Religious Tolerance is a Practical Neccesity

Long ago there was a group of committed Christians who set off on an endeavor that they were sure was the very will of God.  This particular event was welcomed with shouts of “God wills it!” when it was announced by Pope Urban II in the fall of 1095.  There may have never been such a popular outpouring for any announcement made by any Pope ever.  A bit of hyperbole but it may just be true.  It was the First Crusade which has become a black spot in our collective memory.   And for many reasons it should be.  With the coming of the First Crusade violence and devotion to God were combined to fuel a march to Jerusalem that ended on July 15, 1099 with the utter annihilation of thirty thousand Muslims and Jews living there.   It was an act of savagery that shocked the civilized world at the time.  (By civilized world I am not referring to Europe.)  In modern discourse that Crusade will sometimes be mentioned as an example of Christians gone mad and many Christians would like to just forget it as a terrible aberration in the history of the church.

That, however, is a simplistic reading of history.  The First Crusade was a product of its time.  In that world might made right.  If you had the military strength you had the right to take any land, city, country you could.  Certainly the rise of Islam makes that clear but so does the history of Europe which includes the Pope leading armies.  To understand the First Crusade in the light of its time is one way to understand what happened but that is not enough.  The First Crusade did not just end and everyone went home.  There was more to it.  It is often forgotten that the First Crusade brought about a new kingdom in the middle east.  The Kingdom of Jerusalem survived and thrived for many years building lasting institutions, that actually were good for European settlers and the people already living in the land. 

What is not remembered about the First Crusade is that once it had taken Jerusalem it actually built a civilized and inclusive (for the time) kingdom that was not about annihilating the infidel but rather living with Jews, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians.  The more liberal understanding came from a leadership that understood how much the new kingdom needed the cooperation of those around them.  They were undermanned and it was difficult to get enough help from Europe.  They had to cooperate in order to build a civilization.  And they did.  The Kingdom of Jerusalem learned tolerance and so prospered in a way that they could not have otherwise.  Religious tolerance was a practical necessity.

The historical question is how did they do it?  How did they go from fanatical ruthless killers to more reasonable and civilized governors of the land?  The only answer I can offer is that these men and women had faced incredible suffering and degradation in those three years and this challenge and trouble matured them and helped them want and seek the fruits of the spirit.  The new situation they found themselves in challenged them to use their faith to move forward in a more Godly way.  Whatever it was it was an incredible transformation.  Faith can do that for us.

They learned tolerance because they needed too.  It is the same today.  More than ever we need to find a new tolerance for different ideas or we will founder on our opposition to one another.  We need to grow unto God in a way that opens us to others and does not pit us against them.

It is what happened to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.  It lasted for almost a century but then found itself in an ill-conceived battle fueled by the blood lust of people not native to the kingdom but who came from Europe…they had not learned tolerance and it cost them their kingdom.

History can teach if we listen and learn.

Book Bannings and Burnings

Terry Jones, small time minister from Florida finally made good on his threat from last fall.  He burned the Quran.  He is pressing his agenda presumably to combat the evil that is Islam.  He is not alone.  The controversial Westboro Baptist Church also has burned the Quran. The Topeka, Kan., church is best known for its anti-gay protests, often held at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  These people believe they are on God’s side doing God’s will.

As a result of the Quran burning UN workers were killed in Afghanistan. 

It is of course madness.  A pastor of a church of thirty who is desperate for attention and a church group known for ignoring the depth of human suffering to make a point about their belief in correct sexual relations have brought us down to a very low common denominator: hate.

Self righteousness so easily gets confused with God’s will.  It is as if these people have figured out exactly what God wants and can act it out with impunity.  I wonder what they do with the words of Jesus “Love your enemies” ?  It is perhaps the most challenging phrase in all the Bible but in there nonetheless.  It has always mystified me as to why so many people wanted to use their beliefs to hate one another.  It happens in every religion across every culture, I am afraid.

It is enough to make you un-religious but I believe it ought to make us more religious.  It is time to quit using our religions to bludgeon each other. If all of us used our religions to move closer to God we would create a much happier world.  I believe there is not a religion in the world that is not designed to bring you closer to God.  So if we were more religious we might find more important things to do than burning Holy Books or upsetting funerals.   Can you think of anything lower?  More religion would help.  More religion might get us to think not so much about our own needs and wants but Gods.  It couldn’t hurt.

The world has gone mad but faith still makes sense.

Long Winters and Other Spiritual Disciplines

For the first time in a month it did not snow this week.  The kids went to school everyday.  I did not shovel snow much (though I did chop ice).  However, there was no hint of spring.  It is the middle of February and the winter seems to be stretching, still, out beyond every horizon. 

I have friends who get depressed this time of year.  They claim it is the lack of light but I think it is just that they want a vacation.  Winter makes us crazy and we all need an excuse for going south because when the grip of winter is tight it is hard to relax.  The world is darker.  The bad news a bit more menacing.  The days of long summer shadows but a memory….without much expectation warmth will ever come again.

The seasons do this to us.  They last just long enough to get us to believe they shall not end.  On a day like this when the ice is hard and the snow banks are like stones on either side of the road the cold does seem permanent….as permanent as the ice boulders are hard.  And yet it only takes a few warms days to turn those boulders to mush.

It is worth remembering in the darkest of winters that spring comes.  It has for all my years and thousands of years before.  If we hadn’t experienced spring, time and again, we would be shocked by its arrival.  Even knowing it shall come for sure the idea of spring is shocking from the perspective of winter darkness. 

The good news is that light always follows darkness, the bitter blasts are only for a while, the days always get longer, and the world will once again turn green.  It has forever and it will again.  Just this morning crunching out to the mailbox there was a bit more light than usual.  It is coming!  And it will not be so very long before we will think of these days as not possible.  The sun will rise early, stay long, and the whole world will awaken, alive.

What is true for winter is also true for the darkness in our souls.  No sadness is forever, no hurt ever stings always, no despair can hold permanently, there is always consolation ahead….that we can always be confident in.  It is God’s promise.  God has made a world of seasons, a world of redemptions, a world of turn-arounds.  It has always been so.  Love can follow hate, forgiveness can follow violence, even life can follow death.  It, of course seems impossible, and it probably is except in faith.  Only faith can envision the transformation.  And faith is like the memory of spring.  It gives us a vision of what shall come.

Darkness never overcomes the light.  The death of winter lasts just so long.  It cannot be cold forever.  It is worth remembering as the thin winter sunlight seems unable to have a chance against the mountains of snow.  All of it will feed the very life that lies dormant below.  This is God’s way.  The world shall change and so can we.  Redemption is as close as the hope that holds it.

The Mustard Seed (A Spiritual Journey)

The place of my childhood, Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota starts to become forbidding as August closes.  I don’t know if it is the light or the change in temperature but the color changes sometime at the beginning fall season.  It can seem almost black even with the bright yellow, red and orange of the trees that dances around it. The last gasp of summer is Labor Day weekend and in my twenty-second year, as I always had, I was spending the weekend on the lake, racing sailboats.  Mott, good old Mott, friend fo many years, sailing buddy, wonders again what the hell I am doing.  “You want to give up on all of this?”  A beautiful sun coated day absurdly warm for early September in Minnesota.  The last weekend is even more fun than usual.  There are the usual parties, the aimless summer feel, the stupid chatter of boys looking for girls.  It was my life, my paradise, and the end of my childhood.

A mustard seed thrown at the wind.  I didn’t know then but I suspected that on some level my life was not real, then.  I had an inkling of the darkness of that place.  My mother and her helpless and hopeless isolation in alcohol.  She was not in paradise. Her misery made me wonder and question.   A professor at college with an idea about God and a reality that pointed beyond the lake, the nice homes, and the certainties of my childhood.  There was a suspicion that the journey only began in Minnesota.  So on the Tuesday following Labor Day weekend 1977 I headed east in a yellow Pinto.  A mustard seed thrown at the wind wondering what the hell I was doing.

Years before I had thrown a mustard seed in howling desperation.  I didn’t know anything about God.  I had a Bible but the family didn’t go to church.  The minister was to political, may parents said, then he ran away with the organist.  So I didn’t know what to do or where to turn when my friend Suzy fell off a horse and ended up in the ICU.  I couldn’t understand why this would happen to such a wonderful family.  They had become almost my own because they laughed, and talked, and took time and care of each other.  I wasn’t Suzy’s boyfriend, but I wanted to be a part of the family.  There they were crying and agonizing over their little girl who at sixteen might not make it.  I loved those people and was sure they did not deserve this.  They talked about faith, they believed in God, they took time for prayer.    from the first person I had ever seen close to death.  (unconscious, stuck with tubes and wires, lying like a lump…nothing like Suzy.)  I could not comprehend it.  When I arrived home I dragged myself upstairs and fell into bed.  Then I did something I didn’t do much as a teenage boy.  I cried.  I cried deeply.  I also did something I hardly ever did.  I prayed.  “Not them O God, not Suzy, they don’t deserve that.  Heal her….please.”  I kept repeating something like it.  And then in the midst of my despair and carrying on, a voice, the most comforting voice I had ever heard:  “It’s all right.  It’s all right.”  Not “It will be all right.” or “Suzy will recover.”  but a great big universal,  “It’s all right.”  Suzy got better and I heard the voice of God.

On that Tuesday after Labor Day 1977 wondering where I was and who I was I began to hear the radio stations broadcasting from New York City.  I had never been there save once.  What I was doing scared me.  I was going to seminary school when I didn’t even go to church.  As the sun came up and the radio stations continued to get louder I could not fathom that I had made decisions that landed me in this little yellow Pinto crossing over the Delaware water Gap just a few hours from New York City.

What was I doing?

Years later the emptiness of a teetering marriage haunted me through the Thanksgiving celebration at the home of my best friends.  My wife went home early leaving me to the champagne and my friends.  I clung to the children who were being allowed to stay up too late; they seemed to represent the future I would never have.  When I arrived home later I was in deep need of healing.  This marriage was ending.  What was I going to do?  I don’t remember falling asleep but I woke up in a room filled with light.  And again, the most comforting voice ever  “It’s all right.  It’s all right.”  And it was, in a very long while.

Divorce isn’t pretty and it leaves you in a place you never thought you would be (especially if you are a minister!)  I was ashamed and making excuses….looking for a mate without youth or confidence, and not even sure if there was a life where I truly belonged.  I was among the broken and the cynical who had given up on innocence and hope.

I threw my mustard seed at the wind yet again.  A singles dinner.  A silly singles dinner.  I agreed to go to help someone out.  “We need men.” she said.  I agreed.  I gave my word so the night before I was to leave for Central America on a mission trip to build houses in Nicaragua, I sat in a room filled with women older than I….wondering why I would waste my time.  I tried to make the best of it.  I joked with the unattractive but wealthy woman next to me.  However, at the other end of the table there was a very pretty woman with shy laughing eyes drinking too much.  She seemed to have the right attitude.  I decided to lighten up.  After dinner I had one chance to meet her.  Not my strong suit: cold calls.  I was going to call it a night without meeting her but then there we were int he parking lot not far from each other.  “Gee your car is parked near mine,” I gulped.  Perhaps it was the drink or the moment but she did not tell me how stupid I sounded.  Her warm heart took pity and she spoke to me.  I went home exhilarated, so dazzled I even got lost on the way home though it was quite familiar to me.  She was to be the love of my life, I had met the love of my life!

In New York in 1977, on the first night of my new life, I spent hours sitting on the ledge outside my room looking down at 122nd street.  The eerie yellow-orange lights gave the street a very alien look.  And it was to me.  Somehow though, I knew this was my adventure my journey and not alien.  I wondered where it would lead.

More than twenty years after I left Minnesota and after more than thirty hours of labor my son Conner was born.  He didn’t cry in those first few moments; a silence, a pause before the rest began, a sacred little hesitation where the world was contained and my life was recreated yet again.  And then a weak little cry, a scream and a struggle to breath.  I was home.  I hoped the same for him.

Why Is Anyone Listening to Harold Camping?

Harold Camping thinks the time of the church has long ended.  According to him churches are not only outmoded but evil and all those who lead them are also of the devil.  He thinks that religion has no purpose and the fellowship and community and faith that is created and in our churches is all wasted energy and has nothing to do with our salvation.  He is a man who thinks the same of the world.  It has lost its meaning and is not long for this universe.  I think it is next spring when the end will come, he claims.  If there were not so many people listening to him I would easily dismiss him as a foolish and embittered old man who has grown tired of this life.  However, he has an enormous following.  The danger in this is that the bile that he is spreading is infecting us with fear.

The truth is that there is nothing to fear.    Come next May when he tells us the end will finally come for this poor world, on the day after we will all still be here.  There will still be a future.  There is one thing that every doomsday prophet that has come our way has in common with every other doomsday prophet they have all been wrong.  We are still here …..world with out end amen.  It doesn’t matter who they were or how compelling  (from Sabbatai Sevi to Harold Miller to Hal Linsey) they have all been wrong.  And so will Harold Camping….even if you believe that the end will come sometime you would be hard pressed to find much sanity or logic in the calculations he has made.  As a psychoanalyst I work with many people who are classified as psychotic (not in touch with reality is the short hand definition) and Harold Camping could easily qualify.

The questions is why then do so many believe that he has something to say?  Why are there so many who believe that the end is near?  It isn’t just the Family Radio crowd Christian and non-Christians have taken up the cause that seems to be all about frightening all of us out of our wits.   We must like to feel frightened.   There can be no other explanation for the popularity of the “Left Behind” series.   We may like fear but I wonder if it does us any good.  Times like this do not need another overlay of fear.

Faith for me is not about figuring out when the end is coming.  It is not concocting ways to increase fear in our lives.  It isn’t about the dark desperation that seems to hide in every soul.  It is rather about feeling and finding the fullness of life.  I don’t want some dour old man putting a damper on my celebration.  Yes, all of us face trouble.  All of us find ourselves in fear.  All of us will despair at one time or another.  Even Jesus did so.  The more important truth though, is that faith in God gets us through.  Faith in God gets us through in a way that redeems even our darkest moments into love or hope or wisdom.  All of life can then somehow be affirmed as good.  It is a miracle as great as the resurrection. 

God put us here to love one another and love our God and drink deeply from this life.  I choose that more than cowering in fear.  Fear does no one any good and it is a complete lie anyway.

Which do you choose?

Ah Tah….Glimpses of God in an Ordinary Life

“Oh Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!  Thou whose glory in heaven is chanted by the mouths of babes and infants.”

                                                                                                   Psalms 8:1-2

Children at your age?  It was not so odd.  I was only forty-two at the time which is not so old to be having children especially living in the suburbs filled with baby boomers who never wanted to grow up.  Just go to any kids soccer game these days: a bunch of old coots watching…and they are not grandparents.  So it was not really my age that elicited the question about having children.  It was the shared lament of parenthood.  Every parent wants to talk about how much children change your life, some say ruin your life.  Whichever it is there is a shared pathos about being a parent which I ignored before we had kids.  Now I get it.

Kids are a terrible burden.  Parenthood irrevocably changes your life.  Anything less is an understatement….a very large ungainly understatement.  Kids mash, destroy, and most certainly mutilate almost every part of what once was your life.  Movies?  Forget them.  Sleep? Not really.  Eating out? Not with kids if you actually want to eat.  A golf day for just you?  Who has time for that?  In fact they just about kill you and the life you once knew really does die.  Luckily I was forty-two.  Any younger and I would not have taken it as well.  It would have been all about me and what I was losing.  But I was ready to have my adolescent life die.  ( not that I don’t miss my old life here and again…like on a nice golf day)  I was ready, kind of, for the rest of my life to begin,  the life for which I was created.

My new world was given to me when my son Conner was born.  My son Conner taught me about this new life.  In his demands that he be first, I began to taste humility and practice patience.  In his hunger for everything- food, attention, love- I regained a thirst for feeling, living, and loving.  In his smile I felt a home which I had never known.  And in his laugh I will never lose delight.

My old life was over when he was born.  It didn’t come back with the birth of my daughter two years later.  The myth of having a second child is something about having one and that two is not much different.  Two is a world difference from one.  You would think your life couldn’t be ruined more than it already was with one but it is.  Again, though, I welcomed this changed life.  My son helped with the transition by showing the world anew.  Since he was brand new to the world he saw everything new.  It is the gift of being young.  When you have been earth for a while there are fewer and fewer surprises.  It is not so interesting but when it is all new it is fantastic.  He showed again how to see this fantastic world.  One day while I was holding Conner, when he was about one, he pointed out the window to the morning sun just brightening pink on the horizon.  He said, “Ah-tah”  I thought it was just baby jabber until a few days later the wind chimes were ringing and he made a point that they too were an “Ah-tah.”  And then his mom laughing was an “Ah-tah.”  And then a light bulb being screwed in a socket was an “Ah-tah”….I started to get it.

It was the gift of a one-year-old for his dad and mom: the world brand-new.  “Ah-tah,” he said to those things that he wondered about, or was surprised at, or delighted him in some way.  I started to hear it as an affirmation, the kind of affirmation I had all but forgotten about; a simple and sweet prayer of thanks for all that is good.  Adults somehow forget such prayers and sometimes become blind to the depth of goodness all around.  Maybe this place is forever brand new and we have trouble noticing.

Once trying to explain the wisdom that my child had given to me a friend said that she knew all about “Ah-tah.”  She told me it was Portuguese and it meant “now I understand” or “Now I get it.”  It is what Conner tried to convey but I think it is more.  It is a sense of wonder, goodness, and delight.  It is what we feel when all seems right, right now: a cool breeze on a hot day, a hug, a kiss, a warm smile, the right word of encouragement, the moon on the water on a summer’s night.  I could go on but I think you get it.  Glimpses of God and grace that we too often miss are what I believe to be the real “Ah-tahs.  It is what this blog is all about.  Seeing our God in the ordinary events that make up this life.  I hope they help you look in a new way and see the most ordinary moments as delight- filled and God-filled.

Turtle Hunting

I grew up in a benevolent part of the world.  There were few beasts or pests that could hurt anyone.  There were no snakes, no scorpions, nothing very dangerous anywhere.  There were pedestrian troubles that we were warned to stay away from like poison ivy, and wasps, and there was talk of Black Widow Spiders (that could kill you with one bite) but I never saw one.  It was Minnesota which does have terrible winters but even those seem wonderful and benevolent when you are a kid…what is better than a deep snow fall followed by really cold weather to preserve it? 

There was one beast though that inspired real fear in all of the kids in the neighborhood. It wasn’t often but occasionally a creature would emerge from the depths of the lake and be found out roaming the world.  And it looked every bit the scary monster.   A snapping turtle is a truly frightening sight.  They are all muscle coiled to fight.  Luckily they can’t move too far but they can snap quickly if you get too close.  Worse than how they look is how they act.  It does not take long, even as a kid, to realize that a snapper will attack anything that gets too close.  There is no warm fuzzy-ness about them that would ever help you believe that this could be a pet.  Stray dogs, even mean ones seem to have the capacity for relationship.  It is not so with snappers.  A child never wonders if he/she can bring such a beast home.

When they would appear it was an event like the ice cream man coming.  All the kids would somehow know and come out from wherever they were.  We circled the beast and prodded and poked it sure to not get any fingers too close.  Stories were shared about what the turtle could do to you if it ever got a hold of you.  Sooner or later an adult would come by and shoo us away.  Then when the kids were out of eye sight a mop handle would be produced and put right in front of the Snapper.  It would always latch on to the stick and then the turtle would be taken back down to the lake to be released or beheaded depending on the adult. 

As frightening as these beasts were they were that easily dispatched.  Evidently a turtle can’t do anything else but snap when there is something close.  They cannot discern or strategize or realize that if they snap they are doomed.  They have only one response and it is so embedded in their DNA that it cannot be any other way.  It is called a reptilian response. 

Evidently humans have this capacity also.  Dr. Paul McLean MD, Phd has mapped out the brain claiming that it comes in three parts.  The most rudimentary and ancient is the “reptilian brain.”       It is a bundle of nerve connections that is totally absent of thought processes.  It is all about instinct.  Evidently this part of the brain is not just some antiquated compartment of the brain but seems to be the place that we go when we are overstressed, filled with anxiety, or simply afraid.  You may have had the experience of snapping at someone in a rather intense or overwhelming moment.  You  retreated to your reptilian brain.  There are no decisions to make there are just preprogrammed responses.  It is what turtles do and presumably all reptiles.  Simple.  One response for all situations. 

Being human is far more complicated.  We have and know we have a plethora of responses.  The trouble is that too often it seems or we believe that we only have a few.  Sometimes we wish that there was only one response.  Sometimes we even tell ourselves that there is only one appropriate response.  Violence and abuse often is justified because of the claim,  “I didn’t have any choice.”  The truth is that human beings always have choices.  It is one of God’s most wonderful gifts and if we are wise we will always use it.  It is not easy of course.  When we are annoyed or stressed or mad…. snapping can feel like just the thing.  It never solves the problem though and it often makes it worse.

So next time you feel the need to snap try to think.  Try to pause for at least a moment.  Try to think of options.  When turtles snap they always stick their necks out and the outcome is not always to their advantage. 

There is a story in the Gospel of John that is all about Jesus not snapping.  He probably should have snapped when he was confronted with the horror of a woman about to get stoned because she was caught in adultery.  Of course there is no man being accused.  The crowd is sure she is guilty and for justice to be done she must be put to death.  It is enough to make a person snap but Jesus does not.  He bends down and draws in the sand while everyone waits for what he might say.  Finally, he comes to his best choice.  He gets up looks at the mob and says “Those without sin should throw the first stone.”  It was a good choice.  She was saved and a great horror was avoided.

We always have choices.