphor to talk about the spiritual journey.

What is the nature of adultery?  At its simplest, adultery is a loss of loyalty and faithfulness to a covenant.  Right?  It’s a shift in loyalty, steadfastness, and allegiance from one person to another.  Sometimes it’s very subtle and invisible.  Adultery in a relationship happens long before the bed is involved.  Small shifts in attraction or connection.  And with every shift to another, there’s an equal shift away from the other.  So adultery isn’t simply something a person does in a new relationship, it’s also something that person isn’t doing in the covenanted  relationship – and usually that shift comes first.

So adultery in scripture is referring to unfaithfulness to the covenant between the people and their God.  What would the Hebrew prophets be referring to by using this metaphor – how were the people unfaithful to the covenant?  What were subtle shifts taking place in their attention and commitment to the God of their covenant?  What were things they stopped doing in that covenant that led them to shift allegiances?  Significantly, often in the context of this accusation is a reference to the people’s refusal to honor the poor, widows, orphaned, and marginalized among them – a neglect of taking care of those in need – they were dishonest in their financial dealings, they robbed people by charging interest – the religious bureaucracy would enforce their own views of religion and God on the people, setting up impossible rules esp. for the poor and economically disadvantaged, portraying God as a vengeful Judge. Their role was suppose to be to represent the truth about God by how they treated each other.  And yet they built a very exclusive community and religion, considering other people less than themselves.

So when Jesus came along and made the profound declaration, "If you've done it to the least of these people (the poor, orphaned, hungry, captives), you've done it to me," the fact that they were not taking care of these disadvantaged among them meant that they were not being loyal to God.  And that shift away from the needy was a shift away from God.  Which led to shifts in loyalty to other gods (we'll see this in the next metaphor).  All of this was called by the prophets spiritual adultery – unfaithfulness to God and the covenant with God.   Here's a classic passage from one of the Hebrew prophets about this (Jeremiah 7):

⁷ “How can I pardon you? For even your children have turned from me. They have sworn by gods that are not gods at all! I fed my people until they were full. But they thanked me by committing adultery and lining up at the brothels …

²³ But my people have stubborn and rebellious hearts. They have turned away and abandoned me.

28 They refuse to provide justice to orphans and deny the rights of the poor.

³¹ the prophets give false prophecies, and the priests rule with an iron hand. Worse yet, my people like it that way!"

Notice the powerful emotional shift the people are experiencing away from God - the last line:  "My people like it that way!"  The allegiance has completely turned, a new loyalty has been formed away from God - they actually like "the other" better.  And it's being revealed by how they live their lives with the disadvantaged and needy among them.  They no longer value what their God values.

So faith as loyalty, fidelity, and faithfulness to God (in the context of this metaphor of adultery) involves keeping focus on God, not allowing shifts in devotion and loyalty away from God; it involves paying attention to what God pays attention to; centering one’s self on God’s intent for life; being true to our calling and purpose and God-given identity; valuing what God values by living in alignment with the highest values of life.  Placing your heart on God by placing your heart on what God places the divine heart.  Which leads to the second metaphor.

Fidelity vs. idolatry

Here's an interesting take on the meaning of "idolatry" in the context of our faith journey.  I came across a fascinating connection with fidelity in the electronic and technology world.  Here's the definition:

“FIDELITY is the degree to which the output of a system accurately reproduces the essential characteristics of its input signal. Thus, high fidelity in a sound system means that the reproduced sound is virtually indistinguishable from that picked up by the microphones in the recording or broadcasting studio. Similarly, a television system has a high fidelity when the picture seen on the screen of a receiver corresponds in essential respects to that picked up by the television camera. Fidelity is achieved by designing each part of a system to have minimum distortion, so that the waveform of the signal is unchanged as it travels through the system.” (Sci-Tech Encyclopedia)

So the concept of fidelity in electronics is about achieving a pure alignment and congruency between the input signal and the output signal.  What comes in is what goes out.

What does this say about faith as fidelity?

Scripture also uses the metaphor of idolatry to describe the opposite of fidelity in faith.  So using the above illustration of fidelity from the electronic world, idolatry would then be a lack of alignment or congruency between the input and output of our lives.  In other words, we’re not being true to ourselves, to the divine image in us, which is another way of saying we’re not being true to God and God’s purpose/design for us.  We have allowed a disconnect to exist.  Idolatry is incongruence – a shift in our allegiance from who God made us to be to who we think we're suppose to be (perhaps someone else's image of us or who they think we should be).  Either way, we’re “worshiping other gods” by not being ourselves.

So what is fidelity in this case?  A willingness to be a transparent and unobstructed channel through which the Divine Spirit flows.  Letting God’s Spirit continue creating the divine image in us so that we manifest God’s love and goodness in clearer and clearer ways.  And the divine flow through us is always manifested most accurately and powerfully when we're living in alignment with who we are, our true identity, our God-given purpose.

Here's the point:  When we allow and discipline ourselves to focus on these qualities we are placing ourselves in direct connection with God’s Spirit and we become transformed – the disconnect between the source of the input and our output is removed.  We become congruent with God.  THAT’S THE PROCESS OF FIDELITY.  It's a deliberate and intentional choice to be in harmony with God - to allow the heart of God to shape our heart, to value what God values, to live in alignment with the divine passion to show compassion, care, support, and loving action toward ourselves, others, and the world - and to all of this in our own unique, special, and God-designed way.

Jesus made this point when he summarized the entire Hebrew scriptures (what Christians often refer to as the Old Testament):  love God with all your heart, mind, soul and body, and love your neighbor as yourself; on these two commandments rests the entire law of God.

Idolatry (the opposite of fidelity) is about allowing our hearts, our attention, our values to shift away from God and what God values to other interests - when we try to live someone else's life instead of being who God made each of us to be - when we become preoccupied with ourselves to the exclusion of caring for others - when our egos take control and we become unable to live beyond ourselves in self-forgetfulness and compassion - when we become obsessed with fear, anxiety, insecurity in our relationship with God and the world.  Interesting picture of idolatry, isn't it!

God's Fidelity and Faithfulness

In the end, what is it that empowers us toward fidelity and faithfulness?  Sacred scriptures make clear that our loyalty and faithfulness with God are radically empowered by a recognition and embracing of the central core truth of the divine nature:  God’s unconditional compassion and faithfulness.  One of the great theologians, Paul Tillich, defined faith as “the courage to accept acceptance.” Imagine what your confidence level in living life would be like if you lived from the truth of your complete and unconditional acceptance - if you truly knew your self and uncategorically accepted your self the way God accepts you!

Fidelity is not about never sinning, never being selfish and self-centered, always doing everything perfectly and never failing.  Fidelity is about faithfulness to the journey.  Staying on the journey with Life, with God.  Having the courage to accept God’s acceptance so that we give it gently and patiently to ourselves and to others.  Fidelity is about staying on the journey!

And what is the most powerful motivation for us to keep on keeping on is the central truth of scripture:  God’s faithfulness (even in the midst of our unfaithfulness).  Here’s how one of the Hebrew prophets put it in the context of one of the most beautiful love stories in scripture.  God reaffirming his commitment to his people after they have been so unfaithful to him.  Listen to a piece of this powerful poem from Hosea 2:

¹⁴ “But then I will win her back once again.  I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. ¹⁵ I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt.

¹⁶ When that day comes,” says the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master.

¹⁷ O Israel, I will wipe the many names of Baal from your lips, and you will never mention them again.

¹⁸ On that day I will make a covenant with all the wild animals and the birds of the sky and the animals that scurry along the ground so they will not harm you. I will remove all weapons of war from the land, all swords and bows, so you can live unafraid in peace and safety.

¹⁹ I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion.

²⁰ I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as the Lord.” (Hosea 2)

I know this faithfulness personally!  What has kept me going with boldness and courage and persistence, even through the darkness of my own failures and stumbles, is experiencing in the very core of my self that commitment and loyalty God has for me.  It continues to transform and empower my life!  Faith is about staying on the journey with a faithful God.

Here's my prayer:  “God reminds me, no matter what I’ve done, whether great or ungreat, successful or unsuccessful – my faithlessness to God or anyone else doesn’t negate God’s faithfulness to me!  God is committed to me forever, no matter what!  So I will live in this truth!  Embrace it!  Let it melt my heart and fill it with hope and courage and relentless trust!  God believes in me, period!  And with this loyalty together, we will go on to change the world!  Amen.”

Stay tuned for word three for faith in my next blog.  Thanks for staying on this journey of exploration about faith.

Developing A Faith That Works, 2: What Is Fidelity?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] The word "faith," especially to Westernized Christians, has come to be seen as a primarily notional experience - having to do with what you think about God.  It tends to mean holding a certain set of "beliefs," believing a set of statements to be true, whether cast as biblical teachings or doctrines or dogma.  Your faith is judged by how much you believe and how accurate your beliefs are.  If you possess this "right" kind of faith, you're called a "believer."

As a result, this concept of faith as primarily an intellectual exercise has turned faith almost exclusively into a matter of the head, too often with disastrous results by heartless, nonloving "believers."

But significantly, that was not the central meaning and usage of the word "faith" in the history of human religion (including early Christianity).  As Karen Armstrong, in her powerful book The Case For God, states, "Religion was not primarily something that people thought but something they did ... Religion [from its very inception in human history] was always a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart."

It was a way of being and living, not simply a way of thinking.  The stories and sacred scriptures of every religion emphasized the journey of heart and spirit in learning the sacred art of self-forgetfulness and compassion.  As a result, religions developed powerful rituals and practices that, if followed and wholeheartedly engaged in, would enable adherents to step "outside" their egos and experience the Sacred and Divine, empowering them to live more compassionately and unselfishly toward others.

For example, as Armstrong points out, the early Chinese Daoists (over 300 years before Jesus and the early Christian followers) saw religion as a "knack" primarily acquired by constant practice.  They, like the earlier Buddha and even Confucius, refused to spend lots of time speculating about the many metaphysical conundrums concerning the divine (as Buddha once said to a follower who constantly pestered with those kind of questions:  "You are like a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow and refuses medical treatment until you have discovered the name of your assailant and what village he came from.  You would die before you got this perfectly useless information!").

Zhuangzi (c. 370-311 BCE), one of the most important figures in the spiritual history of China, explained that it was no good trying to analyze religious teachings logically.  He then cited the carpenter Bian:  "When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn't make for a good wheel.  If I hit it furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn't work!  So not too soft, not too vigorous.  I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart.  I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it."

Like the Chinese hunchback who trapped cicadas in the forest with a sticky pole and never missed a single one.  He had so perfected his powers of concentration that he lost himself in the task, and his hands seemed to move by themselves.  He had no idea how he did it exactly, but he knew only that he had acquired the knack after months of practice.  This "self-forgetfulness," Zhuangzi explained, was a "stepping outside" the prism of ego and experience of the sacred.  (from Armstrong, The Case For God, pp. xii-xiii, 23.)

No wonder Jesus, centuries later, reiterated this paradigm of spirituality and religious experience when he called his followers to "take up your cross and follow me."  He's not simply talking about believing in your head the right doctrines and the core truths.  He's talking about a "way" of living.  Referring to his own experience as the example for his followers, he said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who is willing to give up his life in this world will keep it forever." John 12:24-25

Genuine faith is not just about your head, it's about your heart, it's about your journey, it's about life transformation that comes from self-forgetfulness and an experience with God the Sacred and the Divine.

SO IN THIS SERIES, we're taking a look at the four words that are translated as "faith."  We're unpacking each word and exploring what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that defines ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.  It's a return to the core of what religion was always meant to facilitate but has too often lost along the way:  a transformation of the heart.  In my last blog, we explored the 1^st word for faith, “fiducia,” from which we get our English word "fiduciary" (a person in whom we place our trust to protect our finances and estate).  So “trust," is the central definition, which in the realm of faith then conveys a profound kind of relaxed, solid, worry-free confidence in God as a power that can be trusted and relied upon to have our best interests in mind.

Today's word for faith is "fidelitas," which is the Latin word for "fidelity."  It literally means loyalty, faithfulness – originally referring to a vassal's loyalty to his Lord; a steadfast and devoted attachment that is not easily turned aside; constancy, steadfastness.  Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart” to the experience of God not simply to statements about God.  A radical centering in God from your heart and soul not just your mind.  So what does that look like in real life terms?

There are two metaphors that the sacred scriptures use in describing our faith relationship with God that I'll unpack in my next blog post.  These metaphors describe what "fidelity" is NOT and so help to increase our understanding of what genuine faith as fidelity and loyalty is.  Stay tuned!

Developing A Faith That Works: What Is Trust?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] Marcus Borg, a professor of religion and culture at Oregon State University and a prolific author and speaker about the importance of a progressive Christianity, was on a plane trip sitting next to a woman who said, "I'm much more interested in Buddhism and Sufism than I am in Christianity."  When he asked her why, she said, "Because they're about a way of life, and Christianity is all about believing." She continued:  "I don't think beliefs matter nearly as much as having a spiritual path and following a way."

He commented later in one of his books:  "I understood her comment, even as I silently disagreed with part of it.  To begin with the disagreement, Christianity is about a way of life, a path, and it has been from its very beginning.  At the center of Jesus' own teaching is the notion of a 'way' or a 'path,' and the first name of the early Christian movement was 'the Way.'  Indeed, seeing Christianity as a 'way' is one of the central features of the emerging paradigm." (The Heart of Christianity, p. 31)

The woman's statement does reflect the most common understanding of the word "faith" in modern Western Christianity:  that faith means holding a certain set of "beliefs," "believing" a set of statements to be true, whether cast as biblical teachings or doctrines or dogma.  If you possess this faith, you're even called a "believer."

As a result, this concept of faith as primarily an intellectual exercise has turned faith almost exclusively into a matter of the head.  But significantly, that was not the central meaning and use of the word "faith" in scripture and among followers during the centuries from the time of Jesus to the Enlightenment.  Faith was not a matter of the head but a matter of the heart - that deep level of life below our thinking, feeling, and willing (intellect, emotions, and volition), deeper than our conscious self and the ideas we have in our heads.

And faith was always seen as central to experiencing the God-life, accessing the divine spirit and allowing It to transform existence.  One of the authors of the Christian New Testament even stated this spiritual reality in strong terms like this, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6)  He’s not suggesting that God hates us if we don’t have faith, or that if we don’t believe the right things God thinks less of us.  No, he’s saying that “faith” is central to the spiritual journey – it’s a key to accessing the divine life and living a transformed life.  In fact, that verse is in the context of a whole chapter that tells the stories of how various people in the Bible journeyed with God – some of them knew a lot about theology, others knew very little.  But all of them chose to stay on the journey with God through thick and thin, successes and failures.  That was called “faith” – the willingness to be in presence (in synch) with the divine spirit

OVER THE NEXT FEW BLOG POSTS, we'll take a look at four words that are translated as "faith."  We'll unpack each word and explore what it means and what the differing nuances suggest about developing a faith that works in real life, a faith that transforms life, a faith that helps define ourselves and produces a rich and deeper experience of both God and Life.

TODAY’S WORD: “fiducia”

This is the Latin word for “faith” which literally means trust, confidence.  It's where we get our financial word “fiduciary” - a person to whom property or power is entrusted for the benefit of another. Of, based on, or in the nature of trust and confidence.  I mean think about it - if you're going to give another person access to all of your money and estate, you want to be able to trust that person.  Right?

In a biblical context, this word for “faith” is describing a radical trust IN God.  This trust "faith" may not mean you know everything there is to know about God.  There will still be lots of questions, maybe even doubts about the metaphysical issues surrounding the divine, the universe, how it all came into being, who or what started it all and how everything is sustained.  But faith as trust is the willingness to connect with God (as you know It/Him/Her) and has a degree of confidence that this Divine Force is, as Albert Einstein put it, a friendly Universe - that God has your best interests in mind.

So let’s look at a couple of metaphors and illustrations of what TRUST is – how TRUST relates to our experience of God and the spiritual life – what are some of the dynamics of TRUST?

Floating in Water:

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the pre-eminent existentialist philosophers and spiritual writers in the 20th century, described faith like this:  “Faith is like floating in seven thousand fathoms of water in the ocean.  If you struggle, if you tense up and thrash about, you will eventually sink.  But if you relax and trust, you will float.”

So, if God is the water, and we’re floating in It, what does this metaphor mean?  Floating in water (without struggling and thrashing about) describes a kind of relaxing quality to trust – you can hold your life without struggling – you relax with yourself and with the Unknowns in your life (after all, you don’t know or understand everything about the fathomless ocean you’re floating in but you can still be there) because you’re being “held up,” supported – the physics works whether you understand everything about the principles and dynamics or not.

Fighting and struggling and thrashing about only tire you out and facilitate your sinking.  Trusting means letting go of your fears and anxieties and uncertainties and simply letting yourself live life in the embrace of God and God’s love; relaxing in the truth that the Universe is friendly and is on your side and will bring what’s good to you and will redeem what’s painful and evil and bad by bringing good growth to you.

So would you describe your personal spirituality or style of life with the word "relaxed?"  Would your faith be described as a "relaxed confidence" in Life or God or Goodness?  Do you feel that the Universe is fundamentally friendly (as Einstein once said, the most important question we'll ever ask ourselves is, Is the universe friendly?).  Faith as TRUST is about relaxing, holding life with an open hand (rather than a clenched fist that tends to signify our desire to control, to hang on for dear life from fear of losing something).  A relaxing confidence!

Rock and Fortress:

The Hebrew poets of sacred scripture, especially in the book of Songs (Psalms) often used two other metaphors to describe faith as trust:  God is both Rock and Fortress.  Notice this piece of poetry:

⁵ Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. ⁶ He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. ⁷ My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me. ⁸ O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62)

What do these metaphors – Rock, Fortress - say about trust?  God is secure, solid, able to be counted on.  What’s that insurance company that uses the “rock” in their advertisement?  Prudential.  What’s their point:  you can count of them when you need to – they’re reliable – “rock solid.”

Notice the phrases about “trust” in these verses:  waiting quietly before God, putting hope in God, not being shaken, resting in a safe place, pouring out our hearts to God.  The poet's point is that he can trust in God as the one upon whom he relies, as his support and foundation and ground, as his safe place.   A solid confidence!

Does this kind of "solid" trust mean that you never have any doubts about God?  That God always comes through for you by protecting you from evil or harm or danger or pain and suffering?  This is certainly the kind of theology (picture of God) that many religious people have - it's very simplistic though real to them.  But, as I've experienced personally, the danger of this belief is that when you go through the storm, the tendency is to question God and wonder what the heck is going wrong?  Where is God?  Why am I going through this?  God really must not care about me after all!  When I lost my job, went through a divorce, experienced great failure in my life, I wondered where the Divine Rock and Fortress were for me.  Either I had failed so miserably that God had left me and wouldn't have any more to do with me or God simply wasn't going to come through for me and couldn't be expected to.  Either way, I was on the losing end!  There wasn't much solid in the swamp I was in.

The psychiatrist and spiritual writer Gerald May once wrote:  "I know that God is loving and that God's loving is trustworthy.  I know this directly, through the experience of my life.  There have been plenty of times of doubt, especially when I used to believe that trusting God's goodness meant I would not be hurt.  But having been hurt quite a bit, I know God's goodness goes deeper than all pleasure and pain - it embraces them both."

The naive belief that if God is truly good and solid in that goodness then your trust in God will be rewarded with lack of pain and trouble and suffering.  God's goodness = no pain.  I learned that, as Gerald May wrote, it isn't true.  God's goodness, God's solid rock and fortress, can be counted on to be a reliable presence in the midst of ALL of life's experiences (self-imposed or externally imposed).  God showed up for me during those dark times most often through other people who chose to come along side me and support, love, care for, and journey with me.  And as the dark tunnel finally emerged into the light, I saw that God's goodness was involved in helping to redeem the pain in my life by ultimately bringing good out of it, by doing a work of transformation in me, maturing me, establishing my confidence in myself, in others, and ultimately in God.

So would you use the word "solid" to describe your confidence in Life or God?  What would you use the words "rock" and "fortress" to describe in your life?  What power outside yourself can you count on to bring you redemption and transformation or is it just up to you alone to muddle through the swamp?  Is God a "safe place" (as the poet described) you can be with or be in?

Faith is about trust; and trust is about both a relaxed and solid confidence in Another.  And that kind of trust can only come from a journey ... together ... through the bumps, bruises, hurts, joys, sorrows, ecstasies of life ... where you begin to discover that nothing you do minimizes or maximizes the Divine love or Goodness for you.  It continues flowing like a River all the time, in you, around you, through you, enveloping you, embracing you.  Trust is about choosing at some point to relax, to give in to the Flow and embrace It back and let it carry you along the winding waters until It empties out into the boundless and deep Ocean.

Stay tuned to word two for faith.

Thin Love or Thick Love?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] Toni Morrison, writer and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote these words:  "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

"Thin" love.  Interesting choice of word.  What does the word "thin" imply about love?  A kind of superficiality, shallow, no real depth - which could refer to insincere or incongruous or even forced.

Consider some of the ways we might manifest a thin love:  saying we love but not really backing it up with appropriate action; giving conditionally (a quid pro quo approach - if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours); being manipulative rather than honest and straightforward (sort of a passive-aggressive strategy); refusing to ever take off the self-protective mask, to not risk being vulnerable and truly present; and the list goes on.  Thin love.

But the context of Morrison's quotation adds another powerful dimension to the meaning.  This statement comes from her tragic novel Beloved, the epic story of a fiercely defiant runaway slave woman named Sethe.  The story is based on the true case of Margaret Garner, a renegade slave who tried to kill her children with abortions rather than allow them to be born and returned to the plantation from which she had escaped.

One of the run-aways Sethe meets, Paul D, considers Sethe's unconditional love "risky": "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love."  The far safer way was "to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."

And it is this "weak love" that Paul D tells Sethe she must accept. When Paul D tells her love is "too thick," however, Sethe insists: "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't no love at all."

Thin love plays it safe.  Thick love takes a risk.  Thin love worries about and protects itself.  Thick love sacrifices everything for the other.  Thin love is conservative.  Thick love is freedom.  Thin love controls.  Thick love gives away.  Thin love is afraid.  Thick love is courageous.

I think of the phrase people often say, "Love is thicker than blood."  What does that mean?  It's often used in reference to being loved by someone who isn't necessarily your biological family but who loves with you a faithfulness and loyalty that you might not experience from blood family.  Thick love.  Someone who shows up for you no matter what, no strings attached.  Someone who stands beside you through thick and thin.  Someone who refuses to let you go, who has your back in every situation.  Thick love.  Feels good when you experience it, doesn't it?

This last weekend I had the privilege of flying to Portland and celebrating my prayer partner and best friend's 50th birthday.  He invited 7 of his guy friends to spend two days together, sharing stories of our journey with him, giving advice for his next 50 years, celebrating the milestone of his life and how we each have enjoyed friendship with him.  One of the things that struck me as I listened to all the guys share the meaningful parts of our experience with him and how his friendship had impacted each of us was the quality of "thick love" that manifested itself through the years.  He had chosen to stand by each of us in meaningful and supportive ways, especially during the difficult and ominous times we each had gone through.  Though others had forsaken us in our failures, he had stood by us and loved us and believed in us unconditionally.  That "thick love" was one of the huge gifts we ended up sharing and expressing our gratitude to him for.  I was reminded how important thick love is in building great friendships and relationships and how much we all hunger for this kind of love.  It's one of the greatest gifts we can give to others!

I love the way this proverb puts it:  "Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.  If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.  Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone?  A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)  Now that's thick love - the transforming effects of great friendship and relationships.  You help the other when they fall (loving support), you keep the other "warm" (pay attention to physical and emotional needs in ways that mean something to that person), and you defend the other (have each other's backs in every way).  Thick love so thick (like a triple-braided rope) that it can't be broken (solid, long term, committed).

Love is or it ain't.  Being "thick" certainly isn't the easy way (you might get attacked in your personal support of the other, you might not get all your needs met, you put your own heart on the line at times, your caring might not always be appreciated or recognized, you risk loss, you make yourself vulnerable).  But in the end, maybe it's the most fulfilling because it's the most congruent with the very nature of love (which of course is at the core of spirituality).  The way we were meant to really love and be loved.  It's the heart of divine love that is given to us unconditionally and extravagantly.  Thick love.  Toni Morrison is right:  love is either thick or not love at all.  So I'm voting for thick love.  It's changed my life.  And I want the love I give to others to be thick, too.

Looking For Thin Places: The Practice of Seeing God In Even Unlikely Spaces

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] My wife and I have been reading a book by one of our friends, Samir Selmanovic, It's Really About God:  Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian.  It's a personal exploration of a very different way of looking at religion which has historically too often degenerated into "self-serving God management systems."  To Samir, "To learn to live together on this fragile earth, authentic believers of all traditions need to see that it's really not about their religion, it's really all about God - God who is about all of us and cannot be owned by any of us."

To suggest a powerful spiritual paradigm that enhances this sense of the Sacred that refuses to be corralled and caged, he references the introduction of Christianity to Ireland by Saint Patrick around 431 C.E.  St. Patrick discovered that God had already been among the Celts before he arrived.  So instead of completely dismantling their spiritual experience in favor of his brand, he found the presence of God outside the walls of his religion and explored a more contextualized spirituality that ended up in a brand of Christian spirituality that is still popular to this day.

Celtic Christians sought after what they called "thin places," spots where the "membrane between mere physical reality and the reality of God's presence thins out to where it can seen, touched, tasted, or sensed in some unmistakable way."  The Celts often found these "thin places" at shorelines, fjords, rivers, and wells.  And later, they experienced them in cathedrals, prayer gardens, sacred groves and plots of ground - places where "the veil was so sheer, one could almost step through it" into the presence of God.

Another author I read recently said:  "There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God."

The contemporary poet Sharlande Sledge gives this description.

"Thin places," the Celts call this space, Both seen and unseen, Where the door between the world And the next is cracked open for a moment And the light is not all on the other side. God shaped space. Holy.

I'm moved by this concept of Thin Places.  A corresponding spiritual practice would be to develop a more intimate awareness of the Sacred wherever we are, an ability to find where the veil of the Eternal is pulled back to give us a glimpse of the divine, a place of encounter with the divine presence.  Discovering and exploring "God shaped space."

What would that look like in your life?  It could be at a busy intersection downtown San Francisco as you prepare to cross the street getting back to your office after lunch or running an errand.  You could come across a divine portal while you're walking your dog or washing dishes at your sink.  The veil could suddenly be pulled back in the midst of a conversation with a friend, a dream at night, standing on Ocean Beach, or pushing your cart down a Costco aisle.  You might discover a God-shaped space in the middle of a discussion with friends or in the middle of a song or while doing some personal internal work of self-discovery.  Thin Places where you suddenly find yourself pulled closer to God.

Have you ever come upon a Thin Place?  What ways have you found to enhance your awareness of the Sacred, places where you've encountered a portal to the divine?  How might you develop a spiritual practice to embrace more intimately the God of your journey wherever you are along that path?

The Jews were masterful at recording stories of their experiences with Thin Places.  My spiritual community Second Wind engaged in a Saturday morning discussion series a month ago about one such Thin Place which occurred at an unlikely spot called the Jordan River.  After having wandered and wilted in the desert for over 40 years, trying to get themselves to their land of promise in Canaan, this large band of ragtag nomads finally found themselves standing in front of the raging, swollen Spring waters of the Jordan, their land of promise unfortunately on the other side - no bridges, no footpath, no boats, no way across.  And yet it was in the face of this seemingly insurmountable obstacle that they encountered an amazing portal to the divine.

As per instructions from their God, the moment they stuck their anxious toes into the raging waters (in an act of bold faith), the veil between heaven and earth was suddenly blown back.  A dramatic Thin Place appeared.   The waters of the Jordan River split in two and dry ground stood before them all the way to the other side of this impossible river, straight to their promised land.  After everyone had crossed over, a group of their tribal leaders walked back into the middle, selected 12 large stones, placed them on top of each other as an altar of remembrance to this Thin Place of encounter with their God.  Then they walked back to the river bank and built another stone altar.  Why build these altars, with one of them remaining in the middle of the river?  They were to be visible reminders of their encounter with God, a Thin Place, a divine portal where they saw and felt God work on their behalf.

“In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’  Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over.  These stones will stand as a permanent memorial for all the people."  (Joshua 4)  Every time future generations would come upon those stone altars, it would be a Thin Place for them where they would be reminded of God's presence, past, present, and future.

Where are your Thin Places?  Might they even be in moments of deep crisis and difficulty, like those wandering nomads at the riverside?  What are some reminders you might develop for your encounter with Thin Places?  How might you be more curious and aware of possible divine portals all around you?  Imagine the powerful impact this could have on your personal spirituality as you discovered places where you could step beyond the veil and savor a glimpse of the glory of God.

Spiritual Lessons From the Rainbow

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Don't you just love seeing rainbows?  There's something both ethereal and inspiring about them.  People get so excited when they see one in the sky, telling whomever's around, "Look!  There's a rainbow!  Over there, over there!  See it?"  And everyone strains their necks to get a glimpse of those spectacular colors in the sky.  It's almost as though seeing a rainbow brings some kind of unique gift to the observer (kind of like the proverbial treasure at the end of the rainbow).  And if you're really lucky, you might see a double rainbow sometime - double the luck or blessing. Rainbows have been centrally portrayed in art, literature, music, and sacred scriptures for millenniums.  For example, in John Everett Millais' 1856 oil painting he titled, "The Blind Girl," he used the rainbow - one of the beauties of nature that the blind girl cannot experience - to underline the pathos of her condition.  Notice how she sits there, totally incapable of seeing this double wonder of nature that the little girl in her lap is craning her neck to see and enjoy.  A rainbow is so powerfully evocative of life and hope, if you can't see one, you've missed a profound human experience.

In most religious cultures, the rainbow is a symbol of the divine presence, the bow of God, the brilliant light display of glory around God's throne.  So the rainbow evoked a kind of deep spiritual fervor and hope for a divinely blessed life.

And here's where this beautiful symbol and metaphor takes on expanded meaning.  Experts tell us that there are 7 basic colors to the light spectrum we see in the rainbow:  red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  But in reality, as they point out, there are infinitely many wavelengths between 380 and 740 nanometers - the visible spectrum of light. That doesn't even count the different tints and shades obtained by mixing in white, black, etc. So, in truth, there is an infinite number of colors, if you look at it that way.

"The actual estimate for how many different colors the human eye can distinguish varies between one and ten million, depending on the reference which you consult. However, the perception of color varies from one person to another, so there can be no single number that is true for everyone. The number of different colors that you, as an individual, can distinguish also varies dramatically according to the conditions; it drops to zero in low light conditions, in which only the rod cells of the retina can function, as the cone cells of the retina are required for color vision." (Paula E. Burch, Ph.D.)

In other words, the whole color experience and reality of the light spectrum is about diversity, differences, innumerable options and shades and perceptions.  No one person sees it the same way.  And there's infinite variety in what can be seen.

So here's what we have with the rainbow:  a powerful universal symbol of Hope, of the divine presence and blessing, and of the amazingly rich diversity in the human experience.  Amazing, isn't it?  That which has always been a symbol for God is also a picture of infinite diversity.

Like sometimes happens when we end up missing the opportunity to see a rainbow because we're perhaps looking somewhere else or distracted by something else or simply not looking for one, could it be that we too often miss experiencing a profound divine blessing because we don't appreciate the rich diversity of life?  We don't see God in the midst of life's variety and infinite spectrum of life because we've boxed God inside boundaries that are in fact too limiting to the infinite God of life - boundaries of belief, boundaries of faith, boundaries of the way we think people should be like.   We allow ourselves to have such narrow expectations of ourselves, others, life, and even God and end up shrinking our souls a bit more and more as time goes by.  If spirituality involves the experience of the Sacred and Divine in all of life, then our spirituality is diminished by refusing to let God encounter us in the midst of the rich diversity and variety and differences inherent in the fabric of life all around us.  To experience diversity is to experience God.

So why would any one of us think we had the conclusive picture of reality and life?  Why would any one of us think that there's only one way to look at God, or there's any one religion or organization that speaks exclusively for God, or there's only a few ways to be human, or there's only one perspective on an issue, or that some people are better than others?  It's too much of a tendency for me to put people in boxes or to place my expectations on others, thinking they need to be more like me.  It's too easy for me to sometimes feel threatened by someone else's views or contributions or life, thinking that if they get away with their perspective, I'm diminished in some way - rather than embracing the truth that all of us are strengthened and deepened if we each are given the freedom and encouragement to be ourselves.  The very nature of life, as the rainbow so beautifully portrays, is the beauty and divinity of diversity.

No wonder William Wordsmith's 1802 poem "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold the Rainbow" begins:

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!…

I love the passion for life he portrays.  He feels his heart "leaping up" when he sees the rainbow - he willingly enters into the joy of life, allowing himself to be ushered into the chambers of awe, wonder, mystery, and Spirit.  It's so valuable for him to experience this divine reality of life through the rainbow that if he can't have it, he would just as soon die.  Why go through life just trying to make it to death safely?  That's not living.  That's being dead already, even though the heart might be pumping and beating.  Wordsworth's reality is that life leaps for joy when it sees the rainbow - the depth and richness of life happen in the midst of variety and diversity and difference.

I want a deep and more joyful life, don't you?  So maybe we should open up the box more to include more, to appreciate and value more, to be aware of more, to experience more.  Maybe we should let God be more.  And then watch ourselves be surprised by the God of the rainbow!

Mindfulness in the Sanctuary of Jiffy Lube

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Invite them to subscribe and receive every new post via email – hit the button on the right to subscribe.] There's a Zen story about an old zen master who was dying.  All of the monks gathered - in a kind of restrained eagerness  - around the deathbed, hoping to be chosen as the next teacher.

The master asked slowly, "Where is the gardener?"

"The gardener," the monks wondered aloud.  "He is just a simple man who tends plants, and he is not even ordained."

"Yes," the master replied.  "But he is the only one awake.  He will be the next teacher."

Apparently there's something about working in and being present to the natural world that produces a kind of "awakeness" toward Life.  The famous painter Vincent Van Gogh expressed this same reality:  "All nature seems to speak ... As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it or feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand." (The Complete Letters, 248, I, 495)

There's something spiritually stimulating about being in nature and allowing it to speak to your heart and mind and soul.  There's something powerful about getting close enough to creation to hear its song and listen to its rhymes.  Every major religion in the world recognizes the spirituality of nature and provides various ways to become more "awake" to the voice of the Sacred that speaks from the world all around us.  It's pretty amazing what we begin to notice when we're being more mindful and aware of everything we see, hear, and feel.

I was sitting in the waiting section of the oil change garage off of the busy Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco last week.  My chair was close to the garage entrance so I could see the street.  I was thinking about the upcoming spiritual retreat we were taking with my Second Wind spiritual community, the retreat theme this year being on the spirituality of nature.  My initial response to what I saw and felt in the midst of my very urban environment was to heave a sigh of relief knowing that it wasn't much longer until I was going to finally be out of the city into "real" nature where I could hear God's voice and feel closer to the Spirit of life.  But then, as I looked outside the huge garage door and saw the cars driving past, hearing the traffic sounds, I was suddenly struck by a significant reality:  I was surrounded by "nature" right there in the middle of my huge city.  It wasn't just the green trees on the median of this busy boulevard, or the birds I saw flying overhead.  The heart and soul of nature was also evident in the awe-inspiring creative spirit that went into the design and construction of today's modern vehicles - the intricate, micro "creation" of computer chips and boards running the cars and trucks, the impressive design of the engines propelling vehicles toward their destination, the guys changing the oil in my car, running back and forth, using their appendages skillfully to service my amazingly constructed automobile (even though I kind of hate my old car these days and wish I could get a nicer new one).  Even the sounds that we so much associate with "anti-nature" (car horns, exhaust pipes from loud buses and trucks, traffic, construction sites, loud voices) are in fact the sounds of life, all of which involve the divine spirit of creativity, artistry, invention, passion, desire for the best in life).  And when that perspective hit me, I became aware of "nature" in the middle of my city in new ways that led to a deeper appreciation of God's Spirit all around me.  I had a very meaningful spiritual epiphany right there on busy Van Ness Avenue - I encountered the God of life in the sanctuary of Jiffy Lube!

Living with our "eyes" more open wherever we find ourselves, suggest the spiritual sages of all time, produces a deeper experience of life and an increased connection with God.  Nature is where life is; and life is everywhere.  I do realize, in addition, that being in environments that are more silent and quiet and environmentally natural is extremely conducive to spiritual depth and connection, as well.  But it's amazing how often even when we're in those settings we simply don't see or hear the Sacred Spirit of life very deeply - we're too busy "doing" instead of simply "being" attentive.  Intentional mindfulness helps make the connection.

The Hebrew poets in Scripture manifested this intentionality with nature so profoundly in describing their experience of God.  Their poetic similes and metaphors were filled with an environmental awareness that opened their hearts to the Divine Creator.  One pointed to the other.  God was both in His creation and the Master of Creation.  Looking at one was like looking at the other.  They facilitated experience, one with the other.  Notice this example:

"O my soul, bless God! God, my God, how great you are! beautifully, gloriously robed, Dressed up in sunshine, and all heaven stretched out for your tent. You built your palace on the ocean deeps, made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings. You commandeered winds as messengers, appointed fire and flame as ambassadors. You set earth on a firm foundation so that nothing can shake it, ever ... What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations ... The glory of God-let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation!" (Psalm 104)

There is a profound spirituality associated with nature that is accessed by developing a greater mindfulness or awakeness or awareness of what you're seeing and experiencing.  That's why, at Second Wind, we value the natural world and desire to enjoy it, honor it, respect it, care for it, and share it often.  And we also value the city we live in as a place where God's breath blows and moves and stirs up life, too.  As urban dwellers, we're learning to feel the divine breath energize us and bring us to life in the middle of our urban "forests," where the voice of God sings to our souls the music of life.

This last weekend, on our Second Wind retreat, our closing "ceremony" was to write a collective psalm of praise to God, each one of us writing two lines describing our personal experience of the weekend, and then putting them all together into one song.  After taking a few minutes to compose our two lines, we stood in a circle and read our lines in one complete collective psalm.  I'm telling you, it was a profound experience for me as I listened to the richly diverse and meaningful ways everyone had encountered God and experienced the depth of life through the retreat time, described in some wonderfully poetic tones.  Our intentional experiences of heightened awareness and awakeness, including times for reflection upon and observation of those experiences, revealed a significant spiritual epiphany for all of us.  The power of keeping our eyes, ears, hearts, spirits, and bodies open to Life!

As Van Gogh once said, "Oh! My dear comrades, let us crazy ones have delight in our eyesight in spite of everything - yes, let's!"

Can Holiness Invade Your Office and Your Kitchen? Part 2

[If you're here at this Blog for the first time, click back and read Part 1 of this topic:  "Can Holiness Invade Your Office and Your Kitchen?"  It will fill out this post more meaningfully.] As I noted in my last blog post (see "Can Holiness Invade Your Office and Your Kitchen?  Part 1"), Dr. Susan Smalley, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, talks about the importance of developing a pervasive spirituality, where the sacred is seen and experienced as inherent to daily life.  She has discovered that this kind of spirituality has great impact on minimizing individual self-centeredness and increasing a deeper sense of personal well-being and compassion for others.

I love the way Brian McLaren, in his book Finding Our Way Again, describes the process of developing a pervasive spirituality.  He says that rather than simply trying so hard to practice our faith (which ends up only adding to our already over-filled To Do lists), we could be “Faithing our practices” - "embuing our normal [everyday] practices with meaning derived from faith.” It's about learning how to see Holiness in every part of our ordinary days.

The Jews do this with what they call "the blessing."  By giving a blessing for everything they encounter during the day, they are reminded of the sacredness of all of life because a Blessing isn't something that embues what is being blessed with goodness or God's presence.  A blessing is simply a tangible, intentional act of acknowledging the inherent Sacredness and Goodness in those things as gifts from God.  “The purpose of the ancient way and the ancient practices is not to make us more religious.  It is to make us more alive to God ... alive to [God’s whole world].” (McLaren)

The Hebrews in scripture also built altars of remembrances out of stones at places where they encountered the Sacred and Divine in meaningful ways.  Why put ordinary rocks on top of each other on the side of busy thoroughfares and even in out of the way places?  The point was that every time they saw them they could be reminded of God's activity in their lives.  They could tell each other the story of their encounter with God and remember that life is sacred and blessed.  Stone altars to help holiness pervade ordinary life.

I wear a ring that has a cross on it on the middle finger of my right hand.  It was a gift from my wife.  It's there as a constant reminder of my calling and life purpose.  Throughout the day, I'll feel it and look down and notice the cross and remember:  I am loved; I have a divine purpose; my life is a calling to live for God.  It's amazing how that thought, generated by a tangible symbol, suddenly transforms that moment into a sacred moment, a divine encounter, an embracing of God's continuing and pervasive presence in my life.

Last Saturday, at my Second Wind spiritual community, in the middle of our discussion on this topic, we engaged in what is called prayerwalking.  We all went outside and individually walked around the neighborhood community with the goal of  intentionally noticing what captured our attention.  We were to do several things:  1) What did we notice?   2) Offer a blessing on it.  3) Consider how it reflected God to us?  How was the Sacred revealed to us through it?  And 4) pause and be in the moment.  Then when we all returned to the room, we tried to capture our experience by jotting thoughts/reflections on paper, staying silent, staying in that Sacred Space.

When we debriefed the experience, it was astounding how much all of us described paying attention to life around us in new and meaningful ways.  There was a sense of sacredness we expressed feeling as we each walked around the blocks in such an intentional frame of mind.  The activity reminded us how something as simple as walking around with a different intention (an open, more "enlightened," purposeful mind) could contribute to a more meaningful spiritual experience and a greater receptiveness to life around us.  When you begin seeing all of life as sacred and spiritual, you look at it all very differently.

What symbols, reminders, tangible ways do you have to remember the Sacred and the Divine all through your day?  How are you decompartmentalizing your spirituality so that all of life is experienced as holy and sacred and thus more meaningful and purposeful?

I love the way Carrie Newcomer describes this in one of her songs, "Holy As A Day Is Spent":

holy is the dish and the drain the soap and sink, and the cup and plate and the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile showerheads and good dry towels and frying eggs sound like psalms with bits of salt measured in my palm it’s all a part of a sacrament as holy as a day is spent

holy is the busy street and cars that boom with passion’s beat and the check out girl, counting change and the hands that shook my hands today and hymns of geese fly overhead and spread their wings like their parents did blessed by the dog, that runs in her sleep to chase some wild and elusive thing holy is the familiar room and quiet moments in the afternoon and folding sheets like folding hands to pray as only laundry can i’m letting go of all my fear like autumn leaves made of earth and air for the summer came and the summer went as holy as a day is spent

holy is the place i stand to give whatever small good i can and the empty page, and the open book redemption everywhere i look unknowingly we slow our pace in the shade of unexpected grace and with grateful smiles and sad lament as holy as a day is spent

and morning light sings “providence” as holy as a day is spent

Perhaps every day life could be filled with a deeper sense of well-being and meaning if we intentionally saw the holiness in all of it?  Maybe we could close the HPI (Happy Planet Index) gap here in the States if we allowed our spirituality to pervade all of life, including our offices, our kitchens, and even the baby's play pen?  Want to join me in experimenting with this?

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Can Holiness Pervade Your Office and Your Kitchen? Part 1

I read recently about a person who discovered that he should drink 16 glasses of water a day. The next morning he brought to his office a large pitcher filled with water. Throughout the day that pitcher on his desk frequently reminded him of his need, and he'd pour another glass and drink. Overall, it was a positive experience—other than having to go to the bathroom 27 times in a period of eight hours. Remaining hydrated, he learned from that experience, requires intentionality. He had to stop periodically in the midst of his busyness, become aware of his body's need for liquid, and take a few moments to drink a glass of water.  It was amazing how helpful having that pitcher of water in front of him all day was to his intention of drinking more water. Intentionality is a huge piece of what makes people effective and successful - setting intentions and then determining a specific course of action to accomplish those intentions.  It applies to every area of life, right?  We intentionalize what we desire, what we can and what we have control over, and then hold it all with an open hand, recognizing that sometimes the best things that happen do happen as surprises.  However, intentionality is an important value.  And what helps our intentions become reality are the tangible reminders we put in front of ourselves regularly of what we're trying and wanting to do - finding ways to integrate our intentions with the rest of our lives.

Dr. Susan Smalley, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, posted an article in the Huffington Post last week in which she tries to understand some of the  reasons India ranks so much higher than the United States on the Happiness Index (especially considering the comparative massive economic disparity and rampant poverty in India).  The Happy Planet Index (whose most recent compilation came out in July 2009)  strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics:  what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness).  Its the first ever index "to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live sustainable, long and happy/meaningful  lives."  That's the way they define it.  The resulting global index of the 143 nations reveals some interesting comparisons.

So after just returning from her first trip to India, she reflects on her experience of its culture and posits a significant observation.  First of all, she defines spirituality as "a sense of connection to something larger than oneself."  And then, recognizing recent research that shows that spirituality positively impacts health and well-being, she describes her experience in India:

"In India this attention to spirituality is pervasive.  It is evident in every aspect of the culture - there is constant integration of reminders that we are part of something larger than the self ... in the shrines present on every street corner, sides of houses, roadside stops, hilltops, alleyways, back of tractor trailers, and beyond.  Shrines are big, small, colorful, bland, dedicated to Shiva, Ganesh, Hanuman, or thousands of other manifestations of our shared nature, to Hindus the manifestations of a Oneness or God or an Ultimate Reality.  It is evident in the pervasive Namaste - a greeting with hand folded in a prayer position accompanied by a bow that means something like 'I see the Oneness in you.'  It is evident in the pervasive 'bindi,' the smudge of color between the eyebrow - a reminder that we are part of something larger than the self - visible by a 'third eye' if you will … I am so impressed with the complete integration of spiritual development into daily life.  Being surrounded by constant reminders of our connectedness and dependent nature make emotions and actions stemming from self-centeredness more difficult to come by."

In contrast here in the West, we tend to compartmentalize our time for spiritual practice if we engage in any at all - once a week in spiritual gatherings, or a specific meditation time each day, or at religious Holidays, or prayer at meals.  Other than these moments, the rest of our lives is rarely surrounded by spiritual reminders or awareness.  Our passion to separate Church from State, our carefulness to maintain distinction and distance between the spiritual and the secular, has led to an overly heightened sense of individuality and independence and self-importance.  Our worldviews have gradually narrowed through the decades from cosmos to planet to nation to city to neighborhood to self, with whatever happening to self carrying the ultimate significance and importance.

This reality, suggests Dr. Smalley, helps to explain some of the difference between India and the U.S. on the Happiness Index - it's about how pervasive spirituality is in everyday life.

The point is, the journey of spirituality (and a corresponding sense of well-being and happiness) don't simply happen by chance.  It takes intentionality and thought and discipline.  It takes structuring our lives around tangible reminders of our connection "to something larger than ourselves."  It takes decompartmentalizing our lives and integrating spirituality into the flow of daily existence.  It means allowing the divine to incarnate itself into the fiber and fabric of our lives.  It means engaging in specific activities, tangible reminders, intentional words, visual - auditory - kinesthetic experiences.

So what would it look like to make spirituality a way of life for me?  What intentional ways do I build into my day to be reminded of transcendence?  How intentional are I about living life deeply and with greater awareness and enlightenment?

STAY TUNED TO PART 2:  What are some tangible ways to facilitate a more pervasive spirituality?

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Skyscrapers and the Human Spirit

Okay, I admit it - I'm drawn to cities ... always have been!  I was born and raised through my teenage years in Tokyo, at that the time the world's largest city.  Ever since then, whenever I go anywhere, I always want to get to the downtown of any city. Among many things, I especially love the skyline of huge, tall skyscrapers.  I love driving home to San Francisco across the Bay Bridge and seeing the massive skyline of downtown getting closer and closer, and then suddenly being right in the middle of it all, feeling awe, inspiration, wonder and excitement that I live here.  Is this weird?  I think I know why I love this, though.  Read on.

My interest obviously got piqued when I read about the world's tallest skyscraper officially opening way over in Dubai last month to a spectacular fireworks, laser, and water extravaganza choreographed to music.

The characteristics are quite impressive:  The Dubai Tower's 160-stories reach 2,716 feet.  It's so tall that it's visible from 60 miles away, reports say, and the temperature drops 6 degrees from base to peak. Winds at the top can reach 90 miles an hour. The highest floor offers views of Iran. Its elevators will travel the world's longest distance, operating a speeds of up to 22 mph. Its nightclub on the 143rd floor is the world's highest; above it, on floor 158, the world's highest mosque.

The skyscraper is not only a testament to engineering and architectural genius but also to a bold and courageously counter-intuitive vision that gave birth to the original idea.  Phil Anderson, managing director of Economic Indicator Services, an economic forecasting service based in London, blogged recently about the beginning of this modern phenomenon:

"Bradford Lee Gilbert designed and built the very first so-called skyscraper in 1887 as a way of tackling a client's unusually shaped six-and-a-half meter plot on Broadway in New York. The solution was to build an iron bridge truss, but stand it on end so that the real structure of the building started several stories above the curb - producing the best design to maximize occupancy and rentals.

New York's press ridiculed the idea. Fellow architects pronounced the building unsafe. Building experts said it would blow over in the wind, if it ever got off the ground. New Yorkers themselves were aghast at the notion of a building that would tower above their side-walk to a height of 160 feet. A fellow engineer and friend begged Gilbert to abandon the idea, pointing out that if the building really did fall over, his legal bill would ruin him. Lawyers confirmed this.

But Gilbert knew better, arguing that the building's structure, with wind bracings from top to bottom, meant that the harder the wind blew, the safer it would actually become. To put the matter to rest Gilbert requested the top two floors of the new building for his offices.  And the rest, of course, is history."

I'm always in awe of people who have a vision to do something that is often ridiculed or thought impossible, a vision that is counter-intuitive to conventional wisdom, a vision that takes boldness and courage to live out.  When those visionaries refuse to give up, when they build their dreams based upon their best research and understanding and end up producing something transformational, the world is left a little bit better for it.  Little did Lee Gilbert know the global legacy he was leaving because of his act of courage and vision!

One of the things I love doing is walking into San Francisco's downtown financial district, right into the middle of that urban forest of monolithic, giant trees.  I crane my neck and allow my eyes to follow the path straight up to the top of the skyscrapers.  Especially when those tall glass-encased structures, glimmering in the sunlight, stand against a dark blue sky, the feelings I get every time are a mixture of awe, wonder, and hope.  There's an instant elevating of my inner spirit and passion for life.  Almost a sense of transcendence ... in the midst of the hubbub of activity and life all around me.

Interestingly enough, ancient cathedrals were designed to evoke similar emotions - the human spirit was being led to look up toward the divine as a person's eyes followed the upward lines toward the tops of the spires and high, vast ceilings.  A place where the divine and human meet.

That's the way I feel when I'm in the middle of our urban glass "cathedrals" in downtown.  I realize that I'm in direct contact with the amazing human spirit of creativity and vision and skill that put these buildings first on paper and then on the streets.  It's awe inspiring to me when I think of everything that went into making these dreams reality.  All of this helps explain why I love being right in the middle of big city downtowns.

Skyscrapers are by design symbols of the willingness to break normal limits, their peaks pointing to the limitless sky of possibility.  Their existence stands as monuments to courage and boldness in the face of ridicule and doubt.  In some ways, they're our urban cathedrals for the elevation of the human spirit toward the divine life of creativity and possibility.

I want to challenge myself and all of us urban dwellers to embrace skyscrapers this year as one of our symbols of hope and courage.  As we each forge into new territory, I want to live a life of possibility, I want to keep dreaming and planning and working to help make the world a better place.  I want to create sanctuaries of hope, where people's inner spirits are elevated and drawn to transcendence, where bigger dreams are dreamed, and profound transformations take place, even when others might ridicule or doubt.  And I want to be a part of a community that helps others embrace their highest possibilities, too.

Hey, here's a great idea:  maybe we should all take a trip over to Dubai to soak up some of Brad Gilbert's inspirational legacy.  If you book me a ticket, I'll fly over there with you!  Or just as good for me, come on over to San Francisco and we'll take my favorite walking tour through downtown together ... and see what happens to our spirits.

Where Do You Want To Be When The Earthquake Hits?

''I think the safest place in San Francisco in a major earthquake is the Bank of America.'' That statement is amazing, considering that the Bank of America building in San Francisco's financial district is the second tallest skyscraper in the city.  For most of us, the thought of being in such a tall building during a big earthquake is enough to force us into an emergency potty break!

But those words were spoken by Dr. Mario Salvadori, a New York engineer who has written several standard texts on structural engineering, immediately following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco which ended up causing the collapse of some major highways, sections of bridges, and some buildings, killing several hundred people.  He's an expert.  But his statement feels so counter-intuitive, doesn't it?

Then he explained himself:  ''We design high-rises so that their structures will stand up.  They are flexible enough to vibrate and sway, but not break up. If there are cracks, they are in things like partitions and windowpanes, not the basic frame. ''

Apparently, in planning for earthquakes, engineers today have come to value flexibility more than strength. For example, small elements of the infrastructure like gas lines and water mains are often designed with elastic loops so they bend rather than break.

Buildings are more flexible too. Dr. Salvadori compares a faulty building to a dry old tree, strong but liable to break under heavy winds, and a well-engineered one to a reed, lighter, more resilient and less likely to snap.

''A building's ability to absorb motion is as important as its ability to withstand collapse,'' said Robert Silman, a New York structural engineer.

The need for flexibility was well understood by one architect who lacked the benefits of today's advanced engineering. In his design for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, completed in 1923, Frank Lloyd Wright placed the building on a foundation that resembled floating pads. The hotel was virtually the only major downtown building to survive the earthquake that devastated Tokyo that year.

Flexibility.  Ability to absorb motion.  Pliable.  Resilient.  Bendable.  Nonrigid.  Hard to imagine words like these being used to describe stable skyscrapers.  And yet it's true.  And as counter-intuitive as it might seem, the same words apply to effective life and spirituality.

Learning how to hold life with an open hand, learning how to be flexible and nonrigid, learning how to adapt and change when necessary, learning when it's important to compromise and share, are not easy things to do.  What is often too easy to do is putting people (including ourselves) and life experiences and even God into boxes of simplistic expectations and definitions.  We think that by being able to define someone or something clearly enough we can be more secure in our experiences.  Our expectations can be fulfilled.  Everything will work out just the way we hoped and expected and carefully planned.

But people, life, and especially God are not that predictable.  Isn't that what quantum mechanics is teaching us - the universe is not as orderly and simplistic as Isaac Newton once thought.  Sub-atomic particles act in often random and unexpected ways.  Things can't always be reduced to cause and effect.

A man in one of my congregations years ago was the epitome of physical health, radically advocating a vegan diet as the only remedy for illness and a medically sound life including salvific spirituality.  He ended up dying of cancer.  Not exactly his predicted and proclaimed outcome.

Some parents I knew years ago did everything "right" (according to the parenting books and their view of Scripture).  One of their daughters ended up getting pregnant during her teen-aged years and running away from home.  Not exactly according to hoped for or predicted outcomes.

I knew a husband whose paradigm of marriage was that as long as he provided the necessary comforts of living for his wife she would be happy and fulfilled in their marriage.  "I bring home 'the bacon' and she'll be happy."  He couldn't figure out why she was expressing such high dissatisfaction.

Let's face it.  Sometimes our expectations and perspectives are simply misguided.  But even when we're right, the outcomes aren't guaranteed.  Life is messier and more unpredictable than that.  And all the experts remind us that unless we are willing to live with a degree of flexibility and nonrigidity, unless we learn how to live with an open hand and develop an ability to be pliable and absorb change, we'll live with disappointment, disillusionment, and resentment.  We can't put people much less God in boxes of our own construction and think we've figured them all out and can therefore know exactly what to expect.

One of the radically transforming views of God in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is the reality that God often acts in unpredictable ways.  Who would've thought God would show up in a burning bush (like God did with Moses)?  Who would've thought God would bring water out of rocks to quench the Israelites' thirst in the desert on their way to the Promised Land?  Who would've expected the incarnated God to show up as a tiny baby in a feeding trough in a cave in Palestine?

Don't put God in a predictable box, says scripture.  God is beyond our limited imagination and expectations.  Be open.  Be pliable.

And then Jesus ends up by shaping the same paradigm for fellow humans.  "When you feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and honor the enslaved, you are doing those things to me." It was this radical, unexpected spiritual paradigm that motivated Mother Teresa to spend her life caring for poor, dying children on the streets of Calcutta.  "Every child I hold in my arms is in fact Jesus," she said.  Who would've thought that the homeless person on the street corner, or the unreasonable boss down the hall, or the obtuse spouse in your bed, was in fact Jesus?  And the truth is that even Jesus defied popular expectations and predictions with his nonconformist behavior.

We can't put each other in predictable, self-limiting boxes, either, without doing disservice to each other and minimizing our ability to love and serve in meaningful ways.  We can't put each other in strait jackets and hope to have deep and fulfilling relationships.  We have to hold each other with open hands, leaving room for the unexpected and unknown about each other, being willing to change and move with the shifting motion of life.  It's an art form that takes lots of practice and patience!  I'm still working on my 10,000 hours on this one (see my last blog post).

And life continues to show that the unmovable, the rigid, the unbendable end up breaking.

Here's the way the Tao Te Ching (authored by the 6th century B.C. Chinese spiritual philosopher Laozi) puts it:

"A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome." (Tao Te Ching, LXXVI)

I'll never forget being on the 23rd floor of our apartment building during the big earthquake in Seattle 8 years ago.  I was astounded at how much the building swayed - so much so that I thought for a moment we were going over!  But then I was told that we were experiencing exactly what the building had been designed to do in an earthquake.  Phew!  Definitely counter-intuitive!

Structural engineers are obviously on to something when it comes to quake-proofing buildings - develop strong structures but keep them flexible and pliable and bendable.  So when the Big One hits San Francisco, I hope I'm in the Bank of America building!