Some perspectives are better than others

I was lying awake in bed at about 4:30 in the morning, because my cat had gotten me up again to open the door for him.  He has no mercy that way!

Lying there, I was thinking about my life and the meanings of events therein, and what I–or anyone–could learn from those things.  This is a general theme of many of my thoughts.  I started to think about the scientific concept of “objectivity.”  I do realize its value.  Obviously, if you want to find out whether a particular event in the physical world happens in a particular way, it’s important to approach the investigation in the most unbiased way possible–otherwise your preferences will influence the outcome, and you will not get clear information.

However, as a believer, I realized that there is another factor to consider.  God is Love, and with deep care, longing and infinite love created our unfolding universe.  So, the best way to scientifically investigate the world is with Great Love.  It’s as Mother Teresa told us:  Life is well lived by doing even “small things with great love.”

The kind of love I’m talking about is not based in self-interest.  The Universe is sustained through time in Great Love, even as we measure it by our tiny planet’s predictable rotations ’round our small and firey sun.  Love does not bias results but enhances our ability to achieve them, because like the deep Love God offers us, it is about great respect and freedom–to see what is really there.  When we miss the mark and live in a way less than worthy of His plan, he clearly shows–and even tells–us that we are off-target.  God’s view IS the truth!

Love has no bias but the utter fulfillment of the highest dream of God.  And it is the true point of view from which to see the Truth of our physical world.

Photo from DandyDanny on Flickr

Anybody want to try their chemistry experiments with great love?

There’s room for good work and faith here!

It’s been more than a month since my last post!

But honest, I had not much to say.  My heart was full, but the words didn’t come from my heart as they sometimes can–not until today.  And there’s so much out there to read anyway, why create more without the good reasons of my heart and mind?

Today I heard the results of the Iowa primary on the radio, and I heard one of the candidates (name not necessary) direct specific comments about how our country is in grave peril of “going socialist.”  Ah.  Yes.  I felt greatly annoyed, because once again a politician was bandying inflammatory language without concrete referents.  I thought of other extremes our society tolerates in political discourse these days.  I speculated as to how long it will take for the left to complete this thrust toward greater polarization by starting to call the richest one percent and the politicians who toady to their agenda “fascists.”  (Actually, I think they have already taken to this tactic, and I’ve simply ignored them.)  And thus America is “going socialist” and “going fascist.”

But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that sadly both views have great truth in them.  Yes, you heard me.   They’re both right.  Differing perspectives are the building materials of a free society, and they offer us the information we need to move forward.  Increasingly, however we have not been honoring them and using them to build our society. Since the Vietnam era, Americans have decided that the best way to deal with political opposition is to move further along their particular political continuum, stating their beliefs in the form of ever more extreme positions–as if the answers to social problems resided in stronger rhetoric.  Most citizens have lost sight of the work of dialogue and compromise.

It is absolutely true that our federal budget deficit is over-the-top huge, and we need to stop spending so much.  We’ve got to tighten our federal belt, among other things.  It is also true that there are a myriad of options–other than the federal government or state government–for providing for the reasonable and just needs of our citizens.  And, it is true that workers deserve a living wage, and that our economy would be much healthier if they could earn one.  It is true that “the richest one percent”  –actually I think it’s the richest three percent– are benefitting from a vicious and degrading culture of greed and corruption that is literally bankrupting us all.  Someone (me at least, and maybe you?) needs to be brave enough to stand up to them.  Sitting in the street makes a statement, but it won’t get the heavy lifting done.

We have a lot of work to do.  Let’s stop calling each other “socialists” and “fascists.”  Demanding that an ethic of care and justice must underly our social actions does not make us “socialists,” and does not determine the nature of the means by which we provide that care and justice.  Reliance on individual freedoms and marketplace solutions doesn’t make us “fascists.”  Let us develop a deeply shared morality, which shall be the fabric of our truly successful society. Polarization leaves us only the cold, barren landscape of civil strife.  Let’s listen to one another, talk with one another, recognize some things that need doing, and do them.

Lesson two: Blessed are those who mourn

I confess that when I have mourned, I felt totally, completely alone—doomed and lost.  But I was not alone.  God and the angels were with me.  I was given the gift of being able to forgive, and when I allowed this gift to be expressed by me, to take hold of me, and fill my heart and my vision, my healing processes began.  The gift of forgiveness that God gave me and inspired me with was what made it possible for me to go on, to continue living—to bring my broken body and my broken life through to another day and other days after that—to build a different life, and to continue on the path toward God—a path that was not totally conscious to me at that time, but it was there nevertheless, or I wouldn’t be here today.  It is only by God’s mercy that I am here today.

Not my car exactly, but my car was similar model/color. Mine had more top-smash-down going on.

I confess that I realize the world is full of mourning.  As a sociology teacher, I’m in a pretty good position to know that.  I confess that the global slave trade and sex trafficking are flourishing.  Mainstream western culture creates a social milieu not unlike that of the ancient Roman Empire, and many people are willing to live off the suffering of others in order to enrich themselves.  We are also a morally bankrupt society.  We support and condone sexualized sensationalism in the name of “freedom of speech,” and this climate helps to maintain the activities of human traffickers.  To make matters worse, many Christian voices have been co-opted to serve a narrow, sexualized moral agenda, which is voiced in an unkindly and judgmental manner.  I confess that we must remember that those who mourn are blessed.  We must have deep respect for people who have been caught up in the lies and vanities of our hyper-sexual, hyper-violent society.  These are the people, ultimately, who also mourn.

I confess that many youth today are mourning.  They dress themselves in black.  They pierce their bodies and cut themselves in desperation.  They are happy if they feel ANYTHING, and what they feel most is sadness and despair.  They see the doors closed for them.  God loves them.  We must love and respect them, be gentle with them, and show them the open doors.

 

I confess that clean, fresh water is becoming a threatened commodity.  I confess that water belongs to God and not to us.  I don’t think anyone has the right to own water in a way that keeps water from others and forces them to pay for it.  Water can be owned in a collective and stewardship sense, with a small fee taken as necessary for its maintenance, but the water piracy that’s developing in the world now is bad news.  All who thirst are suffering.  Those who lose their water mourn.

Horn of Africa Crisis: By the Numbers. InfoGraphic by Rich Clabaugh/ Monitor staff

At the present writing, the drought-caused famine in the Horn of Africa has taken on even more deadly proportions.  More than 13 million people have been dispossessed, and more than 30,000 children have died in the past four months (USAID (the United States Agency for International Development).  In the time it takes to write, or to read, this page, another child will perish.  I confess that the world is as full of sorrow as of joy, and that I must maintain an awareness of this and a sense of responsibility to those in need, and to the God who loves us.  I confess that I must DO more than feel sorry.  I mourn that I live in a world like this, but Christ can help me transform helplessness into help for others.  I confess that I will pray to know what to do.

From what, exactly?

Unless your life has some major disconnects from mainstream culture, you were probably told at some point that you need to be “saved” by Jesus Christ.

If you’re anything like me, you probably responded somewhere in the ballpark if “huh?”

Actually, my “huh?” has a chronology of its own.  My first stage was Total Attention.  I listened with surprise and interest as I was informed by a couple of my high school peers that the Bible has some sort of agenda that unfolds in the present–an agenda, it seems, somewhat different from what my parents had explained to me–a competing theory, you might say.  Apparently what the historical character named Jesus accomplished during his brief period on earth 2,000 years ago was supposed to have something to do with every one of us.  Yeah, right.  Thank you for informing me of this belief system that is meaningful to you and to other people in your church.  I’ve learned something about you.  Have a nice day.

Stage two was Humor and Consternation:  “Yeah, sure.”

Stage three was Discernment:  A couple of my regular buddies said, “Nyah, Jesus saves…BLUE CHIP STAMPS!!!” one too many times.  I thought it was a disrespectful thing to say.  After all, if this great teacher THOUGHT he was dying for all of us, why shouldn’t we at least respect the effort and speak of him nicely?

Stage four was Anger:  “I didn’t ask anybody to die for me!  I don’t NEED anybody to die for me!  This is all a bunch of interpreted nonsense.  What do you MEAN ‘Christianity is the only religion that makes sense?’  It makes NO sense whatsoever!!  And furthermore, people who CALL themselves Christians are a pain in the ass!!!  Ignorant, judgmental, and not helpful at all.  LEAVE ME the F… ALONE!!!”  And that stage lasted a long, long time.

The next stage, which kicked in after I got a little older and mellowed out a bit, was Genuine Curiosity.  On the surface, it sounds somewhat like the anger stage, because the same questions are there, and I’ve made no progress with them.  However, I learned enough about psychology by this time to understand that if I’m inexplicably angry about something that doesn’t seem to call for anger on the surface of it, then I have some personal issues around it that need to be taken care of.  For example, I wasn’t angry at the Hare Krishnas (where have they gone, anyway?) and they used to mercilessly try to convert me, too.  So I began to think reflectively, and ask some questions:  “Save me from WHAT, exactly?”

No, seriously.  I’m a good person.  I really am.  From what would I possibly need saving, and why would some nice person who died 2000 years ago have anything to do with that?

Did you know that the word “person” comes from the ancient Persian word “phersu,” which means “mask”?  (The Greeks got their famous drama/comedy masks from the Persians.)  What makes me a “person” is the “persona” I create in response to social situations.  I start life as a daughter, a friend, a student–learning more and more roles.  But who am *I* without these roles?  The only thing that really makes me *ME* is my connection with God.  Nothing else about me is real.  Nothing that I have done outside of my connection with God really exists.  It’s all masks and mirrors.  Then why bother to do anything–to write this blog?  I-in-connection-with-God am a traveler here on earth, and it’s fascinating.  Why NOT write a blog?

It was sociology that showed me that I am not my social selves, but Jesus showed me what it would look like if human beings lived–really *lived*– in contact with God at least a lot of the time.  He said that we are all sons of God like him, if we can realize that and get goin’ on it.  So, that’s Part 1 of what I take “saved” to mean–shows us what humans should be, how they should live, and how to be REAL inside, once we realize that we’re empty inside.

Karl Marx said, “All that is solid melts into air,” or something right along those lines.  What he meant was, “if you use your logics, any logic, to analyze something long enough, that thing will cease to be valid, cease to have coherency, melt into air.”  And it’s true.  Did you ever discuss the philosophy of something until you couldn’t do it anymore?  That’s what philosophers DO.  They spend their whole lives trying to build up systems of thought that you can’t crash.  But at the most we get a collection of competing systems of thought that are interesting.  When I think of myself as a “person,” I think of Marx’s aphorism and feel myself start to melt into air.  Basically, so does everything else.  We are just travelers here, and this is the holodeck.

I’m going to take another look at the sentence, “I’m not a bad person.”  Well, not until I look under the surface.  Honestly, I’ve done some terrible things, and without my connection with God through Christ, I would probably, under the right circumstances, be capable of doing them again.  I have what everyone else has–my full psychological plate-full of neuroses, anxieties, fixations and other assorted pathologies.  When I say “I’m good,” it is really a surface-level affirmation, a wish, a positioning.  As a dear friend of mine says, “Spiritual growth and psychological growth go hand-in-hand.”  The Greek word “psychology” meant the logic or study of the soul.  So it is this, too, that Christ saves me from: the morass of my psychological stuff.  He is sort of a lighthouse in a dark swamp.  The Christ that’s in me helps me organize my psychological stuff.  Because, remember–otherwise there’s no *ME* to do the organizing.

So, to sum it up, it’s “the notion that I’m anybody,” and “the notion that I’m good.”  That’s from what.

Casting Jesus

I was going to write on Sunday, but got backed-up by work.  When I finally got things squared away on Sunday night, about 10:30, I caught my reflection in the mirror–and it was like a quick “fright” shot in a horror movie. …Dare I look again?  What will I see?  But I had to deal with it, so I peered carefully back into the mirror.  Yes, my left eye (my good eye, the one that actually pretty much sees well) was full of blood!  Red stuff.  OMG.  What to do?  Why doesn’t it hurt?  Can I just ignore this?

Monday after work, there was a quick trip to the eye doctor… that would be the trip to get my glasses prescription reviewed, the appointment that I’ve been postponing for about a year.  I love my eye doctor (I forget which “o” kind of doctor she is, but she is the one who actually has a medical degree of some kind, and is a fully-empowered elder fairy godmother, so why would I put off seeing her?) I put these appointments off because I just hate having my eyes dilated, and she had threatened (promised) to do it “next time.”  Dr. Horwitz was cheerful.  You could almost sense her fairy wings helping her to lightly navigate her work space.  The verdict?  I had sneezed or something and broken a blood vessel–evidently a very common thing.  It looks ugly, but no biggie, really.  She calibrated my new prescription, and administered a lecture about avoiding seeing doctors in general (how did she know?  I guess I told her.  She is so personable and easy to talk to!)

So I ended up telling her about my friend who has a serious glaucoma diagnosis and no health insurance.  Instantly, she hands me a lovely green and blue business card.  She tells me that there is a group of local eye surgeons who will offer doctor visits, treatment and meds for free for such people in exchange for their participation in medical studies that follow their progress.  WOW!  That was so timely!  My friend needed the information and there, almost by accident, was the answer.  I felt the hand of the Lord in this exchange.  I am so grateful that even now as I write this, my eyes well with tears.

I love my life of miracles!  I won’t live in a dead universe of only molecules, atoms, bits and emptinesses.  There is great Intelligence within all of this.  My relationship to the Whole is one of love.

Driving to work yesterday morning, I removed my purse from the passenger seat, because sometimes I feel I must do so out of respect, because Jesus is sitting next to me.  I just know it.  He can sit next to billions of people at the same time, you know.  He has super powers.  I wondered if we were filming a movie of me and Jesus in the car, what would the director want Jesus to look like?  How would they cast Jesus?  Would they ask Mel to reprise his role?  (I will not go see that movie.  That would be the subject of another blog that I’m not ready to write yet.)  I looked over and (well, I really should have been paying more attention to the road, but it worked out OK) …I can’t really tell you about how it feels to see with your eyes and heart at the same time.  I think you know what I mean!  And His beautiful face shown with that translucent, vulnerable, great-strength glow that it has, and then his ethnicity began to “flip.” It was always the same personality, but at times His beauty was contained by the chiseled planes of onyx features, at times by the dignity of Mayan silence, at times His appearance evoked a Confucian monk, at other times a young Thor–and yet again the prayerful and playful Countenance that is part of my normal imaginings of Him.

Why the change of ethnicities?  I don’t know.  I began to think that if they were casting Jesus in a movie, they really should get a whole bunch of men–and women? to play Him, because He is all of us.  He took on ALL of our karma to run an end-game touchdown to heal the whole universe.  He has been in every dark corner that any of us have ever been.  As Carl Jung said, he is the human archetype.  He is our savior in the mythic dimension of time.  And He wants me to write about casting him.  I don’t know why, but I did.  OK, I know why.  I love Him!

An “Anything Can Happen” Day!

Remember the “Mouskateers Anything Can Happen Day?”

This morning when I turned down the lovely and familiar street to park in the parking lot of my church, there were pickets standing on the sidewalk between me and the parking lot!  And they had signs!:  Repent!  The wicked will go to hell and the good will be lifted up!  The end is coming!  …and similar stereotypical messages.

Wow!!! What’s going ON???  I felt a little violated.  They didn’t try to stop me from driving into the parking lot, but they shook their signs at me.  Weird!  Do they think I’m not Christian enough for them or something?

As I walked across the parking lot, I looked back over at the group–there were about ten people, all adult or middle-aged, of various races, mostly male, some tall/short/fat/thin, normally dressed.  I peered at them.  They saw me looking, and they wiggled their signs at me again.  …Why?

The only mention of the situation I heard during the service was that, while we were praying as we usually do, the Pastor asked God to “Bless the ministry of the people outside.”

During another part of the service, when we were quietly praying and just sitting with God, I asked God what was going on.  I got the feeling that the people outside were judging the people inside.  I asked God to lift my feelings of violation and resentment from me, and to help me take more the attitude of our pastor, and just to go with God’s will and bless them.  …And then after that I asked God to please help me not feel “superior” for NOT judging them while they were judging me!    Layer upon layer upon layer, I try to allow the layers to just fall away, and just feel God in my heart.  But it’s so funny and sad, so many emotions to feel in this life.  I feel the emotions and fully live my life, but also just let them go.  And so finally I can just sit and bless them.

Later, after Bible study, which I am so very thankful for and love so deeply, I found out what the pickets wanted.  Apparently they are from a Christian group who believes that churches shouldn’t be incorporated–that is, they shouldn’t be sanctioned by the government in any way.  And since our church is a 501 C3 nonprofit, and obtained that status by filling out papers and filing them with the government, this would, according to the group of pickets, put our faith at risk.

Well, gee, I disagree.  But that’s life in a free country, I guess.  They seem to choose churches at random, and today was our lucky day.  A man told me he had been attending our church for years and had never seen them before.  I was going to find you a picture of them on the internet, but there isn’t one.  Just tons of pictures of people with much uglier signs than they had.  I don’t want to look anymore.

I looked up the group that was picketing.  It seems they aren’t as interested in maintaining separation of church and state as I am.  The group finds it upsetting that tax codes won’t allow pastors to endorse political candidates.  However, I think I can decide who I want to vote for without asking my pastor.  He’s a wonderful man, but that’s simply not his role!

The growing edge

Yesterday in Gilbert, AZ, a raucous bunch–about 75–tea partiers tried to bully John McCain.  He stood and stayed the course.

A bully is motivated by fear.  Tactics like “shouting down”, and disparaging thoughtful discourse come from a point of view where the people doing it believe they are right, and all other views are wrong.

Have you ever participated in a talking circle?  Each person offers his or her own take.  By the time all have spoken their heart and mind, the complexity of an issue can resonate, the key points are articulated.  Going around again and again until consensus is reached is a way to do multivocal, many-voiced public thinking.  Shouting others down is a way to hand out the brown shirts.

As a Christian, I will pray and ask God to be with me as I walk my daily walk–whether it is to attend a political meeting or to find my slippers.

When I walk with God, I do not know the kind of fear that would launch the words in my mind to loudly claim the next moment for me, for my side.

The next moment is for me to listen–both outwardly to my worldly environment and inwardly to hear the quiet voice of God.  God is Love.  How do I love in this situation, oh God?  God is righteousness.  How do I live in right relationship with others right now, oh God?

The walk of faith is the walk of two worlds at once.

The walk of faith is allowing a holy space in life.

Lord, please be my breath, my words for me, this moment!

Words and phrases that have new meaning for me: Prayer

To me, prayer has always been “talking to God,” and there have been very few times when I was so upset that I didn’t think God heard me.  My mother taught me to say The Lord’s Prayer at bedtime.  A series of nice thoughts, or something like that.  I found it confusing.

As an adult, I found out that The Lord’s Prayer is suggested to us by Christ himself!  This is what He says in Matthew 6:9 NIV:

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
¹⁰ your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,^[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.^[b]’

For those who want to pray but don’t know where to start, a good way to do it is to read or recite a simple prayer such as this one (and especially this one, since it’s recommended by a Very Good Source!)

But I’ve also stumbled into discovering that I can use the prayer in another way–as a template for a prayer life that alters the way I feel and perceive.

You could think of the lines of the prayer not as actual lines, but as categories.  In the same way that a business letter has a salutation, body, and signature, this prayer “template” to me suggests Praise of God, Personal Orientation to God, Support in Daily Activities, Personal Orientation in Daily Activities–and then most people, including me, end it with a brief recapitulation of Praise (“For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever! – Amen”)

I used to not bother much with praise of God.  I thought that “the need to praise God” was invented by a bunch of greedy clerics who wanted people to feel small so that the clerics could maintain their authority/dominance and fleece the congregations.  “God already knows that He’s great!” I would think, “Why would He want to hear us praise Him?”  I would think about singers and actors who attain well-deserved fame, and who patiently endure people telling them how “great” they are–mostly in attempts, on one level or another, to get the celebrities to like them.  Why would I want to treat God like that?

What I’ve learned is that we don’t praise God because God needs our praise, or even because He desires it to “please” Him in some kind of implementation of celestial good manners.  We praise God to remind ourselves about God: how can we conceptualize Him?  It does us good to try to do this every day.  This morning I started my prayer with “You are God–Your Laws are the underpinning of the universe, the dances of the electrons, the DNA of creation!  Your Will creates all order and all chaos, and from all chaos You create Your holy Good. You are my Creator, my Mother and Father, teaching me all righteousness and creating me in Your image, because I have a consciousness that I am responsible for to You.”  That was this morning’s version of “Our Father in heaven, hallowed (that is, “kept holy”) be thy name.”

Every morning it’s a little different.  Sometimes it’s a little wordy, like it was this morning, but then I felt the urge to write about this, so I said, “OK, Lord, if you say so.”  This kind of prayer reminds me of what I think God might be, and puts me in that holy place were I understand myself as a tiny spark of Him, and understand my duty today is to use my body and mind to bring His kingdom–that is: love, justice, joy, peace, compassion, truth into the world.  And thus I am oriented for the start of my day.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  May I not fall off the track today.  May I stay in this consciousness.  But if I fall away from this, as I inevitably will, please help me remove myself and my deeds from the worst of the possible bad consequences that I could create.  What I mean is, “If I yell at someone, please don’t let them be really hurt and go off and do something awful.  Please keep their heart and allow me to find them and apologize.”

“For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.”  Isn’t it odd that we can speak to the Universal Mind?  Isn’t it amazing?

Words and phrases that have new meaning for me: Satan

This blog was going to be “Evil (Part 2),” and with a snappy title like that, I know it will be right up there with blogs about when to change your motor oil and what Hugh Grant is up to these days.  But I found that I couldn’t write more about my understanding of the concept of “evil” without talking about our old buddy, Satan.  Weird.  I almost typed “Santa.”  Never noticed the similarity.  But don’t worry…

In Arabic, his name is almost the same:  Shay-TAN would be how it’s pronounced.  The guy is pretty much known around the world.  I’ve heard of female versions, but they’re not nearly as popular.  It seems that devil has a female aspect as well as a male aspect.  Those future blogs are lookin’ promising.

The concept of Satan is that he is Lucifer, who was a great angel, perhaps the greatest angel in heaven.  “Lucifer” is from Latin roots that mean roughly “light carrier.”  Like us, Lucifer carries an immortal spark of the great I AM.  The difference is, Lucifer seeks to be in charge of the earth, and looks to HIS OWN light that he carries, rather than humbling himself to God.  That’s the whole deal right there.  All bad stuff comes from that one principle of operating on your own rather than in relationship with God.

The evangelists tell me that Satan is in charge here on earth.  Really.  That the whole thing we’ve got going on this planet is his show.  Of course, if we look to the great beauty of the world–you know, the mountains, rushing rivers, myriad plants and animals, the elegant and amazing order of all that IS–THAT is not Satan’s handiwork.  But when I started to think about the political and moral condition of the world throughout history as well as today, I got this flash of starving children and people turning their backs to them, and I got it.  Satan is setting the rules and running the show.  It takes courage and love to take a stand and make a difference in the midst of all this–to raise a loving family, to reach out to others with with caring, compassion and trust.  We don’t do that by consulting our own strength.  Our strength comes from beyond us in the Universe.  If we stay attuned to our relationship with the great I AM, and if we acknowledge our connectedness in our hearts, then we are living in a Godly way.  Then Satan is behind us.

I read a wonderful quote in a book by Lynn Austin, “God doesn’t give you strength, He is your strength.”  Big difference.  There’s no separation.

To be separate from God (that is, to take life on as an isolated, unconnected person) is an evil (that is, worldly-of this world only) existence.  This is Satan’s agenda: just live without a thought for God.  You will suffer, you will hit some great ‘feel-good’ highs, but you’re basically on your own, kid.

The hero’s journey… ultimately the hero serves a cause much greater than himself.

That’s our story.  Learning to connect with Infinite Love all the time.  As you connect up, you will change.

My daughter posted a link to her boyfriend on Facebook, so I read that his religion is “Pansatanism.”  At first I was upset and concerned for her safety.  Then, as I got a bit more familiar with the situation, I realized that Pansatanism is the actual spiritual position of most of the world.  Most people in the world do NOT feel connected to the Infinite, to the Great I AM, connected to the Universe, or anything like that.  Most of us, as the Buddhists phrase it, suffer.

Satan amuses himself by tricking us a lot.  It’s really easy.  Hey!  What’s that over there?  And then I’ve forgotten about the context of my existence as an immortal spark of the Great I AM, and I’m all about that thing over there.  So I’m going to quit writing now, because I’m starting to feel like I “get it.”  And that’s a very dangerous feeling, because it takes me a step away from the edge.  From the edge is the beautiful view, where I can think of the infinite.

Words and phrases that have new meaning for me: evil

It’s a biggie.  Evil.  No doubt about it.

I think that as a child, my exposure to the frequent and opaque use this word was the single most destructive experience that mainstream Christianity dished up for me, and listening, I felt awful!

“Sin” was bad enough, but I could be in dialogue with the word “sin.”  We all make mistakes, and some people are intentionally cruel, inexorably selfish.  I figured that I myself had “sinned” in various ways–being angry with my playmates, stealing cookies, and so forth.  Ah, “sin” will be the topic of some later blog.

To little me, “evil” meant “totally rotten and bad.”  Monsters were evil, and vampires–Adolph Hitler and in general, anyone who set out purposefully to hurt others a lot, either for personal gain–or just for the fun of it (if you enjoy that kind of thing).  I really didn’t feel like I fit in that box.  But that’s what I heard over and over from the pulpit–we are all sinners, we are all evil, and we need to repent!  …My mommy is evil?  My daddy, too?  Even my grandma?  And ME???

After awhile, like so many young people, I drifted away from the church and learned to make meaning on my own.  Deep in my heart, I kept working on a theology, although most of the time my surface life continued with hardly a connection.  Then one day when I was in my mid-forties, while driving and reflecting on events in the news, a thought came to me with great clarity:  “Evil is the absence of love.”

I had been thinking about “the banality of evil,” and about how the Third Reich could erect concentration camps and ovens for people, and get away with it for a long time, because so many other people chose not to see, and not to respond.  There are many like that in any community–people whose lives are narrow and bleak, critical and fearful.  I even think that I could be like that, too.  So often I lack caring,

I realized that love, real love, is transformational.  And if God is love, and if real love is from God, is Divine, is Holy, then those who are far from God (regardless of religious status) are far from love, and those who are far from love are far from God, no matter what their job title.

“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”  Matthew 7:11  and it’s also reported in Luke 11:13.  This really shocked me.  Jesus told his disciples and the people he was teaching that they were evil!  Wow!  Why would He do that?

It turns out that there is another meaning of the word “evil” that I wasn’t aware of.  It simply means “oriented to the business of this world and not to that of God.”

And even though I still don’t like the sound of the word “evil,” I now understand that it has a spectrum of meanings, and that yes, I can be “evil” when I turn toward my life without humility.  It’s not that I have to think “God!” all the time, but I need to operate from that larger awareness that I am one animated speck of His creation.  If I can do that, I can develop my sense of awe, my ability to truly love, and have some foundation for the possibility of courage.