Nooners reflection for July 25, 2021

This week's reflection is from Marv Hiles published in the Day Book.

    In the midst of summer exuberance there are silences that call us to return to what is forever essential inside us.  We have lived under many disguises across a lifetime.  Summer makes us remember when we were disguised as boys and girls.  
    Do we remember?  The child-mind is native to summer.  Children, according to David Ignatow’s observation, do not try to make things “fit” – that exhausting habit of adulthood.  In the “loosened” days of summer, something calls out our name in the high grass, in the wind at the shore, or in the drone of a long, hot afternoon.  These summer sounds have to do with destiny.  We want to re-cognize, to know again, among the layers of our beings, the “Something More” about us that we tend to forget.  
    Watch for the long, lovely lines of sun falling between trees and buildings late in the day.  There are many ways to “know” what we most desperately need to know.  Sometimes we are only required to watch the passage of the light.  There is wisdom in observing, in listening.  
    The ancient Greeks believed the cosmos was the manifestation of musical harmony.  How deep can we hear?  These days are open gates to becoming aware again of the external rhythms on which we ride out our lives.  What is the sound of a July night in the heavy, becalmed middle of summer?  It is an invitation to reverie and to a healthy laziness that will enable us to find the path ahead.  Such knowing rises from “the one clear place given to us when we are alone,” as the poet Mark Strand wrote.  
    The meditative-breath focus in Isaiah 55:12 “You shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.” For breath meditation use: out in joy / back in peace.

By Marv Hiles

A Prayer for Today

         Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us from following leaders of falsehood and into a time where more of reality and truth is being unveiled for all to see.   

       We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love. 

       Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world, and give us the wisdom to see and accept our responsibilities for this task. 

       Knowing, good God, that you are hearing our hearts better than our words, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. 

Amen.

A (Lord’s) Prayer

Eternal God-Spirit

Earth-maker, Pain bearer, Life-giver,

Source of all that is and that shall be,

Father and Mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is our heaven;

May the hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

May the way of your justice be hallowed by the peoples of the world!

May your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

May your commonwealth of peace and freedom

Sustain our hope and be fulfilled on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we cause and absorb from one another forgive us;

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us,

From trials too great to endure, spare us,

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,

Now and forever. Amen.

Religion in the Post-Modern World

An adult class at Trinity Church is now studying and discussing a book by Dr David Griffin entitled “Religion and the Modern World”.   Dr Griffin describes the “Modern World View” within which we all ”live and move & have our being” as the current dominant scientific view of everything, understood as nothing more than matter or objects in motion that have evolved over millions of years and finally (?) to have arrived to us human beings.  So in this modern view, everything that is now or ever has existed can be studied and known empirically by scientific observation (sight, sound, hearing, smell), including religion.

Dr Griffin, a Christian “Process” theologian, points out how religions world-wide, including Christianity, have been discarded from the curriculum in the scientific universities as not worth the time, money or energy. UCSC abolished its Religious Studies Department thirty years ago. 

Christians and other religious people my feel  increasingly ignored and left our of this  modern scientific world-view’s dismissal of what may be not only real but precious to us. But it is true that the pre-scientific ages of religious influence on human culture has shrunk precipitously in our modern scientific culture. The old “orthodox” traditional conception of an Omnipotent (all powerful) Omniscient (all knowing) God who lives in a place we call ”heaven,” somewhere beyond our earth or cosmos, and who intervenes at will in human affairs for good or ill to achieve His ends, is simply no longer tenable.  Such a pre-scientific view of a Divine Being living somewhere (in heaven) who may or may not respond to our prayers and entreaties has been reasonable rejected by the Modern Scientific World View.  Unfortunately this “orthodox” Christian view is often maintained in our churches, though largely by very strident evangelical Christians.

Dr. Griffin urges Christians & other thinking religious people to move beyond this old medieval- orthodox faith and also the current “modern scientific” worldview to a “Post Modern World View” that includes empirical science but also includes an “animism” or life force in which “God” and therefore “Religion” can play  an important but limited part  

So Griffin proposes a “Post Modern” World-view that includes a GOD-energy  which is real but has self-limiting power in the world.   God is Love, but Love is also God, which means the God-energy is never intrusive but always appealing and luring us to respond in loving, forgiving and caring ways in all we are and do. 

In this “Post-Modern World View”, God-energy is part of the emerging Process in which we, by faithful, loving lives, may play a vital part within our space-time limitation.   We Christians can discover that part by paying attention not only to the ancient. O. T. value commandments, the O. T. prophetic writings, and most especially to the life and teachings of Jesus, but also to our earthly & human history. And by keeping alert to what our particular calling is toward creating the reign (kingdom) of God=energy on earth in our time as we imagine it to be in an eternity where our highest God-inspired  human & planetary values reign.      

You are always there for me (a remembrance)

 

You are always there for me

 

You are there when I need you
You are there when I call
Whether from long distance
or only down the hall

 

I find you with me always
In life’s challenges and joy
You are embedded deep within my heart
Giving me confidence to employ

 

I am so lucky to have you as my dad
I give thanks every day
You are never very far away
Have a happy father's day!

 

Righteous Slaughter

         Throughout Human history humans have engaged in what we might rightly call ‘righteous slaughter” – killing their enemies in the name of God.  We can read about such incidents in our Bible as well as in many other religious texts. We are all familiar with the stories of Joshua slaughtering every one in the city of Jerico; They killed everyone, men and women, young and old (Joshua 6: 21), and the slaughter of the priests of Baal by the Prophet Elijah following the contest on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18” 37-40)   

         Killing people in the name of God has continued throughout religious history. During the Crusades one historian records the Crusaders  defeat of the Moslems In Jerusalem resulting in the blood of the enemy running up to the stirrups of the Crusader’s horses.

         In modern warfare there are numerous incidents of killing the enemy in the name of God. Recently  the video news  showed accounts of the Isis warriors  cutting off the heads of their enemies,  again in the name of God.

         Today the “Laws of War” established by the United Nations do not permit such barbarian behavior. . We regard our nation’s use of   violence as strictly “defensive”  Yet our nation is the largest supplier of high technological weapons to dozens of countries which are not as constrained by our moral standards and are sometimes used causing the death of thousands of innocent civilians.

         We are also reminded that “righteous slaughter” continues to go on in our own country because many of  our  fellow Americans, citing Second Amendment rights, advocate the unfettered sale of military style weapons to anyone regardless of the  often tragic result  by some who hear the ’”call of God” to rid the nation of its enemies?

         We normally regard our Christian religious faith as a call to peace and non-violence. We refer to Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Consequently we cannot ignore or pretend these contradictions do not exist in our land. For the followers of Jesus, Righteous Slaughter  is never an option. And peacemaking  is our response to the Lure of God.

 

A Prayer for today

    Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us  from following leaders of falsehood and into a time where more of reality  and truth is being unveiled for  all to see.    We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. 

    Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love.      

    Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our suffering world. Knowing, good God, that you are hearing our hearts better than our words, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God. 

Amen.

Transforming Time

         I recently read an essay by Czeslaw Milosz, a polish writer, diplomat and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who wrote of changing one’s past by acts we undertake in the present.  It had always seemed to me that our present acts might change our future, but not our past. But now, I have come to realize that time measured in personal and not merely in linear terms, is a dynamic that changes life continually in all directions. 

         God is an eternal and dynamic spiritual Reality for whom time is our human invention for measuring temporal existence which can be totally transformed in every direction – past present, future, - by our awakening to the eternal dimension of Spirit that “comes and goes where it wills”…and we see &  hear only its effects. 

         We can forgive ourselves of our past sins – God does – and thus transform our guilt over past errors as well as our future choices.  This flexibility of time has social as well as personal implications. “Reparations” is a current call to repair the social wrongs of the past  (slavery & racism) through present acts, thus leading into a forgiven past & a more humane future for all. 

         Christians should be at the forefront of changing both the past and future by awakening in the present to the transforming power of the Spirit of Love & Forgiveness in our past, present & future personal and collective lives.

Images of God

    `’God” is not god’s name. “God ”is the name we humans have given to our image or idea of the great mystery that underlies our limited perception of our lives and the universe.   Christians, of course, derive their images of God from both the Bible and our more than  2000 year old  religious tradition.  Other religions alive and active today  - Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism etc. have different sources and traditions from which they derive their ideas and images of “God”.

While the followers of each of these religious traditions tend to believe their beliefs and ideas about God and the traditions from which they come are the ”right” ones -“inspired” perhaps - modern science, including historical and literary research, has shown that our separate traditions have arisen from different unrelated “tribes” or groups of people, each group needing the same reassurance that their beliefs underlying their way of life and destiny are true and  reliable.

Unfortunately, out of these different sources of “truth” has grown conflict , violence and wars.

The modern ecumenical movement among the more “liberal” trends within each religious tradition has  led most of human kind to a more cooperative and intentional effort to ease our separate dogmatism and exclusivism and seek to learn from each other.  

The “niners” class that meets each Sunday morning at 9:00 (now on ZOOM)  is actively exploring how the Christian faith tradition might  reexamine its origins, history and current relationship to science and biblical scholarship. 

    It turns out that Christian tradition contains an amazing and deeply enriching variety of sub-traditions based largely on two factors: the historical period when each was developed and the visionary spirit of individuals and small groups of persons willing to open their minds and hearts to different ways of understanding God and practicing their faith. All Christians root their faith in the life of Jesus of Nazareth whom we have anointed with the title “Christ.” 

    It is an exciting mind and heart expanding experience to study, discuss and pray our way along this path of exploration. Currently, the Niners class is following Dr. Katherine Keller and her challenging book entitled “On The Mystery.” Every one is welcome to join this venture on ZOOM each Sunday at nine o’clock .  The zoom address is in the church bulletin  The pass  code is niners.

Be the Salt and Light

Jim Wallis 

What does reconnecting with Jesus mean as we go into the world? How do we see him, recognize him, and follow him? Does reconnecting with Jesus mean reclaiming a way of life or style of life that we can look for?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus compares following his way to being the “salt” and light” that the world so desperately needs. He says that his followers will be like salt, a preserving and stabilizing force to preserve, protect, and deepen the values and behaviors that human cultures most need to keep and enhance. Jesus said to his followers, “You are the salt of the earth,” to preserve the important things that sustain and undergird human societies. This is a quality that conservatives often admire: keeping cohesion and positive communal values intact, like the glue that often holds things together — values such as honesty, integrity, compassion, fairness, faithfulness, fidelity, and dedication to raising our children in ways that are good and right and for the sake of service to others.

The followers of Jesus will also be like light, shining into the darkness, revealing what is wrong, untrue, and a danger to human life and dignity — revealing the things that need to be changed. Jesus said to his disciples, “you are the light of the world,” revealing the things we should not let darkness cover up or make us accept. This is what liberals or progressives are often drawn to. Exposing injustice, the light helps point to and promote social, racial, and economic justice where and when it is most needed, because those commitments and goals are integral to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only when light shines will the darkness go away. The light also serves as a beacon that others can see and be drawn to, modeling loving God and neighbor in ways that show what true love and justice look like. I think many of us who learned about the Sermon on the Mount in Sunday school may have thought of “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” as basically the same thing — I know I did.