Many of the pictures expressed hope for things the children might receive, almost like letters to Santa.  Rather than tying into a larger story, kids colored a world where their own individual preferences were met (preferences for lovely things, like cake and puppies, but not necessarily things that had to do with Martin Luther King).  Standing in contrast to the array of wish lists was one boy’s art.  He hoped, he wrote, for a world without any jails.  Martin Luther King had been taken to jail for doing the right thing.  And he hoped that that would not happen to anyone again.  I also learned from the artist that Martin Luther King taught people to be peaceful, which was a very important thing to remember and a very difficult thing to put into practice.  I should say that the children are very perceptive in conversation; I often talk to them when I am dropping off or picking up.  So perhaps the candy-coated artwork was just a misunderstood assignment.

It made me wonder, of course, how often we all misunderstand the assignment when it comes to Dr. King.  So I would like to ask you what the Montessori teachers asked their kids:  What do you hope this Martin Luther King Day?  Let’s think and talk together.

With aloha,

J

The great Unitarian ethicist James Luther Adams is reported to have quipped that he believed in salvation by bibliography.  Sometimes I feel like that.  (If you’re ever looking for me and can’t find me, try, in order: my home library, my office library, Brazos Bookstore, the Fondren Library, the Montrose library, Half Price Books…)  I have spent a good deal of my life with the writings and ideas of others, joining in a great company of theologians, storytellers, and poets sharing their questions and observations.  So just for fun, I thought I’d offer my top ten books of these ten years of ministry.  Each of these books has been something I’ve read and reread, and a few of the authors have become my teachers and friends.  Here goes:

A Case for God by Karen Armstrong – This book strikes me as a perfect example of scholarship in the service of compassion.  Reading the book was like taking a divinity school course; finishing it, I was left with the persistent question of the real effects of my religious practice.

A Feminist Ethic of Risk by Sharon Welch – Welch’s move from an ethic of control to an ethic of risk (and its constituent elements of storytelling, playfulness, witness, and resilience) strikes a deeper chord with me than any work of ethics I have ever read.  This book is foundational to my theology.

A Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places by Gary Nabhan and Stephen Trimble – This book shaped my thinking on children’s need for time outdoors; it also evoked many memories of my own early relationships with the non-human world (Kailua Bay, the Koolau range, and my backyard).

In the beginning…Creativity by Gordon Kaufman – A dense but extraordinary text written near the end of Kaufman’s theological career.  The Prologue, “The Word ‘God,’” is worth the price of admission, offering both an historical survey and a number of relevant options for the present moment, each one informed by an evolutionary view of the cosmos and the natural world.

Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh – An open-hearted appreciation of two great teachers and traditions, encouraging mindful, compassionate living in the here and now.  I think I read this book once a year.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand – A vibrant intellectual history of American pragmatism.  Though there are dozens of excellent volumes on theological pragmatism, Menand’s blending of ideas, history, and personal narrative is irresistible.

Moby Dick: or, The Whale by Herman Melville – What can I say?  I love Melville so much that I read big chunks of his prose aloud to anyone who will listen.  There are too many themes to mention, too many characters to name, but above all Melville deals with the deep ambiguity of existence.  We talked about this book for an entire weekend at the men’s retreat.  But we were just getting started…

Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker – The book reminds us that all theology must answer to lived experience.  Brock and Parker share from their stories and the experiences of women with whom they have worked, critiquing the ways that religion still supports and sanctions unspeakable violence.  This may be the only work of theology that has ever made me weep.

The Sacred Depths of Nature by Ursula Goodenough – This book is something of a sacred text to religious naturalists.  Goodenough’s combination of hard science (she is a cellular biologist at Washington University in St. Louis) and personal meditation is deeply affecting.  While Goodenough is a nontheist, her brand of religious naturalism leaves room for many; she’s more Mary Oliver than Richard Dawkins.

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative by Thomas King – In the wry voice of indigenous wisdom, King raises deep questions about how we tell stories and why.  His prose is painful and prophetic, and his primary concern, offered in the form of a call and response, still haunts me.  ”Need a different ethic?” he asks.  ”Tell a different story.”

My question this week, then, is the same as always:  What are you reading?  What books have most influenced your thinking and living over the past few years?

With a bow to readers and writers everywhere.  And with aloha,

J

Stevens Creek Reservoir, San Jose

I’m just back from a week spent with family in Northern California.  It was good to be with grandparents, to slow our pace to that of Scrabble games and scattered Legos on the carpet.  As is our custom, we went for walks every day, including a few hikes in the nearby hills.  I am always nourished by time in that place, and I usually call to mind the words of the great Zen poet Gary Snyder, who walked many a Bay Area trail.  Snyder’s poem, “For All,” was written with the Rockies in mind, but the joy it describes is akin to my own when I’m out of doors:

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters /stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes / cold nose dripping / singing inside / creek music, heart music / smell of sun on gravel. / I pledge allegiance.

Near the end of the week, I realized that I hadn’t seen a television once.  I had also left my computer at home; my smartphone lay unchecked most of every day.  Now I’m no Luddite (Luddites don’t blog), but what struck me was how distracted my mind can become following its usual routines.  Daily I move from one device to the next, answering texts and e-mails, planning meetings and updating calendars, even sending sweet photos to friends and grandparents.  The technology connects me to others and makes my life more efficient.  But that’s not all it does.

I have felt more and more over the past few years the need to provide a balance to technology’s pace.  So I return to the quiet walk and the silent prayer, times spent allowing my mind to disconnect from the dozens of rapid-fire communiques and reconnect with the world of ordinary objects and experiences.  I center myself in the words on the page of a gospel, turning them over in my mind as one would hold a koan.  I direct my attention to the subtle change in the season, noticing each day’s slight lengthening after solstice.  I listen to the sounds of crushed leaves underfoot as I walk outside to pick up the paper, pausing to look up at the doves alighting on a bare branch.  Later in the day, I am back in the game, computing as always.  But I most often balance this with some slowness in the morning or evening (or both).

The last morning of our trip I read Pico Iyer’s beautiful Op-Ed, “The Joy of Quiet,” in the New York Times.  He wrote of the need to temporarily disconnect from certain technologies in order to reconnect with a deeper reality.  In Iyer’s words, “Nothing makes me feel better – calmer, clearer, and happier – than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music.  It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness:  it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as ‘that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.’”

This year I’m wondering about how best to strike a balance between the whirlwind world of the virtual and the quieter, contemplative, joyful world that can only be found by those who will find the time to unplug themselves.  I pledge allegiance with the poet to the smell of trees, the sound of gravel, and the feel of warm sunlight falling across the trail.

My simple question this week:  What have you found helpful in your own search for balance?  (I’ll be online just enough to read your answers.)

With aloha,

J

view from an evening walk

I have been following the global climate talks in Durban, South Africa with intense interest.  The coverage of the talks, when it can be found at all, casts our response to climate change primarily in political and economic terms.  How will countries reach new treaty agreements?  What is the fair share for developed countries (like us) who have contributed most to the problem versus developing countries who seek to improve their standard of living?  Will we find the political will to make the changes necessary before it is too late?  And when will it be too late?  These are vital questions, but I find myself approaching this moment a bit differently.

I wonder how to respond spiritually to an Earth that is suffering.  More and more, I am convinced that how I live is my best response to climate change.  A part of how I live includes calling my representatives, meeting with them, posting Op-Eds, and rallying my friends.  But a deeper part of how I live includes how I relate to the whole, how I see myself as a part of the story and learn to live more gently on the Earth, mindful of its needs.  It’s a move from what professor Bron Taylor calls “green religion (which posits that environmentally friendly behavior is a religious obligation)” to “dark green religion (in which nature is sacred, has intrinsic value, and is therefore due reverent care).” (Taylor, 10)

It seems to me that what we lack is the dark green sense that nature is sacred.  It seems to me that it is too easy for us to forget what our ancestors knew, everyone from the wandering Hebrews to the First Nations peoples of this continent:  that we belong to the Earth, not the other way around.

As I tune in to the climate talks, I am also tuning in to my own inner sense of connectedness; I am asking about my own response.  And here I begin to review my actions, asking of each if it expresses relatedness.  Starting small, I map out the week and consider how many times I need to take car.  I ensure that cloth bags are on hand for my trip to the grocery, where I will try and pay attention to how and where the food is sourced.  (For beer enthusiasts, I’ll also take my reusable growler to be refilled with local ale or look for something with the “Go Texan” regional agriculture label.)  Moving on, I ask about how many Christmas presents we need and how we might also give to groups working for environmental protection.  When we travel to be with relatives, I am looking at the best ways to pay carbon offsets and/or plant trees to help balance out our carbon footprint.  I do not write about these things so that you will think well of me; I write about these things so that together we might continue to brainstorm.  What else can we do as individuals?  What else can we do as a church?

Every action is a prayer.

What ideas do you have?

J

See Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

During a short course at Oxford in 2004, I took up the Revised English Version after an old vicar claimed it was the only Bible worth reading.  He smiled as he said it, lifting his glass of sherry on the lawn at Wadham College.  ”Real English, you know. Not American.”  This English major took the jibe in fun and found a copy of the REV, which, as it turned out, read like a fairy tale with beautiful turns of phrases, jots and tittles for the Anglophile on nearly every page.  I took the book home and read it often next the NRSV, which sounded dully practical in comparison.  I have often felt glad that the old Englishman made his joke because I have profited from it ever since, but last year I found myself indebted to someone else as well.

While reading Cormac McCarthy’s dark and disturbing novel Blood Meridian for our men’s retreat, I was repeatedly reminded of the King James Bible.  McCarthy’s sentences were oddly opaque and understandable all at once; their strange construction, invented words, and eery images evoked the old 17th Century Bible not often read these days.  After reading the book, along with an essay by Wendell Berry encouraging a return to the King James Bible lest we forget that the stories we read on Sunday are archaic and strange, I reached to the top of my shelf for my KJB.  My copy of the KJB is not a devotional version with pious commentary; rather, my copy is the literary equivalent Oxford World’s Classics edition.  I dug into the book, finding there something quite different than the freshened texts to which I had grown accustomed.

The old language of the KJB helped me to approach it once again as literature.  I felt as if I was reading Shakespeare or Milton, tumbling through the lines in search of great characters, scenes, and speeches.  Moving away from the modern translations (which I believe are more theologically correct), I sat with the words read by my forebears (which are oftentimes more poetic).  Instead of sanding down the rough edges, the KJB draws them out and brings to life the dark and wild drama of a capricious God, who stands clearly as a character not a concept.  In his new book, The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible, literary critic Harold Bloom writes of a similar experience:

A literary appreciation of the KJB must risk blasphemy because truly what is most powerful in the unread Scriptures is blasphemous at its core:  the god who is an astonishing, outrageous personality upon whom theologies have been imposed.  All too often, he is bad news: his passions are violent, excessive, ill-tempered, unfathomable, and horribly dangerous.  If in some of his aspects he evokes awe, in others he engenders fright.  (Bloom, 4.)

It’s true.  The God of the Bible, perhaps especially the KJB, is a difficult character.  Yet reading “him” as a character is the beginning of approaching the Bible figuratively rather than literally.  And that is the point of this wonky literature-meets-religion post.  Sometimes the very oldest texts, the ones that write in ways we never would or could, jar us into the recognition of the fundamental strangeness and wonder of the stories.  Reading the Bible as literature might return it to a new relevance, especially among liberals.  How many of us go to book clubs and excel at discussing plot, character, and narrative arc between glasses of wine yet would feign attend a Bible study?    Bloom also notes the joy of reading the Bible as we would any great work, critiquing its presumptions and prejudices while celebrating its timeless and inspiring qualities:

Reading the Bible as a monument of literary culture akin to Shakespeare frees the text not only of the lacquer of dogma but also of much social history that has crippled apprehensions of its permanent value to those who have been and are still denied justice and equity.  If it has been usurped endlessly by oppressors, nevertheless it was and is an ultimate resource for heroic endurance and resistance by the insulted and the injured.  The Hebrew prophets from Amos and Micah on through James the brother of Jesus constitute an authoritative proclamation of the pragmatic works of goodness required of societies and individuals.  (Bloom, 9.)

It leads me to this week’s questions.  How do you approach the Bible these days?  If you read it, do you read it as religion or literature (or both)?  Have you had your own experiences (a joking professor, an unexpected novel) that opened it to you in new ways?

J

the window had been decorated

A few weeks ago we received a notice from the power company warning of a Monday morning power outage due to scheduled maintenance.  A short window was given from nine o’clock in the morning until about noon, during which time people in our neighborhood were encouraged to make plans to be elsewhere.  I received the notice with a frown at first, noting that Monday was my day off and I wouldn’t be able to get as much done while the power was out.  How would I answer e-mails, run the washing machine, and so on?  No sooner had I begun to ask these questions than a wave of excitement washed over me.

When the morning in question rolled around, I was prepared.  After the early routine of breakfast and school drop-off, I arrived at home, where I brewed a fresh pot of coffee before the power went out.  As the steam rose from the percolating machine, large utility trucks pulled up at the curb outside.  At nine o’clock on the nose, the lights went out, the digital clocks faded to black, and the house descended into a sublime silence.  I poured a fresh cup of coffee and walked into the living room where I sat on a quiet patch of carpet by the window.  There in the natural light I simply looked and listened.  I heard the wind stirring the branches, the whistle and chirp of birds in the back yard, and the sound of my own breathing.  I remembered the words of the old Zen monk, “Breathing in, I am home; breathing out, I have arrived.”

The morning without power was strangely restorative.  Rather than rushing around as I sometimes do on my day off, I accepted the invitation to do nothing for a couple of hours.  Well, at least on the surface of things I was doing nothing.  To look a bit deeper, I think, is to see that I was grounding myself in gratitude (counting my blessings, as they say).  In the hush of the morning, I considered all that was right in my life.  I thought of my dear family and how much joy they bring me; I thought of my friends and the ways our paths had crossed at different times in life; I thought of how much I still love my work after many years; I thought of the simple good fortune of having warm coffee, a soft rug, and a window to sit beside.

Since next week is a short week, I suspect this will be my last blog post before Thanksgiving.  I offer this story as a way of countering the great consumptive pressure of the holidays with the simple awareness of the gifts we already enjoy.  I invite you to share the things for which you give thanks.  And I invite you to share the practices that help you slow things down enough to see and hear what is already there.

With aloha,

J

*Thanks to Vassar Miller for this expression from her poem, “Resolve.”

Last week I pulled an old album from the shelf and listened to it in its entirety.  I was marking twenty years since the release of U2′s “Achtung Baby,” an album that stands as a masterful combination of playful irony and dark soul searching.  Like so many fans, I lined up to buy it on the first day of its release, but I had no idea how deeply it would resonate with my own experience as an idealistic college kid studying religion and literature.

What most of us noticed the first time we spun the record was how wildly different it was from U2′s previous body of work.  Rather than the earnest, hymn-like anthems the band had mastered on “The Joshua Tree” and “The Unforgettable Fire,” which featured a trademark chiming guitar and reverb anchored by a solid rhythm section, “Achtung Baby” began with a garble of fuzz and funk, an indecipherable mishmash of sounds that wobbled into a pattern of moody swirls and jerks.  What followed was a classic rock and roll reinvention, where a once straightforward band applied layer after glossy layer of irony and cheek.  The track list tumbled effortlessly through a soundscape of melancholy bass lines, angular guitar riffs, and shimmering drums–the band’s old sound was now infused with the new club music of the early 1990s, the political energy of the fall of the Berlin wall, and a deep, brooding sadness brought about by the guitar player’s broken marriage.  It was a whale of a record (a point which I think can be proved by listening to it and then listening to anything else from 1991), but there was more to it than the music.

The lyrics to “Achtung Baby” read like a hymn book for skeptics.  I sang them on the sidewalk between English and Religion classes, aware of the allusions to Oscar Wilde, Delmore Schwartz, and most of all, the Bible.  One song, “Until the End of the World,” relates a conversation between Judas and Jesus; a b-side, “Salome,” imagines the dancing girl who asked for the head of John the Baptist.  Every song was rich in imagery and they all affected me.  A few years later, I found myself still quoting the record.  In a seminary paper I included a lyric from the song “Acrobat”:

And I’d join the movement / If there was one I could believe in / Yeah I’d break bread and wine / If there was a church I could receive in / ‘Cos I need it now / To take the cup / To fill it up / To drink it slow / I can’t let you go

The record sold millions, and perhaps for casual fans it was just another album, a bunch of great songs to play loudly at parties; but for me it was a soulful and searching experience, a moment when a silly rock and roll band began to scratch beneath the surface to get at some very deep questions.  Twenty years later, the record still holds up.  And it brings me a question:

What are the records that most influenced you?  What sets of songs resonated with you?  What works, when released, connected with your own deepest feelings and questions?  What do you still pull off the shelf after all these years?

I can’t wait to read your answers.  I’ll have my headphones ready.

With aloha,

J

In his essay, “The Development of My Theological Thinking: Two Themes,” (which appears as an Epilogue in the book, In the beginning…Creativity), Kaufman reflects on a lifetime of theological work, identifying his two primary concerns:

“[There are] two central themes with which I have been preoccupied throughout my life, and which are expressed in the development of my theological reflection from a very early age on:  the problem of God–the questionableness of all our thinking and talking about God–and my life-long concern that human relations should be pervaded, above all, by loving, caring, responsible attitudes and activities.“

In his reflection on the problem of God, Kaufman puzzled with how to understand the mystery of God in ways that were not anthropocentric or superstitious but might fit within the picture of the world offered by the natural sciences, particularly the theory of evolution (biological and cosmic) by natural selection.  And in his consideration of human relations, Kaufman wrestled with the application of his earliest Mennonite convictions; namely, nonviolent ways of being that respected other people and the planet.

Kaufman’s theological project is too complex to summarize in the space of a short blog post, but I would like to share one piece of his work that helped me immensely.  Kaufman suggested that rather than thinking of God as “Creator,” we consider God as “creativity” itself.  In some places he referred to this as “the mystery of creativity,” but more often than not he chose “serendipitous creativity” as a way of referring to the deep mystery of the emergence of life.  Kaufman’s theology left room for ambiguity, but it took very seriously the idea of God and how that idea might be best understood in conversation with the natural sciences.  In his own words:

“For many this creativity–God–manifest through throughout our universe (as we today conceive that universe) is very awe-inspiring.  It calls forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, hope, and fear, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of our distinctive human existence in the world…It is entirely appropriate, therefore, to think of God as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe, as well as our lives in this universe, confronts us.”  (“A Religious Interpretation of Emergence: Creativity as God,” Zygon Journal of Religion and Science, Dec. 2007)

What Kaufman did for me was provide a context for Christian faith that was intellectually credible and scientifically informed.  I always felt that as a Mennonite scholar he was trying to make peace between the worlds of religion and science, to reconcile areas of knowledge and bring us to a tough-minded wholeness.  His work offers deep senses of reverence, wonder, and awe–they are to be found in the sacred stories and symbols of our tradition and experienced in the ineffable beauty and complexity of the natural world.

As I reflect on the death of a theologian, someone who influenced me, I wonder who influenced you.  What theologians, philosophers, or writers have most deeply shaped the way you see things?  What thinkers puzzled over the same questions that you puzzle over?  What teachers have helped you to reconcile certain things in your own life?

With a bow to Gordon Kaufman, I look forward to reading your responses.

J

When we lived in St. Louis, I went to a lot of games with my father.  Baseball courses through that city like the muddy river upon whose banks it is played.  I have shared with many of you the memory of reaching into my father’s shirt pocket to fish out roasted peanuts while we leaned forward in our seats cheering every pitch.  To this day, watching a Cardinals game is an exercise in remembrance.  And every time they play for a pennant I find myself laughing like a little boy and asking out loud, “Dad, did you see that?”

The friend that sent the tie knew that I would be excited about it.  What he didn’t know is that I would take it out of the box and put it on, wearing it for the rest of the night, though it didn’t match my shirt.  The deacons took note a couple of hours later, smiling at my brazen ensemble as the Cardinals beat the Brewers.  The following evening, I forgot to wear the tie and the Cardinals lost.  A day later, I wore the tie and my team won again.  Now I’m not superstitious, but…

So yes I was wearing it when the Cardinals clinched.  But something much more important was happening.

Along with all of the silliness of the necktie, the joking about baseball superstition, and the simple pleasure of listening to ballgames on the radio and hearing my favorite team do well, I had taken a sentimental step.  I gave my son his first Cardinals cap.  Donning it proudly, he asked me about the St. Louis Cardinals, the rules of how baseball is played, and what it was like to watch baseball with my Dad, his grandfather.  Every day we’ve been telling stories.  And every day I’ve laughed, cried, or both as I give thanks for my father and my son.  The seasons of this life are a gift, and this fall feels especially sweet.

Covenant is a church full of baseball fans.  I wonder, this week, what the game evokes for you.  What lessons has it taught you?  What memories does it bring?

With aloha,

J

outside the Live Oak Friends Meeting

Recently I was asked about my own understanding of the good news.  The person who asked did so in earnest; I was struck by the simple beauty of the question.  Afterwards, I stumbled through an answer that I later feared was a bit dry.  That initial answer had to do with my understanding and application of Jesus’ teachings and how those teachings had been transformative for me.  (Just in this one-sentence description you can get a sense of my mind’s drift toward the academic.)  A day later I woke with an answer, clear as a bell.  The answer wasn’t a series of theological bullet points or a philosophical dialectic on the nature of liberal Christianity as interpreted by a religious naturalist.  No, my real good news is a story.  Here it is:

When I was a little boy, my mother noticed that I was building something out of couch cushions.  I set the cushions in the shape of a square with an open door and began to work on how I might make a roof out of the available quilts and blankets.  I was building a clubhouse, and, when my mother asked about it, I told her that my club was called The Everybody Club.  ”Who can be in it?” she asked.  ”Everybody,” I replied, with the seriousness of a boy on a building project.

The good news, in my view, is The Everybody Club.  Though I am now a grown man, it seems to me that my work is essentially the same.  What I hope to do is make of my life, my work, and our church places where everybody can belong.  Rabbi Jesus, as I read him, set about doing this kind of work in his welcome of all, particularly those who were at the margins of his society.  So the basic good news for me is that our church is a place where everybody is welcome.  This has manifested itself in different ways at Covenant as we have evolved over time, expanding the circle of this little beloved community to include people of every gender, sexual orientation and identity, race, ethnicity, class, and religious or philosophical perspective.

Perhaps what has surprised me most is not how strongly this welcome has been felt by visitors to our community.  What caught me off guard was how much I needed this welcome myself.  Finding an expression of Christianity that welcomed me as a minister with doubts, a poet and naturalist, a feminist, a believer in social justice, an oftentimes conscientious objector, a parent, a partner, and a lover of jokes, turned out to be a kind of saving grace.  Over and over again I have found my whole self included (not excluded) and that inclusion has made all the difference.

Other churches may have a more exclusive understanding of the good news.  For me, however, the good news is that everybody is welcome.  No matter what.  I can’t think of a better word than that.  And the house I build out of cushions will never have a door.

So how do you understand the good news?  What is your word or story?

With aloha,

J