On Poetry and Religion

The spell cast by good poetry
And the role played by good religion
Overlap in this

To make familiar terrain
Unfamiliar and strange

To experience the old
As new again

To listen to the ancient story
With the ears of a child

Eyes to see

If you don't believe

In the East's endless cycle of Samsara
In the West's Fall into Original Sin
In Nietzsche's Eternal Return

Watch TV's talking heads
Read your news feed
Stand in line at the DMV

And you will know

Precious few claims in religion
Can be subjected to empirical proof
Repeated, observable, concrete

But this is at the head
Of that short list
Of universal human experiences

If you have eyes to see.

On making images

When taken at their best
Even idols give us glimpses
Of the God beyond words
And reveal that uncontained Other
Contained in matter and mind

And when pushed to their limits
Even the most accurate prose
And the most inspirational poems
Become idols
Which damn and destroy

That of which we cannot speak
We must pass over in silence
Except we can't not
Speak of what we have experienced
Except we can't not
Paint what we have seen
Except we can't not
Pray to the One
Who calls us from Beyond

Just because words
Always make us liars
Doesn't mean we can't use them
To point to the Truth

Just because images
Obstruct the Light
Doesn't mean we can't make them
To reflect the Sun.

Idol Therapy

When taken at their best
Which is unfortunately far too rare
Religion and Skepticism
Are after the same thing
To smash the idols
Which ensnare the mind
And blind the eyes
And bind the heart
To oppression and addiction
To cruelty and hate
To death and destruction

And if you can ignore
The glaring exceptions
To these generalizations

So-called Western Faiths
With prophetic fury
Obliterate the idols
Which obstruct our eyes
So our Vision is clear
To see the Transcendent Source
Who lies beyond sight

While the so-called Eastern Paths
Show us that all creatures under heaven
Even the gods themselves
Are finite images
And partially opened windows
To see glimpses of the Infinite
Beyond yet within

All while Agnosticism groans
Whether and what God is
Is beyond what we can say
And Atheism bluntly declares
Nothing is God
And
God is Nothing

And taken at their best
Despite all their worst
They are all
Correct

The Letter to Diognetus

In an age when there seems to be quite a bit of anxiety about the place of the Church and Christians in the world, perhaps it is a good thing to return to our roots. Writing in the second century, when Christianity was powerless and illegal, an anonymous Christian philosopher penned what we now call "The Letter to Diognetus". In chapters 5-6 he lays out a breathtaking vision of Christian identity and mission in the midst of a pluralistic, nationalistic, materialistic Roman Empire:

On Noah’s Flood and the Nephilim

I often have friends and congregants who decide to read the Bible from front to back. But getting past the first few chapters is a formidable challenge, because the literature is so very different from what we expect from the Bible. We expect a Law Book or a History Book or objective reporting like a Newspaper. But what we get is something that is neither history nor fiction nor poetry nor prose. It is not until we reach the story of Abram and Sarai in chapter 12 that the story becomes predictably “human”. Until then it is a bit… weird.

If modern readers can get past the conflict between the two Creation narratives in chapters 1-2 (and their conflict with the narrative of evolution), and then make it past the talking snake in chapter 3, the next big shock to the system happens in chapter 6:

Holy Crap

This is a poem inspired by Philippians 3.8 and it is not for the easily offended. So if you are easily offended, please read something else. With that said, here we go…

Brief Thoughts on Purgatory and Indulgences

Recently I saw a Protestant Christian railing against the idea that retweeting Pope Francis could "earn" time off from purgatory as a kind of "indulgence" found in this 2013 news story. The person who reposted the story asked for someone to explain what was going on with "retweeting" as an "indulgence" to lessen time in "purgatory". So I responded with this:

The Fallacy of the One True Church™

Recently a sincere and well intentioned person approached me on social media with a raft of questions about the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, and Christianity in general. This questioner is seeking to convert, and one question above all dominated his concerns: Which is the One True Church™ that he should convert to? After all, as he put it, the Church was “united” for the first millennium, so one of those churches that split off must be the One True Church™. Which one is it?

When Jesus wrote

Jesus only ever wrote down 
one thing
and it vanished from the ground
taken by the wind
washed away by the water
just like the shame
of the woman caught in sin

On Privilege and Ignorance and "Showing the Work”

I recently read someone on the left decry a right wing commentator by saying his "white male privilege allows him to make sweeping statements uninformed by history and never once question his position". And in the case of this comment, they are substantively correct in their critique, and yet they offer none of that substance in the critique itself. All that is offered is, ironically, a sweeping statement without evidence. In math terms: They get the answer right, but show none of the work. This is a problem.