Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Dead White Men

Some of my best friends are dead white guys!

This blog’s delivery problems had the silver lining of hearing from a lot of subscribers about your appreciation of its posts. Thank you!

But I received one negative comment, and of course, like Jesus’ parable of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine to pay attention to the one, I felt compelled to respond. It stuck in my craw, as a grating grain of sand an oyster defensively covers with pearl. Well, this post ain’t no pearl.

This live white guy wrote, “Your blog is a real low point for ‘progressive.’ How about sourcing it with someone other than dead white men?”

He did not sign his name, but I had his e-mail, and could figure out who it was. I waited a day to respond, considering whether I should. But I wrote back that actually I did “source” it with other than dead white men, offering multiple sample names he could find using the blog’s search engine in its upper left corner. Then I wrote: 
I also think dead white men have much to offer, especially as I am nearly one myself. And they include Jews, gays, and other marginalized groups that have perspective on the spiritual life. 
I could have added the many who died of AIDS, perhaps my single largest source of contemporary spiritual wisdom and inspiration.

Of course he had struck a nerve. Believe me, I’ve noticed how much a product I am of my European/British/American heritage. But I read outside that genre, and sometimes others’ words and actions stick and sometimes they don’t.

I also think it’s a mistake to think of dead white men monolithically. It reminds me of my church during college years thinking the Chinese family and the Korean family would want to sit together at social functions—after all, both families were Asian! Church members were blissfully ignorant of their (sometimes hostile) differences historically, culturally and ethnically.

Neither are dead white men of one piece. I’m not even of one piece. My Irish ancestors were treated harshly when they immigrated to the U.S., giving me empathy for immigrants today. “The luck of the Irish” was among the ethnic slurs used to describe them—after all, an Irish man or woman could only achieve success through luck because we didn’t have the skills or brains to do it on our own.

My German ancestor left Germany in the 1800s, because, he wrote in a letter, Germany was becoming too militaristic and he did not want to serve in its armies. Given my last name, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he was a Jew who felt compelled to assimilate when coming to the U.S.

My Swedish ancestor came to the U.S. because she fell in love and married someone of the “wrong” class, unacceptable to her family.

And I’m a gay man, meaning I have always viewed the dominant culture as an outsider and as one who doesn’t meet my gender “specs.”

Obviously the person I “source” most is Jesus. To some he’s just another dead white man. But for most of us, each of those designations is up for discussion.



P.S. The subscriber responded to my e-mail with a thoughtful and considerate one that included some thought-provoking questions about my beliefs, which I happily answered in kind. All’s well that ends well! (I know, quoting another dead white guy named Shakespeare!)

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Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC.
You are its sole source of financial support. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Perhaps your congregation might include it in your mission budget. Thank you!

You are encouraged to use 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, catalogued by year and month. For specific topics, use the search feature in the upper left corner of the site.

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

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Thank God for Atheists!

I believe we need to imagine a world without God.

We then might take greater responsibility for our own lives and the circumstances of others, as well as life on this planet.  Our consciences would not be alleviated by the notion that suffering or poverty is God’s will.  There would be no “acts of God” that can toss a baby through a window, drown a family, suffocate the elderly, or destroy a coastline. There would just be tornadoes, tsunamis, heat waves, and hurricanes.

We wouldn’t wait for God to fix things, or save us, or take care of the world. We wouldn’t exclude anyone from basic human rights because God demands purity or orthodoxy or a particular form of religion or worship. We wouldn’t have those who do violence to themselves or others for the reward of various versions of an afterlife. We wouldn’t have American politicians who insist on saying “God bless America” rather than “God bless the world.”

Diseases, disabilities, and infirmities would not be blamed on God but on their true causes ascertained by science. Global warming and evolution would not be things of “belief” but challenges to human arrogance and pride. Sin would be viewed not as an offense against God but as an offense against ourselves, others, and the earth. Redemption would not be considered a supernatural event but a coming together of forgiveness, responsibility, mentoring, and community. Death would remind us of the unpostponable value of life.

Rather than prefer and await an invisible world, we might better value bodies, earth, the cosmos, and the moment.

So I am grateful for atheists and agnostics who remind me of my own “cloud of unknowing” when it comes to God’s definitions, actions, and desires.

Yet I still believe in God.

Letting go of the concepts above prompts me to believe still more that all we say and do and all we fail to say or do matters.


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Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC.
You are its sole source of financial support. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Perhaps your congregation might include it in your mission budget. Thank you!

You are encouraged to use 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, catalogued by year and month. For specific topics, use the search feature in the upper left corner of the site.

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

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Being Mindful of the Gaps

Please talk with me on BlogTalkRadio July 3, 3:30-4:30 p.m. ET.
Enjoy this blog more by going to the link provided in the first paragraph!

Recently National Public Radio featured a report about why certain popular pieces of music spontaneously set people to dancing.  The occasion was Pharrell’s “Happy” going viral on the internet as people around the world videotaped themselves dancing to the music, even at risk to themselves, such as in Iran, where six teens were arrested for posting their video.

The neuroscientists interviewed have theorized that it’s the gaps between sounds in certain pieces of music that invite us to move, providing the “space” and motivation for our bodies to respond.  I think something similar happens spiritually in the gaps reciting liturgies or the Lord’s Prayer.

The mantra of the London subway, “Mind the gap,” could become in sacred music and liturgies, “Be mindful of the gap,” the silences out of which spiritual movement comes: the pauses in liturgies and psalms and eloquent scriptures (such as 1 Corinthians 13 or 1 John 4) as well as the intervals between notes and beats and rhythms and vocals in everything from Gregorian chants to Gospel songs. 

In my book, Communion of Life, I named it “the thoughtful pause,” the quiet and the calm required to absorb what has gone before (say, in a poetic or musical phrase) and to respond, anticipating what may come next. I believe prayer, contemplation, retreats, and (I’d like to believe) this blog may serve as “thoughtful pauses” that compel us to dance spiritually.

The lead neuroscientist, Maria Witek of Aarhus University in Denmark, explained during the NPR story that “Gaps in the rhythmic structure, gaps in the sort of underlying beat of the music—that sort of provides us with an opportunity to physically inhabit those gaps and fill in those gaps with our own bodies.”

Surveys found that the most effective drum patterns in getting people off their feet, she says, were “not the ones that have very little complexity and not the ones that had very, very high complexity, but the patterns that had a sort of a balance between predictability and complexity.” That balance of predictability and complexity may be needed in our own liturgies, readings, sacred songs, and sermons.

The anonymous fourteenth century author of the spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing (which I’m presently reading in my morning prayers) could be considered among the world’s first bloggers, given the brevity of its chapters. Written for English monks, this mystic observed, “You only need a tiny scrap of time to move toward God. This brief moment produces the stirring that embodies the greatest work of your soul.” (Contemporary English translation by Bernard Bangley.)

Alongside music, the cadences of many preachers, the “call and response” of some African American worship, and the antiphonal responses of the Daily Office may all provide gaps that invite us to fill them with our spiritual dance—and by that I don’t mean “disembodied,” but one that moves our bodies as well as our souls.

When I was in college, the choir of our church sang a catchy Caribbean song. Our staid congregation stayed in their pews, smiling appreciatively, but resisting an urge to rise and sway and clap. To paraphrase Jesus, “If these Christians remain seated, the pews themselves will dance.” That didn’t happen, but when the choir finished, someone spontaneously cried out, “Do it again!”

And they did!


Related posts:

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Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC.
You are its sole source of financial support. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Perhaps your congregation might include it in your mission budget. Thank you!

You are encouraged to use 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, catalogued by year and month. For specific topics, use the search feature in the upper left corner of the site.

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

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Who Was That Masked Mystic?

We love our super heroes, from comic books to graphic novels to fantasy films. But what if their strengths or particular gifts were spiritual rather than physical?

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s SuperMystic!

Instead of Wonder Woman displaying awesome abilities, we could have Wonder Sister, whose sense of awe inspires our own.

Who was that masked man? Why, it was the Lone Contemplative and Two-Spirit soul friend!

To quote Carl McColman’s Big Book of Christian Mysticism: 
Thomas Merton, in his book The Inner Experience, wrote about what he called “masked contemplatives”—ordinary men and women who, although they may never have a formal practice of contemplative prayer, nevertheless cultivate a spirit of openness, of wonder, of resting in God in a place deeper than thought. 
While imagining this post I learned that Maya Angelou died. And I thought, what a great example of a “masked contemplative!”

At nine years of age, Angelou chose to go mute for five years after naming her rapist and believing it was her words that killed him. One could say her subsequent memoirs were born in that silence, memoirs that recount her many and serious difficulties, but also celebrate life’s sensual and spiritual delights.

In her book, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, she describes having a transforming moment with the help of another masked contemplative, her voice teacher. “In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic,” she explains. “It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented.”

In class, the teacher had her read a section from Lessons in Truth, a Unity publication, which ended with “God loves me.” To her consternation, he had her read the phrase again and again, until: 
After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things… 
And of course, she did.

She adds: 
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation. 


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Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC.
You are its sole source of financial support. Please click here to make a tax-deductible contribution. Perhaps your congregation might include it in your mission budget. Thank you!

You are encouraged to use 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, catalogued by year and month. For specific topics, use the search feature in the upper left corner of the site.

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