Poof

This coming Friday is my birthday; I turn 62, which means I enter my 63^rd year of life. Don’t think about sending a gift, though cash is always welcome. I buy my own birthday presents since I know what I want better than anyone else, and to tell someone else what to buy is tacky. What am I giving myself for my birthday? Poof.

My life has been lived in the quest for stability. Every company I have started or worked for was supposed to have been a permanent gig. Yet all of them went poof.

Poof is the key to understanding my favorite book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes. You can translate the opening teaching as, “Poof after poof, everything goes poof.” So it isn’t that poof is new; what is new is that I’m giving myself permission to experience poof without guilt.

My main work is writing and lecturing. No, that’s not exactly right: my main work is thinking. The writing and lecturing are expressions of the thinking. So my job is to think, and then to share what I think in words both printed and spoken.

But writing and lecturing are all poof jobs. I write a book, magazine column, journal essay, or even a blog post or Tweet, and poof it’s gone, and I have to write another. The same with talking: I visit one venue, share some of my thoughts, and poof it is over, and I have to find another venue. Nothing lasts.

This used to trouble me. I wanted the security that comes with something that lasts. But, come this Friday when I give myself permission to live a life of poof without fear, guilt, or regret, it will trouble me no longer.

Poof is liberating. I am free of having to maintain efforts that don’t work, and free to experiment with efforts that might not work, or, if they do work needn’t work forever. I will continue to produce poof: essays, books, columns, talks, retreats, and the like, but I will now do so without feeling guilty about it.

So happy birthday, Me, and welcome to your 63^rd year of life, which, like life itself, will very shortly go poof.

The End Times is Comin

The End Times is comin. No doubt bout that. Ya know how I know? Well, I know cause the Senate is gonna kill gun control, an y’know how I know that, well I know that cause America is a Christian nation and Jesus wrote the Constitution and when Jesus put in the Second Amendment He meant it.

Oh, no, Jesus wrote the Constitution and the Bills of Rights and right there in the number two position, just below the right t’ be a Christian, is the right t’ bear arms. An Jesus was no passifist. No way. Yeah, He said that bout livin by the sword and dyin by the sword, but that was swords not guns. An Jesus never said you can’t buy a sword only that you might die by one. So even if Jesus said bout livin by the gun an dyin by the gun, He didn’t say nothin about not havin the right to buy a gun.

You think Jesus didn’t know bout guns? Come on, man, Jesus is God, we agree on that, so if Jesus is God and God knows everything past n future then Jesus knows bout guns and says nothin when he coulda said somethin since he knew about everythin.

Course the Constitution is for Americans only so nonChristians don’t got the same rights and probably shouldn’t have guns especially if they’re Mooslims cause Mooslims would use them t’ kill Christians and make us do Sharia Law and not let our womin drive which I gotta ‘mit wouldn’t be all that bad, but all that would be un-American and if there’s one thing that we all agree on is that Jesus is not un-American.

That’s why I know the End Times is comin and why I congradjewlate those in yer face Christians who want ya t’ be saved. Yeah, I knew Mooslims are proselizin too, but while I would give them the notion that they think they’re doin good by bein in yer face with Mooslimism, I wouldn’t ‘llow them to do it because they aren’t offerin ya something ya need. Everybody needs t’ be saved and we can all agree that Jesus is the only way t’ that so when an in yer face Christian gets in yer face he does it t' save ya or give ya something ya want—eternal life in the world to come—whereby the others aren’t given ya something ya need or even want cause they can’t give ya eternal life in the world to come cause only Jesus can do that as we already agreed and they ain’t got Jesus.

So ya put all that together and ya know the End Times is comin.

[Did this “conversation” happen? I’m not saying it did happen, but if it did it would have happened outside a hotel up north with a valet taking a cigarette break. But I’m not saying this happened, because if I did say it happened, you wouldn’t believe me. So I’m not saying it did or it didn’t. Let me know if you think it did, and if you’ve ever had a conversation like it.]

Love Thy Neighbor

 The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro was and for many still is a catalyst of much controversy in our middle Tennessee town. But the mosque’s neighbor, Grace Baptist Church knows how to make the Muslim neighbors feel welcome.

First, they put up a gauntlet of crosses that the Muslim community must drive by on their way to the mosque. Second, they now house the Evangelical Arabic Church aimed at converting Arab speaking Muslims to Christianity.

Pastor Ghattas of the Evangelical Arabic Church is quoted in the Daily News Journal, the Boro’s local paper, saying: “I want the American public to see Islam from a Christian perspective, how we love (the Muslims) and how we are not afraid of them because we want to build bridges, not walls.”

I’m all for the ending fear, though I suspect local Mosque-goers will fear the evangelical enthusiasm of their Arabic-speaking neighbors. And I’m all for building bridges, but I wonder if the traffic goes both ways: Islam is no less evangelical that Christianity.

I look forward to this Battle of Revelations. 

Religion and Meaning-Making

Science is a relatively new development in the evolution of humanity. Before science, religion told us the what and how of life. For example, to explain the fact that many lizards have legs but snakes do not, Jewish science gave us the Theory of Eden where the snake loses its legs as punishment for seducing the woman to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was good science in its day. Not so much in our own.

Even believers in biblical literacy rarely use the Eden Theory to explain why snakes have no legs. You could argue that this is a sign that science is winning, and that may make you sad. But it is also a sign that religion is being liberated, and that makes me glad.

Religion at its best is the meaning making function of humanity. Its tools are imagination, symbol, narrative, and ritual. When forced to function as a science, religion did the best it could, but today, liberated from the obligation to be science, it can do what it is uniquely suited to do: make meaning.

Science frees religion to be its best, and at its best religion works hand in hand with science: asking science to reveal the facts of nature so that religion can fashion its meaning. The reason science and religion are in conflict is that there are still many religious folks who refuse to abandon the old role of religion as science. But eventually science will win. And so will religion.

Religion as meaning making will celebrate science, but not be cowed by science. Where science may see a lack of meaning in nature, religion can say, “Not so—we humans are nature’s way of making meaning.” We humans are the way God or Reality or Tao or Nature makes meaning just as an apple tree is the way God or Reality or Tao or Nature makes apples.

I find this so exciting. Every time science discovers something new, especially when that something new seems to shake the foundation of our current level of meaning, it is a fresh opportunity for religion to make new meaning. And because we are using our creativity and imagination to do this—the very things that, along with our thumbs—make us of value to the universe—we need not defend old and outmoded meanings, but celebrate our capacity to create new meanings. Religion, when it is free from having to be science, is free to embrace science and make meaning in response to it.

Religion as meaning making will require a new kind of clergy: not a preserver of the old or the sacred, but a creator of the new and the holy. And since meaning needs to embodied and played out through narrative, symbol, and ritual, the new clergy will have to be masters of symbolic play, tellers of great tales, and guides into meaning through ritual acts that allow us to engage the what of science in a way that makes our lives more meaningful, just, and compassionate.

Imagine a seminary where the story of science from the Big Bang to the present moment is part of the curriculum. Where students are taught how to cull the myths, symbols, and rituals of humanity and reshape them in service to meaning even as they are taught to create new myths, symbols, and rituals to do the same. Imagine a seminary where the sacred text is freed from historical fact to reveal meaning–filled, even if temporary, truths.

These won’t be Jewish or Christian seminaries; they won’t bear the labels of one religious brand or another. They will be a new kind of seminary where science will inform the work of meaning making as students learn to draw from the immense storehouse of human religious creativity and tap the even larger well of human imagination and meaning-making capacity.

Just imagine what religious celebration might be like. And as you do, share your thoughts with us here. 

Are You an Atheist?

“Are you an Atheist?”

I’m often asked this question during lectures despite the fact that I use the word “God” regularly. My usual response is to take cover in cleverness: “My atheism depends on your theism. If you believe in Zeus or Apollo, then, yes, I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who chooses one people over another and privileges one strip of real estate over another, then, yes I’m an atheist. If you believe in a god who has children, or who dictates books on mountaintops or in caves, or who saves some and damns others, then, yes, I’m an atheist. But if you believe in the God of Einstein and Spinoza, the God who is Reality itself—the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, then I’m not an atheist.”

Most of the time this works, but sometimes being clever just falls on deaf ears: “But, are you an atheist? Do you believe in a God we can pray to? YHVH, Allah, the First Person of the Trinity, or even Krishna? Yes or no?”

No. But….

“There is no ‘but’ here. It isn’t a difficult question. And you answered it honestly. No, you don’t believe in God, so, yes, you are an atheist.”

At this point someone usually comes to my defense and suggests I’m an agnostic, but I politely refuse this offer of help. While it is true that no one can prove or disprove the existence of God, I will state unequivocally that I don’t believe in the existence of Krishna, Allah, YHVH, the Trinity, or any other object of theological speculation.

So am I an atheist or not? And how about you? Are you an atheist?