God Is Bigger than Yours (and Mine)

Please join me for “The Passion: In Arts, Texts, and Music: A Contemplative Retreat for Lent,” 9 a.m. – 12 p.m., Saturday, March 8, 2014 at Columbia Theological Seminary. 

Reading “The Archaeology of the Stars” about Population I, II, and III stars in the Science Times of the February 11, 2014 edition of The New York Times, I realized again how tiny are our imaginations when it comes to God.

The tribal*, nationalist, and creationist gods are the tiniest of all. To think of God favoring a tribe or a nation, or to insist that earth is a mere 6000 years old, is a sign of hubris and ignorance that actually “disses” God—in Anglo terms, disrespects and dismisses God.

The movement gods are closer to recognizing the reality, I believe, whether that of the Jesus movement, for instance, or the gods of the ecumenical, interfaith, progressive, New Thought or New Age movements, to name a few examples. But these gods too can be trapped when enshrined in inflexible doctrines and institutions, domesticated like a pet to respond to our expectations.

The god of nature, of the environment, of the cosmos at least de-centers our anthropomorphic way of limiting God. The agnostic god recognizes our inability to imagine God adequately, while the god of atheism too often is a mirror reflection of a god rightly resisted. These three options, despite their alleged disbelief, seem preferable to a god that is nothing more than a tribal, national, fundamentalist, or movement pet.

As a participant in the Jesus movement, as much as I love Jesus—what he taught and how he lived and the life he still gives me—I have needed to move beyond the claim that he is the only child of God.

Rather, I have come to believe that he and many who followed him remind us that ALL are children of God, including the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and that we are each to have, in author Karen Blixen’s words, “faith in the idea that God had when God made us.” To paraphrase the sage Rabbi Zusya** in my own faith context: in the life to come, they will not ask me why I was not Christ, but, “Why was I not Chris?”

And further, why didn’t I recognize that my god is not God? 

*I intend that “tribal” includes any group that thinks only their group knows God.

**Rabbi Zusya famously said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ but ‘Why were you not Zusya?’”

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Related post:

Knowing Your Place

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

The Devil Can't Sing

This week marks the third anniversary of this weekly blog, which has had 100,000 visitors, not counting over 400 free weekly subscribers and followers. There are nearly 160 posts archived in the right rail of the blog site. Donations for 2013 totaled $1000.  Posts have appeared on other blog sites and e-newsletters, including Believe Out Loud, Progressive Christianity, and The Huffington Post. Thanks, all!

I have thought of the devil as a metaphorical character rather than an actual being as far back as high school, despite my fundamentalist upbringing. My explanation to those who disagreed was that my unbelief was the worst insult I could heap on the devil if “he” did exist!

But I am taken with Hildegard of Bingen’s notion that Satan can’t sing, because he opposes all harmony. Editor Barbara Newman explains that Hildegard’s morality plays predate commonly known morality plays by 150 years. One of them, Ordo Virtutum, is entirely sung except for Satan’s monologues, because Hildegard didn’t think the devil could carry a tune!

Opposed to all harmony, Satan could never join a choir or quartet, band or orchestra. He could never play well with others, so he could never join a team or a cause or a community or a theater troupe. He couldn’t dance or weave or paint or write—because all require some kind of harmonizing.

But he could join the conflicts in Washington, the Middle East, and dysfunctional churches. He could be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, elitist, bigoted, hierarchical, autocratic, intransigent, uncooperative, greedy, misanthropic, and more. So many bad things, so little time!

Satan is too often a role model for us. No wonder so many people believe in him.

Visit the first two posts of this blog:

Dolphins and Sharks

The Church of Rosacia

Other posts referencing Hildegard of Bingen:

The God Whom Anger Never Touched

The Soul Feels Its Worth

The Sound of Eden

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here for more information or to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"Pride Goeth before a Fall"--and Getting Back Up!

Chris speaking at GWI 2014. Photo by Ryan Johnson.

The week of our snow and ice in Georgia, I gingerly stepped and carefully drove to avoid any ice-related accidents. When most ice and snow had melted and the weather warmed, I decided to go for a run, proudly wearing my sleeveless neon-blue running shirt and shorts in which I look quite good if much too blue. (Looking good enhances my workouts and my running, as with most athletes!)

But before I got out of the guest parking lot of our complex, I fell sprawling on the pavement, catching myself with my hands, scraping them and one elbow and both knees. I wish I could blame slipping on ice or tripping on shoelaces or debris, but the asphalt was dry as a bone and clean as a whistle.

I picked myself up, went back to our unit, scrubbed my wounds to avoid infection, treated them with antibiotic cream, and bandaged the bleeding scrapes and cuts.  “Pride goeth before a fall,” the judging Proverb came to me. I realized that wearing my usual winter garb for running—long sleeved shirt, gloves, and long running pants—would have minimized my injuries.

Yet pride is also what prompted me to proceed with my long run—puffy and bruised knees, multiple bandaids, and raw skin notwithstanding—this time wearing my long-sleeved running shirt. Though the fall was humbling, pride is what made me get back up and start again.

As I ran, I thought back on the four days I had spent that week at the Georgia Winter Institute 2014, meeting in a former Confederate weapons factory in Columbus, Georgia, south of Atlanta, where I live.  GWI’s mission is stated in one sentence: “The Georgia Winter Institute connects people with and without disabilities to work together to nurture and use our gifts to strengthen community bonds.”

In my closing keynote I told the assembly of a gathering of people living with HIV and AIDS, their families, friends, volunteer and professional caregivers near Detroit. “I have no memory of what I said to them,” I explained, “I absolutely remember what they ‘said’ to me. As we helped them carry all their medical paraphernalia from their cars to their rooms at the retreat center—their IV drip bottles and tubing, their medicines, oxygen tanks, and various pieces of special equipment—all I could think of was how determined they were to participate in this event, to be part of the community. And by contrast, I thought about how many people pass up on going on retreats or building community simply because it’s ‘inconvenient.’”

They had been knocked down, so to speak, but they had gotten back up again. And that’s what I witnessed among those gathered in Columbus. Perhaps their pride is challenged by how the culture, government, medical establishment, and houses of worship are inadequately mindful of their gifts and challenges, whether their own or those they love or serve, but pride is what gets us all back up again.

Other posts related to running mishaps:

Praying for “Enemies”

BEWARE OF THE GOD! (includes an Olympic running mishap)

Last week’s post also about GWI 2014:

A Dream within a Dream

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here for more information or to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

A Dream within a Dream

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As I told those attending the Meekhof Lectures in the Seattle area a few weeks ago, “If my dreams are any indication, I have much unfinished business with the church.”

One morning of last week’s Georgia Winter Institute, just before I woke, I had a dream of church in which people of diverse race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, abilities, and beliefs were having quite a good time talking over differences amiably, even kidding one another, but with no “gotchas” or condemnation or competition.  It was so moving to experience that I awoke with tears in my eyes.

No doubt it was a reflection of what we were experiencing at GWI 2014. People with disabilities are themselves diverse, but they also gather people around them who differ in almost every way except the fulfillment we experience recognizing the power and potential of people facing intellectual and physical challenges—our family members, friends, neighbors, strangers, clients, patients, parishioners, and community members. Their stories were central to building the community we achieved during our days together.

As often happens after a successful retreat with people who coalesce, I would think many of us had the thought, “Why can’t it always be this way?” And, in my dream within a dream, I clearly yearned for a church that was as good at diversity as this gathering had been. And sometimes, we are. Though my leadership was more along the line of “generic” spirituality, I mentioned during a conversational segment that the early church was attractive not so much because of its beliefs, but because the first Christians were so kind and compassionate to one another and their communities.

I counted among my new friends several Pentecostals and a Promise Keeper, as well as a soldier who was not part of our group but, as a fellow guest of the hotel, was drawn to what we were about.  The philosophy of the conference was not only building community among ourselves, but also with the citizens of Columbus, Georgia, and its environs.

I am writing this on an American high holy day, Super Bowl Sunday. This morning I awoke to quite another dream about the church, extremely vivid and detailed enough to become another Book of Revelation! Or perhaps Hildegard of Bingen’s visions that I’m currently reading are rubbing off on me? 

In this dream, I had been asked to meet with a committee of a church I once served asking what I thought if they spent their endowment on their current expenses, and I advised them the money was given for future generations and that they should build into their current budget what they needed so their present church generation understood how much it costs to run a church, rather than squander their capital. I doubted the committee would take my advice.

Because in the dream (and in reality) it was Sunday morning, I considered staying for worship. But the scenes that unfolded around me were both dramatic like a mega-church and chaotic like a three ring circus, everything happening at once. Instead of one there were seven tall pulpits, spaced on an angle on the raised chancel like on a brow of ship, each bearing the name of a pastor in bronze-cast letters. And the one leading worship was dressed like he was about to perform The Mikado!

As I tried to leave, I kept remembering things I had to do, or I’d run into someone I knew who wanted to talk, and after clearing these hurdles, I found that parts of my clothing and the items I was carrying kept getting caught on things, resisting my departure.

As I wrote at the beginning, “If my dreams are any indication, I have much unfinished business with the church.”

Next week’s post also about GWI 2014:

“Pride Goeth before a Fall”—and Getting Back Up!

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.