fast forward >> play

It’s been just over 4 years since my last post on this blog.  A lot can happen in 4 years.

Since the last post, my position at the previously mentioned church was terminated (due to a recession and some painful budget cuts…including my salary).  I have taken on a position at an art/faith retreat center across the river.  I am also the part-time youth director at a United Methodist Church in another nearby town.  The step into a mainline protestant church, and the Methodist circle in general, has been a refreshing one.  The breadth of theology within the Methodist tradition is a nice change of pace from the constraining litmus tests I have encountered before.

I hope that a renewed interest and engagement with life and culture and God in rural America provides the inspiration for forthcoming posts on here.

Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 4)

Part One: Active Dimension
Ch 4: Healing Along the Way

Wilson begins the chapter with something I’ve felt for quite a while:

My father had a favorite word: bass-ackwards.  Sometimes I wonder if those of us who promote the religion of Jesus have gotten something bass-ackwards.  Have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a prerequisite for meaningful engagement with Jesus?

He talks about the fact that we can’t crawl into another person’s soul; we can’t know where they are, where they are coming from, etc.  But we hand them a package of belief and expect them to swallow the entire thing whole, all at once, before they can begin to engage God or have any sort of meaningful experience of spirituality.  We’ve forgotten that the Christian doctrinal system has been in development for over two thousand years, rooted in traditions that are even older.  He then speaks to four different aspects of “healing along the way”:

The Creation (a review)

I just finished and set down next to me E.O. Wilson’s The Creation: An appeal to save life on earth.  When I picked it up at a bookstore months ago (I’ve been reading it in small chunks here and there between reading other books), I was pretty excited about it as I’ve been wanting to read something by Wilson for quite a while…and this one was written under the premise that scientists and religious leaders need to work together  to preseve the Earth’s rapidly vanishing biodiversity.

I have to say, I did enjoy it…but I’m not so sure Wilson succeeded in his premise.  His thoughts and words about biodiversity and its importance were beautiful, but he seemed to head off onto various rabbit trails (I know his specialty is ants, and the near entire chapter he wrote about a certain species of ant in the Caribbean and its ethno-natural history was fascinating, but I honestly can’t figure out what it has to do with urging scientists and religious leaders to work together…or helping people in the religious community further value the creation). 

When he writes about the wonders of bacteria and the near countless species of microorganisms and SLIMES that a square meter of soil contains, he’s at his best.  But to me it almost seemed like Wilson was appealing to the worst in people when speaking of the value of earth and its biomes and biodiversity in actual monetary value or basing its value on how these organisms might benefit us directly (through possible medicines, cures, etc.).  I would have much rather he stayed on valuing organisms and biodiversity because of their intrinsic value and the beauty of the relationships and interconnectedness between them.  As Wilson writes at one point, “…ecosystems and species can be saved only by understanding the unique value of each species in turn, and by persuading the people who have dominion over them to serve as their stewards.”  If he had stayed on this path, I think the result (and his argument) would have remained strong (and in my opinion, created MUCH more common ground for scientists and religious leaders to stand on).

I really enjoyed his last section, “Teaching the Creation” and the chapters included within (How to Learn Biology and How to Teach It, How To Raise a Naturalist, Citizen Science).  Perhaps this is simply where I’m at and has to do with what I’ve been trying to exercise and encourage in others, but many of his suggestions and examples in these chapters were great.

He concludes his “letter” hoping that he has succeeded in convincing religious leaders of the value and need for saving Earth’s biodiversity.  Although I was already convinced of this before I took the book from the shelf, I hope it serves in urging others in the religious community in understanding and working toward the preservation and restoration of the creation we were called to steward.

neither bear nor…?

Today was the day of the year we hold baptisms.  We all gather in the field outside the church and sing some songs and those who want to get baptized share a bit of their stories.  The church is right next to the river (where we actually do the baptisms), and so we all walk from the church and across a footbridge to the other side where there is a calm spot in the water.  So this morning, as a bunch of people were crossing the bridge, a bear meandered across the river below and into the bushes updstream from where we do the baptisms.

I’m not sure what people in other places would have done in this situation, but out here in the country, well, we proceeded straight down to the river’s edge without so much as a concern and continued with the baptisms.

‘Cause out here, that’s just how we roll.

Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 3)

Part One: Active Dimension
Ch 3: Repairing the World

Wilson begins the chapter by talking about the contempt many Christians (or at least Evangelicals) often have for “environmentalists.”  He likens this to a “trademark infringement on the Jesus brand,” saying

Religious contempt toward those who care passionately about the environment has nothing to do with Jesus, but it has found a way into much of the religion that bears his name.  I hope and pray this is changing, but when an environmental scientist encounters contempt, the scientist often assumes the contemptuous person also carries the name Christian

He goes on to say (very correctly, I think) that many people who claim to follow Jesus have been taking their cues from the talking heads and personalities on radio and television (“All someone has to do is wrap himself in the flag and build a powerful enough media platform, and we hang on every word he speaks as though it were the gospel”).  All of this is to say that we should be looking for “trademark infringement” whenever and wherever it occurs.  Because religion can both reveal and obscure Jesus, we sometimes have to dig through the mess of religion to find him.  Wilson states that a good place to start is the gospels, where we find Jesus on a mission to repair to the world…and extending an invitation for us to join him.  The chapter culminates with this mission being broken down into the following three categories:

Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 2)

Chapter 2: You Are Here

To know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been.  Understanding the premise of pilgrimage that Wilson introduced int he previous chapter, he begins to elaborate on the idea a bit more before jumping into the four dimensions.

Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 1)

So I picked up a new book today, one I hadn’t intended on picking up, but saw the spine on the shelf and ended up bringing it home with me.  It’s entitled Jesus Brand Spirituality: He wants his religion back  and is authored by Ken Wilson.  The cover intrigued me, and I was about to put it back on the shelf, but then I noticed the foreward was written by Phyllis Tickle, so I gave it more of a chance and flipped through the pages and table of contents.  After reading the first lines of the first chapter, I thought it might be worth the read:

“Jesus wants his religion back.  And he wants it back from the orthodox, the Bible-believing, and the defenders of faith as much as from anyone else.  So it can be for the world again.”

Being a fairly new book to the market, I thought I would go ahead and attempt to review it as I read it…chapter by chapter would be the best, I suppose.  From the beginning, I have to admit that I am irrititated by the phrase “Jesus brand spirituality” (and evidently I’m not the only one, as Wilson communicates his reason for using the phrase here).  But, so far, the actual content of Wilson’s writing is substantial enough that I can get beyond any qualms I have about the phrase.