All that is hidden, all that is plain, I have come to know, instructed by Wisdom.… Within her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, … dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying…. She pervades and permeates all things. She is the untarnished mirror of God’s active power.… She makes all things new. In each generation she passes into holy souls. —Wisdom 7:21–24, 26, 27, Jerusalem Bible
Richard Rohr believes wisdom arises from living with paradox.
Whenever I teach, I am not trying to change anyone’s dogmas or beliefs, but only the mind with which they understand those dogmas. This new mind has everything to do with seeing and thinking paradoxically—grasping the truth of something that seems a contradiction. Great dogmas of the church are almost always totally paradoxical: Jesus is human and divine, Mary is virgin and mother, God is one and three, Eucharist is bread and Jesus. Because paradox undermines dual thinking at its root, the dualistic mind immediately attacks paradox as weak thinking or confusion, somehow separate from and inferior to hard logic. The modern phenomenon of fundamentalism displays an almost complete incapacity to deal with paradox, and shows how much we’ve regressed. Today the church is trying to catch up to what mystics have always known, and great scientists now teach as well.
The history of spirituality tells us we must learn to accept paradoxes, or we will never love anything or see it correctly.The above passage personifying Wisdom is an insightful description of how one sees paradoxically and contemplatively.
Each of us must learn tolive with paradox, or we cannot live peacefully or happily even a single day of our lives. In fact, we must even learn to love paradox or we will never be wise, forgiving, or possessing the patience of good relationships. “Untarnished mirrors,” as Wisdom says, receive the whole picture, which always includes the darkness, the light, and subtle shadings of light that make shape, form, color, and texture beautiful.
Reality is paradoxical. If we’re honest, everything is a clash of contradictions, and there is nothing on this created earth that is not a mixture at the same time of good and bad, helpful and unhelpful, endearing and maddening, living and dying. St. Augustine called this the “paschal mystery.”
Western Christianity has tended to objectify paradoxes in dogmatic statements that demand mental agreement instead of any inner experience of the mystery revealed.At least we “worship” these paradoxes in the living collision of opposites we call Jesus. But this approach tends not to give people the underlying principle that Jesus, the Christ, has come to teach us about life and about ourselves.Jesus, as the icon of Christ consciousness (1 Corinthians 2:16), is the very template of total paradox: human yet divine, physical yet spiritual, killed yet alive, powerless yet powerful.
Jesus reveals the great cosmic mystery and calls us to see the same truth in ourselves and all of creation.
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“Theology without practice is the theology of demons.“
Author Debie Thomas considers the paradox of Jesus’ parable of the weeds and wheat:
In the Gospel of Matthew [13:24–30], Jesus invites us to lean courageously into paradox. A householder plants seeds in his field. While everyone is asleep, an enemy sneaks onto the field, sows weeds among the wheat, and goes away. When the plants come up, the householder’s servants are baffled. “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?…. Where did these weeds come from?” The householder doesn’t spare them the truth: “An enemy has done this” (13:27–28).
But when the servants offer to tear up the weeds, the householder stops them. “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time, I’ll instruct my reapers to collect, bundle, and burn the weeds, and then I’ll gather the wheat into my barn” (13:29–30).
As I ponder this parable, I see Jesus asking his followers to hold seemingly contradictory truths in tension. One: evil is real, noxious, and among us. Two: our response to evil must include both acknowledgment and restraint….
I tend to get worked up about weeds. Weeds in my own life, and weeds in other people’s. I tend to get eager, preachy, and zealous for the purity of the field. Possessive about the integrity of the householder. Impatient for a quick, clean harvest.
Also, like the servants, I tend to lead with confidence rather than humility when it comes to moral gardening: “Jesus, trust me, I know how to separate the weeds from the wheat. Let me at it, please, and I’ll have that field cleared for you in no time!”
But Jesus says no. “No” and “wait.” Jesus insists on patience, humility, and restraint when it comes to patrolling the borders of the field. He asks us, even as we acknowledge the pernicious reality of evil, to accept his timing instead of ours when it comes to destroying it. Why? Because there is no way we can police the wheat field without damaging the wheat. There is no way we can rid ourselves of everything bad without distorting everything good. When we rush ahead of God and start yanking weeds … we do harm to ourselves and to the field. Our sincerity devolves into arrogance. Our love devolves into judgment. Our holiness devolves into hypocrisy. The field suffers.
Thomas understands that Jesus calls us to be held in paradox:
Evil is real, noxious, and among us, and our own response to evil must include both acknowledgment and restraint.
If this ambiguity worries you, then remember that we are braced by a God who is too big for one-dimensional truths, and this is a good thing. It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us. We are held in a deep place. An ample place. A generous place. Though we might fear paradox, God does not. We’re safe, even in the contradictions. Weedy, perhaps, but safe.
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Quote shared by John Chaffee
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.“
Everything is our teacher. Not just our friends and our successes, but our annoyances and our failures. Perhaps it is because I am approaching 40 in December, but I have been internally shifting to the things that Jung calls the “second half of life.” The first half is all about building our ego and sense of self, the second half is all about letting it go and learning from our failures.
It is not easy, but it is good work to get around to doing. Keep growing. Everything is your teacher.
Richard Rohr writes that holding the tension of paradox helps us grow in consciousness and love.
All the great religions at the more mature levels learn and teach a different consciousness, which we call the contemplative mind, the nondual mind, or the mind of Christ. The levels of spiritual development begin with dualistic, exclusionary, either/or thinking and become increasingly nondual, allowing for a deeper, broader, wiser, more inclusive and loving way of seeing.
If we are to live on this Earth, we cannot bypass the necessary tension of holding contraries and inconsistencies together. Daily ordinary experiences teach us nonduality in a way that is not theoretical or abstract. It becomes obvious in everything and everybody, every idea and every event, almost hidden in plain sight. Everything created is mortal and limited and, if we look long enough, paradoxical. By paradox, I mean something that initially looks contradictory or impossible, but in a different frame or at a different level is in fact deeply true.
I am talking about just holding the tension, not necessarily finding a resolution or closure to paradox. We must agree to live without resolution, at least for a while. This is very difficult for most people, largely because we have not been taught how to do this mentally or emotionally. We didn’t know we could—or even should. As Paul seems to say (and I paraphrase), hope would not be the virtue that it is if it led us to quick closure and we did not have to “wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24–25).
I think opening to this holding pattern is the very name and description of faith. Unfortunately, in Christianity, faith largely became believing things to be true or false (intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could themselves know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another Source (love).
We must move from a belief-based religion to a practice-based religion, or little will change. We will merely continue to argue about what we are supposed to believe and who the unbelievers are. We need contemplative practices to loosen our egoic attachment to certainty and retrain our minds to understand the wisdom of paradox. [1]
Contemplative prayer is largely just being present: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment to God instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. In our daily lives, this prayer is most commonly articulated as a willingness to say, “I don’t know.” We must not push the river, we must just trust that we are already in the river, and God is the certain flow and current.
That may sound impractical, but the way of faith is not the way of efficiency. So much of life is just a matter of listening and waiting and enjoying the expansiveness that comes from such willingness to hold. [2]
The Tension of Nonviolence
Peace activist John Dear recalls how Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) used nonviolence to bring long-ignored racial tension and injustice to global awareness:
One of Dr. King’s greatest examples of creative nonviolence was his 1963 direct action campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Thousands of African Americans, mainly teenagers, were arrested by white police officers for marching against segregation. They kept coming forward, even marching into the face of the fire hoses, and one day, a miracle happened—the white firemen put down their fire hoses and let them march. When that happened, segregation fell. King himself spent Easter week behind bars where he wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” perhaps the greatest document in U.S. history. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” he wrote in his jail cell. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” [1]
In his letter, King illustrated how a nonviolent stance both creates and “holds the tension” of conflict, opening opportunities for transformation:
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored…. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister…. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.… So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation….
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. [2]
Dear describes the creative and healing outcome of Jesus’ nonviolent life:
If we engage in active nonviolence as the nature of God … as Jesus did, then we will discover that nonviolence is infinitely creative. There are vastly more creative alternatives with nonviolent resistance to evil and injustice than with violent resistance….
From the perspective of creative nonviolence, the Gospels present a new image of what it means to be human. In the life of Jesus, we discover that to be human is to be nonviolent, to be nonviolent is to become, like Jesus, fully human…. Nonviolence leads us to the fullest possibilities of humanity—to becoming people of universal love, universal compassion, universal solidarity, universal peace, indeed, total nonviolence. [3]
Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever. —Archimedes
Richard Rohr uses images of a lever and a place to stand to explain why social transformation needs both action and contemplation:
Archimedes, a third-century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. He calculated that if the lever stretched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.
The fixed point is our place to stand. It is a contemplative stance: steady, centered, poised, and rooted. To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our “private room” (Matthew 6:6). However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy. Otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapism.
True contemplation, the great teachers say, is really quite down to earth and practical, and doesn’t require life in a monastery. It is, however, an utterly different way of receiving the moment, and therefore all of life. In order to have the capacity to “move the world,” we need some distancing and detachment from the diversionary nature and delusions of mass culture and the false self. Contemplation builds on the hard bottom of reality—as it is—without ideology, denial, or fantasy.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t have a fixed place to stand, a fulcrum of critical distance, and thus we cannot find our levers, or true “delivery systems,” as Bill Plotkin calls them [1], by which to move our world. We do not have the steadiness of spiritual practice to keep our sight keen and alive. Those who have plenty of opportunities for spiritual practice—for example, those in monasteries—often don’t have an access point beyond religion itself from which to speak or to serve much of our world. We need a delivery system in the world to provide the capacity for building bridges and connecting the dots of life.
Some degree of inner experience is necessary for true spiritual authority, but we need some form of outer validation, too. We need to be taken seriously as competent and committed individuals and not just “inner” people. Could this perhaps be what Jesus means by being both “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16)? God offers us quiet, contemplative eyes; God also calls us to prophetic and critical involvement in the pain and sufferings of our world—both at the same time. This is so obvious in the life and ministry of Jesus that I wonder why it has not been taught as an essential part of Christianity.
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John Chaffe; 5 On Friday
1. “Nobody’s smart enough to be wrong all the time.”
Ken Wilber, Philosopher and Founder of Integral Theory
Integral Theory is built upon the idea of seeing the entire universe as a massive interrelated epiphenomenon, not full of hierarchies but fully of holarchies.
Along with that is also the idea that everyone is, in fact, correct in their observation of the world.
Yes, each person was coming from a particular vantage point and describing it with their own, particular and limited vocabulary but everyone is at least partially correct.
This means that you and I can always learn something true about ultimate reality from those we interact with. Everyone has some part of the truth of everything correct, so we better listen carefully in case they say it to us.
2. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
Rumi, 13th Century Sufi Poet
I think that this may also resonate with Carl Jung’s idea of the two halves of life. The first half of life is all about wanting to change the world. The second half of life is all about changing ourselves. Some of us get to the tasks of the second half of life early.
Every darn day, I am realizing the need to change myself more and more. I can sadly admit that I did not always think that way. It is certainly a part of youthful hubris to think that we can or even should change the world without first changing ourselves.
3. “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
William Faulkner, American Novelist
Gotta love a good quote about leaving the familiar to journey into the unfamiliar Reminds me of The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell.
4. “All mature spirituality is about letting go.”
Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest
The 13th-century Christian preacher and mystic, Meister Eckhart von Hochheim, was the first person to teach “letting go” from a Christian perspective (I think).
Despite being trained in Latin and required by superiors to preach in Latin, he rebelled against his superiors and preached in the common, pre-Germanic hillside language. To communicate many of his ideas to the farmers in his care he would invent new words, words such as “gelassenheit.”
“Gelassenheit” was just Eckhart’s word to describe “letting-go-ness.” For him, spirituality was all about “gelassenheit, gelassenheit, gellasenheit.”
Surely, Rohr was influenced by Eckhart when he said this week’s 4th quote.
5. וְקִרְע֤וּ לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַל־בִּגְדֵיכֶ֔ם וְשׁ֖וּבוּ אֶל־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֑ם (“Rend your hearts rather than your garments and return to the Lord your God.”)
Joel 2:13
I do not know why, but this passage has passed through my mind numerous times this past week. There is something to it that haunts me in a good way.
Even the prophet Joel recognized our ability to change our appearances but not change our hearts. We certainly do the same thing today. We curate our appearances without remembering that God sees through our charades.
For theologian Sallie McFague (1933–2019), facing the truth of the world’s crises is the first step toward loving action and change.
Surely, the most difficult task facing us as we finally acknowledge our responsibility for planetary health is summed up in one small word: hope. Is it possible to have any? The more we learn of climate change—the apocalyptic future that awaits us unless we make deep, speedy changes in our use of fossil fuels—the more despairing we become…. It appears that we human beings do not have the will to live differently—justly and sustainably—to the degree necessary to save ourselves and our planet. The single most difficult obstacle to overcome is, then, our own lack of hope. The issue cannot be brushed aside. It is important to face the facts….
It will not be a world simply of less water, more heat, and fewer species of plants and animals; rather, it will be one of violent class wars over resources, the breakdown of civilization at all levels, and the end of certain facets of ordinary life that we have come to expect….
We must allow our imaginations to begin to live within the world that responsible science is telling us will be our fate unless drastic changes are made soon. We must do this so that we can acknowledge where our hope really resides—not with us, but in the power of love and renewal that lives within the universe, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God [and our cooperation with the Spirit].
McFague describes a faith-filled hope that grounds our engagement with a world on fire:
As we consider the basis for our hope, let us recall who God is. We must and can change our ways, live justly and sustainably on our planet, because of God, not because of ourselves. The hope we have lies in the radical transcendence of God…. God’s transcendence—God’s power of creative, redeeming, and sustaining love—is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is the milieu, the source, of power and love in which our world, our fragile, deteriorating world, exists. The world is not left to fend for itself, nor is God “in addition” to anything, everything. Rather, God is the life, love, truth, goodness, and beauty that empower the universe and shine out from it….
Thus, “mysticism” is simply this awareness of God’s presence in and through and with everything for its well-being…. Curiously, this faith, not in ourselves, but in God, can free us to live lives of radical change. Perhaps it is the only thing that can. We do not rely on such hope as a way to escape personal responsibility—“Let God do it”—but rather this hope frees us from the pressure of outcomes so that we can add our best efforts to the task at hand.
Engaged Christianity
Brian McLaren traces how he and Father Richard have been on similar journeys, charting a path for a Christian faith that is engaged with the world’s needs:
The titles of my books reveal that I was encountering something in my faith tradition that didn’t sit right with me…. I felt like I was peeling an onion. I noticed, for example, that people who spend a lot of time in church often seemed to be some of the meanest, more arrogant, and most judgmental people that I met. I noticed the same being true of me at times as well…. It seemed that Christianity had become for many people an evacuation plan (how to get your soul out of earth into heaven) rather than a transformation plan (how to help God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven).
When I was introduced to Richard Rohr in the late 90s, I realized that Richard was on a very similar path. He was many steps ahead of me and helped me to understand that there was something we were both struggling with and seeking to repair, fix, heal, correct in our inherited Western tradition…. Eventually, I came upon the important work of Thich Nhat Hanh, and I realized that Thich Nhat Hanh had been on a similar journey as Richard and me, but in his Buddhist tradition….
I think this parallel struggle, in Catholicism and in Protestantism, in Buddhism and Christianity, is the struggle to have a faith that isn’t an evacuation plan or an escape into private bliss, but a way of seeking to have a spiritual transformation in our own lives that will express itself in change and transformation in our world. We’re on a quest to find out how to have an engaged expression of deep spiritual life that makes a difference in a world on fire. [1]
Inspired by the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh and The Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism, McLaren wrote TheFourteen Precepts of Just and Generous Christianity. Here are some of the guidelines McLaren offers:
Lifelong Learning:Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, complete, and absolute truth…. Be open to the Holy Spirit and practice childlike humility….
Gentleness:Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education….
Love:Do not maintain anger or hatred…. Make love your highest goal.
Serenity:Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Dwell in the presence and peace of God to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you….
Nonviolence:Do not kill and do no harm, and do not stand by when others seek to do so. Find creative, just, and nonviolent ways to prevent or end conflicts and to promote and strengthen peace. [2]
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From our friend John Chaffee
“It is no secret that institutional religion in the West finds itself in decline… What treasures should we take from the burning building? One such treasure is the mystics – the creation-centered mystics (St. Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen) whose worldview is so fit for an eco-age.“
Perhaps what the world needs right now, are the Christian mystics, who speak from deep experiences of God about the world as being a sacrament worth taking care of rather than exploited.
The Christian mystics, if I am being honest, saved my own personal faith more than any formal theologian or logician.
In each quarter of 2024, we will explore a different aspect of Radical Resilience.In this video, CAC teacher Brian McLaren reflects upon the first theme: Engaging with a World on Fire.
Way back in 2007, I wrote a book called Everything Must Change. I wanted to understand what our greatest challenges and threats and problems were here on Earth as a global civilization. I spent a year researching the literature of global crises, and I came away with an understanding of four deep problems that we face.
First, we face a crisis with our planet. We are literally destroying our life support system, disrupting our climate, destroying our oceans, depleting our soil, polluting everything, committing ecocide against the whole web of life.
Second, we have a crisis of poverty and unequal distribution of wealth and power, concentrating more and more wealth and power among a tiny minority of people.
That leads to a third problem: the crisis of peace. We know we’re in trouble, so what do we do? We disseminate more and more weapons of increasing kill power. We set on fire all of our divisions: racial, economic, religious, social, gender related, and more.
We have the crises of the planet, poverty, peace; the fourth crisis is religion because all too often our religious communities are remaining on the sidelines. As Thomas Merton said, they’re “guilty bystanders.” I think much religion has been selling people an evacuation plan rather than helping them participate in a transformation plan.
McLaren points to people who integrated spirituality and action in service of the world’s healing:
The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn came of age in Vietnam right as his nation was descending into civil war. He didn’t want to be part of a religious community that was disengaged from his culture at a time of great need. He began to articulate what he called a form of engaged Buddhism.
It was the same with Thomas Merton. He became a Trappist monk. We might think of Trappists as people who are withdrawn from all the events and affairs of the world. But Merton, who wrote New Seeds of Contemplation, also wrote a book called Seeds of Destruction because he said he wanted a form of engaged contemplative Christian faith.
When Richard Rohr started the CAC, he wanted it to be the Center for Action and Contemplation: engaged contemplation rooted in a Christian tradition. And of course, this just draws from the example of Jesus, who withdrew for a period of contemplative silence at the beginning of his ministry, a period of forty days, the story says. But then of course, he engaged with the struggles and challenges of his people in his time.
Every day Jesus would follow that same rhythm: withdraw for solitude, but then come back to engage by healing, feeding, caring, welcoming, binding up the wounds of this world, and implanting in people a vision of resilience, engaging with a world on fire.
Contemplation, Love, and Action
Father Richard explains the importance of engaging with the world’s needs as a way of holding action and contemplation together:
I’m inspired by the word “engaged” from my Buddhist friends who talk about engaged Buddhism. What Jesus talks about is not attending or belonging but doing. He focuses on the way we do life and do life with and for the neighbor. If going to service on Sunday morning keeps us from volunteer work on Monday, service work on Thursday, and pro bono work on Friday, I don’t think it’s what Jesus had in mind. The soul is refined in engagement, in relationship, in doing, in connecting. [1]
When we named the Center for Action and Contemplation, I hoped our rather long name would itself keep us honest and force us toward balance and ongoing integration. However, over the years, I have witnessed how many of us attach to contemplation or to action for the wrong reasons. Introverts may use contemplation to affirm quiet time; those with the luxury of free time sometimes use it for “navel-gazing.” On the other hand, some activists see our call to action as an affirmation of their particular agenda and not much else. Neither is the delicate art and balance that we hope to affirm.
By contemplation, we mean the deliberate seeking of God through a willingness to detach from the passing self, the tyranny of emotions, the addiction to self-image, and the false promises of the world. Action, as we are using the word, means a decisive commitment to involvement and engagement in the social order. Issues will not be resolved by mere reflection, discussion, or even prayer; nor will they be resolved only by protests, boycotts, or votes. Rather, God works together with all those who love (see Romans 8:28).
Though “Love” is not in our Center’s name, I hope that it is the driving force behind all we do, just as it was for Jesus who knew God’s love intimately and fully, and for the early church who proclaimed that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Amidst this time of planetary change and disruption, the CAC envisions a movement of transformed people working together for a transformed world.
The only way out and through any dualism, including that between action and contemplation, is a kind of universal forgiveness of reality for being what it is.This becomes the bonding glue of grace which heals all separations that law, religion, or logic can never finally or fully restore.
We are all on this journey together and we are all in need of liberation (which might be a better word than salvation). God’s intention is never to shame the individual (which actually disempowers), but solidarity with and universal responsibility for the whole (which creates healthy people). That is an act of radical solidarity that few Christians seem to enjoy but which the CAC is committed to fostering. [2]
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From our friend of Friday Five… John Chaffee
It may be disruptive but we always need to be growing, changing, and evolving further into who we are here to be.
Why?
Because…
Your growing IS the world’s growing.
Your deepening IS the world’s deepening.
Your healing IS the world’s healing.
Your maturing IS the world’s maturing.
In my life experience, formal church work did not actually want or approve of my own growing, deepening, healing, and maturing. For anyone to do those things was dangerous to it’s status quo.
But we can’t stop growing just because it makes others uncomfortable. In the words of Gregory of Nyssa (an early Church Father), “To refuse to grow is a sin.”
In his book We Survived the End of the World, Steven Charleston writes about the Paiute prophet Wovoka (c. 1856–1932) who received a spiritual vision of the earth’s renewal, with equality and reconciliation for all people. Wovoka taught the Ghost Dance as a way of embodying the hope of this heavenly vision during a time of crisis. Charleston writes:
The core message—the vision of a renewal and reconciliation for all life—remained at the center of what motivated hope in the hearts of Native people from across the wide spectrum of languages and cultures. The essence of the vision was hope, not fear—and hope for all, not only for a few.…
The roots of fear run deep. The hope we embrace must run just as deep. No matter what happens we must keep dancing, hand in hand, joined in a circle of equality, constantly moving in the slow rotation of justice and prayer. Like Wovoka’s dancers, we must be dedicated to a vision and willing to dance for it for as long as it takes. That level of commitment is not common in our age, but it is what will be necessary if we are to diminish the apocalypse we see rising before us. Not magic, but faith is what will see us through.
Charleston reflects on how Wovoka’s Ghost Dance invites a willingness to go beyond what we think is possible:
As a Native American I am so struck by the fact that this dance, unlike any other, must take place without the drum. The use of the drum as a ubiquitous presence in our traditional worship leaves me wondering what it must have been like to dance without it, without that comforting heartbeat of the earth that formed the cadence for our movement as a people through time and space. The silence it leaves at the center of the Ghost Dance seems eerie to me, like stepping out into the emptiness of space.
Yet I have come to appreciate Wovoka more because of that silence. Without the drum, all I have is the physical sensation of being joined to my brothers and sisters in an endless circle. All I hear is our combined voice rising into the thin air in a lament and expectation. We are weightless and floating. Nothing grounds us but our own faith that someone out there is listening, and more important, someone who cares.
Wovoka’s dance reminds me that there are times in life when we must have the willingness to go beyond what we think is possible. We have never encountered a world like this before; how will we survive it, much less transform it? The silent drum forces me to recognize that in this dance we are moving into uncharted territory. We are stepping off the familiar into the unknown. We are creating a dance ground where none has existed before. The willingness, the faith, to take such a step is the haunting silence of the Ghost Dance.
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Jesus Gets Us……. Judging Others or Reaching Out….
Jesus didn’t judge others by their looks. He looked at their hearts. That meant reaching out to people who were outside his circle or society’s mainstream to get to know them individually. He was criticized, even mocked, for doing so, but he didn’t care because he loved all, even if it meant he would be wrongly judged for the friends he made and the company he kept.
One of the interesting things that happened while we were producing our Jesus Gets Us videos was the casting. We wanted to use people that we thought would immediately elicit judgment from others. You’ll see that nobody is doing anything wrong or illegal. Maybe they’re running down an alley, skateboarding, hanging out on a corner, or hopping a fence, but viewers have been conditioned by society to make assumptions that they’re up to no good. Probably doing something illegal or criminal.
It was very intentional to point out the unconscious bias we all have and that we need to overcome if we’re going to build trust, love, and peace with each other.
Scripture References:
Matthew 11:19; The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
Luke 5:29-32;Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Luke 6:6-11;
On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.
9 Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”
10 He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.
Richard Rohr observes how we grow spiritually through powerlessness and a willingness to change:
In Twelve Step Programs, there is no side to take. It is not a worthiness contest. There is only an absolutely necessary starting point! The experience of “powerlessness” is where we all must begin. The Twelve Steps are honest and humble enough to state this, just as Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now.… I do not really understand why God created the world this way. I do not know why “power is at its best in weakness” as Paul says, or “it is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).
Therapist Aundi Kolber writes about accepting our powerlessness as surrender and a way of “trying softer”:
Surrender can lead us to be gentler with ourselves and others, and sometimes it enables us to ride through the waves of pain that life inevitably brings…. Paradoxically, when we choose surrender for the right reasons, it empowers us. A curious mystery comes from honoring the truth that surrender with gentleness can be its own form of strength. Our ability to hold our lives with a flexible, open posture allows God’s power to manifest in us.… When we give ourselves permission to try softer in this way … we remain attuned to our own experiences, which enables us to connect to our truest selves…. We are able to move toward integration, wholeness and peace, open to what may come. Essentially, we grow in our resiliency. [1]
Richard continues:
God seems to have hidden holiness and wholeness in a secret place where only the humble will find it. Why such a disguise? Why such a game of hide-and-seek?
I cannot pretend to understand God, but this is what I see: People who have moved from seeming success to seeming success seldom understand success at all, except a very limited version of their own. People who fail to do something right, by even their own definition of right, are those who often break through to enlightenment and compassion. It is God’s greatest surprise and God’s constant disguise, but we only know it to be true by going through it and coming out on the other side. We cannot know it just by going to church, reading Scripture, or listening to someone else talk about it, even if we agree with them.
Until we bottom out and come to the limits of our own fuel supply, there is no reason to switch to a higher-octane fuel. For that is what is happening! Why would we? We will not learn to actively draw upon a Larger Source until our usual sources are depleted and revealed as wanting. In fact, we will not even know there is a Larger Source until our own sources and resources fail us.
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Jesus was fed up with politics, too.
From Jesus Gets Us…
In Jesus’ time, communities were deeply divided by bitter differences in religious beliefs, political positions, income inequality, legal status, and ethnic differences. Sound familiar?
Jesus lived in the middle of a culture war, too. And though the political systems were different (not exactly a representative democracy), the greed, hypocrisy, and oppression different groups used to get their way were very similar.
Let’s set the scene.
Jesus was born at the height of the Roman Empire’s power. They’d conquered most of the known world, and Israel was no exception. Unlike previous empires that would try to destroy cultures by displacing conquered peoples’ leaders, the Romans didn’t force people to change their religion or customs as long as they kept their obligations to the empire. Rome would install a client king (a puppet government) and exact tribute (cash) in lots of different ways. Families were charged taxes per person—farmers on crops, fishermen on catches, and travelers were charged fees to use the roads. This was in addition to local business and religious taxes charged by priests.
In Israel, political and religious factions were one and the same. Back then, it was Pharisees and Sadducees. Today, we have conservatives and liberals.
The Pharisees were the most religiously conservative leaders. They had the most influence among the common working poor, who were the majority. They believed that a king would come one day to conquer Rome with violence and free their nation. Some preyed upon a mostly illiterate population by adding extra rules and requirements that were designed to force the working poor into a posture of subjugation.
The Sadducees were wealthy aristocrats who had a vested financial interest in Roman rule. They were in charge of the temple, and they didn’t believe any savior king was coming. They made themselves wealthy by exacting unfair taxes and fees from the labor of their own people and by contriving money-making schemes that forced the poor to pay exorbitant prices to participate in temple sacrifice—a critical part of their religion.
There were Zealot groups who hid in the hills and violently resisted Roman occupation, and then there were the Samaritans, often oppressed and marginalized because of their racial and ethnic identities.
And so, the common farmer, fisherman, or craftsman’s family lived through a highly volatile political period. Overbearing religious leaders who despised and oppressed them, wealthy elites who ripped them off, racial and ethnic tension with neighbors, and sporadic violent outbreaks between an oppressive occupying army.
So where was Jesus in all of this? Did he align with the religious elites? With the wealthy and powerful? Or did he start an uprising to overthrow them?
None of the above.
He went from town to town, offering hope, new life, and modeling a different way to live and to change the world. Instead of pursuing power, money, or religious authority, he shared a loving and sacrificially generous way of living. He chose not to go along with the schemes others used to impact the world. Instead, he championed a better way.
And so, each of these political groups saw him as a threat. The Pharisees recognized his movement as an affront to their authority—exposing the hypocrisy of their practices. The Sadducees saw Jesus as a threat to their power and wealth because he exposed their money-making schemes. The Zealots violently rejected one of the essential themes of Jesus’ movement: love your enemy.
In the end, it took all three of these groups to have him killed. A Zealot (Judas) betrayed his location to those seeking to arrest him, the Sadducees brought him before the Romans to be executed, and when the Romans couldn’t find a crime committed, the Pharisees rallied the people to force Rome’s hand.
Isn’t it funny how political foes can come together to destroy a common enemy that threatens their designs? But in spite of their best efforts, his execution was only the beginning of a movement that continues to impact the world thousands of years later. Jesus’ movement was so impactful because he actively resisted and rejected participating in culture-war politics.
Scripture References:
Matthew 9:35-38,
The Workers Are Few
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Luke 19:10;
The Parable of the Ten Minas
(A Mina is about four months’ wages)
11 While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. 12 He said: “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. 13 So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas.[a] ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’
14 “But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’
15 “He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.
In the podcast The Cosmic We, CAC faculty member Dr. Barbara Holmes considers the collective resilience needed during times of crisis:
It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to survive. For many of us, villages are a thing of the past. We no longer draw our water from the village well or share the chores of barn raising, sowing, and harvesting. We can get … almost everything that we need online. Yet even though our societies are connected by technology, the rule of law, and a global economy, our relationships are deeply rooted in the memory of local spaces.
Villages are organizational spaces that hold our collective beginnings. They’re spaces that we can return to, if only through memory, when we are in need of welcoming and familiar places. What is a village but a local group of folks who share experiences, values, and mutual support in common? I’m using the word “village” to invoke similar spiritual and tribal commitments and obligations.… When there is a crisis, it takes a village to survive.
In each generation, we are tested. Will we love our neighbors as ourselves, or will we measure our responsibilities to one another in accordance with whomever we deem to be in or out of our social circles? And what of those unexpected moments of crisis, those critical events that place an entire village at risk? How do we survive together? How do we resist together? How do we respond to unspeakable brutality and the collective oppression of our neighbors?
Our lifelong efforts to map our uniqueness do not defeat our collective connections. Although I’m an individual with a name, family history, and embodiment as an African American woman, I am also inextricably connected to several villages that reflect my social, cultural, national, spiritual, and generational identifications. These connections require that I respond and resist when any village is under assault.…
There’s a way in which we can come together as groups, as collectives, as individuals, and seek the highest good of all of us by using our gifts creatively. There really are alternatives. It’s not one thing or another. We don’t have to have large systems determining the outcome of our lives. We just have to think through creatively how we want to maximize the flourishing of most of us, not just a few of us.…
Where is your community hurting? Where can you be of help to that community? What resources and gifts do you possess that will enhance the healing of your own body and of your community? As a village, we have a sacred duty to respond to the crises of oppression and injustice. We have a responsibility to respond to the suffering of others around us. But first, we have to figure out who we are, how we’re going to show up, and how we’re going to work with others, our neighbors, in a communal response to crisis.
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“Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.“
In his book Falling Upward, Richard Rohr helps us come to terms with the suffering of life:
Carl Jung (1875–1961) believed much suffering occurs unnecessarily because people won’t accept the “legitimate suffering” [1] that comes from being human. He wrote, “Behind [mental conflict] there is so often concealed all the natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear.” [2] Ironically, refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings a person ten times more suffering in the long run. It’s no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message in the male initiation rites that I have helped lead is “life is hard.” We really are our own worst enemy when we deny this.
Episcopal priest and researcher Alice Updike Scannell (1938–2019) identified radical resilience as the ability to endure, grow, and thrive through adversity:
We usually think of resilience as the ability to recover from an adverse experience and pick up our lives where we left off. It is that too.… But there are times when adversity permanently changes our reality and we can’t go back to the way things were.…
Resilience then becomes the work of coming through the adversity so that, at least on most days, we see our life as still worth living. With this kind of resilience, we come through the adversity knowing that we’re still ourselves, even though things are very different for us now. I call thisradical resilience.[3]
Richard sees suffering inherent in all of reality, but only humans have the choice to accept or deny it:
What I call “necessary” suffering goes on every day, seemingly without question. As I wrote this in the deserts of Arizona, I read that only one saguaro cactus seed out of a quarter of a million seeds ever makes it even to early maturity, and few reach full growth. Most of nature seems to totally accept major loss, gross inefficiency, mass extinctions, and short life spans as simply the price of life. Ironically, feeling that sadness, and even its full absurdity, pulls us into the general dance, the unified field, and an unexpected deep gratitude for what is given—with no necessity and so gratuitously.
Reality, creation, nature itself, what I call “the First Body of Christ,” has no choice in the matter of necessary suffering. It lives the message without saying yes or no to it. It holds and resolves all the foundational forces, all the elementary principles and particles within itself—willingly, it seems. This is the universe in its wholeness, the “great nest of being,” including even the powerless, invisible, and weak parts that have so little freedom or possibility. The Second Body of Christ, the formal church, always has the freedom to say yes or no. That very freedom allows it to say “no” much of the time, especially to any talk of dying, stumbling, admitting mistakes, or falling. Yet God seems ready and willing to wait for, and to empower, free will and a free “yes.”
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From John Chaffee’s Friday Five
“The status quo will never invite itself to be disrespected, disrupted, or overthrown.“
I hope it doesn’t seem too presumptuous to quote myself. Facebook reminded me of a memory from 3 years ago. If you remember, we were in the thick of Covid and there was a terrible amount of political upheaval.
Organizations, schools, churches, and schools were struggling with the world as we found it… and some chose to be innovative while others dug their heels in and defaulted back to old paradigms.
Hence why I wrote what I did.
Sometimes the status quo/the old paradigm of how to do things needs to be completely upended or overturned in order for any progress or innovation to happen. And, I think this is why the prophets of old were killed or scapegoated back in their day… they disrespected, disrupted, and overthrew the status quo because it was what the Good Lord inspired them to do!
This CO2- (Church Of 2) is where two guys meet each day to tighten up our Connections with Jesus. We start by placing the daily “My Utmost For His Highest” in this WordPress blog. Then we prayerfully select some matching worship music and usually pick out a few lyrics that fit especially well. Then we just start praying and editing and Bolding and adding comments and see where the Spirit takes us.
It’s been a blessing for both of us.
If you’d like to start a CO2, we’d be glad to help you and your partner get started. Also click the link below to see how others are doing CO2.Odds Monkey
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
