AWESTRUCKDUMBPILGRIM - Musings

AWESTRUCKDUMBPILGRIM

Creating Scarcity: The Only Way Forward is Back

2/8/2019

Rivers are a perfect metaphor of the common good... and the evil of private property, short term thinking, and greed.
Rivers flows freely, a picture of common grace, providing water for drink, transportation, power, irrigation, cleansing, recreation, beauty.

As long as a community learns the seasonal changes and organizes life around them, the river continues to be an abundant gift for everyone, up and down stream.

But you can guess the rest of the story. Creating scarcity by diverting too much water for local agriculture, using the river to transport waste rather than composting, or building a dam rather than water wheel for power, in short, stealing from your neighbor downstream.

Next thing you know they attack you and you feel justified in attacking back and war breaks out and no one can see anymore what is clear as day: The gifts of the common good are for everyone. They can not be hoarded, access can not be sold to the highest bidder, gifts can not be polluted, or their beauty desecrated.

Once these things happen, the only way forward is backward to mutual respect and gratitude for the gifts of the common good, expressed through a healthy relationship to the land, air, rivers and sea.

Refuse to be Driven

1/26/2019

I Refuse to be Driven, so that I Might be Drawn

I'm done with prohibitions, with will-power, with shame & guilt, and definitely comparison. These are the tools of empire, the isolated individual, and tribal morality. I am free.

But what does that leave me with? How do I manage my baser impulses? How do I fulfill my responsibilities as an interdependent human-being filled with light and darkness?

It leaves me with nothing, nothing but Grace. Grace is gift, freely given, but must be received. The gift of Grace puts one in a healthy relationship to self, others, and all creation.

That's all well and good, you might rightly say, but how does one receive this Gift?

This is what I hope to discover, by going all-in. I intend to refuse driveness, which is a tools of coercion, like those listed above, and assume that the Grace I really need and desire is available. That all things are lawful, truly, and that the beneficial alternatives can be discerned and embodied.

Either God is present and active and Grace is readily available, or not. Nothing else is worthy.

According to Simone Weil, the only function of the will is attention. It's merely a pointer, not a power. I'm not going to use up the limited energy available to my will by exercising it as a muscle of force. When I've used it as a source of control it quickly runs out of power and leaves me with less control than before.

The answer then to the question "How do I receive this liberating, empowering Grace?" I look for it and cultivate a willingness to be drawn by it.

My practice then is simple. I sit quietly three times a day in a state of willingness. I am willing to be drawn by Grace. That may mean facing hard truths, feeling uncomfortable feeling, and remembering and imagining things that I am drawn to do.

The regular practice strengthens my awareness of my ongoing relationship to Grace. And my refusal to use the tools of coercion to drive myself hinders me from falling back into old patterns and effective but limiting strategies. The strategies that one learns in childhood and from one's culture are okay as far as they go, but it's clear that they DO NOT provide real and lasting freedom

Going all-in, trusting in Grace rather than proven strategies of self control, may seem like a risk, but at this stage of my life it feels like the only worthy option.

Discipleship or Believe

1/24/2019

I've noticed a difference between those who cling to belief and those who aspire to be discipled in The Way.

Those who focus on praxis and aspire to kenotic love and solidarity can tolerate the gap between their aspiration and their lived experience. They receive forgiveness more as a starting point than the final solution. Freed of shame, they can look at their shadow and begin the work of integration. And attempting to be an agent of love in the world is a discipleship; failure is assumed.

On the other hand, those who trust in belief systems find the gap between how they see themselves, often informed by original sin/total depravity, and what a holy god demands as intolerable. They need a final solution; a praxis or process like discipleship is inconsequential due to the shameful difference between who they are and who they need to be.

The Only Real Power

1/13/2019

Central to the Christian call is this graphic and troubling invitation to "take up your cross and follow me." Over a life time, I've heard dozens of explanations of Jesus's meaning. These interpretations run the spectrum, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

While I delight in symbolic language and interpretive play, a rather simple and direct understanding of the invitation has captured my imagination. To bear the cross is to bear sin. To follow Jesus is to take on the sin of the world, to take it out of circulation. To hold it rather than throw it back in the face of the sinner.

As far as I can tell, this is the only power we have to effect real change. Force, coercion, exercising power over others, these are merely frantic efforts to maintain order, fingers in a failing dam. They do not awaken or transform people. They do not move people from obeisances to cultural norms to joyful obedience to the law of love.

Yes, I realize that the call to bear the sins of others has often resulted in silently enduring abuse. I do not know of a rule for discerning the difference between bearing sins as healing act and suffering abuse. And Jesus example is not that helpful. He told Peter that there were a legion of angels standing ready to protect him, but he chose to endure the injustice unfolding before him.

While I'm comfortable with thinking that Jesus's "mission" was somehow unique, I still feel that the invitation to all followers of Jesus remains: choose weakness, vulnerability, and forgiveness and, like Jesus, let that be God's power in the world.

As in all things, especially regarding the upside down kin-dom of God, wisdom and communal discernment are required. But imagine what the world would look like if even a 20% of the world's 2 billion professing Christians we're practicing cross bearers, violence interupters, peace makers, generous hosts reducing fear and anxiety everywhere they went.

The Advocate

1/13/2019

The good news of the legal language in scripture, which has been the source of a lot of bad news in late modernity, is that we have attorney client privilege with the "advocate." We can open up and share every shameful secret knowing that it will never be used against us in a court of law. For the first time, we can face the whole truth about ourselves, and begin a process that will set us free.

The Wonk and the Buffoon

1/11/2019

Why do people vote against their own interests?

Because they've been inculturated to value self reliance and believe that they may one day join the independently wealthy, making solidarity with anyone below them feel like a limitation. Consumerism makes imaginary solidarity with those who own the most stuff a necessity.

People are formed from the 1st grade to think that patriotism, expressed mainly as militarism, is a high and noble sacrifice and a source of security. Thus the belief that a bloated military industrial complex is a necessity, not to mention a source of pride. Leaders who can tap into that pride have access to something much deeper than self interest.

And, of course, there are a myriad of fears natural to the human condition, which are intensified by the demands of empire, predatory capitalism, and globalism, making the safety of homogenous tribes and powerful authoritarians feel necessary.

All this and more make up the mythic story that defines and creates ones experience of reality. It takes education and communal support to discover, comprehend, and accept a new story.

But the thing about story, it's a kind of short hand, a necessary simplification that orders the overwhelming complexity of reality. Story is like the operating system, the user interface for limited, vulnerable human beings facing a dangerous, unpredictable universe. It can not be surgically extracted by reasoned arguments. Even though story is a simplification it grows tendrils that reach the deepest parts of ones identity. The world view one's story supports feels necessary to survival.

The stories that order our reality are always in flux, but the process is glacial. Children receive their story from their elders, and then their peers and a new story emerges over generations. Though the process may be accelerating as technology increases connectivity.

Part of what we are in the process of learning is that the promise of the Enlightenment, unending progress through reason, is an illusion that has made us impatient with the deeply human need to make sense of life through stories. Those who were "enlightened" imagined that they had been liberated by reason, blind to the myths that motivated them, limited their vision, and led to assumptions of superiority, and unconscious racism.

A new story is beginning to emerge: One that actually values diversity (not just the idea of it); Understands that survival is dependent upon a regenerative relationship to the earth and social justice; It includes a broader sense of tribe and an appreciation of inefficiency, the small the slow, and the queer.

Reason is invaluable, but impatience with the human condition which is trans-rational, is counter productive. Story is invisible, but immensely powerful nevertheless. Ignore it at great peril. Never forget the buffoon with a bad but resonant story can win an election over an arrogant wonk, especially if her story is essentially the same, but merely polite and poorly told.

Works Righteousness?

1/8/2019

In my emphasis on faith expressed as following the words and model of Jesus, I can assure you that there's nothing of "works righteousness" in my effort to discern and walk The Way. Because I'm not trying to earn anything.

I recognize my deep human limitations and my propensity to self deception. I acknowledge that every breath is gratuitous gift. And I look forward to whatever the future brings as a continuation of that gift.

As for "salvation" and eternal life, etc., I don't know, can't know, and don't feel a need to know what I assume to be well beyond my capacity to imagine. I simply trust the Creator I hope is revealed in Jesus. I feel childlike and foolish in this trust. But that appears to be the human condition regarding an unknowable future.

My desire to walk The Way springs from a deep attraction to the beauty of self-emptying, co-suffering love, and the hope of Shalom as restorative justice.

Of course I fail and block the flow of Love (my definition of sin), but my desire to cooperate with Love keeps growing stronger. This is the dynamic of my life, I don't assume that I am worthy of anything because of this growing desire, I'm just grateful for it. Love is it's own reward.

So, I have no thoughts of earning, worthiness, or certainty. Nor do I fear punishment. If I ever did, due to a preoccupation with such things in my evangelical formation, they've been replaced with trust, hope, and a desire to join in the beautiful dream of Shalom.

Kin-dom Economics vs.

1/1/2019

The Domination System hordes what God gives freely and sells it to the highest bidder, creating rivalry through artificial scarcity.
And since people, naturally would not stand for this, the Domination System hires a PR firm to develop a narrative that makes the system appear to be a moral imperative.

Since the narrative of the Domination System is the water in which we swim, the Kin-dom of God can not be imagined. As a consequence, the only meaningful, liberating, Christian act is to show/live the abundance of the Kin-dom of God.

Proof or Contemplation

1/1/2019

Many people care about proving the factual historicity of the biblical narrative. I don't see that God does, and so neither do I. (eg. announcing the Incarnation to shepherds and pagans, the resurrection to women and true believers... why not Roman historians, or even waiting a second, in God time, for a videographer...) Proofs don't matter to God, and they didn't matter to Christians until Christendom started competing with science rather than proclaiming the good news of God's present commonwealth in story and kenotic love.

The "Faith" is full of mysteries that I neither believe nor disbelieve, rather I contemplate their meaning. I pay attention and try to discern the Divine Invitation from the voice of The Accuser. I risk engaging in the practices that have led others to Christlikeness.

And I can tell you that paying attention has changed my life far more than believing. Paying attention is an ongoing, humbling, transformational activity. It's placing oneself under the object of attention, making oneself vulnerable to it, rather than dominating it by containing it as a thing that can be known.

Believing, on the other hand, is relatively passive, an affirmation of a tribal identity, which made no noticeable impact on my life. Yes, it gave me a set of values, some of which I still value, but it also gave me a great big bag of assumptions and unconscious shadow material, which often hinders rather than aides my attempts to join the incarnational solidarity that I see Jesus modeling in that quasi-historical library commonly known as the bible.

January 01st, 2019

1/1/2019

"I was formed in M.A.C.E. (modern American Conservative evangelicalism) and while I have abandoned the eschatological hope of a second coming that depends upon violence to "set things to rights," I can say that this was the hardest narrative to relinquish, not because I wanted God to come with retributive justice, but because I couldn't imagine any other way working in the world that I observe.

A non violent answer is still an elusive picture, but it has become clear that God's dream is Shalom which must be restorative rather retributive. I'm happy to say and encouraged to hope that my imagination is growing. Previously unknown possibilities emerge and I am increasingly confident in the divine creativity to bring about a peaceful new earth without coercion.

In times like these, however, when world leaders are increasingly reactionary and tribal, I fear that the Way won't open again until after a whole lot of hell on earth has sobered enough people, the remnant of Christ's body perhaps, so that we can abandon the illusion of redemptive violence and become willing to sacrifice for solidarity.