No, you are not taking the Bible literally. You are taking an English translation literally. You have no idea that to take any translation literally means to renounce the original meaning the text had in its own place and time. Read without reason, scripture is reduced to the memorized cliches of one’s own culture. Read without love, scripture is but another weapon to assault your culture’s scapegoats. There is a reason that, when the devil wanted to lure Jesus from the path of love, he brought along a Bible.
In my religion, I am looking for a place between what is called “atheism” and what is called “theism.” I believe there is a mystery that ties us all together that is perhaps less than a god, but certainly more than a rock. I believe we are surrounded by an intelligence that does not think, a power that does not move and a beautiful symmetry that cannot be seen. Religion, for me, is the attempt to share that connection we each feel when passing through a woods, watching a trackless sky or looking into the eyes of a newborn. Religion, for me, is the refusal to forget our intuition of primordial unity.
Some of us, in our religion, give mystery a human face not because we believe it is in any way like a human, but because we want to remember humans are personal emanations of that one mystery. There is a deep mystery shining in between what we are calling “mind” and what we are calling “matter.” For some of us, religion is remembering that, for all our pretenses to the contrary, we humans are as much apart of the web of life as any bug or tree.
If a large business can refuse to provide reproductive healthcare to women for reasons of religious conscience, why can’t a business owned by a Christian Scientist refuse to provide healthcare at all? What principle would stop a Protestant pro-choice business owner from ordering employees not to work through Catholic agencies, or an anti-Semitic business owner from ordering employees not to work through Jewish agencies? How can it ever be a religious right to impose our religion upon another? By what principle do the religious rights of a business owner trump that of a worker?
You ask me to compromise my principles for what you deem to be a good cause.
I’m not one of those who can dance with the devil and find my soul waiting for me when I get back.
Virtue has never been a faucet I can turn on and off at will.
It is more of a hummingbird that, when set aside for some lesser good, upon my returning is nowhere to be found.
I do not mean to be stubborn, but I spent the first third of my life searching for my own soul.
At this point, my only fear lies in losing it.
I belong to the world’s most dangerous profession- I am a clergy.
While there is very little physical danger in the life of clergy, but there is tremendous danger to their spirit. Every day they are expected to be certain about matters which no one really knows. Every day they are expected to display some pretended magical power through ritual or prayer. So long as clergy’s “truth” is what people want to hear, they are honored. As soon as they confront their group with an unpleasant reality, they often lose that trust. So long as they minister to the popular and famous, their status rises. As soon as they minister to those rejected by their group, they are usually rejected too.
While my profession is quite easy on the body, it the most dangerous path possible for my soul. Can I reject the temptation to give my group what they want instead of what they need? Can I empower others without becoming their shepherd thus relegating them to the role of sheep? Can I be an authentic human being and not pretend to be anything more?
Some say prostitution is the oldest profession, but it possible that long before anyone thought of selling their body for goods or status, someone else raised their arms to bless the hunt.
“Tour a jail in any county in the nation and chances are six of every 10 inmates are people legally presumed innocent and still awaiting trial. The majority of those inmates are stuck behind bars not based on their presumed risk to the outside community or likelihood to appear in court, but solely because they were unable to afford their bail bond.
And the people who can’t afford to pay are not typically the high-stakes defendants with bail bonds set to the tune of $50,000 plus. Far more often the people with low-stakes bonds, between $50 and $1,000, are the ones that sit in jail, unable to work, accumulating bills and costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
Why is this the case? A for-profit, unregulated, centuries-old $14 billion bail bonds industry thrives in this country. The people in the business of dishing out bail bonds for desperate defendants are looking to turn a serious profit from the high-stakes bonds, in part via nonrefundable fees charged to the defendents.” -April M. Short, Alternet
http://truth-out.org/news/item/20914-in-america-innocent-until-proven-guilty-not-for-most-people-who-are-stuck-in-jail
“Watch your thoughts; they become your words…
Watch your words; they become your actions…
Watch your actions; they become your habits…
Watch your habits; they become your character…
Watch your character, for it will become your destiny.”
-Rabbi Hillel
Thanks to all the wonderful people who stopped by my blog or Facebook page this year. Our conversations have been such a gift.
Some years back I stopped writing for national websites like Huffington Post and Common Dreams. Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
Earlier in my ministry I realized that, if I was not very careful, the task of giving weekly sermons could put my mind on auto-pilot. I would be just pumping out words instead of sharing actual insights. I made a promise to myself early on that if Sunday morning ever came around, and I had nothing to say, I wouldn’t waste peoples’ time by delivering a sermon. Instead, I would have the courage to just admit I had nothing to say that morning.
I have realized that I had that same concern with writing. Peoples’ time is the most important possession they have. To waste another’s time is the worst kind of theft. I realized instead of writing longer essays on schedule, what what I really wanted to do is share insights and have a conversation. You have made that possible this year and I am deeply grateful.
I may go back to more public writing at some point, but this blog and this page have been a wonderful home base for getting thoughts together. Thanks for the conversation.
I sometimes catch myself talking about people in a way that leaves their oppression invisible. A person is not a “slave” but “someone who has been enslaved.” It’s not “the third world,” but “the present and former exploited colonized peoples.” It is not “the working poor,” but “the victims of wage theft.” I sometimes slip and forget that speaking from the vocabulary of the oppressor is itself an affront to justice.
“Love can be understood only “from the inside,” as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.” -Robert C. Solomon
I was so fortunate to have Bob Solomon as a philosophy professor at U.T. At a time when a kind of bloodless objectivism was presented as the only acceptable path for an intellectually honest person, it was Professor Solomon who reminded us that emotions are not problems that hold us back from the pure air of rational clarity, they are what give our lives value and meaning. It was Professor Solomon who pointed out that the sulking atheism of some Existentialists was itself theocentric in a negative way. “They never forgave God for not existing,” he would say. Professor Solomon showed, as did Kant, that human reason, if left to it’s own devices, can be its own kind of dead end. Professor Solomon reminded us that the goal of wisdom is not some emotionally denuded notion of truth, but to live a good life. To do that, one needs both a healthy mind and a healthy heart. I still study philosophy with a passion, but thanks to Bob Solomon, I know wisdom is found not in merely thinking about about life, but in living with all our heart mind and strength.