My House of Faith
I build my house on Unknowingness
The foundations do not stand up to scrutiny
The walls fold on examination
This carpet unravels with each footstep
The icons dissolve if I stare
These gods vanish when I greet them
And the light turns out, just when...
I think I've found the
Truth.
I build my home on Unknowingness
And now I am free to roam
According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just, "Many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, as the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at many times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term success – and many movements come and go with little long-term effect – has relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear with surprising regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement."
If the idea of being religious is intended to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the origin of life or the Universe. You would think it would be a constant evolving journey of exploration in our changing perception of life, and the universe around us.
I think these prophets, these seers, visionaries filled with redemptive imagination that saw beyond the windows of the religions of their day would be filled with sadness that we have only followed their journey to the point of closing the windows again. To get to the place where you construct a sytsem of belief, rules, dogma, doctrine and rituals, is to end the journey of exploration. It is now nothing but maps, and road side markers...nothing more than a tour down memory lane. People eventual grow weary of the same road trip, where you arrive back home repeating the same story over and over again.
Ironically, it's kind of sad when we say," all the religions ", because in a sense we've gone astray, because really there is only one kind of religioness. Just as in science is one, the scientific approach is one, so is religion, so is the religious approach.
Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu they all belong to one kind of religioness. Of course they all speak different langauges...that is another matter. They are bound to speak different languages. Lao Tzu will speak chinese, Jesus will speak Aramaic, Buddha will speak in Pali and of course they will use the idiom of their day. But that is the difference of expression. And one should not be decieved by expressions, one should not be decieved by words, because religion has nothing to do with words. Maybe that's why Jesus didn't hire a scribe to record his every word. Maybe its because we've turned our words into the bricks of a fortified wall that we can not see. It covers our eyes, and hinders our insight. Religion at its deepest meaning is a wordless experience.
The problem with religion today is it creates theology. It's not really religion justa faint carbon copy of it. But, all churches are based on it. When a Buddha exists in the world, or a Mohammed, or a Krishna, or a Christ then pundits, scholars, and learned people, intellectually cleverand cunning people, gather together around them. They start working hard: "What does Jesus mean?" They start creating a theology, a creed, a dogma, a church. They are successful people because they are very logical people.They cannot give you God, they cannot give you truth, but they give you great organizations.
Truth is profoundly like beauty. Beauty is not matter and beauty doesn't belong to parts. Once you dissect a flower, once the wholeness of the flower is gone, beauty is also gone. beauty belongs to the whole, it is the grace that comes to the whole. It is more than the sum.
God is the greatest totality, "all things together." God is not a person. God is a presence, the presence when the total is functioning in great harmony...the trees and the birds and the earth and the stars and the moon and sun and the rivers and ocean...every speck of the universe. That togetherness is God. If you dissect you'll never find God. Dissect the world into who's who you won't find the presence that is God. To dissect religion into Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism or Hare Krishna you will not find God.
Maybe religion is the journey into the bigger whole, the totality of "all things together." It's only in this that maybe we find meaning.
That's where I'm at, this profound place where I can't really describe "God" in words. That's why God is beyond my imagination. God is the biggest conceivable whole, and without grasping and trying understand "all things together" we will not attain a higher understanding, and meaning. God is not a person, we have to move beyond that...the image of God looks like me, and not them. God is not sitting static somewhere at a cosmic postal code. Maybe, we come to the realization God is the total presence of existence, the being...as what John Shelby Spong likes to call the ground of all being.
And if there is an energy that holds "all things together", it is love. Maybe love is the purest possibility of God. Because it is the subtlest, and the most infinite force of unity in the universe.
The most profound religious experience is God is love. Profoundly, the deepest experience of love is a religious experience. And here's the irony, forget God, love will do. But never forget Love, because God alone won't do. If anything, this far along the corridor of history we can conclude just God isn't working.
Maybe the only hope for the future is embracing "all things together", in love...the purity of one religion beyond dissection, embracing the beauty of the whole. Beyond words, maybe this is the closest we get to the truth.
I can only really call myself a mystic. When I finally looked over my shoulder, and could no longer see any path at all...only my foot steps. I new I had arrived.
I was consumed by everything; everything that was, everything that is, and everything that will be. The utter mysterious profound freedom...consumed, accepted, deeply connected to everything...can only be described as "Love."
This whatever it is "God." Strangley, the shocking irony is in this place there is no "belief", and there is no "doubt." Here, I didn't have to struggle with which one to hold.
If any thing " doubt " for me was just a bridge. It's that chasm between the subjective and the objective. They are twp poles of the same reality. Ten or more years of inquiry, and questions, it kept me moving on an evolving adventure. And, it kept me moving.
If this, whatever it is, God-thing is love, in infinite bold letters "LOVE." It makes us look at our love, to find it filled with so many things. And in those "so many things", we find our love is polluted. Jealousy can't be apart of love. Hate, anger, possessiveness, can't be apart of love. Love knows no jealousy. Love knows no possessiveness; on the contrary, love gives freedom. If " Love " can't give absolute freedom...then, who is going to give it.
At that moment a revolution happens, an overwhelming sense of gratitude.You feel grateful for absolutely everything, every person...you even love your enemies. Love can't hate anything. Even if there is a scent of hate in the air, love ceases to exist.
So here I am, mystic, in this place of not believing, but not doubting, closer to childhood innocense...but, I guess you could call me a fool or crazy. If you were a christian, or someone witha religious slant, you might call it awe. But, it kind of makes me smile, burts into laughter, just looking at the miracle of existence all around me.
Here I am...therefore I am...once lost, now found.
Truth has to be lived, not known. Life has to be squeezed to the last drop to the last drop of juice. It is not something to be contemplated upon...drink it.
The last words of Jesus, the God-man to his disciples are profoundly significant. The last supper, the last time when Jesus ate with his disciples before being caught and taken to prison...He was aware that he was going to be caught; the rumor was all around. He was aware that it is possible he may be crucified. So after supper he spoke a few words to the disciples, " Perhaps I may not be ables to see you again. Just remember one thing: you have not been with me to listen to what I say, so that you may write them down later, misinterpreting me; You have been with me to eat me, to drink me, to live me. I may be gone, but you can continue to drink me.
It's that life that needs to be squeezed to the last drop...drink.
Once we have learned, and have known the secret of eating, and drinking and absorbing life like Jesus did, the whole of existence is open up to us. The master is only "a" small window into the universe. Once you come to the master, the window disappears and you are facing the whole existence.
The frame of the window should not become important. Sadly, we have made the "church", that window. That's what has happened to millions of people, the frame of window is being worshiped; nobody is looking through the window. No one is reimagining what is means to eat, drink and live in the context of broken world today.
The window is an invitation to see beyond the horizon of certainty, it's to grasp, to wrestle with crisis facing humanity today. But sadly, we stop at the window content with what we framed in our myopic theological thinking; we adorn it and worship it.
Someone is at the window worshiping Buddha, another window Alah, another window Krishna; but, the windows aren't for worshiping; they are to be transcended. They are to open our eyes, and minds to greater truths. Yes, we remember the windows that have led us to the view, but we move on to engage the future in this profound open space beyond windows in unity. This is where the reality of hope lies. If we are to recreate our world with a unified profound redemptive imagination it lies beyond our individual windows.
We can all agree that Jesus, the radical scandalous god-man was a resonator. He was profoundly tuned into the wavelengths of God and humanity, so much so, in him they seemed to be in unison. When we look at how he plugged into humanity it is obvious that the comfort of his audience was not a significant consideration. In fact, Jesus taught in a manner that engaged his listeners and challenged them. He had a way of taking them to a liminal space where he disorienated peoples religious beliefs, ideas about God, politics, power and wealth. Feeling their world fall out from under their feet, they grasp for the only thing available, Grace. Jesus was anything but crystal clear, simple, and easy to listen to. Even now, when we engage his teaching through the Gospels, it is a puzzle to which he never have all the pieces. To reduce it to certitude, rigid dogma and doctrine, to timeless creeds is to take the profound mysterious redemptive imagination of Jesus, and reduce it to "our" truths. Reading the gospels is like looking at a road map. We can second guess what the journey is like, but until we put our feet on the ground and navigate the broken landscape of humanity...the gospel is never experienced.
He doesn’t give us 3-point alliterated sermons, that you plug in and play to make your life better. He gives you a life, and death...a journey that boggles the human mind. He just says, "follow me", not to a church, a temple, a synogue or a mountain. He questions, but unlike the "bible answer man", he seems short on providing answers. He seems to enjoy watching us wrestle.
Profoundly, if any kind of truth can be found, it is that in this journey we discover the clearest revelation of what abundant humanity is.
I wonder how comfortable he would be at church on a Sunday morning?
If the question has caught fire in you,
or doubt has caused a crack in one of your walls,
then maybe God's work is done.
The rest belongs to the fire.
"For an earliest generation of Christians, Jesus was not the Savior but the Life-giver. In the original Aramaic of Jesus and his followers, there was no word for salvation. Salvation was understood as bestowal of life, and to be saved was “to be made alive.”
This gift of life, moreover, was received in a clear rite of initiation, following the pattern of Jesus’ own initiation. According to the ancient, Aramaic-derived traditions, Jesus’ divine sonship began not in his sacrificial death on the cross, but in his spirit-filled baptism in the Jordan River. Entering the waters at the hand of John the Baptist, he emerged as the Life-giver (in Syriac, Mahyana), upon whom the Spirit “rested.” He came forth also as Ihidaya, “the only one,” or “the Unified One,” and in this pattern his initiates became known also as ihidaye, “those who are one.” This early Aramaic Christianity—scholars call it “Spirit Christology” —knew nothing of dying and rising with Christ, but only of a larger, more vivified and unified life made possible through the indwelling of the Spirit.”
–Cynthia Bourgeault, "The Gift of Life," on the unified vision of the desert fathers, Summer 1989
"The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things."
Franz Kafka
Let’s not forget the Christian demand of discipleship: “Love your enemies.” Central to the Gospel announcement of Jesus is the nonviolent love of those who would oppose us: sometimes physically and other times ideologically. At the center of discipleship is love–love for God and for neighbors. And lest we forget the criteria for a “neighbor,” Jesus makes that clear in the story of the Good Samaritan: a neighbor is the person we naturally hate. For a Jew in the first century to even acknowledge a Samaritan as anything but a despised traitor to the God of Israel was unthinkable! Yet that is exactly what Jesus called his hearers to–to equate enemies to the status of neighbor. Therefore, a neighbor is any and every person on the face of this earth that we like, dislike, or would even consider an enemy. We are called to love our enemy-neighbors.
This is one of my favorite stories is the gospels ( John 6:1-15 ), everytime I read it, it is like a sun rise that slowly and mysteriously illuminates the landscape of reality to endless possibilities.
It continuosly breaks the illusion that God is restricted to borders...that he graviates to those he likes. As Jesus reminds us in Matthew 5:45, " In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike." Suddenly there is a profound redemptive spark that ignites the imagination...like the sun, and the rain, God orbits humanity and permeates everything.
It's interesting that Tiberias is a jewish community but it is permeated and surrounded by a heterogenous population. In the days of Jesus many more religious Jews refused to settle there because the presence of a cemetery rendered the place unclean. Herod settled many non-Jews from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis, " city on the extremity." Here Jesus finds himself in a collage, a landscape of diversity...of faiths, of cultures, of race and langauge. His presence embraces every inch of this human landscape.
Also the teller of this story reminds us that it is nearly time for the Feast of the Passover. Again, my mind, my memory and imagination rewind to that incredible journey into freedom. It again was centered around a meal that would sustain God's people across a threshold, through a doorway into a journey where the horizon was filled with the hope of new possibilities. The God-man must have been acutely aware of this reality as waded through and was surrounded in this sea of humanity.
This diverse mass of people has seen, and heard the word " miracle "...that more than anything it has been the magnet that pulls, and gravitates them toward Jesus. They want to see Jesus perform some God-tricks...and the crowd gets bigger, and bigger. The day is coming to a close, the shadows are getting longer as the creator pulls the curtain, and light dims.
Jesus is profoundly aware of the moment and in it he sees the fullness of humanity...he sees the intersection of humanity and God. He more than anyone knows of the mysterious profound redemptive possibilities that can be found when the two interact and become one...he more than anything is proof of that reality.
Jesus lights a match, trying spark some human imagination asking Philip, " Where can he buy bread to feed these people?" Immediately Philip is doing some calculations in his mind, counting on his fingers and finally coming to the conclusion, " we don't have enough money." Not the best answer, but at least he's absolved himself, and the disciples of any responsibility.
There is a yound boy in the crowd with his bag lunch of five small loaves and two fish that he sees as a possibility. But, like a flickering candle about to go out, Simon readily admits it doesn't offer much hope.
Jesus seats everyone on the ground and takes the bread, giving thanks passes it into the midst of the people. He does the same with the fish, and everyone ate as much as they wanted. When the people had eaten their fill, he said to his disciples, "Gather the leftovers so nothing is wasted." They went to work and filled twelve large baskets with leftovers from the five barley loaves.
To often in this story we want to fast forward, and hit stop...satisfied with the obvious conclusion it's " all " Jesus performing some kind of God-magic in a miracle. Now, I'm not saying Jesus can't, and didn't do miracles. I'm saying maybe in the profound redemptive imagination of Jesus he doesn't want us to stop there. Maybe there is another kind of miracle going on...a kind of God-man collaborated miracle. Maybe it's that profound interesction when God and humanity merge as one, and in the fusion something heaven-on-earth shattering happens.
The young boy in this story ignites the redemptive imagination in my mind to a new generation that is not just on the fringe. But that they " get " Jesus and are close to him. They understand that Jesus was deeply and fully human more than he was religious. It's profound that the disciples didn't really grasp what was going on. But here is this young boy hovering close to Jesus saying here is my bag lunch...its not much, but I'm willing to share it.
Can you imagine the look on the disciples faces, " Are you serious kid...there is 5,000 or more people out there." That would be like sharing a " Happy Meal " with a small town. But more than that the young boy doesn't just want to share it with his family, his friends, his tribe or even his faith. He wants to share it with everyone..." you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike."
It is that profound mysterious intersection...if God is like that, humanity should be like that. It is when we live like that miracles are possible...heaven comes to earth, they become one.
So could it be possible someone saw this young boy pass his meager bag lunch to Jesus, and whisper started through the crowd, and the whisper became a wind, like spirit touch everyone. Slowly people searched their packs, and there pockets, and everyone regardless of race, and religion started to share with one another.
It is that profound mysterious intersection...if God is like that, humanity should be like that. It is when we live like that miracles are possible...heaven comes to earth, they become one.
I bumped into a friend a couple of months ago down town, a churchless follower of Jesus. He shared that he had went to Gurdwara at a Sikh temple in town. A part of the worship involved a meal in this large kitchen room. It is a meal where all are welcome regardless of faiths...it is here evryone sits together and shares a common meal. This profound act of worship is said to enable people to serve one another, and to banish all distinctions between people...its the profound mysterious realization in the midst of God's presence there is no circumference...everyone is in.
More than every we must re-kindle redemptive imagination...and come to the profound truth there are many paths to God. But real faith is found in the intersection of humanity and God. Jesus the God-man came to reveal this to us...this is what is is to be fully human. And I believe it's in this intersection in our unique and diverse religions, and beyond our religions that miracles can happen today to change the course of humanity.
I dream there is a generation of young people that are like the young boy in this gospel story that will lead us into a new journey of faith beyond mere religion but into the fullness of humanity that Jesus lived and spoke about.
This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed non-conformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the actions of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a dedicated minority. (Martin Luther King )
trying to live faithfully...search, revealing, and building the Kingdom
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