Note from CM: Each day I receive meditations from Richard Rohr. I found Sunday’s article quite insightful, and hope you will too.
• • •
Irreplaceable “Thisness”
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same;
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying what I do is me: for that I came.
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
Franciscan philosopher-theologian Blessed John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) taught extensively on the absolute uniqueness of each act of creation. His doctrine of haecceity is derived from haec, the Latin word for “this.” Duns Scotus said the absolute freedom of God allows God to create, or not to create, each creature. Its existence means God has positively chosen to create that creature, precisely as it is.
Each creature is thus not merely one member of a genus and species, but a unique aspect of the infinite Mystery of God. God is continuously choosing each created thing specifically to exist, moment by moment. This teaching alone made Duns Scotus a favorite of mystics and poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins and Thomas Merton, who both considered themselves “Scotists”—as do I. I studied this largely unknown genius for four years in college, which is why I quote him so often.
Duns Scotus taught that you cannot know something spiritually by saying it is a not-that, by negation or distinguishing it from something else. You can only know anything by meeting it in its precise and irreplaceable thisness and honoring it there. Each individual act of creation is a once-in-eternity choice on God’s part. The direct implication of this truth is that love must precede all true knowledge, which was at the heart of all Franciscan-based philosophy.
In a word, this is contemplation: to look at reality with a primary gaze of love. Contemplation has been described as “a long, loving look at the Real.” Nondual consciousness is learning how to be present to what is right in front of me, to the Now, exactly as it is, without splitting or dividing it, without judgment, analysis, or resistance. We must say yes before we offer any no!
In other words, our mind, heart, soul, and senses are open and receptive to the moment, just as it is. This allows us to say, “Just this,” and love things in themselves, as themselves, and by themselves, regardless of how they benefit or make demands on us. Is there any other way to truly love anything?
Spiritual knowledge is to know things subject to subject (I-Thou), whereas rational knowing is to know things subject to object (I-it). There is, of course, a place for both; but most people have never been taught how to see in this deeper, non-dual way, center to center and subject to subject—and that is the seeing that changes our lives.
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’
The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
• • •
The Lord be with you.
I can’t imagine too many places other than here in the farm country of central Indiana where people would be more familiar with the concept Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel text. He uses a simple agricultural metaphor that is simple to understand, but which challenges all of our expectations about God and his Kingdom.
Let’s set the scene…
We have reached the turning point in the Gospel as John tells it. All throughout the Gospel, Jesus has been saying, “My hour, my time has not yet come.”
But today, in John 12, he announces, “Now the time has arrived. Now the hour has come.”
Now is when the Son of Man will be glorified, Jesus announces.
Now I have reached the moment for which I came into this world.
Now it is time for the ruler of this world to be judged and cast out.
Now it is time for me to be lifted up.
Now it is time for me to draw all people to myself and to God.
I’m not sure what his disciples and others thought when Jesus said that, but perhaps they imagined it was time for him to claim the throne as Israel’s rightful king, the Messiah. Perhaps they thought when he said he was going to be “glorified” that it meant it was time for him to receive the true honor and public accolades that he deserved. Perhaps they understood that when he was lifted up and that all people would be drawn to him, it meant that he would replace the Romans who were ruling at the time, be hailed as King and Lord of all, and everyone would bow before him in allegiance.
It would have been perfectly natural to interpret his words like that. After all, this speech takes place right after Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly, with people shouting his praises.
However, right in the middle of his pronouncement that his hour has come, Jesus introduces a metaphor that turns all of those expectations upside down.
Look at it and listen to it, right there in verse 24:
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
I think everybody here has a pretty good grasp of what Jesus is talking about here. At planting time, we put seeds in the ground. We have learned that life and food and nourish-ment and abundance come about through a process. And the process, at first, looks like death. We bury seeds. We plough up the ground and put the seeds down in it, down in the darkness, down in the quiet. It looks like we are consigning the seeds to death.
But we wait. And in days to come, as the rains come and the sun shines and the nutrients in the soil do their work, the seed germinates, and life begins to grow silently, secretly. Then one day, a shoot of green breaks through the soil. Over time, it grows to maturity, produces its crop, and gives life to us.
Life comes to us through a process that, at first, looks like death. It looks like dying.
And so it is with the Kingdom of God. And so it is with Jesus becoming King and bringing eternal life to the world.
Yes, Jesus will be glorified. But surprisingly, it won’t look like a King being honored with a robe and crown, it will look like dying.
Yes, Jesus will accomplish what he came to do. But surprisingly, it will involve dying a criminal’s death.
Yes, Jesus will overcome evil and defeat the powers of sin and death. But surprisingly, he will do it by submitting himself to their power and suffering their violent attacks.
Yes, Jesus will be lifted up. But surprisingly, it not be on a throne. It will be on a tree of crucifixion.
Yes, Jesus will draw all people to himself as King and Lord, but it will be by dying for their sins, which will draw them and reconcile them to God.
This is how Jesus becomes King. This is how he is lifted up. This is how he accomplishes what God sent him to do. This is how sin, evil, and death are defeated. This is how people all over the world are drawn to Jesus in faith to receive eternal life. It looks like dying.
Jesus goes on to say that this is how his followers will continue to live and bring life to the world: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”
As you and I live each day, we are called to live cruciform lives. We bring life to the world in the same surprising and counter-intuitive way that the seed does. It looks like dying. It looks like laying down our lives for others. It looks like sacrificing our own self-interests so that we might serve the interests of others. It looks like committing ourselves to the small, humble, and often secret acts of love that nourish and enhance life for those around us.
This is life the way God designed it. Jesus’ life and our life follows the pattern of the seed. It brings life to the world. But it looks just like dying. Amen.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12.24)
• From a lectionary reading for Lent 5: John 12.20-33
• • •
Reflection for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 25) By Jan Richardson
The lectionary texts this week have set me to thinking about how God works in hidden spaces: in the inner being, in the secret heart, in the earth. There is work that God needs to do in us in secret; out of sight, away from the glare of day, removed from public view. Yet God has a penchant for revelation, for bringing into the open what is within us. God’s inward work is for the purpose of opening us outward. God draws us deep inside, then draws us back into the world to bear the fruit that comes when our inner lives are congruent with our outer ones.
I should tell you
at the outset:
this blessing will require you
to do some work.
First you must simply
let this blessing fall
from your hand,
as if it were a small thing
you could easily let slip
through your fingers,
as if it were not
most precious to you,
as if your life did not
depend on it.
Next you must trust
that this blessing knows
where it is going,
that it understands
the ways of the dark,
that it is wise
to seasons
and to times.
Then—
and I know this blessing
has already asked much
of you—
it is to be hoped that
you will rest
and learn
that something is at work
when all seems still,
seems dormant,
seems dead.
I promise you
this blessing has not
abandoned you.
I promise you
this blessing
is on its way back
to you.
I promise you—
when you are least
expecting it,
when you have given up
your last hope—
this blessing will rise
green
and whole
and new.
Welcome to the Monks Brunch on this St. Patrick’s Day, 2018. Here are a few Irish blessings to share with each other as you lift your glasses this day:
Bless your little Irish heart and every other Irish part.
May the Lord keep you in His hand and never close His fist too tight.
May the Good Lord take a liking to you — but, not too soon.
May your troubles be as few and as far apart as my dear Grandmother’s teeth.
May you die in bed at ninety-five years, shot by a jealous husband.
Here’s to your coffin!
– May your coffin have six handles of finest silver!
– May your coffin be carried by six fair young maids!
– And may your coffin be made of finest wood from a 100-year-old tree, that I’ll go plant tomorrow!
As you slide down the banisters of life may the splinters never point the wrong way.
May you live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent.
We start today with good news, life-changing and heart-warming, from a scene that is almost Gospel-like in its wonder and joy.
From NPR:
The blind have descended in droves on the Bisidimo Hospital in Eastern Ethiopia.
The Himalayan Cataract Project is hosting a mass cataract surgery campaign at the medical compound that used to be a leper colony. For one week a team from the nonprofit has set up seven operating tables in four operating rooms and they’re offering free cataract surgery to anyone who needs it.
On the first day of the campaign it’s clear that the need is great.
“We have like 700 or 800 patients already in the compound and many more appointed for tomorrow and the day after and the day after that,” says Teketel Mathiwos, the Ethiopian program coordinator for the Himalayan Cataract Project.
…The entire operation takes four minutes. Some more complicated cases take longer. It can be harder to work on a person with an extremely deep eye socket. Also if the patient has suffered from trachoma or some other eye disease in the past, the cataract surgery might take up to 20 minutes. But even then this is a relatively quick procedure.
“It doesn’t really cost very much money,” Oliva says, “and it’s insane that there’s so many people waiting around for cataract surgery, people that could have their sight restored by a simple and inexpensive operation.”
…As more and more bandages are peeled off, family members of the patients start singing and dancing in the courtyard. Several patients experiment with putting a hand over one eye, then the other, checking out their restored sight.
Oliva says the entire cost for this event — including paying staff, renting equipment, transporting patients back and forth to their villages — breaks down to just $75 per patient.
He calls cataract surgery the low-hanging fruit of international health. The Himalayan Cataract Project started working in Nepal in the 1990s and now hopes to tackle the leading cause of blindness in sub-Saharan Africa.
The HCP was a semi-finalist last year for the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition, a search to find a group delivering bold solutions to one of the world’d most critical problems. (The $100 million prize went to Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee to educate displaced kids in the Middle East.)
The World Health Organization estimates that more than 2 million people in Africa have lost their sight due to cataracts.
Now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some of the notable entries in the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. This year, the contest drew nearly 320,000 entries from more than 200 countries. Winners will be announced on April 19. Here are a few of them. Go to the site to see more.
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.
A university spokesman confirmed the death.
“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.
On Scientific Discovery: “I wouldn’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.”
On His Life’s Work: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
On Black Holes: “They’re named black holes because they are related to human fears of being destroyed or gobbled up. I don’t have fears of being thrown into them. I understand them. I feel in a sense that I am their master.”
On Depression: “Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly to another universe. So if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up — there’s a way out.”
On His Physical Limitations: “I want to show that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.”
On God: “There is no god. I am an atheist.”
On Climate Change: “Climate change is one of the great dangers we face and it’s one we can prevent.”
On Knowledge: The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
•
One of Hawking’s long time collaborators paid tributeto him in these words:
What distinguished Stephen from the rest of our pack when I first met him, and ever since, was not his insane brilliance or his consummate knowledge of every last detail of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It was his passion in the search for the truth. This helped keep him alive and in good spirits through unimaginable and unrelenting physical challenges. Einstein once said “Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to except for the society of the true seekers, which has very few living members at any one time.” Einstein would have counted Stephen as a member.
Astronaut Scott Kelly set a record for the longest single spaceflight in history and now NASA is saying the trip made him a “new man” as well. A study of Kelly and his identical twin brother found that spending nearly a year in space significantly changed the astronaut’s DNA.
Kelly spent 340 straight days aboard the International Space Station from 2015 to 2016. When the NASA veteran returned to Earth, researchers immediately noted that he had grown two inches in height. A new study comparing Scott to his identical twin, Mark — who is also a NASA astronaut and stayed on Earth during the 340-day trip — has revealed that long-term space travel alters more than just your height.
“Scott’s telomeres (endcaps of chromosomes that shorten as one ages) actually became significantly longer in space,” NASA researchers wrote in a statement. The space agency added that Kelly had hundreds of “space genes” activated by the year-long flight which reportedly altered the astronaut’s “immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia, and hypercapnia.”
While Scott Kelly’s height and 93 percent of his DNA returned to normal after returning to Earth, NASA confirmed that seven percent of his genes have remained changed and may stay that way. “This is thought to be from the stresses of space travel, which can cause changes in a cell’s biological pathways and ejection of DNA and RNA,” researchers added.
A surfer rides waves under snowfall on March 11, 2018, in Unstad, northern Norway, Lofoten islands, within the Arctic Circle. (OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Let’s end with one of the all-time greats from N. Ireland, Van Morrison.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and be careful if you’re planning a wild night.
The ELCA claims to be committed to embracing diversity, seen even in Human Sexuality [ELCA Social Statement] as we embrace multiple positions on accepting same-gender relationality as a Christian lifestyle. So also there exist in the ELCA multiple positions on marriage, divorce, relationality, having children, monogamy, polyamory, sexual expression, and relational intimacy. We lift this multiplicity up and demand that its full diversity be recognized within the Christian lifestyle in our church.
In the past, I have written about how the Evangelical Church in America has spoken about issues regarding homosexuality and other human sexuality issues. You can see links at the bottom of the post for two such articles. Generally speaking, I have commended the ELCA in its statements for trying to walk a via media and to keep unity within a denomination made up of diverse perspectives. Still, serious breaches have taken place in synods and churches. I have heard most often about certain conservative individuals or groups who left the ELCA to form or participate in groups that sought to uphold more traditional forms of morality.
But conservatives are not the only ones dissatisfied with the ELCA approach. There are groups within the denomination who think the ELCA did not go nearly far enough. From their perspective, the denomination remains a “heteronormative” organization that is advancing oppressive power dynamics and structures upon individuals’ rights to practice sexual freedom as they see fit.
As the quote above shows, these groups will not be satisfied until a full range of sexual practices and relational arrangements are sanctified and “recognized within the Christian lifestyle in our church.”
We are Lutheran theologians committed to an incarnational theology that rejects purity culture and any theology that is afraid of bodies and their desires. We are not ashamed of our sexuality, our relationality, our queerness, and our genders, because we walk in the promise that God sees our bodies and calls them good.
Naked & Unashamed challenges the theology and expected conduct described in Vision & Expectations, Definitions and Guidelines for Discipline, and Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, among other ELCA documents.
In their full statement, the group lays out their problems with the ELCA approach in a summary:
The ELCA documents we are highlighting are being used to perpetuate a pressure for leaders in the ELCA to be married, and to additionally conform to oppressive relational and sexual standards set by our church that are often in contrast with our values and lived experience.
The expectations surrounding “chastity” purport an ethic of works-based righteousness, positing that certain practices of our sexuality make us a better steward of our pastoral call.
Singlehood, the dating process, friendships, and committed relationships outside of civil marriage are devalued by the overemphasis on marriage and family.
The recent inclusion of same-gender relationships in these ELCA documents still utilizes heteronormative language that sets narrow expectations of what an acceptable committed relationship looks like.
These ELCA documents have created a culture of shame in our community, one that manifests itself in both our experience with candidacy committees and among our cohorts. This culture sits in juxtaposition to our current context, politically, economically, scientifically, and medically.
They argue against the priority given to marriage (a priority which I commended in the article Unique below). “Our argument is that ELCA’s theology is hegemonic in that it prioritizes one cultural theology as the implicit norm, and those who fall outside are demonized and de-Christianized.” Now, I would be the first person to agree that people have “demonized and de-Christianized” people who look, act, and relate to others outside societal norms. I see this as a failure to “love your neighbor as yourself,” however, not “hegemony” that necessarily grows out of a sexual ethic that these folks deem “heteronormative, white-centric, economically oppressive, and non-Lutheran.”
They also argue that our fundamental approach to relationships should be based on an understanding of the power dynamics involved rather than on any particular view of sexuality. In their view, the very rhetoric of giving marriage a special place within a context of “heteronormality” is oppressive and shame-inducing.
We have experienced various overt and internalized pressures from the ELCA to make sure that any romantic or sexual relationship we are in is validated through marriage. This internalized pressure to get married leads to preoccupation with the self and with the fear of unworthiness in our actions. The shame we feel and the daily internal reliving of it does not embody the freedom in Christ that Paul and Luther emphasized. The ideal that the highest level of union is the marital relationship leads to non-marital relationships being characterized by this “burden of unworthiness” instead of love for the neighbor. The idea that sexuality should only be expressed through celibacy in singlehood and monogamy in marriage means that as ministers in the church, we are deemed unfit for ministry in other forms of sexual expression.
I myself have certainly criticized an overemphasis on marriage in certain ways in various Christian communities because it does often lead to ignoring and excluding others and making them feel less than people made in God’s image, claimed and beloved in Christ. In my view this represents a failure to understand and practice a healthy and inclusive doctrine of vocation and should be critiqued on that basis.
And certainly, where “purity culture” has been proclaimed and enforced through bad teaching about God’s good gifts of the body and sexuality, and where forbearance, understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance has not been practiced well, people have been made to feel dirty and ashamed in ways that are not fitting in loving pastoral or community care.
The views expressed in this statement are dogmatic and insistent. They represent the same kind of culture war mindset of those who throw grenades from their bunkers on the other side. An entire tribal rhetoric has been developed that inhibits listening and conversing with others on any kind of neutral ground. They are not approaching these matters as concerned brothers and sisters but as entrenched combatants with weapons of language and doctrine.
Culture war Christianity is as wrong-headed and off-center on the left as it is on the right. Working for “justice” can be as much an exercise of works-righteousness and self-righteousness as any promulgation of rules enforcing traditional moral frameworks. Groups like this, which develop their own constituencies, strategies, and rhetoric can be as unloving, aggressive, and even militaristic as any group touting “traditional values.”
The agenda of a church and denomination should be Christ. When Jesus is removed from the center, it becomes a free-for-all. And it doesn’t matter whether you replace Jesus with “family values” or “justice.” No matter which side of the debate you’re on, you’re missing the point.
We are continuing our reflections on Miracles and Science based on a series of blog posts by Ard Louis of BioLogos. The blog posts can be found on the BioLogos web site archives here. The blog posts are based on a scholarly essay Louis did for BioLogos in 2007 which can be found here.
Rather than attempt to come up with a careful and precise definition of science or scientific practice, Louis will instead use one of his favorite metaphors. It originates with one of his former teachers at Cornell, the physicist David Mermin, who describes science as a “tapestry” woven together from many threads (experimental results, interpretations, explanations, etc.). The question then becomes; does the pattern of the tapestry as a whole make a pattern with the strength to move the listener forward in their thinking? Louis says:
I am fond of this metaphor because it describes what I think I experience from the inside as a scientist. Moreover, it also emphasizes the importance of coherence and consistency when I weave together arguments and data to make an “inference to a best explanation.”
And that “inference to a best explanation” is the best one can hope for in the discussion of the relation of miracles and science. Science can disprove the claim of a miracle by providing contradictory evidence, but the best that science can do in validating a miracle is fail to falsify the null hypothesis. Which is a fancy of saying that science didn’t prove the miracle didn’t happen. Of course, inference to the best explanation is not inference to the only explanation. If someone is committed presuppositionally to only a material explanation for the cosmos, then any other explanation will be preferred. However, let’s be clear, that isn’t science it’s metaphysics.
Louis then points out the communal aspect of weaving a scientific tapestry. Every scientist is relying on the judgment of others as to whether their particular tapestry will stand the test of time. He notes that weaving reliable scientific tapestries relies on subtle judgements. So a young scientist may work for years as an apprentice of older and more experienced practitioners before branching out on his own. This he compares favorably to the guilds of old. Modern critics of science often seize on this communal aspect to argue that science is a “social construct” and no more guarantee of reliable knowledge than any other human undertaking. Many scientists, and I’m one of them, react quite negatively to this assertion. Although in times past too many white, male, Euro-centric scientists refused to acknowledge that all kinds of economic, historical and social factors do play a role in the formation of scientific theories, most would argue that, in the long run, the scientific process does lead to reliable knowledge about the world. Just like in any human endeavor, hubris and arrogance leads to bad consequences. Humility keeps one from being self-deceived. Louis says:
The view of nature embraced by most scientists whom I know could be described as critical realism. They are realists because they believe that there is a world out there that is independent of our making. The adjective “critical” is added because they recognize that extracting knowledge about that world is not always straightforward. Thus, the primary role of the collective nature of the scientific process is to provide a network of error-correcting mechanisms that prevent us from fooling ourselves. The continual testing against nature refines and filters out competing scientific theories, leading to advances in the strength and reliability of our scientific knowledge tapestries.
Louis then talks about the subtle differences that arise between different branches of science as they assemble their tapestry arguments. As a theoretical physicist, Louis has been enculturated in a tradition of what the Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner called “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics:” Based on the extraordinary success of modern physics in employing mathematical solutions to their problems, most physicists believe that mathematical consistency among threads is a key indicator of strong tapestries. Louis says that lately he has been working with biologists who view his reliance on mathematical models to model the world accurately with great suspicion. Physicists, on the other hand, are often instinctively skeptical of the huge error bars that can afflict biological data.
I am somewhat in the middle ground, as a geologist, between the theoretical physicists and the biologists. Great progress has been made in recent years in the mathematical modeling of groundwater and contaminant transport flow. And the degree of success in “ground-truthing” the models has been remarkable. Funny, true story, though, about my experience with geophysicists, mathematical models, and ground truth. A geophysics company had developed what they believed to be an ingenious method of locating underground stream passages based on inducing an electrical current in the ground and then modeling that current flow to accord with the groundwater flow based on magnetic induction measurements on the surface of the terrain. I don’t want to over-tech everybody here, but current flowing in groundwater produces a magnetic field that, theoretically, can be detected by very sensitive magnetometer measurements at the surface. Well, I and my crew had been able to access the cave stream through a sinkhole and had surveyed about 175 feet of passage before they encountered a ceiling collapse that blocked them from any further exploration. So I had the passage plotted on the site map and I told the company to perform their survey and gave them the general area to survey, which included the underground passage. Of course they wanted the map before they did the survey. I said, no way, do the survey and then tell me where the passage was, I knew what confirmation bias was and I wasn’t having any of it. Well, to make a long story short, they took their measurements, ran their model, and produced a beautiful set of 3-D graphics showing where the passage lay. Problem was, they weren’t even close. I was disappointed, I had high hopes for their method, because in theory, it was very sound, and had worked elsewhere.
But, despite these cultural differences, most scientist agree on a number of ground rules for defining what makes a tapestry strong. For example, what scientists either predict or measure should be repeatable. If someone claims to see an effect in an experiment, someone else in a different lab should be able to reliably measure the same effect. That lack of reproducibility in medical research has been noted as a problem lately
Louis then notes that there are many questions that simply are not amenable to purely scientific analysis. He quotes from the book The Limits of Science by Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) Sir Peter Medawar, who wrote:
“That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer… It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things.” And:
“Science is a great and glorious enterprise – the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed.”
In a sense, science’s great power come from its self-imposed limits. It’s a great mistake to ask questions of science it is ill-equipped to answer. Most people understand the greatest questions in life are not answerable by science, nor do they live as if it were. I am reminded of the quintessence of this type of person; the character of the Great Kirk in C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy. Although Lewis said he owed a great debt to Kirk for teaching him how to think critically, it was obvious that the man could not grasp the concept of joy, or had any clue how to live a life of joy. Louis then quotes John Polkinghorne:
“We are entitled to require a consistency between what people write in their studies and the way in which they live their lives. I submit that no-one lives as if science were enough. Our account of the world must be rich enough – have a thick enough texture and a sufficiently generous rationality – to contain the total spectrum of human meeting with reality.”
As imperceptively as grief. Photo by Cate Storymoon
Note from CM: Every once in a while, I receive an email or some other communication from a reader that hits home hard. Susan took the time to write me the other day just to tell her story and express her thanks — she had no idea how what she said blew me away. And she had no idea that I would ask her if I could share it with the Internet Monk community. She graciously agreed, made a few edits, and here it is. This piece caused me to take a good long look in the mirror. For people who follow a Savior who was a “man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief,” many of us sure act like we don’t want anything to do with it.
• • •
Susan’s Story
Hi, Chaplain Mike. My name is Susan. I am a long-time iMonk lurker. I’ve only commented once back in 2010, mostly because I cannot seem to grasp many of the new-to-me ideas expressed here enough to contribute to the discussions. I desperately want to understand…but that’s not the subject of this email.
What I want to say here is, thank you for your posts about depression, lamentation, grief, and mourning, and I hope you will continue to share your insights on these topics. How lucky your patients and their families are to have you as their hospice chaplain!
I am so grateful for the hospice care my mom received as she struggled through the last stages of the illness she had lived with for over a decade (she passed away in December), but our family did not receive the same pastoral care that I am now benefiting from through your posts.
One thing I really need help with is forgiveness—not of my mom or of our past, but of those who did not console me after she died.
My pastor forgot, twice, to include me on the prayer list, so my church as a whole did not know my mom had passed away and, therefore, was not given the chance to offer consolation. My husband and I did personally tell each individual in our respective Sunday school classes, with whom we had shared my experiences with eldercare and from whom I had requested prayer for myself and my mom. Yet, out of all those people who knew my story, only one couple expressed condolences when she died, donating a gift in her memory to the church. One other woman told me—three months later—that she had bought a card for me but had put my address away with her Christmas list and, what with the holidays and all, had not bothered to dig it out so she could send it.
One of my in-laws (who were all also personally told) waited two weeks to email me to say she was sorry about my mom and could I bring a vegetable for dinner on the weekend? Another told me, almost as an afterthought on my way out the door after we had spent an entire evening together, that she was sorry about my mom and hoped we had a safe drive home. And still another did send me a beautiful memorial gift a few weeks later but told me she hadn’t gotten in touch before then because she hadn’t wanted to end up crying.
I received three cards from friends and flowers from a family member, and that was it. No one has called or stopped by to talk or ask how I’m doing or give me a hug. No one. How is that even possible? How can almost an entire community of church, family and friends fail to console someone who has just lost their mom? One or two people, maybe, but nearly everyone? I cannot understand it.
No one among my community is a stranger to loss. They know what might be done to show sympathy to someone who is grieving, because they’ve been shown sympathy themselves, from others and from myself. I have tried to live out my care for the people in my life, and to receive so little care in my time of need…I feel abandoned, rejected, unworthy. I feel like I no longer belong. I feel like a fraud, pretending we are brothers and sisters in Christ when I feel exactly the opposite. I have to force myself to be among them now and do not feel a part of them even when I am with them. I question the depth of every relationship I thought was mutual. I question myself, wondering in what ways I may have hurt others so much that they are okay with hurting me now.
Where is God’s grace in all of this? Where is Christ’s comfort to those who mourn? I know in my head that it’s near, because the Bible says it is, so it must be, right? But I don’t see it, I don’t feel it, I don’t know it in my heart.
What good is hearing the gospel preached every week if we fail each other in such astounding ways—if the gospel message stops with being saved and teaches nothing about the practical humanity of living saved lives? What good is participating in a liturgy I have always loved if the words seem empty to me now? What good is receiving the Sacraments? I don’t even want to go to church anymore.
I feel like, in withholding kindness, those who have not consoled me have denied me a space to mourn. And I don’t know what to do with that. Not only am I grieving for my mom, but now I am grieving for myself as well—and with no clear path for an outward expression of mourning in the context of community.
I don’t want to end up bitter and angry and isolated. But how do I forgive—and what does that look like in everyday terms? How can I ever un-know what I have learned about those I mistakenly believed would surround me at such a time? How do I come to feel I belong to my community again, instead of standing alone outside of it?
And how do I respond in heartfelt honesty to those who seem clueless when it comes to expressing sympathy, but yet expect me, in my grief, to absolve them of their thoughtlessness and resulting guilty feelings by telling them it’s okay that they couldn’t be bothered to look up my address to send me a card (or even hand it to me in person after church) or that they neglected me because they didn’t want to end up crying or that their distant silence for weeks on end was soul-crushing? Because it’s not okay, I’m not okay, and I feel like a liar telling them differently just so they can feel better. How do I respond to them without invalidating what I am going through?
Please continue to teach us, not only how to lament with others who are grieving, but also how to lament for ourselves, how to respond to others when we are the bereaved, and how to forgive those who abandon us in our need.
Thank you for listening and for doing the work that you do.
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.
• Matthew 7:1
Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.
• Romans 2:1
• • •
We live in judgmental times.
As Jonathan Haidt said in his invaluable book for these times, The Righteous Mind, “I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.”
Perhaps we are not more judgmental than in previous days, but our technology, freedom, and affluence have enabled us to be much more democratic and public in our judgments, outspoken about our opinions and positions in public forums. As a result, the air we breathe is filled with violence, not peace.
We raise our flags and wear our colors proudly these days, and are unafraid to shout down the other army and its soldiers. We are not often heeding the call of Romans 12:18 — “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
Violence — inner, spoken, attitudinal, expressed — too often marks how we relate to each other.
Father Stephen Freeman reminds us that one purpose of Lent is to call us to peace by forsaking the violence of judgmentalism.
…If my generation was angry about peace, today we are angry about everything. The battleground within is strewn with the dead bodies of those whom we imagine being against us. No holocaust of violence could ever cleanse the world and bring peace to the heart. None of our projects will make the world a better place. The world is the projection of the human heart, and little more.
It is this very battlefield that the Lenten path to Pascha asks us to see.
“Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother…”
So we pray as we repeat the prayer of St. Ephrem. Everything we see (or imagine we see) in those we judge is present within our own heart. It is only when we know that this is true that repentance can begin and the battle turn towards God’s favor.
Without repentance, every public display of outrageous violence only provokes us to more violence within. The mind races to fix blame and argue solutions. Repentance would, I think, produce silence, as we confronted the shame that the latest carnage should provoke in us all….
“Everything we tried is not working,” said Michael Emerson, the author of “Divided by Faith,” a seminal work on race relations within the evangelical church. “The election itself was the single most harmful event to the whole movement of reconciliation in at least the past 30 years,” he said. “It’s about to completely break apart.”
What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American dream that says, “You are limitless”? Everything is not possible. The mighty kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of “the gospel” meant that we are simple people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.
Savage seems to see what he did to Jules as being the same as two unmarried adults having consensual sex: a common indiscretion that requires repentance but not jail time. The view that all sins are equivalent is called sin-leveling. It’s a problematic perspective because it only considers God’s moral law, not the damage on another person nor the breaking of civil laws. Applied to sex, sin-leveling sees rape as no different from premarital fooling around. The sin is between the person and God, God is the only one who needs to give a response, and if the sinner repents to God, he is forgiven, and the sin is forgotten.
But there are more possible wrongs to sex acts than just immorality. There are also sex acts that are unethical and sex acts that are illegal. The consequences for each are different.
Savage’s reflections on the incident, and the responses of all the other pastors over the years who knew about it and did not call the police or remove him from ministry, show how Christian leaders do not understand sex crimes and sexual ethic violations.
Our knee jerk assumption is that holiness is the opposite of love.
That’s the working assumption I grew up with. Holiness was all about piety, discipline, and purity. Holiness separated you from people. It didn’t draw you closer to them.
In fact, holiness tempted you to be judgmental….
Holiness, we think, will make us into worse people. Because we think holiness is the opposite of love.
Thomas Merton, on one of his less restless days wrote: “It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my Fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially so about it as mine, though doubtless it is not somebody else’s. I must learn to live so as to gradually forget program and artifice.”
Ordinary life is enough. There isn’t any need to make an assertion with our lives. Our preciousness and meaning lie within the preciousness and meaning of life itself, not in having to accomplish something special.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’
• • •
From Mount Hor to the Red Sea (Numbers 21:4-9), the snakes of fear and anxiety trail the people, their serpentine mouths gaping to bite with poison, lashing out at the people’s heels, twisting around and among them — and the only solution to the infestation is to look directly at the serpents, to name the poison, to gaze honestly at the plague, and to own up to the sins and doubts that brought the serpents into their midst. To be healed, the people have to see the source of death. To be restored, they have to repent of their death-perpetuating behaviors.
The First Testament plainly describes the journey the Israelites took from Egypt to Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land as a dangerous journey, fraught with perils and difficulties. For example, in the book of Deuteronomy, it says that God led them through “the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions.”
Welcome to Lent. Welcome to the wilderness.
The images of Lent are dangerous, life-threatening ones. We sometimes view the concept of the “wilderness” through a sentimental lens. But the wilderness is the place where people get lost and are never found again. The wilderness is where people run out of food and die. The wilderness is where people perish from thirst. The wilderness is the uninhabitable place. It has no discernible path through it. It is far from civilization and help, should we need it. The sun beats down mercilessly on your head. At night the temperatures drop and it’s hard to shake the chill. Shade is scarce and resources hard to find. And then there are these pesky critters, like snakes and scorpions and tarantulas and vultures. In our imagination, we picture them waiting to spring or strike or swoop down on us as we try to escape.
It is true that there is a robust and vibrant ecosystem in the wilderness, but it is not one that easily supports human beings. The fact that large numbers of people in our own country are able to live and thrive in places like the desert Southwest is a miracle of modern engineering, as water is transported hundreds and hundreds of miles through systems of canals and waterways to meet their needs.
But it was not so in the days of Moses or in the days of Jesus. The desert or wilderness was a place to avoid if possible, to pass through as quickly as possible if you couldn’t, a forsaken place without form and void of the kinds of things that promote human thriving.
In our Gospel text today, Jesus makes reference to a story from the book of Numbers in which the wilderness turned deadly as Moses and the people made their way to the Promised Land. The story notes how the people became impatient and grumbled about their long journey. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” they complained. They were tired of eating manna, they were tired of being thirsty, they were tired of the lack of comfort and resources. They wanted out.
The text says that’s when the serpents showed up. “Fiery” serpents, it calls them, and apparently they infested the camp to such an extent that many people were bit, suffered excruciating pain, and died. So the people went running to Moses again and begged him to ask God for a reprieve from the deadly snakes. They confessed that they had been wrong to grumble and complain. They cried out for relief.
And so, as the story goes, God had Moses do something unusual. Rather than simply grant the people’s request and send the snakes away, God told Moses to make a pole and put an image of one of these serpents on it. If someone were bitten by a snake, they were to look at the serpent on the pole, and they would be healed of the effects of the snakebite. And so, the text summarizes: “So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.”
The only solution to the problem was to look at the serpent. The only remedy was for the people to face the snake, to look directly at the thing that had caused them pain and misery and death. They were not to ignore the serpent or run away from the serpent, but they had to turn and face the reality of their own sin and the sad consequences it had brought upon them. They were not healed by avoiding the snake, they were healed by facing the snake.
Welcome to Lent. If this season teaches us anything, it teaches us to be realistic. It encourages us to look directly at the source of what ails us, to name the problem, to own up to what we as human beings have done to our lives, our relationships, our communities, and our world. By our sin and failure to be what God created us to be we have raised the serpents out of their lairs and we have made ourselves vulnerable to the painful, deadly results of that.
Lent urges us to take responsibility, not to grumble and complain that someone else is at fault. Lent is when we take personal inventory, not when we judge and speak ill of others. Each individual owns up to his or her part in awakening the serpents in our midst.
But there’s more than that. For in our Gospel today, Jesus said, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’”
Ultimately, we do not just take an honest look at our sins and what they have wrought, we look at Jesus, the One who took all our sins upon himself, who became, as it were, the serpent. He was lifted up on the cross to bear all the weight of human sin and death and to set us free from it. When we look at him in faith, the effects of the poison are healed, and we are raised to life again. Jesus, as it were, became the serpent and all the sin and pain and death it represents.
And so in Lent we are encouraged to fix our gaze on Jesus. We gaze at the cross. We gaze at the One who knew no sin who was made sin for us. And so we are healed. Amen.
Irreplaceable “Thisness”
, “I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.”
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