On our sabbatical road trip we’ve done cities: Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philly and our hometown New York City. Well, we’ve done as much of each as possible with limited time and limited bodies.
It only took us a day to discover that we could only really do one big thing a day—one art museum, one tourist event, one 20-block walk, one history museum or one zoo, the latter a necessary antidote to too much past and too many people.
Standing, staring and shuffling by wonders brings awe as well as neck and back aches—to say nothing of jostling on subways and trains, finding a bathroom and a Starbucks fort the late afternoon treat.
One of the most fascinating small museums we visited is moBia, the Museum of Biblical Art in New York It is a small space upstairs from the American Bible Society store and learning center. This museum offers regular special exhibits, lectures, concerts and workshops.
There was an engaging photographic exhibit of a recent visit to NYC of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, head of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He has been traveling to promote the green agenda, sparing no words to tell the faithful and any who will listen that any act that harms natural resources like water, air, earth counts as a sin against the deity, no exceptions.
The Patriarch claims to trace his apostolic authority to St. Andrew one of Christ’s original biblical disciples. I thought it might have been Bartholomew like his name, but such authenticating details matter little to me.
Bartholomew is a handsome, white-bearded elderly man with an air of dignity and a twinkle in his eye. Particularly engaging was a picture of him laughing as he alighted from a buggie after a horse and buggie ride around Central Park. The ride is one of New York’s famous attractions. I’m quite sure that this green man of God would never have gone on such a ride had he not been assured that the scandal not long ago exposed of abuse of the poor horses had not been corrected. Which it has been.
The main exhibition just now is the work of artist Tobi Kahn. It contains many ceremonial objects for synagogue worship. They combine the symbolism of Jewish rites with functionality and a unique artistic voice—very contemporary, simple lines, using many geometric shapes arranged in patterns that suggest deeper spiritual meaning.
For example, the Torah breastplate which protects the scroll, the law of God so central to Jewish life and religious formation, is a large wooden square composed of many different shapes in relief and arranged in such a way that I at least couldn’t make it conform to something manageable or replicable. Very bold, tangible and made from earthbound material yet mysterious and transcendent.
Where my heart stopped and stayed for some time in spite of my tired feet was to behold what Kahn calls AHMA, four Shalom Bat chairs acrylic on wood creatd in 2008. The chairs are high backed and represent four biblical matriarchs, Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca and Leah, women without whom there would be no biblical patriarchs, in fact no story at all. But women nonetheless who have been overshadowed by their male counterparts, mentioned yes but not given full honor.
The very tall chair backs are painted with abstract but strongly suggestive patterns of feminine imagery, biology and shape—ova, blood red slashes of color, breasts and roundedness. There isn’t a squared-off shape on any chair.
Kahn made the chairs along with other works in commemoration of his mother. They connect with the ritual ceremony of welcoming and naming a baby girl into a Jewish family. Mothers and grandmothers, maybe even stepmothers or mentor mothers, sit in the chairs during the ceremony. On the back of each chair is space for each girl’s name and the date of her naming to be engraved. A beautiful gift of wholeness (shalom) for the daughers (bat)of Israel and all women, ancient and modern.
Kahn leads workshops for families in which they create their own miniature Shalom Bat chair to commemorate a significant family event or honor the life of a loved one, of either gender I assume and hope. since it would not do for any of us women, no matter how zealous we are to bring women into their rightful places in history and contemporary life, to be exclusive. Women and men and contribute equally and indispensably to every aspect of communal life religious and secular.
I’m grateful for Tobi Kahn’s art for its own beauty’s sake. I’m also grateful that his work serves a politics of justice, inclusion and freedom for humanity.
* * * *
I serve as a trustee of the Massachusetts Bible Society (MBS), an organization whose original mission was the distribution of bibles. We wanted people to have them. Our mission today is to promote biblical literacy. We want people not only to have access to bibles but also to to read and interpret biblical wisdom as it enhances everyday living toward a world governed by justice, peace and compassion—central biblical themes.
The MBS motto is "One Book, Many voices" meaning the bible is composed of many voices and also that it takes many voices to participate in biblical study to keep this book alive for every culture and person.
Just as every age develops it own aesthetic, so very era must find spiritual wisdom appropriate to its particular situation and a message of liberation for its day.
The bible is a vast and supple library of resources for this endeavor. Such amplitude is why many call this book holy and why biblical word, theme and insight continue to flavor literature as well as the secret desires of every longing heart.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things—About Aging
As you edge into your 8th decade you may notice you're getting older and more fun when............
-you can c.y.o.g. (choose your own gender)
-you go out to lunch not dinner because you’re in bed when most diners get started and you can’t see to drive well because the moon isn’t as bright as the sun
-your body talks back for the first time
-words that end in ah suddenly end in er as you hear yourself say, Linder’s lovah
-you and your friend or spouse get a case of teenage giggles; you suddenly hear yourself say, “Stop. You’re making me wet your pants!”
-you carefully pinch out the salt for your neti-pot and drop it into your o.j.
-hearing small children’s voices outside, even their wailing, becomes essential soul food
-you read the funnies before the news (even the word funnies dates you)
-nature is a primary source of reverence; in fact you fall in love with Ms. Spider at the window and cry when one day she disappears
-your mate sees you storing bananas in the refrigerator and shouts “Don’t!” You say, “Why not? They’re collecting fruit flies.” He says, “Chiquita Banana says...”
-you give your sleeveless tops to Good Will who, according to your granddaughter, isn’t a girl.
-your flesh takes on a life of its own, separate from your bones
-gratitude is up, griping down; laughter is up, lament down
-you pray that they come up with a less beefy, more stylish call alert wristwatch before you need one—a matter of fashion
-a box pops up on your computer screen saying your server is disconnected, but you don’t know what a server is so you call your six year old grandson.
-the ratio of medical to gossip has flipped from 20/80 to 80/20 in girlfriend conversations
-your will gets weaker but your soul gets stronger
-you think Godde may actually be your father............. AMEN.
-you can c.y.o.g. (choose your own gender)
-you go out to lunch not dinner because you’re in bed when most diners get started and you can’t see to drive well because the moon isn’t as bright as the sun
-your body talks back for the first time
-words that end in ah suddenly end in er as you hear yourself say, Linder’s lovah
-you and your friend or spouse get a case of teenage giggles; you suddenly hear yourself say, “Stop. You’re making me wet your pants!”
-you carefully pinch out the salt for your neti-pot and drop it into your o.j.
-hearing small children’s voices outside, even their wailing, becomes essential soul food
-you read the funnies before the news (even the word funnies dates you)
-nature is a primary source of reverence; in fact you fall in love with Ms. Spider at the window and cry when one day she disappears
-your mate sees you storing bananas in the refrigerator and shouts “Don’t!” You say, “Why not? They’re collecting fruit flies.” He says, “Chiquita Banana says...”
-you give your sleeveless tops to Good Will who, according to your granddaughter, isn’t a girl.
-your flesh takes on a life of its own, separate from your bones
-gratitude is up, griping down; laughter is up, lament down
-you pray that they come up with a less beefy, more stylish call alert wristwatch before you need one—a matter of fashion
-a box pops up on your computer screen saying your server is disconnected, but you don’t know what a server is so you call your six year old grandson.
-the ratio of medical to gossip has flipped from 20/80 to 80/20 in girlfriend conversations
-your will gets weaker but your soul gets stronger
-you think Godde may actually be your father............. AMEN.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Paranoid Paradox of Faith
Last Monday I received a phone call. “Hi. Is this Lyn Brakeman?” (Too cheery. Telemarketer for sure.) “Yes,” I say guarded. “Oh,” the female voice continues, its brightness dimmed. “Oh, well then. This is Holly from Writers Digest.” “Yes.” (Wants to know when I’ll renew.) “Well,” (Could she be more excited? Sounds like my mother used to. I imagine her jumping up and down.) “I called to tell you that your essay Electric Salvation has won fifth prize in our annual national Writers Digest contest in the category of Inspirational Writing. “Cool.” (Warming up. Inspired myself.) “So we need your email to tell you the details.” Gladly I oblige. Thanks are exchanged. “You’ll be getting an email from us soon.”
My heart jumps up and down. I call Dick. He jumps up and down. Send email to friends and call my kids.
Tuesday there’s no email confirmation. Anxiety edges out joy. Who is Holly? Sudden panic. It’s a hoax. Go online to their site. Read the list of winners. I’m not on it. Call Dick. He dashes home to join me in my puddle of tears, asks a few details. What? You gave her your email address? I told you don’t give any personal information out to anyone on the phone. It was in good faith. She sounded true. He freaks out. Now he’s paranoid too. Guilt.
I call the magazine, manage, navigate twelve prompts and then four more after I find the correct one for my question, which is “Is it true?” Leave a message for Teresa or Marissa Brower, Bower or Bowes.
I don’t know which head got cool first his or mine but he goes to the computer at the same instant I wonder if I’ve looked at the list of last year’s winners. But it says the winners would be on line. Will be? Yeah. Early November. It’s October. They wouldn’t put them on line before the next issue is out or no one would buy the magazine. Oh.
Call Marissa/Teresa B. Leave an apologetic message. Courteous. Call writing buddy to laugh with her about my paranoid process. My magazine just came she says. Yes. Here’s your name listed. It’s true.
It’s true. I feel as if I’d just seen the bodily Resurrection of Christ and I know it’s true, a fact. I feel about six years old. It’s true. I notify the “world.” It’s true.
It’s amazing what writers go through—out here writing, hunched over computers, submitting to countless publications, editors, etc. over and over along with hundreds of thousands of aspirants all as hopeful as you are. Rejections pour in by mail and email. It's easy to lose heart, get paranoid, be sure the whole world of publishing is out to get you alone, expose your foolishness. Your spirit begins to schlump, great yiddish word. Thank God for friends who schlump too, and thank God for Spirit who raises up schlumpers.
I’m still waiting for Holly’s cheery email and wondering at the paradox: the more passionate you are about something and the more hopeful and persevering you are about it and the more faith you have in your efforts, the more vulnerable you are to paranoia when hope turns to truth.
How odd. It reminds me of the phrase in Luke’s gospel describing the Jesus followers’ reaction to the news the women brought of the Resurrection. First they called it a hoax, an “idle tale” (like the ones women always tell, right?) Then they ran to check it out for themselves. Then they had a spiritual experience of the resurrected Jesus himself on the road to Emmaus. They “disbelieved for joy.” (Luke 24:41)
My heart jumps up and down. I call Dick. He jumps up and down. Send email to friends and call my kids.
Tuesday there’s no email confirmation. Anxiety edges out joy. Who is Holly? Sudden panic. It’s a hoax. Go online to their site. Read the list of winners. I’m not on it. Call Dick. He dashes home to join me in my puddle of tears, asks a few details. What? You gave her your email address? I told you don’t give any personal information out to anyone on the phone. It was in good faith. She sounded true. He freaks out. Now he’s paranoid too. Guilt.
I call the magazine, manage, navigate twelve prompts and then four more after I find the correct one for my question, which is “Is it true?” Leave a message for Teresa or Marissa Brower, Bower or Bowes.
I don’t know which head got cool first his or mine but he goes to the computer at the same instant I wonder if I’ve looked at the list of last year’s winners. But it says the winners would be on line. Will be? Yeah. Early November. It’s October. They wouldn’t put them on line before the next issue is out or no one would buy the magazine. Oh.
Call Marissa/Teresa B. Leave an apologetic message. Courteous. Call writing buddy to laugh with her about my paranoid process. My magazine just came she says. Yes. Here’s your name listed. It’s true.
It’s true. I feel as if I’d just seen the bodily Resurrection of Christ and I know it’s true, a fact. I feel about six years old. It’s true. I notify the “world.” It’s true.
It’s amazing what writers go through—out here writing, hunched over computers, submitting to countless publications, editors, etc. over and over along with hundreds of thousands of aspirants all as hopeful as you are. Rejections pour in by mail and email. It's easy to lose heart, get paranoid, be sure the whole world of publishing is out to get you alone, expose your foolishness. Your spirit begins to schlump, great yiddish word. Thank God for friends who schlump too, and thank God for Spirit who raises up schlumpers.
I’m still waiting for Holly’s cheery email and wondering at the paradox: the more passionate you are about something and the more hopeful and persevering you are about it and the more faith you have in your efforts, the more vulnerable you are to paranoia when hope turns to truth.
How odd. It reminds me of the phrase in Luke’s gospel describing the Jesus followers’ reaction to the news the women brought of the Resurrection. First they called it a hoax, an “idle tale” (like the ones women always tell, right?) Then they ran to check it out for themselves. Then they had a spiritual experience of the resurrected Jesus himself on the road to Emmaus. They “disbelieved for joy.” (Luke 24:41)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Angels and Bulls
Today on the church calendar we remember St. Michael and All Angels.
Do you believe in angels? I don’t know if I do, but I love the imagery and the spiritual energy that is named angel. To me angels are metaphors for spiritual strength—the kind needed for liberation.
Angels are like bulls charging into life’s injustices full force. That’s why they are pictured with weaponry, divine armor which does not mean you are to start a war either inside or outside yourself but rather to trust that inner strength will be provided.
It seems too sentimental, except for children, to say that angels "guard" individuals. I think angels guard divine values—justice, peace and compassion—by giving us wings to fly free and help others fly.
In the bible angels are messengers, fierce messengers announcing news of something new that will require your attention, your best resources and your creative imagination. When imagination and the forces for good are let loose, angels fly, bulls charge. There is death and there is new life.
Today I read in the Boston Globe that a 1,400 pound bull had escaped from a slaughterhouse in Paterson N.J. and dragged police officers with a lasso down the street ten blocks. The bull charged forward with brute force, running for his mighty life, refusing to succumb to the forces of violence that threatened his beautiful life.
My heart flew with the bull as I stared at the photo. Angels were with that bull as he made a run for life and freedom against impossible odds. I admired that bull. His effort was futile. It took an hour to corral him, sedate him and return him to slaughter. I will think of that bull the next time I order steak and am asked how I would like it cooked. The bull’s effort was futile, not wasted.
Sometimes our best efforts for the good end in tragedy. The courageous among us make these efforts anyway. Liberation is never easy. Liberation requires heroism, strong force. Many literally die like the bull, but all liberators wake us up and all are beloved.
Once a bull was an angel of liberation for me. He came out one day in therapy when my brilliant and uppity therapist suggested I give my restless inner energy an animal identity. I knew right away it was a bull. I’d spent lots of childhood time on a farm. I knew bulls up close and personal. In spite of my fear at their ferocity and power I was fascinated. My therapist told me to be a bull, right there in her office. As appalled as I was I was at a stage in my therapy that if she told me gravel was food I’d have eaten it. I started to paw the carpet, roar, howl, snort. What was probably five minutes or less released thirty years of rage. When the bull quieted I emerged transformed. A feeling of absolute peace enveloped me and strangely sharpened my vision so I looked up at my therapist and for the first time noticed how beautiful her face was.
She asked if I had words. A hymn came to mind, “Father Eternal, Ruler of Creation.” It’s a violent hymn, relentlessly, verse by verse, detailing the destructive powers of oppression and war. The refrain is Thy kingdom come, oh Lord, thy will be done. I sang it to her.
Do you believe in angels? I don’t know if I do, but I love the imagery and the spiritual energy that is named angel. To me angels are metaphors for spiritual strength—the kind needed for liberation.
Angels are like bulls charging into life’s injustices full force. That’s why they are pictured with weaponry, divine armor which does not mean you are to start a war either inside or outside yourself but rather to trust that inner strength will be provided.
It seems too sentimental, except for children, to say that angels "guard" individuals. I think angels guard divine values—justice, peace and compassion—by giving us wings to fly free and help others fly.
In the bible angels are messengers, fierce messengers announcing news of something new that will require your attention, your best resources and your creative imagination. When imagination and the forces for good are let loose, angels fly, bulls charge. There is death and there is new life.
Today I read in the Boston Globe that a 1,400 pound bull had escaped from a slaughterhouse in Paterson N.J. and dragged police officers with a lasso down the street ten blocks. The bull charged forward with brute force, running for his mighty life, refusing to succumb to the forces of violence that threatened his beautiful life.
My heart flew with the bull as I stared at the photo. Angels were with that bull as he made a run for life and freedom against impossible odds. I admired that bull. His effort was futile. It took an hour to corral him, sedate him and return him to slaughter. I will think of that bull the next time I order steak and am asked how I would like it cooked. The bull’s effort was futile, not wasted.
Sometimes our best efforts for the good end in tragedy. The courageous among us make these efforts anyway. Liberation is never easy. Liberation requires heroism, strong force. Many literally die like the bull, but all liberators wake us up and all are beloved.
Once a bull was an angel of liberation for me. He came out one day in therapy when my brilliant and uppity therapist suggested I give my restless inner energy an animal identity. I knew right away it was a bull. I’d spent lots of childhood time on a farm. I knew bulls up close and personal. In spite of my fear at their ferocity and power I was fascinated. My therapist told me to be a bull, right there in her office. As appalled as I was I was at a stage in my therapy that if she told me gravel was food I’d have eaten it. I started to paw the carpet, roar, howl, snort. What was probably five minutes or less released thirty years of rage. When the bull quieted I emerged transformed. A feeling of absolute peace enveloped me and strangely sharpened my vision so I looked up at my therapist and for the first time noticed how beautiful her face was.
She asked if I had words. A hymn came to mind, “Father Eternal, Ruler of Creation.” It’s a violent hymn, relentlessly, verse by verse, detailing the destructive powers of oppression and war. The refrain is Thy kingdom come, oh Lord, thy will be done. I sang it to her.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
At the Foot of the Cross—or the Bed
Reflecting on Holy Cross Day, September 14th, on the old holy cross, I wonder why we could call such a topsy-turvy symbol holy.
Most people think it’s nuts. Even many Christians. A great and innocent man of God is killed for preaching divine mercy and justice and roiling up the rabble and we call it divine love? divine will? How do you make common sense or sacred sense of such a hideous instrument of execution, signaling cruelty, injustice and other sins against humanity too fierce to mention And Christians say it’s God’s self-giving love? Or worse, it’s for your own good, or God needs this lamb’s blood to ransom us from sin. Not very loving, eh?
One of my favorite movies is Thelma and Louise. It’s a gruesome story of two women who commit murder in the wake of rape, become fugitives from the law, and decide to die together rather than submit to further abuses in a patriarchal system. Their decision to drive over the edge of the Grand Canyon felt noble to me, heroic, holy. My tears flowed sorrow and joy. I learned a lot about myself, women, injustice, cruelty and spiritual freedom. I think of Jesus’ choosing death. I think of God’s choosing resurrection.
I bet those women ended up somewhere near the right hand of Godde.
Our good friend of years and brother priest Richard Schuster died the end of August. He had devoted his whole adult life to works of justice and love, developing a non-profit organization, St. Lukes LifeWorks, to help the underserved populations of the city of Stamford, Connecticut get jobs, training, counseling and housing. He saw his work as ministry. He did it for people and for God.
Richard was only sixty-four. His disease, pulmonary fibrosis, took hold and went faster than anyone imagined it could.
On Friday August 28 we had a dinner date with him and his wife Angela. We two couples had been good friends for years. Our dinner date morphed suddenly into hospital and hospice and huge oxygen tanks that pumped oxygen into his failing lungs, almost like a home respirator without the nasty nasal gastric tube.
We debated about it all and, undeterred, decided we’d come anyway and bring in some take out food from one of our favorite haunts Mitchells Fish Market. When Richard heard we were coming and getting food from Mitchells he perked up and ordered—broiled trout, garlic mashed potatoes, two pieces of key lime pie and wine.
We gathered, sat on his bed while Angela fed him a little trout, two bites of potato and almost all of one key lime pie slice. He was alert. We laughed, sharing old and odd memories of our escapades, including our plans to reform the church calling ourselves Parish Management Services, which we dropped when we figured the acronym was PMS. We all cried; we touched; we said prayers each one according to our own styles and words; we touched some more, hands, arms, head, his flesh cold to the touch; we said good bye and good bye and good bye with love. It was a holy communion at the foot of his bed, his "cross". Then he left and started his journey home. We ate the rest of the meal and the pie, drank the wine and hugged. A holy communion.
Although sad these last moments were transformative for us all. We and Angela have a living memory that will stay with us for ever or at least every time we dine on key lime pie and loving conversation.
Isn’t that what Jesus’ followers did with his tragic death: gathered, shared, prayed, loved, sipped wine and broke bread together? Is that enough meaning?
Isn’t this what we Christians do every Sunday when as community we gather at the foot of a cross for the Holy Eucharist?
It’s enough meaning for me, holy enough too.
Most people think it’s nuts. Even many Christians. A great and innocent man of God is killed for preaching divine mercy and justice and roiling up the rabble and we call it divine love? divine will? How do you make common sense or sacred sense of such a hideous instrument of execution, signaling cruelty, injustice and other sins against humanity too fierce to mention And Christians say it’s God’s self-giving love? Or worse, it’s for your own good, or God needs this lamb’s blood to ransom us from sin. Not very loving, eh?
One of my favorite movies is Thelma and Louise. It’s a gruesome story of two women who commit murder in the wake of rape, become fugitives from the law, and decide to die together rather than submit to further abuses in a patriarchal system. Their decision to drive over the edge of the Grand Canyon felt noble to me, heroic, holy. My tears flowed sorrow and joy. I learned a lot about myself, women, injustice, cruelty and spiritual freedom. I think of Jesus’ choosing death. I think of God’s choosing resurrection.
I bet those women ended up somewhere near the right hand of Godde.
Our good friend of years and brother priest Richard Schuster died the end of August. He had devoted his whole adult life to works of justice and love, developing a non-profit organization, St. Lukes LifeWorks, to help the underserved populations of the city of Stamford, Connecticut get jobs, training, counseling and housing. He saw his work as ministry. He did it for people and for God.
Richard was only sixty-four. His disease, pulmonary fibrosis, took hold and went faster than anyone imagined it could.
On Friday August 28 we had a dinner date with him and his wife Angela. We two couples had been good friends for years. Our dinner date morphed suddenly into hospital and hospice and huge oxygen tanks that pumped oxygen into his failing lungs, almost like a home respirator without the nasty nasal gastric tube.
We debated about it all and, undeterred, decided we’d come anyway and bring in some take out food from one of our favorite haunts Mitchells Fish Market. When Richard heard we were coming and getting food from Mitchells he perked up and ordered—broiled trout, garlic mashed potatoes, two pieces of key lime pie and wine.
We gathered, sat on his bed while Angela fed him a little trout, two bites of potato and almost all of one key lime pie slice. He was alert. We laughed, sharing old and odd memories of our escapades, including our plans to reform the church calling ourselves Parish Management Services, which we dropped when we figured the acronym was PMS. We all cried; we touched; we said prayers each one according to our own styles and words; we touched some more, hands, arms, head, his flesh cold to the touch; we said good bye and good bye and good bye with love. It was a holy communion at the foot of his bed, his "cross". Then he left and started his journey home. We ate the rest of the meal and the pie, drank the wine and hugged. A holy communion.
Although sad these last moments were transformative for us all. We and Angela have a living memory that will stay with us for ever or at least every time we dine on key lime pie and loving conversation.
Isn’t that what Jesus’ followers did with his tragic death: gathered, shared, prayed, loved, sipped wine and broke bread together? Is that enough meaning?
Isn’t this what we Christians do every Sunday when as community we gather at the foot of a cross for the Holy Eucharist?
It’s enough meaning for me, holy enough too.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Shack - a Review
Today is the anniversary of my late father’s birth day. If he were alive today he would be ninety-eight; instead esophageal cancer left him with too many bags, drains and tubes and no way to eat, so he went to bed the day after Christmas, 1982 and died. I loved him, alcohol, cigarettes, despair and all. My grief was long and hard. He died too soon for the length of my love.
I never thought God had a thing to do with his premature departure, causally at least. I don’t know what Dad thought. He didn’t talk. He’d say on and off throughout his life, What’s the point? and those were his last words to me as he lay dying. I had no answer but I don’t think he expected an answer, at least from me.
Dad had a reverence for the holy even in the midst of feeling defeated by life. He had a respect for religion and the transcendent. I could tell by the way he sang the Christmas carols in full bass voice, almost happy. I’d look up at him when I was a kid and think he knew something but couldn’t quite grasp it or let it take hold of him.
Traditional portraits of God— judge, monarch, Big Daddy watching from on high, subduer of deepest desires and passions—may have made it hard for my father to love and feel loved by God. He grew up in a family of six boys and two girls, number five flanked by two sisters who used to dress him up and play house. His father was passive, sweet and inebriated while Ma was a stern rising tower of authority. “Ma’s boys” could do no wrong. Dad was successful but I’d wonder if the occasional yearning I spotted in his eyes longed for, craved, a missing peace.
It’s not God but our misconstrued images of God that wound and kill us. The patriarchal God who points fingers and plays favorites has scared too many people for too long. That God, He, is the projection of a frightened church. That God, He, is still alive and well in too many shivering, cautious hearts. That God, He, has been the image of choice (for there are many images in the bible) in the church for too many centuries now.
Many clergy preach other, but mental imprints and hierarchical domination language are still used in worship and still hold power over souls.
I wish my dad could have met the portrait of God in The Shack.
When I read The Shack this summer I felt affectionately connected to God— in myself, in creation, in other people, and on high. Not new feelings but renewed feelings.
I’d resisted reading it in part because it was all the rage and I’m cynical about the tastes of the masses, and in part because I’d heard it was evangelical propaganda full of biblical literalism and not for sophisticated progressives who take the bible seriously but not literally, like my image of myself.
The Shack is a parable, a wisdom tale designed to startle and reveal something new. The story is about a father’s spiritual trip, and I say trip, because it is not a steadfast faith journey that evolves and matures over time with trust and prayer. It’s a crisis trip, an internal psychological/spiritual conversion of soul and mood: from a life of grim plodding, possessed by grief, laden with a habit of gloom larger than Eeyore’s to a life full of joy grounded in wisdom not rapture.
The plot isn’t complicated. It’s a reiteration of the story of the biblical Job, the good guy who is struck by more personal tragedy than anyone should have to bear and asks, Why? Job is far more dramatic in his impatient refusal to let go of the besetting question about why bad things happen to good people than is Mackenzie Alan Phillips in The Shack who has sunken into a faith of empty duty and spiritual deadness—until he gets an odd invitation in the mail.
The ideas in this book aren’t new: God in three persons, God who meets us and loves us at the center of our pain, Jesus in living color. It’s evangelical Christian propaganda as I’d feared.
What is new is that the theological ideas are wrapped, often not too tightly, in personal narrative, someone’s experience filled with characters you can fall in love with, identify with, care about. You keep reading even though you think you can guess what might happen, and to Christians the story is the one we hear in Church every Sunday and then some—with a twist. One of the novel’s characters is God-relating-to-God. Hey, don’t you have inner dialogues? But are yours all filled with mutual respect and love—and good boundaries, for godssake?
The gift of his book is that it gives readers a new image of God, not an abstraction or doctrine but as characters in a novel, drawn with sympathy and color, characters that sustain the narrative, characters you want to know. That’s new and it is charming.
What makes The Shack not really a good novel is that its plot is weak, the writing not very creative, the dramatic action not suspenseful but forced into the service of an agenda, the solutions contrived, the wisdom un-nuanced. The plot quickly takes second place to the agenda of the author and collaborators with just enough change of scene to keep you going. What starts as a story turns into a sermon, embarrassingly preachy in spots. especially near the end when a clear Christian refrain shows up uninvited. I cringed. My Jewish blood also curdled in a couple of places that were unnecessarily anti-semitic and insulting to the Hebrew scriptures. The story doesn’t carry its own weight throughout.
As I’d feared it is also biblical literalism thinly disguised. Why am I not in a rant? Disgusted? I don’t know. I just got into the scene, the relationships, corny but alluring, often followed up with a tidbit of irresistible wisdom like the Eden myth question: “Rumors of glory are often hidden inside what many consider myths and tales.” Or the human soul as a living fractal—wild, messy always in process, patterns emerging, alive, growing and needing constant tending.
Jesus takes Mack on a walk across the water. I giggled with them as they stepped off the dock, carrying their socks and shoes and rolling up their pants just in case. This and other biblical scenarios are simply portrayed without fanfare. They’re just acted out in character. Who cares if they actually happened? It is not fact that inspires faith but warmth.
This book is vulnerable, open to all kinds of scholarly nitpicking, literary scorn, religious defensiveness, much of it justified. But does it work anyway? I think it does for one reason only: the characters are lovable, charming, their voices convincing. You want more. You fall in love. You want this kind of love, this kind of God. I wonder if that is why this book is so popular. It allows us to fall in love, to be as a child, to let go of proofs, to enjoy a story that touches our humanity at its most vulnerable and presents an ancient Christian insight in new garb.
In addition, this book may serve as a bridge between the foolishly warring left and right religious camps. It's a string bridge to be sure, but one that both side may be able to execute with caution.
If The Shack does nothing else it give us fresh dynamic language and imagery for divinity and goes a long way to balance transcendent and immanent, love and freedom, revelation and psychology.
This is evangelical Christianity in its loveliest form. Happy Birthday Dad. Is this “the point” you always asked about?
I never thought God had a thing to do with his premature departure, causally at least. I don’t know what Dad thought. He didn’t talk. He’d say on and off throughout his life, What’s the point? and those were his last words to me as he lay dying. I had no answer but I don’t think he expected an answer, at least from me.
Dad had a reverence for the holy even in the midst of feeling defeated by life. He had a respect for religion and the transcendent. I could tell by the way he sang the Christmas carols in full bass voice, almost happy. I’d look up at him when I was a kid and think he knew something but couldn’t quite grasp it or let it take hold of him.
Traditional portraits of God— judge, monarch, Big Daddy watching from on high, subduer of deepest desires and passions—may have made it hard for my father to love and feel loved by God. He grew up in a family of six boys and two girls, number five flanked by two sisters who used to dress him up and play house. His father was passive, sweet and inebriated while Ma was a stern rising tower of authority. “Ma’s boys” could do no wrong. Dad was successful but I’d wonder if the occasional yearning I spotted in his eyes longed for, craved, a missing peace.
It’s not God but our misconstrued images of God that wound and kill us. The patriarchal God who points fingers and plays favorites has scared too many people for too long. That God, He, is the projection of a frightened church. That God, He, is still alive and well in too many shivering, cautious hearts. That God, He, has been the image of choice (for there are many images in the bible) in the church for too many centuries now.
Many clergy preach other, but mental imprints and hierarchical domination language are still used in worship and still hold power over souls.
I wish my dad could have met the portrait of God in The Shack.
When I read The Shack this summer I felt affectionately connected to God— in myself, in creation, in other people, and on high. Not new feelings but renewed feelings.
I’d resisted reading it in part because it was all the rage and I’m cynical about the tastes of the masses, and in part because I’d heard it was evangelical propaganda full of biblical literalism and not for sophisticated progressives who take the bible seriously but not literally, like my image of myself.
The Shack is a parable, a wisdom tale designed to startle and reveal something new. The story is about a father’s spiritual trip, and I say trip, because it is not a steadfast faith journey that evolves and matures over time with trust and prayer. It’s a crisis trip, an internal psychological/spiritual conversion of soul and mood: from a life of grim plodding, possessed by grief, laden with a habit of gloom larger than Eeyore’s to a life full of joy grounded in wisdom not rapture.
The plot isn’t complicated. It’s a reiteration of the story of the biblical Job, the good guy who is struck by more personal tragedy than anyone should have to bear and asks, Why? Job is far more dramatic in his impatient refusal to let go of the besetting question about why bad things happen to good people than is Mackenzie Alan Phillips in The Shack who has sunken into a faith of empty duty and spiritual deadness—until he gets an odd invitation in the mail.
The ideas in this book aren’t new: God in three persons, God who meets us and loves us at the center of our pain, Jesus in living color. It’s evangelical Christian propaganda as I’d feared.
What is new is that the theological ideas are wrapped, often not too tightly, in personal narrative, someone’s experience filled with characters you can fall in love with, identify with, care about. You keep reading even though you think you can guess what might happen, and to Christians the story is the one we hear in Church every Sunday and then some—with a twist. One of the novel’s characters is God-relating-to-God. Hey, don’t you have inner dialogues? But are yours all filled with mutual respect and love—and good boundaries, for godssake?
The gift of his book is that it gives readers a new image of God, not an abstraction or doctrine but as characters in a novel, drawn with sympathy and color, characters that sustain the narrative, characters you want to know. That’s new and it is charming.
What makes The Shack not really a good novel is that its plot is weak, the writing not very creative, the dramatic action not suspenseful but forced into the service of an agenda, the solutions contrived, the wisdom un-nuanced. The plot quickly takes second place to the agenda of the author and collaborators with just enough change of scene to keep you going. What starts as a story turns into a sermon, embarrassingly preachy in spots. especially near the end when a clear Christian refrain shows up uninvited. I cringed. My Jewish blood also curdled in a couple of places that were unnecessarily anti-semitic and insulting to the Hebrew scriptures. The story doesn’t carry its own weight throughout.
As I’d feared it is also biblical literalism thinly disguised. Why am I not in a rant? Disgusted? I don’t know. I just got into the scene, the relationships, corny but alluring, often followed up with a tidbit of irresistible wisdom like the Eden myth question: “Rumors of glory are often hidden inside what many consider myths and tales.” Or the human soul as a living fractal—wild, messy always in process, patterns emerging, alive, growing and needing constant tending.
Jesus takes Mack on a walk across the water. I giggled with them as they stepped off the dock, carrying their socks and shoes and rolling up their pants just in case. This and other biblical scenarios are simply portrayed without fanfare. They’re just acted out in character. Who cares if they actually happened? It is not fact that inspires faith but warmth.
This book is vulnerable, open to all kinds of scholarly nitpicking, literary scorn, religious defensiveness, much of it justified. But does it work anyway? I think it does for one reason only: the characters are lovable, charming, their voices convincing. You want more. You fall in love. You want this kind of love, this kind of God. I wonder if that is why this book is so popular. It allows us to fall in love, to be as a child, to let go of proofs, to enjoy a story that touches our humanity at its most vulnerable and presents an ancient Christian insight in new garb.
In addition, this book may serve as a bridge between the foolishly warring left and right religious camps. It's a string bridge to be sure, but one that both side may be able to execute with caution.
If The Shack does nothing else it give us fresh dynamic language and imagery for divinity and goes a long way to balance transcendent and immanent, love and freedom, revelation and psychology.
This is evangelical Christianity in its loveliest form. Happy Birthday Dad. Is this “the point” you always asked about?
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Spirituality of Scarcity
I’m thinking today of a little five year old girl whose hands are wrapped to twice or three times their natural size with gauze bandage.
The child is blonde, petite and has a name far more beautiful than Sprite but for privacy’s sake I’ll call her Sprite because it fits her.
Sprite is in the Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston. Naturally inquisitive and trying to be helpful, she pulled a full steaming pot of hot coffee off the counter and onto her front body. Luckily her face was not burned but her hands took a full hit.
Sprite, as her pseudonymn suggests, is a spirited girl with a shy smile and looks to kill. You think she’s one who gets lost in her mother’s skirts until suddenly she turns into a commando. Once at a celebration at our parish church, where there was more cake than anything else, she ran in first and got a plate piled high with several helpings of several cakes. As I approached I leaned down and commented on how delicious the cake looked. Sprite pulled her plate to the side, walked off fast, tipped her head in the direction of the cake table and said, It’s over there.
The most painful but necessary routine in the burn hospital is the daily changing of the dressings. It’s done with as much care and medication as possible but........ During her first ordeal Sprite began with the polite speech she’s been taught. Please stop. There were explanations and careful touch I’m sure but it didn’t stop. Stop. She howled. Nothing. If you don’t stop I’ll kick you. And she raised her small legs, the only limbs left at her service. Follow-up the next day: I hate nurses!
How hard it must be to hurt a child. Training in this work helps but it never takes away the torture and the echo of the screams. Sometimes we have to wound to heal.
People today are quick to speak of spiritual abundance, the abundance of divine love. Glib and silly, locating Godde in one place when Godde is in all places. Abundance stands at one end of a continuum with scarcity at the other. We favor abundance because it is positive and trendy but it limits the breadth of Godde’s love and sounds idiotic to someone who is in the midst of scarcity like Sprite, a five year old with no hands—to her not 2-3 weeks but eternity.
What is the spirituality of scarcity? I mean how is scarcity imbued with holiness, a spirit of goodness. I don’t know. To me it seems right to suggest that Godde is in the tiniest things. When you’re starving for real food a scrap of bread, broken and shared by people in a concentration or prison camp is divine. When you’re starving for the spiritual food of love a small gesture of caring or a touch when everyone is helpless to change things is holy.
To me Sprite's impolite crying out and the vigorous response of her legs are signs of divinity in the middle of scarcity. Alive: screaming and kicking.
Not a bad prayer either.
The child is blonde, petite and has a name far more beautiful than Sprite but for privacy’s sake I’ll call her Sprite because it fits her.
Sprite is in the Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston. Naturally inquisitive and trying to be helpful, she pulled a full steaming pot of hot coffee off the counter and onto her front body. Luckily her face was not burned but her hands took a full hit.
Sprite, as her pseudonymn suggests, is a spirited girl with a shy smile and looks to kill. You think she’s one who gets lost in her mother’s skirts until suddenly she turns into a commando. Once at a celebration at our parish church, where there was more cake than anything else, she ran in first and got a plate piled high with several helpings of several cakes. As I approached I leaned down and commented on how delicious the cake looked. Sprite pulled her plate to the side, walked off fast, tipped her head in the direction of the cake table and said, It’s over there.
The most painful but necessary routine in the burn hospital is the daily changing of the dressings. It’s done with as much care and medication as possible but........ During her first ordeal Sprite began with the polite speech she’s been taught. Please stop. There were explanations and careful touch I’m sure but it didn’t stop. Stop. She howled. Nothing. If you don’t stop I’ll kick you. And she raised her small legs, the only limbs left at her service. Follow-up the next day: I hate nurses!
How hard it must be to hurt a child. Training in this work helps but it never takes away the torture and the echo of the screams. Sometimes we have to wound to heal.
People today are quick to speak of spiritual abundance, the abundance of divine love. Glib and silly, locating Godde in one place when Godde is in all places. Abundance stands at one end of a continuum with scarcity at the other. We favor abundance because it is positive and trendy but it limits the breadth of Godde’s love and sounds idiotic to someone who is in the midst of scarcity like Sprite, a five year old with no hands—to her not 2-3 weeks but eternity.
What is the spirituality of scarcity? I mean how is scarcity imbued with holiness, a spirit of goodness. I don’t know. To me it seems right to suggest that Godde is in the tiniest things. When you’re starving for real food a scrap of bread, broken and shared by people in a concentration or prison camp is divine. When you’re starving for the spiritual food of love a small gesture of caring or a touch when everyone is helpless to change things is holy.
To me Sprite's impolite crying out and the vigorous response of her legs are signs of divinity in the middle of scarcity. Alive: screaming and kicking.
Not a bad prayer either.
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