Dolphins & Sharks

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

Somebody shouted this to me as I began a several-mile run along a beach during a vacation. This stranger was absolutely right. Three dolphins playfully leapt up out of the water and, in tandem, we raced down the South Carolina shoreline for almost an hour. And most of that hour I reflected on that moment when the gracious abandon of a stranger, who might not otherwise have greeted me, alerted me to one of God’s wonders.

Running for me is a time to meditate. Like a Buddhist walking meditation, its rhythm gives me peace and a place for thought. And what I thought was that this stranger had played the preacher—that this is the purpose of any exhortation—to awaken us to such wonders.  Because I believe each one of us may serve as a minister, it occurred to me that this is our role, to shout,

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

There’s something about the shore that gives us permission to talk to strangers. I think it’s the elation, even the ecstasy, that we experience in nature—whether manifest in shores or dolphins. It awakens the child in us that freely enters the commonwealth of God.

The stranger speaking to me about the dolphin was purely gratuitous, an occasion of grace. He had nothing to gain by it other than the thrill of sharing the experience. But I proclaimed his gospel to all I passed in my run along the beach,

 “Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

The next day, our last full day along the shore, it rained. And instead of wading into the Atlantic, I waded into all those e-mails I had avoided all week. It was sobering, to get back to business. There’s nothing natural about sitting in front of a laptop, reading a screen and plucking keys on a keyboard.

And I had another thought. Earlier in the week on the beach we had met a couple who alerted us to a shark in the water. It occurred to me that our job as “ministers” (remember, all of us) is not only to point out the dolphins, but warn others about the sharks.

Many of us got too many sharks growing up in our churches and too few dolphins. Like the preacher in the novel and movie Pollyanna, egged on by Pollyanna’s stern and bitter aunt, we heard preachers who focused on the curses found in scriptures rather than its blessings. Pollyanna, the orphan of missionary parents, who herself had every right to be bitter, pointed out to this preacher that there are many more blessings than curses in the Bible, many more dolphins than sharks.

Progressive Christians recognize the sharks infesting the waters of our faith tradition: biblical literalism, fundamentalism, prejudice, exclusion, patriarchy, condemnation, and so on. It’s important that we warn others to stay out of these waters. But it’s equally vital—or all the more vital—that we point out the dolphins of our faith tradition: grace, mercy, justice, compassion, inclusion, blessing, wonder, storytelling, and spiritual truth.

“Look, there are dolphins in the baptismal water!”

 

This week marks the tenth anniversary of beginning my blog with this post from February 16, 2011.

There’s been nearly half-a-million visitors, not including an average of five-hundred free weekly subscribers.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely in Chris Glaser’s name to the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here.  Thank you!

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

 

Escape to Holy Week

This year I couldn’t wait till Holy Week to escape for my annual visit to The Temple of God’s Wounds. This pilgrimage of the imagination was given me in 1988 by a retired fraternal worker in the Church of North India who spent his last days in Southern California, where I lived. He went to the mission field because, being gay, he could not serve the Presbyterian Church in this country.

Several weeks ago I couldn’t wait any longer for the respite, the sanctuary, the clarity and the renewal of purpose depicted by the pseudonymous “Bishop of Bombay.” Personal challenges and political “disturbances in The Force” demanded less a solution than a resolution to keep on keeping on. As a gift pillow I purchased for my sister earlier that week during Ormewood Park’s Makers Festival declares, “Nevertheless, She Persisted.”

The day after I began my visit to the temple “somewhere in the West” I learned during a routine doctor visit that my blood pressure was high, despite a mostly healthy diet and daily vigorous exercise. He said that, given the troubles of the last two years, most of his patients were experiencing ailments that could be the result of stress and anxiety. He said only a handful of his clients described things as “good.” He advised I pay more attention to the spiritual and the relaxing aspects of life, advice I am only too happy to follow. A subsequent test monitoring my blood pressure for 24 hours showed excellent results, thanks be to God! 

The narrator of the temple story meditates on seven portraits related to the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This may seem a demanding “escape”—after all, it’s not like going to the beach—but it is an opportunity for finding meaning and purpose in a world that appears less in touch with meaning and high purpose. “Lord, have mercy…” became a prayer one morning for all I pray for, including myself. I view the phrase less as a confession than as a spiritual Amber Alert.

The painting on a particular day of my reading depicts a worker astride Jesus stretched on the cross on the ground “driving home the nail which pierced the two feet.”

The poise of the hammering figure suggested the rhythm of long practice, and the impersonality of habitual craftsmanship. … How unconcerned it looked; how callously intent upon its task. As the hammer was a tool in his hands, so was this man a tool to those whose minds had conceived, and whose lips had ordered, this outrage.

Once distance or time could soften for me the impact of the hammer on that nail. … Now my mind could not refuse the knowledge that the same plots and betrayals and denials and shifts and stratagems and mockeries and brutalities are as common now as then. …

Such acts did not belong only to other times and places, and other races. By unmistakable instances it had been brought home to me that my own folk were equally guilty. I was left without hope of righteousness or justice, of gentleness or generosity in the world. … Every crime against the helpless and innocent was an added blow upon that nail. My own folk were striking many such blows…

Eventually the narrator realizes, “I knew with complete conviction that as my own folk had proved to be so was I myself.” What drags me/us down is the awareness that we are caught in a system and are a part of the system that is “callously intent upon its task.”

What especially struck me in this scene was not the banality of evil, but how mechanical evil had become. Not only was the figure wielding the hammer, but he too was a tool wielded by political and religious “powers that be.”

In a strange juxtaposition, during the same week that I revisited The Temple of God’s Wounds, I was reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’ve seen multiple productions of this story but can’t remember ever reading the book. It’s about a beautiful young man who is willing to give up his soul if a painting of him could take on his sins as well as the effects of aging so he might remain young and handsome.

Perhaps we’ve done something similar to Jesus. We’ve placed on him “every crime against the helpless and innocent” so that we can be saved, delivered from responsibility for our own agency in that enterprise.

I had been reading Jesus’ words as part of my Lenten spiritual practice, what my sister laughingly referred to as my “red letter” Jesus when I told her, referring to those Bibles which highlighted Jesus’ words in red font. Though his words comfort and console at first, I found I stumbled when it came to his woeful words about pious religious people and then, the apocalyptic judgment on us all in the end times. That was when I escaped to my Holy Week practice revisiting the temple of God’s wounds.

My Lenten “aha” was that Jesus’ gospel/good news was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” not John 3:16, which Martin Luther called the gospel in miniature. In his time and our own, Jesus’ gospel is far more necessary.

I grieve with all who mourn the devastating fire that burned Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris this Holy Week. It sent me back to Joseph Campbell's understanding of the vital spiritual power of such sanctuaries, and I will probably reflect on that in two weeks.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  The Temple of God’s Wounds first published by The Morehouse-Gorham Co. (NY) in 1951, British edition published in 1953 by S.P.C.K. (London), all rights reserved.

Earth, Air, Water, and Fire

Sunset on the Nile, January 1981 - crg

I offer four meditations from my book Communion of Life that celebrates the gifts of earth, air, water and fire. You will better understand how Celtic spirituality and Celtic Christianity deeply touch me.

Cycle One: Day 1 Earth

Sacred earth :

Holding us fast,

Whirling to keep us steady,

Shifting axis to temper climate,

Yielding nutrients of life.

Holy ground :

A grassy belly cradling us in rest,

A rounded, rocky bosom inspiring dreamers,

A birth canal whose current is destiny.

Grateful, grateful am I,

To stand, to sit, to lie on you,

To ride, to sail, to drive on you,

To look down, to look up, to look out

And see you there.

Sacred ground,

I remove my shoes in reverence.

Cycle Three: Day 10 Air

The sun’s glory

Wraps around us,

Dives into valleys,

Peaks behind ridges,

Slinks through city streets,

Explodes on beaches

As if through thin air.

The sun’s grandeur

Glows green through branches,

Bounces lavender off irises,

Mushrooms grey above factories,

Canopies blue on clear days,

Gilds with age,

As if through thin air.

The sun’s gospel

Proclaimed to earth’s ends

Effortlessly, gracefully,

Baptizing us all,

Just and unjust,

Believer and nonbeliever,

Grateful and ungrateful,

Enlightened and unenlightened—

Immersing us all

In our star’s splashing splendor

As if through thin air.

Cycle Two: Day 7 Water

You live within me—

In my eyes, in my flesh,

In my thoughts, in my movements :

My liquidity.

You cleanse me inside and out,

Rinsing each cell,

Flushing out toxins,

Boiling out sweat,

Crying out grief.

Most of me is you.

Before air, I knew you,

Bundled by embryonic fluids :

Echo of primordial waters

Where first were fused

Earth, air, water, fire,

The things that make for life.

As you held me,

Now I hold you,

Precious, unasked gift from eternity—

Living water.

Cycle Eleven: Day 44 Fire

You have been the center of our dance.

From bonfires ablaze to candles flickering,

Wildly we have swung around you,

Howling, shouting, singing, chanting,

Igniting our passion for uniting

For war, for the hunt, for community, for the gods.

Flame mesmerized by flame :

Our burning, restless insides

Stretch outside unfired clay

For flames of unity, at-one-ment in immolation :

The burning flash of bullets and bombs,

The stinging, fatal wound by carnivores,

The searing of the heretic at the stake,

The burnt offering of sacrifice.

Attacking the enemy,

Devouring our prey,

Excommunicating the stranger,

Slaughtering a scapegoat

Do not make us one.

We are one—

With one another and the gods,

With the enemy, the prey, the stranger, the scapegoat—

Clay lamps burning with the same divine starstuff

That prompts bowing in reverence and awe

Before one another.

To know more about how the book came to be, see my earlier post “Communion of Life.”

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2018 and Communion of Life copyright © 1999 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Why Must Politics Intrude on Our Faith?

Join me near Chicago this Saturday for a 4 p.m. lecture on “Creating Community” (based on Henri Nouwen) and Sunday 9:30 a.m. worship “Discerning the Body of Christ” at St. Paul’s UCC in Barrington, IL.

A few days after Christmas  I picked up our morning paper and, before I put on my reading glasses, I saw on the front page a child on a sled in the snow, confirmed by the caption that began, “Heavy sledding…” I wondered where in the world the photograph was taken.

As I drew the paper closer and put on my reading glasses I was stunned by my mistake. This was no child laughing as he rode a sled through snow—no, this was a child crying out in pain, being carried on a stretcher over a caption that read not “heavy sledding” but “Heavy Shelling…” as in “Heavy Shelling Reported Near Damascus.” What I imagined was snow on the boy’s clothing must have been debris from the blast.

I felt much the same way when I read the Gospel lesson for the Sunday following Christmas. After spending Christmas Eve hearing and singing about the holy infant Jesus, so tender and mild, enjoying a silent and holy night in which all is calm, all is bright, I found Matthew’s text about the slaughter of the innocents disturbing and violent (2:13-23).

Here Jesus had just been born to Mary and Joseph, and was lying in a manger, sleeping in heavenly peace, visited in Matthew by three spiritual sages from another country who brought gold and frankincense and myrrh and, in the Christmas carol, Silent Night, visited by shepherds enjoying the “radiant beams from his holy face” that meant “the dawn of redeeming grace.” The only thing that had disturbed their silent night earlier had been angels in the heavens singing “alleluia to our King; Christ the Savior is born.”

Why, oh why, must this beatific image be shattered by political realities? Escaping from King Herod, who, if he can’t find this baby that threatens his political power, chooses to slaughter all the innocents—infants the age of Jesus, causing wailing and lamenting in his birthplace of Bethlehem. And why, upon their return from Egypt, must Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go into hiding once more, this time in Galilee, to escape the even more heinous son of Herod, Archelaus, who had ascended the throne upon his father’s death?

Why can’t we just have a nice little Christmas? Why can’t we all just get along? And why must politics intrude on our faith, disturb our praise and worship, interrupt our contemplative mantra of “peace on earth, goodwill to all”? Why must we read of slaughtered innocents and wailing mothers? Why must I pick up a newspaper and see such a disturbing scene as a terrified child in pain after the president of Syria has bombed his hometown?

If we learn nothing else from the subsequent life of Jesus, it is that spirituality is never an escape—it is always an engagement with reality. Jesus’ prayer “forgive us our debts” meant a lot to his poor, impoverished fellow Israelites. “Thy kingdom come” meant the end of the Roman Empire. If a Roman soldier compels you to carry his gear one mile, carry it two miles, because “Loving your enemies” is a revolutionary act.

“Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but give to God that which is God’s.” “Don’t be like these Pharisees…,” rather, “consider the lilies of the field.” Whether waiting for the bridegroom or your master or the owner of the vineyard, be strategic in your preparations. “Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” “If a town (or church) does not welcome you, shake its dust from your feet.” “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come follow me.”

“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” God’s “house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, but you have made it a market place!” All of these quotes bring to mind real world applications of Jesus’ gospel.

And then there’s the cross: a political execution awaiting our “holy infant, so tender and mild.”

So I wrote this prayer for the children of the world: 

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world:

We pray for those who live in poverty,

            from our own neighborhood to those in hidden corners of the world.

We pray for those who live in danger

            of abuse, exploitation, violence, war, and disaster.

We pray for those who live in hunger and thirst,

            those who starve and those who are malnourished,

those enduring droughts and those whose water is polluted.

We pray for those who suffer illiteracy or disease, those who are refugees,

those who are illegal immigrants, those with disabilities,

those who are oppressed, those whose religion, culture, tribe, or nation distort their view of themselves and the world.

Your child, Jesus, suffered with all the children of the world

“because all are precious in his sight.”

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world. Amen.

Related Posts:

Mohammad’s Child

Meanings of Christmas

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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. 

How Well Do Progressive Christians Fish?

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

When Jesus called some of his disciples, who were fishermen, he told them he would make them fishers of people. He used a metaphor for their calling that they could readily grasp. A net is flexible, stretching to include as many fish as possible.

In a resurrection story from John, Jesus tells his disciples on which side of the boat to cast their net. From his vantage point on shore, he could possibly see a school of fish—a dark patch in the water or the froth of swimming fish. He had the perspective and vision they lacked.

When they drew in the fish, we are provided an exact count: 153 in total. Jerome, an early interpreter of this story, perhaps mistakenly suggested that the number of species of fish known in the time of Jesus was—you guessed it—one hundred and fifty-three. Despite the possible error, I like the implication that this is an inclusive net and this is a most diverse school of fish.  And the net—the church?—didn’t break.

As progressive Christians sometimes embarrassed by our aggressively evangelical siblings, we might ask ourselves, “How good are we at fishing for people?” How flexible is our net? We pride ourselves at the diversity of people we “officially” welcome. But how many people are we actually “catching”?  Are we throwing our net on the correct side of the boat? Is our net strong enough to bring 153 varieties of people to the shore to encounter Jesus on their own? Can our net—of worship, of community, of service—stretch itself enough to include others? Can we summon the same audacity to “fish for people” that we do when collecting signatures on a petition, proclaiming justice from the pulpit, and protesting prejudice and violence?

I served with the late Louisville seminary professor George Edwards on a national church task force toward the end of the 70’s. He was adamant on calling himself “a liberal evangelical,” declaring passionately that he would not surrender the term “evangelical” to conservative Christians.

We too are “evangelicals,” bringing the good news of progressive Christianity to those who think they’re not following Jesus because they don’t profess the certainties of earlier generations or of present-day fundamentalists. Regardless of doubts, or rather, because of our doubts, our gospel may be more accessible.

As Tennyson wrote in his elegiac poem to his late friend, Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam A. H. H.:

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be;

They are but broken lights of thee,

And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

…

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

Coming up:

Wilmington, Delaware, Oct. 9: Chris will preach on the parable of “The Wedding Banquet” during the 10 am worship at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church, 1801 North Jefferson Street 19802 and offer “A Brief History of Marriage” for the noon adult class that follows. The day’s theme is same-gender marriage.

Rockville, Maryland, Oct. 23: Chris will speak at the Rockville United Church, 355 Linthicum St. 20851 at the 9:30 am morning class on “Claim the God in You as a Progressive Christian” and his sermon title during the 10:45 worship will be “Jesus Was Not a Literalist.” Lunch follows with a question-and-answer period with Chris.

The Gospel of Glee

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

In thanksgiving to God for the life, ministry, art, and friendship of Bill Silver, a fellow openly gay candidate for ministry in the Presbyterian Church in 1975.

For another blog and another purpose, I recounted Jesus telling his disciples “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” It is the story of a widow—vulnerable because of her lack of marital status as well as her gender—seeking justice from an unjust judge, a judge who cares neither for God nor people. For a while the judge refuses, but finally concludes, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming” (Luke 18:4-5).  Jesus’ point is that no one should feel discouraged from praying for the good, because God is all the more swift to grant justice.

God’s swift justice, however, is nonetheless retarded by unjust judges. Jesus’ parable has given me heart in our struggle to persuade the church that it has unjustly judged and excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Like the persistent widow, meeting after meeting, in every denomination, our movement has petitioned for justice—membership, ministry, marriage. After one defeat, one of the last things my supportive father said to me before his death in 1991 was, “The next time you go tilting at windmills, I hope they fall down!” It seems finally we have worn down resistance in several denominations. The windmills are falling.

Yet the ratification of an amendment to the Presbyterian Church’s constitution last week that plucks out the prohibition of LGBT ordination is a mere whisper of justice. The prohibition that dared not speak our name (requiring heterosexual marriage or chastity for ordination) is replaced by an affirmation that also dares not speak our name!

I found myself grieving and angry over hundreds of friends and colleagues who did not live to see this sliver of “More Light” dawn on a church in which they had been raised to believe they belonged but who died being told they did not.

But I didn’t feel my rage at “justice delayed / justice denied” until I watched the Glee episode “Prom Queen” broadcast the same Tuesday evening of the deciding presbytery votes. A vision of God’s commonwealth always makes reality pale in comparison. Though I initially resisted becoming a fan, I believe the program is the most uplifting hour on television. Glee blessedly proclaims the Gospel the church has resisted, in one way or another, throughout our history—that all of us belong, equally, of whatever color, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender.

An artist who proclaimed a similar Gospel was Vincent van Gogh, but only after he was removed by the institutional church from his pulpit as a Calvinist minister because he identified too much with the poor and marginalized he had been sent to serve. He went through an idle wilderness period to discern his new call, as a painter of the overlooked and marginalized. His sermons, he wrote to his brother Theo, would be his paintings, offering the consolation that the Christian religion once gave.

Glee gives me the consolation and the inspiration the church is called to offer. When the church fails, Jesus speaks to us any way he can.