Finding God

I was listening last week to some professionals talking about trauma and how to treat/deal with it.  Gabor Maté, one of the experts, spoke about the power our emotions have on our physical health. According to Maté, a major factor in physical maladies is the presence of all kinds of emotional trauma at play under the surface.  Often that trauma may not be clearly remembered.  To deny or gloss over the emotional aspects of trauma will miss a healing pathway available for the physical breakdown in the organ systems of the body. Like a leaking pipe in one's house that is ignored for a long time, it results in greater damage.

Christianity evolved from a Middle Eastern man, Jesus, who met people on an emotional plane.  Everyday people came to him with physical problems - leprosy, blindness, lameness, even death that were fraught with emotional pain in their lives.  But on the religious side, he faced defensive thinking heads. Jesus healed the emotional & physical hurts in people, but the religious systems diverted the power and influence of that healing into centuries-long cognitive exercises in proper head knowledge. The Church adopted sanctified prescriptions for the "right" way to view God. This led to faith being dominated by "right doctrine" and far less on relevant experience.  Our spiritual lives were pressed into rational explanations rather than who we experienced God to be. 

This reality, alongside Maté's association of physical suffering tied to buried emotional trauma, sent me reassessing how I know who God is.  Who is God?  God is not in creeds or proclaimed doctrine: "I believe in God the Father..." way. But maybe in the "I met God today on the street in the tears of a child" way. One is head knowledge assent.  The other is a living emotional presence. I have known God much more intimately through feelings -- compassion, empathy, sensitivity, and concern.  That's the emotional level that has real connection to the heart - the central organ necessary for life. I posit the heart is central not only to living our physical lives, but to our ability to feel the real touch of God. Feeling our way into God brings us a much stronger "near presence" experience and possibly a regenerative healing spiritual balance to our physicality. If God is, in fact, love, then experiencing love would be the best way to live in God and find union. 

Our Human Predicament - Creation Gone Awry

 The last time our creation went as badly awry as it is at present was way back in the mists of mystery and myth in the story of The Flood -- the one with Noah and his fine ark. Genesis 5:5-7 spells out the problem (somewhat):

"When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, God was sorry that humans had ever been made or put upon the earth.  God was so filled with regret that God said, "I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and birds, because I am sorry that I made any of them."

Of course, the short riff of the story is that Noah found favor, built the ark as instructed, sailed the seas of destruction, and then landed with all the pairs of reinhabitants to start a new chapter for humanity (and planet Earth).  God placed the rainbow in the skies as the seal of the covenant never to do that again. 

The majority opinion in mainstream Christianity is that this is a teaching myth, shared by other religions. If so, what lesson should we learn? Maybe that humanity is capable of mucking up the works so badly that there's nothing to do but start over? Which brings us to the present. Are we, as a planet, again at this soon-to-be crossroads? Climate scientists say yes. 

The human predicament is still as it always has been: when we're good- spiritually aware- we can be very good, but when we're bad, it can be very bad. The continuance of the earth depends on a healthy balance between the good and the bad.  Ideally, we will lean in favor of the good.  But in the United States, the current situation is placing "good" on very shaky ground. The driver for this trend appears to be the cynical attitude of the ultra-rich to strip as much from the Earth for themselves as possible. Therein lies the true predicament: a few with over-inflated privilege robbing the whole. Yet we all do it in our own self-centered ways. The predicament grows terminal as each individual starts to assert a right to have and defend what they consider precious. All creation becomes a zoo of silos - each one grabbing onto and storing a hunk of Creation as their very own.  The sole focus of living becomes acquiring and holding tightly to each one's little kingdom. The quibbling, petty physicality of this predicament erases the glue that holds it all together - the spiritual - the Source. Is there an option for saving creation from this foolish myopia that averts the pending utter destruction?

As innumerable sages from all ages and faiths have declared: Return to the Source. The Source is the Wisdom that guides our steps.  It is the collective Care for neighbor.  It is the Gentleness with which we walk the Earth. It is the Union created by holding onto the lessons of past generations, ever conscious of the generations to come. Humans crave what's theirs. They crave simple solutions, e.g., the barrel of a gun.  They seek the easiest answers to the most complicated - answers that usually only serve the few.

Yet, we do not serve only our own kind or just the people next to us. We are woven into a cosmic expanse that transcends time and place. The eons and cosmos are One. Those who have gone before are still inescapably joined to us. They still pray with us to the same Source.  The Vision is that even as Creation continues to expand, it is eternally held tightly in the Love that first brought the Light. 

The remedy to a Flood-type apocalypse wrought by our futile human predicament is to see the forest.  We exist not as individual trees. We're gathered by the Architect of Creation, glued into an evolving beauty that came before we were born into it and lasts as an eternal present moment of evolutionary Hope, where we get to the future together as the Old Testament story of the Promised Land foretold. 

This is our future should we choose to accept it. Staying in this wilderness, worshipping the Golden Calf, comes to naught. 

 

 

Memorial Day

 "Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for the mourning of U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces."  - Wikipedia

I was born very close to the beginning of the Vietnam War and spent the first 18 years of my life seeing scenes of Vietnam on the evening news nearly every night.  Each Memorial Day, growing up, my family also made an annual trek to the cemetery with irises in tow to place on the graves of my grandparents, noting all the flags on the graves of my uncle and other's family members lost (mostly) in World War II.  By the time I was old enough to vote, I was opposed to all war.  With each "police action," "military excursion," and war after that, I was on the side of pacifism and conscientious objection, reaching a nadir in seminary, feeling hostile toward all military matters, expenditures, and people.  So Memorial Day has ground my gears for a long time. 

One of the ways I wiggled around the military aspect of the day, especially when I was pastoring, was to widen the lens to include all people in the memorial (giving my churches two days with All Saints Sunday to recognize their departed). One or two veterans would invariably complain about "watering down" their sacrifices.

More recently, I've softened in my sympathies toward those who have served in the military or families who have lost someone in military actions. Military service is a major fork in life that would have been. So, I would regard my present state as one of profound reflective respect, not so much for the acts committed by our leaders who order the military, but for the choices with which military personnel face - from unbidded duty assignments to permanent injuries to death. Also, a visit to Tahoma National Cemetery one May a few years ago and seeing the vast expanse of white funeral tombstones with hundreds of flags was sobering.

So, this weekend I'm deeply present with all military folks living and dead.  Especially so for those in the Persian Gulf right now. Few things could test a soul more than to be under constant threat with no discernible purpose. I'm deeply present with all those who still live with an ever-present felt loss in their life or in their family. Some of that pain may go back decades across a generation or two. 

Each and every life lost frames the past and shapes the future for those choosing to remain in a relationship.  That relationship might be one very close, like a spouse or a child..  Or it may be more distant, like a citizen to the military. Each life, each death alters the future, and the vibration of those feelings reverberates across the sands of time, just like Jesus' death still ripples through the world to this day.  I thank all for all they have given and for all the unmerited gifts that I benefit from daily, though I am blind to the many lives that contributed to me having the life I have. 

Blessed Memorials!