Noah and the Raven

"At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven." Genesis 8:6-7 (NRSV)


In June of 1843 Isabella Baumfree, having received a vision of God telling her to "travel up an' down the land showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them," left New York and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She became one of the greatest abolitionists and women's rights lecturers in American history. This is from one of her speeches, “Ain’t I a Woman?”

Ain't I A Woman?

That man over there say a woman
needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles or gives me the best place,
And ain't I a woman?

Look at me—Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns
and no man could head me...
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much and eat as much as a man--when I could get to it--
and bear the lash as well
and ain't I a woman?

I have born 13 children and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
none but Jesus heard me...
and ain't I a woman?

That little man in the back there say a woman
can't have as much rights as a man
‘cause Christ wasn't a woman.
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough
to turn the world upside down, all alone,
together women ought to be able to turn it rightside up again.


She flew above the limitations of slavery like a raven sailing over the vultures and turkey hawks. You know, the raven isn’t considered a terribly spiritual bird. But I hope to change your mind on that subject this Sunday. The topic of this Blog is “Noah and the Raven,” but while considering these ideas I’d nevertheless like you to remember Sojourner Truth.

“The Raven” of Edgar Allen Poe is arguably the best known black bird in American literature. But today I will introduce you to his ancient ancestor. Most of us have heard the story of Noah and the Ark….how Noah built the ship on dry land, then gathered two of each kind. Actually, Genesis 7 says he gathered seven pairs of “clean” animals and one pair of “unclean” animals…and seven pairs of all the bird species, too. All the living creatures…together in one place. Lions and tigers and bears…oh, my. Feeding time aboard the ark must have been a real zoo…and I don’t even want to think about what that boat smelled like after a few days with no potty break.

And insects! There are more insects on earth than all the land, air and sea animals, combined. Where did Noah keep the insects…for example, his thousands of species of fleas?
Of course, we’re not dealing with an animal documentary here. The story is clearly mythological. Trying to make Noah and the ark an historic event is like trying to make history out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

But just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Some of life’s greatest truths are told in stories which have no relationship to actual events. As biblical scholar Fr. Paul Fitzpatrick S.M., famously said: “Everything in the Bible is true, and some of it actually happened.”[1]

There is an older tale on which the flood epic of Genesis depends for many specific details, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the story, the author describes the pairs of animals, the ark, and other familiar landmarks, although the picture of the divine isn’t as majestic as the one drawn by the Hebrew Scriptures.

In those days the world teemed,
the people multiplied,
the world bellowed like a wild bull,
and the great god was aroused by the clamor.
Enlil heard the clamor
and he said to the gods in council,
"The uproar of mankind is intolerable
and sleep is no longer possible
by reason of the babel."
So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.

In Gilgamesh, the gods decided to eliminate humankind by a flood because we were making too much noise…and that was before boom boxes, rap music and country rock. Furthermore, they outdid themselves with the flood…listen to these words from the ancient poet:

The gods were frightened by the deluge,
And, shrinking back,
they ascended to the heaven of Anu.
The gods cowered like dogs
Crouched against the outer wall.

The story sounds a little more like Noah when the ark comes to rest after the flood begins to subside.

When the seventh day arrived,
I sent forth and set free a dove.
The dove went forth, but came back;
There was no resting-place for it
and she turned round.
Then I sent forth and set free a swallow.
The swallow went forth, but came back,
There was no resting-place
for it and she turned round.

So…the dove failed in her mission, eh? Let’s see who succeeds, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh:

Then I sent forth and set free a raven.
The raven went forth and,
seeing that the waters had diminished,
He eats, circles, caws, and turns not round.

Gilgamesh comes to dry land and immediately offers sacrifice:

I made a sacrifice and poured out a libation
on the mountain top…
When the gods smelled the sweet savor,
they gathered like flies over the sacrifice.

Just how indebted to this early story is the Genesis account? Listen to the Hebrew Scriptures describe what happened when Noah comes to dry land:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And…the LORD smelled the pleasing odor…

Now, there is a minor point of disagreement here. In Genesis, Noah first “opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven”, which did not return. “…it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.” But the raven doesn’t get credit for finding land! Noah sends out a dove, which fails in the mission, so he sends it out again! The dove returns again, this time with an olive branch in its beak. You know we’re clearly into mythology here, because olive trees are among the slowest growing trees in the Mediterranean region. The dove gets sent out again; and this time it doesn’t return.

So, why did the dove get the credit for discovering Mesopotamia, instead of the raven, like happened in the older story? Remember “clean & unclean” animals? Guess which one is clean and which is unclean.

I think the raven was gypped. And I think we need to take a good look at the symbolism of the raven in this story. I’ll tell you why… If the raven had been hailed as the heroic bird of the Flood Story, think of how that might have changed subsequent religious symbols. What if, instead of a white dove, the Holy Spirit was portrayed as a black raven? How would that have affected our attitude toward things dark, maybe even people darker than ourselves?

So, lets indulge ourselves and look at Noah’s raven…Catholic Encyclopedia: Raven symbolizes the Jews, confession & penance. Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore said in Mysteries of Genesis that the raven represents uncertainty, whereas the dove represents peace of mind and confidence in divine law.

But that’s only because the author of Genesis overlooked the fact that the raven—which was the first bird released—did not return. Here was no uncertain bird.

That ancient feathered explorer said to himself, “Whoo-hooo! Dry land ahoy. Now, let’s see…Shall I go find a nice green forest to live in, or go back to that smelly old ark with Noah and his thousands of species of fleas?”

To me, the raven represents openness and a willingness to be led by Spirit to new heights. You know what the best possible score is in golf? Eighteen. Has anybody ever scored it? Very unlikely. So, a total score of 18 on an 18-hole coursed is possible….theoretically.

What the raven represents to me is the possibility of unprecedented success, maybe even on the first try. I mean, it’s important to hang in there and persevere, right? But what if God shows me the answer instantly? Do I fly back to the Ark, with Noah and the fleas? Or shall I make like a blackbird and start raven about my good fortune? (Sorry. Couldn’t resist that one.)

Edgar Allen Poe’s literary raven croaks woefully from its perch atop the "bust of Pallas". Here’s the opening and the ending of his immortal poem, "The Raven":

Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door…


The poem ends:


And the Raven, never flitting,
still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas
just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming
of a demon's that is dreaming
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming
throws his shadows on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Okay, Edgar, we’ve got to work on our positive thoughts, espceially light and life and prosperity. For the gloomy Mr. Poe, who struggled with alcoholism and probably drug abuse, the raven represented darkness, fear, hopelessness. And, yes, there is that side to the raven symbolism. Practitioners of dark magic are often shown with blackbirds. But the whole idea about “dark is bad, light is good” --which is found in mythologies and fairy tales cross-culturally and cross-racially--probably comes from the fact that humans are almost instinctively afraid of the dark, because we are a daylight-feeding, daytime-browsing species. We’re diurnals…day creatures. If we were nocturnals, imagine the difference.

In my science fiction novel, The Princess and the Prophet (see ordering information to the right of his column), one set of characters are warren-dwelling, furry creatures of high intelligence who travel through space on vast city ships. But because they are a night-active species, their religious language is exactly opposite from ours. Listen as the Captain Urlis Tarkamin of the furry creatures prays a benediction over his human guests:

“May the blessings of Holy Darkness descend upon you with its gloom of protection.”

Later, when his son, Hozaine, learns a great truth, here’s how I imagined it:

(Hozaine)…put a paw over his mouth as the Sacred Gloom of Wisdom descended upon him, blessing his mind with the Darkness of Divine Knowledge.

The incident of Noah and the raven can show what happens when prejudices take over. The raven should have gotten the credit, but the raven was “unclean” and the raven was…well… black. People are like that. We are afraid of things that are different. And as day creatures, we fear the dark. But darkness can be a good thing, especially if you’re alone with your honey on a starry night. And darkness is a good time for rest. Daylight is a good thing, too. Especially if you’re coaching a little league game or grilling hamburgers at a church picnic.

Ravens…doves….there isn’t much genetic difference between them. And Lord knows, we need to treat all our ravens and doves with love and respect. Not just in the outer world, either. Your raven thoughts are uncertain moments…you need to respect those hesitations. Sometimes, ravens are the voice of God saying, “Slow down...” Other times, they are like Noah’s bird that flies off boldly and finds its nest on the first attempt. The dove shows peace of mind and confidence in divine law…but I gotta tell you…there’s something to be said for the raven…the quiet, eager, opportunistic raven.

People need to be ready to fly straight through the open door when opportunity presents itself, too. That is part of raven consciousness…

Sojourner Truth was a raven. She saw her duty and flew right to it. She was not daunted by the prejudices of race consciousness. She was willing to follow her guidance instantly, and she never looked back. After slavery was ended, she fought endlessly for women’s rights.

Maybe, if Christianity had noticed that it was the raven who actually found the new earth, the raven might have become a great symbol of hope and faith and peace. Maybe the Holy Spirit would be immortalized in art as a raven. Maybe things would have been different. But if we realize that now, then we can make things different in our lives and in our attitudes. There is no place for bigotry. There is no place for fear.

There is only faith, trust, and certainty when we fly forth as bold ravens of the Lord God.

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Genesis 8:6-12

6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made 7and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; 9but the dove found no place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. 10He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; 11and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. 12Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.


Hebrews 11:6-7

6And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 7By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.






[1] Paul Fitzpatrick S.M., online source: http://www.qaya.org/blog//?p=414 [Accessed 04-07-08)

British Scientist Discovers Flying Penguins

For an amazing short video, take a look at the following produced by BBC and just released April 1, 2008:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxmpihCjqw


PS: In a Cosmos full of everyday miracles, why not believe that penguins could fly?

Higher Participatory Reality

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” .- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There is, at the heart of an apparently impersonal Universe, a higher participatory Reality which is transpersonal, caring and supportive. The whole process of existence functions like a grand computer program that runs endlessly, encompassing everything which exists or could exist and all the principles by which Existence functions, evolving and improving while re-arranging the furniture of the Cosmos and re-creating in myriad shapes the beauty of new forms. Humans are part of this program, like subroutines of a master program which is alive and making conscious decisions as the whole network learns and grows.

Nature is at once symbiotic and predatory. Ecologies are built on subsystems in which both cooperative and hunter-prey relationships thrive, all working together while simultaneously competing for resources. Plants and animals interact in the dance of life. Even through violent competition for resources and food, the needs of the system are served. To feed her family, lioness kills zebra. While this may seem cruel to the zebra, their predator-prey relationship culls the zebra herd of weaker individuals.

The driving force of this evolutionary program seems geared toward producing beings like you and me, creatures who can walk out under a night sky, ask questions about what it all means, and appreciate the work of mastery unfolding before us. Evolution knows where it is going, as Jesuit scholar Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said. Teilhard believed the very program of the Cosmos is headed toward Union with God:

“Without a doubt, deep down in the most spiritualized zones of our being, certain interior needs subsist which are inexorably forcing us to pursue our forward march. ... Doubling, and little by little relaying the push coming from the bottom, the appearance of an attraction descending from the top reveals itself as organically indispensable for the rest of the operation; --- indispensable for sustaining the vital evolutionary thrust… There can be ...only one kind of Universe ---convergent, [with]---some illumination, some vivifying revelation at the end of the tunnel..." [1]

In other words, Divine Order works in and through the natural order to bring about its creative, dynamic, infinitely diverse expressions. The divine-within is the local articulation of God as artist, creating new beauty and enjoying the adventure of life. We are consumer-packaged theophanies exploring the limitless possibilities available in a Cosmos where free will and divine order interact to “harness for God the energies of love” and reach heights yet unknown.
________________________________________

[1] http://www.noosphere.cc/tdc1.html

Excerpt from Just-Submitted Q&A Column

Dear Mr. Shepherd: What are Unity's views on the evil and hatred emanating from the entire Arab Islamic culture? I am stuck in a stage of repulsion, anger, and contempt for a culture that raises their children to kill themselves as a means to murdering as many people as possible, a culture that gives nothing to humanity except oppression and destruction, a culture whose heroes are mass murderers. If I were a young man instead of a middle-aged woman, I would probably become a soldier so I could fight this scourge with my entire being. I think it is strange that Unity is so silent when evil is so prominent. I wish Unity Magazine contained articles that address these issues.

P.G., Bronx, NY

Dear P.G.: Well, I am fairly certain your letter has my readers leaning forward in their chairs. I don’t think I’ve ever reproduced anything more strongly worded in the fifteen years I’ve been writing my (Unity Magazine) column. Yes, I believe Unity people should address current events, especially those which are divisive and painful. Conflicts which lead to shouts of trembling rage cannot be resolved without first acknowledging these emotions exist. Let me I reiterate that I am NOT speaking for Unity, just giving my theological-political analysis...so here goes.

You mention being “stuck in a stage of repulsion, anger, and contempt...” Let me begin by acknowledging that your epistle comes from deep inside my storage vault of worthy-yet-unpublished correspondence. Since it is something you wrote several years ago (2003), it may not represent your current viewpoint. (You might be un-stuck by now.) However, this old letter has raised some new issues which I want to address today.

From unpublished parts your two-page letter, I surmise you are a native New Yorker, a strong supporter of Israel, and a woman of the Jewish faith. These three factors make it somewhat easier to understand the distress you must have felt when events of 911 hit home, literally. Many Americans, indeed many people around the world, are sympathetic to the struggles of the Jewish people and are strong supporters of a free and independent State of Israel. Certainly, the torrent of violence from hostile neighbors, which Israel has endured since its creation by United Nations mandate in 1948, has not shown any signs of abating. There are deep and bitter sources of this conflict, as I am sure you know.

After what the Hebrew people suffered through history, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, the United Nations decided that Jews deserved a place to settle down and raise their families, and the ancestral home of Israel was the logical choice. However, the battle over that 60-year-old decision still rages today, and there are complicated religious and political overtones to the ongoing struggle. Westerners tend to see Israel as the re-established biblical homeland for Jewish emigrants to return after the Diaspora. However, most Middle Eastern Muslims see Israel not as an ancient land reborn but as a European colony not unlike the Crusader kingdoms of the Middle Ages.

Commentators have frequently noted how odd it is that a land considered so holy by many religious faiths continues to be the focal point of so much antagonism. Much of the ongoing unrest is fed by a fatal combination of high unemployment and religious fanaticism in the Palestinian communities, coupled with endless armed clashes between Israelis and Arabs. Although I agree with your assessment of the outrageous brutality which radical Islam has brought to the world, I don’t see how this makes all Muslims equally guilty agents of hatred and violence. The problem stems not from ordinary believers but from a rather small percentage of extremists who have hijacked Islamic tradition and gotten way too much media coverage for their frankly heretical point of view. Violent opposition to Israel and Western society comes not from ordinary followers of Islam but from the Islamists, which apparently is the culturally preferred Muslim word for their radicals.

Historically speaking, your comment that Islam is “a culture that gives nothing to humanity except oppression and destruction” is simply untrue. Muslim scholars in the Middle Ages saved much of Greek and Roman literature and sciences; Islamic civilization invented algebra (an Arabic word) and the university system. Arab traders opened routes to Africa and Asia. In fact, some historians argue that trade with the Muslim Near East inaugurated the European Renaissance movement which subsequently revitalized slumbering Western Civilization. During the five hundred years when Spain was a Muslim country under the Moors, Islamic culture promoted a remarkable degree of religious tolerance on the Iberian Peninsula. Jews and Christians and Muslims lived together in a reasonable measure of harmony, because the Prophet Muhammad had told his followers to respect “people of the Book,” i.e., those whose religious traditions flow from the Jewish and Christian Bible. Unquestionably, those who chant their hatred for Jews and Christians in the streets of the Arab world are not in harmony with the teachings of their great Prophet, any more than the KKK is showing its Christian character by burning a cross on someone’s lawn.

Although every faith has its fanatics, sometimes strong convictions can bring out the best in people, even among those with different religions. Corrie Ten Boom was a young Christian woman whose family decided to join the Dutch equivalent to the Underground Railroad. They began secretly housing Jews who were escaping from the Nazi’s. Corrie recorded their remarkable story in her bestselling autobiography The Hiding Place. Not all Dutchmen were as faithful to the teaching of Jesus as the Ten Boom family. After her pastor refused to risk helping runaways because the fugitives were Jews, Corrie’s father, Casper Ten Boom, dryly evaluated this “Christian” minister by observing that just because a mouse lives in a cookie jar doesn’t make him a cookie.[1]

Having said that, it is important to recognize that a major disconnect exists between Islamic and Western societies. Historian Karen Armstrong has identified a reality which cannot be ignored, i.e., that religious fervor runs deep in the Muslim world and it can reach vituperative levels which are unintelligible to Westerners. Armstrong writes in a pre-911 book which now sounds prophetic:

Obviously, the religious passions in the Middle East are no longer always amenable to rational control. The area has become a tinderbox that could ignite into a nuclear holocaust, if this extreme spirit were allowed to get out of control.[2]

Some Islamic scholars argue that Muslims who hate all non-Muslims are not being true to the faith of Islam, any more than burning crosses in the night represents true Christianity. Both Jesus and Muhammad wanted their follower to live in peace and harmony with God and neighbor. As a Christian, I am outraged at some things which misguided and fanatical people have been done in the name of Jesus Christ, and I know from personal contact with American Muslims that they feel the same about radical Islamists who claim to be acting in the name of the whole religion but are just hiding under the mantle of a great world faith in order to spread prejudice, hatred and violence.

Unity is not silent on these issues, because the work which Silent Unity began over a century ago is today a network of praying and caring people around the earth. Prayer for peace and justice seems mandatory for people of good will. If humanity has learned anything from its great religious teachers it should be that peaceful cooperation is the only hope for a healthy and prosperous human society. The ancient debt to God and neighbor is not so much an obligation as it is the only healthy recourse for a world united by the Internet, facing global geo-political, ecological and climatological challenges, and reaching outward to the stars as one human family.

Unity believes in the Divine-within, that each sentient being is best understood as imago Dei, the image and likeness of God in a concrete, finite expression. And, yes, this includes even terrorists whose painful path has led them to choose a religion of hate. I do not presume to understand their motivations or their decisions; I certainly do not condone their actions. But I do believe we should pray for everyone involved while affirming that God works in and through every circumstance. Take a look at the next letter, also from the vault, written around the same time you took pen in hand, in which a woman twice your age has some advice for all of us.

Dear Tom: I apologize for not typing. I am 84 and physically handicapped, but I hope you can read this (on yellow lined paper). I recently read one your fine answer to someone who asked about non-Christians going to heaven. It strikes me that God is not Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc. God is spirit and to be worshipped in Spirit and Truth, as I think it says in the New Testament. It seems to me that all our human-made concepts about God, heaven, hell, etc. are for our convenience of communication, like Daylight Savings or Standard Time. Can you believe it, someone once asked me why God made Daylight Savings time? What do you think about that?
J.M., Yellow Springs, OH

Dear J.M.: You said it all: “God is not Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, etc..” (Usually, I’m Christian. But some days I find myself a firm believer in the faith of Etc.) I’m only sorry I didn’t publish your letter a few years ago when I received it and stuck it into my “goodies to hold for later” bag. People can distort the kindest sentiments into expressions of hate and discord, and the previous letter-writer was deeply troubled by this tendency in radical Islam. The best way to oppose such hatred is to hold to the truth of love and the basic goodness of all people, everywhere. This may be hard to see sometimes, but the sun never vanishes simply because clouds form in the earth’s atmosphere.

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[1] Casper Ten Boom www.worldofquotes.com/author/Casper-Ten-Boom/1/index.html
[2] Karen Armstrong, Holy War (NY: Anchor Books, 2001), 538.

I Can See Clearly Now

I Can See Clearly Now
Lyrics by Johnny Nash

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.


In his book Power Through Constructive Thinking Emmet Fox writes:

“…there exists a mystic power that is able to transform your life… This mystic but intensely real force can pick you up today, now, from the midst of failure, ruin, misery, despair – and in the twinkling of an eye…solve your problems, smooth out your difficulties, cut you free from any entanglements, and place you clear, safe, and happy upon the highroad of freedom and opportunity… This Power is to be found within your own consciousness, the last place that most people would look for it.”

Note what Fox does NOT say: He does not say you will henceforth and forever avoid failure, ruin, misery, despair and problems…Rather, when those impostors come your way, the “mystic power” of God can instantly “pick you up” and as Fox says: “…place you clear, safe, and happy upon the highroad of freedom and opportunity...”

Like the song by Johnny Nash, I want to see clearly now…I want to see the world with such faith that I recognize problems are the leading edge of opportunities.

When I was an Army chaplain serving in Colorado, I once had a beautiful young female soldier come to my office with tears in her eyes because she and her soldier-husband were being evicted from their apartment. I told her the power of God can accomplish any task.

She said, rather sharply, “Can it pay the rent?” She was expecting my positive thinking to be silenced by that complaint in question form.

But, like a good Unity person, I said, “Yes.”

“Right away?” she insisted. “Today?”

“If that’s what you need, yes,” I replied.

She scoffed…quietly. After all, she was a junior enlisted member and I was a captain. But I insisted it was true. She turned to leave my office and her husband met her at the door with news of a new apartment he had just found. It was affordable, and they could move in right away. Today.

I didn’t say a word. When you work with Truth principles, you can get a little smug sometimes if you're not careful.

“This Power is to be found within your own consciousness, the last place that most people would look for it.”

Emmet Fox is echoing, or perhaps more accurately influencing, Eric Butterworth's great story at the very beginning of Discover the Power Within You. The gods want to hide human divinity someplace we will never look. After considering several remote locations, the senior god says they will hide it deep within us, which Fox and Butterworth rightly note as the last place anyone would look for it. Yet, science has given comfort to those of us who believe we have great, unknown power deep within us, and the support comes from one of my favorite athiests, Dr. Carl Sagan.

Twenty years ago, astronomer Carl Sagan used his PBS-TV mini-Series Cosmos to teach the Western world about cosmic evolution. We learned that the metals and heavier elements in our bodies were formed in the supernovas of long-gone stars, “billions and billions” of years ago. “You are star stuff,” Carl Sagan said. He taught people all over the world to see themselves from a new vantage point, standing on the shore of the cosmic ocean where our chemistries were born.

As it is true about your bodies in the physical Universe, so is it true of your essential nature. You are not just star-stuff…You are made of God-stuff. God-energy, which Metaphysical Christianity calls by the rather archaic word substance.

Because there is only One Presence and One Power--God, the Good, Omnipotent--then virtually anything is possible. God is in all and through all. This means your consciousness is God-consciousness. Substance is the God-energy behind everything which outpictures in the Cosmos. It is the power-matrix which causes everything to exist. Theologians call this panentheism, the idea that everything is in God, and generated out of God, like a fish is in the ocean in which it has evolved.

Understanding the fundamentals of Christian metaphysics means nothing can faze you. Nothing can disturb you. You may hurt and you might even suffer, but although you travel through the places of deep darkness, you shall not fear. Feelings of joy may not be possible at all times, but peace is. I love the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing affright you.
All things pass.
God is unchanging.
Patience obtains all.
Whoever has God needs nothing else.
God alone suffices.

To strive for this kind of deep, abiding faith is to know God is all you need… because, as our friends in Religious Science say, “God is All.” The only limit to God’s ability to outpicture good in our lives is our limited ability to visualize it, believe it, accept it, feel worthy of it, and allow it to appear. As Emmet Fox has said, the Power of God-within “can teach you all things that you need to know, if only you are receptive and teachable…” EVERYTHING is a source of good! EVERY circumstance can yield great bounties for everyone concerned.

Does that mean everything which happens is a good experience? Of course not. People hurt sometimes. They lose friends, relatives, loved ones, to the arms of death. They may fail in business, make mistakes, say foolish things, crash into walls or wade through thorn bushes because they’'ve wandered off the path. But person following a Unity Way of life knows this great Truth:

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS…GOD-POWER WITHIN ME CAN CONVERT THIS APPARENT EVIL INTO A GOOD.

You can begin again with new opportunities. Build again. Love again. Expand your mind to expect greater good, and it comes. It surely comes. It cannot be prevented from arriving unless you refuse delivery!

When you and I realize the True nature of all things, we’ll see clearly. All obstacles in our way will stop being “obstacles” and become benches to rest upon, guideposts to mark the path, or refreshing stopovers along the journey.

We are God-stuff… With God-stuff, there’s NOTHING we can’t handle. Problems are the leading edge of opportunities. No problem can defeat you. Bring it on, Universe.

“I can see clearly now…” (Click on link below for Midi file, music and lyrics)

http://www.ezgeta.com/clearly.html

PS: Divine Order strikes again? I just noticed, the Word for today (03-31-08) is New Life.

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Excerpt from Power Through Constructive Thinking by Emmet Fox:

Strange as it may seem to you, there exists a mystic power that is able to transform your life so thoroughly, so radically, so completely, that when the process is completed your own friends would hardly recognize you, and, in fact, you would scarcely be able to recognize yourself... This mystic but intensely real force can pick you up today, now, from the midst of failure, ruin, misery, despair – and in the twinkling of an eye…solve your problems, smooth out your difficulties, cut you free from any entanglements, and place you clear, safe, and happy upon the highroad of freedom and opportunity.

It can lift you out of an invalid’s bed, make you sound and well once more, and free to go out into the world to shape your life as you will. It can throw open the prison door and liberate the captive. It has a magical healing balm for the bruised or broken heart. This mystic Power can teach you all things that you need to know, if only you are receptive and teachable….It can furnish you with the prosperity that means freedom…

But where, it will naturally be asked, is this wonderful, mystic Power to be contacted? …The answer is perfectly simple. This Power is to be found within your own consciousness, the last place that most people would look for it. Right within your own mentality there lies a source of energy stronger than electricity, more potent than high explosive, unlimited and inexhaustible.

Target Practice: Politics and Public Service

When I taught middle school in the late 1990's, I became aware of the pervasive cynicism which flourishes in the minds of adolescents. And today I am seeing the same mentality in grown-ups, especially in reference to the public figures in American life.

I am consistently amazed that anyone with an ounce of self-respect enters the public arena in elective politics or government service any more. It's not that political office and non-elective jobs in the government are such an evil profession, right the contrary. It's just that Americans have become so cynical, hyper-critical and self-righteous about anyone who undertakes public service. The lone exception is military service, which retains a kind of romantic allure amid the tragic and brutal war we are now waging against civilian combatants. This renewed respect for the military community sounds almost like the US citizenry is attempting to atone for an unpaid debt of gratitude owed to Vietnam era veterans, men and women who bore the brunt of another failed foreign policy decision which led us to a war we should not have fought. As a Vietnam veteran, I rejoice that my countrymen are appreciative of soldiers today--better late than never. However, the best way to honor those who serve is by disengaging from conflicts which are none of our business and which cannot be settled by outsiders, like Vietnam and Iraq.

Although the military is finally getting the respect long overdue, the real tragedy of American consciousness is the brutal way our news media--and perhaps average citizen--attacks everyone else in public service. This pervasive cynicism is poison to republican democracy, where the people choose representatives to act in their place and to make decisions which affect the whole society. Frankly, I grow weary of the nit-picking way that pundits (i.e., political "experts") and news commentators (former traffic reporters and weekend weathermen) attack and castigate public figures and hold them to a standard of perfection which no reasonable person could demand of a friend, colleague or loved one.

Government workers are either "bureaucrats" or “political appointees” who mindlessly apply regulation and add processing burdens to every action for the express purpose of thwarting personal freedom and suppressing the expansion of commerce. Politicians are either crooks in it for personal gain or hypocrites who will say anything to get elected.

And what person of right mind would insist on linguistic perfection and a photographic memory in others? Granted, when John McCain confuses Iraq and Iran, that’s a little scary, but it was either a “senior moment” or a typical McCain goof-up. Nobody but Keith Olbermann actually believes Senator McCain doesn’t know the difference between two important Muslim nations with their widely divergent ethnic backgrounds, languages and histories. But the pundits had a field day at McCain's expense. Similiarly, when Barack Obama called his typical white grandmother a typical white grandmother, he was assailed as abusively lumping all Caucasians together. Then Hillary Clinton scrambled the details of a story about a plane landing 12 years ago, mistakenly recalling that they were under sniper fire. Of course, she was accused of lying, instead of simply having a faulty memory. America was born in a revolution, and we still enjoy overthrowing our leaders.

Don’t misunderstand my tone here. Some politicians abuse their trust. But there is a qualitative difference between Bill Clinton clumsily covering his adultery and George W. Bush pushing false intelligence reports for an excuse to take us to war. What has happened is that in this 24-hour-a-day-cable-news-cycle-blogospheric information society, and the stain on Monica’s dress has become as important as the 4,000 Americans and God-knows-how-many Iraqis who have died as a result of the criminal misconduct of this administration’s foreign policy. Brittany Spears' latest forray into rehab and the massive failure of the housing industry have merged into one dull ache. Americans can't tell the celebrities from the statesmen any more. No wonder people fear to enter public service.

Yet, I recall from my brief foray into elective politics, that most men and women who enter government service are decent, honorable, hard-working people who want to serve their communities, states and nation. This applies both to elected officials and public servants--dare we pronounce with a blessing the odious words?-- bureaucrats and politicians.

If I could wave my magic wand it would be to correct two excesses in the media and in society at large: people would turn from cynicism about ALL public figures to examine the behaviors of SOME officials which have serious consequences for all Americans. Corruption and deceit in high places should not be tolerated. However, when it comes to what people do in their private lives or whether they perfectly remember every incident of perfectly say everything in an inoffensive way--get real, grow up, live and let live, love thy enemies, forgive them for they know not what they do...pick your favorite cliché.

In any event, we need to take a lesson from Will Bowen and get a little more complaint-free when looking at people in public service. America would be a better place if grown-ups quit playing "Gotcha!" games. I could understand that in my middle schoolers, but isn't it about time we adults stopped arguing about what he said/she said and get back to studying ways to make this nation a better, healthier, happier place to live?

The Gospel According to Popeye

"I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam..."

I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam
I'm Popeye the sailor man. [1]

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OK...if you look at the b&w cartoon above and wax nostolgic, you're probably old enough to remember when TV cartoons were b&w and only available Saturday mornings. (The rest of you, bear with me...I'm not making this up.)

What brings this image to mind is Popeye the Sailor man's famous line, "I yam what I yam..." (Do any of you cable-TV-color-cartoons-on-demand kids need that translated?) I confess a certain degree of divine snickering inside the closet of my soul when I hear some metaphysical teacher rapturize about The I AM, identifying It with the divine-within and tying the whole package together with strings leading from Mount Sinai to Jesus in the Upper Room. I know, I know. It's irreverent, probably sacreligious, but whenever someone invokes the I AM, I can't help hearing a gruff-voice cackling, "Arf-arf-arf--well, blow me down!"

So, what is this odd use of I am--first person singular of the verb to be--all about, anyway? Who got it right, Emmet Fox or Popeye the Sailor Man? If you have a few minutes to spare, we can briefly stroll through the biblical landscape and see if any new shrubbery bursts into light.

First, let's visit Moses at Mount Sinai. You know the story from the book of Exodus:

[God said from the burning bush] "I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" [Exodus 3:10-11]

God has told him to head back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to set the Hebrew people free. But Moses doesn't want the job, so he starts weaseling like a middle schooler with an essay to write over the weekend:

Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, "What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" [vs. 13]

This was more than weaseling. In the ancient world, to be able to call something by its name was often considered as having power over it. Hence, Adam names the animals in Genesis as a sign of his dominion over the beasts and birds. (Nowadays, the way humans are mis-managing the planet, one could argue that the beasts and birds should have named us.)

So, if this Sinai deity tells Moses his name, it's like giving Aladin the secret word to put the genie back in the bottle until it does his bidding. But the God of Israel is no air-headed desert jin. He gives Moses a cryptic reply:

God said to Moses, "I am who I am." He said further, "Thus you shall say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.' " [vs. 14]

One can imagine Moses shaking his head, muttering, "Right...sure you are. But what's your name!?" Actually, there are a number of things happening in that odd juxtaposition of inactive verbs. First, one of the ancient Semitic names of God involves variations on the sound Ya, sometimes Ja. Many scholars believe the actual name of this deity may have been Yahu. This God-name was identified by First Testament writers who have come to be called the J-Source. So, when you hear a biblical name or place with a strong Ja or Ya in the word, you've got a link to the ancient root word for one of the deities in pre-Israelite times. Some examples include: Elijah, halleleu-yah (praise Ya), and Joshua (also Yeshua, Jesus = Yahu is salvation). Another ancient Hebraic name for God is El, and I'll leave you to search your memory for the many, many biblical names and places which use this expression.

Now, what does this have to do with the goofy response Moses got from God when asked for His name? Because the most common word for God is the tetragrammaton, which are four Hebrew letters transliterated into the English alphabet as YHWH. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, but the best guess about how this was pronounced is Yahweh (YA-way). And that name sounds like--you guessed it--a form of the Hebrew verb to be. It was a play on words in the Hebrew; I AM = Yahweh = I let be what I let be = You don't get to say my name out loud, Buster!

The name of God is so sacred to Judaism that to this day Jews will not speak the word Yahweh when they encounter it in the text. And it appears over 6,800 times in the Hebrew! When the Dead Sea scrolls came to Kansas City, I learned something amazing--the hand-copied ancient manuscript had set off the tetragrammaton in distinctly different letters, slightly larger, italicized, and written in an unmistakably different script. No reader could accidentally stumble across that Name of God and say it out loud, which Jews would consider taking the Name of the Lord in vain. When Jews come to that word, they read it as Adonai, which means the Lord, instead of Yahweh.

In the summer of my middler year at seminary I went on active duty with the US Army to take the Chaplain Officer's Basic Course in preparation for my eventual career as a military chaplain. One vivid menmory I have is the diversity of the students-in-uniform. Catholic priests, all sorts of Protestants, Eastern Orthodox clergy, and a good contingent of Rabbis. When we held an evening prayer meeting with the whole student body, whoever was in charge of putting the program together chose a psalm for the biblical reading, figuring it would meet everyone's needs. Except the Catholic chaplain who selected the reading used the Jerusalem Bible, which frequently uses the word Yahweh for God. When the rabbi got up to do his part in the program, he began by lightly chiding us for saying the Divine Name in public, something which they simply never do. It was a learning experience for all, and it harkens back to the ancient reverence for this peculiar set of sounds which many English Bibles translate "the Lord" except on Mount Sinai, where it is "I am who I am" or sometimes, and perhaps better translated, "I let be what I let be."

The Second Testanment writers were aware of this connection between the Divine Name and the verb to be. John's gospel records the following:

[And Jesus said] "Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad." Then the Jews [Judeans] said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM." So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

And why did they pick up stones to hurl at him? Because the context suggests he probably said, "Before Abraham was, Yahweh." It was abomination. John's Jesus was claiming divinity, an unthinkable, outrageous, blasphemous assertion of oneness with the God of Sinai, something even Moses had never done.

Of course, Unity people today understand this divinity is not specific and exclusive to Jesus but is evenly distributed through all God's creation. As good panentheists, New Thought Christians blithely affirm that there is only One Presence and One Power, God the Good, in Whom we live and move and have our being, like a fish lives in the sea.

The I AM is a sound-alike for the unspeakably holy Hebrew name for God. It is the true nature of every sentient being, if we could we perceive it. And this indwelling divinity is so pervasive that I can even hear crackling traces of the old burning bush in the laughter of a black-and-white cartoon character who had a fondness for cooked greens in a can.

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[1] http://www.theneitherworld.com/popeye/lyrics.htm Accessed 03-25-08. (Full text published below.) For the true nostolgiacs, midi version of music for "Popeye" available at: http://www.hamienet.com/midi13102.html

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,'Cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm one tough gazooka
Which hates all palookas
What ain't on the up and square.
I biffs and I boffs them
And always outroughs 'em
But none of 'em gets nowhere.

If anyone's dasses to risk me fisks
It's "Bop!" and it's "Wham", understand?
So keep good behav'or,
That's your one lifesaver
With Popeye the sailor man.

I'm Popeye the sailor man!
Popeye the sailor man!
I'm strong to the finich,
'Cause I eats my spinach
I'm Popeye the sailor man!

Spring Strikes Again

Can you relate to Spring, or do you live someplace nice?

I've again reached the age where I don't have to worry about speaking the Truth without offending anyone. (FYI: Intellectual independence is first achieved at age 13, lost at 18, and retrieved again at 62).

So, let me tell you the Truth about Spring: When winter departs the season to follow is amazingly beautiful. Warm, light-filled, flower-draped, and decked in pale green leaves. It is a salad bar with garnishing, a sunny day after the storm, a fluffy lamb romping-bounding across the meadow like they did in the Warner Brothers cartoons of my youth. (Yeah, the little woolly buggers actually go boing-boing-boing, stiff-legged bouncing. It's disgustingly cute.) Spring is crocuses and tulips and daffodils and tiny leaves that halo the trees in green mist. It is dogwoods and cherry blossoms and warm breezes stirring the wind-chimes. It is walking through the park in a short-sleeved shirt. Robins, Cardinals, yellow finches, and hummingbirds.

The only response to such natural unfoldment is a powerful, plaintive cry raised to the March kite-breezes, outgoing lions and incoming lambs: Spring sucks!

Well, not Spring itself, actually. But what we have to endure to get there...THAT is the rub.

Remember scraping windshield ice while your tailpipe smokes like a crack addict? Remember when you waddled across the snowpack like a penguin and hoped you wouldn't end up a frozen turtle on its back? Remember the brrr-cold wind howling at your exposed ears and the ankle-deep slush in the Wal-Mart parking lot?

Now, don't get me wrong. I actually love winter, or some aspects of it. New snow brightens up the world and makes everything look...well, clean. There's nothing as joyful as sitting by the fire while a blizzard howls outside, provided you don't have to drive out into the white tornado and pick up a stranded family member or get some forgotten essential ingredient for the winter feast in process in your kitchen. And there are those who enjoy winter sports, too, although I am certain these people are quite mad, or at least go temporarily insane when the ski slopes beckon.

But Spring is only a big deal because nature has deprived us for at least four or five months. And every Spring I ask myself, "Why don’t you move someplace where winter means different flowers in bloom?" And every summer I forget there is such a thing as winter. And then the autumn arrives in full color, and I actually begin to look forward to cold days and white flakes.

And then January, and I remember again...Oh, yeah. That's why Spring is such a big deal.

There is probably a great sermon outline somewhere in the whining paragraphs above, buried in the snowdrifts or hiding among clusters of new leaves. But it's Monday, late March, and it's cold again in Missouri, and I can't, for the life of me, think of anything profound or theological or metaphysical. So, I'll just sit here and affirm One Presence/One Power, and pray to Thor the Norse god of Storms to get this winter over so I can go sit in Myrtle's grove again.

Spring reminds us about those good things we have been missing, while holding out the prospect of a better world to come. Maybe that's what all religions are supposed to do...but I reiterate...it sucketh. Let's get on with summer.

Hmm...let me recall...wasn't last July really too hot and humid?

RevTom

What's "Good" about Good Friday?

[RevTom's Holy Week Monologue "The Roman Soldier Beneath the Cross" included, below.]


"GOOD" FRIDAY?

I never understood why the Church considered "Good Friday" good. On a scale of one to ten, this day must have scored below zero for the followers of Jesus. I can imagine an elder in Jerusalem speaking to the small band of confused Jesus people on the night which will be called Good Friday, saying something like this:

"So, they crucified your Messiah? You think he's the first prophet to wander into town and get himself executed? Sorry about that, but deal with it. The party's over. Go home, return to your nets and fields and tax collecting. He had a good run, but let's be realistic...did you really think his silly little homilies about loving your enemy would prevail in a world ruled by Roman power? They arrested him--you barely escaped with your lives--and then made quick work of your Prophet from Nazareth.

"Pilate didn't even take the time to review the evidence. Oh, sure. He wanted to turn him loose, or so the rumors have it. But there were enough politically influential businessmen and religious leaders to condemn Jesus. After turning over the money changers' tables and disrupting the marketplace in the Court of the Gentiles, what did you expect? I mean, preach whatever nonsense you want, but for God's sake don't upset the flow of commerce! Business is business. This rabble-rouser had to go. So, an arrest in the dark, a summary judgment for execution, and a hurried crucifixion before sundown and the Sabbath. Nice of the Romans to respect our local tradition, wasn't it?"

And that's how the primordial "Bad Friday" ended. But the story doesn't end there. Something happened which transcended the mere facts of another routine Roman execution of a Jewish zealot. His followers became convinced that they still had a relationship with Jesus. Whether by vision, dream, hallucination, inspired thought, meditative assurance or a theophany of the risen Lord--take your pick--the uncontroverted historical fact is that the followers of Jesus believed he had risen from the dead. True or false or something in between, the community of believers re-grouped around this central belief and went forth to transform the world.

What these events meant to them and what they can mean for us today is still an ongoing discussion in Christian theology. But "Bad Friday” only became "Good" when the followers of Jesus crawled out from under their beds and decided that God's goodness was manifesting through the unforeseen and tragic death of the man they had followed and loved. They took this positive message--good can come from tragedy, triumph can emerge from apparent crushing defeat--to the ends of the earth.

It is a message worthy of repeating, whenever any Monday or Thursday or Friday seems hopelessly bad.

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The following is a monologue I wrote for a Good Friday service. You are welcome to use it or reproduce it for any church-related function. Just cite the author and copyright as indicated.


THE ROMAN SOLDIER BENEATH THE CROSS
A Holy Week Monologue by – Thomas Shepherd

"All those who knew Jesus personally, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance to watch." Luke 23:49 (TEV)

You there! Aren't you one of the Galilean's followers? No, you say? Well, I recall seeing you hanging around with him. What's the matter? Don't you want to go closer, to die with your king? He is the king of the Jews, isn't he? Look, that's what the inscription reads over his head. One of my men who can write printed it on a scrap of wood in Latin and Greek, and one of you Jews scribbled it down in that backward scrawl you call Hebrew. So it must be true‑‑there hangs the King of the Jews.

Why don't you go worship him? Fall down before your king! Come on, stand beneath the cross with me, and we'll look for the New Jerusalem

Ha! You say you never saw him before? Liar. I saw you myself the first day of the week. You and the others were walking beside him as he came riding into the city on that donkey. People were cheering‑‑they tore branches off the date palms and covered the dirt road to keep your king from getting dusty. You were with him then‑‑oh, don't bother denying it. A big fellow like you is hard to forget. You were soaking up the applause, enjoying the roar of the mob, weren't you? And yesterday when your own religious leaders handed him over to my Lord Pontius Pilate, didn't that same crowd roar for us Romans to crucify your king?

I could really learn to hate you people. One day this man is your Deliverer, the next you are denying you know him and handing him over to us Romans to crucify. Why don't you do your own dirty work? What's the matter, does the smell of blood offend you? Must soldiers do your grisly chores because you haven't the stomach? Your high priests cut open animals by the score every day at that big temple of yours. There's blood running everywhere‑‑you'd think you could handle a little more blood.

Hear that? My men are mocking your king. "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!" That's a joke. The only Jewish Prince you have is Herod, and he's kept on a short leash by my Lord Pilate.

You look pale. A big fellow like you, sickened by the stench of Golgotha? I've pulled crucifixion duty too many times to let one more dead Jew bother me. But you don't like the Roman way of capital punishment, do you? You'd rather stone the poor creature to death like your ridiculous holy books require. Here, take a stone. Throw it at him. Go on. I'm Centurion in charge of the execution squad‑‑I give you permission to stone the accused!

You're disgusting. I hate all of you people. You refuse to eat with us and you think you're so much better than everybody else. We Romans offered to fellowship with you‑‑we said we'd put a statue of your god in our temples if you'd put statues of our gods in yours. But your chief priests refused. They ripped their clothing and shouted, "Abomination!" Imagine that!

All we wanted was to honor your god and ask you to do the same for ours. You people have no business being self‑righteous. Why, in Rome your religiosity is judged by the number of gods you worship. If you worship eight gods, you are obviously more religious than the person who only worships six or seven. And you Jews only worship one‑‑you are the next thing to atheists! Listen. I think one of the thieves is speaking to your king.

Can you hear what he's saying? Oh, yes. "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!"

Ha! I'd like to see that. I've served all over the Empire and I've never seen anything even remotely resembling divine intervention.

Listen, the other thief is speaking. "Do you not fear God?" he asks. "Since we are under the same sentence..." well, that fellow at least is a realist. What's he asking now? "...remember me when you come into your kingdom."

You people are totally insane! The man is bleeding to death, and you STILL think he's going to bring back the Empire of David and Solomon. Oh, now what? Your king speaks‑‑today the thief will be with him in paradise? Well, they'll both be dead, that's for sure, but paradise? I guess Jews never give up on their religion.

Don't look so sad, friend. There have been false messiahs every year or two. John the Essene who baptized in the Jordan lasted about as long as this new fellow. Want a job with another one? Just hang around the capital for a few months. There's bound to be another fool, storming down from the hills.

See? My men are so bored by all this they've started gambling again. Looks like they're tossing to see who gets his robe. Well, he won't be needing it, that's for sure. I should stop them, but it takes their minds off the crucifixion.

You wonder that Romans have feelings, too? I've pulled this duty enough times to know; it is the most miserable way to die that the human mind has yet devised. You should be glad we nailed your king up there, drove the spikes right through his wrists, because that means he'll bleed to death and won't linger for days until he dies of exposure. We Romans are merciful.

Besides, your chief priests and scribes pitched a fit the last time we failed to have these miserable wretches dead and buried by sundown on the night before the Sabbath. Isn't that just like you people? You howl for blood, insist we carry out your grisly wishes, then howl if we don't get the body out of sight so you can pretend it never happened on your holy day!

Listen. Your king speaks again. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Who is he talking about? Who doesn't know what they do? Us? Or you? Or everybody? What an extraordinary thing to say! Was that a prayer? And why did he call his god 'Father'? Very strange.

Why would he pray for the forgiveness of Rome? You Jews all hate us. Don't tell me you haven't heard—we are occupying your country. If I'm walking along and I see one of you, I can give him my knapsack and make the Jew carry it for me a mile.

You know, the strangest thing happened to me four years ago up in your part of the country, Galilee, near a village named Nazareth. You know it? I was walking along and I spotted this Jew working on a carpenter's bench. I said, "You there, carry my pack!" Well, he got up and hefted the load for the required mile, then he says to me, "You look weary. Let me carry it for you a little while longer."

Can you believe that! He must have carried it nine, ten miles that afternoon, in the boiling sun, too! And we talked about all sorts of thing‑‑he was something of a philosopher, I take it. He said that all people were children of God, that God was a loving Father‑‑wait a minute. I thought this man looked familiar. You're one of his followers, tell me! Does he come from Nazareth? Don't lie to me, I know you're with him. Why else would you be standing out here watching, shaking in your sandals? Does he come from Nazareth?

Yes. I thought so.

Then it is the same man. What a shame. He was the only Jew I ever liked. Oh, you people are no different from any other. You have good men and bad men. But no other Jew ever showed me kindness—me, a Roman centurion! I suppose you have reason to hate us. If you occupied my country, I'd hate you. But he didn't hate me. He talked with me as though we were brothers. And he carried my pack miles and miles longer than the law demands.

And now I've nailed him to a cross. What a shame. If anyone deserved to be the king of the Jews, it was this man. Look, he's struggling to speak. Jupiter! How dark it becomes, and yet it's only the sixth hour of the day. Hear him‑‑"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" (Long pause)

He's dead. Damn, what a shame. If God has any sons--which I seriously doubt—this truly was the Son of God.

Why are you weeping, Galilean? You denied him, you deserted him, and now you weep for him? You should weep for all of us. We killed a good man because of your religious fanaticism. No wonder we Romans are cynical about religion.

Can you feel that! The very ground beneath my feet trembles. And it is getting so dark! Quit your wailing, Jew. Go home and hide under your bed, lest your own people hand you over to me, and I have to nail you to a cross the first of next week. Go on. My men will take down the body and your women can have him. Here, hold my helmet. I've got to go do one more grisly deed for the glory of the Senate and People of Rome. I must take this lance and jab it into his side to make sure he's dead.

Galilean? Where did he go?

Oh well. It's a soldier's job, and there's no getting out of it. Come on, men. Let's finish the two thieves. Lucius, you and Gaius break their legs. I'll handle the spear thrust. We've got to get the three of them down before sunset. Can you believe it is so dark, and only the sixth hour of the day? I wonder what his name was. I wonder if anyone will ever speak of him again...


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[c] Thomas W. Shepherd, 2002. May be performed or reproduced by churches and non-profit organizations for use in programs; re-publication in non-profit newsletters and other church related publications is authorized by the author. Please credit author upon use.

Moving Beyond Mauve

I write this early in the morning, looking out my office window at Unity Institute in the quiet moments before the day begins. A mauve sky arches its back over Kansas City as the world awakens to a new day, the first day of spring. I find myself pondering a connection to Unity’s past which that lavender-pinkish sky brings to mind. The 1890's were sometimes referred to as the "mauve decade" because that was the era when the new color became popular. Varying shades of mauve became mandatory for chic women's fashion, for fabrics in the parlor, and for artists who wanted to make an avant-garde statement. It was the hot color in the Victorian world, very trendy, and those who clothed their lives in mauve were living in the Now. But the Now was, alas, the late 19th century, which isn't Now any more. Just ask any follower of Eckhart Tolle.

Unity was founded in the mauve decade, and many of the terms and concepts in its foundational literature reflect this 19th century point of origin. For example:

1) "The Law of Cause and Effect" is built on Newtonian physics with its clockwork cosmos. In Newtonian thought, given the same circumstances, every outcome is totally predictable and every action produces the same effect at all times and all places. Today, quantum physics with its uncertainty principle has shattered Newtonian regularity. Science speaks of aggregate tendencies instead of absolute law as the heart of the physical universe: “...a picture of the submicroscopic world emerges as one of statistical probabilities rather than measurable certainties.”[1]

2) "The ethers, " which the American Heritage Science Dictionary calls, "A hypothetical medium formerly believed to permeate all space, and through which light and other electromagnetic radiation were thought to move. The existence of ether was disproved by the American physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in 1887. " Charles Fillmore continued to use this 19th century pseudo-scientific idea for much of his life, grudgingly admitting in the first edition of his book Prosperity that "about half the leading physicists assert that the ether exists and the other half deny its existence..." (p. 4) He later added qualifying words like spiritual, sacred, or invisible ethers. Such distinctions would not have been necessary in the mauve decade when New Thought pioneers like Mr. Fillmore were hammering out their theologies.

3) “Science” - Even the terms science and scientific no longer mean the same today as they did when early forms of the Christian sciences were getting themselves organized in the mauve decade. Today something is generally considered "scientific" if it is empirically verifiable through repeated observations or double blind experimentation. New Thought founders used the term much more loosely, i.e., something was "scientific" if people could try it in their lives and prove its validity for themselves. There was a passionate drive to unify science and religion during the mauve decade, which is still a noble goal, but one which can lead to convolutions in both theology and science.

Not every spiritual principle will have its correspondingly accurate proposition in the physical sciences--after all, can you quantify love? Not every scientific concept is a happy match to spirituality. The concept the eternal nature of God's creation disturbingly runs into trouble from cosmologists. Current astronomical theory holds that the last star will burn out in 100 trillion years, leaving an eternally dark, cold cosmos. And spiritually based concepts of ecology and evolution have to take into account the enormous costs of every advance. The whole ecosystem is built on higher creatures killing and eating lower members of the food chain, both plant and animal.

While science is not the enemy of spirituality, it can never be relied upon to provide answers to questions of value, meaning, and purpose. Science is about the how questions, whereas religious thought is about why and why not. This is a gross oversimplification, but the outlines of a true distinction between science and religion can be seen in the above.

Perhaps the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 - 1969) gave the best advice about the progressive nature of religious thought: "The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth."

I look out my window, and the mauve sky is now golden with dawn, the first day of spring. The 21st century is well upon us, and mauve has become the sign of an antique, something you bring to an auction house and a TV commentator tells you how much that upholstered chair is worth in today's money. We stand too close to the first decade of the new century to feel the kind of certainty about our symbols and values which men and women shared in the last decade of the 19th. Yet, something of its hope for regular demonstrations of Divine Order has endured. The principles work if you work them, although perhaps not like Newtonian Cause-and-Effect clockwork every time. With persistence and faith a person today can still experience the same kind of healing, prosperity, and spiritual insight which invigorated the great ones of the past. New images, new insights, new sciences. Same One Presence/One Power.

With a little patience, it is possible to note that mauve skies usually turn golden and spring returns year after year.

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[1] “Uncertainty Principle,” Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition; online source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-uncertai.html - Accessed 03-20-08

Daily Blog (More-or-Less) Launched

Friends: I am launching this effort to depart from my haphazard writing ways and enter the blogosphere as a regular contributor. I'll attempt to write something every weekday, perhaps weekends, too. I ask your kind indulgence in allowing for events in work or family spheres which may inhibit this ambition, or at least give me a good excuse to duck the writing duties. That said...let's talk about Barack Obama's theological-political assessment of race in America during his March 18 speech.

I have not been an Obama supporter, so I listened to the speech with a somewhat critical ear. Yet, as the message developed, I found that he addressed this divisive subject with remarkable courage and genuine insight, something you don't expect to hear in a political address. Most speeches are aimed at the middle of the perceived public sentiment at the time they are delivered. Most politicians pack their talks with glittering generalities--affirmations of noncontroversial values like freedom, prosperity, education and peace. Obama went to the heart of the matter and frankly admitted that race is an issue for everyone and everyone has feelings of discomfort about the subject. When a theologian and preacher like Rev. Jeremiah Wright says things which sound hateful to some listeners, what we have to do is reject the hate speech while understanding the forces which produced this kind of reaction in a well-read and profoundly spiritual man. Obama's white Grandmother had a different experience in America. She is, in Barack's words, "a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

This kind of fierce honesty calls for higher discussion of the real issues which divide us, which is incredibly uncommon in American politics. Obama says it is unavoidable if we want to make real change: "Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality."

He even had the courage to critique religion in America at large: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning."

Obama calls for honest dialogue that allows for the fact that all segments of American society have strong feelings on racial issues, and that feelings of discomfort and disenchantment do not necessarily mean a person is hopelessly racist or that the nation at large is the cauldron of evil which Rev. Wright seems to find.

This is a powerful message. If you haven't heard his talk yet, it is widely available online in video format. [ Here's the YOU Tube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU ]
But more importantly, Obama has called for all of us to enter the discussion about race in America without descending into the angry, hateful rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright. It is a goal worth our struggle, and even those of us who may not support him for president nevertheless owe Barack Obama a word of thanks for raising the issue.

RevTom

New Book in Progress - Excerpt #3

And He Walks with Me: Jesus 2.1 – Interactive Edition

New Thoughts about Jesus & the Christ for the 21st Century
by Thomas W. Shepherd

[#3 - Continuing the excerpts...]

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TEDDY BEARS AND STARSHIPS

Even for a relatively new species, human beings seem to have elected that subject as their major in the divine university of the cosmos. People love to love and be loved. Human love seems capable of projecting its warmth on all sorts of objects. People love teddy bears and national emblems and sweet melodies. A baby’s smile stirs us deeply; even the child of strangers touches the love chords in our mind-heart organ. Men and women are able to love irrationally, deeply, sometimes with a degree of steadfastness to surpass the loyalty of angels. It is not surprising that humanity would turn its love-light onto the collective personifications of human goodness—the gods and goddesses, divine power, however understood. The religious literature of humanity teems with declarations of devotion, loyalty and affection for the Divine. People need a divine teddy bear, an image to love and cling to and trust when the Cosmos goes mad, as it always does from time to time.

Jesus was a man, so he makes an even more convenient target for the cupid arrows of spiritual adoration, a manageable package of divinity, colored and shaped by the changing tides of world consciousness. Nuns call him husband; millions call him Lord. The biblical Jesus blesses everyone’s inner child; the believer eagerly climbs into his lap and feels secure in the divine embrace. Martyrs in the Roman arena loved him, as did medieval peasants, Renaissance artisans, free-thinkers of the Enlightenment, nineteenth century super-literates and revolutionaries, veterans of the world wars and moon-landing astronauts.

Someday, when starships sail the corridors of space at faster-than-light velocities, they will leave Earth orbit with Bibles in their prayer chapels. Doubtless there will be churches on the Moon and Mars and unknown worlds beyond Orion’s belt, along with an assortment of temples, mosques, and synagogues, too. Humans are irrevocably religious. It is not impossible that someday the great-great-great-whatever-grandchild of someone reading this book join an alien religion as soon as humans begin encountering them, and perhaps—turning Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill in a direction the Apostle never envisioned—become the first human-born priests or priestesses of a truly Unknown God.

Jesus 2.1 – Interactive: Post-modern Paradigm

Although Jesus Christ has been a thoroughly interactive figure throughout history, the post-modern age has finally produced a paradigm to explain this phenomenon: the computer program upgrade. Arriving after the initial software has been installed, an upgrade builds on the platform already laid down and modifies the program to improve basic functions or add new features which were unimaginable when the first edition hit the market. Later upgrades will continue the process. This is, of course, exactly what has happened to the “program” built on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

The premise of this book is that Jesus as experienced today is an interactive work in progress, co-created by people from the raw materials provided by scripture, tradition, life experiences, and your powers of intellectual reasoning and creative intuition. It is a solid, historical fact that humans have made and re-made the Nazarene in their image—physically and emotionally, politically and culturally—throughout the centuries since he walked the dusty streets of Roman Judea. Every generation has tweaked the Jesus model until it harmonized with the issues and requirements specific to the times.

At first glance, some might call this a cynical attitude. One could reasonably argue that the goal should not be to remake Jesus in our image but to discover his authentic message and conform ourselves accordingly. Of course, every church believes this is exactly what they have done, but the crazy-quilt landscape of Christendom shows otherwise. While sympathizing with people who are devoted to the search for a historical Jesus, many of whom are respected biblical scholars and theologians, nevertheless the inescapable conclusion from a study of Jesus as an interactive figure will show that embedded theological assumptions, which scholars inevitably bring to the Bible, will shape the results of their quest. Even if one were to allow that the Jesus Seminar has actually discovered some of the “authentic” sayings of Jesus through scholarly review of the gospel texts, all the mechanics of post-modern socialization come into play as soon as the question moves from “What did he say?” to “What does that mean for us today?”

Calling this study Jesus 2.1 / Interactive underscores the theological process which continues unabated into the 21st century. An interactive Jesus is not only unavoidable, the model also has great advantages. It allows humanity to project the highest and best attributes of its character on a recognizable figure and follow the leader in the direction which most people already know they should be traveling. Although Jesus has been portrayed as a lofty king with groveling subjects—a divine emperor who has no problem with subjugated servants or even slavery itself—today it is possible to say that Jesus loves humanity because he is humanity, the best example of what it means to be human and divine. In twenty-first century humans have learned, by and large, that subjugation and slavery are not acts blessed by godly sanction.

Light, Not the Lamp

Understanding Jesus as interactive allows creative flexibility, and the outcome is never certain. Although hindsight clearly marks a chosen highway as the obvious choice, looking ahead where the road divides presents a traveler with live options. Often, as in Robert Frost’s great poem, both paths have advantages and disadvantages, a circumstance which behavioral scientists call a double approach-avoidance conflict.

In making initial adjustments to the recorded memories of a living, historical Jesus, the developing Christian church faced such a double approach-avoidance conflict, because both positive (approach) and negative (avoidance) results followed once someone decided to cast Jesus either as human or divine. The proto-orthodox party—those who would one day hold the majority opinion—avoided the dual temptations declaring Jesus neither exclusively divine or exclusively human. Too limiting, they insisted, because Jesus was both human and divine. To this day traditional theology insists Jesus Christ must be fully human so that his divinity is accessible to mere mortals. However, this addition proposition—the uniqueness of Jesus’ divine-human nature—is not a mandatory component in Christology. There are other alternatives which are far kinder to humanity and historically far more tenable. Post-modern men and women have generally given up on God as the old man in the sky of Renaissance art. They know there is no cosmic Christ who, according to memorized creed, “sitteth at the right hand of God the Father.” Mystics through the ages have found something better, an inner Christ enthroned in every man and woman, and from this inner repository men and women have discovered that God brings forth anew the perfect idea of what it means to be human and divine in all times and seasons of life. It is this inner, divine spark which poets and prophets have recognized throughout history, although the tendency has persisted to confuse the lamp with the light.

When addressing epistemology or cosmology, in fact when looking at all the grand questions of life, the starting point for post-modern Christian thought can be clarified by this vital distinction between external lamp of Jesus and the inner light, which is the Christ-presence in every sentient being. While Jesus 2.1 definitely allows people to modify their understanding of Jesus, some would rightly argue for an interactive model which requires communication in both directions. Modern interpreters have an obligation to hear what the authors of the Second Testament were actually saying about the primordial Jesus of scripture. This process of clarification brings up an important point, namely, the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive theology. We have been doing both in this study so far, describing what exists and prescribing possible choices or alternative points of view.

DESCRIPTIVE / PRESCRIPTIVE THEOLOGY

Fairly early in life, most people learn that it can be dangerous to discuss religion with friends and family. Many people have set beliefs and will brook no challenges to the world as they see it. Yet, life is growth, and growth means change, which is one of the reasons that former Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has written that Christianity must either change or die. Effective religion is always a work in progress, responding to the times and circumstances of real people in a real world. In this need for flexibility and responsiveness, religion is not unlike the other taboo subject which popular wisdom warns us against discussing—politics.

Ballot-Boxed in Georgia

True confession: In a previous incarnation—well, at least a few years ago—I ran in a partisan political election. I was the 1992 Democratic nominee for the majority-Republican 114th District of the Georgia House of Representatives. The local Democrats were graciously willing to let a carpet-bagger Yankee like me fall in battle against an incumbent who would have otherwise retained his seat in an uncontested election. I think the contest at least provided some comic relief for my fellow Georgians. Fortunately for the Peach State, the voters of the district chose the other guy—but I learned so much! The process of representative government really comes alive once citizens take the time to get involved in the elections. I eventually became an appointed member of the Richmond County Board of Elections and was able to serve all the people as an overseer of the elective process.

From my brief sojourn into the land of partisan politics, I learned that in the political arena people with highfalutin ideals—often originating from sincere but conflicting values—learn how to live in the real world by compromise, re-interpretation, and coalition. In a utopian world, whenever a problem presented itself, everyone would agree and their voices rise in harmonious finale. But until later in the program, people won't be living in utopia. Even in the best possible scenarios, progressively self-perfecting people will struggle to achieve worthwhile goals while operating as a check-and-balance on each other's excesses.

The same human dynamics were in play when Christianity was born. Hellenistic paganism and the new Christian faith quickly merged because they were never apart; they sprang from the same milieu. Although a cursory glance at church history might suggest the Christianizing process flowed from a Jewish Jesus who exerted powerful influence on the pagan world, in reality the communication was multi-sided. When Christianity reached out from its Jewish homeland, the mingling of various schools of Jewish Christian thought with Hellenistic ideas was unavoidable, even desirable, as the two worlds cross-pollinated.

This is one of the points which Jihadists of today—whether Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or whatever—fail to recognize, i.e., the interactive nature of world cultures. As the human population becomes more aware of this cultural dynamic, the evolutionary penalty for religious worldviews which try to fight this movement toward higher consciousness might very well be extinction. Although theology is no longer called “the queen of the sciences,” theologians attempting to discuss a subject as deep and far-ranging as Christology can only command respect for the quality of their work by establishing ground rules and clarifying the methodology they will follow. Most theology contains these two basic elements, descriptive and prescriptive.

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Theology

A descriptive analysis tries to explain what a particular belief or practice means. This is best illustrated by biblical theology, where the task of scholarship is to determine what the author of a particular passage was probably saying to his ancient target audience. However, a descriptive analysis of the sacrament of baptism might also attempt to clarify the practices of initiation into the Christian community and the beliefs which this or that group has held about baptism. Depending on the theological background of the group being addressed, even basic terms may have to be described. In some traditions, calling baptism a sacrament (rather than an ordinance) requires an explanation, and if the goal is to illustrate rather than advocate, the process is descriptive.

Prescriptive reasoning attempts to push beyond clarification about the way things are and to articulate underlying causes, discover connections, and arrive at new possibilities. In its most radical form, prescriptive theology says, "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (MT 5:43-44, NRSV)

Descriptive and prescriptive theology can be objective or subjective, although describing what exists is ostensibly more impartial than prescribing new connections. Frequently these two methodologies are mixed haphazardly by artless commentators, so the reader bumps along over description and prescription without realizing the road has been cobbled together with incompatible materials. The reason for this amalgamation is clear. For theologians, both amateur and professional, it is exquisitely tempting to favor one’s point of view by discovering it embedded in the words of Jesus, St. Paul, Thomas Aquinas, or Gandhi. And the more deeply people hold a certain conviction, the more easily they can “discover” authoritative support for that idea elsewhere.

An honest respect for methodology requires a beginning point within a self-consciously objective, descriptive model of the sources—facilitated by studying the Bible, non-canonical scriptures, and other historical documents of the faith; reflecting on the beliefs and practices of Christian and other religious communities throughout the ages; and surveying other resources now available due to the explosion of knowledge in this computer-enhanced world society—then to advance prescriptively by offering new insights for students of theology today. Although this does not require a rigid formula— first descriptive, then prescriptive—it obliges religious thinkers to be aware of the perils of unsubstantiated speculation and to acknowledge when the line between explaining and advocating has been crossed, as it will be in almost any theological work, present volume included.

With so much already written about Jesus of Nazareth, one might wonder about the need for yet another book about his life, teachings and the meaning of his “work” for Christian theology. However, the orientation of this study is somewhat different from most other works on Christology written to date. Jesus 2.1 continues the pattern established in my volume on systematic theology, Glimpses of Truth. While attempting some degree of objectivity, especially when doing descriptive theology, this work does proceed from a point of view within the Metaphysical Christian circle of faith. Having said that, I will nevertheless attempt to apply some degree of intellectual rigor to the study of Christology and place the insights of New Thought Christianity in touch and in context with mainstream theology of the early twenty-first century.

Because the subject is Christology and not systematic theology, this work will assume readers have a basic grasp if New Thought Christianity or can infer enough from the context of these discussions to understand the issues. Those who are totally unfamiliar with the New Thought/Metaphysical Christian view of Reality might want to take a crash course by reading the works of writers like Eric Butterworth, Nona Brooks, H. Emilie Cady, Johnnie Colemon, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Emmet Fox, James Dillet Freeman, James Gaither, Joel Goldsmith, Ernest Holmes, or Emma Curtis Hopkins, just to name a few.

With these first thoughts and observations in mind, we begin our journey into a deeper examination of Jesus and the Christ. This work is unevenly divided into four parts, all of which are grounded in the model of Jesus as an interactive work-in-progress. Part I, New Thoughts about an Old Story, provides an extended discussion of the issues and possibilities for additional new ways to look at Christology. Part II, Looking Back to See Forward, wades into the historic controversies, the hotly debated ideas about the nature and ministry of Jesus, from the early church, Apostles, and Paul through the Christological controversies of the late ancient period. Part III, Jesus Christ Today, investigates the many possibilities for practical Christology in the twenty-first century. Finally, Part IV presents a brief discussion of popular stories which New Testament authors attribute to Jesus, the Thirteen Favorite Parables.

We begin with a look at the guy under the halo, which I have subtitled, “Dream a little dream with me…”

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