"Speaking of Religion..."

Wed., Sept. 26, 2012 --  I got alot of comments, mostly positive, about a "Speaking of Religion" column I wrote for the Bennington Banner last month.  So here it is.  I'd welcome your comments and thoughts--

Since Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4^th c. of the Common Era, the Christian Church has been part of The Establishment, at least in the West.  That has been both a blessing and a curse—a blessing, in that it has allowed Christians to worship openly and freely, a curse in the sense that power has all too often corrupted and distorted the original message of Jesus.  Streams within the Christian tradition have all along witnessed to the alternative notion of power as serving, as sacrificing self-centered desires, as standing alongside the powerless and witnessing for justice.

 

United Church of Christ Pastor Robin Meyers has written a book entitled, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus, urging the church to “recapture the spirit of the early church,” before we became part of the establishment. He challenges his readers to imagine what such a church might look like.

 

“So  just imagine…[Meyers writes]

--A church where women are truly equal to men, and never patronized.

--A church where straights and gays worship together as children of God…

--A church where following Jesus is just as important as worshiping Christ.

--A church where trying to discern what Jesus taught us about God is more important than arguing over what the church has taught us about Jesus…

--A church where we earn our tax-exempt status by giving space back to the communities we serve in ways that create community and bring people into true fellowship with one another.

--A church where learning is not subversive and science is not the enemy of faith.

--A church where fear is never an instrument of religious conversion or conversation.

--A church where the enemy is not death but rather our failure to truly live…

--A church where we tend the small garden we have been given and do not participate in the murder of creation….

--A church where being rich means having everything you need instead of everything you want.

--A church where there is no acceptable alternative to hope, no substitute for joy, and no excuse not to offer the same unconditional love to others that has been so freely lavished on us.”

 

We at Second Congregational Church, UCC, in our commitment to follow in the way of Jesus, try to be such a church.  We’re not perfect and probably never will be.  There are other things on Meyers’ list that we’d like to say we are but can’t yet.  We know it’s a journey.  We welcome companions on that journey, “whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here,” we say each Sunday morning.  And we gladly walk alongside other communities of faith who share the vision of God’s realm made real on earth, where all are welcome, where all have enough to live, where all come to know themselves as beloved children of God.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark, Pastor

Second Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Bennington

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"The Happiness Revolution" --James 3:13-4:3; Mark 9:30-37-- Sept. 23, 2012

"Revolution" is all over the news. The Middle East is rife with it, as the Arab Spring has turned into summer, autumn, winter, spring, and summer/autumn again. Images from Africa and Latin America of young men–and sometimes young women-- armed with machetes and machine guns disturb and even frighten us. The "Occupy Wall St." movement just marked its one-year anniversary. Upheaval, overthrow, disturbance, confrontation, sometimes peaceful, too often violent. Such news can be scary, as these human wildfires threaten to burst into higher flames at the slightest gust of insult, foolish speech, perceived humiliation. Revolution.

Remember, though, that our country was born out of revolution–a refusal to have no say in how we are governed, a demand that the fruits of our labors not be merely sent overseas to a distant monarch, a protest against the seizing of ships and cargo and sailors engaged in legitimate trade, a desire to create a new form of government and way of living together, a recognition that this new physical environment offered new possibilities. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were lifted up as inalienable rights.

Jesus was and is viewed by many as a "revolutionary," teaching and modeling a way of life that upset the status quo, that moved beyond rigid family structures and hierarchical ways of thinking. The kingdom of God which he preached stood in stark contrast to the kingdom of Caesar. When Jesus’ followers called Jesus "Lord" and "Son of God," that was in direct contradiction to the Roman Empire’s claim that Caesar was "Lord" and "Son of God." Jesus was most likely crucified because of this "revolutionary" teaching and activity.

And what was Jesus’ revolutionary "platform"? It was that God, not Caesar, not money or wealth, is to be served. "You cannot serve two masters," he said, "for you will either love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other. You cannot serve God and mammon, or money." His revolutionary platform was that the first in the revolution would be those who the current system considered last–and he drew a child into their midst, saying, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." Children were considered the lowest of the low, with no status, no rights. "In antiquity," writes one Biblical scholar, "childhood was a time of terror. Infant mortality rates sometimes reached 30% of live births. Sixty percent were dead by the age of sixteen. These figures reflect not only the ravages of unconquered diseases but also the outcomes of poor hygiene...A minor child was considered equal to a slave." (John Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Cycle B, p. 139)

"Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." To welcome a child is to welcome God! That’s revolutionary talk!

Or what about Jesus’ follower who wrote, "Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures."

In a world where craving new things or more things, where resources and power are considered to be limited, where success of one person or group always comes at the expense of another, these words that we find in the Letter of James are revolutionary talk. It was even too revolutionary for the Church as the years and centuries went on, and it accumulated more wealth, more power, all in the name of God. So Jesus’ revolution went underground. Some followers of Jesus formed monastic communities, sharing everything in common, devoting themselves to serving God. Other communities and pockets of followers took Jesus’ revolutionary talk at his word, and cared for children and orphans, fed the hungry, tended the sick, stood with the oppressed, used the resources entrusted to them not to accumulate wealth but used them to make the revolutionary kingdom of God or reign of God more visible on earth. They sought happiness and meaning not seeking more "stuff" or power or wealth or celebrity, but in serving others, in discovering God in the most unlikely places--within themselves and in others whose divinity wasn’t all that obvious.

Imagine, then, my initial surprise but then "ah ha" moment when I read this in Tal Ben-Shahar’s book, Happier. Tal teaches the course I’m taking in Positive Psychology and is one of the field’s leading scholars and teachers. He was talking about the many benefits of the scientific revolution– things like greater life expectancy through discoveries in medicine, better productivity in agriculture through greater understanding of soil cultivation, improved seeds, advances in astronomy so that we have been to the moon and beyond, have greater understandings of our place in the universe, and so forth. But, he writes,

...our perception of science as omnipotent can lead to a new set of challenges. One of these challenges, a by-product of the scientific revolution, is the prevalence of material perception, the belief that the material is the highest on the hierarchy of importance...The problem arises when the freedom to pursue material wealth is replaced with a compulsion to amass it. The alternative to material perception is happiness perception, which is about moving away from seeing the material as the highest end, as our central pursuit.

(op cit., p. 159)

Now, I’m not crazy about the word "happiness"–it’s a little too "smiley-face." I prefer Martin Seligman’s phrase "well-being," so you might want to substitute that whenever you hear the word "happiness."

Tal often speaks of happiness perception as the spiritual opposite of material perception. "Happiness perception [he writes] involves finding the overlap among the three questions ‘What gives me meaning?’ ‘What gives me pleasure?’ ‘What are my strengths?’ It is about asking, ‘What is my calling?’" (160)

"I believe that the spread of happiness perception can bring about a society-wide revolution," Tal writes, no less significant than what Karl Marx had hoped to achieve."

What would happen if most people internalized the change from material to happiness perception? First, envy, among individuals and cultures, would be reduced considerably...The need to bring others down comes from a materialistic perception of a world in which resources are a zero-sum game and one’s success implies another’s failure, where one’s gain is another’s loss. More generally, if happiness perception prevails, individual and international conflicts would be reduced significantly. Most wars are fought over land, oil, gold, and other material goods. The leaders in these countries who are responsible for fueling these conflicts accept the false premise that the ultimate currency for their country–and for themselves–is how much material wealth they possess.

...The quantity of happiness is not fixed: an abundance of happiness for one person or country does not deprive another. The pursuit of happiness does not set up a zero-sum game but a positive -sum game–everyone can be better off. As the Buddha said, ‘Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.’ Unlike material possessions, which are usually finite, happiness is infinite."

(Ibid.)

It is clear that the material revolution has not brought us happiness. Research has shown that those who pursue wealth as their ultimate end and obsession actually have a lower sense of self-actualization, are more depressed, and have more physical symptoms (although those who see wealth as an indicator of hard work, as a vehicle to do good, do not necessarily experience those negative symptoms). The average age of the onset of depression in our culture is now 15. Except for those in the lowest income brackets, having more money does not lead to greater happiness. This idea of happiness, rather than the material, as the ultimate currency is reflected in the question, Would you rather be a miserable millionaire or a happy pauper? Which is it for you?

"Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? [writes the author of the Letter of James] Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts."

The Asian country of Bhutan, tucked between the two super-powers China and India, actually measures its success not in terms of Gross National Product, but in Gross National Happiness. There’s a revolution that doesn’t get too many headlines.

"I have sheep that are not of this fold," Jesus says in the gospel of John, and I have no doubt the revolutionary movement of the Holy Spirit is at work in surprising ways. Maybe the 500 year rummage sale that the church is going through includes the ways that the secular field of Positive Psychology is permeated by the wisdom of Jesus. Maybe the revolution is popping out in the tiny Buddhist nation of Bhutan, concerned about happiness rather than product. Krista Tippett’s conversation on "Speaking of Faith" this morning on VPR was with two young evangelical Christian leaders who are part of the "next Christianity," as she calls it–less strident, more concerned about walking the walk than talking the talk, being engaged in working for the common good, building bridges rather than putting up walls. What a concept! It sounds a bit like the really old Christianity, the one that Jesus lived and talked about.

No revolution is peaceful for everyone. Those who benefit from the status quo do not readily give up those benefits or that comfort for a new way of being. That the "Jesus Revolution" or the "Happiness Revolution" is not all fun and games is made clear by Jesus’ insistence that "The Son of Humanity is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." Happiness, or well-being, which really expresses it better, is not a matter of surface bubbles, but of the deep, underlying well of Life and Love from which we can draw even in the most difficult and tragic times. Betrayal, loss, even death cannot penetrate deeply enough to empty that well. Suffering is part of the fully human life, but it does not have to define our lives.

A friend of mine did her Psychology residency at the Dana-Farber Institute, where she worked with children with cancer. She learned many lessons from these children, but one that stands out for me is this–"If you can live in the moment [Maria writes] doing what you love, as children can, and you are surrounded by those you trust, then suffering is ameliorated and it becomes a part, not the whole, of your life." (Maria Sirois, Every Day Counts, p. 24).

"Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, [Jesus said] and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

The wisdom to live into this revolution is both ancient and new–"The wisdom from above [or deep below, to keep the image of the well] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace." God’s intention for us and for our world persistently, powerfully, gracefully is still seeking to become manifest, to blossom forth in ways both wondrous and beyond our imagination. May we offer our lives to the cause and join the revolution. May we be part of this harvest of peace.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Who do you say that I am?"-- Mark 8:27-38-- September 16, 2012

Smack dab in the middle of Mark’s gospel–between Jesus’ ministry of "opposing all that oppresses God’s people," (David Lose, WorkingPreacher.com, 9/9/12) as one writer puts it--the healings, the exorcisms, the feeding, and so forth–and the journey to the cross, right here in the middle we find this conversation between Jesus and his disciples. "And on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’" And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him."

It may sound like a conversation to pass the time while walking from one town to the next ("on the way"), but it was far more than that–really the pivot of Jesus’ whole ministry, in fact. Who do you say that I am? It’s not just a question of names or terms, but of authority. Why does anything I say or do matter? What difference does it make–in your life, in the life of your community, or to the world, for that matter? "Who do you say that I am?"

The Christian Century, a venerable and well-respected bi-weekly journal that we receive here at the church, recently ran an article entitled, "The Gospel in 7 Words." The pre-text was this–

"In his autobiography Brother to a Dragonfly, Will Campbell recalls how his friend P.D. East had badgered him for a succinct definition of Christianity. East did not want a long or fancy explanation. ‘I’m not too bright,’ he told Campbell. ‘Keep it simple. In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?’ Campbell obliged his friend: ‘We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway,’ he said. To which East replied, ‘If you want to try again, you have two words left."

(The Christian Century, Sept. 5, 2012, p. 20)

So, "the Century invited some authors to try their hand at summarizing the Christian message in seven words or less." (Ibid.) Here are a few of their answers–"We live by grace," wrote Craig Barnes. Donald Shriver wrote, "Divinely persistent, God really loves us." Author Mary Karr wrote, "We are the church of infinite chances." Environmental activist Bill McKibben thinks "Love your neighbor as yourself" summarizes the gospel. Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes with characteristic density, "Israel’s God’s bodied love continues world-making." (Century, pp. 20-25) ("I used only six words. I rested on the 7th.")

The Gospel in 7 words or less. Who do you say that I am? Jesus asked. How would you answer? Could you put the gospel in 7 words or less?

We know Peter’s answer. "You are the Messiah," which didn’t seem to please Jesus all that much. "He sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him." And the conversation got even more uncomfortable as it went on. "Then he began to teach them that the Son of Humanity must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great 19^th c. American Transcendentalist, wrote, "In a friend, I’m not looking for a mush of concession, a person who will agree with everything I say. Rather, I’m looking for a person who will challenge me, who will become a beautiful enemy, a person who will help me in my apprenticeship to the truth."

Jesus was looking for a beautiful enemy, not someone who would simply tell him what they thought Jesus would want to hear. If Jesus had any sense that he was the Messiah, he knew it was not the kind of Messiah that most people expected, the one who would free Israel from the occupation of the Romans, the kind of king whose armies and powers would overpower all other kings and armies, matching violence for violence, no matter how good a God he might be proclaiming. "Don’t just tell people I’m the Messiah," Jesus says. "They won’t understand what that really means."

Interestingly enough, 106 years ago on September 11, Gandhi delivered his speech that launched the non-violent resistence movement that changed India forever. "I am prepared to die for this cause," he said, "but there is not a cause for which I will kill." He also affirmed, "We are Hindu and Muslim, all children of God, and in the name of that God, let us swear a solemn vow that we will resist this unjust law, but we will not kill." It is significant that Gandhi’s model for non-violence was Jesus. We may disagree on whether non-violence is the same as pacifism (I don’t think it is) and whether it has any moral backbone to it (I think it’s got more than I have), but it is clear what the way of Jesus is. Whether it is a way that can be followed by a nation is not clear, even though that nation may call itself "Christian." India under Gandhi’s leadership followed the way of non-violence, but we know that India no longer follows that way.

"He began to teach them that the Son of Humanity must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

Stephen Cope, director of Kripalu’s Institute of Extraordinary Living, writes that they have made some surprising discoveries in their research on people who are trying to discover and nourish the gifts they’ve been given, artists, musicians, teachers, whatever. One surprise is that the gift requires practice. The most successful musicians, artists, whatever are not those simply with the greatest innate gifts, but those who worked at developing and honing their gifts. The gift requires practice.

The second surprise was this: that a person’s unique gift is quite often paired with their woundedness. "Strangely, our greatest strength (and greatest possibility) seems to be routinely paired with our greatest limitation–even our greatest wound." (The Great Work of Your Life @mariashriver.com/blog/2012/09) For example, one successful writer’s poetry comes out of the difficult circumstances of her life, an abusive childhood and the early loss of her mother. Our greatest gifts may be paired with our woundedness. Might this be a different way to think of our unique cross, which Jesus told us we must take up to follow him?

And related to this is the third surprise in the Extraordinary Living research–"The full flowing of the gift [writes Cope] is usually paired with a sacrifice of some kind," the giving up of something else–even something important–to fully serve the gift. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

The word for "life" here is psyche, meaning "life force," or "vital force." To gain that vitality, that life, we have to give up clinging to it and everything else we think our lives depend upon, for when we "get clingy," as one commentator puts it, "then we have no free arm to reach out to another." (Alyce McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, 9/10/12)

This conversation began with Jesus’ question to his disciples–"Who do you say that I am?" And though Peter had the "right" answer–You are the Messiah–it wasn’t an answer they were to tell anyone else, because it wouldn’t communicate the Truth of who Jesus was and is. Much of our "church-y" language today doesn’t communicate the Truth of who Jesus is, either–language like "lord" and "savior". What does that really mean to anyone not raised in the church (or even to those of us who were)? "Who do you say that I am?"

Here are a few more of the 7-words-or-less answers the Christian Century writers submitted–Kathleen Norris wrote, "God is love: This is no joke." "To dwell in possibility," another wrote, after Emily Dickinson’s poem, I Dwell in Possibility. "God refuses to be God without us," wrote United Methodist bishop William Willimon. "Everybody gets to grow and change," wrote UCC pastor Lilian Daniel, though in parentheses she added, "(but not everyone will grow and change.)" "Christ’s humanity occasions our divinity," wrote Scott Cairnes. "God gets the last word." – Martin Copenhaver. "We are who God says we are," wrote another (Nadia Bolz-Weber).

Who do you say that I am? In a world where labels like Christian or Muslim or Jew, conservative or liberal, get hurled around, we ought to be able to speak clearly and succinctly about what being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, means to us. How would you respond to a friend who asked you, "In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?" Here’s the six word phrase I came up with–

"Love includes you and outlasts death." Love includes you and outlasts death.

Here’s your assignment for the week. In 7 words or less, what is the Gospel for you? There’s a sheet on the folding choir doors in Webster Hall for you to add your phrase. Mine is up there. You can add your name or initials or not.

"Who do you say that I am?"

                                                                                                                                  --Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Invitation to Dance" --2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-16, Mt. 11:16-19-- Sept. 9, 2012

Listen again to that poem of the 14^th c. Persian poet Hafiz–

Every child

Has known God

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don’ts

Not the God who never

does anything weird,

But the God who only knows

four words

and keeps repeating them,

saying

"Come dance with Me"

Come

Dance.

 

Maybe you prefer a more contemporary sage. How’s this from Snoopy?– "To live is to dance; to dance is to live."

Gertrude Mueller Nelson tells of working on a sewing project when her 3-year old daughter Annika discovered all the brightly-colored strips of fabric in the waste basket. She eagerly gathered them up and disappeared. A little while later, Gertrude found Annika out in the backyard, attaching the strips of fabric to a stick with mounds of tape. "I’m making a banner for a procession," she said. "I need a procession so that God will come down and dance with us." (Nelson, To Dance with God, p. 3)

"What this little primitive reminded me," Nelson writes, "was how innate and easy [children’s] way is with the sacred...and what a sense of wonder." As we begin another season of Godly Play today, encouraging our children to wonder about things, about the stories from the Bible, about the world around them, we would do well to join them in their dance with God. Middle school students are finding connections between the issues and attitudes they encounter every day–issues like hunger or poverty or cliques or bullying or dating–and how they connect with their faith. We would do well to join them in their dance with God. Students in high school are being invited to consider confirming their faith, to spend this year exploring the traditions of our faith and asking their own questions, wondering about things, about the Bible, about themselves, about God, about their world, about anything and everything. We would do well to join them in their dance with God.

Now, we may not be at all sure about this "dancing" business. Maybe like Michal, Saul’s beautiful daughter who hated David for dancing in front of the Ark of the Covenant in only a loincloth, maybe we think there’s something "unseemly," maybe something irreverent, about dancing, let alone dancing with God. There is certainly plenty of precedent for that in the Christian tradition. The movie "Footloose" told a story about that. And the very title of the movie "Dirty Dancing" sums up what some people think about all dancing.

Of course, we may not want to dance because we’re too self-conscious. "I can’t dance, don’t ask me..." We’re clumsy, or we don’t know the steps. We’ll look foolish. We like things a little more under control. Maybe our body is too stiff, too sore, too uncooperative.

And maybe dancing is just too frivolous. There are chores to be done, serious matters to consider, the world going to hell in a handbasket. Who has time to dance?

Or maybe it’s too primitive, not intellectual or rational enough. The great historian of religions from Harvard, Arthur Darby Nock, wrote, "Primitive religion is not believed. It is danced." We’re more worried about "belief," not how to dance.

"To what will I compare this generation?" Jesus asked. "It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Humanity came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."

Are you alive? Jesus asks. Do you find joy in anything?

Kerra Becker English is a Presbyterian minister in Richmond, VA who took up ballroom dancing lessons when she was in seminary as a break from the head trip that seminary can sometimes be. She has made some observations about what can be learned from dancing, either on the ballroom dance floor with a human partner, or in life, with God as your Partner–capital P!

The first lesson is "Maintain your frame. Or, as a counselor might say it, ‘Know your boundaries.’ Hold on too tightly, vice-grip. Hold on too loosely, spaghetti arms." (English, in "Congregations," Issue 3, 2012, p. 6) If we are so uptight, so rigid, so controlling, so closed off to anything new or spontaneous in our life of faith, we might as well be one of those pillars in the middle of the dance floor instead of a dancer. On the other hand, if we have no spine, no sense of who we are, no substance or boundaries, if anything goes, we’re not much of a dancing partner. It’s hard to engage in a relationship if there’s nothing there, nothing to build on. It’s hard to maintain any connection. "A spiritual frame as I understand it [writes English] is about active engagement, connection, and readiness." (Ibid.) That’s true for us as individuals and as a church. We need to know who we are, and from that place of knowing, be ready to engage, connect, learn, grow.

The second lesson, says English, is to move. That’s what dancing is, isn’t it? Moving? Now, I know that there are people whose bodies are unable to move but whose spirits soar. I would still call that moving. Dancing with God or "following Jesus" ..is not about standing still in a tradition," English writes, "it’s about taking in all that spiritual energy and allowing it to move and expand and grow." Jesus encouraged his disciples to take what he had taught them and then do it better. He expected them to grow and evolve.

We as adults would do well to follow in the footsteps of our younger companions on this journey–not just because "they are our future," as we hear often, but because of what they can share with us right now– in Godly Play, which is what our children up through 5^th grade are engaging in; in exploring issues of daily life–"attitudes and issues," as it’s called–which our middle school students are doing; and questioning and arriving at some point of confirmation, which our high school students are invited to. What would it look like for you to engage in Godly Play? Have you ever read an article in the newspaper and then reflected upon what your faith has to bring to it? Is there anything you know for sure, what you can confirm, that is your true north, your center of gravity, from which all of your actions and meaning in life flow?

Which in a way leads into the 3^rd lesson that English suggests–"Dance on your own two feet." Learn balance. Know where your center of gravity is. "The spiritual life is upheld by learning and repeating those practices that enable the practitioners to keep their own balance. Even the very best dance partner cannot maintain balance for two! Sadly, [she writes], we live in a world that is constantly throwing us off balance." This fall’s political campaign is an example, writ large, of the dangers of hanging out on the extremes. But we need to learn to live in that tension between the extremes, to find our balance between too much work and not enough work, too much time on our hands and no time to ourselves.

Boredom–that great complaint of our time–"comes from taking for granted what is around us," Gertrude Nelson writes. "We are numb. We do not allow ourselves to be touched and quickened." (Op cit.) So even though we are moving in this dance of life, we also need to take the time to notice, to appreciate, to savor. The music is made not only by the notes but also by the rests. It’s a dance between sound and silence. So as we practice our moves, we must also practice our pauses, including those times when we lean into our partner and trust that we will be held up.

"Take one step at a time," is the 4^th dancing lesson. We might call it mindfulness. Be here now. "Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans," someone has said, and how many times has that proven itself to be true? God’s timing is not always our timing, so you might as well sit loose, and take one step at a time.

This dance is not just a self-absorbed undertaking. English says she learns to "Sympathize with those who are dancing life backwards and in heels," which, you may recall, is what has been said about Ginger Rogers, who had to stay right with her more famous partner Fred Astaire, but all the while, dancing backwards and in heels. "Sympathize with those who are dancing life backwards and in heels," In other words, we can learn compassion, as this dance takes us beyond our own individual orbits, where we can indeed go deep, but we must also move out to touch other lives. There are those who may have fallen down, who need time out to re-group or rest, those who don’t have adequate food or health care or shelter in which to sleep. This is a dance of bending and leaning, of supporting and being supported.

And while lots of dancing today would appear to be a mass of individuals doing their own thing, there is in fact a collective energy that connects all the dancers. And, as we know, "it takes two to tango." Just as you practice dance steps, like the tango, or fox trot, or swing dance, or even contra dance, so we come together each week to practice our dance with God and each other. We work on getting to know our partner better, on trying out new moves, on being still together, on listening for the beat and the music.

For, as English says in her last lesson, "Dancing is fun, and life is a dance!" – a variation of Snoopy’s "to live is to dance; to dance is to live." "Dancing is an expression of the joy of life [English writes]–the whole range of joy–from the bouncy happy Jive, to the lovers’ quarrel in Tango, to the lilting rhythm of the Waltz." (p. 8) "It may be," says Sam Keen, "that the sparcity of joy in contemporary life is closely related to the loss of dance as a central vehicle for the education and articulation of values and beliefs," as it is in more "primitive" (but more wise?) cultures. (Keen, To a Dancing God, p. 52) It is a dance of joy, because ultimately, through the worst we might imagine, "all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well." (Julian of Norwich).

Every child Has known God – Not the God of names,--Not the God of don’ts--

Not the God who never does anything weird, But the God who only knows four words

and keeps repeating them, saying– "Come dance with Me" - Come – Dance.

Amen, and amen.                                                                  Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Friends for the Journey

Wed., Sept. 5, 2012 – My nephew is getting married this Saturday, so I’ve been thinking about wedding wisdom. My father-in-law, who had performed hundreds of weddings in his career, always said it was a waste of time to give advice or counseling ahead of time. It only made sense once you had lived into the marriage for awhile. That’s probably very true, although most of the couples whose weddings I do now have been living together for awhile.

Marriage counselor David Schnar wrote that "Marriage is a people-growing machine." He’s not just referring to the children who may be the fruits of a marriage, but most importantly to the two people who are married to one another. They are the ones who can grow in marriage.

"In a friend," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, [and it’s true for a partner] "in a friend, I’m not looking for a mush of concessions, a person who will agree with everything I say. Rather, I’m looking for a person to challenge me, who will be a beautiful enemy, to help me in my apprenticeship to the truth." I love that image– "a beautiful enemy, to help me in my apprenticeship to the truth."

"The truth" is the truth about who you are as a person, who you are as a beloved child of God, given a unique set of gifts and graces; only you can bring forth the particular combination of qualities and dreams whose seeds have been planted in you. To be a "beautiful enemy" is to truly see and love that unique person who is your friend or your partner–which may be different from the idealized person you maybe wish they would be for your sake. To be a beautiful enemy is to be honest with yourself and the other when you see them turning aside from their sacred essence, to call them back to their apprenticeship with the truth, and remind them who they are and Whose they are. To be able to do that for one another is a holy trust, a sacred path, and, ultimately, a joyful dance.

I love the rabbinic story in which Rabbi Alyosha tells his disciples, "When I come before the Almighty, I will not be asked, ‘Why were you not more like Moses?’ Rather, the question will be, ‘Why were you not Alyosha?’" We may seek to follow in the Way of Jesus, but we are not to be "like Jesus." We are to be true to ourselves as Jesus was true to who he was.

We can be "beautiful enemies" to one another, calling us back to our true Selves. That is my wish for Patrick and Kristen this weekend.

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"The Implanted Word"-- James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23-- Sept. 2, 2012

 

I’d like to use what is called "appreciative inquiry" into our readings from James and Mark this morning, and zoom in on one image–what James calls "the implanted word"–and see what fruit might be born from it.

In fulfillment of God’s own purpose, [James writes] God gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures...Therefore...welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. Or, as Peterson puts it, In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. [The Message]

Now, there is always a danger in taking verses out of context. James is particularly concerned about those who say the right words, but whose actions speak of a very different word. So, we don’t want to lose that important context or wisdom from James.

And in the passage from Mark, Jesus tells those who complain about his and his disciples lack of proper ritual hygiene that it’s not what goes in from the outside of a person that defiles them, but rather what comes out of a person. "All these evil things come from within, from the human heart," Jesus says.

But if we shine an appreciative light on this one image of the implanted word, we may find a way to put it back in its context–both in Scripture and in our lives–that has more integrity perhaps than simply glossing over as we read. In fulfillment of God’s own purpose [James writes] God gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures...Therefore...welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

Every Sunday, perhaps every day, we pray the prayer of Jesus. "Thy kingdom come," we pray in good King James English. And yet the language of Jesus–Aramaic–contains this earthy meaning for that phrase-- "In our depths, sow your seed with its greening-power, so that we may be midwives to your Reign." God’s seed or intention is planted in each of us, with its greening, growing power, able to blossom forth in ways unique to each one of us, each one contributing to the beauty of God’s kingdom on earth. That is our True Self, the core of who we are.

But very early on, layers and layers of hard shells build up around that core–initial layers of limitations put on us by parents or family or early environments. "Oh, you can’t do that. You mustn’t do that. You’re this or you’re that," when our True Self may not be "this" or "that." And then we layer on fears over the limitations, fears that we’ll disappointment or anger or call attention to or be found out. And so we create an image which we present to the world, to safely guard all those layers, but too often in the process, lose sight of that true, inner core, that seed or intention planted by God, "the implanted word," if you will.

It is in the process of covering over, denying, not appreciating that true core that all sorts of distortions and defilements take place. "For it is from within," Jesus says in Mark, "that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

All of those "evil things" are distortions of the original intention planted by God.

We all know how easy it is to lose sight of that true core of Light. We know what it is like to act not from our highest Self but from our meanest desire. We acknowledge that reality when we pray our prayers of confession, which, while any one prayer may not speak specifically to our experience, we pray them in acknowledgment of the human experience, and remind ourselves that we are not exempt from that more collective experience.

But, I wonder, what if we prayed a Prayer of Affirmation as well each week? "I am beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold, and I serve the God of Love and Light." Any of us could pray that each day, and some of us do. We might also get more specific, if we take the time to reflect upon the particular "implanted word" in each of us.

One exercise we did during our Positive Psychology immersion was to think of someone we admired–someone we knew personally, like a teacher or family member or friend–or a public or literary figure, like the Dalai Lama or Eleanor Roosevelt-- and describe that person to 2 other people. We each listed the qualities of that person that struck us as being qualities of the ideal person. After doing that for all 3 people in the group, we were each to think of yet another person we admired, and describe that person to the group. Again, we listed the qualities–he is, she is, he does, she has...– until we each had a list of maybe 20 different qualities we thought would be attributes of an ideal person. Then we were to narrow it down to 5-8 of the most important qualities and star or mark those.

Next we were to start on a clean sheet of paper. Write those 5-8 qualities–she is... he is...–only this time writing, "I am....I have... I do..." It was stunning. The image that emerged for each of us rang shockingly true. What we admire in other people cut through the limitations and fears and self-images and went to the core of who we are. Our teacher recommended that we look at that list everyday, remind ourselves of who we really are everyday, maybe reflect on one quality each day with real intention.

Just as an experiment, take out the commission which we say each week, "to remind ourselves how we are to be." It’s a collective prayer. Try it now, changing each phrase to first person singular–"I go forth into the world in peace. I am of good courage. I hold fast to that which is good. I render to no one evil for evil. I strengthen the fainthearted; I support the weak; I help the afflicted; I honor all people. I love and serve the Lord. I rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit." It’s just a slight shift, but notice how different it feels.

"Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls." Welcome with meekness. This is not an exercise in puffing up, in self-centered pride. The work translated as meekness here is used in the bible only to describe Moses and Jesus. It describes the quality of being so open–so selfless (small s)–so utterly immersed in God that there is a fearless-ness about it, not the timidness, the milquetoast limpness, that we often associate with the word "meek." "Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls." Our denying or never taking the time to discover the implanted word in us, our True Self, does not serve God or ourselves.

"In our depths, sow your seed with its greening-power, so that we may be midwives to your Reign." Thy kingdom come. "In fulfillment of God’s own purpose , God gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures...Therefore... Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls." I urge you, even for a few moments a day this week, to do a little "appreciative inquiry" into the word implanted in you. "In simple humility," as Peterson puts it, "let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation garden of your life."

Acting from this implanted word, nourishing it, watering it, we can become doers of the Word, caring for those who have lost their way, those in distress, loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. This bread and cup that we are about to share comes into our bodies and nourishes and waters our True Selves created by God and so transform and empower us to bear fruit that will nourish the world. With this promise, with this hope, receive the Bread of Life and the Cup of Blessing. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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