TGA Faith State

Lent Is For Feasting!

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:00 GMT

by David Henson

Don’t forget to feast this Lent.

In the midst of the almsgiving, praying and fasting that traditionally mark this season, remember also to feast.

But only on Sundays.

For Christians, every Sunday is a feast day, and fasting is forbidden at a feast. And, it would be downright rude — to the host, to others at the feast, and to yourself — to fast in the midst of a feast.

Of course, feasting isn’t the first thought that comes to mind in Lent, especially in the popular imagination. But, in many ways, it is the most important part.

Some Christians tend to think of Lent only in terms of deprivation, discipline and rigorous religiosity. Others might malign it as encouraging a kind of mind-body dualism in which the body is battered into submission or the spirit edified at the expense of the repression of the body. Others have criticized Lent, explaining they don’t need the Church to dictate a special season for them to draw close to God.

These criticisms tend to forget about that one critical element: the Lenten feast.

Now, before anyone protests, the feasts of Lent are certainly on the more somber side of things, with all the minor chords and buried Alleluias. But the Sundays during Lent are still celebrations. The Eucharist is never a dirge. It is always a celebration and not just of God’s love and of Jesus’ life. It is also a celebration of our participation in that divine mystery. It is an invitation to a party in which we can touch the hem of divinity — and sometimes more. It is an embodied celebration and a celebration of bodies, particularly God’s own body.

So how can we experience God on Sunday in the Eucharist and taste God’s radical love and acceptance of us, and go back immediately to fasting? We can’t.

That’s why Sundays are for feasting.

They are feasts of love.

For many, feasting is synonymous with gluttony and overeating. But a Lenten feast isn’t simply about warming up the leftovers from Fat Tuesday and eating of a fast’s forbidden fruit. Nor is it a matter of discovering and exploiting with mischievous glee the great Lenten Loophole. Feasting in Lent reminds us that as people of faith a feast isn’t about eating all the pancakes, or chocolate, or potatoes and bread, and it isn’t about spending all day amusing ourselves to death.

Bingeing, no matter what our obsessive-consumptive society tells us, is not feasting.

In a season in which we rightfully deprive ourselves of one of the thousands of luxuries at our fingertips, feasting on Sundays in Lent reminds us that joy and happiness are centered in something deeper than distractions and fatty foods. It reminds us that, as citizens of the world’s wealthiest country, we use the luxuries of life to placate our desires rather than understand them, to numb our humanity rather than live into it, to suppress our hunger and thirst for justice rather than feast upon it.

Feasting in Lent is a unique journey all its own, one often neglected theologically. Lenten feasts invite us to discover how to celebrate life without subduing our bodies with luxuries. They offer us a chance to discover what a true feast is, embodied not by overeating and hoarding but by sharing and sacrifice, enacted not by consuming as much as we can in a day but enacted by a community that gathers and believes, against all evidence to the contrary, that Jubilee exists and the arc of the universe bends towards justice.

That’s why Sundays are for feasting.

They are feasts of faith.

Indeed, isn’t this the point of any Sunday feast? To imagine a world where Jubilee happens: where debts are forgiven, where oppression is ended, where liberation is won? Isn’t this the feast of a Sunday: To believe, if only for the few seconds when the bread and wine hit our lips, that God’s Reign of Love exists and we are its agents in the world? Isn’t this the feast of a Sunday, to glimpse the potential of our humanity as God’s holy agents, entrusted with the great commission of bringing God’s divine Jubilee to earth as it is in heaven?

A Lenten feast is one that celebrates our bodies by seeing them as tov — good, divine, creative. It is an embodied feast in which our bodies are not vehicles for pleasure, or exploitation, or oppression, or money-making, or objectification, but bodies that exists simply because they are good, and, if we have eyes to see them, divine images of love in a world given to hate. A Lenten feast celebrates the future, a future in which we boldly proclaim our agency, our creativity and our independence from the evil we do to ourselves, the evil we do to others and the evil done on our behalf.

A Lenten feast calls us to reclaim our bodies from a world that twists them, makes us feel naked and ashamed for them, turns them into gears for war machines and profit and abuse. A Lenten feast calls us to embody God in the world, because it is only through our bodies that the world can change. A Lenten feast helps us to see the Promised Land in the middle of dry and thirsting land.

That’s why Sundays are for feasting.

They are feasts of hope.

Perhaps, when the 40 days of fasting are finished, the greatest lesson to learn from a holy Lent is how to feast.

How To Deal With Turkeys

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:45 GMT

by Rand Walker

Turkeys are considered the essence of ineptness and stupidity. Perhaps they are categorized unfairly, but nonetheless, the word “turkey” carries negative connotations when it refers to certain people or undesirable events in our lives. Sometimes, we invite turkeys into our lives; other times, they show up unannounced or are driven into our space by something or someone else. This is a true anecdote about such as incident in my life a few weeks ago.

Some background is needed to set the scene. I live in a rural area that seems like a wildlife reserve at times. It is not unusual to see deer by the dozens grazing in the front yard or to hear hawks screaming overhead because they are being dive-bombed and aggravated by crows, or they are circling slowly, hunting for prey. Coyotes howling at night are a normal occurrence, but they have been heard howling before sunset, their otherworldly yelps and chortles growing closer together as two of them locate each other. Hence, turkeys wandering through the yard or in the woods just feet from my house are considered normal and part of the territory.

A nearby neighbor has a dog named, Joe. He is a German Shepherd/Border Collie mix who wandered up when he was a puppy more than five years ago. His pleasant, friendly nature endears him to us, so we feed him at my house, and he stops by on his rounds to visit. One peculiar thing about Joe is that he is very reluctant to enter the house, even the sunroom. Why this is important will become clear, later.

There is an 18’ by 12’ sunroom attached to the rear of my house with glass doors and panels around three sides. The doors can be opened and the screens slid into place. It was a sunny, quiet mid-spring Sunday evening, and two of the sunroom doors were opened with the screens in place. I have a cat, Missy, who is very skittish, and she was curled up on the loveseat in the sunroom, napping like most cats do during the day. I was in my recliner in the living room, reading a book. The door between the sunroom and the kitchen was open. Basking in the quiet and the solitude, I was engrossed in my book when suddenly, I heard a loud sound that had the qualities of both a thud and a crash, followed by the cat’s claws scratching for traction as she hastily made her exit from the sunroom, down the corridor to the basement steps, and into the basement. My first thought was, What the hell has that cat knocked over? She likes to climb, and there is a bar-height table in the corner of the room along with a couple of lamps and plant stands scattered around the room. I laid my book to the side and rose from the recliner, reluctantly, and walked through the kitchen toward the open door to the sunroom. I was not prepared for what I saw.

Standing in the sunroom mere feet away, looking frightened and startled, was a huge tom turkey (This means a male turkey for you city people). He was a very large turkey: I would guesstimate around 30 pounds or better; his head came up to my chest, and I am about 6-feet-tall. What a beautiful creature. A beard (loose skin beneath his beak) hung down his neck at least 8 inches or more. I would have had difficulty closing my hand around his head if I had wanted to. His legs were long and spindly, but his feet were two-thirds the size of my hands with claws at least 3 inches long. His head, neck, legs, and feet were a composite of bright blues, reds, and pinks. He was frozen in position, his wings slightly spread, his head drawn back and cocked to the side just enough to focus on me standing in the doorway, with a look of disbelief and startled much like the poor turkey.

Our stare-down lasted only seconds, but it felt like minutes to me. My brain was not fully convinced my eyes were working properly. Then my attention was slowly drawn to Joe, standing just outside the door of the sunroom in the backyard. He looked as if he was smiling, his tail wagging, as if to say, “Look what I brought you.” Keeping the frozen and obviously-scared turkey in my vision field, I let my eyes wander to the right where the screen mesh, once tightly fitted in the door frame, was hanging loose. Apparently, Joe had come upon the turkey, somewhere, and chased him into the corner where one wall of the sunroom and the exterior house wall meet. Cornered, the turkey had run through the screen, busting it loose from the retaining channel, and he had stormed into the sunroom. The poor cat was scrambling for her life because she wanted nothing to do with a bird the size of that turkey. In other words, he was bigger than any “tweety bird” she had ever seen!

The turkey began to recover from his immobile state, and he was now running toward the other screen and the glass panels. I knew I had to remove him from the sunroom before he damaged more than he already had. But his size and his claws deterred me from wrangling him like livestock, so I backed up slowly and closed the door between the kitchen and the sunroom. Then I went out the front door and came around to the sunroom. Naturally, Joe took up his position on the opposite side of the sunroom waiting for the turkey to move toward him, back through the already damaged screen. The turkey was starting to panic even more, and I was expecting him to run through the other screen or turn furniture and fixtures over as he struggled to find an escape route.

Finally, I opened the screen door opposite the one he came through, and moved away from the door into the backyard. The turkey watched me move away, took one last look at Joe, put his head forward and down, and bolted through the open door. I did not realize how fast a turkey could run! He ran the 20 feet or so into the woods and over a small embankment, and I thought he had made his escape; when suddenly, Joe streaked by me and dove over the embankment where the turkey had disappeared. I had forgotten how fast he could move! The turkey began to vocalize now, and unfortunately, Joe killed the turkey. It appeared that Joe was acting on his herding instincts since he is part Border Collie, but he would not let the turkey escape until the turkey eventually died of exhaustion. I was not very happy about this turn of events, because I did not want the turkey to be harmed. But dogs will be dogs, and turkeys will be turkeys.

What are the moral implications of this story? When turkeys appear in your life, whether you let them in, or they are driven into your space by other forces, don’t panic and make things worse. Calmly assess the situation, compartmentalize and isolate the turkey, and provide an escape route; then move out of the turkey’s way!

You Might Be Stuck, If...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:28 GMT

by Randy Walker

If you think your way is the only way, you might be “stuck in the details.” If you belittle those who do not look like you, act like you, or think like you, you might be “stuck in the details.” If dogma rules your life, you might be “stuck in the details.”

First, what is meant by the idiom, “stuck in the details”? Has anyone encountered someone who is obsessive-compulsive over certain things in his or her life? This person becomes consumed with a minute detail, or details, that have little impact on the person’s quality of life, and in doing so, misses the “big picture,” or the things that do matter and affect the quality of life or the outcome of something in particular. I once worked for someone who displayed this quirk to the extreme. He and I worked in construction. This man would obsess over visible brush strokes left on a painted surface, imperfections in trim molding, or other minor blemishes to the point that he would miss obvious things, such as a missing storm door, blatant damage to an outside wall or other similar but what should be easily detected flaws. In other words, he was “stuck in the details,” and he missed the “big picture.”

I believe it is easy for many people to do, essentially, the same thing when it comes to religion or worldviews. To me, religious dogma is an example of details, and people tend to focus on dogmatic “details” and miss the more crucial “big picture.” Stated another way: the doctrine and the rules included in the dogma become more important to some people than how they view and treat people they encounter. They will argue, vehemently, about a minute point of doctrine and proclaim that if other people do not believe just as they do, such people are inferior, hell-bound, unfit, outcast, ex-communicated... the list goes on.

Secondly, what is the “big picture” when it comes to religion and worldviews? A brief discussion about the underlying principles of some of the major religions in the world will lead to this answer. The chosen religions are Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. Christianity is the most popular based on the number of adherents, while Islam is number two, and Buddhism is number six.

Buddhism focuses on four primary qualities as its foundational practices: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Islam uses several words to denote different shades of the meaning of “love.” One of these terms appears about once every 15 verses within the Koran. These are only two examples, but the other major religions have similar underlying principles to these two religions.

Another question is what kind of love is being discussed here? In Christianity and in the English language, there are two Greek words that denote two types of love: eros and agape. Eros love denotes individual love that is considered conditional and often rooted in sexual desire, while agape love is considered unconditional love that is godly and holistic. Another way to state this is that eros love equates with casual concern and sexual infatuation, while agape love means loving someone or something despite the inherent flaws in the person or the object receiving the love. This discussion focuses on agape love.

Since it has been established that the major religions of the world, which clearly include Christianity, have essentially the same underlying principles based on agape love, let’s look at what the Bible says about love. I John 4:8 reads: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” For the benefit of the fundamentalists who might be reading this, I quoted the King James Version of the Bible. Also, for the benefit of the fundamentalists and those who believe that the Bible should be taken literally, word-for-word, nothing added, nothing taken away, let’s break the language down in this verse. It does not say that God “loves,” nor does it say that God is “capable of love,” or anything similar in meaning to these phrases. It emphatically and clearly states: “God IS love.” “Is” is what is often referred to as a “linking verb” in the English language. In other words, it “links” a noun with an adjective, adverb, or another noun. In this case, it links “God” with “love.” “Is” means that the noun, “God,” is one and the same as the noun, “love.”

Seems simple to me: God IS NOT some mystical all-powerful being who happens to love, God IS love, period--the end--no more to the story.

Think about the implications of this: If we immerse ourselves in agape love for ourselves and others, then we “know God.” Who, by the way, IS love. The remaining “fluff” is mere “details” that, while people with good intentions adhere to them, are just details used to torment those who are “stuck in them,” and anyone around those “dear stuck ones” who is affected or offended by those same details.

Now, in order not to discriminate against any one religion, let’s take each one and give an example of someone who is “stuck in the details.” For instance, if a Buddhist insists that someone will not achieve enlightenment unless he or she meditates a particular way and a specific amount of time each day, this person is “stuck in the details.” There is nothing wrong with meditation, but it does not, directly and solely, determine the outcome of a person’s life.

We all witnessed a fanatical fringe of Islam on 9/11. How anyone can believe that murdering innocent people will bring them special rewards in an afterlife is beyond my comprehension, but those misguided terrorists were so “stuck in the details” that they highjacked and flew commercial airliners, with innocent people aboard, into buildings, which contained more innocent people! This is an extreme example, but think about all the hatred, bitterness, and most importantly, fear, these heinous acts triggered in the world. No matter how much this event is analyzed, it happened because a few fanatics became “stuck in the details.”

Finally, when Christians exclude other people and dismiss them as sinners, who are unworthy of love, just because they do not believe in the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus, or do not attend church, or do not read the Bible daily, do not pray often enough, do not love someone of the opposite sex--and so on, they are “stuck in the details” and missing the “big picture.”

The following quote is attributed to the late Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Let’s substitute “God” for “love” and see what we have: “When the power of “God” (Who IS love) overcomes the “God” of power, the world will know peace.”

Another way to state this: When we focus on loving one another instead of controlling one another with what we see as essential “details,” the world will know peace. The sad thing is that clinging to details and claiming to know the answers is, too often, rooted in fear, and the one thing that overcomes fear is “love.” This, my friends, is the big picture. I sincerely believe that if more of us could become “unstuck from the details,” the big picture would start to sharpen and come into focus.

“God is Love.”

America, A Christian Nation. Truth Or Fable?

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:36 GMT

by Randy Walker

Many people are quick to assert that America was founded by Christian men and based on Christian precepts and principles. Is this true? Or is this another repeated truism taken at face value because someone said so? If America was not founded by Christian men and based on Christian principles, then who were the men called the Founding Fathers, and what principles did they base the three major foundational documents (the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution) on?

There are passionate and misinformed arguments on both sides of this issue. On the one hand, many fervent Christians will proudly proclaim how the Founding Fathers were devout Christians, and how they made sure that Christian principles were consulted and included in the foundational documents. On the other hand, many fervent agnostics, atheists, and free thinkers will contend that the Founding Fathers were not Christians, and how they framed the foundational documents on the principles of deism and free thought. As with most passionate controversial arguments, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

For those unfamiliar with deism, it is a worldview–as opposed to a religious view–that sees God or the “Creator” as a “watchmaker.” A watchmaker creates or assembles a watch before setting it in motion and has little to no interest in what happens to the watch or how the watch feels, and so forth. Deism says God does not communicate with man or try to influence the world through action, thought, or revelation. He merely created, set in motion, and is now unconcerned with what is going on with the creation or any potential outcomes it may face. I am presuming that most readers are familiar with Christianity, its principles, and its dogma. Basically fundamental Christian principles and dogma state: Jesus is God’s son, who was sent to earth to suffer and die as atonement for the sins of humankind; he arose from the grave and will return one day to claim victory over sin and death. Believers will reign with him throughout eternity, and unbelievers are doomed and will face an eternal hell. Obviously, these two perspectives are quite different from each other. Deism places humankind’s fate in the hands of humans, while Christianity believes divine intervention will determine the fate of each individual human. Deism does not believe in an afterlife, while Christianity hinges on what happens in the afterlife.

Some historical context is necessary before an understanding of who the Founding Fathers were and what they believed can be realized. In the eighteenth century (1700&rime;s), the Western world was experiencing the Enlightenment after suffering the violence of the Dark Ages and the Catholic Inquisition where people were killed for a mere shadow of heresy. It is easy to conclude that this was one of the darkest eras, filled with intolerance, fear, and violence, for Christianity and its followers. But despite the effects of the Enlightenment in Europe, where reason and individualism where emphasized over tradition, it was still unpopular to overtly oppose traditional religious views. The fact that the first English settlers were fleeing religious oppression due to the mingling of the Church of England and the ruling monarchy is common knowledge. Perhaps, they were concerned that, despite being separated from the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England could, plausibly, resort to the tyranny and violence wrought by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition. A rational conclusion is that the settlers and colonists of that era viewed organized religion as suspect and potentially harmful; although, they were not yet ready to totally disconnect from the same. In other words, it can be stated with a degree of certainty that the Founding Fathers were not atheists, and that they maintained a formal connection with some form of organized Christian religion.

While “Founding Fathers” is a somewhat ambiguous term, most sources cite about 204 men who fit the definition of the term. The three major foundational documents contain 143 signatures representing 118 signers. There are seven men who are considered the primary Founding Fathers and who are considered the central drafters and composers of the three documents; they are: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, and James Madison. Of the seven, at least five can be confirmed as holding deist beliefs central to their worldviews: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin. Letters these men wrote confirm these beliefs, and this was a likely scenario since overt religious doubt was not popular in this era. There are many of the other Founding Fathers who were, most likely, “closet deists,” who condoned freedom from religious oppression and believed that reason was crucial to a free and just society.

Another method of confirming this is to look at the foundational documents themselves: of the three, only one mentions a “Creator,” and that is the Declaration of Independence. No specific religion, God, or belief system is mentioned or condoned. It becomes readily apparent that while the principles of a free and just society may be similar to the principles of Christianity, no specific religion–whether Christian or otherwise–was mentioned or used to create the underlying framework of the three major foundational documents.

There is one more document that came along years later in 1797: The Treaty of Tripoli, which was a treaty between the United States and the Arab Barbary States. Its intended purpose was to control and stop piracy of US vessels. It is curiously amusing to read the attempts by many people to paraphrase, twist, and try to occlude the language of Article 11 in this treaty, but it seems clear and beyond ambivalence or obscurity to me:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, [Muslims] — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

When the Old English terms for Muslim are replaced with more modern terms, this article’s meaning and intent are clear. Look at this phrase again: “As the government of the United Sates of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion…” . Remember, this was written as an article of a peace treaty, approved by Congress, and signed by John Adams, President of the United States at that time.

These are not my words or the words of fervid atheists, agnostics or free thinkers of today. They are an integral part of American history documented in an historical treaty. So, to those passionate Christians who want to proclaim the Christian foundation and heritage of our nation, be careful how far you go to support such a premise. Also, I warn the atheists, agnostics, and free thinkers who, just as fervently, argue that no divine principles were included in the documents to be careful how far you go to support such a claim. The actual questions seem to be “what” and “whose” divine principles were consulted and used to guide the same, and it is clear that the Founding Fathers were adamant about keeping religion away from the governing bodies and under the auspices of individual citizens.

Happiness and the Matrix

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:44 GMT

by Peggy Beatty

In the movie, The Matrix, Neo can take a blue pill that allows him to live every day in bliss, but the trade off is that he gives up his autonomy and control to an unknown force that renders him a mindless slave - happy, but mindless. Or he can take the red pill which will afford him to learn the truth about himself. He will understand the forces that control him and learn to gain freedom from them, but at a steep price. The road will be hard; he will enter into dark places of His weakness: shame, guilt, neediness, greed, jealousy, fear. But he will learn to sculpt away these castings, these disguises of the true divine Self and realize that they must be held in paradoxical tension with all that is good and pure and true. The journey will reveal the truth and the truth will guide the journey. He will discover the essence of who he is. He will become his most authentic self. Happiness will look more like self-acceptance and deep joy, and Neo will be the Hero of his own life. This is how a book I am reading, called The Steps of Essence, by Hanns-Oskar Porr, describes the first call to becoming who you truly are: the choice of pills, blue or red.

I was intrigued with this because I think I missed this point in the movie. Or maybe not – it has been awhile since I saw The Matrix, but I am familiar with the choices that the pills afford. So, the first step is to say, “ok I am willing to take the hard road.” But here’s the catch, everyday you get the pill choice again: Will you choose to wait for happiness to present itself to you, to be a victim of life, a sort of bystander to your own existence? Or will you choose to to be the Hero of your life, to confront your fear, put aside some of those things you think you "need," and ride the wonderful experience of your true Self? The choice to hold the tension between what should and should not be is the demand of truly living YOUR [authentic] life.

At my niece’s graduation, the priest gave a sermon on "The Road Ahead" for the grads. He said that Jesus would ask them at every turn, “Do you love me?” To answer to this question, we must make the choice of pills. If we answer yes, we take the red pill. We agree to be Christ-like in love which is to love ferociously, and, yes, to suffer for it. To love is to be vulnerable. It is to bear all the sweet goodness of your divine Self to the other, with no defense; to be completely compassionate. The red pill requires us to be loyal to truth, above all else. And the truth is, Love is who we are! Every day we are faced with the choice to be either authentic or robotic. Every day we choose to take the high road or the low. Everyday we can allow the circumstances of life to control us, or we can choose our destiny. To know ourselves as love requires incredible courage and strength. To remain positive, optimistic, “happy” requires us to be a warrior for love and kindness, even at those times when we would rather not be. To truly live into love, which is our authentic nature, is to encounter hurt, absorb it and love harder.

We can run from the demands of life and relationship and never know who we are, or we can meet life head on with the Wisdom (yes, this choice is a wisdom choice) that happiness means more than just getting what I want. Which pill will you take?

Originally posted on "Ecumenicus."