On Life: Part 2, Voices Far Way from Where I Grew Up

The faith of my childhood having failed in substantial ways  to make sense out of life, I kept thinking.  And reading.  And exploring.  And traveling.  Discovering and listening to voices far away from where I grew up.  And I have come across many amazing insights that do help me make sense of life.  

I have learned, for instance, that change and pain and hard knocks are inevitable.  I have learned to accept that I can never know what will happen to me next.  I am learning to relax with the idea that we are always in transition – that things are always coming together and falling apart, and coming together again and falling apart again, and that often their falling apart brings healing and creates space for what is new and better.[i]

                                                                                   

When emotional distress arises, I am learning to let the story line go.  Behind unhappiness there is always an unhappy story, a drama I keep telling myself that fuels my distress.  And I am learning that only if I am not caught up in my own version of things can I see what’s really happening.[ii]       

I am learning to live in the present moment, to show up for whatever life offers, to not hold back because things are not going as I wish, but to let go of my preferences and acquire the kind of invincibility that comes from not being attached to any particular outcome.[iii]

I am learning not to swing at every pitch.  Not all problems require a solution.  Now instead of keeping everything stirred up all the time, in the words of the Tao Te Ching, I am learning

the patience to wait

till my mud settles

and the water is clear. 

And often I find that when I quit reacting against a situation, the solution arises out of the situation itself.

I am learning to move gently toward what scares me, to lean toward the pain, knowing that the pain is usually a sign that I’m still holding on to something – often my own ego.[iv]   

I am learning, not without pain, that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.[v]

                                                                                               

I am learning to connect with bigger and bigger perspectives, to evolve beyond the little me that seeks to cocoon in comfort zones.  I know that God is always larger and kinder than I suppose.  And I am learning that the only actions that do not cause strong reactions are – drum roll, please – those aimed at the good of all.  They are things that include, not exclude; that bring people together, not drive them apart.  They are for all of us, not just for me and people like me.  They are for all humanity, not just my country, not just “my” religion. [vi]  

           

And I am learning (thank you, C.S. Lewis) that if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy it means that I was made for another world.[vii]

There are then many, many insights – too many!  But I think they come down to come to some basic insights of Jesus, three in particular, which I will begin focusing on in my next post.  Due to travel plans, however, this will be three weeks from now. 

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[i] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 8.

[ii] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 50-51, 56, 79, 123; The Places That Scare You, 28.

[iii] Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal, 171.

[iv] Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You, 50, 94.

[v] Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 66.

[vi] Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 290.

[vii] As cited in Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, 180.

On Life: Part 1, Rethinking the Reason for Being Alive

One way or another, we are always trying to make sense of being alive.  And each day brings us new ways to be bewildered, new things to wonder about, maybe to be deeply concerned about.  To begin with, a lot of things depend on where we were born, and to whom, and where life has led us.  Life is a very different matter for many of us than it is for those who live in a Palestinian refugee camp, or an AIDS-ravaged village in sub-Sahara Africa, or in earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Yet almost all of us have some basic concerns in common:  Why am I alive?  For what purpose?  How am I connected to others? Why do these powerful emotions and desires surge within me and drive me to do what’s not in my best interest to do?  What am I meant to do with my life?  How am I meant to spend my days?  And why are things so hard?  Why sickness, suffering, tragedy and loss?  Why constant struggle, conflict and fear?  Why are so many relationships unsatisfying?  Why the injustices and inequities of life?  There are, it seems, a thousand questions, and for each many conflicting answers. 

I look in Scripture, and I find help.  I remember what Paul wrote in Romans 7:15-19, “I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. … I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”  And this makes sense up to a point, and when I’m in certain moods.  But why?  Why are things this way?

I think of life as I was growing up.  We had made sense of it, after a fashion.  By we, I mean the adults in the little churches I went to.  Life was about obeying God.  Obeying God meant being right on baptism, communion, church organization and worship, in fact, on all matters pertaining to the church.  And there was only one true church – specifically ours.  There were also lists of things not to do: divorce, drinking, dancing, or really anything on Sunday other than church and napping, which some did simultaneously.  The other kinds of questions didn’t matter really.  Life was just hard.  What did matter was that those who did these things correctly did not go to Hell.  That was the purpose of life, to save one’s soul from Hell, and of course, if one could, to save a few other souls too though people were known to be stubborn.  That the story ended with vast numbers burning for ever and ever was thought to be regrettable but not catastrophic.   And all of this made sense as long as we just kept talking to ourselves.  But the longer I lived the more I realized that much, much more is going on in life, that it does not make sense that the earth with its six billion plus people is just a backdrop for a few hundred thousand of God’s elect. 

How did we ever, in a universe that seemingly stretches forever, come to think in ways that are so small, so sectarian?

On Globalization: Part 4, Jesus' Point Exactly

Although globalization – the world coming together culturally and economically – involves substantial and large-scale risks, there is every reason for followers of Jesus to take heart.  Scripture, in fact, is all about globalization.  It’s all about Jesus who came to save the world (John 3:17), who is acclaimed as the light of the world over and over, in whom God reconciles the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).  It’s all about Jesus when he is truly lifted up from the earth drawing all people to himself (John 12:31).  It’s what the great Hebrew prophets foretold – that one day the earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).  It takes us back to the original meaning of “salvation” in Scripture, the Hebrew yeshu’a, to save from danger, from harm, from disease, from evil intent or violence.  Yes, salvation is about a glorious life after death, but first it’s very much a hands-on, this-world, here-and-how, real-life salvation.  In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, it’s “on earth as it is in heaven” salvation.  It’s about people everywhere being freed to realize their full potential.

Jesus, you see, is about a whole lot more than saving souls after death.  He’s about saving the world, the flow of history, the majesty of creation, the wonder of the universe, the whole thing, the whole process from beginning to end, the unfolding of the story from beginning to end.  He’s about the redemption of the cosmos, the stars in their galaxies, the plants and animals, the rivers and seas, the forests and fields, people in all their amazingly colorful diversity.  He’s about saving the planet from greed, from fear, from desires run amuck, from people looking out only for their own interests.

It was this that Paul anticipates in that glorious beginning of his Ephesian letter, Ephesians 1:3-14.  He writes it (and this makes it all the more remarkable) while under arrest in Rome expecting to appear before of all people Nero.  In a breathless run-on sentence (Ephesians 1:3-14), Paul hardly comes up for air.  These are his primal beliefs.  This is what he is most excited about, and most sure of.  Long before Jesus was co-opted for sectarian purposes, before the Christian church turned dark and fearful, Paul sees the world in a different, new, glorious light.  He praises God over and over.  He talks of redemption.  He talks of God’s grace lavished on us.  And he declares that this is our destiny – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ.  He could say this because he knew that Jesus was the most inclusive person he’d ever known.  Jesus truly was, is and always will be, for everyone.

As Paul goes on in the Ephesian letter, he over and over marks our calling as global, as cosmic.  It’s to bring peace, proclaim peace, to those both far way and near (2:17).  It’s to destroy dividing walls of hostility (2:14).  It’s grasping how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (3:18).  It’s to bring all things in heaven and on earth together.  But for globalization to work best, it is best founded in an understanding of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.  Globalization is for Christians.  It always has been.  With Christ, the call to “love your neighbor as yourself” turns global.  It calls for our becoming knowledgeable, conscious, aware, seeing the people who have fallen among thieves and are now being passed by, challenging patterns of exploitation, working toward solutions that are just, sustainable and compassionate.  For all people.  Everywhere.

But then of course you would have to find some people with whom to do this.

On Globalization: Part 3, If There's a Will

As we have seen, globalization – the process whereby the world is coming together culturally and economically – entails certain risks, large-scale risks.  Democracy can suffer.  So can local and regional cultures, as well as local and regional systems of agriculture and production.  Even the Earth’s life-support system can be threatened by the short-sighted economic interests of players far, far away from the zones of impact.  Still, there is reason for optimism.  As more and more understand the process, as more and more scrutinize the process, as more and more become conscious of the process (hence these posts), the more transparent the transactions will be, the more accountable the process will be to an informed global market, the more the poorest of the poor will be taken care of, the more knowledgeable investors will realize that the welfare of people anywhere depends on the welfare of people everywhere.  And globalization will fulfill its promise of a world coming together as one. 

And all of this is economically doable.  If there’s a will to do it.  A 1998 survey found that the world’s 225 richest people have (or had then) a combined wealth of over $1 trillion.  It is estimated that 4% of that would achieve and maintain access to basic education, basic health care, adequate food, and safe water and sanitation for all those still without these things.1  I’m not suggesting – horror of horrors – redistribution here; I’m simply noting the very manageable scale of the problem.  This is beyond question  doable. The challenge then is moral.  It’s spiritual.  And this would be no surprise to Adam Smith who seventeen years before writing The Wealth of Nations wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  In that book of 1759 Adam Smith observed that for the invisible hand of the free market to work its magic it would take moral sentiments – specifically, it would take sympathy, the ability of economic players to identify with the emotions of others and to care about the general welfare.

But from where do we derive, from where do we inspire, such sympathy?  Whose voices must be heard and in what settings would they best be heard?

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1 The United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1998, pp. 29-30.