Coming soon!....... "Half Naked... and Laughing"
For some time now I have wanted to allow this rarely visited, fairly limited topic type blog to evolve into something a little wider. Especially since my journey has changed so much over the last few years and I have been so fortunate to have my life intersect with the life story of others with a whole new lens.
I continue to hold (loosely) to deep values and things seeming right and true, at the same time letting go of so much which hindered for me, honest living and honoring questions and doubts which were silenced by cliche. Embracing new thoughts, people, life practices, hobbies has and continues to focus and brighten my view through the kaleidescope of life.
Keep eyes open for new blog to be launched in the near months.... "Half Naked... and Laughing"
I hope to stimulate laughs, raise questions, turn a few heads or hearts toward discussion, showcase a few bits of my right brains expressions via music, photos and writings.
Peace and Smiles,
Joel
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
When Resurrection Fails, And When It Doesn't Easter 2012
When Resurrection Fails, And When It Doesn't Easter 2012
For me, resurrection isn't so much a miracle because it happened....but because it...happens, sometimes still.
It was an easy ride from winter to Spring this year as winter didn't feel like winter. It didn't feel like a death to life sort of feeling. My typical winter depression was much kinder, and the snacks of sunlight and warmth kept the beating and breathing of plant and animal life just below the surface, faint enough to hear and feel the whole time. As much as I am delighting in the life warming rays of the sun this morning, it doesn't feel so much like a resurrection happened, or is happening because the contrast is a bit missing....for me.....today. And that's okay for now, because contrasts always come. Death always visits. The curtains always fall.
For my good friend who spent over a decade living in the woods, and then found himself inside with three squares a day for the last three years....a sort of resurrection happened and we smiled. He always smiled even when the curtain was down. I did not. But he did, and he made wonder how you do that. How do you smile after sleeping outside in the cold on a half empty stomach. But he smiled. And I wondered.
But the curtain has fallen again for my friend, who has more patience with me than I do him. He is in the woods again, every day. And he is messy, and hungry and wild...and is he is smiling still. Resurrection has failed his twisted thoughts and the voices in his head are winning.
And for my dear brother, who I left as a young man to follow Jesus...but am finding again because I think Jesus cried when I let go of my brothers hand. For him, resurrection is happening. It didn't always. It never "always" does, does it? To see him smile on the other side of a hell he created for himself is like the sun I feel on my face right now. And I'm smiling bigger. And he is too. He smiled the whole time, but sometimes you can smile when you're not really smiling. He is really smiling.
And my sweet sister and her children are remembering the failure of resurrection on this Easter five years after their daddy and husband had the curtain fall forever on his life with them on earth. And who knows how to hold the hand which has had a hand torn forever from it? I do not. But I do get to see the smiles on them all which peek through the curtain they did not drop on themselves....and the beauty of who each of them is, is not snuffed out by the grave, but perhaps is even brighter in contrast to it....and they smile of courage, with trembling lips sometimes, but enough courage to admire and to be called brave ones.
I smell death all the time, sometimes on others, but often on myself. Curtains always want to fall on us. And some of the curtain strings are in our very own hands. When WE let curtains fall it is possibly the saddest quiet sound. It is the sound of giving up. Or of wanting to die, or to not be seen, or to not want to see. It is the stance of hands over the face, and pillow over the head and ears. And sometimes it feels good to drop curtains. And then it doesn't anymore.
I sit grateful this morning. I am not always grateful. I should be because I have a great life right now and the curtains are up still. But I am caught often in the noise of the props and stage noise. But right now, I am resting in the failure of resurrection at times in my life, in our lives. But also in the success of resurrection sometimes in our days... And in both seasons, I have seen Love.
Love lives in the grave and in the spotlight of the stage.
Love never fails.
For me, resurrection isn't so much a miracle because it happened....but because it...happens, sometimes still.
It was an easy ride from winter to Spring this year as winter didn't feel like winter. It didn't feel like a death to life sort of feeling. My typical winter depression was much kinder, and the snacks of sunlight and warmth kept the beating and breathing of plant and animal life just below the surface, faint enough to hear and feel the whole time. As much as I am delighting in the life warming rays of the sun this morning, it doesn't feel so much like a resurrection happened, or is happening because the contrast is a bit missing....for me.....today. And that's okay for now, because contrasts always come. Death always visits. The curtains always fall.
For my good friend who spent over a decade living in the woods, and then found himself inside with three squares a day for the last three years....a sort of resurrection happened and we smiled. He always smiled even when the curtain was down. I did not. But he did, and he made wonder how you do that. How do you smile after sleeping outside in the cold on a half empty stomach. But he smiled. And I wondered.
But the curtain has fallen again for my friend, who has more patience with me than I do him. He is in the woods again, every day. And he is messy, and hungry and wild...and is he is smiling still. Resurrection has failed his twisted thoughts and the voices in his head are winning.
And for my dear brother, who I left as a young man to follow Jesus...but am finding again because I think Jesus cried when I let go of my brothers hand. For him, resurrection is happening. It didn't always. It never "always" does, does it? To see him smile on the other side of a hell he created for himself is like the sun I feel on my face right now. And I'm smiling bigger. And he is too. He smiled the whole time, but sometimes you can smile when you're not really smiling. He is really smiling.
And my sweet sister and her children are remembering the failure of resurrection on this Easter five years after their daddy and husband had the curtain fall forever on his life with them on earth. And who knows how to hold the hand which has had a hand torn forever from it? I do not. But I do get to see the smiles on them all which peek through the curtain they did not drop on themselves....and the beauty of who each of them is, is not snuffed out by the grave, but perhaps is even brighter in contrast to it....and they smile of courage, with trembling lips sometimes, but enough courage to admire and to be called brave ones.
I smell death all the time, sometimes on others, but often on myself. Curtains always want to fall on us. And some of the curtain strings are in our very own hands. When WE let curtains fall it is possibly the saddest quiet sound. It is the sound of giving up. Or of wanting to die, or to not be seen, or to not want to see. It is the stance of hands over the face, and pillow over the head and ears. And sometimes it feels good to drop curtains. And then it doesn't anymore.
I sit grateful this morning. I am not always grateful. I should be because I have a great life right now and the curtains are up still. But I am caught often in the noise of the props and stage noise. But right now, I am resting in the failure of resurrection at times in my life, in our lives. But also in the success of resurrection sometimes in our days... And in both seasons, I have seen Love.
Love lives in the grave and in the spotlight of the stage.
Love never fails.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
My Psalm of Exile with extended comments about my journey
A Psalm Of Exile Joel Usher 2010
Leaving is part of finding...
disillusionment and failed certainty
Fuel the agonizing pregnancy of desire to be free.
Free from that world of half truths and of bad "good news"
Leaving that which, in Loves name, excluded the "other"
It sometimes healed, but it sometimes smothered
The crushing yet hopeful choice to move from the familiar,
to push away from that cadence of myopic pseudo-living,
which impeded my daily breaths.
That choice....invites me into a new but ancient journey,
escaping a half-lived, partially tasted story...
But for now I'm...
In this place of in-betweens where the path behind is hardly seen
In a place. of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I've never been
Letting go is no substitute for holding on,
But it's a necessary middle place.
Hands have to be emptied in order to grasp well,
but emptiness sometimes wishes to own us,
before we grasp the life we know we were meant to loudly live
And this always seems to happen...
In this place of in-betweens
where the path behind is hardly seen
In this place of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I long to be
Sitting by the waters in this Babylon
I wont hang my harp and I won't weep
And if songs must be sung in this foreign land
Then these songs are the songs I will sing
Yes, these songs are the songs I will sing...
I'll do it, yea I'll do it...
In this place of in-betweens
where the path behind is hardly seen
In this place of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I've got to be
This poem/song of mine is not so much an inditement against any person, or even community which I belonged to, but more about a system of beliefs which I have held to with many people and groups throughout my years. So many, and most of the people in and out of these groups and systems of beliefs for me...are and were dear friends and fun people and some people who poured into my and my families lifes in deep and meaningful and playful ways....for which I have no regret or complaint. It is with a few of the toxic ways in which my faith and faith communities practiced or beliefs we were to hold to which I must disassociate with in order to feel like an honest integrated human being part of the whole family. I mean no disrespect to Scriptures as they stand alone. Nor to the over all diverse christian church with its many expressions of faith [often contradictory to one another and ever increasing in the purest form of supposed enlightnemnets within the "family"] I have had some of my best years and seen some of the most sacrificial ways of living and loving....alongside some of the worst ways. My change of mind and heart is not to throw away or exclude the rich roots of much of what I have grown up with, but to enlargen the circle of people included in Gods Love. To enlargen the possibilities of what this god might be like. To broaden the possibilities of other cultures and faith communities to be included in the pursuit of god as mysterious and as close to our breath that God might be. It is with the exclusiveness and the dogged certainty which my religion often practiced or if one pushed or questioned beyond the walls of its dogma or creed...one was seen as backsliding, or compromising or becoming wordly or worse yet unscriptural or heretical.
I am guessing that many in my old world of faith would share my disdain for our creeds about hell, pre-occupation with "spiritual" things which seem so disconnected from actual living in and with the world. With exclusiveness..... and for most these issues never come up. the remain as footnotes to our religion...as fine print which we dont spend much time with, and are willing to tolerate because of all the other rich enjoyments we get out of the other beautiful parts of the faith and community. Me too! but for those outside out circles...the footnotes are headlines....the small print is Capital ad Bold.
This is why it matters. Because it is people we are talking about.
Mothers in Iraq who bleed and hope for there children like you and I - are they going to hell? Really?
Native Americans whose land we love and live in and have done many great things with....did God really give us their land? Was it the City On A Hill and The Promised Land to Gods people escaping religious intolerance?? And when the last child was seperated from his mother so he could be properly trained as a good Christian boy and renounce his demonic voodoo religion...were we too rejoice that Gods work was getting done...his promises coming true to America? As the populations declined from the tens of millions to the tens of thousands of native Americans being exterminated in a variety of ways...either by primary or secondary causes...so that the Light and the Glory of the Columbus god dreams would come true....can we get an Amen or a Halleluia for this???
Are these the christian roots we want to fight to get back to reclaim for our heritage?
This and many other examples of how parts of our christian story have been hi-jacked and parasitized are what have made it hard for me to say I am a Christian. And at some point it becomes hard for those "outside the camp" to be able to do the hard work of figuring out "is that what Jesus would do?" as they look at us.... and they shouldn't have to work so hard to do that. And many of them think Jesus would not do or hold to that sort of doctrine/creed.
I am not talking about the fools we make of ourselves sometimes, this failings and fallings we experience as broken imperfect people.... for these we merely need to be humble about. and ask forgiveness and get up and try again.
I am talking about the core beliefs which we try to defend some of which are destructive, inhuman and fly in the face of the relentless aparantly renegade love and grace practiced by Jesus upon "sinners" which pissed off, and still pisses off some people.
The amazingness of grace seems to have stopped at the need to affirm our creed before tasting it. I think the amazingness of grace spill all over the mess of humanity and our funny attempts to understand and circumscribe God into our communities.
More to follow....[I know this sounded cynical...it probably is....still coping....don't leave me!]
Leaving is part of finding...
disillusionment and failed certainty
Fuel the agonizing pregnancy of desire to be free.
Free from that world of half truths and of bad "good news"
Leaving that which, in Loves name, excluded the "other"
It sometimes healed, but it sometimes smothered
The crushing yet hopeful choice to move from the familiar,
to push away from that cadence of myopic pseudo-living,
which impeded my daily breaths.
That choice....invites me into a new but ancient journey,
escaping a half-lived, partially tasted story...
But for now I'm...
In this place of in-betweens where the path behind is hardly seen
In a place. of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I've never been
Letting go is no substitute for holding on,
But it's a necessary middle place.
Hands have to be emptied in order to grasp well,
but emptiness sometimes wishes to own us,
before we grasp the life we know we were meant to loudly live
And this always seems to happen...
In this place of in-betweens
where the path behind is hardly seen
In this place of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I long to be
Sitting by the waters in this Babylon
I wont hang my harp and I won't weep
And if songs must be sung in this foreign land
Then these songs are the songs I will sing
Yes, these songs are the songs I will sing...
I'll do it, yea I'll do it...
In this place of in-betweens
where the path behind is hardly seen
In this place of in-betweens
Being drawn to where I've got to be
This poem/song of mine is not so much an inditement against any person, or even community which I belonged to, but more about a system of beliefs which I have held to with many people and groups throughout my years. So many, and most of the people in and out of these groups and systems of beliefs for me...are and were dear friends and fun people and some people who poured into my and my families lifes in deep and meaningful and playful ways....for which I have no regret or complaint. It is with a few of the toxic ways in which my faith and faith communities practiced or beliefs we were to hold to which I must disassociate with in order to feel like an honest integrated human being part of the whole family. I mean no disrespect to Scriptures as they stand alone. Nor to the over all diverse christian church with its many expressions of faith [often contradictory to one another and ever increasing in the purest form of supposed enlightnemnets within the "family"] I have had some of my best years and seen some of the most sacrificial ways of living and loving....alongside some of the worst ways. My change of mind and heart is not to throw away or exclude the rich roots of much of what I have grown up with, but to enlargen the circle of people included in Gods Love. To enlargen the possibilities of what this god might be like. To broaden the possibilities of other cultures and faith communities to be included in the pursuit of god as mysterious and as close to our breath that God might be. It is with the exclusiveness and the dogged certainty which my religion often practiced or if one pushed or questioned beyond the walls of its dogma or creed...one was seen as backsliding, or compromising or becoming wordly or worse yet unscriptural or heretical.
I am guessing that many in my old world of faith would share my disdain for our creeds about hell, pre-occupation with "spiritual" things which seem so disconnected from actual living in and with the world. With exclusiveness..... and for most these issues never come up. the remain as footnotes to our religion...as fine print which we dont spend much time with, and are willing to tolerate because of all the other rich enjoyments we get out of the other beautiful parts of the faith and community. Me too! but for those outside out circles...the footnotes are headlines....the small print is Capital ad Bold.
This is why it matters. Because it is people we are talking about.
Mothers in Iraq who bleed and hope for there children like you and I - are they going to hell? Really?
Native Americans whose land we love and live in and have done many great things with....did God really give us their land? Was it the City On A Hill and The Promised Land to Gods people escaping religious intolerance?? And when the last child was seperated from his mother so he could be properly trained as a good Christian boy and renounce his demonic voodoo religion...were we too rejoice that Gods work was getting done...his promises coming true to America? As the populations declined from the tens of millions to the tens of thousands of native Americans being exterminated in a variety of ways...either by primary or secondary causes...so that the Light and the Glory of the Columbus god dreams would come true....can we get an Amen or a Halleluia for this???
Are these the christian roots we want to fight to get back to reclaim for our heritage?
This and many other examples of how parts of our christian story have been hi-jacked and parasitized are what have made it hard for me to say I am a Christian. And at some point it becomes hard for those "outside the camp" to be able to do the hard work of figuring out "is that what Jesus would do?" as they look at us.... and they shouldn't have to work so hard to do that. And many of them think Jesus would not do or hold to that sort of doctrine/creed.
I am not talking about the fools we make of ourselves sometimes, this failings and fallings we experience as broken imperfect people.... for these we merely need to be humble about. and ask forgiveness and get up and try again.
I am talking about the core beliefs which we try to defend some of which are destructive, inhuman and fly in the face of the relentless aparantly renegade love and grace practiced by Jesus upon "sinners" which pissed off, and still pisses off some people.
The amazingness of grace seems to have stopped at the need to affirm our creed before tasting it. I think the amazingness of grace spill all over the mess of humanity and our funny attempts to understand and circumscribe God into our communities.
More to follow....[I know this sounded cynical...it probably is....still coping....don't leave me!]
Friday, September 16, 2011
My journey of recovery - A talk I gave this summer as I re-find my bearings in life
INTRO
I am so grateful and humbled to be here today
to share my story in regards to your summer theme of Calling.
I am not officially part of your community
but have found a safe and kind haven here during my self imposed exile as a recovering Born Again Charismatic Right Wing Evangelical Christian.
I have read and love your principles and it's very comforting to me that according to them, no matter what I say today…
you probably will not throw me out!
Although, you might not invite me back…
I am also grateful for the lunch I had with Margie, during which she kindly allowed me to spew forth my faith journey…
mixed with all of the accompanying Joy and Angst.
And while I was here playing with Jim Dexter’s Band at your Woodlands Folk Festival, I walked through your church building, with a beer in my hand, and read your principles on the wall
…and I just felt that they were so right for my heart.
For several reasons this was a bit of a conflict of soul.
The first being that I had never considered drinking alcohol in church,
and the second, that in the strict Bible school I attended,
I had studied carefully why UUism was a cult. And it was now becoming my favorite cult…..forgive me for saying so…
One of the things I really appreciate about UU is the practicing of your fourth principle, which states that you “covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”.
I love that.
And now I’ll share some of the story of my search with you here today,
in hopes to inspire dialogue, connect with a few fellow strugglers, and hopefully add a humble piece to the joint human struggle for meaning and purpose in our short days on this beautiful and messy planet.
BEGIN
I grew up with no formal religious training or stories whatsoever.
I do not ever remember thinking about God, church, Bible
or anything associated…. other than that we were Methodists …whatever that meant.
I do not remember ever being formally told anything
about the story of life, or the world,
either scientifically or any other organized way.
Nothing really about earth, humanity,
where we come from or are going… if anywhere.
I don’t think that really bothered me either.
If I had a soul I was pretty sure it was the size & color of a football, but a little squishier and light enough to float.
My mother and father were very adventurous
and loved nature and worked hard and they really loved us
even though we threw up on them sometimes and went tinkle in the bathtub before the next kid got in.
I mostly grew up here in Stony Brook, with a regular family [if there is such a thing]
We liked the Walton’s. We liked camping and hiking.
We had pets and friends with no pets.
My best friend was John John,
and he taught me how to get into trouble…he never got caught.
I played in the woods. I played with matches.
I loved kick the can, but playing army was better,
because there were nurses.
It was a regular Friday night… I think in October at age 13,
when mommy and daddy sat my sister and brother and I down at the kitchen table and announced that daddy would be moving out.
Well I loved my daddy. I loved my family. I loved the Walton’s.
I loved playing in the woods with my friends who had no pets….
and matches and nurses and hiking…
and getting into trouble with my invincible friend John-John.
Of course this is not unique,
all children face pain in a variety of flavors.
But this was my life. It was all I knew. And now it all changed.
As I will tell of my spiritual journey this morning,
I would like to use the metaphor of finding my Pulses, when I am talking about Callings.
For me it’s this sort of… feeling of something moving,
just beneath my soul, and a little bit out there somewhere…
...where truth or love or someone is, which draws me in
and I lean myself up against for awhile and do life…
….until it gets shaky again.
The first pulse of great significance, which drew me in, was during the years just following my family’s new status as a “broken family.”
I would call it the PULSE OF SURVIVAL
I began hiding and pretending my family wasn’t broken, and when that got hard I liked getting into trouble, and getting high
…then I liked stealing sometimes and fooling around with girls.
I didn’t like school or telling the truth.
I left my invincible best friend John John for a girl.
I Left a girl for drugs.
I mostly didn’t want to feel. I secretly wanted to find HOME I think.
I loved the rituals and sense of community I felt with my new fellow partiers and lovers.
The sense of common purpose….to escape…. To not feel pain.
The excitement of secrecy, being sneaky and the adventure of having to figure out life by ourselves…until I felt alone….again…
…and felt pain again….and shame again.
By the age of 17, this pulse got so loud,
I could no longer bear the noise and the feelings
of failing people,
of pretending,
of losing while trying to free myself from addiction and self hatred and the terrible feeling of being so small and insignificant and dirty.
I was tired of hiding the scared hurting little kid that I really was.
I didn’t like hanging around me any more,
but I couldn’t get away from me either.
During this time my mother had met Jesus.
I had never met Jesus before.
And he really helped her….
even though I didn’t understand why the Jesus people had,
what looked like séances in my kitchen, while my friends and I played Led Zeppelin in the basement as we coordinated a small pharmaceutical business under black lights and fluorescent posters.
I finally got desperate enough and gave in
and talked to a Jesus person.
I had never heard anything like this in my life.
It seems that it is possible, apparently, to play in a Jesus Rock and Roll band…..and not get high…. and to still be happy.
People were actually doing this.
And there was, as I learned, this God… out there…
who knew everything there was to know about me ….
….I mean everything…and loved me anyway…
just as miserable as I was…
Even more…I was told that this God liked me,
and wanted to forgive me for all the crap I had done to people…
and to myself….and I guess to him.
I was hearing, and finding it hard to escape from this NEW PULSE
….and within two weeks, on a Monday night,
February 6, 1980 at 9 o’clock,
I asked this god to forgive me, and to come into my life,
And to help me find out who the heck I was supposed to be in this world…
….and I balled my eyes out like a little boy,
while snot ran down my face and
my chest heaved like a baby catching its first breathes on earth…
…and my squishy football shaped soul felt like it filled up with air and floated for the first time in my life.
I felt clean….. I felt alive….
And I was breathing new life, and this is what it sounded like……
SING “HERE I AM” SONG [4:30]
I was immediately accepted into this community of people
and I exchanged old friends for new,
old groups for new, old passions for new.
I began tracking with a very strong new pulse, which invaded every part of my life and interests.
With an even stronger commitment than I had to partying, I began a journey of freedom from addictions, forgiveness and forgiving, personal empowerment…
and an incredible, larger than life mission to give myself to…
I found myself given to a story and a pulse that I would call the pulse of BEING ALIVE again
I had been yearning to be me, to be free, and I found it through surrender and renewal, community, and awakening to a brand new story and new life.
I strongly sensed and believed what I was being taught…that this God out there knew my name, my story, and loved me anyway.
I experienced what felt like help from outside of me…you know like an empowering which I had never experienced all the times I had tried to quit drugs, quit being a jerk and trying to be a free ME again.
I began incessantly attending all sorts of gatherings and enjoying a sense of a community of hope, and of shared leanings into a story,
It included joint singing, sharing of affection openly, and even sometimes sharing of some inside private stuff.
This was so brand new to me and exhilarating.
And no one else that I knew, was experiencing anything like this.
I learned how to say “Halleluiah” and “Praise the Lord” at just the right times. And I really meant it!
I felt a sense of mission, of common purpose and responsibility to others...to the bigger narrative of life.
There was this sense of adventure too.... but without the hangover or guilty feelings or memory loss.
There was also this feeling of trusting each other and finding help from community in issues of marriage and family, of a safe place for kids.
I poured myself into Jesus headlong, and into what I was told was his family.
Daily I found myself coming home after school and laying for hours on the living room floor, talking, singing, crying and just sitting before God.
I was 17 years old, and no one in Ward Melville High School who knew me would say anything otherwise, than that I was a changed and brand new person.
I went to Bible school and felt called to be a missionary. Which meant going into other parts of the world to preach and teach the gospel to those who had not heard it so that they would not go to hell, and so they could enjoy the good life which God wished for them.
I married my childhood sweetheart, and we both joined a missionary organization and lived in community for over five years with two of our three children in the eighties.
We did missionary trips where we preached on streets, in orphanages, in churches and on college campuses through music and drama and personal conversations.
I spent time with people jails and nursing homes and down and outers on the streets to share the gospel with them.
We also gave out food and built some buildings for needy people once in awhile. We served food to the homeless in soup kitchens after they listened to the required preaching, which was the required price for them to get food.
We then ran a maternity home for pregnant unwed teenaged girls before we finally settled back into a house and a regular job back on Long Island.
For the next fifteen years we continued to immerse ourselves and shape our lives around what we felt were the teachings of God or Jesus.
Running men’s and women’s groups, teaching children, leading worship, doing cantatas, serving all sorts of ministries, and leading people in what we always called “the ways of God”.
And we loved people. For real. And we loved God, for real.
We just didn’t know that sometimes how we loved was not very loving at all.
And then, a few years ago there developed this silent haunting in me.
This noise in the background.
These questions and doubts about my faith.
And finally they began to get so loud, and so unavoidable I had to sit down and start to listen to them.
I realized that there were all these unmet yearnings, and aches, and pulses, which I had been ignoring…
and what was worse, they were not allowed to show themselves in the brand of Christianity which I called home for nearly 30 years.
I began to be embarrassed and ashamed of much of what my fellow Christians were being associated with.
Taking America back for Jesus…Pro-war rhetoric, gay bashing, anti-environmental policies…
And more subtly in my own close circles, a sense of exclusivity,
of demonizing groups and harping on just a few certain private sins while ignoring systemic evil and injustices….
questions about hell and heaven which seemed a great distraction to actually living here and now.
Pre-occupations with end times and prophecies about wars and non-believers…. Which all just bothered me.
As a youth pastor, my students would ask me questions to which I knew the answer I was supposed to give, but could no longer give.
There was all this dark stuff which I overlooked in the Bible, and all these huge holes began to appear in my airtight theology.
Someone wise told me at that time, that “what we focus on determines what we miss”
I took a missionary trip with a friend to Turkey, and I found the people absolutely delightful….did they need Jesus?
Were they really going to go to hell if they didn’t accept him before they died tonight?
They seemed nicer than some of the Christians who were living all confident with their hellfire insurance…. What do I do with this?
I travelled to southeast Asia with an organization called Love146, which I now belong to, which cares for young children who have been rescued from sex slavery.
Were these children going to go to hell if they did not pray to Jesus. And was this God sovereign still in the way I that was taught,
even though this happened to these innocent ones?
What would I tell them about this God?
And when I found myself foolishly caught up in their game of Chinese jump rope as they giggled at my clumsiness,
I felt like I was peeking into Gods eyes, hearing God giggle,
and I was being saved from my smallness by the bravery of these little ones as they seemed to trust this white middle aged male who must have represented all that was once evil to them.
Where did this come from?
What theological box did this belong in??
These things and many others began to unravel wildly and uncomfortably over the next few years for me.
I learned of some of the terrible history of the church through the ages….right up until present….involving racism, ethnic cleansing, power trips and struggles and ugliness.
I saw how well meaning people could use the bible, which I had immersed myself into for decades, feel they were following the truth and in fact be terribly unloving and in many cases fly right in the face of truth.
All this to say, I began to feel dirty again.
I felt like a dirty, white, heterosexual, male, American, Christian….
The few beautiful things which I loved about this story.. and which changed me forever …were surrounded by small print about a whole bunch of stuff I could not stand….
…and the small print was getting larger by the day.
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to berate Christians any more than any group of people. All groups have their demons.
And most groups compare their BEST with the others WORST.
Nor do I want to overlook the very amazing things which many Christians have contributed and still contribute to the brokenness in our world.
And not only to the world, but to my own broken and screwed up life and the life of my family through the years.
This is not about that. It is about my story, and about the smallness I began to feel.
It’s about ways that I began to feel that the beautiful story, which I had fallen in love with, had been hi-jacked by religion and politics and had lost most of its plot.
This pulse for me began to feel like a TOXIC pulse, a POISONOUS one which I can’t imagine Jesus ever being a part of.
For me it was about the disconnection from yearnings and longings which felt SO human.
There was so much I felt I was missing….
Missing out on connecting to creation, to the wonder of it all because “its all gonna burn anyway and Gods gonna take us all to heaven or hell”
Missing out on the connectedness of the Whole human family and culture, of honoring what was beautiful about the others outside our circle of experience.
Of the importance of maintaining and exhibiting unconditional love for all people, not just for those IN the new family
Missing out on the appreciation of art and beauty and healthy clean passionate impulses to be honored as god given and inspired, and not smashing down desires all the time.
Missing out on really good parties.
Missing out on truly connecting with the broken, exploited and marginalized without an agenda to get them to heaven,
but only an agenda for loving them as people because…that’s what they are…. people.
My wife and I ended up stepping down from being youth pastors and worship leaders to begin to recover both our time and spiritual re-orientation.
I began to push outside the walls I had created, which isolated me from people unlike me. Walls which made it easier to exclude them and treat them as others, as outsiders to God, as sinners outside the family and care and experience of God.
I am ashamed to say this, to admit this, but it is the truth.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I became what I think would have made Jesus throw up if I ran into him.
Someone claiming to follow him…. and trying to… and using his name, but leaving others out. Not loving. And actually not really living.
I found out that the Bible contains over 2,000 references to Gods heart for the poor and exploited…and not once did it occur to me how important these people must be to God….and should have been to me…
Once I began to realize these things….it all began to change…and I felt like I was being born again…..again….
I think I will call this current pulse I am now in...The pulse of becoming HUMAN….again…
As I began to push beyond the toxicity I felt, I began perhaps the most thrilling and yet disorienting times of my life.
The thrill of honoring doubts and questions that ran just below the surface, but were not permitted an audience.
Yet, the insecurity of not having absolutes all figured out anymore.
Of the thrill and adventure of re-discovery, of deconstructing and of reconstructing of my faith.
Yet the fear that after all the deconstructing, there would be nothing left but cynicism…
There was the thrill of finally being true to myself and finding courage to break away and challenge the system, the broken story, to parasitized story, The morally and politically hijacked story
And the deep joy of finding the face and beauty of God in new friends I was getting to know who were Strangers, Muslims, Gays, Homeless or de-churched people.
People who are now teaching me about life and love and showing me that God was never closer to me than to them….
that God and Truth and Love are bubbling up waiting to be discovered in the messiness of all our human relationships.
That when I hear their stories, I find they are not that different than me. We are made of the same stuff.
I felt so much sadness at what judgment I must have passed on to so many people through the years …along with the guilt of how many relationships I had short-circuited, missing out on them, and them missing out on me.
I had this hollow feeling about the loss of community, of support, and activities and shared mission,
And a deep deep grieving…which was only tempered with the gratefulness of being able to re-do this journey with my wife and all three children…who were co-incidentally going through a very similar metamorphosis of their own.
And a huge new vibrancy and urgency overtook my life after my trip to Cambodia and Thailand.
I had learned that:
there are 27 million slaves on the planet today.
That $30 Billion is made each year in the selling of people
That 1.2 million children are taken into slavery every year,
That’s 2 every minute, every day,
and that each child has a story and a name…like I do,
And after having my soul torn from me in hearing what these children in front of me had gone through,
but then… having it returned to me… filled with hope after hearing them giggle on their way out of hell….yea this is the stuff which has been replacing the toxic faith I carried…
and this new life has inspired my friends and I to raise over $750,000 in the past few years to help Love146 to build and run a safe-home in the Philippines for the kids we are learning to love as well as inviting thousands to join the modern day abolitionist movement.
There came to me a freedom and a joy of finally trying to BE the Good News to people, and not to PREACH the good news to people.
And this has been a major help for me in re-connecting the missing injustice and love piece I had lost site of. The fact that LOVE was SO much bigger than I had let it be.
In regards to really loving…
I had the realization that saying it is not doing it…
That singing it is not doing it
That believing it or writing it as my creed is not doing it
The only thing that IS doing it…..is…doing it.
And that I needed to shut up and live a sermon with my life.
And if it was worthwhile reading, it’ll get read, and if not…it’s probably not very good news anyway.
These days I find myself a little less anxious and disoriented.
And I am grateful for places like this, with people like you, which have created a safe space for dialogue, questioning, inclusiveness and active care for the under-resourced, overlooked and mal-treated brothers and sisters we all have.
I am still a bit gun-shy about formal gatherings of well intended people while I am still in religion detoxification mode.
But I have to say, the sensitivities which I have heard expressed and read about in your community, do a great deal to adding to my courage, and helping to bleed out what is left of my cynicism.
IN CLOSING
Life has changed greatly over these 30 or so years.
I am grateful, and feel so wealthy with things that matter.
I still have a deep love for God and the way and words of Jesus.
I’ve been spoiled with some of the most amazing people and moments a person could have.
I have hurt people deeply and needed forgiveness.
I have been hurt by people and needed to forgive.
I have been myopic, narcissistic, and unselfish and joy filled.
I been thrilled mostly by being a dad and a husband even though I’ve been quietly scared the entire trip.
… I still like the Walton’s. I like camping and hiking.
We have pets and friends with no pets.
My best friend John John, who I left in the dust for a girl,
the one who taught me how to get in trouble…and who never got caught,
well he hasn’t slept in his own bed since January because he has bone cancer now …but we’ve recently re-connected on the phone with memories and tears.
I still like to play in the woods, but I don’t play with matches.
I can’t play kick the can because my lower back hurts,
And I don’t believe in playing Army anymore even though there are nurses…who needs ‘em?
I’m still in love with my best friend Lisa for over thirty years.
I think that what I now call "the addiction to certainty" was probably been one of the most disturbing things about the faith I once held.
I am now finding myself loving the wide open spaces which have been created by embracing mystery, people and hope.
And I’m feeling a little certain about just a few things
....but mostly about LOVE.
And I know me…it’s gonna take the rest of my life to learn this one out loud…
Thank you.
I am so grateful and humbled to be here today
to share my story in regards to your summer theme of Calling.
I am not officially part of your community
but have found a safe and kind haven here during my self imposed exile as a recovering Born Again Charismatic Right Wing Evangelical Christian.
I have read and love your principles and it's very comforting to me that according to them, no matter what I say today…
you probably will not throw me out!
Although, you might not invite me back…
I am also grateful for the lunch I had with Margie, during which she kindly allowed me to spew forth my faith journey…
mixed with all of the accompanying Joy and Angst.
And while I was here playing with Jim Dexter’s Band at your Woodlands Folk Festival, I walked through your church building, with a beer in my hand, and read your principles on the wall
…and I just felt that they were so right for my heart.
For several reasons this was a bit of a conflict of soul.
The first being that I had never considered drinking alcohol in church,
and the second, that in the strict Bible school I attended,
I had studied carefully why UUism was a cult. And it was now becoming my favorite cult…..forgive me for saying so…
One of the things I really appreciate about UU is the practicing of your fourth principle, which states that you “covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”.
I love that.
And now I’ll share some of the story of my search with you here today,
in hopes to inspire dialogue, connect with a few fellow strugglers, and hopefully add a humble piece to the joint human struggle for meaning and purpose in our short days on this beautiful and messy planet.
BEGIN
I grew up with no formal religious training or stories whatsoever.
I do not ever remember thinking about God, church, Bible
or anything associated…. other than that we were Methodists …whatever that meant.
I do not remember ever being formally told anything
about the story of life, or the world,
either scientifically or any other organized way.
Nothing really about earth, humanity,
where we come from or are going… if anywhere.
I don’t think that really bothered me either.
If I had a soul I was pretty sure it was the size & color of a football, but a little squishier and light enough to float.
My mother and father were very adventurous
and loved nature and worked hard and they really loved us
even though we threw up on them sometimes and went tinkle in the bathtub before the next kid got in.
I mostly grew up here in Stony Brook, with a regular family [if there is such a thing]
We liked the Walton’s. We liked camping and hiking.
We had pets and friends with no pets.
My best friend was John John,
and he taught me how to get into trouble…he never got caught.
I played in the woods. I played with matches.
I loved kick the can, but playing army was better,
because there were nurses.
It was a regular Friday night… I think in October at age 13,
when mommy and daddy sat my sister and brother and I down at the kitchen table and announced that daddy would be moving out.
Well I loved my daddy. I loved my family. I loved the Walton’s.
I loved playing in the woods with my friends who had no pets….
and matches and nurses and hiking…
and getting into trouble with my invincible friend John-John.
Of course this is not unique,
all children face pain in a variety of flavors.
But this was my life. It was all I knew. And now it all changed.
As I will tell of my spiritual journey this morning,
I would like to use the metaphor of finding my Pulses, when I am talking about Callings.
For me it’s this sort of… feeling of something moving,
just beneath my soul, and a little bit out there somewhere…
...where truth or love or someone is, which draws me in
and I lean myself up against for awhile and do life…
….until it gets shaky again.
The first pulse of great significance, which drew me in, was during the years just following my family’s new status as a “broken family.”
I would call it the PULSE OF SURVIVAL
I began hiding and pretending my family wasn’t broken, and when that got hard I liked getting into trouble, and getting high
…then I liked stealing sometimes and fooling around with girls.
I didn’t like school or telling the truth.
I left my invincible best friend John John for a girl.
I Left a girl for drugs.
I mostly didn’t want to feel. I secretly wanted to find HOME I think.
I loved the rituals and sense of community I felt with my new fellow partiers and lovers.
The sense of common purpose….to escape…. To not feel pain.
The excitement of secrecy, being sneaky and the adventure of having to figure out life by ourselves…until I felt alone….again…
…and felt pain again….and shame again.
By the age of 17, this pulse got so loud,
I could no longer bear the noise and the feelings
of failing people,
of pretending,
of losing while trying to free myself from addiction and self hatred and the terrible feeling of being so small and insignificant and dirty.
I was tired of hiding the scared hurting little kid that I really was.
I didn’t like hanging around me any more,
but I couldn’t get away from me either.
During this time my mother had met Jesus.
I had never met Jesus before.
And he really helped her….
even though I didn’t understand why the Jesus people had,
what looked like séances in my kitchen, while my friends and I played Led Zeppelin in the basement as we coordinated a small pharmaceutical business under black lights and fluorescent posters.
I finally got desperate enough and gave in
and talked to a Jesus person.
I had never heard anything like this in my life.
It seems that it is possible, apparently, to play in a Jesus Rock and Roll band…..and not get high…. and to still be happy.
People were actually doing this.
And there was, as I learned, this God… out there…
who knew everything there was to know about me ….
….I mean everything…and loved me anyway…
just as miserable as I was…
Even more…I was told that this God liked me,
and wanted to forgive me for all the crap I had done to people…
and to myself….and I guess to him.
I was hearing, and finding it hard to escape from this NEW PULSE
….and within two weeks, on a Monday night,
February 6, 1980 at 9 o’clock,
I asked this god to forgive me, and to come into my life,
And to help me find out who the heck I was supposed to be in this world…
….and I balled my eyes out like a little boy,
while snot ran down my face and
my chest heaved like a baby catching its first breathes on earth…
…and my squishy football shaped soul felt like it filled up with air and floated for the first time in my life.
I felt clean….. I felt alive….
And I was breathing new life, and this is what it sounded like……
SING “HERE I AM” SONG [4:30]
I was immediately accepted into this community of people
and I exchanged old friends for new,
old groups for new, old passions for new.
I began tracking with a very strong new pulse, which invaded every part of my life and interests.
With an even stronger commitment than I had to partying, I began a journey of freedom from addictions, forgiveness and forgiving, personal empowerment…
and an incredible, larger than life mission to give myself to…
I found myself given to a story and a pulse that I would call the pulse of BEING ALIVE again
I had been yearning to be me, to be free, and I found it through surrender and renewal, community, and awakening to a brand new story and new life.
I strongly sensed and believed what I was being taught…that this God out there knew my name, my story, and loved me anyway.
I experienced what felt like help from outside of me…you know like an empowering which I had never experienced all the times I had tried to quit drugs, quit being a jerk and trying to be a free ME again.
I began incessantly attending all sorts of gatherings and enjoying a sense of a community of hope, and of shared leanings into a story,
It included joint singing, sharing of affection openly, and even sometimes sharing of some inside private stuff.
This was so brand new to me and exhilarating.
And no one else that I knew, was experiencing anything like this.
I learned how to say “Halleluiah” and “Praise the Lord” at just the right times. And I really meant it!
I felt a sense of mission, of common purpose and responsibility to others...to the bigger narrative of life.
There was this sense of adventure too.... but without the hangover or guilty feelings or memory loss.
There was also this feeling of trusting each other and finding help from community in issues of marriage and family, of a safe place for kids.
I poured myself into Jesus headlong, and into what I was told was his family.
Daily I found myself coming home after school and laying for hours on the living room floor, talking, singing, crying and just sitting before God.
I was 17 years old, and no one in Ward Melville High School who knew me would say anything otherwise, than that I was a changed and brand new person.
I went to Bible school and felt called to be a missionary. Which meant going into other parts of the world to preach and teach the gospel to those who had not heard it so that they would not go to hell, and so they could enjoy the good life which God wished for them.
I married my childhood sweetheart, and we both joined a missionary organization and lived in community for over five years with two of our three children in the eighties.
We did missionary trips where we preached on streets, in orphanages, in churches and on college campuses through music and drama and personal conversations.
I spent time with people jails and nursing homes and down and outers on the streets to share the gospel with them.
We also gave out food and built some buildings for needy people once in awhile. We served food to the homeless in soup kitchens after they listened to the required preaching, which was the required price for them to get food.
We then ran a maternity home for pregnant unwed teenaged girls before we finally settled back into a house and a regular job back on Long Island.
For the next fifteen years we continued to immerse ourselves and shape our lives around what we felt were the teachings of God or Jesus.
Running men’s and women’s groups, teaching children, leading worship, doing cantatas, serving all sorts of ministries, and leading people in what we always called “the ways of God”.
And we loved people. For real. And we loved God, for real.
We just didn’t know that sometimes how we loved was not very loving at all.
And then, a few years ago there developed this silent haunting in me.
This noise in the background.
These questions and doubts about my faith.
And finally they began to get so loud, and so unavoidable I had to sit down and start to listen to them.
I realized that there were all these unmet yearnings, and aches, and pulses, which I had been ignoring…
and what was worse, they were not allowed to show themselves in the brand of Christianity which I called home for nearly 30 years.
I began to be embarrassed and ashamed of much of what my fellow Christians were being associated with.
Taking America back for Jesus…Pro-war rhetoric, gay bashing, anti-environmental policies…
And more subtly in my own close circles, a sense of exclusivity,
of demonizing groups and harping on just a few certain private sins while ignoring systemic evil and injustices….
questions about hell and heaven which seemed a great distraction to actually living here and now.
Pre-occupations with end times and prophecies about wars and non-believers…. Which all just bothered me.
As a youth pastor, my students would ask me questions to which I knew the answer I was supposed to give, but could no longer give.
There was all this dark stuff which I overlooked in the Bible, and all these huge holes began to appear in my airtight theology.
Someone wise told me at that time, that “what we focus on determines what we miss”
I took a missionary trip with a friend to Turkey, and I found the people absolutely delightful….did they need Jesus?
Were they really going to go to hell if they didn’t accept him before they died tonight?
They seemed nicer than some of the Christians who were living all confident with their hellfire insurance…. What do I do with this?
I travelled to southeast Asia with an organization called Love146, which I now belong to, which cares for young children who have been rescued from sex slavery.
Were these children going to go to hell if they did not pray to Jesus. And was this God sovereign still in the way I that was taught,
even though this happened to these innocent ones?
What would I tell them about this God?
And when I found myself foolishly caught up in their game of Chinese jump rope as they giggled at my clumsiness,
I felt like I was peeking into Gods eyes, hearing God giggle,
and I was being saved from my smallness by the bravery of these little ones as they seemed to trust this white middle aged male who must have represented all that was once evil to them.
Where did this come from?
What theological box did this belong in??
These things and many others began to unravel wildly and uncomfortably over the next few years for me.
I learned of some of the terrible history of the church through the ages….right up until present….involving racism, ethnic cleansing, power trips and struggles and ugliness.
I saw how well meaning people could use the bible, which I had immersed myself into for decades, feel they were following the truth and in fact be terribly unloving and in many cases fly right in the face of truth.
All this to say, I began to feel dirty again.
I felt like a dirty, white, heterosexual, male, American, Christian….
The few beautiful things which I loved about this story.. and which changed me forever …were surrounded by small print about a whole bunch of stuff I could not stand….
…and the small print was getting larger by the day.
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to berate Christians any more than any group of people. All groups have their demons.
And most groups compare their BEST with the others WORST.
Nor do I want to overlook the very amazing things which many Christians have contributed and still contribute to the brokenness in our world.
And not only to the world, but to my own broken and screwed up life and the life of my family through the years.
This is not about that. It is about my story, and about the smallness I began to feel.
It’s about ways that I began to feel that the beautiful story, which I had fallen in love with, had been hi-jacked by religion and politics and had lost most of its plot.
This pulse for me began to feel like a TOXIC pulse, a POISONOUS one which I can’t imagine Jesus ever being a part of.
For me it was about the disconnection from yearnings and longings which felt SO human.
There was so much I felt I was missing….
Missing out on connecting to creation, to the wonder of it all because “its all gonna burn anyway and Gods gonna take us all to heaven or hell”
Missing out on the connectedness of the Whole human family and culture, of honoring what was beautiful about the others outside our circle of experience.
Of the importance of maintaining and exhibiting unconditional love for all people, not just for those IN the new family
Missing out on the appreciation of art and beauty and healthy clean passionate impulses to be honored as god given and inspired, and not smashing down desires all the time.
Missing out on really good parties.
Missing out on truly connecting with the broken, exploited and marginalized without an agenda to get them to heaven,
but only an agenda for loving them as people because…that’s what they are…. people.
My wife and I ended up stepping down from being youth pastors and worship leaders to begin to recover both our time and spiritual re-orientation.
I began to push outside the walls I had created, which isolated me from people unlike me. Walls which made it easier to exclude them and treat them as others, as outsiders to God, as sinners outside the family and care and experience of God.
I am ashamed to say this, to admit this, but it is the truth.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I became what I think would have made Jesus throw up if I ran into him.
Someone claiming to follow him…. and trying to… and using his name, but leaving others out. Not loving. And actually not really living.
I found out that the Bible contains over 2,000 references to Gods heart for the poor and exploited…and not once did it occur to me how important these people must be to God….and should have been to me…
Once I began to realize these things….it all began to change…and I felt like I was being born again…..again….
I think I will call this current pulse I am now in...The pulse of becoming HUMAN….again…
As I began to push beyond the toxicity I felt, I began perhaps the most thrilling and yet disorienting times of my life.
The thrill of honoring doubts and questions that ran just below the surface, but were not permitted an audience.
Yet, the insecurity of not having absolutes all figured out anymore.
Of the thrill and adventure of re-discovery, of deconstructing and of reconstructing of my faith.
Yet the fear that after all the deconstructing, there would be nothing left but cynicism…
There was the thrill of finally being true to myself and finding courage to break away and challenge the system, the broken story, to parasitized story, The morally and politically hijacked story
And the deep joy of finding the face and beauty of God in new friends I was getting to know who were Strangers, Muslims, Gays, Homeless or de-churched people.
People who are now teaching me about life and love and showing me that God was never closer to me than to them….
that God and Truth and Love are bubbling up waiting to be discovered in the messiness of all our human relationships.
That when I hear their stories, I find they are not that different than me. We are made of the same stuff.
I felt so much sadness at what judgment I must have passed on to so many people through the years …along with the guilt of how many relationships I had short-circuited, missing out on them, and them missing out on me.
I had this hollow feeling about the loss of community, of support, and activities and shared mission,
And a deep deep grieving…which was only tempered with the gratefulness of being able to re-do this journey with my wife and all three children…who were co-incidentally going through a very similar metamorphosis of their own.
And a huge new vibrancy and urgency overtook my life after my trip to Cambodia and Thailand.
I had learned that:
there are 27 million slaves on the planet today.
That $30 Billion is made each year in the selling of people
That 1.2 million children are taken into slavery every year,
That’s 2 every minute, every day,
and that each child has a story and a name…like I do,
And after having my soul torn from me in hearing what these children in front of me had gone through,
but then… having it returned to me… filled with hope after hearing them giggle on their way out of hell….yea this is the stuff which has been replacing the toxic faith I carried…
and this new life has inspired my friends and I to raise over $750,000 in the past few years to help Love146 to build and run a safe-home in the Philippines for the kids we are learning to love as well as inviting thousands to join the modern day abolitionist movement.
There came to me a freedom and a joy of finally trying to BE the Good News to people, and not to PREACH the good news to people.
And this has been a major help for me in re-connecting the missing injustice and love piece I had lost site of. The fact that LOVE was SO much bigger than I had let it be.
In regards to really loving…
I had the realization that saying it is not doing it…
That singing it is not doing it
That believing it or writing it as my creed is not doing it
The only thing that IS doing it…..is…doing it.
And that I needed to shut up and live a sermon with my life.
And if it was worthwhile reading, it’ll get read, and if not…it’s probably not very good news anyway.
These days I find myself a little less anxious and disoriented.
And I am grateful for places like this, with people like you, which have created a safe space for dialogue, questioning, inclusiveness and active care for the under-resourced, overlooked and mal-treated brothers and sisters we all have.
I am still a bit gun-shy about formal gatherings of well intended people while I am still in religion detoxification mode.
But I have to say, the sensitivities which I have heard expressed and read about in your community, do a great deal to adding to my courage, and helping to bleed out what is left of my cynicism.
IN CLOSING
Life has changed greatly over these 30 or so years.
I am grateful, and feel so wealthy with things that matter.
I still have a deep love for God and the way and words of Jesus.
I’ve been spoiled with some of the most amazing people and moments a person could have.
I have hurt people deeply and needed forgiveness.
I have been hurt by people and needed to forgive.
I have been myopic, narcissistic, and unselfish and joy filled.
I been thrilled mostly by being a dad and a husband even though I’ve been quietly scared the entire trip.
… I still like the Walton’s. I like camping and hiking.
We have pets and friends with no pets.
My best friend John John, who I left in the dust for a girl,
the one who taught me how to get in trouble…and who never got caught,
well he hasn’t slept in his own bed since January because he has bone cancer now …but we’ve recently re-connected on the phone with memories and tears.
I still like to play in the woods, but I don’t play with matches.
I can’t play kick the can because my lower back hurts,
And I don’t believe in playing Army anymore even though there are nurses…who needs ‘em?
I’m still in love with my best friend Lisa for over thirty years.
I think that what I now call "the addiction to certainty" was probably been one of the most disturbing things about the faith I once held.
I am now finding myself loving the wide open spaces which have been created by embracing mystery, people and hope.
And I’m feeling a little certain about just a few things
....but mostly about LOVE.
And I know me…it’s gonna take the rest of my life to learn this one out loud…
Thank you.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Finding church...at Unitarian universalism, at trader joes or with every group I stumble upon...
If my job depended on keeping up this blog I'd have been fired forever ago...but it doesn't!
I think and hope I am less cynical than I was when just beginning the deconstruction of my faith journey.
The only residual guilt I feel is that of not taking the time to share my thoughts with what used to be the key religious people in my life. With the motive of not wanting to start an insurrection or create insecurity among the fold of people which I called my family for almost 30 years I chose to silently bow out...and walk away. And if the opportunity presents itself, and perhaps with a little planning on my part, I feel it would be loving to take the time with a few of them to share what and why and all...about the journey I had to take in order to stay sane and salvage the essentials of what may be called "a life with god in the world, and for the world"
Huge leaps from where I was at last writing have taken place as I have talked with people, read books, and listened to my heart with honesty. Sharing my faith journey at a Unitarian Universalist church gathering forced me to sit down, and track my story with many of the impulses which drew me into different aspects of it, as well as the hiding from incongruities and disagreements my heart had with parts of the story I was told was THE one true story.
Allowing myself to ask the silenced questions out loud to myself and to a few trusted travelers has given me the occasion to look at other possibilities of interpretation, or understanding which honor a high view of god and love without so much of what seems like religious people's baggage added to the human story in attempt to either define, or control or label...or identify who and how one is in or out (and if that is all that important)
My current place of thought is not too deep, or even sure (if there is such a thing),but it is honest and it is open to thoughtful challenge by anyone, including myself, anyone inside or outside Christianity or religion at all. I don't mean to be sounding like I am making a challenge about what I feel is THE truth, but more an invitation to...please challenge me....I need challenging, and prodding, and additional musings of spirituality and faith and daily practicing of love because for so long the field from which I tried to harvest these things from was soooo small and myopic. And it did and does offer something to the diet needed in the world to contribute to it's healing and well being, but so many additives to it have made it nearly undigestible to me....and I suspect to many others sadly, some of whom will never take the time needed to parse through, strip off and discover what is beautiful about The Story in it's simplest way (I do not claim to have discovered it completely, but I am not as likely to run away from it as others who have been damaged, shocked or disgusted by what seems obviously a perversion of something once beautiful)
So here are some really long run on sentences of thought which run on in me these days as I observe and listen and try pathetically sometimes to practice....
As I think about holy books, rituals, dogmas, creeds and spiritual practices held by people throughout the world, and throughout human history, it seems all people reach for some sense of meaning, of transcendence, of connection to something or someone bigger, better and more intuitive beyond or around ourselves or anything in our world... And that experiences of all sorts have taken place in this search which include revelations of sorts about life or reality or truth, and may include ecstatic experiences or visions, words from "the other side" whatever that might be.... And then..... Through the ages these ideas and truths and revelations and practices are passed on orally or in writing....and ones which seem really important and "enlightened" or "inspired" get to make it to the Book or List or Mantra or spiritual life practice. And then over time... meaningful well intentioned (and maybe sometimes not so well intentioned) people add to and or tweak the book, list, mantra, creed.....
And maybe different peoples of different cultures over periods of time have gotten peeks into the Divine, the Ultimate Reality, the Truth, and tried with whatever language they could to define, announce, repeat what they experienced.... And with the imperfect perceptions and with the poverty of words, seek to encapsulate the moment to pass it on...... All this...... So others might carry on as wayward sons trying to find our homes...the centers of our beings....our place in the galaxy of life.
And maybe our Book, or books or principles are kind of true, or true within a time and place which most needed them, but not for all places, times, situations. Except for the (it seems) universal MUST, of Love. Loving people, planet,self and god as we understand her/him....
Well it's hard to argue against love....and most won't. The messy and sticky part comes in when we try to decide what is love....what is loving...and for those of us with fundamentalist flavored DNA, "loving" is telling you the right way, Gods way to live. And I get that....kind of....but it breaks down so quickly, and is so often self disguised, In-group decided morals which change with seasons or centuries, exposing the obvious frailty and imperfection of our "absolute truth". And parenthetically, I am sorry, to others, and for myself, for the missed and damaged possibilities of connecting with "the other"...outside my in-group because of holding sincerely to such presuppositions of exclusion and pride.
How does this practically affect and effect my days? In every way if I am paying attention...which is... sometimes. In my talks and meetings with all sorts of people...new people...people I would not have freely and honestly talked with before....people who I felt I had a superior view if Life than they...people who may have contradicted my world schema and truth view....with these people, I put all my theological shit aside...my arguments and truths....and I just listen to them. Listen to their souls speak and sometimes bleed. To the pulse which calls their name and which they try to lean into when life sucks...and at THAT moment I know....I and they are brother and sister....that we smile and sigh and bitch and get screwed in all lifes ways....and then we try...We try....and sometimes we don't...but we are not discarded because we don't....whether because of our statement of faith, or family values or because sometimes in the darkness of violation or the crashing of dreams of innocence we we say "fuck you god"....we are not let go....we are not dismissed...we are not cast away to the eternal fires of conscious torment..... Unless we choose to live in torment... But if we speak and walk in the honesty of our bewilderment before the Sky, before God, before the Ground of our Being....we ALL have the possibility of redemption.....redemption from evils face....from our own delusional proud house of cards, from the sin against ourselves and against Loves inescapable demand...of forgiveness and forgiving, of finding The Image of The Holy in the shitpile of what we tried to do....of how we tried to make it better.....
....in this....in these thoughts....sometimes remembered in my frailty....I am stumbling toward the truth....towards the Arms which have rescued me, held me, invited back over and over even though I claimed to know them perfectly while being a sincere ignorant confident bastard of half truths.... This I know.... I am loved. I am held. As much as any one else has ever been....no more....no less. And in this I am trying to be content.
I think and hope I am less cynical than I was when just beginning the deconstruction of my faith journey.
The only residual guilt I feel is that of not taking the time to share my thoughts with what used to be the key religious people in my life. With the motive of not wanting to start an insurrection or create insecurity among the fold of people which I called my family for almost 30 years I chose to silently bow out...and walk away. And if the opportunity presents itself, and perhaps with a little planning on my part, I feel it would be loving to take the time with a few of them to share what and why and all...about the journey I had to take in order to stay sane and salvage the essentials of what may be called "a life with god in the world, and for the world"
Huge leaps from where I was at last writing have taken place as I have talked with people, read books, and listened to my heart with honesty. Sharing my faith journey at a Unitarian Universalist church gathering forced me to sit down, and track my story with many of the impulses which drew me into different aspects of it, as well as the hiding from incongruities and disagreements my heart had with parts of the story I was told was THE one true story.
Allowing myself to ask the silenced questions out loud to myself and to a few trusted travelers has given me the occasion to look at other possibilities of interpretation, or understanding which honor a high view of god and love without so much of what seems like religious people's baggage added to the human story in attempt to either define, or control or label...or identify who and how one is in or out (and if that is all that important)
My current place of thought is not too deep, or even sure (if there is such a thing),but it is honest and it is open to thoughtful challenge by anyone, including myself, anyone inside or outside Christianity or religion at all. I don't mean to be sounding like I am making a challenge about what I feel is THE truth, but more an invitation to...please challenge me....I need challenging, and prodding, and additional musings of spirituality and faith and daily practicing of love because for so long the field from which I tried to harvest these things from was soooo small and myopic. And it did and does offer something to the diet needed in the world to contribute to it's healing and well being, but so many additives to it have made it nearly undigestible to me....and I suspect to many others sadly, some of whom will never take the time needed to parse through, strip off and discover what is beautiful about The Story in it's simplest way (I do not claim to have discovered it completely, but I am not as likely to run away from it as others who have been damaged, shocked or disgusted by what seems obviously a perversion of something once beautiful)
So here are some really long run on sentences of thought which run on in me these days as I observe and listen and try pathetically sometimes to practice....
As I think about holy books, rituals, dogmas, creeds and spiritual practices held by people throughout the world, and throughout human history, it seems all people reach for some sense of meaning, of transcendence, of connection to something or someone bigger, better and more intuitive beyond or around ourselves or anything in our world... And that experiences of all sorts have taken place in this search which include revelations of sorts about life or reality or truth, and may include ecstatic experiences or visions, words from "the other side" whatever that might be.... And then..... Through the ages these ideas and truths and revelations and practices are passed on orally or in writing....and ones which seem really important and "enlightened" or "inspired" get to make it to the Book or List or Mantra or spiritual life practice. And then over time... meaningful well intentioned (and maybe sometimes not so well intentioned) people add to and or tweak the book, list, mantra, creed.....
And maybe different peoples of different cultures over periods of time have gotten peeks into the Divine, the Ultimate Reality, the Truth, and tried with whatever language they could to define, announce, repeat what they experienced.... And with the imperfect perceptions and with the poverty of words, seek to encapsulate the moment to pass it on...... All this...... So others might carry on as wayward sons trying to find our homes...the centers of our beings....our place in the galaxy of life.
And maybe our Book, or books or principles are kind of true, or true within a time and place which most needed them, but not for all places, times, situations. Except for the (it seems) universal MUST, of Love. Loving people, planet,self and god as we understand her/him....
Well it's hard to argue against love....and most won't. The messy and sticky part comes in when we try to decide what is love....what is loving...and for those of us with fundamentalist flavored DNA, "loving" is telling you the right way, Gods way to live. And I get that....kind of....but it breaks down so quickly, and is so often self disguised, In-group decided morals which change with seasons or centuries, exposing the obvious frailty and imperfection of our "absolute truth". And parenthetically, I am sorry, to others, and for myself, for the missed and damaged possibilities of connecting with "the other"...outside my in-group because of holding sincerely to such presuppositions of exclusion and pride.
How does this practically affect and effect my days? In every way if I am paying attention...which is... sometimes. In my talks and meetings with all sorts of people...new people...people I would not have freely and honestly talked with before....people who I felt I had a superior view if Life than they...people who may have contradicted my world schema and truth view....with these people, I put all my theological shit aside...my arguments and truths....and I just listen to them. Listen to their souls speak and sometimes bleed. To the pulse which calls their name and which they try to lean into when life sucks...and at THAT moment I know....I and they are brother and sister....that we smile and sigh and bitch and get screwed in all lifes ways....and then we try...We try....and sometimes we don't...but we are not discarded because we don't....whether because of our statement of faith, or family values or because sometimes in the darkness of violation or the crashing of dreams of innocence we we say "fuck you god"....we are not let go....we are not dismissed...we are not cast away to the eternal fires of conscious torment..... Unless we choose to live in torment... But if we speak and walk in the honesty of our bewilderment before the Sky, before God, before the Ground of our Being....we ALL have the possibility of redemption.....redemption from evils face....from our own delusional proud house of cards, from the sin against ourselves and against Loves inescapable demand...of forgiveness and forgiving, of finding The Image of The Holy in the shitpile of what we tried to do....of how we tried to make it better.....
....in this....in these thoughts....sometimes remembered in my frailty....I am stumbling toward the truth....towards the Arms which have rescued me, held me, invited back over and over even though I claimed to know them perfectly while being a sincere ignorant confident bastard of half truths.... This I know.... I am loved. I am held. As much as any one else has ever been....no more....no less. And in this I am trying to be content.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
A little lost, a little found, but it's okay...
Approaching the end of the year. A hard year in many ways for work/economy. A good year though for continuing to re-imagine life, religion, the world I find myself in. The joy of being part of the story of a friend coming out of over a decade of homelessness is among my favorite gifts this year. The saving it is doing to my soul is beyond the supposed "saving" of assenting to polished sets of beliefs or exclusive creeds, detached from actual living with and among real people. Substance and action have taken a greater place on my radar for living over against holding on to "my beliefs" this last year. And life has been all the better for it. And I think our God is still smiling...
I am grateful for several authors who have given me "permission" to explore beyond the dogmas which silently corralled parts of life, soul and journey from being pleasantly soiled by human scent, struggle and commonality.
I have not found a comfortable place in faith community, only some places which bother me "less". And that's is okay. If I found one....I would certainly be the "bother"! It isn't about, or shouldn't be about what suits me, or how I can get my weekly dose of spiritual energy the way I want it...but about about how to be with one another in a way that is helpful in becoming who we are...or are trying to be...in a way that betters the world we touch daily...and the world far away which we are inextricably connected to. So....yeah, a little lost I feel, a little disconnected. But for now I would not trade it for what I had before....and I hope that I find more people who wish to dusty their feet with me.
I am grateful for several authors who have given me "permission" to explore beyond the dogmas which silently corralled parts of life, soul and journey from being pleasantly soiled by human scent, struggle and commonality.
I have not found a comfortable place in faith community, only some places which bother me "less". And that's is okay. If I found one....I would certainly be the "bother"! It isn't about, or shouldn't be about what suits me, or how I can get my weekly dose of spiritual energy the way I want it...but about about how to be with one another in a way that is helpful in becoming who we are...or are trying to be...in a way that betters the world we touch daily...and the world far away which we are inextricably connected to. So....yeah, a little lost I feel, a little disconnected. But for now I would not trade it for what I had before....and I hope that I find more people who wish to dusty their feet with me.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Some thoughts and prayers along the journey...
As I continue on the journey which extends from the original post/comments I made on this blog...I am finding myself in a place which is beautiful, wide open, deeper in love and less certain about less important things. I am loving building relationships with "the other", those outside my old christian walls, and I am feeling like I am more in the center of where Jesus would hang out [and of course he would be in trouble...ruining his reputation with some]
I've detached from so much and it feels so good to be looking at my "christian life/culture/principles" from the outside. It was/is so easy for me to be myopic, exclusive, certain and unintentionally dogmatic, with an aroma of judgment and non-love. And there are/were so many trappings and cliches which are so distracting and sidestepping spiritual honesty. And so much fear and superstition...so much busyness and consumer driven narratives...so little raw, honest, lip-biting trust and connection to ALL people and the earth we are to steward.
To deeply listen, care, spend time and money and life on another...without an agenda other than Love feels right and good. Love needs no acvertisement to say it is Love...it is obvious when it is in the "room". The need to advertise is an indicator that there is not much substance or essence to permeate the space in which I live.....for me that spells "clanging gong...noisy cymbal" St. Paul - 1 Corinthians 13
Let my life be like a love song to all sorts of people and to the creation I am to care for and honor. Especially, I pray for freedom from cynicism and a critical aroma toward that which I am being freed from. And to never believe that any person or system is all bad or all good...but to honor and hold the truth and beauty in each and every corner of created people and things, while disowning or transforming that which is part of the empire/power/destruction narrative or kingdom.
May I always remember, that I myself, at my best, am a mix of hypocricies and paradoxes...and only a choice away from the darker trail which I hate...but love sometimes.
Hold me...and help me to hold others...along the way of renewing and restoring
I've detached from so much and it feels so good to be looking at my "christian life/culture/principles" from the outside. It was/is so easy for me to be myopic, exclusive, certain and unintentionally dogmatic, with an aroma of judgment and non-love. And there are/were so many trappings and cliches which are so distracting and sidestepping spiritual honesty. And so much fear and superstition...so much busyness and consumer driven narratives...so little raw, honest, lip-biting trust and connection to ALL people and the earth we are to steward.
To deeply listen, care, spend time and money and life on another...without an agenda other than Love feels right and good. Love needs no acvertisement to say it is Love...it is obvious when it is in the "room". The need to advertise is an indicator that there is not much substance or essence to permeate the space in which I live.....for me that spells "clanging gong...noisy cymbal" St. Paul - 1 Corinthians 13
Let my life be like a love song to all sorts of people and to the creation I am to care for and honor. Especially, I pray for freedom from cynicism and a critical aroma toward that which I am being freed from. And to never believe that any person or system is all bad or all good...but to honor and hold the truth and beauty in each and every corner of created people and things, while disowning or transforming that which is part of the empire/power/destruction narrative or kingdom.
May I always remember, that I myself, at my best, am a mix of hypocricies and paradoxes...and only a choice away from the darker trail which I hate...but love sometimes.
Hold me...and help me to hold others...along the way of renewing and restoring
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Invitation to discuss, dream, doubt and desire the best kind of journey together
I am hoping this blog may be a place for you my friends, and me, to wrestle with most important themes and stories and beliefs which frame our lives. Discovering, perhaps ways to live more beautifully. More in line with the dream of God. To try to peel away the layers of broken and poisonous religion, infected with themes and scripts of unlove. To consider ways we may have been living by destructive life-stealing narratives.
Perhaps we might share stories and questions and doubts. Allowing for dialogue, intellectual sparring and probing the deep needs of our planet and it's people, in harmony with the divine community some call trinity. To find ways to spend our days, our treasures, our talents in ways that honor the glory we and creation carry so timidly, so uncertainly and so hurtfully sometimes.
So come and join me if you will in your spare moments. No subject off limits. No question too far fetched. No challenge denied. No comment mundane.
Is anyone having these same questions, concerns, musings?
Perhaps we might share stories and questions and doubts. Allowing for dialogue, intellectual sparring and probing the deep needs of our planet and it's people, in harmony with the divine community some call trinity. To find ways to spend our days, our treasures, our talents in ways that honor the glory we and creation carry so timidly, so uncertainly and so hurtfully sometimes.
So come and join me if you will in your spare moments. No subject off limits. No question too far fetched. No challenge denied. No comment mundane.
Is anyone having these same questions, concerns, musings?
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