Held by God

Following last week’s reprise of A Healing Touch, this September 28, 2016 post reminds us that we are ultimately held by God. Given the verdict yesterday, you may want to read, "I Can't Breathe!"

Okay, so now you’re gonna think I’ve gone off the deep end. 

I’ve had a lot going on lately, and when I wake at night, I start thinking of all those things I need to do, should have done, am anxious about. I don’t mind when I use such nocturnal musings constructively, as when a post or talk or retreat comes to me and I develop it, lying still. But when my thoughts serve no purpose, I am bothered that I’m losing sleep over them. The worry gene runs in my family, so I’m not alone. 

Lately my usual way of simply blocking thoughts, or using a mantra, verse, short prayer, or Psalm 23 has not been working, so I’ve discovered a new strategy. 

I imagine I’m being held by God: the soft bedding, the warmth of Wade, the firmness of the mattress, the caress of the ceiling fan, the enveloping darkness become God holding me. And lest you think I am centering God on me, I believe this is true for everyone. 

Process theology talks of the cosmos as God’s “body.” God is not separate from the world—what is material is God’s incarnation, God’s embodiment. And body theologians try to recover the body as a locus of divinity. So I do have theological legs to stand on. 

And Christianity’s premise is the Incarnation, that God became one of us, and offers God’s body and blood that we may become the Body of Christ, an agent of redemption in the world. So I also have a Christian leg to stand on. 

Jesus said the kingdom or commonwealth of God was coming into the world and already in our midst. The trajectory of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that of God coming into the world, not abandoning it. And Paul remarked that the whole creation was groaning in birthpangs to bring something new into the world, and that in God “we live and move and have our being.” So I have a biblical leg to stand on. 

I also believe that I’m a part of God as well, so I think of cuddling with Wade as having divine inspiration. Teresa of Avila said that on earth, God’s body, Christ’s body is our own. And Augustine’s spiritual goal was resting in God. So I have church tradition behind me. 

My “ah-hah” is how good it feels to be held by God and to hold as God. It awakens a new kind of eroticism, if you will, that feeling of bliss one experiences in the unity of lovemaking or prayermaking. I’ve written elsewhere that “eros” is our “urge to merge,” what inspires the lover as well as the mystic. 

I’ve also spoken and written about the Beloved Disciple, who lay his head on Jesus’ chest during the Last Supper, “listening for the heartbeat of God,” as Celtic Christianity would have it. I’ve poked fun at recent English translations of that passage that seem to keep distancing the beloved disciple until I fear the next translation will have the beloved disciple in another room entirely! 

The NRSV translates simply that the beloved disciple is “reclining next” to Jesus. But it also translates John 1:18  as Jesus being “close to the Father’s heart” rather than the actual meaning, that Jesus is “close to the Father’s bosom.” 

What I believe is that we fear such intimacy with God, one of the earliest themes of my writing on spirituality, a cover article for Presbyterian Survey in the 1980s. 

Jesus experienced or was experienced as being a child of God, the essence of Yahweh, and the mystical gospel writer John declared that Jesus came so that we might all be children of God. So I have a mystic’s reason for my experience. 

I encourage you—no, I urge you—imagine yourself being held and touched and cuddled by God. Imagine God dwelling in you, your breath, your body, your touch. 

It feels good because it is good. 

 

FYI-I considered retiring from my blog on its tenth anniversary in February but didn’t want to “abandon” readers during the pandemic! My brother suggested I run “the best of” posts, and I decided to run past posts that speak to our current experience. This will also give me the opportunity to write a new post occasionally. Thanks for your continued interest! 

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

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion. 

Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here.  Thank you!

Held by God

Okay, so now you’re gonna think I’ve gone off the deep end.

I’ve had a lot going on lately, and when I wake at night, I start thinking of all those things I need to do, should have done, am anxious about.  I don’t mind when I use such nocturnal musings constructively, as when a post or talk or retreat comes to me and I develop it, lying still. But when my thoughts serve no purpose, I am bothered that I’m losing sleep over them. The worry gene runs in my family, so I’m not alone.

Lately my usual way of simply blocking thoughts, or using a mantra, verse, short prayer, or Psalm 23 has not been working, so I’ve discovered a new strategy.

I imagine I’m being held by God: the soft bedding, the warmth of Wade, the firmness of the mattress, the caress of the ceiling fan, the enveloping darkness become God holding me. And lest you think I am centering God on me, I believe this is true for everyone.

Process theology talks of the cosmos as God’s “body.” God is not separate from the world—what is material is God’s incarnation, God’s embodiment. And body theologians try to recover the body as a locus of divinity. So I do have theological legs to stand on.

And Christianity’s premise is the Incarnation, that God became one of us, and offers God’s body and blood that we may become the Body of Christ, an agent of redemption in the world. So I also have a Christian leg to stand on.

Jesus said the kingdom or commonwealth of God was coming into the world and already in our midst. The trajectory of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is that of God coming into the world, not abandoning it. And Paul remarked that the whole creation was groaning in birthpangs to bring something new into the world, and that in God “we live and move and have our being.” So I have a biblical leg to stand on.

I also believe that I’m a part of God as well, so I think of cuddling with Wade as having divine inspiration. Teresa of Avila said that on earth, God’s body, Christ’s body is our own. And Augustine’s spiritual goal was resting in God. So I have church tradition behind me.

My “ah-hah” is how good it feels to be held by God and to hold as God. It awakens a new kind of eroticism, if you will, that feeling of bliss one experiences in the unity of lovemaking or prayermaking. I’ve written elsewhere that “eros” is our “urge to merge,” what inspires the lover as well as the mystic.

I’ve also spoken and written about the Beloved Disciple, who lay his head on Jesus’ chest during the Last Supper, “listening for the heartbeat of God,” as Celtic Christianity would have it. I’ve poked fun at recent English translations of that passage that seem to keep distancing the beloved disciple until I fear the next translation will have the beloved disciple in another room entirely!

The NRSV translates simply that the beloved disciple is “reclining next” to Jesus. But it also translates John 1:18  as Jesus being “close to the Father’s heart” rather than the actual meaning, that Jesus is “close to the Father’s bosom.”

What I believe is that we fear such intimacy with God, one of the earliest themes of my writing on spirituality, a cover article for Presbyterian Survey in the 1980s.

Jesus experienced or was experienced as being a child of God, the essence of Yahweh, and the mystical gospel writer John declared that Jesus came so that we might all be children of God. So I have a mystic’s reason for my experience.

I encourage you—no, I urge you—imagine yourself being held and touched and cuddled by God. Imagine God dwelling in you, your breath, your body, your touch.

It feels good because it is good.

Related post:

Cuddling with Jesus

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

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

The Child Who Calls Us to Evolve

Why do we care so deeply for the child born to Mary and Joseph in a Bethlehem cave and not the millions of other children born into a poverty of one kind or another? Is it because of who he became, or simply because we can only care for one person at a time?

According to “The Arithmetic of Compassion” by professors and researchers Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic, our capacity for compassion diminishes when there is more than one to care for: “psychic numbing” takes hold. Their studies reveal a “compassion fade” when one person in need is joined by another, and we are less motivated to help either.

“Pseudoinefficacy” disables donors when it is felt their contributions would be “a drop in the bucket” facing a disaster or pandemic, a study I’ve cited before on this blog. And the “prominence effect” prevents interventions to halt such things as genocides and climate change when competing with our “near-term comforts and conveniences.”

Citing the insights of psychologist Robert Ornstein and biologist Paul Ehrlich from their decades-old book New World New Mind, we still have cavemen and cavewomen mentalities, ill-equipped to deal with the complexities and breadth of the world. Ehrlich and Ornstein prophesied we need a “conscious evolution” of our minds to care not only for those nearby but to embrace the world.

Enter spirituality. This is not what any of the experts above suggest, but this is what comes to my mind when they speak of our own evolution toward altruism. Spirituality recognizes our connectedness to all creatures and all creation.

Jesus understood our limitations and taught an ethic of the nearest neighbor, to quote musician Billy Preston, later set to music by Stephen Stills, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Love your neighbors as yourself, love your enemies, greet and welcome strangers, visit the sick and imprisoned, proclaim release to the captives, give vision to those who don’t get it, comfort those in mourning, feed those in need, announce God’s common wealth to the poor.

G. K. Chesterton summed up this attitude in Francis of Assisi: 

To Francis a human being stays always a person and does not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honored all; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never one who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernadone was really interested in him or her, in his or her own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that each was being valued and taken seriously and not merely added to the spoil of some social policy or the names of some clerical document. … He treated the whole mob of people as a mob of kings. 

I particularly like the ending emphasis on social policy and clerical documents. Whether our goal is social justice or church membership, unless we regard each one uniquely and highly, we will fail.

Henri Nouwen quotes this in his Genesee Diary, writing, “I cannot embrace the world, but God can.”

But it’s not enough to hold the world in our prayers. “GOD CAN’T FIX THIS,” New York’s Daily News reminded us in its headline after the recent mass shooting in California.

Our words, thoughts, and prayers are not enough.

Tradition has it that Francis said, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”

“On earth Christ has no body but [our] own,” Teresa of Avila reminded us.

The holiest purpose of prayer, of meditation, of spirituality is that it fixes US.

It helps us evolve to embrace the world. Now our nearest neighbor is also in the news and on the internet. Our spirituality must keep up with our technology.

The Christmas story is that God wants to save the world, not just you and me and our neighbors. And we are to be, to paraphrase Francis, instruments of God’s peace on earth and goodwill to all. That should be the measure of our every act.

A reading for Christmas: Mohammad’s Child

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

The Lord's Prayer--What It Means to Me

The prayer that Jesus taught has different meanings for each of us. These are some of mine:

“God, Mother and Father of us all…”

Theology rather than ideology prompts me to begin “the Lord’s Prayer” in this way. My own mother and father loved me in different ways, and I loved them in different ways, and so addressing this prayer to both Mother and Father God feels more complete.

I don’t view mother/father and male/female as binary, but rather as ends of a spectrum, so it’s not an either/or, but rather, a both/and. Saying “mother” and “father” is more personal for me than “parent” or a general term for God. And adding “of us all” replaces “our” in the “our Father.” This prayer reminds me that prayer is a collective, communal practice, and that we are ALL children of God.

“Who art in heaven…”

Heaven is both a destination and a present reality. Heaven is where human will and God’s will coincide. To “go to” heaven is to follow your bliss, in the words of Joseph Campbell, a place where your greatest joy meets the world’s deep need, in the words of Frederick Buechner. And yet it also appears to us in those “thin places” of Celtic Christian spirituality in which heaven can be glimpsed on earth: in beauty, in kindness, in love, and so on. This is where and when and how we experience the awesome essence of God.

“Thy kingdom come…”

“Thy” and “thee” and “thou” were all familiar forms of address in English from 1450 to 1650, and the KJV was translated in 1611, though the translators may not have followed common usage. If they did, though it sounds formal to us, these familiar terms are in line with Jesus beginning the prayer with the Aramaic “Abba,” addressing God as family: “our Father.” It reminds us of our intimacy with God.

“Kingdom” welcomes God’s reign, and rather than associate it with patriarchy, I think of “magic kingdoms” of fairy tales, myths, and legends, that may be ruled by either a king or a queen. In other contexts, I substitute “commonwealth,” because ultimately God’s kingdom is a common wealth which we all share, spiritually and materially. And when I say “all” I don’t mean only Christians or human beings. I pray for the kingdom to “come” because I believe it is divinity that gives it birth, within or among us.

“Thy will be done…”

I believe our greatest bliss is to be found in our assent to this phrase. By “our bliss” I mean not just our personal joy but our collective joy as human beings, as creatures, as creation. My central purpose in saying this prayer daily is to align myself with God’s Spirit and her purposes in the universe: abundant life, creativity, compassion, wisdom, knowledge, reflection, service, to name a few. By such measures, doing God’s will is not tedious duty but awakening pleasure.

“In/on earth as it is in heaven…”

When I pray “your will be done in earth,” I am praying that God’s will may be manifest in my own body—to paraphrase Teresa of Avila, on earth God’s body is our own, my hands, your hands, my feet, your feet are God’s hands and feet.

When I pray “your will be done on earth,” I am praying that God’s will for peace and justice and compassion be manifest in our international relations and governmental actions, in our political discourse and interfaith dialogue, in our houses of worship and in our neighborhoods. Remember, I believe that heaven is where human will coincides with God’s will.

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

This seems a bold request, a kind of “socialist” demand, but where else does our daily bread come from if not from what God has given us? In praying this, I acknowledge that the many ways I am fed—through food, through companions, through wisdom, and more—all come from a divine source.

I also note the allusion to the manna the Hebrews were fed in the wilderness, and how they were only to collect a day’s ration, except on the day before the Sabbath, when they were to collect enough for the next day as well. If they took more than their day’s quota, whether out of anxiety or greed, it would grow wormy. This challenges us to limit our own consumption to what we really need.

“Forgive us our debts/trespasses/sins as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass/sin against us…”

Given the day and what feels most appropriate, I pray one of these pairings.

“Debts/debtors” reminds me that I owe everything to God, and so I should let go of what I think people “owe” me. “Trespasses/those who trespass” makes me think of the ways I trespass not only on God’s territory but on others’ space. “Sins/sin against us” suggests to me my/our most grievous errors.

God’s forgiveness anticipates my own choice to forgive. I believe if I truly know God’s grace, I will become more gracious, and that as I become more gracious, I will truly know God’s grace.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

In his book The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen wrote to himself, “The more deeply you live your spiritual life, the easier it will be to discern the difference between living with God and living without God, and the easier  it will be to move away from the places where God is no longer with you” (p 23).

Of course, God is everywhere, but the point of this is that the venues in which I may experience God most clearly, dearly, and nearly (to paraphrase Godspell’s “Day by Day”)

are the places that diminish my desire to yield to temptation to be less than I am created and called to be, or surrender to evil, either my own or the world’s.

“For thine is the kingdom…”

Church tradition rather than Jesus has added these remaining phrases of the Lord’s Prayer (an echo of 1 Chronicles 29:10-13), but I like this final threefold, uplifting “letting go.” The commonwealth is God’s, not ours. We may manifest it, be its citizens, and serve as its instruments of peace, justice, and compassion—but we and it belongs to God.

“…and the power…”

I believe we incorrectly equate power with control. God’s power is love, that which persuades, leads, instructs, invites, and inspires us also to love.

“…and the glory…”

For the Hebrews, this is the glory reflected so brightly on Moses’s face on Mt. Sinai that the people asked him to veil himself. Christians are called rather to unveil that glory, to witness that glory to one another and to all, so that we may “grow from one glory to another.” We may see this glory on a mountaintop, on a cross, in an empty tomb. We may see this glory in a loved one, in a baby, in galaxies billions of light years away. It lifts us up, raises our hopes, magnifies our possibilities.

“…forever. Amen.”

God’s commonwealth, love, and glory give us a taste of the eternal. Our time may be short, but it is a part of God’s time from now on. So be it.

See a related post, “A Pragmatic Guide to Prayer.”

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Copyright © 2015 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!

Dust and Glory

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. 

“We have this treasure in clay jars,” the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians, “So that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” 

As I age I am especially aware of my cracked and wrinkled clay! I see it in the mirror, as my skin’s terrain shifts with time. I feel it in my body, my joints stiffening like the Tinman’s rusting hinges. 

Lent is a time to reflect on our mortality, but I think of it also as a time to contemplate our divinity—as process theology would say, our participation in the divine life. “For in God we live and move and have our being,” Paul quoted a Greek philosopher to proclaim a new theology in Acts 17:38. 

Henri Nouwen’s spiritual director once gave him this koan, this mantra: “I am the glory of God.” Where else is the glory of God manifest but in our bodies and in nature and in the cosmos? As Teresa of Avila observed, “On earth, God’s body is our own.” Ephesians tells us, “We are God’s work of art” (NJB, 2:10). 

Thomas Merton wrote “it is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, [God] gloried in becoming a member of the human race.” 

Listening to the news on National Public Radio and reading the newspaper each morning, I am constantly reminded of human absurdities and our terrible mistakes. That’s why I need a time of reading and reflection to remind me who we are. 

Some progressive Christians have reservations regarding the divinity of Jesus, "that God gloried in becoming a member of the human race." Henri Nouwen wrote in his book Creative Ministry, “We will never fully understand the meaning of the sacramental signs of bread and wine when they do not make us realize that the whole of nature is a sacrament pointing to a reality far beyond itself. The presence of Christ in the Eucharist becomes a ‘special problem’ only when we have lost our sense of God’s presence in all that is, grows, lives, and dies.” I would extend his understanding to say, “The divinity of Christ becomes a ‘special problem’ only when we have lost our sense of God’s divinity in all that is, grows, lives, and dies.” 

Affirming “I am the glory of God” is not “all about me” or “all about you,” but rather, all about us and all about God.  

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You may enjoy reading “Jesus’ Temptations” on the writings page of my website, my imaginative excerpt from the “lost” Gospel of Jesus.

To Stop and Think, Not Click and Link

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

On the occasion of passing the milestones of having had 10,000 hits (not including the 135 weekly subscribers) and six months of weekly blogging, I offer some thoughts about why I am doing this.

The artist who designed my website mentioned when helping me set up this blog site that she used the internet primarily for information, not contemplation, though she became my first subscriber. Probably most people use the internet for information, social and professional networking, their work, arts and entertainment, shopping, and, according to a recent study, a lot of pornography.

A fellow blogger who has encouraged me from the start and given me much useful counsel recently advised me to provide links in my posts. He was absolutely right about a post quoting a New York Times article, and right about the advantage of reciprocity (a link working both ways). But, as I told him, my purpose for this “contemplative blog” is to encourage readers to stop and think, not click and link. This goes against the grain of our ADHD cultural mindset.

Teresa of Avila warned against exchanging “the language of tranquility” for “the language of the world.” “Out goes peace and quiet for the soul and in comes a wearying restlessness,” she wrote in The Way of Perfection. And yet the sentence that follows suggests Teresa may have done quite well in our computer-driven, internet/Facebook/Twitter/texting age: “I only wish I could write with both of my hands, so I wouldn’t forget one thing while I’m writing down another!”

I began this blog partly because someone in publishing told me that there is no market for devotional materials among progressive Christians. I was told the same thing when I began writing prayers and meditations for the LGBT community, but have since published three such books that have enjoyed multiple printings, one of which has been translated into Spanish and now, on a daily basis, into Estonian. I’ve written two additional books of meditations for the general public, one of which is also available in Spanish.

My spiritual discipline of morning prayer has been encouraged by using contemporary and not so contemporary devotionals, so these ventures have been my way of encouraging others to do the same. Beginning my morning reflecting on the larger picture and greater purpose of life anchors me, as well as prompting mindfulness of those I will meet and things I will do that day.

I chose a weekly rather than daily format because I doubt anyone would want to hear from me every day! And because there is a plethora of “Monday morning” meditations available on the web, I chose “hump day”—Wednesday—as a good time to take a break and reflect. I’m glad and grateful that so many of you have joined me along the way. Thank you!