A New Frontier

Yesterday (literally!) I thought I had nothing new to give you, but then I realized I did have something old to offer, the wisdom of the poet Kahlil Gibran. My mother loved reading his books in the sixties and I’ve been reading her copy of Mirrors of the Soul, translated with biographical notes by Joseph Sheban and published by the Philosophical Library of New York in 1965. It’s amazing to me how relevant it is today.

In seminary I had a friend from Lebanon who could not understand why Gibran was so popular in the United States. “There are better poets in Lebanon,” he said frankly. But reading this particular book explains it to me. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was a teenager, though he returned to Lebanon for his higher education. No doubt being “bicontinental” as well as located in New York City gave him the exposure needed in the publishing world.

This book begins with a quote of Gibran that speaks to our need to listen to our own hearts and the heart of the universe:

My soul is my counsel and has taught me to give ear to the voices which are created neither by tongues nor uttered by throats.

Before my soul became my counsel, I was dull, and weak of hearing, reflecting only upon the tumult and the cry. But, now, I can listen to silence with serenity and can hear in the silence the hymns of ages chanting exaltation to the sky and revealing the secrets of eternity.

How often we only attend to “the tumult and the cry” rather than “the hymns of [the] ages”!

Sheban contends that Gibran was “a rebel, but only against ceremonial practices,” while familiarizing himself with a wide range of spiritual teachers, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Confucian, non-religious philosophers, and more. In one of his stories in Arabic, “Kahlil the Heretic,” a novice urges his monastic community to go out and serve the people, saying,

“The hardships we shall encounter among the people shall be more sanctifying and more exalting than the ease and serenity we accept in this place. The sympathy that touches a neighbor’s heart is greater than virtue practiced unseen in this convent. A word of compassion for the weak, the criminal and the sinner is more magnificent than long, empty prayers droned in the temple.”

Of course, the novice in the story is driven from the monastery!

Another character from another story, “John the Madman,” prays, “Come again, O Jesus, to drive the vendors of thy faith from thy sacred temple.”

Finally, these excerpts from Kahlil Gibran’s essay entitled “The New Frontier” written a hundred years ago may have a familiar ring and relevant reverberations for our time:

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

Are you a merchant utilizing the need of society for the necessities of life for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere, hard-working and diligent person facilitating the exchange between the weaver and the farmer, charging a reasonable profit as a middleman between supply and demand? If you are the first, then you are a criminal whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the second, then you are a charitable person whether you are thanked or denounced by the people.

Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income? Or are you a devout and a pious person who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of one’s own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world?

If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast at day and pray by night. If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved. …

Are you a governor who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed? Or are you the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people?

If you are the first, then, then you are as a tare in the threshing floor of the nation; and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.

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

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Photo from California desert by Chris. 

Einstein's "Holy Curiosity"

This 1947 photo by Philippe Halsman was a favorite of Einstein's.

An article in Sunday’s paper about the possible evolutionary advantages of curiosity introduced me to a “famed quote” from Albert Einstein that was nonetheless new to me. He told a college student “never lose a holy curiosity.”

Of course, my “holy curiosity” got the better of me and I clicked on the link to that quote and found an intriguing conversation Einstein had with an interviewer, William Miller of Life magazine, and his “nihilistic” college-age son about religious beliefs.

Granting that we are free to name any power we believe in “God,” Einstein explains, “I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. … The presence of a superior reasoning power…revealed in the incomprehensible universe forms my idea of God.”

“I cannot accept any concept of God based on the fear of life or the fear of death, or blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar. … I am an honest man.”

“Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can’t. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.”

When asked if he believes in a soul, Einstein responds, “Yes, if by this you mean the living spirit that makes us long to do worthy things for humanity.”

He suggests to the student that he (and by inference, we) find something “to occupy your curiosity for a lifetime.”

“Then do not stop to think about the reasons for what you are doing, about why you are questioning. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.”

As the interviewer and son are leaving, the son points to a tree “and asked whether one could truthfully say it was a tree.” “This could all be a dream,” Einstein replies. “You may not be seeing it all.”

“If I assume that I can see it, how do I know exactly that the tree exists and where it is?” the student asks.

“You have to assume something. Be glad that you have some little knowledge of something that you cannot penetrate. Don’t stop to marvel.”

Reading this exchange, I couldn’t help but think of my and your “little knowledge” of God and the spiritual life. Einstein’s counsel never to stop marveling rings in my ears and rings true in my heart.

“It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a person of success but rather try to become a person of value. One is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than one puts in. But a person of value will give more than he/she/they receives.”

Related post: What Is Truth?

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

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Armchair Contemplatives

Mount Shasta photo by Bill Buchanan.

Bill and Ruth are regular readers of this blog.

At the end of Book One of The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, I wrote, “I don’t like his God.” What I felt is that his God is incredibly demanding, and I found myself yearning for the homeliness of Evelyn Underhill’s God in her two-level House of the Soul.

But then it occurred to me that Juan de la Cruz’s book could be compared to a manual on how to climb Mt. Everest. To do that requires demanding training, sacrifice and investment. It’s not God who’s “demanding,” any more than it is Mt. Everest that’s demanding. What’s demanding are efforts to scale seeming insurmountable heights.

I’d rather see Mt. Everest from a distance than from the top. I guess the same goes for my preferences of seeing God. Ninety-nine+ percent of the Hebrews saw Mt. Sinai from the plain. Only Moses ascended to commune with Yahweh, sovereign of the universe.* And we have his testimony of what God calls us to be and do, along with the testimonies of all the prophetic mystics of every age, of every faith and culture.

With many of you, I am content to remain an armchair contemplative. I am grateful for the stories and writings of saints, contemplatives, mystics, and spiritual authors. The spiritual horizons they offer inform and inspire our own spiritual quests. “Success” is not my spiritual objective; in fact, I don’t consider success a spiritual objective, period.

I’ve written elsewhere that a sense of “having arrived” is when we may be in the most spiritual danger. John of the Cross understood this; he warns that such folk judge others as the boastful Pharisee contrasting himself with the Publican sinner. John writes that it may be best that God not free such people from their imperfections, despite their petitions, lest they “wax haughtier in their pride.”

So I guess I should thank God for my imperfections!

John of the Cross is the first to admit that the purgation of dark nights, first of the senses and second of the intellect, does not “earn” God’s companionship. Rather it allows God’s ever-present, unyielding love to touch us, to infuse our souls.

As I move into Book Two of Dark Night, however, I resist John’s supposition that he is sufficiently purged as well as his original premise of purging the sensual and the intellectual.

Moses first encountered I AM in a lowly desert shrub that was burning and yet unconsumed. Jacob physically wrestled with God in the middle of the night. Ruth embraced Yahweh in her fidelity to Naomi. Elijah heard God in a “sound of gentle stillness.” Hannah’s fervent prayers to get pregnant were answered. God blessed Solomon with wisdom at his request. Jewish faith has been traditioned in teaching and chavrusa, debating the meaning of sacred texts in small groups or partnerships.

Mary experienced birth pangs to give rise to a refreshing renewal of the faith of Abraham and Sarah. Jesus prayed in lonely places and was sought out for his healing touch and compassionate wisdom. The Christian story is that God has been embodied in Jesus himself, whose Spirit inspires and empowers his followers. And Christians believe themselves to be members of the Body of Christ, which cannot say to the head or the hand, the intellect or the senses, “I have no need of you.”

John of the Cross’s spirituality appears to be, to me at least, more a product of Hellenistic dualism than of the Bible. Though his concept of letting go of all that is not God is admirable, I myself find everything good is of God.

Four decades ago, an elderly gay Roman Catholic priest visited the congregation I was serving and joined us for brunch afterward. He told us he first learned of God as a child on his grandmother’s knee, and though he grew up learning and studying a harsher and more demanding God, he now, in retirement, was welcoming a gentler understanding of a “grandmother God.”

Related Post: My Dark Night of the Soul

*Moses was accompanied part way by others and further by Joshua but only Moses entered Yahweh’s cloud at the summit as described in Exodus 24.

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

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Photo used by permission.

"Hey Kids! Look at the Too-lah! Look at the Too-lah!"

Wade looking at the Indian Ocean along 

Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, last summer. (crg)

On a recent visit with my family of origin, I heard the usual stories rolled out by my older siblings, putting me in my proper place as the “baby of the family.” One sibling surprised me by a new take on an old story. Being the youngest, I sat in the front seat of our old Hudson with our parents on a cross-country drive, apparently considered a privileged position by my sister and brother. At one point, given my vantage point, I saw a body of water and turned to them in the back seat, exclaiming excitedly, “Hey kids! Look at the too-lah! Look at the too-lah!” We long ago decided that “too-lah” must have come from the word “toilet,” then my only frame of reference for a body of water.

On this telling, however, one of my siblings added the word “condescendingly”—that I had “condescendingly” turned to them to announce this wonder. Miffed, I replied, “How can a toddler be condescending?” My other sibling had a different interpretation, that I was simply imitating the tone my parents took to convey something exciting to us kids.

This story came to me as I am currently reading The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. A bookmark not many pages in reminds me I’ve tried to read it before. In the past I’ve made the common mistake of understanding “dark night” as simply a period of suffering externally imposed, but, at the same time, it is a spiritual practice detaching ourselves from anything that is not God (including moving beyond our mental images of God “to the state of the progressives”), while welcoming God’s transforming love of our souls. At least, that’s one way of putting it.

One by one and day by day, as I read the sins or “imperfections” that may come with the spiritual life, I am realizing that I am guilty of each one of them. The first listed is pride, how the contemplative novice may be so excited by what she or he is learning that they prematurely become spiritual teachers rather than doers. That very nearly silenced me as a writer of these “progressive Christian reflections,” much as reading and writing about Zen Masters in recent years almost nudged me to enter their silence.

I realized that my readers may be enduring what my siblings did when I was a child, hearing, “Hey kids! Look at the too-lah! Look at the too-lah!” I get so excited by what I’m learning, if not always practicing, that I want to write about it.

I overheard a monk acerbically say of spiritual author Henri Nouwen, “I wish he would stop writing about wanting to pray and just pray!” In his book, Reaching Out, Henri offered a kind of defense, which I’ve quoted before:

I found some consolation and encouragement in the words of one of the most stern ascetics, the seventh-century John of the Ladder, who lived for forty years a solitary life at Mount Sinai. In his chapter on discernment, step 26 of his spiritual ladder, he writes: “If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach…For perhaps, being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach.”

A half century ago I visited a progressive Baptist congregation whose pastor offered a good job description of his work. Along with other ministerial responsibilities, he was given time to explore theology and spirituality on behalf of the congregation and share those insights from the pulpit.

So, even if I may not have the exact word for God or the exact words or best practices for the spiritual life, I can still lean over the front seat of the Hudson and shout excitedly to all of you, “Hey kids! Look at the too-lah! Look at the too-lah!”

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

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Ozymandias on the Nightly News

The Karnak Temple Complex in Luxor, Egypt, 

in which Ramses II is depicted as the god Osiris.

1981 (crg)

Watching the evening news recently, “Ozymandias” came to mind. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetic rendering of the transiency and impotence of inflated egolatry of the kings of ancient times speaks to the would be “kings” who dominate the 24/7 news cycle of our own time. I was thinking of one in particular, but there are many around the world who qualify.

So I looked up the poem in my good old Norton Anthology, whose footnotes explained that a first century B.C. Greek historian reported that the largest statue in Egypt had the inscription: “I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.” The anthology explains, “Ozymandias was Ramses II of Egypt, 13^th century B.C.”

Decades ago, when I visited Egypt as part of a religious studies class, it was pointed out to us that Ramses II had his name carved deep into the stone of structures he built so that a later Pharaoh could not scratch it out, which sometimes happened. In the poem below, the anthology further explains that “the hand that mocked” refers to the sculptor’s representation and derision of his subject, and “the heart that fed” refers to the king’s heart that served as the source of such mockery.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” reminded me of the frown, wrinkled lip, and sneer of a cold and callous politician that I frequently see on the nightly news.

It also made me think of my recent reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, whose familiar story has been told in multiple productions: offering his soul, Dorian Gray’s portrait takes on all his sins and aging so he can remain unblemished, untouched, unmoved, and unreformed. Dorian keeps the painting covered and hidden in an unused, locked room. He occasionally checks on it, finding it uglier and more distorted with each viewing.

Dorian finally decides he needs to change his way of life and he does something he considers good and unselfish, hoping to reverse the process, but in the end,

He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning, and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. … Had it been merely vanity that made him do this one good deed? Or the desire of a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these?

Ozymandias could be said to practice the power of positive thinking, thinking of himself and his work in superlatives, but the sands of time are a great leveling field, Shelley makes clear.

Dorian Gray was above it all, privileged and pampered and proud, without good promise or purpose. Wilde’s implication is that conscience is necessary for the soul to survive.

“What does it profit a person if, in gaining the whole world, loses the soul?”

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

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Hounds in Heaven

My name is Hobbes. I’m a 15-year-old female retriever mix. I’ve watched my human do this over 200 times, so I’ve decided to mark this post myself. It’s taken me a few weeks because I type slower than he does. Be grateful that I have substituted this for the post he wrote, which was just not right for New Year’s Eve: all about the gloom and doom of this past year—y’know, disease, torture, rendition, racism,* guns, rape, climate change, war, you name it.

The occasion? Pope Francis’s statement while comforting a child in the death of his dog: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”** He said this several weeks ago, but as I said, I type slowly and I like to chew on things for a while, the canine form of contemplation.

Paradise would not be paradise for my humans if I wasn’t there. As it is, I bring them a little heaven on earth, if I may say so. Remember, if Eve hadn’t come along, animals were made to be Adam’s companions, and we would never have let them be fooled by that snake. Eden was idyllic for us, too, as Adam and Eve were both vegans before The Fall. We too yearn to return to that Paradise in which all animals, including humans, will get along.

Of course Mr. Pope stirred up controversy, because what he said suggests that animals have souls. How can humans not see my soulful expression in the photo that accompanies this post? And what makes humans think they have a soul and we do not? Isn’t that presumptuous?

My late brother Calvin wrote about his philosophy in a book, Unleashed: The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog. In his chapter “On Evolution,” he questioned that dogs descended from wolves, but never doubted humans descended from apes. He asserted: 

Rather, I believe that I and other dogs were created by God and made in God’s image. We are God’s mirror reflection. That’s why God backwards spells dog. Isn’t that one of the first things you English-speaking humans notice, the spelling thing? And who else but God loves as unconditionally as a dog? We don’t care who you humans are or what you humans do, as long as you take some time to be with us, praise us, worship us, and do our bidding occasionally. Isn’t that godlike? Even when you treat us badly or forget we’re around, the minute you turn about and give us the attention we deserve, we lick your faces and give you comfort. Isn’t that divine? 

Beware, all those who mistreat or abuse animals in this life or allow us to be treated badly by others, because heaven will seem like hell to you, not because we are vengeful (that’s a human thing) but because you will feel so ashamed!

Instead, consider my brother’s hope for the world this New Year: 

Avoid that misnamed “dog-eat-dog” world (after all, we’re not cannibals) and drool over a dog-sniff-dog world in which we smell one another’s delicious scents, see the wonder of all creation, dig out a safe lair for all (especially puppies), perk up our ears at worthy lead dogs, take opportunities to rest and play and nest, and sense the presence of our Mother Dog watching over all of us.

Then together, as one pack, we can sniff out life’s buried treats.

*I have a bone to pick with humans. Why breed so much diversity among us dogs, but resist diversity among yourselves?

** This is Chris adding this editorial note. I didn’t have the heart to tell Hobbes that the quote was subsequently attributed to Paul VI! She loves Pope Francis’s choice of name so very much! -CG

P.S. Since Hobbes posted this, Pope Francis, in his June 18, 2015 encyclical on climate change, wrote, “Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all.” He ends the encyclical with prayers, including, “Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey toward your infinite light.” Thanks to Nicholas Kristof for his column, “A Pope for All Species.”

See Hobbes referenced in The New York Times by clicking here!

Posts that have gone to the dogs:

A Bone to Pick with Scripture

My Dog Ate My Scripture

Let God Rub Your Belly

Miss the Rapture?

What Calvin Taught Me about God

So I can get more treats, please support my human’s blog ministry by clicking here or 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!

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a pet-friendly denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

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

"For Thine Is the Kingdom (burp!)"

Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I say the Lord’s Prayer every day. This morning I burped after praying “for thine is the kingdom.” I immediately apologized (to God) and went on, “and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

But then I thought better of the apology. This is the way God made us, to burp and to fart and to do all those things we’d rather not do or say in God’s presence, let alone talk and write about them!

Yet, choosing an alternative to the scary book I wrote about last week, I had just been reading a collection of Flannery O’Connor’s spiritual writings, bristling a little at her insistence on traditional Christianity, while intrigued by her notion of the importance of belief in writing fiction, in an excerpt from “Novelist and Believer” (1963). So I reviewed what I had underlined, “this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source.”

Could this Southern Roman Catholic lady living in rural Georgia have felt the same way about my burp during prayer, especially our Lord’s prayer? I daresay she’d join Gone With The Wind’s mammy, saying of Scarlett’s unladylike behavior, “Tain’t fittin’. Just tain’t fittin’.”

Then I re-read the paragraph in which I had only underlined the above phrase. She starts with St. Augustine’s notion that God is poured out in the world in two ways: intellectually and physically: 

To the person who believes this—as the western world did up until a few centuries ago—this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source. The artist usually knows this by instinct; his senses, which are used to penetrating the concrete, tell him so. When [Joseph] Conrad said that his aim as an artist was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe, he was speaking with the novelist’s surest instinct. The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality. This in no way hinders his perception of evil but rather sharpens it, for only when the natural world is seen as good does evil become intelligible as a destructive force and a necessary result of our freedom. 

O’Connor fears “that religion will suffer the ultimate degradation and become, for a little time, fashionable,” reminding me of the first monastics escaping into the deserts to pray, wary of the popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire of Constantine.

She then affirms, “Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama.”  Despite this serious assertion, she adds, “it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy.”

Perhaps this allows my burp after praying “for thine is the kingdom”—a little comic relief to my earnestness.

This past Sunday, asked to speak about generosity to a congregation, I began by asking them which person they felt most relaxed around, inviting them to name the characteristic of the person that made that possible.  For me, I feel most comfortable with someone who has a generosity of spirit, a graciousness that sees my “divine source,” my “soul,” even as I burp and fart.

In memory of Pam Byers, one of those easy-to-be-with friends and colleagues.

Today is the 75^th anniversary of my late parents’ wedding.

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here. Or please mail 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!

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

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

Does a Corporation Have a Soul?

The U.S. Supreme Court has launched an entitlement program for corporations. They are now considered individuals, and individuals with faith. Makes me wonder, if corporations go bankrupt, will they dream?

Will the Court soon assert that corporations have a soul, and cannot be aborted from the moment they are conceived?

If corporations have a soul, they have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do before the Supremer Court of the Heavenly Realms. BP, how dare you foul the Gulf coastline? GM, what took you so long on that recall? Walmart, kudos for your environmental policies, but why not share your huge profits by paying your employees better wages and benefits? Hobby Lobby, why do you impose your personal interpretation of your religion on your employees? Well, you get the idea. Supply the name and sin of your most offending corporation.

Of course, churches are corporations too. And too many times they have sold their souls to the highest bidder: those who can pay for that new building, those who withhold funds if the church doesn’t toe their particular line, or those who threaten to leave if the church is too prophetic or inclusive.

I can imagine corporate evangelists who offer businesses “come-to-Jesus” moments, exhorting them to repent of their evil ways. C’mon down the aisle while we sing a couple of additional verses of our final hymn: 

Just as I am, without one plea, but that we make more mo-ney

For our stockholders and our bonuses,

And super PACs we fund, we fund.

Maybe it’s time for corporations to live on free will donations, issue quarterly statements of confession, and be given penances serving the poor.

Jesus was once asked by a corporation, “What must I do to be saved?”

“Go and sell what you have, and give to the poor.”

And the corporation went away sorrowful, for it had many acquisitions.

There will be no corporations in heaven. No churches either.

Only souls.

+++

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. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

Readers are this blog’s only means of support. Tax-deductible donations to this Emerging Ministry may be given online or by mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232, designating in the memo area, “For Progressive Christian Reflections.” Thank you!

Our neighbors have a tall, silver, windowless van in which they transport merchandise for their antique business. When I first saw it, I kidded them about whether it contained aliens, or perhaps alien pods to replace people in the complex. Then I clarified that I didn’t mean illegal aliens, but extraterrestrial ones, like the coneheads of Saturday Night Live.

The pods reference was to the 1950s sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which extraterrestrial aliens use pods to grow exact duplicates of human beings, but without emotions or individuality. I had always thought it was a metaphor for the conformity of McCarthyism, the anti-communist hysteria I referred to in last week’s post.  But I discovered on the internet that others think it a metaphor for communism itself or any totalitarian state or rigid ideology, such as fundamentalism or even orthodoxy.

Yet what it makes me think of are the body snatchers that found their way into Christian thinking—you know, those who introduced the Greek notion of body-spirit duality that contradicted the Hebrew and early Christian concept of the soul, an indivisible unity of body and spirit. To separate spirit and body meant that the spiritual was higher, eternal, and closer to God in the heavens and the body was lower, temporal, and separated from God, being closer to earth.

Despite four central theological affirmations to the contrary—Creation, Incarnation, Resurrection, and the church as the Body of Christ—Christians got it in their heads that the body was not a locus for divinity. But, as I wrote long before I read it in one of James B. Nelson’s books, we know God through our body or we don’t know God at all.  That I thought my words original suggests how much the work of Nelson and other body theologians had permeated contemporary Christian consciousness.

I thought I had to go outside of Christian tradition to find affirmation of my bodily and earthly experience. That’s why Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek became my second Bible in college: Zorba’s sensual zest filled a gap in my theology. That’s why Romantic Age poets and Process philosophy and Native American spirituality helped me see the sacred in nature’s every turn. And that’s why science from biology to astronomy now inspires me.

Little did I think that God evolving earth and bodies was a cosmic laying on of hands imparting holiness. Little did I consider the metaphor of God putting on human flesh as an incredible affirmation of the body, especially a body willing to touch other bodies with affection and healing. Little did I know that resurrection reclaims bodily experience as having eternal significance. Little did I understand that the concept Body of Christ meant that “the anointed one” transcended being a first century Palestinian Jewish male, becoming a body of every age, race, condition, gender, sexuality, and nationality.

If only I had known of Celtic Christianity then—the notion that Christ walks among us in two shoes—the Bible and Creation, and that sin can be removed by the grace encountered in nature, love, or Christ. If only I had read the Benedictine nun Julian of Norwich (1342-1420), that “Our sensuality is grounded in Nature, in Compassion, in Grace… In our sensuality, God is… God is the means by which our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as never to be apart.” In other words, in God our essence and our embodiment are one—the integrity sought in the spiritual life. And if only I had been taught Teresa of Avila’s (1515-1582) insight that now on earth God’s body is our own!

I believe more people could comprehend the spiritual life if they understood that spirituality is not an out-of-body experience, not an other-worldly encounter. Rather, our bodies participate in the divine life, the cosmos is God’s body. “In God we live and move and have our being.”

Beware of the body snatchers!

The Soul Feels Its Worth

“And the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope / The weary world rejoices…” 

It may seem strange, this first day in Lent, to quote this line from the Christmas carol “O Holy Night.” But this season, despite its emphasis on humility, is an opportunity for our souls to feel their sacred worth.

There is something almost mystical about the weaving of words with music. Hildegard of Bingen wrote that “Singing summons the Holy Spirit.” It can uplift the soul in a way naked words cannot. As much as we need to change the bad theology of old hymns, there are times when old phrases that resonate positively may be used as a kind of mantra, a form of lectio divina in which the phrase repeated over and over may descend, as the fourth century contemplatives described it, from the mind to the heart. For me, such is the phrase “and the soul felt its worth.”

What illustration could I use to get across the meaning of “the soul felt its worth”? Seeing love in the eyes of someone you love. Receiving praise from a person or group you respect. Being part of a good and just cause.

Yet what too often comes to mind are the many ways in which the soul does not feel its worth in today’s world: the maiming and killing of terrorism and war, the oppression of injustice and religious shaming, the hatred of prejudice, the violence of assault or bullying, the violation of theft, unfaithfulness or abuse or exploitation in a relationship, whether in the home, the workplace, the marketplace, politics, or religion. These are obvious examples when the soul doubts its worth.

But there are less obvious examples: when we are unemployed or underemployed, when we can’t afford food or healthcare, when we don’t have shelter or education, when slighted by society or religion. And less vital but no less devastating examples: a cutting remark by a family member, an impatient look from a sales clerk, the failure of a loved one to phone. All of these occasion times when the soul does not feel its worth.

A publisher once asked me to write a book entitled, “Why I Am a Christian.” I replied that all of my books attempt to answer that question. But what he meant was, despite everything, why I still valued my Christian identity. Now I realize it is because as I draw close to Jesus, to God, to all that I hold sacred, my soul feels its worth.  “We are God’s work of art,” the apostle Paul assured the Ephesians (Ephesians 2:10; NJB).

“O Holy Night” is not just a sentimental song that describes Jesus “born to be our friend” who “taught us to love one another,” whose “law is love” and whose “gospel is peace.” More than such sweet generalities the song proclaims:

      Chains shall he break / For the slave is our brother;

      And in his name / All oppression shall cease.  

The reason I follow Jesus is that I believe he somehow “got it right” about what true spirituality is, recognizing and reminding every soul of its sacred worth. I want to be like him when I spiritually grow up.