No Kidding

Almost everything that we experience is only partially serious; otherwise, no one who’s lived on earth for more than a few decades could still smile or laugh.

And the one thing that we experience with full seriousness - that's the very source of lightheartedness.

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Book Note: Recently someone emailed who thought OF can only be ordered online, but it’s also available at bookstores by special order: ISBN is 978-1-934611-00-5.

Note to Regular Commenters: Speaking of blogging etiquette, as I did last post, I’m forced to breach it until I get a handle on a new medical development. For hopefully not more than the next few weeks, you may find me having to visit your blog less often. I usually spend some time visiting new blogs as one of the few things I can do to make people aware of the book; for now, the little time I have for blogging has to be spent mostly on that.

Posting & Comments Style: Caps Lock & Religious Talk

Below is an excerpt from a comment that I came across on the discussion thread of another blog recently:

I WOULD LIKE 2 KNOW WHO UR 2 TELL ME OR ANYBODY IN THIS WORLD WHAT FAITH WE NEED TO BELIEVE IN. THERE IS ONLY 1 FAITH EVER 1 NEED 2 KNOW, 1 GOD AND 1 JESUS THE SON OF GOD… GOD IS NOT IN R SCHOOLS ANY MORE, U DON’T SEE JESUS’ PIC IN THE HALLS OF ANY OTHER PLACE TOO. THE PEOPLE THAT COME 2 THE USA SHOULD LIVE WITH R-GOD.

Ugh…

From time to time I’ve received similar all-caps emails and comments. As in this example, they’re sometimes unconsciously ironic: here, the preachy commentator clearly feels that he or she is in an excellent position to tell others exactly what “faith we need to believe in.” In contrast, the blogger whom this individual faults was holding a genuinely open dialog on different ways of understanding scripture.

As a matter of effective communication, it seems to me that Caps Lock generally isn’t a good idea. I think it’s likely to come off as loud, shrill, or defensive in tone and doesn’t add useful content to one’s message. From what I can see, Caps Lock's essential message is, “WHAT I’M SAYING IS REALLY REALLY TRUE AND IMPORTANT.” Now let’s try it without Caps Lock: “What I’m saying is really really true and important…”

I really don't think that either way makes the point...

1. Do you have any suggestions regarding posting/commenting techniques that strike you as especially effective or ineffective? Alternatively:

2. The first couple comments to this thread have responded more to the emotional tone and content of the above quotation that its use of Caps Lock. What do you think is the best way to handle remarks, whether in blogging or other contexts, whose content might be summarized as angry and featuring an "us against them" outlook in which you're clearly the one being perceived as "them?"

3. Where do you think people are coming from when they make such remarks?

Jesus and the Terrible Twos: Questions of Identity

“Joseph, come upstairs, quick – he’s doing it right now…” Mary called down to her husband in the basement as another round of hammer-pounding subsided.

“Honey, I’m kind of - into it…”

“Joe, you can work on that old sailboat anytime. Come up here – please. He’s doing it again.”

Joseph trudged upstairs with a sigh and quietly followed Mary into the living room. What is it this time, he pondered in his heart. The toddler Jesus was sitting slouched in a corner of the living room, pouting.

“I told you, young man…” Mary admonished him, “Put your toys away at once and come to bed. Who do you think you are?”

Jesus raised his head and gave a quick wink along with the thumbs-up sign.

“I told you.” Mary folded her arms and scowled at Joseph indignantly.

“And I told you,” said Joseph. “All I ever taught him was that sports handshake.”

Divinity and Humanity

In my experience of Christianity growing up, Jesus’ divinity was emphasized far more than his humanity. This was true even though Christianity teaches that Jesus was fully human as well as fully God.

My impression is that this emphasis is both widespread and rooted in the New Testament. The NT doesn’t have a word of description about Jesus’ physical appearance. (The familiar bearded figure is an artistic tradition.) There’s no indication that he has sex or sexual feelings. Jesus foresees everything that will happen to him, makes no mistakes, performs miracles, and there are no more than hints of personal struggle. In my experience, these are often minimized or explained away.

How do you view Jesus’ humanity and reconcile it with the idea of his unity with God?

What does it mean to be “close to God” or “enlightened?” How does it show? In an ability to perform miracles? By being perfect – no more bad days, no more missteps, no more misguided thoughts or feelings? Is enlightenment or nearness to God a goal that can be achieved once and for all? If not, what is it?

What’s your view of our relationship to the One in whom we live and move and have our being - and to which we quickly return after our brief lives - whether you conceive of the One as a Creator or as the universe or being itself?

Reference – Original Faith: Chapter Eight, Working from World-Center; Chapter Nine, Owning the Greater Claim.

The Potential Heroism of Us All: 9-11-01

Explosion

In Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC, the morning of September 11, 2001, was one in a string of clear, mild days that almost felt like the return of spring. As usual, I clicked off the news on my radio shortly before 8:30 AM and headed for the school, which stood almost directly across the street from my apartment.

I’d been scheduled to speak to a class first thing that morning and had just returned to my office when our principal made a quick detour to step inside my door. With a roomful of second graders at her back, Cintia spoke quietly. “Have you heard the news?” she asked.

“I was listening to the news before heading out this morning…” I didn’t know what she was referring to.

Cintia started to tell me something about a plane crash in New York when she paused in mid-sentence: “Did you hear that?” she asked, looking at me intently. I played it back… I had -- a low rumbling sound that had lasted two or three seconds. We would soon learn that a plane had just struck the Pentagon a couple miles away.

Patrick Henry Elementary School is a multi-cultural place, with parents who come from all over the world. Many have seen war and civil unrest first hand. That morning so many of them came to take their children home from school that our classrooms soon held half the usual number of students. Parents were often visibly agitated or upset. Our front office staff was being overrun. The children who remained started wanting to know why everyone was going home.

Like the rest of the nation, we didn’t know what was going on. Like New York, we knew that our city was a focus of attack.

Response

The rest of the day was a blur of intensely efficient activity. In fact, later on, with all the meetings and talks about emergency preparedness, I couldn’t help but think that it would be hard to surpass that day’s spontaneous efforts.

Non-classroom teacher staff quickly noticed and communicated to each other that the front office needed help retrieving and keeping track of the many children who were going home. A steady stream of us quietly went up and down the long hallways, asking for students at classroom doors as unobtrusively as possible. We tag-teamed: “Hey…!” somebody would call in a loud whisper to someone exiting with a child from a classroom. “We need Carlos too…” Some of us reassured parents, sometimes in their own language. Others, with better office skills, were able to function as extra hands on deck. Usually we anticipated needs ahead of time – no need to be asked.

Teachers knew what to do that day without benefit of the memos that would start coming in from the central office next morning. They answered student questions only to the extent necessary, emphasized that school was a safe place to be, and discouraged parents from exposing children to the images on TV.

The total, concentrated, and uninterrupted staff-attention to the needs of children and parents amazed me. I could see that if the walls had started coming down, all of us would have continued doing our jobs. Yes, I could see anxiety and even fear in some faces – and I could see the strength. In Cintia’s apprehensive but purposive manner when she’d asked if I’d heard it too. In Clare’s frightened eyes as she momentarily stepped into the hall early that morning to ask if I knew what was going on. I didn’t. Turning away, I caught the usual sound of her comforting, slightly singsong early-elementary schoolteacher’s voice as she stepped back into her room to continue with her lesson. I could see it in Ellen’s This is starting to get really crazy eyes – as the principal’s assistant, she was on the front line -- accompanied by her unfailing courtesy and refocus each time she turned to respond to the next parent crowding in at her desk.

Great and obvious courage was everywhere. There was something in each of us that quietly and presumptively refused to budge in the face of an insanity with the potential to threaten students. We moved through the day concertedly and fluidly, with “leadership qualities” springing up all over the place: a reorganized team intent on staying on top of whatever was coming at us.

The appalling spectacles and sounds of 9/11 were imprinted forever on the nation’s collective mind. Yet we also witnessed the extraordinary heroism of ordinary people: our firefighters, rescue workers, and random citizens caught up in the day’s events. Watching the staff of Patrick Henry Elementary School in action that day, I had the privilege of seeing clear intimations of the potential heroism of us all.

In God’s Politics, “God” Goes without Saying

First: A Quick Book Note – Original Faith’s subtitle has been changed to “What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You.” Over the coming days & weeks this will be reflected on this site and then on Amazon and other retail sites. The book’s contents are unchanged. Also please note the yellow Post-it on the right of this page. Reader feedback is always welcome.

Rendering It All Unto Caesar

What’s the best indicator that a political candidate will make wise decisions that serve the best interests of the nation and the wider world? Probably not the quantity of religious verbiage that he or she generates at election time. Identifying their political positions with their religious views even gives some leaders an irrational self confidence that God is on their side, leaving them feeling free to ignore opinions that differ from their own.

Basing political positions on religious beliefs is also inherently divisive. If, for example, one is against stem cell research because the Bible says “Thou shall not kill,” then reasoning and compromise around this issue is unlikely. It’s just too hard to convince those who don’t already think so that the commandment against killing people contains a footnote in numeric code or secret writing that refers to stem cells. (OK, I guess I tipped my hand about my own opinion on that one…)

As a practical matter, and as someone who’s not a fundamentalist, I'm glad, sort of, that progressives now get in on the song and dance routines about faith at election time. However, these requisite displays of public piety invite precisely the sort of religious hypocrisy that Jesus repeatedly speaks against in the gospels. Hypocrisy has already done more than enough to give religion a bad name in the eyes of large numbers of people. I’m not sure why we want to integrate an invitation to religious hypocrisy into our political process.

Frankly, I don’t even understand how such a large portion of the electorate takes this stuff seriously. The politicians may as well be wearing T-shirts that read “I’m talking like this to get myself elected!” Or perhaps, for the relatively subtle candidate: “God wants you to vote for me!”

Use a Hotter Grill for a Better BBQ this Labor Day

It seems to me that there's no proper role for religion and spirituality in politics other than an implicit one. A sound and genuine moral outlook, whatever its religious, philosophical or personal basis, will be shown by a person's conduct in whatever kind of work they do. If school principals and physicians don’t need to be prodded by pastors into talking like junior clergy members to prove they’re well qualified for their positions, neither do candidates for public office.

Professions of religious belief and church attendance don’t tell us a thing about whether a candidate will behave morally or even responsibly in office. Neither does lack of religious belief or church attendance indicate that a candidate for public office will behave irresponsibly or immorally.

What I’d like to see is serious investigative journalists grilling candidates on their connections to big business. Now that could be enlightening.