This group discusses our mindfulness of our life’s encounters with God. It uses Morton Kelsey’s “The Other Side of Silence” and writings of Robert L. Moore as catalists for discussion and reflection. Whenever we try to increase our understanding of matters related to spirituality, we do so humbly, knowing that the presence of God is always greater than the limitations of our language, intellect and social experiences. But it is a life-long journey which never ends.
This 4 week group begins meeting on February 21st, 2001 at 7 p.m. and we hope you can join in the learning experience.
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Philip Siddons
When God Runs Out of Gas
Michael is spending yet one more of his Saturdays, helping in a fund-raiser for the Urban League. Social Service agencies, these days, are particularly needy. The for-profits are good, decent and hardworking folks but the poor and the disenfranchised must have made poor decisions which have brought their woes upon themselves. Or so those, who have, claim. Yet one more event, one more step toward good.
And Michael is really good with computers. He always leaves plenty of time for set-up and even anticipates and proactively accommodates the lag time because of weather, traffic conditions and unexpected resource shortfalls. His “Executive Ego” is always keeping time – mindful of available project resources. He’s a workaholic, overly conscientious, an over-achieving needy person, loved by his employers for his competency and efficiency.
Today, Michael has a small network of portable computers, a printer and a switch and the cables that would enable him and a colleague to print the participants’ and winning contest certificates. It’s the annual Taste of Soul, a cooking contest that celebrates Black History month. For all, it will be fun, celebrative and commemorative of African American history. Something about table-fellowship. Darn good food. But to Michael, it’s just another event. He’ll enjoy doing his job well and the casual conversations with his colleagues and the cooking contestants but it’s work.
Michael knows he’s getting event-weary, in a way. He likes using his skills toward the agency’s goals but like everything, after a while, it is just a job. He hasn’t personally developed the discipline nor pursued the art of cooking. If and when food comes in pills, he’d just as soon down a few capsules to survive and move on to the next task to be accomplished. He is not black and he avoids food that is spicy and had passion in its flavor. Michael knows he must be pretty boring but has learned to live with it without much ado.
His Malibu’s near-empty gas gage device is bonging again. It’s clearly broken as it starts to remind him that it thinks he is at empty. At stop lights, Michael found that if he turned off his car and restarted, the gas gage would return to normal, showing two thirds of a tank of gas. Yet it is bonging at him again after only two days from refilling. Michael had decided to get gas every weekend, whether he needs it or not. Anything to stop the bonging sound. He knew he couldn’t afford to pay a mechanic to remove the gas tank and install another gas gage device for probably $600. He pulls into the Sunoco at Amherst and Elmwood.
It is Saturday morning, usually a day off for him from the League. It’s freezing cold. There’s another vehicle at the next set of pumps getting gas. As Michael begins filling up his car, along comes a man to the other gas pumps. He is on foot, carrying a large red metal gas can. He didn’t have a car so it wasn’t as if he had come with his can for snow-blower fuel. It must be for his vehicle somewhere else.
As Michael pumps his gas, he notices the rather large man is dressed in a long fur coat, making him look like a bear or buffalo. Being from the burbs, Michael hadn’t seen this style of winter coat and the shadow side of Michael’s personality wonders if this man is some sort of drug dealer. Yet his more real-world set of experiences reminds him that he isn’t really fully awake enough to make fashion judgments on others. He is out in the cold pumping gas in his car and he’s glad the man has a warm coat. The cold wind and the wisp of light snow keep him on his task of contributing to the coffers of the fossil fuel moguls.
He hears the wooly mammoth man ask the man at the other pump, “Can you give me a ride down the street with this can?”
The other man, wearing his Eastern Mountain Sport® down coat with the rip-stop Gortex® outer layer looked over from his car, as he screwed on his gas tank lid and replies, “I can’t. I’m on my way to work.”
“I’m on my way to work!” Michael’s Id silently responds, almost in cadence with the answer he hears from the other driver. But another voice within him, in argument with his first voice, said “Yea but what IS your work anyway? You work for a social services agency don’t you? I mean, what is your life’s work anyway? You could be selling hot dogs at a Sabre’s hockey game or cleaning toilets or carrying dying bodies to Mother Theresa’s infirmary in Calcutta. Do you really consider getting to the next event with your computers on time for setup your “life’s work” (not to mention that you are early anyway)? If you got run over by a snow plow today, would you really like to have everyone in the next dimension watching the last video clip before your transition of you rushing off to the next event. Or should the celestial audience be watching you extend yourself a little to help someone else.? “Geeees!” the voice of Michael’s conscience gasps as it relentlessly continues.
“With of the experiences you’ve had so far in life, you’d think you’d at least have an inkling of your purpose on earth.”
Now this argumentative conversation goes on in Michael’s mind in about 2 seconds. A thousand one. A thousand two.
He had just finished screwing on his own gas cap and is about two other seconds away from turning to get back in his car, out of the cold and off to his work.
In that gap, . . . in a nanosecond, Michael is mindful that he just overheard the man with the gas can asking for help. In that fraction of a second, Michael realizes that like everything in life, there is that sacred instance where you realize that something is happening that is about to pass you by.
Now Michael has schemas. “Vulnerability” is the one of the many that limits his generally self-involved life. It’s the one, he had read, where you think that something terrible may happen to you if you venture out of your control zone.
Michael locks his home and car doors. He walks in well-lit streets and avoids places where violent, drunk or disorderly criminals may casually gather. But Michael knows he was only a hair’s breath away from becoming the kind of person who lives in a “gated community” where “questionable, potentially dangerous people ere kept away and everyone around you dresses and holds your same opinions about life. He is ashamed to occasionally find himself gravitating only toward people just like him.
Michael despises this control-freak part of himself and vows to be more open to others in life, least society just check him into a nursing home and have the staff keep everyone and everything germ-carrying object away from his little life until his pathetically narrow, self-involved life comes to a boring end.
But toward the end of that nanosecond, the Archetypes break through Michael’s schemas. Unaware of it, his memory and the cosmic collective unconscious elbow their way through Michael’s time and task mania. He forces a few words out of his mouth into the frigid air. He says to the man, “Do you have to take your gas can far?”
“Yes,” he says with some surprise. “Down to Grant and about two blocks south.”
At this moment, Michael knows the decision has already been made. What is he going to say, “Gee, that’s too bad” and walk away? Michael knows he is going to be present and human for a change. So he walks over to the man and says, “Hi, my name is Michael Taylor and I work for the Urban League. I’ll give you a ride. That looks heavy to have to carry that far.”
“Thank you and God bless you.” the man says. “My name is Rev. Leroy Thomas and I’m the minister of St. Ann’s Missionary Baptist Church of the Savior.”
Leroy offers to pay Michael ten dollars for the ride out of appreciation but Michael laughs and turns it down, saying , “Look, we’re all in this together! I’m glad to help out.”
In the five minutes Michael is diverted eight blocks from being early for his event, he speaks with Leroy who is so large that he takes up nearly every cubic inch of the passenger seat of his Malibu. Leroy knows a few people who works at the League. Michael knows they have commonality in their faith so he says, “You know, Leroy, I think these kinds of circumstances are worked out upstairs. Clearly not coincidence. We are all being taken care of.”
When Michael drops Leroy off at his big blue van, used by his church for doing one transportation rescue or another, it occurs to Michael he had already been “to work.” It comes to him that there would be no audiences clapping, reviewers scribbling their published analysis of what he did. He would not be called before the gathered masses and presented a certificate for being “The Weekly Good Samaritan.” His moments of kindness will be quickly forgotten, along with discarded empty tubes of toothpaste and the memories of faces of those casually met years ago. And yet something about this non-dramatic human encounter will go into the vast reservoir of cosmic experience that affects Michael’s and Leroy’s souls. No big deal of heroism but at least a dim light which gives humanity a small glow from time to time. A quiet reminder of Presence.
* * * * *
What happened in that nanosecond after Michael heard the discarded request for a ride? What broke through his urgency addiction to rush off early to his job? What was that mystical Presence which penetrated and overruled Michael’s predisposition to play out the program he had set in motion for the start of his Saturday morning?
Who ran out of gas? Wooly Mammoth Leroy? Get-it-done-efficiently Michael?
Or was it that Michael’s life’s experiences, his soul, his accumulated vision of a just and compassionate world, his memory and personal experiences of life and death, of joy and deepening sorrow had all gotten together and caused him to realize this was one of those moments? What brought Michael, in that nanosecond, to a mindfulness that at that split second, he was at a crossroad with a moral choice?
How many thousands of choices had he ignored already that past week?
How much of living life to the fullest had Michael truly missed by just not listening, asking, seeing, feeling? How much of a life does Michael have left to live out?
It’s when we out of gas that we should turn on all of our security sensors and video tapes and with every sensory receptor of our lives, pay attention to everyone and everything around us.
This is how meditation carries over into the mundane of our lives.
When we learn to be present with ourselves, . . . present in the moment, . . . we watch how our mind is wildly taken up with everything on our to-do list, our fears, our hopes, and our regrets. But in between our silent pulling back from everywhere our mind rages to drag us, we eventually come to be at home with ourselves. We settle, even for a few moments, in that space where we don’t impulsively get caught up in the should and the ought’s and the drama. We learn to stay grounded in the simple moments of breathing while the world and our minds rage on.
In meditation, through time, you learn not to become caught up in everything that comes into your mind. You come to laugh at how so much of what bugs you is in your head. You come, through time, to be at home with yourself. You see that the core of your being is apart from all the rants and rages and the worries.
That gentle grounding in being at home with yourself gradually spills out to being more at home with others. Just like meditation practice enables you to pull back and not get sidetracked with your compulsions and what-ifs lists, it enables you to focus. You find yourself focusing, more often than before, on simply being. On being present in the moment.
What this practically does is enable you to focus on mundane tasks like putting gas in our cars but also on hearing the voice of strangers asking for help. Meditation helps you be more mindful that with all the pitiful everyday tasks we gather in order to fill our lives, most of the time we live, unknowingly, surrounded by incredibly noble beings. Magnificent dwellers of God’s Spirit who travel through this life as needy and as frail as us. We live in the Presence of an extremely powerful and compassionate and constantly Present Being. Mindfulness acquired, then, enables us to be more at home with ourselves, with others and with God.
Time is running out but it all happens in the nanoseconds of the now – if we can stay mindful that every encounter with another is a crossroads.
That’s where we’ll find God. The Creator in the person in front of you. The Almighty living within you.
It’s your destiny. Mindful compassion is the only thing that truly matters. So choose what you’re getting caught up in. It only takes a nanosecond.
Comment by Philip Siddons — March 7, 2011 @ 12:41 am |
An Explorer’s Introduction To How To Meditate
You already know of Meditation’s benefits from reading health-related or progressive and religiously-oriented publications. At the same time, you may know little of what it is about, except for some remnant stereotypical images from movies and comedy sketches. For instance, you may think meditation involves sitting cross-legged in the corner with your head wrapped in a bath towel. You may think it enables you to walk barefoot across a bed of nails without pain. You may picture a person going into some kind of trance where they become unaware of their surroundings.
Meditation, in reality, is simply mindfulness. A clearer and sharper sense of everything around you and of what is going on within you. If anything, it gives you a clearer and more realized sense of what all your senses are experiencing. It equips you with greater focus and concentration on whatever it is with which you are engaged.
Meditation isn’t some social trendy new thing that is taken up by people who have achieved media and social familiarity. It’s been around for thousands of years and has enabled millions of people to be more at home with themselves, with others and the One Whom their faith tradition has found to be of ultimate importance.
“Why haven’t I heard of this before?” you might be quietly asking. It’s probably because you’ve been too busy to look into it and read about it. It might also be because it isn’t part of the “sanctioned” rituals or practices of the organized religion with which you’re already familiar. “After all, I was raised as a ________ and they never taught us this stuff.”
Try it. It’s free. It’s safe. You can do it most anywhere. You’ll feel and think better about your life. In fact, it may save your life if you are destined to have some sort of heart attack or health-related disease process that is aided by stress.
The Five Minute Trial
1. Don’t tell anyone you’re doing this and you won’t have to deal with people who think you’re getting sucked into ‘the trend of the month.’
2. Don’t think that if you start meditating, somehow someone, somewhere, will secretly gain control of your mind so that in a few days, you’ll be donating all your available financial assets to some off-shore tax exempt scheming con artist. No one is going to take control of your mind and there are not secret meta words between the lines of this text that you’re reading right now. (If people could do that, you know advertisers would be right on it in a nanosecond.)
3. Get out a timer and set it for five minutes or set one of your iPhone aps to make a frog croak or duck quack sound in five minutes. (And if you don’t have five minutes to try this, make out your will. You haven’t got time to live anyway.)
4. Pick a place, maybe in your house, and a time when you’re likely not going to get interrupted.
5. Get comfortable in a chair, couch or cushion. Obviously if someone comes in the door and you’re sitting still doing nothing they’ll wonder if you’ve had a stroke or have lost your mind.
6. Start your timer and wait for it to alert you that 5 minutes has passed.
7. “Now what?” you say. “What am I supposed to do for five minutes?” Nothing!. Just sit there and observe how many zillions of things go through your mind. But start thinking of your breathing. Think of each breath rather than just getting caught up in what comes to mind. Notice what you start to think about but before long, return your attention to your breath.
After about 3 breaths, your mind will be thinking of the next million things. The mind is wild. You’ll think of things you should be doing next. You’ll think of things you’ve already forgot to do. You’ll see yourself start worrying about things and people. Watch what feelings arise. But before you get caught up in those feelings or endless task lists, gently bring yourself back to your breathing. One breath and then the next.
Are you breathing fast or slow? The more you think about your breathing, it will probably somewhat slow down.
A few more breaths and you’ll sense that you’re actually relaxing a little. “Hey,” you tell yourself. “I ought to slow down like this more often.” But just as soon as you realize that, you’ll think of 14 bazillion more things you should do before next week. You may recall the weird and hurtful thing someone said to you. The beautiful smile on a child may come to mind. But go back to thinking of your breathing.
Ding. Your timer lets you know you’re done.
Lessons You May Learn from Meditating
1. Our minds are wild. They’re always going.
2. We have stuff on our mind. Stuff that makes us feel good, bad, depressed, fearful. Observe those feelings but don’t go with them so that you dwell on them at length. Instead, just bring your attention back to your breathing.
3. We always have our breath wherever we are. Jon Kabbat- Zinn’s book “Wherever You Go, There You Are” sums it up well. We can meditate wherever we find ourselves and we don’t have to get caught up emotionally every time a feeling crosses our awareness. We’re not bound by the feelings that come to us.
4. Did you find yourself relaxing a little during those five experimental minutes? That’s what happens.
5. If you do this little exercise every day, in about a week it will come to you that there is an inner you that can pull back and see yourself choosing whether or not you’re going to get caught up in your own rushing to do the next thing or worry about the next worry. It will come to you, from these little times of just being with your breath, that you can step back and not get caught up in it all. You’ll become more observant of what you are thinking and feeling. You’ll actually get a sense of more control over your life because you’ll be able to “not go down that path” in your thinking or feeling. Instead, you’ll find yourself saying to yourself “It’s typical that I would start thinking/feeling/doing this when someone comes along and does a certain thing. This time I’m just going to be aware of how I typically react to that and think a little more instead of reacting impulsively, like I usually do.”
6. If you keep at this little exercise and gradually expand your times from five minutes to 10 or 15, your mindfulness of what is going on in you increases. It gets easier and you find yourself being more aware of who you are and everything else in your life. You’ll start to see patterns emerging. You’ll see that you have common feelings and thoughts come from certain experiences and predicaments. You’ll get to know your patterns and those that you get stuck in if you get caught up in them. You’ll see things coming further off and feel more “in control” of how you may respond.
7. If you keep meditating every day, you’ll find you are concentrating at your work or reading longer. Your attention span increases. You’ll have better track of all your senses and your feelings about what is happening in your life.
8. If you keep meditating every day, you’re going to feel more in touch with yourself as a person.
9. If you keep meditating every day, you’re going to feel more aware of other people you meet; maybe more connected to them because all of your senses will be more alert and focused on what others are saying and doing.
10. Because you are becoming more in touch with who you are and the people around you, you’re going to feel more “at home” with all of your life. Maybe even the One you feel Who is mysteriously Present in your life and in the lives of the people around you. With more of your senses alive and focused, you’ll see and hear more. You’ll see more purpose in between the lines of what people are doing. As if something or Someone seems to be orchestrating good out of truly diverse people and events in your life. You will come to see that you are strangely being taken care of.
It’s in you, your essence. What you are doing with meditation is essentially hanging out with yourself. And yes, you’ll discover that you’re worth it. That you are a noble, worthwhile person, worthy of others’ attention and efforts. You see, when you hang out with the core of who you are, you discover yourself as a wonderful thinking, feeling, caring and breathing being – worthy of being who you are without judgment, without oughts and shoulds but worthy of just being in the moment just as you are.
Through your meditation you intuitively discover several simple things that your religion, your parents and your teachers might not have gotten around to getting across to you in their efforts.
• The core essence of who you are is simply good as it is
• The core of who you are is beautiful and nobody or nothing outside of us can ever touch that or change that
• You are inexorably connected to everyone else, no matter how much suffering they experience or inflict on others because of their own fears or need to try to control
• You are not only connected to everyone else but every living being and the One Who made us from the beginning
• You will frequently get out of touch with these truths about the beauty within you but they are only a breath away from remembering
Comment by Philip Siddons — March 13, 2011 @ 2:10 am |
Who Hears Our Prayers and Meditations?
The story goes that a couple, who lived by the edge of town, was in their front yard raking leaves. A car came over the hill and pulled up to the edge of their yard. The driver opened his window and called out. “We are new to the town and we were wondering what the people here are like.”
The two stopped raking and looked at each other and smiled. She chose to speak and addressed the driver, asking, “Well, what are the people like where you’re from?”
The driver said, “You know, they’re wonderful people. I hated to have to move but we are coming here because of a job transfer.”
The woman said to him, “You’re in luck. The people here are wonderful as well. You’ll enjoy the town. Welcome. My name is Janet and this is Frank” as she shook his hand.
Not ten minutes later, another vehicle pulled up and pulled over by the couple who were now raking a pile of leaves into a trash bag. This driver curiously asked, “Say, could you tell me what the people in this town are like? We’re looking for a home because I got transferred to a local plant.
Both of the leaf gatherers grinned and this time he turned to respond to the driver. “Well what are the people like in the town where you live?”
The driver sighed with discouragement and said, “Not very friendly. I mean, everyone seems like they are in it for themselves. If you ask me, it’s one clique after another.”
The man rubbed his chin and said, with some sadness, “Well I’m afraid that you’ll probably find them to be like that here.”
The driver quickly pulled away and they both returned to their raking.
- – - – -
To a certain extent, a lot of what we perceive about God has to do with how we, ourselves, think of God. I mean, Who is God anyway, other than the loose and tentative collection of impressions we carry around from our life’s experiences? To push the question to the extreme, if you were born and lived in a remote jungle, raised by a distant member of the nearest surviving tribe, and died at a young age, Who would God be to you if you never heard of God?
Well of course it’s an impossible question so let’s return to whatever it is we know. Our sense of God has come to us from a number of people, their lives and teachings as well as our readings and our own experiences. Is God limited merely to what images exist in our mind, like the relationship tendencies of the people in the story who were new to that town?
What do you think God is like? When you’re praying or meditating, where is God? Is God sitting next to you, calmly and earnestly putting the same kind of attention and emotions into what is going on within you?
Let’s back up again and ask it this way. Think about some relatives of yours. Say, an aunt and uncle. What are they like? What were they like when they were at your home for a family dinner? Warm? Friendly? A little judgmental? Quiet? Opinionated? Talkative? Interested in how everyone is doing?
If someone asked you to describe your uncle and aunt’s personalities, could you? Of course.
But describing God is difficult. Here’s why. Imagine telling your friends this.
“The other night we had a dinner party and during the meal, God had us in stitches. It was one funny thing after another. We were almost rolling on the floor laughing. God didn’t have dessert but ate most of the mashed potatoes. And it still impresses me that God washed the dishes and helped clean up. God even read the kids bedtime stories and gave Carol a shoulder rub because her rotator cuff was killing her.
“Next Friday, after work, we’re all going out to the Red Lobster and having clams.”
Ok, right there we can’t do that. ‘God eats desserts and stays away from shellfish’ you may be thinking. More likely, you’re thinking that God isn’t one of the gang Who is a regular gatherer with our other friends. Or is God?
We have lots of questions related to Who and Where God is. As much as our culture claims to be religious and believing, most of us feel spiritually illiterate. After all, if the world was sadly about to be enveloped by out of control nuclear reactors and we all gathered one last time; if people asked us where is God, what would we say?
We’d try our best. But take a little time to look at how other people of God have tried. The Bible is a centuries-long scrapbook of God’s people about their experiences with their Creator. People of faith, counted among the most brilliant poets, writers, historians and theologians, have compiled their best efforts at describing their sense of God. So to begin your refresher on the subject of what does God do when we pray and meditate, consider these readings.
• In Job 38 & 39 we see one of the majestic portrayals of God’s infinite knowledge and presence in creation. If you haven’t got a modern translation, try reading Eugene Peterson’s The Message. It’s fresh vocabulary, metaphors and acronyms bring new life to the dynamic equivalency of today’s culture and language.
• Read Paul’s moving prose in Romans 8:22-37. Consider that not only is God’s Spirit with us at every second of our lives but God knows everything we feel and think, even when we can’t even articulate it to others or to God.
• Consider Jesus’ almost casual comment to Nathaniel, John 1:45-51. ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ Another small but undeveloped glimpse, by the gospel writer, at God’s presence everywhere, even when we believe we are utterly alone.
However you come to believe in the nature of God, consider that the consensus of the understanding of the nature of God was once attempted in this Westminster “shorter catechism” statement, held by many Christian faith expressions. It says:
“God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”*
It’s certainly doesn’t say it all, nor could any attempt to describe God. But “infinite” pretty much means there is nothing that God can’t do. That means God is not bound by time or space. God can do all things – is all powerful (omnipotent) and knows all things (omniscient). There are no surprises for God. On top of that, God is wisdom and good, compassionate and certainly not bound to the typical human attributes even religious authorities have projected on to God, such as being judgmental, pursuing vengeance or riddled with jealousy.
So like the newcomers to town who wanted to know what the people of the community were like, the answer might largely be the same as their predisposition to others. When we want to know what God is doing when we pray and meditate, the answer for each of us is informed, to some extent, by our life’s experiences. But no matter what we’ve been thrilled to experience or suffered in life, most all witnesses point us to this compassionate, ever-present and all-powerful Being.
So next time you hang out with yourself, be mindful. Try to keep in mind summaries of what all of your life has taught you about the nature and presence of God. Try to remember the times when, beyond reason and mere deduction, you experienced the presence of goodness coming to you from others and perhaps from an unknown Source.
At this point, you’ve read at least 1,277 words of this essay and it’s clear you are earnest in pursing in your faith in the presence of God in your life. Keep on in your pursuit. Meditate. Hang out with yourself because as you come to feel at home with yourself, you’ll make a number of life-changing discoveries.
You’ll discover that within you, there is a noble and holy core soul that no circumstance or other person can ever touch. You’ll discover, within and surrounding your inner core is God’s Presence that makes Self known to you in ways that confound human explanation. You’ll discover, in time, that no matter who you are, what you are doing for good or bad, you and your soul are intricately connected to all others.
That’s why Jesus pursued the tax-collecting scoundrel, perched up in the nearby tree, hidden from the crowds. That’s why Jesus went well beyond the customs of the 1st century male-dominated social boundaries and taught, healed and befriended women, lepers and people of other faith expressions who were despised by the fearful, prejudiced and judgmental folks of that culture.
Perhaps another clue in being mindful of God’s presence comes in activity beyond the expected. For instance, do you see someone acting compassionately on behalf of one who has been excluded or devalued? Do you hear a cry of need and strangely feel compelled to respond kindly? Further clues that you are (and are always) in the presence of God’s active and moving Spirit.
If you do, your times of meditation, your times of prayer, will probably be transformed into moments of mindfulness. Be assured that it will spill out to other parts of your life. When it does, it will be transformative.
- – - – - – - – - – - – -
*End Note: The 17th century catechism originally read “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” Human language is always evolving in order to more fully express the continually evolving experience. That’s why we no longer use the King James English, nor that of Chaucer’s time.
And whenever we try to describe or point to our sense of the mysteries and truly supernatural nature of our Creator, it can never be easy. When televangelists and branded clergy with media familiarity so easy talk of God, it almost sounds like they are carrying God around in their back pocket.
The band “Depeche Mode” has their song “Reach Out and Touch Me” with (some) of the following lyrics:
“Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there
“Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
Ill make you a believer
“Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver”
Bob Dylan got across the same point with his song “I’t’s Allright Momma, I’m Only Bleeding”
“Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.” . . .
“While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.”
- – -
You see, even those who are perhaps not synced into the Christian faith, can spot the shallowness of those who so casually treat the mysteries of the infinite, eternal God.
But it appears that the earnest and devout career theologians of the 17th century were struggling with trying to be articulate about the God of their faith. In the language idiom of their day, they wanted to attempt to describe god as a thinking, knowing, loving being so they used “He.” They couldn’t have used “She” because their immediate culture wasn’t there as of yet.
Today we are a little more nimble and mindful of the history of male imagery dominance so we would try rendering this statement without any personal pronoun as:
“God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”
In our ongoing struggle with language, we may become more accustomed to using new words such as “Shim” to reflect gender neutrality. In the above choice not to use any pronoun, the thinking is that when you are using those adjectives, it is overwhelmingly clear that they are for a living being, not a computer, machine or some random-chance amalgamation of particles from a chaotic universe.
Comment by Philip Siddons — March 19, 2011 @ 7:30 pm