Tricked by Grace

This was my 200^th post, published on December 10, 2014. I recently read that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Merry Christmas!

A few weeks ago I was reading one of Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s last short stories, entitled “Revelation,” published posthumously in her collection All That Rises Must Converge. She takes the book’s title from Teilhard de Chardin, whose writings as both a scientist and a mystic she greatly admired.

The story is written from the perspective of an older woman who finds herself in a doctor’s waiting room, looking from person to person, engaging in small talk. Her judgmentalism is in high gear as she silently evaluates their appearance, their interactions and lack thereof, as well as sharing aloud the foibles of people in general with another woman. I was especially put off by her frequent use of the “n-word.”  In that brief story I saw the unabbreviated word more often than I have seen it in recent decades.

Needless to say, I too was frothing with judgment (of the protagonist) as the story came to a surprising twist. Without giving the story away, something happens that upsets her certainty about things, and later, watching the sun set, she has an unsettling vision of what was to come: all the people she routinely judged marching nonetheless toward heaven, “battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.” The story continues:

And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.

I cried with recognition. I was her. Flannery O’Connor tricked me, even as grace tricks us all. We think we will be saved by our many words—prayers, sermons, posts—or our many deeds—charitable, political, religious. But it’s grace that really saves us.

In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.

  

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

Manifest Destiny

Please join me in a thought experiment I began during my morning walk. What if we are alone in the universe? What if Earth is the only celestial body in the entire cosmos that has evolved life?

Wouldn’t we want to make the most of this gift? Wouldn’t we want to make this the best possible world and make the best possible neighborhoods and communities and countries and institutions? Wouldn’t we want to be motivated to preserve life and biodiversity, to share wealth and opportunity, to create harmony and beauty?

The truth is, of course, that we long thought we were the only game in town, so to speak, yet managed to steer our way toward conflict, greed, malice, and environmental destruction. But that was in what we thought was a world of limited resources, in which we believed sharing meant losing what belonged to us or our tribe or our nation.

What if we believed in a world of unlimited resources, if not of the material kind, in the kind of ingenuity and imagination and compassion that indeed have improved the world? All those ambitions listed earlier have arisen because we wanted to make this the best possible world.

What if we wanted not only to “people” the universe, but “creature” the universe, introducing our biodiversity onto other habitable planets? Could this be our “manifest destiny”? God knows the phrase has been used to inspire far lesser goals.

I’m not talking colonization, imposing our life forms on other habitable planets to the detriment of native expressions of life. But rather, as in biblical prophecy, helping the wilderness bloom.

Just as we bring the best possible flowers to grandmother’s house, or serve the best possible cuisine to dinner guests, or find the best possible natural settings to show our children, we could bring our best possible selves to our calling to ensure life continues to spread and evolve.

This is the world and calling Jesus lived and proclaimed. This is the world “ruled” by our better angels, our best selves, our highest powers, our most gracious love, our greatest calling. It begins in our hearts, in our own transformation, as we live “as if” this commonwealth already exists. It takes practice, spiritual practice, beginning with a thought experiment such as this, a vision that prompts us to be on our best and kindest and most compassionate behavior.

I know this sounds like science fiction, and you may think I’ve lost it, but teleologically speaking, isn’t this more positively motivating than the apocalyptic or dystopian scenarios we’ve been handed by doomsayers, religious or otherwise?

Presumably Jesus knew little of science, evolution, or the cosmos. But he did know how to inspire the human heart. And he knew to change the world, we need to change our hearts.

As I said, this is just a thought experiment. What do you make of it?

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Tricked by Grace (My 200th Post!)

This is my 200^th post on this blog, created in 2011 to encourage and enhance the spirituality of progressive Christians. Thanks to 500 subscribers and an additional 3000 monthly visitors from all over the world! And thanks to Metropolitan Community Churches for including it among the denomination’s Emerging Ministries in 2012.

Please consider a gift to support this ministry today, either as an individual or a congregation. Your tax-deductible contributions are its only source of funding. Thanks to this year’s donors of nearly $1200 to date!

A few weeks ago I was reading one of Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s last short stories, entitled “Revelation,” published posthumously in her collection All That Rises Must Converge. She takes the book’s title from Teilhard de Chardin, whose writings as both a scientist and a mystic she greatly admired.

The story is written from the perspective of an older woman who finds herself in a doctor’s waiting room, looking from person to person, engaging in small talk. Her judgmentalism is in high gear as she silently evaluates their appearance, their interactions and lack thereof, as well as sharing aloud the foibles of people in general with another woman. I was especially put off by her frequent use of the “n-word.”  In that brief story I saw the unabbreviated word more often than I have seen it in recent decades.

Needless to say, I too was frothing with judgment (of the protagonist) as the story came to a surprising twist. Without giving the story away, something happens that upsets her certainty about things, and later, watching the sun set, she has an unsettling vision of what was to come: all the people she routinely judged marching nonetheless toward heaven, “battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.” The story continues: 

And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. 

I cried with recognition. I was her. Flannery O’Connor tricked me, even as grace tricks us all. We think we will be saved by our many words—prayers, sermons, posts—or our many deeds—charitable, political, religious. But it’s grace that really saves us. 

In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah. 

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

Seeing Things as if for the First Time

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

In his novel Zorba the Greek, the Greek author and lifelong spiritual seeker Nikos Kazantzakis observed that poets, artists, and visionaries see things “as if for the first time.” The narrator’s friend Zorba, based on an acquaintance of the author, witnessed a rock rolling down a hill and observed in awe, “Boss, did you see that? On slopes, stones come to life again!”

Such fresh vision, without prejudice or jadedness, opens God’s commonwealth to us in the here and now. As the gay poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins observed, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

“Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” Jesus said. A teacher of children, “Ranger Rich,” helped me see a tree as if for the first time by inviting several of us to lie down beneath its branches with the tops of our heads toward the trunk and look up. I highly recommend you try this!

Mystics, too, see the world and God “as if for the first time” as they cast aside expectations and look beyond tradition to embrace imagination as spiritual artists and poets, and welcome fresh insight as spiritual children. Remember the famous story of Thomas Merton’s vision at a Louisville intersection, after a prolonged solitary retreat, that people were “walking around shining like the sun.”

Mystics, artists, poets, and children are all “progressives” in this sense.

Perhaps no mystic was so imaginative and so playfully childlike as Saint Francis, who is said to have hugged a leper and saw Jesus, preached to a tree and made it blossom, gathered the birds of the air for a sermon, befriended a wild animal and prevented it from killing villagers, called earth, wind, fire, earth, sun, and moon mother and brother and sister, recognized the dignity of those in poverty, and regarded popes, beggars, and robbers equally.

According to Kazantzakis, in his book, Saint Francis, this little saint even saw the devil differently. To his companion Brother Leo he says, “Do not lose heart, Brother Leo,” he told him, stroking his head. “Stand on your feet, and if the Tempter has straddled you, have no fears: the gates [of heaven] will open, and the two of you will enter together!”

Brother Leo exclaims, “The Tempter too! He’ll enter [the gates of heaven] too? How do you know, Brother Francis?”

To which Francis replies, “I know because of my heart, which opens and receives everything. Surely paradise must be the same.”

Enjoy a conversation led by Chris Glaser about sex "as if for the first time" this Saturday, June 11, 10-3, at First MCC Atlanta. No charge, free lunch, his books available. Open to everyone!