| Philosophy
Welcome. The following represents a few of
the thoughts floating around in my head. This is an
attempt to share some of what inspires me, what I believe, and what
motivates me to move on...
It Doesn't
Matter...
…what
you have been doing for the past twenty years or what you did last
night.
…if you are
politically conservative or liberal.
…if you feel like
you have all of the answers or if you haven’t got a clue.
…if you are
married, un-married, have children, pregnant or hate kids.
…if
you are unemployed or working; selling cars or selling yourself.
…if you prefer coffee, tea, wine or beer.
…if you
desire the opposite or the same sex.
…if you
grew up attending a church or have never been to one in your life.
…if you believe in God or believe you are a god.
It doesn’t
matter because we all desire the same things; to be loved and
accepted unconditionally. I once read a quote that said,
"People deserve to be loved because they exist. And that
love has to come without a price tag." What "price
tag" do we pin on our acceptance of other people? We are
all just a bit more judgmental, prejudice, and critical than we might
choose to admit or even realize. But how do we want others to
see us? Don't "they" all deserve the same?
The Creative
Spirit
A few years ago during Spring break, I had the opportunity to sneak
away from the house and spend the day in my classroom workshop
creating. I do create a lot of things in many media, but this
was a special day. It has set my path in what I'm sure
will prove to be a life-long pursuit into the deep connection with the
power of the creative process.
This day was a
beautiful Spring day, warm enough to have the door open to see, feel
and smell the new forming Spring. I was in the shop to work on a
new acoustic lap steel guitar prototype that I had been
designing. As usual, I connected up to Pandora Radio. This
day I dialed in some fantastic deep delta blues, the raw unpolished
kind that reach right into your soul and make you feel the heart of
each player. I worked for about 6 hours that day, getting lost
in time and lost in the complete joy of creating. The instrument
was taking shape and at each turn of the drill and sander, I could
begin to hear the tone ringing from within. At points, I found
myself completely lost in the joy of creating what I had been made to
create; expressing myself in the world that I was meant to be.
Not for anyone or for anyone else's expectations, but just for the
pure sake of creating. No stress, just fulfillment, joy, peace,
and connection...connection that I could only describe as
spiritual.
That evening, I
was attending my son's baseball game. A perfect day had turned
into a perfect evening surrounded by friends, family and
revelry. At the end of the game, I set off by myself to get the
car and bring it around to pick up my family. As I rounded the
school and moved out of sight from the ball field, I happened to look
back over my shoulder at the setting sun. It was one of those indescribably
stunning early Spring sunsets with swirls of rich reds, oranges and
yellows streaked with nearly every imaginable shade of blue...simply
stunning! At that moment it struck me...I had always
referred to God as the "creator God" but at that moment I
knew that perception had been radically altered. At that moment
I saw God as the "creator God who continues to
create." He creates just because he can and he has never
stopped. Each moment that passed as I watched the setting sun
brought a new composition, never static but in constant motion.
I imagined God to be painting and repainting continually to offer me
the scene that was unfolding before my eyes; not in a fever pitch of
frenzied stress, but out of the joy that comes from creating.
Not to appease anyone else, but just to be and to revel in the
process; free from stress, free from expectation, free from criticism,
free from concern about quality, just set free...
I feel that we
are closest to our God when we create...and creating can take on any
form from writing, to performing music, to painting, to building
instruments...to creating spreadsheets, to writing software, to
preparing a sales presentation. To do what you were made to do,
to create what you were made to create, that will set you free.
Now, I am not an insect person, but I once heard that there are over
400,000 different species of beetles, and new species are being
discovered regularly (or maybe created...). There was once a display
at the Rochester Museum and Science Center of a few hundred of these
and they were so diverse in their size, color, etc. Now, why
would God care to create so many beetles? I often think that God
must have had a frolicking great time making these. I imagine
him reveling so greatly in creating each beetle that he lost all track
of time...and, after all, why not? I believe that we are each
wired with that same creative spirit and as we express that spirit, we
are somehow drawn more intimately to the spirit that created
us.
Our Inspiration
We are maturing, evolving and morphing in our spiritual journey.
I used to think I had all of the answers; that God, Church and
Religion were so perfectly black and white. I was deeply
involved in that culture for many decades. But now I hold on
loosely to what I believe...and I believe, I no longer know. I
doubt and I wonder. I appreciate and value what other people
believe. I no longer feel the need to be right but can listen
and appreciate. I do accept, appreciate and value those
who are very different from me because I was once very different from
me...and I often find myself longing to be much more like those...
Our faith
journey still has us walking closely in the footsteps of Jesus, but
definitely not the Christian religion that humans have created around
Him. We do not attend Christian church nor advocate church
indoctrination as a necessity for a living and growing friendship with
God. This is some of what we believe and what inspires us
to be more like Jesus as we understand him...
God is very cool. He is somehow three separate gods in one,
"father", "son" and "holy spirit". The
son Jesus came to earth to live and then be killed for the
unconditional love that he showed to everyone...a great irony, I
know. After being dead for three days he returned to human life
for a short while, then went back to heaven. This act of
self-sacrifice was performed for everyone and all will unconditionally
benefit, no matter what one "believes". The Holy Spirit
then came to continue to interact with us and help us to grow in his
spirit (Which, incidentally, is the Holy Spirit's job, not the pastors
job;^).
While on earth,
Jesus
made some pretty extreme, counter culture statements that still
seem as radical today...especially radical to many religious
"Christians". Check them out...
“You
have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your
enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in
heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and
he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those
who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax
collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are
you different from
anyone else? (Matthew
5:43-47 )
“Do to
others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence
of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.
(Matthew
7:12)
"Be
especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't
make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God
who made you won't be applauding. When you do something for
someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in
action, I'm sure—'playactors' I call them— treating prayer meeting
and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as
someone is watching, playing to the crowds." (Matthew
6:1-2, but check out the entire chapter)
“Teacher, which is
the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all
your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and
greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the
prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew
22:36-40)
"'For I was hungry and you gave
me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you
clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and
you came to visit me.' "Then
the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and
feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did
we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe
you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
"The King will reply, 'I tell
you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers
of mine, you did for me.'" (Matthew
25:35-40)
“You know
that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials
flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be
different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your
servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of
everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to
serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
(Mark
10:42-45)
Some of his friends
said some radical things, too...
"Anyone who
sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is
self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real
religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this:
Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard
against corruption from the godless world." (James
1:26-27)
"What good is
it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can
such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without
clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I
wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about
his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by
itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James
2:14-17)
"This is the
kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid
of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts.
What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the
hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on
the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around
at once. Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage." (Isaiah
58:6-9)
"The Spirit of the
Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from
darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's
favor..." (Isaiah
61:1-2a)
A Better Question
Too often, those of us who believe Jesus is the Son of God spend our
time creating a comfortable home for ourselves, thinking about,
"What kind of church do I want?" or in a futile and endless
search for the ever elusive "good Christian"
life.
The great Danish
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813 – November 11, 1855)
offered a similar diagnosis:
The matter is quite
simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we
Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be
unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we
understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words
in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself
to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my
whole life will be ruined. How will I ever get on in the
world?
Herein lies the problem with Christian scholarship. Christian
scholarship is the church's prodigious invention to defend itself
against the Bible, to ensure that we can be good Christians without
the Bible coming too close.
The modern-day
musician and social activist Bono (of U2 fame) has said (YouTube
link),
It's not a coincidence that in the
scriptures poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not
an
accident.
It's a lot of air time. The only time Jesus Christ was judgmental
was on the subject of the
poor, 'As you
have done it unto the least of these my brethern, you have done it
unto me.'
A better question
and our motivating philosophy has become, "What kind of world does God
want?" A radical transformation needs to take
place in our thinking and our action; with a shift away from "me" to an emphasis on
love, mercy, grace, concern, and care; on how Jesus has taught us to live our lives
for Him and for the benefit of others.
Playing the Trickster
So, how do we go about encouraging this shift? Author Kester
Brewin ("Signs of Emergence") says we need to play with
dirt; where dirt is defined as the British anthropologist Mary
Douglas has, "matter out of place." On your plate,
pizza and wings are a tasty party meal, but in the trash can they are dirt. Soil in the garden is a source of life, but tracked into
the house becomes dirt. We can learn to exist in the the interplay of
the sacred (dedicated, holy) and the profane (unholy, polluted); to
take the sacred and use it as common or to take the common and use it
as sacred; to break the norms; to shift the paradigms; to encourage
people to think about things in different ways. After all, who
has declared one to be sacred and one to be profane? Again,
Kester Brewin says, "By pushing all of our...dirt
'outside', we risk abdicating our responsibility to do something about
the roots of it and actually do damage to our psyche."
Perhaps it is simply matter that has been misplaced from the
beginning. Our "dirt work" may not be
"cleaning" so much as re-thinking what "locations"
are fitting. In
mythology, there exists a character sometimes (although not
sufficiently) described as the "trickster". Lewis
Hyde, in his book "Trickster Makes the World", says this
about the "trickster"
In short, trickster is a boundary-crosser.
Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and tricksters
are always
there, at the gates of the city and at the gates of life, making sure
there is commerce. He also
attends the
internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social
life. We constantly distinguish-right
and wrong,
sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old,
living and dead-and in
every case
trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.
Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore
the wise fool,
the gray-haired baby, the cross dresser, the speaker of sacred
profanities. Where someone's
sense of
honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear
to suggest an amoral action,
something
right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the
mythic embodiment of ambiguity and
ambivalence,
doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
...there are also cases where trickster creates a boundary, or brings
to the surface a distinction previously
hidden from
sight. ...The boundary is where he will be found.
...social life can depend on treating antisocial
characters as
part of the sacred. Art
and the creative spirit is the very vehicle that ought to function as
the modern-day trickster to our society. It allows us to cross
over lines, to state boldly, to offend in order to gray the boundary,
to empower... The creative spirit can offer a place to ask
questions, to explore, to discover there is no "right"
answer, to express, to wrestle, and to receive "permission"
to break free. Playing
trickster is not always popular, but play we must! As a bit of a
dervish and speaker of sacred profanities, this is most exciting ;^) Furthering
the Conversation
Gray
Chautauqua
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