So yesterday, March 11, 2009, a 30-something man dove into the frigid, roiling waters of the Niagara River in an apparent suicide attempt and survived the 180-foot plunge. He even had enough left to try to fight off his would-be rescuers at the base of the falls. Yowsa.
On my church's Facebook page I put forth the following question: If you were the first person this man saw when he woke up in ICU, what would you say to him?
In terms of faith, life, God, death, sanity, insanity...what could it possibly mean when someone survives a self-removal attempt of such total, over-the-top lethality?!? It stretches the perceived boundaries of both physics and metaphysics!
Come on. I have my thoughts. But I want to hear yours first...
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
"Do you believe in miracles?"
...asked the kerjillion-celled, carbon-based life form as he and several billion companions clung to their little spinning rock, only the barest wisp of vapor protecting them from the infinite dead, cold vacuum of space.
We are incredibly improbable miracles. Our impossibilities are endless. When we speak of miracles, we tend to think of occurrences seemingly outside the realm of natural occurrence. But in truth, natural occurrence is, itself, miraculous.
So I don't believe God caused the sun to literally stand still in the sky for a day (those Hebrew writers were wonderfully poetic and figurative in their writings). I still believe in miracles, and even agree there may be the occasional miraculous intervention of an attentive God. I don't need to swallow it all at face value to believe it all, do I?
Do you?
Let's discuss!
We are incredibly improbable miracles. Our impossibilities are endless. When we speak of miracles, we tend to think of occurrences seemingly outside the realm of natural occurrence. But in truth, natural occurrence is, itself, miraculous.
So I don't believe God caused the sun to literally stand still in the sky for a day (those Hebrew writers were wonderfully poetic and figurative in their writings). I still believe in miracles, and even agree there may be the occasional miraculous intervention of an attentive God. I don't need to swallow it all at face value to believe it all, do I?
Do you?
Let's discuss!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Corruption is a Slippery Fish
Aren't the headlines painful? New York's governor, Eliot Spitzer, implicated in a prostitution ring. The man who rode a reform agenda into office with a 70% approval rating...the guy who took on the corporate thieves...the guy with the happy family and everything to gain, at this writing, is about to lose it all.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
How excruciating is his fall? Even his political nemesis, that scoundrel Joe Bruno, has thus far refused to pile on. The damage is just too horrific on its own. To toss in more criticism would be like throwing a match on an already raging house fire.
Don't put your trust in the princes of men the psalmist tells us. We are flawed creatures, we humans. It is not a morose downer to acknowledge a universal sinning nature. It is, rather, a more realistic assessment of life together. We're human. We sometimes miss the mark. Enlightened thinkers will admit this truth into life's equation.
To me, the greater crime in prostitution is committed by the pimp and the john. I assume at the prices they were charging, these particular women were not impoverished financially. But, typically, the pimp and john are in a predatory relationship with the prostitute. It is the rich stealing from the poor. It is the strong stepping on the weak. It is the comfortable abusing the desperate.
I had a friend in South Carolina who was a newspaper reporter and something of a deep thinker. During a similar scandal involving a university president and his "assistants," I asked him how this could happen to people with so much power and privilege. He answered by asking me if I had any flaws with which I sometimes struggled. When I acknowledged that I did, he said something that has stuck with me to this day:
"Now, Corey," he said. "Imagine you with your fatal flaw becoming evermore powerful. With power come resources to get whatever you want whenever you want it. But with power come isolation, fatigue, even loneliness. Power does not corrupt. Rather, power makes it all the harder to control the corruption we ourselves carried in with us."
I pray for Gov. Spitzer, his wife and children. I pray for New York. Albany is broken, that is true. But so are the rest of us.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
How excruciating is his fall? Even his political nemesis, that scoundrel Joe Bruno, has thus far refused to pile on. The damage is just too horrific on its own. To toss in more criticism would be like throwing a match on an already raging house fire.
Don't put your trust in the princes of men the psalmist tells us. We are flawed creatures, we humans. It is not a morose downer to acknowledge a universal sinning nature. It is, rather, a more realistic assessment of life together. We're human. We sometimes miss the mark. Enlightened thinkers will admit this truth into life's equation.
To me, the greater crime in prostitution is committed by the pimp and the john. I assume at the prices they were charging, these particular women were not impoverished financially. But, typically, the pimp and john are in a predatory relationship with the prostitute. It is the rich stealing from the poor. It is the strong stepping on the weak. It is the comfortable abusing the desperate.
I had a friend in South Carolina who was a newspaper reporter and something of a deep thinker. During a similar scandal involving a university president and his "assistants," I asked him how this could happen to people with so much power and privilege. He answered by asking me if I had any flaws with which I sometimes struggled. When I acknowledged that I did, he said something that has stuck with me to this day:
"Now, Corey," he said. "Imagine you with your fatal flaw becoming evermore powerful. With power come resources to get whatever you want whenever you want it. But with power come isolation, fatigue, even loneliness. Power does not corrupt. Rather, power makes it all the harder to control the corruption we ourselves carried in with us."
I pray for Gov. Spitzer, his wife and children. I pray for New York. Albany is broken, that is true. But so are the rest of us.
Monday, March 10, 2008
A Whereness of God
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! – 1 Kings 8:27
So Solomon begins his dedication of the massive temple he built in Jerusalem, the first of its kind for a God that had first been encountered by humanity somewhere around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (we think), and who had led men, women and children to wander across borders of far-flung nations, in and out of slavery, self-rule and exile for millennia.
This is the God who compelled Abram to pull up stakes in Ur and travel all the way to Canaan. Who led Joseph and his brothers down into Egypt…Moses and his followers back out. This was a God of nomadic herdsman, itinerant workers, strangers in strange lands and vagabonds. Now Solomon would push a pin into the infinite map of the universe and say “this is where we will meet to encounter God.”
Solomon, in his wisdom, immediately recognizes the irony of the moment: How could the God who created the heavens and the earth, whom our ancestors met everywhere they turned, be contained in this one spot? Nonsense! Solomon’s Temple was not built to narrow the scope of God, but to focus the vision of God’s people.
A church is not built to corral God, but to corral us: God’s wandering, ADHD followers. If we simply stated that we would meet Sunday morning where we most encounter God, some of us would be up in the hills or down by the lake, others in an inner-city soup kitchen, a maternity ward or a Habitat for Humanity construction site. A couple of us would meet at the church, and a few of us wouldn’t even leave our homes.
We are followers of a God who supplies to us no name beyond Yahweh -- I Am. Christ’s given name, Jehoshua, literally means Through God I am Free. Christ sends to us the Spirit whose name means wind (ruah).
But sometimes for us finite, mortal beings, AWARENESS of God requires A WHERENESS of God; a specific place we set apart as communally holy, where we can come together, share our experiences and turn to our God as one to offer praise and worship. Building and maintaining a church are profound acts of worship: a reaching out for God, a humbling of our human intentions. Attending a church is an expression of love to God, an act of faith and sacrifice. From the moment you turn to begin your trip to a house of worship, you have begun a holy pilgrimage, not because you are moving from where God isn’t to where God is, but because you have set your mind and the coming hour on Christ, and are journeying with others to turn together to our God who is everywhere. It is the beginning of our offering before we put anything in the collection plate!
May your church always provide A WHERENESS of God. And, wherever you go outside the church, may you recognize your brother, Christ, in the freedom of will you enjoy, and take in the Holy Spirit in the very air you breath.
So Solomon begins his dedication of the massive temple he built in Jerusalem, the first of its kind for a God that had first been encountered by humanity somewhere around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (we think), and who had led men, women and children to wander across borders of far-flung nations, in and out of slavery, self-rule and exile for millennia.
This is the God who compelled Abram to pull up stakes in Ur and travel all the way to Canaan. Who led Joseph and his brothers down into Egypt…Moses and his followers back out. This was a God of nomadic herdsman, itinerant workers, strangers in strange lands and vagabonds. Now Solomon would push a pin into the infinite map of the universe and say “this is where we will meet to encounter God.”
Solomon, in his wisdom, immediately recognizes the irony of the moment: How could the God who created the heavens and the earth, whom our ancestors met everywhere they turned, be contained in this one spot? Nonsense! Solomon’s Temple was not built to narrow the scope of God, but to focus the vision of God’s people.
A church is not built to corral God, but to corral us: God’s wandering, ADHD followers. If we simply stated that we would meet Sunday morning where we most encounter God, some of us would be up in the hills or down by the lake, others in an inner-city soup kitchen, a maternity ward or a Habitat for Humanity construction site. A couple of us would meet at the church, and a few of us wouldn’t even leave our homes.
We are followers of a God who supplies to us no name beyond Yahweh -- I Am. Christ’s given name, Jehoshua, literally means Through God I am Free. Christ sends to us the Spirit whose name means wind (ruah).
But sometimes for us finite, mortal beings, AWARENESS of God requires A WHERENESS of God; a specific place we set apart as communally holy, where we can come together, share our experiences and turn to our God as one to offer praise and worship. Building and maintaining a church are profound acts of worship: a reaching out for God, a humbling of our human intentions. Attending a church is an expression of love to God, an act of faith and sacrifice. From the moment you turn to begin your trip to a house of worship, you have begun a holy pilgrimage, not because you are moving from where God isn’t to where God is, but because you have set your mind and the coming hour on Christ, and are journeying with others to turn together to our God who is everywhere. It is the beginning of our offering before we put anything in the collection plate!
May your church always provide A WHERENESS of God. And, wherever you go outside the church, may you recognize your brother, Christ, in the freedom of will you enjoy, and take in the Holy Spirit in the very air you breath.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Into the Wild
Have you ever heard of Christopher McCandless? A promising young man from a well-to-do family, McCandless graduated from Emory University in 1991, gave away $25,000 in savings to charity, and began to wander North America, facing demons and searching… for truth, for what was real, for himself and salvation. Early in the Spring of 1992, McCandless marched alone out of the world and straight into the barren wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Why would anyone do that?
Here we are in the middle of Lent. Lent is a wilderness. It commemorates Christ’s 40 days in the desert. It is a time of facing demons and marching straight into the barren wilderness… for truth, for what is real, for ourselves and salvation. We all have barren wildernesses and demons in our lives. We spend a lot of time skirting around them, pushing them to the backs of our minds, doing our damnedest to avoid dealing with them for more than snippets at a time. Christ compels us to march straight out into the middle of our darkest, wildest, most forlorn places. Why would anyone do that?
McCandless made mistakes. He was reckless. He had no lifeline back to civilization, he took no charts or maps to guide him. No books or education to help him survive in the wilderness. He ate some bad berries. He injured himself. He shot a caribou, only to have it rot because he didn’t know how to preserve it. Ailing, injured and hungry, he set out to return to the world, only to find his way blocked by a raging river swollen with the Spring thaw. He searched in vain for miles upstream for a place to cross. Confused, disoriented and without a map, he missed his opportunity for rescue: a cable bridge just a quarter-mile downstream that was clearly marked on every commercial and private map available. He missed it, and he died in his wilderness. Cold. Alone. Starving. His body and his diary were found in August, 1992.
Are you scared of your own wilderness? Afraid to face the demons in your life? Frightened that you too, may be lost? It doesn’t have to be that way. Facing our demons and searching for truth, for what is real, is a necessary task. But we don’t have to face any of it alone or in isolation. Our faith community is our lifeline – remain connected to it and let someone you can trust know where you are going and what you are facing. A Bible is a map and a primer – consult it and learn the lay of the land. Christ is an excellent guide: No matter what our wilderness, He has been there before us. He has faced down all the demons that have popped up in our lives. He has lived through the wilderness we find ourselves in. And He has carved out a trail for us to follow.
Why would anyone want to face the wilderness? Because it’s there…in all of us. Head off into the wilderness. Face your demons. Surround yourself with others who are faithful, arm yourself daily with Scripture, be led by Christ – and face your demons. During this Lenten season may you face down your demons, cross your wilderness, and may you come to your own personal Easter – a blessed place bursting forth in blossoming truth, heavy with the fruit of what is real, where you may rest yourself and see your salvation.
Do the wilderness. But do it right.
Here we are in the middle of Lent. Lent is a wilderness. It commemorates Christ’s 40 days in the desert. It is a time of facing demons and marching straight into the barren wilderness… for truth, for what is real, for ourselves and salvation. We all have barren wildernesses and demons in our lives. We spend a lot of time skirting around them, pushing them to the backs of our minds, doing our damnedest to avoid dealing with them for more than snippets at a time. Christ compels us to march straight out into the middle of our darkest, wildest, most forlorn places. Why would anyone do that?
McCandless made mistakes. He was reckless. He had no lifeline back to civilization, he took no charts or maps to guide him. No books or education to help him survive in the wilderness. He ate some bad berries. He injured himself. He shot a caribou, only to have it rot because he didn’t know how to preserve it. Ailing, injured and hungry, he set out to return to the world, only to find his way blocked by a raging river swollen with the Spring thaw. He searched in vain for miles upstream for a place to cross. Confused, disoriented and without a map, he missed his opportunity for rescue: a cable bridge just a quarter-mile downstream that was clearly marked on every commercial and private map available. He missed it, and he died in his wilderness. Cold. Alone. Starving. His body and his diary were found in August, 1992.
Are you scared of your own wilderness? Afraid to face the demons in your life? Frightened that you too, may be lost? It doesn’t have to be that way. Facing our demons and searching for truth, for what is real, is a necessary task. But we don’t have to face any of it alone or in isolation. Our faith community is our lifeline – remain connected to it and let someone you can trust know where you are going and what you are facing. A Bible is a map and a primer – consult it and learn the lay of the land. Christ is an excellent guide: No matter what our wilderness, He has been there before us. He has faced down all the demons that have popped up in our lives. He has lived through the wilderness we find ourselves in. And He has carved out a trail for us to follow.
Why would anyone want to face the wilderness? Because it’s there…in all of us. Head off into the wilderness. Face your demons. Surround yourself with others who are faithful, arm yourself daily with Scripture, be led by Christ – and face your demons. During this Lenten season may you face down your demons, cross your wilderness, and may you come to your own personal Easter – a blessed place bursting forth in blossoming truth, heavy with the fruit of what is real, where you may rest yourself and see your salvation.
Do the wilderness. But do it right.
What to Do with a Miracle?
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. – Mark 10:46-52 (NRSV)
Each morning, Bartimaeus would rise and find his way to a spot along the road where he would do the day's begging. He passed within reach of hundreds of people, dozens of homes, through different neighborhoods without knowing much about the events of these peoples’ lives. He was, no doubt, necessarily concentrating on his own need to make it safely to his workplace. He was blind. How blind am I, in the course of rushing from appointment to appointment, to what is going on around me and in the lives of others?
But today Bartimaeus was in luck. Jesus was approaching. Bartimaeus shouted out and made himself known. He didn’t hold back his feelings despite the crowd trying to shut him up. Jesus had just, by chance, made a sudden, surprise appearance in his life. Their paths were crossing and Bartimaeus recognized this crucial opportunity for what it was. What do you do when Christ suddenly crosses your path...in an idea, in a gesture, in a word that cuts straight to your heart? Do you swallow words you long to speak? Do you hold back a flood of tears? Do you sit back quietly and wait for the moment to pass so as not to cause a scene or draw attention to yourself? Which opportunity will be the last to come along? How many times will I sit and wait for the moment to pass rather than stepping up, speaking out, seizing the opportunity that might never come again?
“Son of David,” Bartimaeus calls Christ. This was not nearly correct, not even close to a full understanding of all that Jesus was, but it was enough. Our knowledge doesn’t have to be perfect, or even accurate. It is faith and desire in the moment, and not how readily we can quote scripture and say the proper words in the proper order, that matters. We should never let our lack of knowledge keep us from approaching Christ in prayer, in praise and worship, in reading scripture. Imperfectly prepared as I am, do I have faith enough to invite God in right now?
“What is it that you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked, even though he could see that the man was blind. Jesus knew what his needs were. Still, he had Bartimaeus name his infirmity out loud. This is what it means to confess before God. Do I want the cure badly enough to seek it out and openly name what's wrong with me?
Bartimaeus, upon receiving his miracle, followed Jesus. Many did not after being healed. They experienced God’s healing power and then went back to their ordinary lives, content that they had won some improvement. Think of all the mind-blowing opportunities they missed out on by dropping back out of the picture! When we experience the Holy in some dramatic way, and then just go home to our ordinary lives, that feeling begins to fade. We can tell over and over again that one story of a time when we experienced a miracle. We can confine God’s work to one or two easily managed occurrences, or we can allow the maker of that dramatic change into our lives and follow along the way, truly becoming a disciple and a witness to countless wonders. Will I limit God to a few crisis moments in my life, or will I open my life completely to challenging, miraculous, spontaneous power beyond my control?
Each morning, Bartimaeus would rise and find his way to a spot along the road where he would do the day's begging. He passed within reach of hundreds of people, dozens of homes, through different neighborhoods without knowing much about the events of these peoples’ lives. He was, no doubt, necessarily concentrating on his own need to make it safely to his workplace. He was blind. How blind am I, in the course of rushing from appointment to appointment, to what is going on around me and in the lives of others?
But today Bartimaeus was in luck. Jesus was approaching. Bartimaeus shouted out and made himself known. He didn’t hold back his feelings despite the crowd trying to shut him up. Jesus had just, by chance, made a sudden, surprise appearance in his life. Their paths were crossing and Bartimaeus recognized this crucial opportunity for what it was. What do you do when Christ suddenly crosses your path...in an idea, in a gesture, in a word that cuts straight to your heart? Do you swallow words you long to speak? Do you hold back a flood of tears? Do you sit back quietly and wait for the moment to pass so as not to cause a scene or draw attention to yourself? Which opportunity will be the last to come along? How many times will I sit and wait for the moment to pass rather than stepping up, speaking out, seizing the opportunity that might never come again?
“Son of David,” Bartimaeus calls Christ. This was not nearly correct, not even close to a full understanding of all that Jesus was, but it was enough. Our knowledge doesn’t have to be perfect, or even accurate. It is faith and desire in the moment, and not how readily we can quote scripture and say the proper words in the proper order, that matters. We should never let our lack of knowledge keep us from approaching Christ in prayer, in praise and worship, in reading scripture. Imperfectly prepared as I am, do I have faith enough to invite God in right now?
“What is it that you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked, even though he could see that the man was blind. Jesus knew what his needs were. Still, he had Bartimaeus name his infirmity out loud. This is what it means to confess before God. Do I want the cure badly enough to seek it out and openly name what's wrong with me?
Bartimaeus, upon receiving his miracle, followed Jesus. Many did not after being healed. They experienced God’s healing power and then went back to their ordinary lives, content that they had won some improvement. Think of all the mind-blowing opportunities they missed out on by dropping back out of the picture! When we experience the Holy in some dramatic way, and then just go home to our ordinary lives, that feeling begins to fade. We can tell over and over again that one story of a time when we experienced a miracle. We can confine God’s work to one or two easily managed occurrences, or we can allow the maker of that dramatic change into our lives and follow along the way, truly becoming a disciple and a witness to countless wonders. Will I limit God to a few crisis moments in my life, or will I open my life completely to challenging, miraculous, spontaneous power beyond my control?
Monday, February 11, 2008
After a dozen years in parish ministry, I can tell you I am not interested in adding to the cultural noise faced by the faithful and faithless alike . Still, if I'm going to have an online ministerial presence, it necessarily has to feature the give-and-take so prominent at my church. So here goes.
I'm a Christian... which is a good thing if I am going to pastor a Christian church. But the Christian I am resists much of what is promoted as "Christian" in American society:
I'm a Christian... which is a good thing if I am going to pastor a Christian church. But the Christian I am resists much of what is promoted as "Christian" in American society:
- I find no conflict between the brilliant theory of evolution and the beautiful truths of Genesis.
- Artist-renderings of Jesus wrapped in an American flag (or any other) make me want to hurl.
- I am equally at home with Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Confucian, Quranic and Sufi texts, though I find the Rig-veda a tough slog and the Book of Mormon just plain goofy (sorry, Mormon brothers and sisters -- it's me, not you... just being honest here in the shadow of Hill Cumorah).
- I think insisting on particular genitalia for God is goofy, too, but I take no offense at pronouns.
- I am too busy working in the trenches to look for Jesus coming on the clouds.
I guess I take my God at my God's word: With the most common Biblical directive from God, messiah and angels being "fear not," I find no place for fear in faith. This is borne out for me in my experiences in the presence of God. In those blessed moments when I feel closer than close to God, the very first thing I feel is a flushing away of all fear.
The physiological response to fear includes the constricting of blood flow to the brain, the narrowing of perception and the predominance of our most primitive impulses...definitely not the way I want to encounter the Holy One, you know?
Jesus told the patriarchal society of his day to call God Daddy. Disarm the dread... whatever it takes, just get yourself as closely aligned and harmonized as possible to all that is true, pure, good and loving.
So that's me. What about you? What do the words Christian and/or faith mean to you?
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