Signs of the Times, Ominous and Hopeful

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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.

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.  

The Double Feature

There are movies that I can watch again and again with pleasure because they conjure up for me the “olden” times of my life. The Birds and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? take me back to a quaint California of the early 1960s, my native state. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter take me back to books I enjoyed as a youth, and both were transformative, not only at how I looked at race and disability, but how I viewed myself as an outsider.

Recently I wanted to end a Sunday afternoon with such a movie, and I caught the last half of A Summer Place on Turner Classic Movies. It’s a peculiar story how I first happened to see the film. My occasionally non-conformist mother and a colleague of hers served as tricksters at the rather staid Christian school where they taught and which I attended, playing practical jokes on each other and exchanging funny, mischievous notes.

He suggested my parents and I—10 years old or so—join him to see Ben Hur at a drive-in movie theater. It happened to be half of a double feature with A Summer Place, a movie my parents had reservations about seeing themselves, let alone letting me see this film about lusty, illicit love. I can’t remember if it was shown first, and we had to watch it, or if last, and we stayed because we had already paid for it! (My parents, while generous, were even more frugal than I am!) But we watched the entire double feature.

In my book, As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage, I wrote how, of all the Hollywood movies about Jesus, I prefer Ben Hur, because the film never shows Jesus directly, but rather, depicts how he affected people—which is what I believe we have in Christian scriptures as well. I like this less literal and more indirect way of portraying Jesus.

Obviously it’s strange pairing this quasi-religious film with an incredibly secular film about older star-crossed lovers who leave their disastrous marriages to marry, and their teenage children who fall hopelessly in love, played by (to me, adorable) Troy Donahue and (to me, lucky) Sandra Dee. (When he died in 2001, I was saddened to learn that, after a serious bout with drugs and alcohol, his “summer place” was New York’s Central Park, before getting sober and getting on with his life.)

But the double feature awakened the double feature of my own life. Yes, I liked Jesus and things religious. And yes, I liked Troy Donahue, and things romantic. Religious or romantic, love would eventually come to me spiritually and sexually, thanks be to God!

Ever wonder why, after teaching at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, prolific Christian author Henri Nouwen spent the last ten years of his life as part of the L’Arche community, built around people with disabilities? Come find out as I lead a weekend retreat at Kirkridge May 2-4: “Henri Nouwen’s Road to L’Arche.”

Each Wednesday of Lent, I am providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as a Lenten resource for reflection.

Thursday:      Spiritual Yearnings

Friday:            Vacation and Vocation

Saturday:       If Jesus Read The New York Times

Holy Week

Palm Sunday:           Blessed Are the Prophets

Monday:                    The Temple of God’s Wounds

Tuesday:                   Spiritual Struggle [First full day of Passover]

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, catalogued by year and month.

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

A Single Unified Force

Those of you who follow this blog may have already guessed that I sometimes use The New York Times ScienceTimes for a kind of lectio divina. The day I am writing this, my text was the exciting observation of “Ripples from the Big Bang”: “faint spiral patterns from the polarization of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang,” believed to be evidence of the theory of inflation, the force behind the original cosmic explosion that became our universe, dating back to a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of our cosmic “grand opening.”

I gravitated to the phrase, “a single unified force,” that predated the Big Bang: 

Knowing inflation’s identity could be crucial if scientists are ever to unwind cosmic history back to the beginning, when they suspect the universe was ruled by a single unified force instead of the four distinct forces we know today: gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. 

To me this is as awesome as anything found in the first chapter of Genesis! And also mythological in its best sense: not an untrue narrative as most people misunderstand myth, but a narrative with intensely deep meaning for human imagination.

I had heard the Big Bang began with something the size of a marble, but this article suggests something infinitesimally smaller: “a subatomic quantum speck.” I have speculated in the past that this “marble” or “speck” could be the origin of our spiritual intuition that we are one: one with each other, with all creatures, with earth and stars, with all that is. The spiritual yearning for unity, overcoming dualism and differentiation, is really, I have thought, a nostalgic wish to return to the womb of this “subatomic quantum speck” and its “single unified force”—the “good ol’ days” of the cosmos.

Yes, I am probably overstepping my intellectual abilities as well as my education. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I might as well stick both feet in my mouth by confessing that, after a career of objecting to dualism, especially of body and spirit, I’ve never quite understood that dualism is by definition a bad thing. When I was ministering to people losing their bodies or their friends to AIDS, the separation of spirit and body came in handy to let go.

And I didn’t quite understand how a duality necessarily implied a hierarchy; why couldn’t a duality be like yin and yang, where one side is part of the other and vice versa? Or why couldn’t it be like the explanation of the Trinity where each part is a dimension of the one God—you know, just as a daughter can be a sister as well as a mother? (I was reminded this past weekend during a course on Hildegard of Bingen that she viewed the Trinity as inseparable: when one was present, all were present.)

In child rearing, differentiation is a preferred outcome. Only dysfunctional families desire a child to be a uniform expression of parents. Even so, differentiation of the cosmos has given us everything from black holes and supernovas to our pets and lovers. Differentiation, I would say, is a good thing.

I’ve used the metaphor of an expanding delta at the mouth of a river, spreading fertile soil and water to a broader expanse, to affirm the church’s diverse expressions as a good thing, rather than seeing it as the Body of Christ “broken” once more. And I apply this same principle to broader spiritual and religious diversity.

In my view, all of these are additional “ripples from the Big Bang,” and I look on them and consider them good. It’s only bad when we think our ripple is superior, or the “one way,” or the only way, or the “crown” of creation. Diversity is good. Evolution—biological and social—is good. Multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-disciplinary, multi-species, multi-ecologies—all are good.

Being united is also good, but absolute unity would cause the universe to collapse on itself, and we and everything we know and everything we have yet to discover would disappear.

Given the diversity of you readers, I would also consider it good to have pushback and feedback. Most everything I’ve written (not just here) raises issues for somebody out there. My ignorance far exceeds my knowledge, my imagination overreaches my scholarship, reality is way beyond my grasp.

I take comfort in the first Genesis creation story, in which Yahweh repeatedly pronounces everything created “good.” The ancient Jewish story is on to something, I believe.

Each Wednesday of Lent, I am providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as a Lenten resource for reflection.

Thursday:      It’s a Small, Small World

Friday:            Everybody Has a Story

Saturday:       Peace in Jerusalem

Sunday:          Treasure in Earthen Temples

Monday:         Our Mother

Tuesday:        The Thoughtful Pause  

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, catalogued by year and month.

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

Bill Maher's Fundamentalism

This post appeared in last week’s Huffington Post, receiving over 200 “likes” and over 200 comments.

I am a Bill Maher fan. My partner and I regularly watch the political comedian’s show on HBO, and we share his political leanings. Though he doesn’t quite “get” the need for or role of myth, he fulfills the traditional and mythological role of “fool to the king,” using barbed wit to speak truth to power. And he expresses the anger and frustration many of us progressives feel toward “the powers that be.”

Saturday night before last we attended his live performance here in Atlanta. The friends I accompanied wondered how his religious barbs might affect me. All I could say was that I agreed with most of them, mainly because he was not directing them at the religion I practice.

For example, I agree that religion and science are mutually exclusive categories, but it’s not an either/or choice, for each serve different purposes. Some of the most respected theologians and contemplatives have been scientists, doctors, and mathematicians themselves. Personally, my faith would not be as vital and progressive were it not for scientific discoveries and revelations.

Though Bill Maher thinks he is dissing all religion and spirituality, he actually attacks what I would call grade school religion. He even hinted at some respect for the new pope, whom I would describe as representing graduate school religion and above.

His reference to “the Jewish fairy tales” of Hebrew scriptures sounded unintentionally ironic to me, given that the Jewish prophets played the same role of playing “fool to the king,” speaking truth to power, and could be said to be the moral and spiritual basis for Maher’s own criticism, both of political leaders who fail the poor and marginalized, and religious leaders who place priority on worship and purity over justice and mercy, as well as his desire to set a fire under the electorate to do something about it. Another Jewish prophet, Jesus, did much the same.

Rather than give credit to Mother Teresa’s ability to doubt her faith, referencing her posthumously published letters, Maher used it as “proof” that religion is a crock of ----.

Psychiatrist and spiritual explorer M. Scott Peck once defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” the inability of an individual or institution to even imagine being wrong. Thus I believe that in faith, doubt is a virtue. Just as in science.

Maher’s certainties about religion mirror the certainties of fundamentalists, rather than the whole of faith. I believe he would appreciate Bishop Jack Spong’s quip, perhaps quoting someone, “Religion is like a public pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

Each Wednesday of Lent, I am providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as a Lenten resource for reflection.

Thursday:     The Benefit of Doubt

Friday:           A New Underground Railroad

Saturday:      "One Nation Under God"

Sunday:         The Making of You

Monday:        Dust and Glory

Tuesday:       Piety on Parade  

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. 

Jesus: Introvert or Extrovert?

Reading Susan Cain’s book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, was like coming up for air! Or eating an entire box of See’s chocolates at one sitting, enjoying every morsel! As one friend said to me on Facebook, reading the book was her own “coming out” experience.

You see, I am an introvert who nonetheless manages to play the extrovert—I do enjoy people, after all—but then needs a rest, alone, in quiet, probably why I’m a promoter of contemplation. Throughout my life, however, I have felt constantly compared to what Cain calls “The Extrovert Ideal,” sometimes by my own hand, and sometimes at the hands of others, including American culture and the church. For example, I realize now that preaching or even speaking from a manuscript is not deficient, as I have been told, but my strength. Oh, for President Obama’s teleprompters!

Acknowledging the need for both extroverts and introverts, Cain, an introvert, strikes a blow (though that’s usually an extrovert’s temperament) for the necessity of introverts. Studies suggest that introverts are usually “high-reactives” to stimuli, and thus need to limit our exposure. Another word that is used is “sensitive.” We need time to observe, reflect, and consider situations, people, and events prior to speaking or taking action.

That’s why I insist on a “monastic moment” of silence when I pose a question to people in a workshop or retreat, a moment to turn inward, consult one’s own experience and feelings and thoughts, before opening general discussion. My experience has been that others are quick to express their thoughts before I have had a chance to consult my own experience. I thought Sir Thomas More’s Utopia had it right when its legislature vigorously debated a concern but waited till the next day to take action! Cain writes, “Congress…is made up of some of the least sensitive people in the country” because to get elected and re-elected virtually requires an extrovert’s temperament.

That’s also why I wrote a post two weeks ago about experiencing spiritual community outside of church, what I had thought of calling “spirituality for loners.” Several pastors took me to task on Facebook, though in previous posts I have acknowledged that church and worship are worthy spiritual disciplines.  But as I have discovered the need for silence in my own spiritual practices, I have looked for more silence in worship, and when it is interrupted or when worship gets raucous it sounds to me like fingernails scratching a chalkboard. And I reclaim words I found appealing in college, words from Alfred North Whitehead, “Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.”

The post opened me to pleasant conversation with Sam Troxal, a young and gifted blogger, and with a role model pastor and author, J. Barrie Shepherd. Barrie, a regular reader of this blog (I am proud to say), has written many books of poetry whose daily rhythms encouraged me to pray regularly long ago. I appreciate the fact that in poetry, pauses are as vital as words, and an economy of words are carefully, thoughtfully selected to convey exactly what is intended. In my book of “secular” poetic meditations, Communion of Life, I called poets “secular mystics.”

Barrie sent me his recent book, Between Mirage and Miracle: Selected Poems for Seasons, Festivals, and the Occasional Revelation, urging me to read his poem about church, “Why I Still Go,” which meaningfully concludes: 

For all my weary, reasoned doubt,

the continuing disillusion and despair

of this already blood-drenched century,

for all my anger at her blind echoing

of the worst that hides in all of us,

come Sunday morning, somehow,

I still find myself in church.

I have questioned whether it is the church’s “blind echoing” of prejudice against LGBT people that prompts me to seek other counsel and other forms of worship. But it is also true that the expected conformity and the lack of silence and gentle voices are also factors. And what presents itself as teamwork, collaboration, or democratic process is too often an opportunity for extroverts—sometimes with less experience and expertise, or worse, less compassion and wisdom—to outtalk and occasionally bully others! 

So I’ve been wondering about whether Jesus was an introvert or an extrovert. Obviously I may be projecting, but I believe he was an introvert. He was certainly a “high reactive” to religious hypocrisy and “sensitive” to religious outcasts. When tempted in his solitary sojourn in the wilderness by relevance, sensationalism, and power, he resisted. Though followed by multitudes seeking healings and teachings, he found lonely places to pray or a boat from which to preach. He called 12 disciples, and taught them privately. Perhaps it was the temperament of being introverts that Jesus shared with “the disciple whom Jesus (especially) loved” who gave us the most mystical gospel. But without extroverts like Peter and Paul, the world may not have been evangelized.

That may be the power of the Spirit, that gives even introverts the gift of speech. Yet it is also the Spirit’s gift to hear God’s voice in “the sound of sheer silence” that follows the storm, the earthquake, and the fire.

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.

This blog is entirely supported by your donations. Thank you!

Posts you may have missed:

In Praise of Praise

The Right Word

If Jesus Read The New York Times

If Jesus read The New York Times, he would not see a world so different from his own, except in externals. He would still see the poor, the hungry, and the marginalized. He would recognize military occupations, tribal warfare (even in Washington), and rulers who act like gods. He would experience déjà vu as he read about a variety of attempts at world domination, this time not by the Roman Empire, but by corporations, governments, ideologies, religions, even terrorists. Misogyny, patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia would not surprise him. And misuse of God’s creation has been with us since Eden.

Religious battles, spiritual abuse, clergy misconduct, religious hierarchy, fundamentalism, exclusivity, scapegoating, judgment, and self-righteousness—he challenged all of these in his own time.  Wealth and greed in its myriad expressions (money, property, possessions, knowledge, ancestry, etc.) he has already testified as  stumbling blocks to entering God’s commonwealth.

Drones have replaced crosses, weapons of mass destruction have replaced the swords we were to beat into ploughshares, AIDS has displaced leprosy, terrorist acts by individuals and governments alike have more “sophisticated” expressions—but all still intimidate the human spirit. Equally harmful, they may distract us from the life of the spirit. There’s even been a recent slaughter of the innocents.

Violence comes neatly packaged in celluloid and video and digital formats, but the violent games of the Roman circus might also have been considered “wholesome” fun in their time. The internet provides just the latest opportunity for greedy lust to overrule the better natures of our hearts. Prisons, at least in the West, are more humane, but those in the U.S. house a higher percentage of the population than in Jesus’ time.

So Jesus’ calling still has relevance, as he quoted Isaiah, “to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of the vision we need, and to let the oppressed go free.”

And his calling to us still resonates. “Give to the poor.” “Feed the hungry.” “Provide shelter.” “Welcome strangers.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Love your neighbor.” “Love your enemy.” “Do not judge.” “Pray in secret.” “Seek, and you will find.”  “Do not be anxious.” “Blessed are the merciful.” “Avoid anger.” “Do good to those who persecute you.” “Avoid revenge.” “Forgive as you have been forgiven.”  “Don’t shut others out of the temple.” “Woe to religious leaders who tie heavy burdens on others.” “Be compassionate as God in heaven is compassionate.” “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

If Jesus read The New York Times, I believe he would lament over the world as he did over Jerusalem, “You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

Copyright © 2013 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. Past posts are available in the archive in the right rail on the blogsite.

Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to this ministry! Thank you!

Please join me this weekend at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland March 9-10, 2013 for a Saturday retreat on Henri Nouwen, “From the Heart,” and on Sunday morning,  interviewed in the Dean’s Forum about “Progressive Christianity” and preaching at the 9 am jazz mass and 11:15 am choral Eucharist on “The Holy Place: Mercy and Reconciliation,” on Jesus’ parable of the prodigal.

Thanks to Brian McNaught for this wonderful article, “Religious LGBT Folk Are Unsung Heroes.”

New weekly feature! Posts you may have missed:

We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands

Seeing Things as if for the First Time 

Spiritual Freedom

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

Paul reminded the church in Galatia that he had been very religious. He wrote, “I advanced in [religion] beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” What that meant was following to the letter every religious law and performing every required religious ritual. But what that also meant for him was intolerance of any who did not rigidly adhere to the same laws and rituals—thus his persecution of the freewheeling sect who were followers of Jesus.

But then Paul had a spiritual experience. It was a spiritual experience that did not conform to his tradition. As is true throughout the Bible, personal experience is thus counted as a sacred source, alongside religious teaching and ritual. Our lives are sacred texts that we may consult alongside scripture and tradition. Spirituality is not something imposed by external requirements, such as circumcision. Spirituality is something inspired by internal freedom, a circumcision—transformation—of the heart.

The apostle Paul addressed a crisis in the life of the congregation in Galatia in which some of its members were trying to impose traditional rituals and requirements on its converts. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery,” Paul virtually shouted at them. But freedom itself can be inhibiting, when we face so many possibilities! What do we preserve and what do we transcend? How do we make the choice? Who makes that decision?

From childhood I remember an episode of a TV program called Crossroads in which two angels come to a village. The angel in the white suit claimed to have come from God, as did the angel in the dark suit. The villagers did not know which angel to believe, so they challenged them to engage in a staring match. Two chairs were set opposite one another on the main street, and a wide circle was drawn around them, lest someone get in the way of their spiritual warfare and be harmed.  The angels sat in the opposing chairs and stared intently into each other’s eyes without blinking.

Unaware of what was going on, a little girl playing nearby chased her ball into the circle, to the alarm of the villagers. Suddenly she was struck down by the spiritual powers wrestling for control. But before she fell to the ground, the angel in the dark suit turned to catch her before she hurt herself, breaking his gaze at the angel in the white suit.

“Ah, now we know which angel is from heaven,” some villagers concluded, “The angel in the white suit did not look away.”

But other villagers wondered allowed, “But wouldn’t an angel from heaven be more concerned for the child’s welfare than with winning a stupid contest?” And so the villagers were divided between the angel with power and the angel with compassion.

It has been said of our own era that the most needed spiritual gift is an ability to discern the spirits. The Galatians were similarly torn between the traditions of their spiritual ancestors and their newfound Christian freedom. So Paul gave them a way to test the spirits in their freedom: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” But lest we focus on judging others, Paul continued, “All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride.”

A conservative Christian once remarked about a festive gathering of progressive Christians, “You do seem to have better parties.” The progressive Christian to whom he spoke laughed, observing, “There may be a theological reason for that!”