How old do we have to be to follow Jesus? If I took a spiritual inventory of my life, what would I learn about my faith? About God?

How old? At least as old as a sun-centred daisy, younger than a toiling bee, as old as the ever-restless ocean, younger than blown thistledown, as old as a struggling spring thaw, as young as an agile rabbit leaping from a coyote, older than any darting fish… just the right age, I think… grown to the edge of transparency.

A spiritual inventory? Just one item: engagement.

What does it tell me about my faith? Faith’s more precious than life… faith enables life to be lived. What’s faith? Trusting the mystery.

What does it tell me about god? God defies description and understanding… but is discoverable: always, everywhere. Abundantly.

How old do you have to be?  I think following Jesus is an age appropriate thing.  We can only follow when we understand what we are being called to.  Depending on how long we have looked into the notion of following we might have only a surface notion as  opposed to an indepth notion.

We all start somewhere.  Where we start is not as much an issue as how long we decide to follow.

Spiritual inventory?  Varied.  In some aspects I have been through the wringer and I have been steadfast, in other aspects I folded before the heat was turned well and truly on.  There is still much for me to learn and master.  I probably cannot ever begin to itemize everything I need to know but don't yet.

The same goes for my knowledge of God.  I might know more than others, compared to the enormity of God I know bupkis.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Labyrinths…

I have walked labyrinths. These days the idea of a labyrinth, as I understand it, is to free the mind, an aid to contemplation.

I find my mind’s more readily and effectively eased into contemplation by shifting “focus” where I am. Life’s become a labyrinthine experience and contemplation, for me, it's about experiencing (not “knowing”/experiencing) the meaning beyond the words… wordless wonder.Yes, it engages my mind but it requires me to draw ALL of my senses together as engagement.

I can see it’s theoretically a “problem”, my not knowing where I’m going.

But the future’s beyond us all and today’s full of wonder.

Today? Full of wonder? Oh yes!

Try putting the tips of your thumb and forefinger together, if you have them both.

How do you control that movement? That little movement’s something almost every human being can do… and puts to any number of purposes.

It’s a distinctively human capability… one that was crucial to unleashing technology and humanity’s ascension to power over other creatures. For better and for worse… The power at your fingertips…

Think about it. Now… how do you make it happen? What does it feel like again?

When summer comes, find a blossom and watch the traffic to and fro… the pollinators: the same creatures making same that visitation like a faithful ritual for millions of years, millions of generations. It’s an interaction that helped that flower evolve in the first place.

Watch it and you are watching the self-same activity that all of your hominid ancestors saw… does that lead you to wonder?

Watch an icicle drip as its transparency takes over in the spring thaw.

Where are those drops going? Where did that water come from? Try to imagine the journey. Water all tends toward the ocean, then tends back towards the land, the hills, the forests and fields, uhe inderground caverns… washing and sustaining… every drip.

I listen to the sounds of a nearby river.

They fuse into angel song.

Watch a cloud… you won’t need a labyrinth.

And you will discover that your whole existence is a part of an endless, creative journeying. We are never alone. We are borne along through the most amazing interactions and have no need to struggle after “good” things when we can simply open to what’s good all around us, in us, over us, beneath is; inseparable from us. What is good helps us to rise against the sources of those things that trouble us and harm others. That's the responsibility of existence.

What is good? Truly GOOD?

Read the Gospels.

When has seeking what is good in your life caused unintentional arm to others?

I don’t know.

The good in my life has come to me more as gift than as the fruit of my efforts. I am lazy. I have been marvelously ineffectual. I had wonderful parents, I have a wonderful wife. I have more happiness than I could possibly create with just my own resources. I have always pursued passions rather than a profession and can even pretend that was all god's fault because of my wife’s itinerancy as a Methodist minister in her pre-UCC days. So I have been a follower, doing my best to support her in her work.

Still, here and there, I managed to put in some good years as a journalist and as a teacher. Some of that is bound to have done harm but it’s the good outcomes that others have kindly been most forthcoming about.

Life shakes us up, like bugs in a bottle — we bruise and are bruised in the course of that. Most of what brings us grief is the result of inadvertence rather than spite. Besides, I’ve always felt that, even if there are scents of spite in the air, a bruising isn’t worth making an issue of. Likewise, I hope those I’ve bruised have moved on, forgiven and healed.

Harm, it seems to me, seldom happens as the simple direct outcome of one malicious act, but almost always as the coincidence of impacts and circumstances from a number of sources. It’s like an intersection where speeding cars with no brakes all happen to arrive at the same ill-fated instant… if they fly through one at a time, maybe nobody gets hurt. If you’re standing on the intersection when all four arrive at the same moment, you’re all toast.

Where I do most harm is almost certainly in my complacency about the systems that crush others in sustaining the society I inhabit. I make noises as I can and I try to achieve “other” things. But I’m a long way from changing the course of history.

So I'm in a poor position to answer today’s question.

I strongly believe that the outcomes of most of out interactions are hidden from us. And the vulnerabilities of others are also largely hidden from us.

The most we can hold ourselves accountable for is a loving intention. Actions formed out of a loving intention do their share of damage along with the good, but we’re likely to get nothing better this lifetime.

Blame’s a very dangerous thing, even self-blame. It works like a magnifying glass, focusing the sun’s rays onto one small spot that then catches fire. And fire spreads. Personally, we must always forgive.

The thread of life leads each of us through all sorts of chances and circumstances. We deserve neither the good not the bad, neither the hope nor the catastrophe, neither riches nor deprivation. A cruel society, a thoughtless society, will step aside and let the bad stuff, the catastrophe take you, like a hawk falling on its prey.

A good society helps to keep those hawks at bay.

And we have no choice but to act with loving intention — and loving intervention — just as if we had a good society. That way… we will have a good society.

P.S.

Here’s a story my Scottish History prof told me (I don’t think it’s historically accurate, but there’s certainly truth in it):

During the English Civil War, a critical battle was lost in this way:

It was May, 1645, and a well-armed detachment of Royalist infantry and cavalry was entering a valley in Northampton… when scouts galloped in to report that a smaller group of Parliamentarian infantry was approaching the other end of the valley. Unusually, no cavalry were with them. They would be easily defeated.

The Royalist commander thought about this, arranged his infantry in a column to make it seem like a smaller force than it was, and he sent his cavalry off behind a the hills to the right to take the Parliamentarians by surprise when battle began. It was a cunning plan.

The cavalry followed a road away to the right to keep out of sight.

They formed up at a crossroads and waited for the signal to attack.

The day was hot for early summer. They were in their armour. Flies were bothering the horses.

At the crossroads — the intersection of two ancient Roman roads that had become a local marketplace — there was a pub.

A trooper with a very dry throat — he’d neglected to fill his water bottle that morning — said to his Corporal: “Hey, Corp, how about a quick wet of the whistle?”

“Silence!” snapped the Corporal, though the idea had already crossed his mind,

Another trooper said: “Aw, Corp, at least ask the Sergeant.” Others joined the chorus.

At last, the Corporal went and told the Sergeant the men wanted a drink… they’d fight better,” he said.

“We could get the signal any moment,” barked the Sergeant.

Something similar was happening in each troop. At length the Sergeant was persuaded to go and ask the Captain if the men could maybe wet their whistles. The idea had already occurred to the Captain.

Eventually, still with no signal from the lookout on the hill, the Captain said: “Okay… but just one light ale per man!” These WERE beer drinking days, and it WAS hot. And the horses were restless.

Four hours later, the Parliamentarian troops, having decisively defeated the Royalist infantry, turned up at the crossroads and, inflamed by their recent victory, massacred the Royalist cavalry too: by then they were too drunk to defend themselves. Then the Parliamentarian soldiers descended on the pub and got totally, utterly blootered. And the publican was decidedly richer for his day’s work.

But… those Royalist troops had been on their way to Naseby where their presence would have been decisive in the looming battle. Their defeat ensured that Charles I was defeated and subsequently executed by beheading.

So: how do you apportion the blame for the King’s death, seeing Charles I’s Catholicism brought all this to a head in the first place. Maybe it was “the Catholics”. Or Cromwell. You can’t reasonably blame the axeman (who was just doing his job). Was it King Charles himself? Or was it the publican at the cross roads who sold drink to soldiers, or that silly trooper who, by forgetting to fill his water bottle, orphaned his two sweet children and turned the love of his life into a penniless widow. Or the Romans, who should never have invaded Britain and built their blasted roads? Or would Naseby have been won by Cromwell anyway? Cromwell? But Cromwell would almost certainly have been defeated had this incident never happened.

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We put a few pints away ourselves, my prof and I, discussing that one… happily it had none of the consequences the story depicts.

"When has seeking what is good in your life caused unintentional harm to others?"

Whenever I fail to listen, whenever my opinions override others, whenever I fail to think things through, whenever I become "full of myself", whenever I have failed to compromise and whenever I've failed not to compromise.

But still I fall back on my favourite axiom, " I can only begin from where I am now", even still one must still incorporate past wisdoms and teachings we have learned ourselves and from others, that can enable us to influence a future that holds a better understanding clearing a path towards more compassion for one another and ourselves.

Recall a time when you had a very busy day and felt completely drained. How did you feel? Was your ability to be present to others affected? If so, how? What did you do to nurture and renew yourself

I have had whole weeks like that. How did I feel? Completely drained.

Is my ability to be present to others affected at such times?

Of course.

How?

I become unable to be present to others in useful ways… mostly, my memory lapses, my reasoning dulls, my attention is weakened, my sensitivities and compassion are flattened, my patience nears its snapping point. Colors drain from my world. Isn’t that what “completely drained” sort of means?

What did I do for nurture?

Slept. Then engaged… with the beauty and abundance that's here, there and everywhere.

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I must have entered this reflection too trustingly.

It failed to stir anything helpful in me. It seems to simply invite me to let my memory lapse, let my reasoning cloud over, my attention weaken, my sensitivities flatten… I try to avoid those times by sustaining my engagement with the “more” that feeds my energies… wonderfully and effectively.

The problem is, I think, that In my experience, demands sometimes overtake us… and that's one thing. But we also live in some unnecessarily frenzied contexts where over-commitment, the over-extension of capacities or abilities, an inflated sense of responsibility, typically point to workaholic-ego issues. When we measure the value of others by their busy-ness, we are bullying them. When we do it to ourselves, we have some seriously skewed values.

Over-extension doesn’t help anyone (least of all those in REAL need of help, of love, of that application of skill and/or experience, of that need fulfilled)… some things are too important to be done uphill, ineffectually, wearily or with a darkening spirit. (The old adage that "if something's worth doing it's worth doing badly" — words I've seen inflicted on the already overtaxed — is utter nonsense.)

Limits need to be respected to let what’s unlimited be expressed.

There’s no shame in standing down when fatigue’s taking its toll. Accepting one’s limits, and one’s capacity for failure… these are necessary, admirable life skills: critically necessary; uncompromisingly admirable!

A busy day doesn't have the ability to drain me physically, mentally and emotionally.  At least it hasn't yet.  Busy day, after busy day, after busy day begins to drain the well dry.

At the time I felt like an old mop left to sit in a bucket of filthy water.

My ability to be present was affected.  I could be physically present and if I pushed myself I was emotionally present but mentally I was withdrawing.

When I finally had some room and my Session said they would safeguard my time (to prevent more demands being placed upon me.  I said a prayer of thanksgiving and went to bed for hours and hours and hours.  Upon waking for matters of necessity I would offer more prayers of thanksgiving and then hop back into bed for more sleep.

Once I got all of that I needed I started to slide back into familiar routines.  I consider it a tremendous grace that I have never been pushed to that limit since.

Grace and peace to you.

John

When am I most authentic before others? When am I least authentic? Where do I feel an outcast?

Where do I feel an outcast

I feel most like an outcast among people whose values are most at odds with my own… racism and violence make me feel a physical revulsion. Fundamentalism, bigotry, ultra-materialism … these things alienate and anger me. And I let it be known. And, yes, it has got me into trouble on occasion.

When am I most authentic

I don’t bother about “display” any more, if that’s what this question means. I once was young and played image games but that just advertised my "authentic" identity as an opportunustic, emotionally immature game player. We always are who we are. If I’m false, that’s my authentic character, my nature.

I got over that in my 30s… I am lazy, I wasn't very good at it and it was far too hard to sustain. I was poor and it was too costly to sustain. But that’s me changed, not a different face. I was encouraged by being among people for whom "being full of bullshit" was the worst possible manifestation of personality.

I grew up in a time and place where character was discussed very directly, very bluntly.

It was a context in which being told I was a “stupid/lazy/inattentive kid” was perfectly legitimate. It takes stupidity to act stupid. It takes self-knowledge to change. Realising I was stupid/inattentive, whatever, helped to impel a bit of change.

I certainly didn’t hear any of that as a crushing verdict that condemned me for life — it was a challenge to get my fingers out of my orifices and grow up. And it was do-able. I’ve been told I was thoughtless, impatient, loud… I still have those characteristics but I work at it and I’m a better person than I used to be. Acting stupid doesn’t help you very much; neither does “thoughtless”, “impatient”, or “loud”. I’m happy to have been told the downsides of how I’ve been seen. I’ve also been told about more desirable traits. It’s all liberating because it helps me re-focus and that’s a constantly necessary part of being alive.

Authenticity is what we do, regardless of what that is. A poseur is authentically a poseur. There are contexts in which that can be admired for what it is. In politics it seems to get things done… even if they’re not always the right things.

I am most authentic before others when I am being honest.  I am least authentic before others when I am not.

I don't particularly feel outcast anywhere.  There are times and places when I do not feel welcome, that is not all the time and I understand that is nothing out of the ordinary as there are times and places when I would rather have others near me than those I am with.  It the times of not feeling welcome were constant then I might feel like an outcast.  They aren't so I don't.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Who is “on the other side” of your boat today? On your “road to Damascus”?

I’ve found it intriguing: two very different “religions” that seem to co-exist (more or less unhappily) side-by-side in most churches, and most faiths, and in most countries and communities. And then there’s another non-“religious” group altogether.

THE TWO RELIGIONS

One religion (as a way of expressing faith) is that of “seekers”… people who are on the spiritual move, looking for better questions, bigger understandings, wider appreciation. They are hunters and gathers, nomads, chasing the vision. They’ll go from one church to another, one faith to another if they have to.

The other “religion” (as a way of expressing faith) is that of the “clingers”: people who are secure in their faith as they received it, where they received it, and how they received it. They have what they like from sources they respect and see no reason to change it. They have enough answers to get them through and do not need more questions… faith is their consolation, not their impetus. The seekers will only betray them, abandon them in the end — the seekers do not understand, respect or accept. “My” church is not something the nomads understand or cherish.

THERE is also a fatalism/activism divide, but this gets really complicated

THE OTHERS

AND there’s a different group altogether: those for whom church is essentially a social club where “good” values are expressed. These folk really don’t want to get too deep into the “faith side” of it all because of its potential for stirring up disharmony. The “old, old stories” are really for the kids (if there are any) and provide a morally familiar backdrop to their sociability: polite, happy, no drink, no drugs, no rough types… it’s a nice safe environment. The "seekers"-"clingers" thing only disturbs a nice community/heritage asset that’s been here for over a hundred  (or whatever) years , so let’s “save” our church by getting busy as meeters and greeters, laying on lots of suppers and social activities and fellowship all round. And this group’s members work very hard to keep the institution viable. Although the “clingers” are often allies, they’re not the same, but both the "clingers" and the "seekers", in their own ways, need these “others”.

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SO: Ask a congregation WHY they attend church and you’ll often get blank stares… we’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here. Asking why is affront to faith and it's rude …and, maybe, it's an invasion of privacy.

Thus we see the odd circumstance that there are churches where it has been far easier to accept women ministers and same sex marriage than it is to move the pews or — god forbid — get rid of the budget-blowing, cash-hemorrhaging old building and find some more appropriate facility with massively lower maintenance bills.

The trouble with boats is that you need both sides and a solid bottom of it to stay afloat… and if it goes down, you all go down together because, hell, that’s what a faith (?) community does

Fishing on the “other side” is only an option while the boat actually floats. The indications are that many of our boats are seriously leaky if not yet actually sinking.

What we really need to think about is some safer mode of transportation. But there will still be those who’d rather go down with the ship… an arguably noble but totally ineffective response to a crisis, in my view, and a shockingly irresponsible witness of one’s faith, if faith is why you're afloat. Ah, but… we believe in hope and resurrection.

Or do we offer our lives for something … towards hope for others?

And isn’t faith a journey?  Maybe “church” is the wrong place for the faithful? Certainly for the seekers, but also for a lot of the clingers. Maybe these guys needs to learn to care for each other instead of counting on the social club?

Did Jesus have a place to lay his head?

Get real! They couldn’t even keep him in his tomb!  I’m afraid I sometime think “church” is afraid to let the stone be rolled away.

Rolling the stone away, though… isn’t that what the World is waiting for!

Or is it?

No comment today, but I will join in that prayer.

God, help us to give up patterns and structures that enslave others and us.

AMEN

I'm not finding the questions helpful today.

The issue with the other side of the boat was not, I believe, who was on it.  I mean, the disciples were looking for fish period there is no such thing as port fish or starboard fish.  The port and starboard issue most likely relate to habit.

Fish aren't dumb (they travel in schools right), they are going to avoid areas of disturbance simply because they want to avoid predators.  Unless you are baiting the area fish will move off.  So, unless the disciples are baiting the port side of their boat to draw fish in repeated castings of a net are going to cause the fish to move away.

The exhortation to try the right side is an admonishment to break the pattern of futility.

The miraculous catch is not reference to the fact that they caught any but rather to the fact that they caught so many.

Imagine all those fish stacking up where we never thought to cast our nets.  Maybe it is more miraculous that the fisherman present in the boat never thought of the strategy on his own.

The Road to Damascus imagery isn't, I find, particularly helpful either simply because it refers to a person who would not be passed by not a person who could easily be passed by.  It is a person who demands confrontation and has the power and the ability to have its way with us.  Paul did not cooperate willingly, Paul was mastered.

And there was nothing special about the Road to Damascus other than that is the Road where Christ decided to meet Paul.  Any road could be a Damascus Road if Christ stands upon it to meet us face to face.  Paul didn't pick the road to force or evade a confrontation.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Can I have the faith to accept my experience of god?

My gift came to me as alienation, for which I must thank Billy Graham and the relentlessly bullying “Christians” at the “Christian” boarding school I attended for five very difficult years.

Alienation freed me from all of that and let me immerse myself in atheism and the “dangerous” ideas and arguments it offered my rather voracious interest in life. 

It was that interest in life (more of an indiscriminate headlong plunge into everything) and the buzz of risk that placed me stark naked, standing utterly alone on a stone-covered beach in a thunderstorm… which is what it took to blow my headfulls of silly, egocentric little vanities into the void and leave me with a wholly re-structured appetite for experiencing awe and wonder as paths of personal and sacred discovery.

I badly needed direction and discernment and that is how it came. I was no more or less for it, but all the chains had broken. I was able to begin exploring myself and my World beyond ideas and words, beyond social injunction and academic elaboration. I was given an immense inner freedom.

It was this freedom that led me into religious inquiry… even to a re-examination of Christianity, which I’d loathed and lost any respect for at school. I discovered that 5,000 years or so of human thought and attentiveness had actually produced more insight and truth than I'd generated in all my 20 years. I suddenly saw with awful clarity the intellectual insolence and spiritual vacuity of my atheism.

There, without going near a church, I could find NONE of the hostility I’d experienced as a kid. In fact, it clicked with so much of my wonder experience.

That didn’t stop me from looking into other faiths, I got a good, enriching shot of Maori spirituality that stays with me today. I got with Moslems, Buddhists, Samoan Baha’i and a few Hindus. At university, I had been enthusiastic for the International Students Society, which gathered people from around the Pacific rim and beyond. My first fiancée was Japanese — a  Shintoist. I went re-eamining it all.

More and more I saw the atheism I’d embraced was egotistical, thin, tasteless, tedious… it no longer had anything interesting to say to me. But a lot of “Christians” were as dulling… in fact a lot of people of various faiths seemed to be trapped in identical orbits of pedestrian literalism, locked in a little human-centred universe. But everywhere, too, I found people who seemed to “get it”: who lived expanded lives and whose open-ness and excitement about life in its wholeness stimulated me. I studied more and more about Christianity, its antecedents and its history. And about science. Science is laden with opportunities for awe.

Of course Christianity’s flawed. It's a human institution, "body of Christ" or not…  but I concede that I am flawed too… I’m still inclined to arrogance,  laziness, impatientce and rudeness. And, somehow, Jesus leads me on… and on… and on. And I still find each day a walk in the midst of beauty and abundance. There's not a lot I'm not grateful for.

Which is a roundabout way of saying “yes” to today’s reflection.