One of the things that struck me at the conference this weekend (of the many) was the way that fear has controlled our country since 9/11. The Republicans have been masterful at playing on this fear to gain electoral victory and advance what is on the whole, a rather unpopular agenda. But the fear goes deeper than this, and it has affected my life as well.
Even during the conference itself, I thought about Beslan in Russia and how easy it would be for terrorists to burst in, take the 1000 of us hostage, and then murder us all. I can never board a plane without the fear in the back of my mind that this might be the one with the bad guys on it. And even driving through downtown brings up occasional thoughts of a dirty bomb or suitcase nuke detonation thoroughly ruining my day. I suspect most Americans have some level of fear, although at times I wonder if mine is a bit more neurotic than most.
In any case, Richard Rohr addressed this issue head-on, and it made me think. Here is my liveblog from that section of his talk today:
“Survey that people are more fearful now than they were five years ago immediately after 9/11. This is a very clever way to keep people enslaved. Keep the self afraid, and you keep the self split. You can’t bring your wholeness, you can’t say “Here I am.”
While I can’t expect the country as a whole to be able to move beyond the fear in this way, I CAN expect the church to do so. It seems to me that the church in our country, myself included, has failed to realize that it has total freedom in Christ. The freedom to take risks that seem foolish. The freedom to not be afraid in the face of fear. The freedom to die because death is a doorway to complete wholeness in Christ.
But our flesh keeps us dwelling upon fear. It keeps us split, so that we cannot bring our wholeness to God and say “Here I am.”
The goal for me this next year is to stop walking in fear and instead walk in faith.
But this needs to be the goal for the church as a whole. The church needs to lead our country past our fears. We need to show Americans that there are alternatives to the fearful responses to terrorism presented by the current administration, and very likely, even the Democrats if they gain power. We need to present fearless strategies which can overcome terrorism - yes, with suffering, as that is the call of the church - through the strength of our love.
But it has to start with me. It’s time for me to stop responding to fear and strive to respond only to God. I want to bring my wholeness to Him so that he can use me to bring wholeness to others. But I need to be whole to do that, and my fear prevents that. The world is an incredibly frightening place in the 21st century, but the world is ultimately not to be feared. We have a God who is much stronger than anything the world can throw at us. Even if it throws us our death.
Country music DJ, songwriter said they should call the movement the “Red Letter Christians.” “I love all the red stuff.
Tony Campolo said “that’s it, we should be the red letter Christians.”
What really is going on? He was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. After 9/11, they fitgured they should invite some religious leaders. This is where he met Rick Warren. They had a session called “Should we despair of our disparities?”
Wallis brought up the subject of Biblical archeology. When they dig down in the ruins of Israel, they find periods of time where the houses are basically the same size. Show a relative equality between the people. During those periods, there are no prophets. When they dig down into other periods, where there are huge mansions and little shacks, that’s when the prophets rise up.
God hates inequality. He doesn’t mind prosperity if we share it. God’s economy is “there is enough, if we share it.” He believes that God is raising up voices in our time. The differences in Israel would pale in comparison to the inequality in our time. God is raising up a new generation. This is the only way he can explain Bono - a backslidden Catholic boy who is getting more religious every day.
God is raising up our voices. He doesn’t know why these changes are happening. We can’t control it - all we can do is join it.
They had a six-point plan for peace, but offered too late. War broke out anyway. Even though the state department and others liked it. His wife was going into labor, and he kept getting phone calls from British cabinent ministers about talking about the six point plan. His wife said “Stop the war, I’m not pushing yet.”
Habakkuk, Chapter 1. “2 How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.”
He is practicing the politics of complaint. He’s a liberal.
“Then the LORD replied:
“Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald [b] may run with it.
3 For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it [c] will certainly come and will not delay.”
It’s time to write the vision and make it plain, because the runners are the next generation. They’re ready to run. Lets write a vision that draws people from all sides of divisive spectrums.
Richard mentioned cynicism and hope. The folks who came here probably consider themselves activism. When he was going up, he was told the big choice was the difference between belief and secularism. But he believs the big choice is between hope and cynicism. He likes the cynics, because they are realistic. They see the world how it is, and they are against all the bad stuff. And for a while they may have tried to change it, but then they got disappointed.
After a while, they are alone, and then they feel vulnerable. They step back into cynicism. Surround themselves with a bit more security. They are still against all the bad stuff, but don’t think things could ever really change. Cynicism becomes a buffer against commitment. Hope isn’t a personality trait. Hope is a choice. A decision you make, because of a thing they call faith.
Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hope is the most imporant thing we have to contribute to politics. Both sides in Washington take an issue, make us afraid of it, blame it on the other side, and take a poll to see who won. The election is just the last poll. It’s a politics of fear and blame.
People are hungry for a politics of solutions and a politics of hope. The media is even worse than the politicians. Did you know that every issue has just two sides? When they interview you before a show, they are just trying to see if the talking heads have conflict to make good television. Does youth violence have two sides? No, it has many sides. The dualism in the media prevents us from finding solutions.
A politics of solutions doesn’t work without a politics of hope.
The other choice we have to make - which he usually says to students - career versus vocation. Career is where we assemble our assets - what is said by the culture is important enough. Climb up the ladder. Vocation is where you discern your gift. What’s your gift? It’s what you lose track of time while you’re doing. What are you really good at? What’s your passion? What were you put on this earth to do? Where your gift meets the crushing needs of this world, that’s your vocation.
When Dr. King came back from getting nobel peace price, a reward of success, when he came back he went right to Washington to talk to Lyndon Johnson. King told Johnson we needed a voting rights act, since the civil rights act won’t be enforced. Johnson told him he had cashed in all of his chips and it would take 5-10 years. King said “we can’t wait, we need it now.” King went back to the South and organized a campaign in Selma, Alabama. The leaders of SCLC and SNCC marched to confront sheriff Jim Clark. John Lewis was beaten almost to death on “Bloody Sunday.” The whole nation was watching. The clergy poured into Alabama to march from Selma to Alabama. Within five months, we had a voting rights act. King changed the wind.
We have such a historical memory of religion changing things much more quickly than anyone could imagine. We can do this again.
We don’t just keep pulling bodies out of the river, we need to send someone upstream to see who’s throwing them in. We’re not lobbyist either. But we need to be wind-changers.
Lisa (missed last name): “Don’t you understand, we are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Do a few things:
- Take care of your faith. We lose that, and none of this happens.
- Take care of each other. We don’t want movement where win and lose dominates.
- Know that you are part of something that could make a real difference in this world. Know that you are not alone anymore.
Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change. “I believe that you are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Founding principal of the CAC is that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. St. Francis didn’t waste time opposing the Roman church, he just went to the edge of the church and made it better. He calls this “soft prophesy.” He’s convinced that in our age it’s the only prophesy that can be heard by a large number of people. “Hard prophesy only causes people to dig in their heels. Trying to present an alternative in a non-oppositional way, so that it is seen as an alternative.
Aristotle is considered the father of politics, who saw that the nation states around him seemed to be constantly warring. In the U.S., it seems that we need a war every ten years, as a product of the military-industrial-academic complex. Aristotle’s original idea of politics was to deal with issues by argument, by persuasion, by reason, and by a clear presentation of truth, not by violence. How sad we must all feel that today it has come to mean the exact opposite - another form of violence.
We’re facing a major crisis of meaning (post-modernism). The soul cannot live without meaning. So what people are doing in the vacuum is creating quick, glib, smug meaning systems which give them a sense of identity, but they are almost always oppositional. That’s why he told us that until our eyes and consciousness change, he doesn’t see any end to this.
They tell him in Washington that at least the Democrats and Republicans used to drink in the same bars, but now there are separate bars for each because the hatred is so deep. How can they create a people when they are not a people themselves?
We need to tell our own stories. Exodus 3 - the burning Bush. Two sentences later, the voice that Moses hears from the Bush tells him to confront the Pharoah. Instead of this, we have a church of Leviticus and Numbers - concerned with priestly questions. Balanced by the church of Exodus. The prophets try to bring the two together, but end up meeting their deaths. Probably, the most God has been able to hope for is a minority position - a remnant.
Out of the Bush, he called “Moses, Moses.” Moses said “Here I am.” All we can bring to the moment is who we are. The good news is that this is all God wants us to bring. Broken bread, like in the Eucharist.
“Do not draw near, but put off the shoes on your feet, for the place you are standing is holy ground.” This is an alternative space, from which we can look back on the world without hatred or judgement but perspective and freedom.
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people in Egypt…” God knows their sorrows, and is capable of empathy and sympathy with our sorrows. This is precisely what Jesus brings front and center - the connection of God with human suffering. Exodus 3 is the foundation text for this.
Our word for God in the Romance languages (deus, dios), is a direct translation of Zeus. God was the god who through thunderbolts from the sky, sitting on the throne. Despite the revelation of the scriptures, Jesus, and the trinity, we elevated Jesus to the monarchical tradition. The trinity reshaped the world in a circle, not a hierarchy. If you are converted to Jesus without being converted to the trinity you will misunderstand Jesus. After 2000 years of Christianity, the best we have done is grow a year a century in our readiness for the gospel.
For most Christians, God is still out there - a punitive out there. This does not create a safe universe, it creates fear and a violent universe. In this universe, we have to protect ourselves even from God. This leads to a defended kind of life.
What does the God of Israel do? “I have come down to deliver from the hand of the Egyptians, my people… To bring them to… a land flowing with milk and honey.” The enslavement of comfortable first world people is our growing hopelessness, cynicism, and apathy which cannot imagine anything different. When you cannot imagine anything else, he thinks we are enslaved. The opposition of Israel to Moses shows that they didn’t understand their enslavement - until they saw the alternative.
The pressures of the dominant, highly victorious culture has been so seductive that the real story line has become power, prestive, wealth, health.
This is the work of God. We cannot make it happen, but it comes through silence, and years of letting go. We let go of the old empire and refind our ground on new, sacred ground. Our work is still putting the two - Leviticus and Exodus - back together.
Whenever we bring all of us, this is the definition of prayer. When only part of you is there, you are not in prayer. But when all of you is there, then you are an instrument and can be used by God. His definition of sin is trying to live with part of you. The work of religion is pulling together all of the parts. This takes a lifetime.
In the beginning, we live in shame of parts of ourselves. The work of religion is the work of reconciliation, forgiveness. Don’t need to hate and deny different pieces. If we don’t need to do it in our heart, then we don’t need to do it outside of ourselves. You don’t need to fear, oppose would-be enemies.
Survey that people are more fearful now than they were five years ago immediately after 9/11. This is a very clever way to keep people enslaved. Keep the self afraid, and you keep the self split. You can’t bring your wholeness, you can’t say “Here I am.” What the gospel gave us is a recognition that the “I” we are is something deeper than the psychological self. In the promise of the indwelling spirit is a place we can go and rest which has nothing to do with us. It’s a pure gift. When we learn to abide there, that’s the true self. That’s the God self. That’s the transcendant self. This democratizes religion.
The only difference is those that dwell there and those who are trying to create our persona with outside things - the false self, which dies when we die. We have been given an alternative world that’s solid, but we don’t draw on it. If Western Christianity does not find its mystical self, it might as well close shop. Mystical means inner experience. Paul calls this the inner witness. Paul lived a trinitarian life. He knew there was a homing device, an “inner knower” inside of ourself. Prayer teaches of to abide there.
After all is said and done, it is this that makes this different from a humanist left-wing political conference.
Ending with Mary Oliver poem. He hopes what they have given us is another way to entire the fire. There are two fires - the heroic way to do everything ourselves, but we always fail. His first 20 years as a Franciscan was to try to be Francis. He’d haul all of his possessions out, only to have them be back 6 months later. God told him “You’re not Francis. You’re Richard.” He was given the grace to know that there is another way to enter the fire - that “I am what I am what I am.” For most of us, we have one gift in one area - maybe two. Few have three. Don’t let anything split you, but bring all of you and offer it. That is what God wants.
We will be experiencing the Thomas Mass in a few minutes. Jesus gave us a “beautiful mime.” Every so often, you have to take your life in your hands, let it be broken, give it away, and share it. This creates a basis for communion and community. Not heroism, not meritocracy. No worthiness systems. Will always be split apart. But when we are inside of safety, knowing we are all broken, then we can come together. We have nothing to prove, nothing to protect. God can get at us. I can get out of myself, and others and God can get in. This is the other way to enter the fire. When you live in there, you will be fire. The world is not prepared for this because there is nothing there to hate. You just are, who you are, who you are. Which is exactly what God loves.
