We'll Always Have Paris

Friday I finished helping with a week-long spiritual formation course and found myself reflecting on the instructor’s  explanation of Ignatian spirituality’s concept of “holding things loosely.” He learned this professionally as a church pastor and personally weathering a divorce and as the father of a daughter with a drug addiction.

After a Costco run, I retrieved Wade from the Atlanta airport, returning from a week out of town for work. Then we sat down for our usual evening PBS newscast and learned of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris. A Facebook friend posted that he and his wife had just visited the city two days earlier and found it gay and vibrant.

I wept, as I often do watching the news. I wept for those who lost their lives and the wounded and their loved ones, I wept for Paris and for France and for our world. Like most Westerners, I was oblivious to a pair of terrorist bombings that killed more than 40 innocent children, women and men in Beirut the day before.

On the subsequent newscasts and Saturday’s Democratic presidential candidates debate, no one was “holding things loosely”—everyone had either questions or plans on “what we should do” to prevent such violence.

As usually happens, one idea again emerged in the nonstop commentary, that Islamic moderates had to speak out forcefully to rein in Muslim extremists.

Easy to say, hard to do. I remember oh-too-well how little mainstream denominations in this country said or did to rein in religiously-motivated gay-bashing before LGBT people became respectable, or at least acceptable, in their eyes.

No matter your religion, if your god tells you to kill yourself or others, literally or figuratively, that god is what needs to be eliminated from your mind and your heart.

I once wrote on this blog that the young men being attracted to ISIS were as illiterate about the Qur’an as gay-bashers who quoted the Bible when brutalizing transgender people, gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals.

But last March’s cover story in The Atlantic begs to differ. “What ISIS Really Wants and How to Stop It” by Graeme Wood asserts that the ISIS movement is very well-versed in the Qur’an. Its intent is to bring in an apocalypse, provoking the rest of the world to a violent confrontation and destroying the freedoms that make cities like Paris so gay and vibrant.

German liberation theologian Dorothee Sölle once struck my survivor’s mentality to the core when she spoke on nuclear proliferation during an interfaith luncheon I attended when I lived in Los Angeles. She said that, in a nuclear war, she would rather be among the killed than among the killers. Why should she be provoked to change her non-violent nature?

I have the same beef with capital punishment. I oppose executions partly because they make us all killers. But I am not a pacifist. ISIS and terrorism of any kind must be confronted, if only because it’s usually the most vulnerable who suffer from their actions. Confrontation may have non-violent forms, which would be preferred, but it will require more, I believe—though we should never equate the “more” with the will of God.

In the Ignatian course we viewed the French film Of Gods and Men, the story of a household of Trappist monks ministering to the needs of Muslims in their Algerian village, ultimately slaughtered by fundamentalist revolutionaries that even their Muslim neighbors feared.  Warned to leave, they followed a discernment process that led them to the “aha” that this was their home, that this was their calling, to serve this neighborhood materially and medically—and so they stayed, despite their peril. They held their own lives “loosely.”

Jesus too knew the risk of “moving into our neighborhood” to proclaim a spiritual commonwealth, not a caliphate, which welcomes us all equally and voluntarily, a commonwealth of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

At the end of the film Casablanca, Rick urges Ilsa to go with her husband to aid him in his vital work of resisting Nazis, despite the great love they had found earlier in Paris. “Ilsa,” he explains, “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

“We’ll always have Paris,” he reminds her.

We’ll always have Paris. It will always be gay and vibrant. And it will always risk the crazies who want to diminish its shine and glow, because liberty to be liberty must hold everything loosely.

Relevant columns:

“Ted Cruz and the Anti-Gay Pastor” by Katherine Stewart

“Finding Peace within the Holy Texts” by David Brooks

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description. Thank you! Donations of $100 or more will receive a gift signed copy of a first edition of my book, Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy.

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

Violence Is

Thanks be to God for the life, books, and ministry of Marcus Borg (1942-2015), rightly described  by The New York Times as “a leading evangelist of what is often called progressive Christianity.”

Posts on this blog that mention Marcus Borg:

“What’s Playing Down at the Presbyterian?”

Richard Dawkins Has More Faith than I Do

A Worthier and Larger Idea of God

Walking our dog, Hobbes, I am sometimes asked by children, “Does he bite?” I explain that any dog will bite if adequately provoked. Though she has a docile temperament, if rushed upon, startled, or aggressively cornered , she will growl, bare her teeth, and, on rare occasion, snap. It’s a dog’s only defense, I explain, if the child is still listening.

Humans are that way too. We ascribe violence to police officers, minority youth, religious extremists—whatever scapegoat we want. But the truth is, violence is an inherently human trait, as well as a creaturely and cosmic characteristic.

In my unpublished mystery novel set in a small Southern town, spiritual profiler John Boswell investigates the untimely death of one of its two Presbyterian pastors, Angus MacDonald. Among the townspeople he interviews is a rotund, Buddha-like former actor living in a houseboat on the river, recently returned from California after ending a relationship with an OCD partner trying to fix the world (who once followed him around the kitchen with a Dustbuster!).  He explains: 

“Finally what ended the relationship was a conversation we had about violence, though maybe I was just goading him because I was tired of his moralistic crusades. I told him that even though I think violence is the worst thing in the world, violence is a natural part of the world, of human nature, even God’s nature. I said, ‘You think God didn’t destroy something to create something new? Creation does violence to whatever was before. And what do you think death is? Death is violence. Violence is. Death is. So get over it.’” Matt paused, gesturing toward a snake that had been sunning itself on a nearby rock now slithering to shore, merely skimming the surface of calm water along the river’s edge.

           

“Then I added, ‘Dirt is. You’re dirt. I’m dirt. We’re all dirt. The world is dirt. So stop trying to vacuum the world!’”

French social anthropologist and philosopher René Girard has done intriguing work around violence. He posits that in cultures with ritualized violence—everything from the Eucharist (when understood as re-enacting the sacrifice of Christ) to the Super Bowl—one on one violence is diminished.

I used Gerard’s work, especially around sacrifice and “the scapegoat mechanism,” in my book Coming Out as Sacrament. In it, I questioned why so many Christians need to see the crucifixion as a sacrifice to God to be forgiven our sins. I prefer the twelfth century teacher Abelard’s idea that the cross enables at-one-ment because it awakens in us an attribute that unites us with God: compassion.

Studies have associated testosterone, the male hormone, with aggression and violence. This prompted friends in MCC San Francisco, a female comic duo called “Fifi and Fanny,” to initiate a wink-wink campaign to lessen violence by reducing male testosterone, encouraging men to give “One testicle for peace!”

I’m reminded of the opening scene in Gore Vidal’s novel, Washington D.C., in which a young man goes out into a stormy night, hormones raging, desperately wanting either to make love to somebody or to kill somebody. The military has always counted on such young men to fight our wars, so it should not be surprising that so many young men are being drawn to terrorism and ISIS. By the way, apparently most Muslim terrorists have as little Qur’anic literacy as gay-bashers have Biblical literacy, yet both often use their respective scriptures to justify their violence.

Human institutions—marriage, family, religion, government, organizations—may curb or channel our human tendency for violence toward upbuilding or destructive ends. A civil civilization may be why we are here. If so, the best reason and the most compassionate values must hold sway over mere instinct.

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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 © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  Fifi and Fanny material is copyrighted and used by permission.

Evangelical

As a progressive Christian, I am hesitant to admit how dearly I wanted my college buddy to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Clearly it was a desire for intimacy on my part, but I also wanted him to know how dearly loved he was: if he could never be told of my love, at least he would know the love of Jesus.

I recognized the experience decades later upon reading Henri Nouwen’s  Life of the Beloved, written for a young secular Jewish friend requesting generic spiritual guidance. Henri wrote:

All I want to say to you is, “You are the beloved,” and all I hope is that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being. (p 26)

When offered the manuscript to read, Henri explains in the epilogue, the young man responded basically “thanks, but no thanks,” as it was still so Christian. But Henri published the book anyway! I gave the book to a gay friend graduating from seminary, fearing that he might lose his sense of belovedness serving the church from the closet.

What awakens these memories is reading again Paul’s letters to his “beloved,” congregations he founded or shaped for whom he behaved as a mother caring for her children (1 Thes. 2:7), treating “every one of you as a father treats his children” (1 Thes. 2:11). I am in awe of Paul’s passion for the first Christians and their passion for one another, sharing all things in common, giving thanks in all circumstances, as well as their passion for loving and helping their neighbors, what made the faith so attractive in its beginnings (see Elaine Pagel’s Beyond Belief). Among progressive Christians, such passion is often focused in our pursuit of peace and justice. Obviously, that’s a good thing, but do we welcome spiritual intimacy in this process?

Our fear, of course, is becoming like some of our evangelical brothers and sisters, who, as Jesus said of the Pharisees, “cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15).

Seeing even “in the center of an intimate relationship the seeds of violence,” Henri critiqued the passion that may lead from embracing to grasping in his third movement of the spiritual life, a movement significantly named “From Illusion to Prayer” in his book Reaching Out (p 84). Prayer and contemplation may lead us away from illusory power and control, away from idols and our own demons.

Religiously, we see this grasping in the misdirected passion of the self-inflicted martyr and would-be terrorist, the inquisitor and the enforcer, that can be found in every faith historically—even among progressive Christians.

The solution for Henri was hospitality, the ancient spiritual practice, which he explains “is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way” (Reaching Out, p 51).

This, to me, is the best spiritual path and practice of progressive Christians.

“Last call” for this weekend’s Kirkridge Oct 3-6 retreat: “For All the Saints!” which includes a film and segment on Henri Nouwen.

Upcoming Henri Nouwen events led by Chris Glaser:

October 12 in Pasadena, CA:

From the Heart: The Spirituality of Henri Nouwen

November 9 in Dallas, TX:

The Wounded Healer vs. Getting Hooked in Our Wounds—A Retreat for Clergy and Caregivers

January 12, 2014 in Seattle, WA:

Henri Nouwen: Forgiveness, Fruitfulness, and Fun

January 18, 2014 in Chicago, IL:

            What Community Meant to Henri Nouwen (Sat. aft. TBD)

May 2-4, 2014 at Kirkridge, PA:

            Henri Nouwen’s Road to L’Arche

           

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support. Thank you!

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. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.