"In Earth"

On my way to Petra, 1981.

Thank you, Huston Smith, for widely sharing your lifelong spiritual quest.

The morning that I write this, I completed my re-reading of the Gospel texts of Jesus’ Nativity, a habit of Advent for me. As I have several posts already prepared, this will be published toward the end of Christmastide, a few days before Epiphany. Given that it’s a “Christmas epiphany” of sorts, that feels just about right. Epiphany and its season have come to mean for me a time to celebrate all glimpses of divinity, including spiritual and scientific, and this “glimpse” juxtaposes both categories.

The reading this morning was the Gospel of John’s famous prologue about the Word, the Word that called creation into being, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. My blogpost “The Word We Need This Christmas” reflected on this passage, and I had this in mind as I read again John’s very grand interpretation of Jesus’ birth.

But my “a-ha” came when I recited the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, as I do every morning. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth”—and here I stopped, not adding my usual “on earth,” an alternate wording that suggests an alliance of human will. “Thy kingdom come…in earth.” “The Word made flesh.” The connection was obvious and inescapable. From the beginning, God’s “kingdom” and God’s “word” has been embodied, enfleshed, in earth, in matter and energy.

God’s kingdom and God’s will is the spark that began the universe in the eyes of people of faith. “Thy kingdom come in earth as in heaven” is as much about origins as it is about hoped-for destinations. Faith posits that the more we know of our origin—our reason for being who and what and where we are—the better we know our destination, our purpose, our meaning.

The scientific search for the origins of the universe is no less than an attempt to find our place in it, how and why and when we came to be. For most of human history, we have relied on our spiritual imaginations to speculate on our place: myth-making, ritual-performing, story-telling. Now that our scientific imaginations are given a freer reign, we have fact-oriented, experiment-performing, evidence-gathering methods of discerning something like what our spiritual imaginations have sought.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “arc that bends toward justice” may be a way of recognizing that justice (God’s will, God’s kingdom) is built-in. This is a high-view of creation in general and humankind in particular, and would seem to belie the notion of “The Fall,” but to “fall” requires heighth. In my belief, “The Fall” is not built-in, though most Christians probably believe that to be so. As Matthew Fox and others have pointed out, it’s our “original blessing” that is built-in.

Genesis has us created in God’s image, thus in Jesus’ lineage the Gospel of Luke calls Adam “son of God.” The Gospel of John has the Word giving us “power to become children of God,” restoring us to our rightful heritage.

My reasoning will seem sophomoric to some, but the profound sense that matter and energy and we are also incarnations of God’s will and kingdom will not leave me.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

The intense beauty of colors in the stone of Petra 

brought involuntary tears to my eyes.

Everybody Has a Story

Prayer was saved for many progressive Christians of my generation by Malcolm Boyd’s landmark book of prayers, Are You Running with Me, Jesus? For Protestants, his book and others like it served as our Vatican II, putting religious expression in the common vernacular. He and I were introduced by a mutual friend the year his courageous coming out memoir, Take Off the Masks, was published. We first came to know one another taking my favorite walk along the Santa Monica shore at sunset.

Malcolm is a great storyteller, and one story in particular has stayed with me in the decades since, one about him on an airplane, sitting next to a self-important man who was sorting through stacks of papers related to his work, infringing on Malcolm’s own space. As I recall, he even told Malcolm how important he was as he asked him to hold a stack of papers for him.

“I don’t look for this sort of thing,” Malcolm tells the story with obvious delight, “But a stranger came up to me at that moment and said, ‘Your writing has changed my life—would you mind autographing a book for me?’” At which the self-important man eyed Malcolm from the corner of his eye, took back his papers, and never said another word to him during the flight!

I have sometimes thought of that story when I meet a stranger, sit next to someone on an airplane, or stand in line with people I do not know. It may occur to me when seeing hundreds pass through an airport, sitting in an audience, or gathering for a cause.

Many of us are so preoccupied with our own stories, we fail to recognize that the person before us, beside us, or behind us also has a rich and complex story.

What I have discovered when I am attentive to another’s story is humbling: they are the stars of their own biographies, and often with good reason. And I have found many have a spiritual autobiography worthy of the telling. I have led workshops and retreats on “Our Lives as Sacred Texts,” encouraging people to look at their own stories as a sacred source, just as they might biblical stories. Using an idea from Matthew Fox, I have encouraged workshop participants to draw their own spiritual maps, imaging barriers they broke through, mountains they climbed, swamps or deserts they traversed, dragons they fought. Or create spiritual timelines, revealing times of growth, change, or conversion.

When you consider how full your life has been, and then multiply that by the billions around the globe, you realize God has filled all of our baskets to overflowing. And that’s an occasion for both listening and thanksgiving.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations.