Wade's Mezuzah

As you might expect, our home is filled with religious artifacts accumulated over the years, most gifts from thoughtful friends. Like many Christian clergy, I have my share of Communion chalices and bread plates, crosses and icons, most of which live in my home office.

I work on a small desk adorned with a colorful Latin American altar cloth on which a Sacred Heart of Jesus sacramental lies beside my laptop and the Hindu god Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles, sits nearby to solve computer issues.

Two clay Muslim men in kaftans embrace on top of my bookshelves, and Arabic phrases from the Quran beautifully illustrate two round metal plates hanging in another room. A ceramic tile from Israel welcomes visitors before entering our kitchen with the word Shalom in Hebrew.  

Upstairs a Christ Pantocrator placidly blesses an African goddess dancing above a Balinese mask and a Pharaoh judgment scene on papyrus. All are facing a handwoven Tree of Life across the room above our bed.

Well, you get the picture.

But never have I ever thought of having a mezuzah, despite my deep respect for the tradition.

Wade saw it at a booth during the Dogwood Festival here in Atlanta, a booth featuring the delicate art of Israeli artists from Brooklyn. Stavit Allweis and Nachshon Pelig are graduates of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

Wade appreciates its spiritual meaning, but more so its aesthetic appeal. It didn’t even cross his mind that, because we’re not Jewish, it might not be “kosher”! So, he purchased it, after carrying on a meaningful conversation with the handsome vendor, one of the artists.

When we came home from the festival we showed it to Jenelle Holmes, our pastor two doors down, and she asked us if we could do a “show and tell” about it as our moment of mindfulness the following day at Ormewood Church. We went online to prepare.

Mezuzah is Hebrew for “doorpost.” It contains Hebrew verses from the Torah, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21, the first of which begins, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The passage ends urging that we write these words on the doorpost of our house.

A mezuzah is traditionally hung on the right side of the door and—I especially love this as good Jewish compromise—tilted because early practitioners differed as to whether to hang it vertically or horizontally.

But Wade wanted it mounted vertically on the more prominent left side of the door, and so, apologies to Yahweh for being loosey-goosey progressive Christians, that’s where it is. We followed the tradition of reciting this blessing in Hebrew as we held it against the spot it was to be placed: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with Your mitzvot (Law) and commanded us to affix a mezuzah.”

I always knew that summer-long intensive in Hebrew would come in handy.

You might think this an imperialistic appropriation of a spiritual practice of another culture and religion, but if you saw Wade’s innocent delight and wonder you may excuse us.

And I enjoy the practice of touching the mezuzah as I enter our home, remembering that the Lord our God is one, and that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and might.

This post has a follow-up: It’s a Wonderful Life

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Killing God

             Michael Christman illustration for Coming Out to God

His five-year-old daughter offered a prayer while burying a sparrow who died flying into a window pane. “Dear God, we have buried this little sparrow. Now you be good to it, or I’ll kill you.” When told by her mother she didn’t need to threaten God, she said, “I just wanted to be sure.”

John Fraser tells this story in a collection of essays entitled, Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen, to which I also contributed a chapter. Fascinated by the story, Henri wrote about it in his book, The Road to Daybreak.

I once buried a sparrow who died similarly, trying to fly into what appeared a welcoming space within glass walls of a campus chapel. I wrote about it in my book of prayers, Coming Out to God. It made me think of many who hit invisible barriers trying to enter our churches. Jesus once told his followers not to be afraid, that not one sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing.

What strikes me is that this prayer of a five-year-old is often the prayer of adults. Karen Armstrong says as much in her “Death of God?” chapter in her History of God. When we conceive an all-powerful God, then God is responsible for all that’s wrong with the world—in her word, “a monster.” And I have pastorally and personally witnessed those who suffer or those who suffer loss doubting God’s intentions or God’s existence. An omnipotent God who fails to care must be distrusted or killed.

I believe Christianity is conducive to this way of thinking, as it conceptualizes a God of compassion, willing to be vulnerable to the point of death—all out of love.

We often conceive of God as “the best” at everything. When you consider your “best friend,” do you think of someone who is powerful or someone who is loving? Just as we would classify a best friend as loving, so is our best God. It could be said that love is God’s power.

When we look for love, would we choose a lover who is dogmatic and demanding, or one who is trustworthy and welcoming? Even so with God, for biblically God’s love is steadfast and inclusive.

And when we consider our best leaders or pastors or teachers, do we think of someone who is controlling or one who is persuasive? Just so, our “best God” is persuasive, a good shepherd, one who stands at our door and knocks, one who wants to be invited in to commune with us, one we want to follow.

And lest God become thought of as just another thing or being as “best” implies, it’s better to think of God as the most: the most loving, the most welcoming, the most loyal, the most inclusive, the most persuasive. To borrow a word from comedian John Oliver, that’s the God with the “mostus.”

This line of thinking is how process theology “saved” God for me long before I went to seminary.

Armstrong observes, “Throughout history people have discarded a conception of God when it no longer works for them.” And later, “Those of us who have had a difficult time with religion in the past find it liberating to be rid of the God who terrorized our childhood.”

She suggests that often what “saves” God are poets, artists (of all kinds), visionaries, and mystics who glimpse something through the imagination, through their disciplines, and through silence, something that cannot be known so much as witnessed. In Care of the Soul Thomas Moore noted that imagination is perhaps our most underutilized spiritual gift.  And Saint Ignatius, who gave us his Spiritual Exercises and founded the scholarly Jesuits, believed the spiritual life required imagination.

I would add that too many readers of the Bible refuse to see it as the work of poets, artists, visionaries, and mystics—not an objective record or rulebook—rather, one that invites our own imaginations to play and to pray as we discern God for a new generation.

One of the worst things that can happen to God, Armstrong suggests, is when “the more educated, sober, and responsible element” in a given faith discard religion altogether, instead of re-imagining God, because too many others prefer to worship the manmade* Golden Calf rather than the God hidden on the mountain, or in the sound of sheer silence, or in a newborn’s cry.

Armstrong recounts a story that echoes the accountability required by the five-year-old in my opening story. It is told that in Auschwitz, some Jews put God on trial for cruelty and betrayal. They found God guilty, worthy of death. A rabbi gave the verdict, and announced that now he would lead evening prayers.

The God who inspires human beings to be tenacious in the face of calamity is worthy of reimagining.

*The use of this non-inclusive term is intentional.

Related posts (also linked in the above text):

The Terrible God (Good Shepherd, Psalm 23)

God is Our Shepherd

God is Not a Control Freak

Beware of the God!

Donations to this blog ministry may be given by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Henri, Vincent, and Compassion

Henri giving Chris a cross from El Salvador

In celebration of this month’s fifth anniversary of my blog, the last entry of January and every Wednesday of February I’ve provided the most visited post of each year. For 2015, that would be Progressive vs. “Biblical” Christianity.

My friend, Nouwen biographer Michael Ford, invited me to write this piece about Henri Nouwen for a retreat he is leading on the spiritual writer this week.  It so happens that details of my own spiritual formation course on Nouwen September 22-25, 2016 were posted last week. It tends to fill up, so register early!

When Henri Nouwen proposed a course on “The Life and Ministry of Vincent van Gogh” at Yale Divinity School for the spring semester of 1977, his fellow academics were stymied, expressing concern: “But he was an artist.” “Wasn’t he crazy?” “Didn’t he kill himself?”

I took that seminar and it was my last formal course with Henri, though our friendship would continue through the rest of his life. We viewed photos and prints of van Gogh’s paintings, read his voluminous Letters to Theo (his patron brother), and biographical materials. A limit of a dozen or so students allowed an intimate, conversational format.

Many parallels drew Henri to Vincent. They preferred using only their first names. They were from Holland. Both were prolific. They shared compassion for the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, and the underprivileged. They each exercised unconventional ministries. Both were problematic as well as prophetic for the church. Either could be intense. And both were extremely lonely.

I did not know that Vincent had begun as a conventional Calvinist minister to the coal miners of the Borinage, and that his ministry scandalized the church because he did not keep a “professional” distance—descending into the mines with them, chatting with them at their kitchen tables, giving them his possessions, including his own bed to a sick woman.

This led to his dismissal from his pulpit by the church hierarchy and a long idle period trying to discern, “What next?” He decided to take up painting, hoping that his work would offer the same consolation that the Christian faith once did, even as Henri’s books about our very human challenges consoled his readers.

Unlike Vincent, who only sold two paintings in his lifetime, Henri’s books soon touched millions, either directly or indirectly through their influence on Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant pastors and lay leaders throughout the world.

Henri’s classes helped countless students discern their true vocations, not just in ministry, but determining what kind of minister they were called to be. As the final paper for that course I wrote a fictional story about a woman in transition, ministered by two versions of van Gogh’s Madame Roulin and Her Baby, which I spent time contemplating, first in Philadelphia and then in New York City.

Writing that story was the most fulfilling paper I produced in all three years of seminary, because it brought together compassion (my required muse) and creativity, as well as my callings as a writer and minister.

I am grateful to Henri and Vincent for their spiritual guidance. Vincent once wrote that Jesus was an artist whose medium was human flesh. Both Henri and Vincent followed in his footsteps as soul artists.

A reading for this week of Lent:

“Woman, Behold Your Son. Son, Behold Your Mother.”

Click on their names to find other posts that refer to Vincent van Gogh or Henri Nouwen.

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Donations of $100 or more either at once or over 2016 will receive a signed gift copy of my book, Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy.

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Why Do We Have to Be Reminded?

In memory of Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor, among those killed at the Nairobi mall.

Coming out of the first evening of a weekend poetry course featuring Mary Oliver and Thomas Merton last Thursday, heading toward my car, I heard a loud rustling and looked to see a huge owl half-leaping, half-flying from the pavement to the top of a chain link fence that bordered the parking lot and a small wild area beyond. I could see its eyes, but they were not fixed on me, so I turned to the opposite horizon to see what it was staring at and saw a huge full moon rising, whose light shortly silhouetted a slowly ascending jet.

For those familiar with Mary Oliver’s poetry, attending to the owl and the moon could be considered a “Mary Oliver moment.” Her poetry contains a vast zoo of critters and a lifetime subscription to National Geographic images. But the ascending jet made me think of Merton’s poetic concerns about encroaching “civilization” as well as human vulnerability and glory.

The basic message of the course was that poets remind us to look and to listen. Why do we have to be reminded to look? Well, to see, of course! Why do we have to be reminded to listen? Well, to hear, of course! Or savor or smell or feel! Jesus reminded his students to watch and listen, and the Psalmist reminded worshipers to taste and smell and touch.

Poets and preachers, contemplatives and prophets, mystics and artists and scientists—all urge us: Look! Listen! Pay attention! Be mindful! Be aware—be VERY aware!

One might think that with all the communication devices we have that seeing and hearing would be our least unused senses, but in truth we are flooded with images and sounds, overwhelming the mere sprinkling needed to ensure a harvest in reflection. Thus focus is the key, and a few carefully chosen and crafted words, whether of poetry or scripture or (might I daresay) blog, can prove helpful.

A great example of focus can be found along Atlanta’s BeltLine, which exhibits many temporary outdoor works by artists. Look at the photo at the top of this post. What do you see? Metal and glass debris strewn over more than twenty feet? (That’s our dog Hobbes in the foreground for perspective.)

Yet if you walk up to it and look through the empty frame provided, as below, you will see a face, a portrait of local glass artist Matt Janke. A sign beside the frame explains, “Object of Ma(tt)n challenges the notion that materials, ideas, places and people within Life are disconnected. After gathering together discarded items from all areas of Atlanta, artist William Massey shows that our perspective is our portrait—separate or together, clutter or culture, divided or One.”

That’s pretty much the gist of what the spiritual formation poetry class reminded me this past weekend, from the poetry and professor as well as from fellow participants and our morning and evening prayers.

Related Posts:

Dolphins and Sharks

Seeing Things as if for the First Time

Spiritual Picassos

Related upcoming morning retreat in Dallas, TX, Nov. 9:

Seeing as if for the First Time

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.