The Sacrament of Imagination

An abnormal Sunday approaches
When Church pews normally filled
Lie dormant and desolate
As the faithful search for ways
To fill the void
In their schedule 
And in their hearts

Divine Justice, Quarantine, and Healing

During this time of pandemic, social distancing, and quarantine, my sacred reading today was from the First letter of John (read it all here). One text in particular deals with Divine Justice, and can really reframe how with think of Justice in an age of global contagion:

"If we confess our sins, [Christ] is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins, and purify us from all injustice." (1 John 1.9)

Prayer Resources for COVID19

The following is the text of an email I sent out to the faculty, staff, and families of my school community. I post this as a resource to other pastors or chaplains who may want to send a similar email and resources. Feel free to cut-and-paste and adapt as needed.

A Poem for a Pandemic

All across the world right now
People are feeling what you feel

Love one another

With anxiety for the future
And worry for their loved ones

Love one another

With boredom and cabin fever
Which grows deeper as time grows longer

Love one another

With dismay at empty shelves
Empty streets and empty shops

Love one another

With prayers for the wellbeing of their families
And supplications for those who are sick

Love one another

With unexpected childcare and meals to fix
And cries of “Why can’t we go out?!?”

Love one another

With a flinch at every cough
And hesitation when a chill is felt

Love one another

With trepidation at unpaid bills
And terror at missing paychecks

Love one another

With waiting waiting waiting
And worrying worrying worrying

Love one another

With this Litany we address the Lord of Life
Who reminds us again and again

Love one another 

Persons are persons

Persons are persons 
And should be treated like persons
With compassion and kindness
With mercy and grace
With dignity and respect
The same way we would want others
To treat us

This is a very simple concept
But exceedingly hard to internalize
In our heads
In our hearts
And embarrassingly hard to actualize
In our deeds
In our words

Disarming the Canon

Recently a friend asked me: "Who decided that the Bible is as-is? Whose voices were included? Whose voices were omitted? Why these texts?" This is a great question, and gives me an excuse to write briefly about the process of "canonizing" the texts that would make up the Bible. This starts by defining terms. First of all, the Bible. The Bible comes from the Greek word "Biblia" meaning "Library of Texts". We think of the Bible as a single book, but in reality it is a library of at least 66 separate texts (but probably 80 or more!). These texts were written over a thousand years, from as early as 1000 BCE to as late as 100 CE, by dozens of different authors from wildly different walks of life, across different languages, different cultures, and different religious backgrounds. 

So the question being asked is: Why did these books "make it in" to the Bible, while other texts did not? 

Human rights or God’s rights?

We get tied up in knots about whether healthcare is a human right or an earned privilege. We argue about whether food is a human right or an earned privilege. We debate whether education is a human right or an earned privilege. For those of us who believe in God, as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, there is a way out of this conundrum. 

Sacred Ideas within Secular Idioms

As a school chaplain I am blessed to live and work with people from all faith backgrounds, and those who claim no religious faith at all. With this in mind, I strive to make our spirituality program at my school "authentically Christian and genuinely inclusive". Thus, I try to shape our chapel program so that it has something to say to everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. From our prayers to our Scripture readings to our mediations to our sermons, it is my hope that every member of our school community can find something that speaks to their life, and challenges them to grow spiritually and ethically. 

As a result, I frequently try to "translate" Christian texts and concepts into language that speaks more directly to "Religious Others". This is NOT as a substitute for Christian texts and prayers, but as an explanation or interpretation of them. In particular, I like to imagine what Jesus' teachings might sound like if he were talking to postmodern secular people who do not adhere to any formal religion, and who may not have space for "God" or transcendence in their worldview. 

A Universal Invocation

LORD of Love
Source of All Worlds
Known by many Names
Flow through us
Now and evermore
Think through our minds
Feel through our hearts
Speak through our mouths
Act through our bodies
That our deeds may bring Life
That our words may share Love
That our plans may have Purpose
Rooted in you alone. 

Divine Authorship, the Incarnation, and human avatars

Jesus replied: “Isn't it written in your Law, I have said, you are gods?” Scripture calls those to whom God's word came “gods”, and scripture can't be abolished. So how can you say that the one whom the Father has made holy and sent into the world insults God because he said, “I am God's Son”? (John 10.34-36)

The central paradox of the Incarnation is that Christ is both the unique embodiment of God in human form, and also a prototype of what ALL humans can be when they realize their true nature. But if Christ is unique, how can he also be a Pattern for all other humans? By definition, unique seems to be the opposite of universal. 

Jesus’ formula for discerning Good from Evil

Among the many things John’s Gospel teaches is a concise formula to discern Good from Evil. John records Jesus as saying:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10 NRSV)

In Greek it reads: ὁ κλέπτης οὐκ ἔρχεται εἰ μὴ ἵνα κλέψῃ καὶ θύσῃ καὶ ἀπολέσῃ· ἐγὼ ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσιν καὶ περισσὸν ἔχωσιν.

And so I would paraphrase it: The thief only comes for theft, murder, and destruction. I have come that they may not only survive, but thrive. 

In the first sentence, Jesus lays out what is evil, anti-life, anti-Christ, and anti-God. In the second sentence, Jesus lays out what is good, enhances life, embodies Christ, and glorifies God. 

The Palindromic Prophet

The Presentation of our Lord
In the Temple on
02022020
Seems significant somehow
Seeing that Baby Jesus
Secured blessing from
ANNA
At the Temple when
The Palindromic Prophet saw him. 

(Luke 2.36-38)

On Voting for the Least Bad Candidate

A poem about our current political moment...

They say 
VOTE!
But then they
Won’t
Give us anyone
Worth voting for. 

Authentically Christian AND Genuinely Inclusive

A recent article in the Church Times worries that we are failing the next generation of Christians by not handing down the great ideas and ideals of Anglican spirituality in an effort to "simplify" Christianity so it can be more easily digested to those who are un-churched or de-churched. In the name of compassion and inclusion, we often fall into the trap of ignoring our distinctive ideas and practices to be more "user friendly". The truth is, if we do not preserve and transmit our distinct spiritual, theological, and ethical concepts, we will have nothing to include people into. When you tear down all the walls in an effort to remove barriers between people, you cease to have a house that can protect people during life's storms. 

The Persistence of the Fact/Value Distinction

I have encountered several attempts to derive moral values from empirical observation, from "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by angry atheist Sam Harris, to the Lobster hierarchies of neoconservative hero Jordan Peterson. Most of these attempts revolve around the mundane rhetorical strategy of "we observed these behaviors consistently in nature, which means they must be ethically normative for humans". Which of course is the very definition of the naturalistic fallacy in logic. Furthermore, most of the attempts to collapse the fact/value distinction depend on a metaphysics of eliminative materialism, while sneaking in a transcendent value for “life” or “actualization” without acknowledging it. 

For instance, the argument is often made that “ought” is simply a function of “could”, and “could” is simply a function of “is”. The way things are implies certain possibilities about how they could be, when extended through a causal chain of events. “Ought” simply takes one or more of these potential states and designates it as preferable to other potential states. Generally, the preferable states are those that maximize life and health and creative capacity. Why are these states preferable? Because in evolutionary biology we see that creatures seek to maximize survival through adaptation, therefore the universal drive to maximize life is something like an empirical fact. Thus the “ought” of maximizing life is dissolved into the “is” of evolutionary observation. 

But notice the transcendent value that has been assumed and snuck in: That life ought to be preserved and maximized. Why? 

Three Ways to teach World Scriptures

In the modern era, there seems to be two major ways of teaching Scripture: As Oracle and as Literature. The Oracle view treats one set of Scriptures as an entirely Divine product which overrules any human contribution to the text. The Literature view is the opposite. Scriptural texts are entirely human products, and any Divine involvement (if there is such a thing) must be bracketed and excluded to truly understand them. Note that these labels are my way of quickly labeling two trends I have found in my experience as a student and teacher of Scripture and Religious Studies. I don’t know if anyone else uses these labels, but I do know that the phenomena which these labels describe occurs all the time in religious studies classrooms across the Western world. 

That All Shall Be Saved: Great Theology in Good Literature

I thought I would end 2019 with hope: A review of the book “That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation” by Orthodox Theologian David Bentley Hart. This book was given to me this Christmas by a dear friend who had challenged me to expand my view of God's grace and Christ's atonement back in 2005. At that time we were reading Emerging Church authors such as Brian McLaren and Rob Bell, who were flirting with the idea that Christ would eventually save everyone who ever lived. I had first encountered hints of this idea in CS Lewis and George MacDonald, but I was still a Skeptical Universalist: I believed Christ could save all, but probably wouldn't. But, upon pondering these things deeply, and learning about the doctrine of Apokatastasis found in many of the earliest Christian theologians from Origen to Gregory of Nyssa to Julian of Norwich, I became a Hopeful Universalist: Christ could save all, and probably would save all. Upon reading this book by Hart, I think I have shifted once more. I am now a Convinced Universalist: The Good News is that God will save and heal all things in Christ.

The reason why I have evolved from being skeptical to hopeful to convinced comes from the central problem that Hart's book wrestles with. And that problem centers around the vision of God we find revealed in the person of Jesus Christ:

Five Persistent Illusions: Ownership, Separation, Time, Death, and Self

Four seductive myths beguile us, and five persistent illusions blind us to the Reality of Love that we live and move and exist within: Ownership, Separation, Time, Death, and Self. 

Bad Poetry for December 2019

Some poems about God and life, the Bible and aliens, semi-sentient Algorithms, and Santa Claus knocking someone out.

Consumerism, Yoga, and Meditation

Over the last two decades there have been a vast number of studies which document the effectiveness of mindfulness and meditation on everything from emotional health to recovery from illness. This has been coupled with the rise of "The Mindfulness Industrial Complex" which packages Eastern spiritual practices for Western Corporate consumption. In the last couple of years, I have noted some really good thought pieces and video essays which analyze and critique these trends. I wanted to catalogue these critiques of Westernized forms of Eastern Spiritual practice, ranging from yoga to mindfulness to meditation, offer some of my own commentary on how Consumerism had adapted Eastern practices to its own ends, and suggest where we might go from here.

While I see immense value in Eastern spiritual practices and have incorporated several into my journey with Christ, my problem with Consumerized versions of Eastern Spirituality is threefold: