Friday, July 11, 2025

The Widsom of Water

One of the most important symbols in Christianity is water. First, it is a vital necessity,for life sustenance as well as its cleansing properties .Symbolically, it shares properties of the Holy Spirit - flowing, omnipresent - yet difficult to come by in dry times.  It chiefly appears in church life through baptism, and it is used in purification ceremonies, in christening rituals, in washing feet.  

Water is unique in the universe and is a substance science uses as an indicator for the presence of life in the search for extraterrestrial life. So in all its variety of ways in which it is found it contains wisdom - wisdom that binds and connects us 

I invite my readers to meditate on all the ways water connects humans and the planet. A few thoughts to get you started:

  • Whose mom never said, "Wash your hands"?  (You hear her voice don't you?!)
  • Hydroelectric power that provides electricity to run our lives -heating and cooling, cooking... 
  • Every source of food must have water. (Food shared around common tables.)
  • How filthy (and stinky!) would life be without it?
Last weekend a horribly tragic disaster involving water struck Kerr County, Texas with 300+ missing or killed in a massive flash flood. While water has vast powers to hold life together, like most other extreme powers (fusion, fission, electricity, violence, God?), it has a "dark side" that can reset all that has gone before. 

Scripture, particularly the Old Testament, supplies a regular reminder about "having fear of the Lord." "Fear" in the time of King James English meant "respect."  In the human experience of life and death, powers that end life receive special warnings and admonish respect, or even reverence.  There is no answer to the inevitable question of why except to say because it can rip life to its most basic elements - carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen - 3 elements that are the beginning and ending of creation. 

Herein is the tangible lesson present in the wisdom of water: respect what can give or take away life. Value the positive powers it has to make life not just convenient but possible.  At the same time cherish (respect) the inevitability that all life surrenders to the elements, elements that God uses to remake New Life.  

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Vibrations

When I was learning to do Acutonics - a therapeutic technique using tuning forks in place of acupuncture needles -- it was pointed out that sound is vibrational energy.  It is a type of energy that can be used for medical imaging (ultrasound), and it is known to move things -- like your furniture when the bass on your sound system is too high.  We would also not be able to hear if sound did not cause the ear drum to vibrate.  I live in Tacoma, WA.  We had a famous bridge across the Narrows Strait called Galloping Gertie a significant suspension bridge because it swayed so much in a slight wind.  On Nov 7, 1940 the beautiful suspension bridge came crashing down.  A powerful windstorm came through.  Early speculations were that the wind was so strong it snapped some of the suspension cables.  Later analysis determined it wasn't the strength of the wind, but the whistling sound through the cables of the bridge that set up a resonant vibration that caused the bridge to literally vibrate apart.  "Sound waves," or the variety of frequencies, are what make the vibration. 


Vibrational energy can be used as an apt metaphor for Love. When God spoke (sound of speech) to trigger creation, the resonant Love frequency in the tone of God's voice was the vibration that generated galaxies and life.

Music, containing various vibrations (some harmonic, some discordant) can have powerful effects on the human nervous system.  Our brains retain memories of sounds that connect us to places, events, or emotions for a lifetime.  Virtues and good feelings could be conceptualized as harmonizing vibrations, whereas, emotions we consider negative -- anger, hate, danger, etc., might be discordant ones.  Love may have it's own vibration. 

So, I'd like to plant a meditative seed or project for you.  Sit in a quiet comfortable space and slow your breathing.  Become aware of the rhythm of your breathing and your heart.  Then begin to hum different notes.  Take note of how the vibration of each note feels.  Then you can begin looking for the tone that most closely resonates with any of the following:

  • how your are feeling
  • note(s) that make you feel good, or courageous, or sad, 
  • the note that could represent love
When you hit a frequency that feels good stay with the note as you breathe in and out with it. Where does the Spirit lead you then?  

Another option is to use YouTube.  YouTube has a huge selection of musical tones of different frequencies, which some individuals have attached certain properties to the tone.  Put aside these definitions from others and consider yourself the authority of what feels right or helpful to you or your goal.  You can begin on YouTube by searching for "healing tones."  Just entering "frequency" will pop up a list of all sorts of possible options.

Good Vibrations!

Mark

  

Monday, May 26, 2025

Tribal Awareness

 What Tribe Are You A Part Of?

A sermon for Renton UCC based on the passages:

Acts 11:1-18

John 13:31-35

Mark Fredericksen, MDiv, ND

 

Let me borrow, if you will, the control of your imaginations and let me steer us back through time.  We’re going to go way back -- way before the earliest Bible stories were being told around smoky campfires.  Before humans inhabited the Middle East, still living in Africa.  Let’s go to roughly 200,000 years ago.  This is approximately the period of time when Neanderthal humans were evolving into Homo Sapiens –us!  We were living in small family bands.  There were no arrowheads or spears so you were surviving on mainly whatever vegetation was edible, maybe some small game or fowl that could be snared – but fire has just started to be domesticated by some – so maybe your band did not even have that.   As the food sources in your location got consumed, you had no choice but to move on.  If your band ran the territory of another band there could be trouble because food (and water) was a basic matter of survival. The other discovered truth, however, is that more people provided more scavengers and so, the bands negotiated and became tribes. Burying the hatchet so to speak for the good of all.  Those are our roots, our ancestors. And point in fact, approximately 96% of our functional digestive system today is still dependent on the genes we have inherited from them – so our food gets digested the same as theirs did.  And this is a sermon, not a nutrition lecture, but there’s little wonder with all the radical changes in our food chain over just the past 60-70 years that we have trouble digesting the chemicals and processed food.  Also the other prehistoric genetic reality we’re a bit stuck with is we have a high amount of our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems that are what they are because of the eons that humans spent in survival mode – fending off predators, reacting to scarcity, fighting with competing tribes, facing famine and natural disasters. Humanity has been stuck in dog-eat-dog life for a stinking long time. So out of near necessity our human tribalism became hard-wired into our brains. Those with the violent knee-jerk reactions survived and thrived while the less-so struggled. There was then and there is now a cognitive component which can take over and choose other kinds of reactions – but for many they haven’t practiced and learned to do that part.

So let’s move the clock up closer to us – about just 3 or 4000 years ago same competitions going on only the human geography had expanded widely.  There’s cities and empires and organized armies to defend territory.  Food-wise cities could work together for sake of agriculture and animal husbandry. Hunting and gathering took a back seat but the control of territory was still a thing. Wars were still how things got settled. So many of the human beings’ worst traits were still being used for control and the measure of successful cultures. The Bible gets established revealing all the mean rottenness that could play out in human communities. There’s the story of the Flood where God lost patience and wiped the slate clean to start over – but it didn’t really.  The Jewish people have an endless parade of different marauders trek through their lands – Assyrians, Persians, Babylonians, Romans, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. 

To survive, naturally, Jews become one more established population group with 12 tribes at one point and they fight off their neighbors (or don’t or can’t).  Then something remarkable happens.   God comes into the picture as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes in a far-flung part of the Roman Empire called Bethlehem. That single event changed world history – or perhaps a better way to say it put a new choice in our laps – That single event drew a line in the sand and supplied a powerful choice to humans to believe in the value of the good side of our nature or continue the warring, violent, resource-snatching tribalism that, until then, was all the world had known.  And that choice is still ours today: the Jesus Tribe or the Ugly Tribe.  The Jesus Tribe – the Christian Way – has not been entirely clear of the messiness of the built-in on-going traumas and reactions of past tribes, cities, nations, and continents.  The Christian Way, as we read here in Acts had two “tribes” facing down each other on who gets to call themselves Christian.  There’s the Jewish Christians (Peter) saying that to be Christian you have to adopt and follow all the Judaic laws and there’s the Gentile Christians (Paul) who aren’t too keen on all the Jewish law.  This splitting of Christianity hasn’t really improved dramatically in 2000 years as we still have – even worse now – denominations where each has its own set of ideas on who can belong, with no shortage of bragging who is best or in the extreme – who is of God and who is of well – you know whatever is worse. Peter’s Vision in Acts caused him to see a new Light for the Way.  He saw a more inclusive way was the path Jesus expected.  Paul had seen this light on the Road to Damascus and was busy welcoming Gentiles all over the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. And so here we are.  What light do we follow?

 

What should be the purpose of the Christian Way today?  Do we want to stay locked in the terrible, learned, defensive violent ways of the past 200,000 years?  Can humans learn nothing besides what the past has imprinted on our brains?  Do we not have a healing remedial solution to knee jerk violence and rage over the slightest slight?  I think we do, but it’s going to take us working together to overcome the panic  & domination reflex – where we see too easily everything as a threat that needs to be eliminated – whether that be not enough money, not enough people, not enough faith?  Threats trigger our fear, which brings out our smallness, our negative reactions.  So where do we turn?

In the Gospel Jesus says, “I’m going where you cannot go, but I give you this: Love one another.” Sure loving one another is easy if we’re all alike – look alike, think alike, hold the same grudges and biases against the others not like us.  And maybe Jesus was pipe dreaming that we could, though I think he really saw a different side to everyone he met – even the ones who crucified him.  So therein is our challenge.  I don’t think the Jesus we know through scripture would leave us with something that was impossible, and we couldn’t possibly do.  I’m also sure that retribution, revenge, grabbing everything you can for yourself is not the Christian Way. There is no faith in Christ at all pursuing those goals.  They cannot sustain your spirit, your soul, any community, or the good of the planet as a whole. Those are the antithesis of everything Christ-like. 

The healing we need for ourselves, our families, our communities and our world are the virtues Christ lived.  Cooperation not competition.  Inclusion not domination. Sharing not possession. Forgiveness not grudge-holding.  And most of all holding tightly to sacred value, worth, and kindness for yourself AND for each one you meet.  I could beat this point into the ground, and Lord knows we all need to be hearing it daily in this toxic soup our politics have plunged us into – but love is the Christian Way for the Jesus Tribe. 

I’ll close with a piece of writing by Hafez.  He was a Persian Poet and Sufi Master born in 1326.  He says,

We are not in pursuit of formalities or fake religious laws.

For it is through the stairway of existence that we have come to God’s door.

We are people who need love, because Love is the soul’s life.

Love is simply creation’s greatest joy.

Through the stairway of existence, You have now come to the Beloved’s Door.”

 

Hafez was a Muslim, but I think he and Jesus would have been pals. Because in the height, and width, and depth and breadth of God, Love is our common denominator and is what keeps us beautifully human with a pinch of the Divine in every one of us.  Always!