A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That are Transforming the Faith by Brian McLaren

A Christian synchroblog that I have written with sometimes in the last few years has sort of gone extinct.  Every now and again a theme for a synchronized blog raises its head from the mire of the busy bloggers’ lives. When Steve Hayes suggested that we all write about the 10 questions from Brian McLaren’s new book, at first I harumphed, knowing that McLaren is not my flavor of Christian, but he is admired by many people that I admire, so I thought I better get over myself and at least read the questions.  

McLaren is an evangelical post-modern Christian.  And what, might you say, is THAT animal?  Well, you should read about his truly ground breaking work on one of my favorite blogs ‘Homebrewed Christianity’.  He and Richard Rohr are tight.  Along with some other big thinkers like Phyllis Tickle.  So his ideas and work have great validity.  Anglican bishop Alan Wilson says on his blog Bishop Alan’s Blog: Discipleship starts with 10 Questions

You may find his answers disturbing, but I challenge any who care about following Jesus today not to profit from asking these questions. However you answer them, they supply an agenda for anyone wanting to follow Jesus honestly and authentically. Read this Book.

But I have to say, in respect and humility: are these the best questions he can come up with?  I have not yet read the book, and I’m sure his answers will be enlightening.  But the questions…ah, they leave my heart a stone.

Someone has said, ‘never trade a great question for a mediocre answer.’   Good advice.  And vicey versa.

Brian McLaren’s Ten questions:

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?  
2. How should the Bible be understood?  
3. Is God violent? 
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the Gospel?
6. What do we do about the Church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?   
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions? 
10. How can we translate our quest into action?

Sorry, my friendly synchrobloggers.  I can’t do these questions.  The only one that remotely speaks to me is the first one, and that’s because it involves speaking the truth in mythological language. 

In the meantime here are my own ten questions, for what they’re worth. Not sure that wrestling with them would change the world, but it does change my world. 

1. How is the membrane of any cell in my body similar to the surface of the earth?

2. How does the human heart perceive truth, beauty, wisdom?

3. Since the wisdom of the ancient ones and the elders is available to us in so many forms, what is it going to take for us to actually listen to what they have to say?

4. What if Jesus had really said something like this to the woman at the well, “If you knew that all you had to do was get in the River of Life and let it overtake you, you would then become the River and you would never thirst again.”

5. What if the Bible is only a snapshot of truth, a collection of moments that is no more or less important than any other moments of expressed wisdom?  What if revelation is truly not only on-going, but comes from a host of sources—including animals, rocks and the sky?

6. Why do we weep at the blue of a baby’s eye?

7. What if God really is a process and is hosted in our cellular memory: learning and mutating and hurting and changing?

8. What if the only book we ever needed to 'read' was to look carefully, prayerfully at a microbe or a constellation?

9. What if the muffled screams of Congolese women who are being raped and tortured is the groan of God being heard as if for the first time? Like a birth-pang of a new universe?

10. What if the dead bodies of supposedly failed summiteers that litter the sides of the highest Himalayan mountains are the only offerings that those sacred mountains will accept in exchange for their degradation? What if these frozen facsimiles of humans are thus keeping the world intact?

Anyone want to answer any of these questions or write your own?

This post is also the 5th in a series of Lenten reflections. Over the time of Lent friends and I are doing a Lenten study course with Christine Valters Paintner from the wonderful  Abbey of the Arts.  I will be writing some of my reflections, returning to ancient practices that can help me renew my most sacred vows.  This is not easy or done without discernment, having left most religious ‘trappings’ behind.  But I’m feeling drawn to revisit and see them with new eyes, as if for the first time.  I hope you will consider traveling with me/us on this pilgrimage to the Heart of the Matter.   There are challenges to just reading the words of Biblical scripture. Challenges to allowing my heart door to creak open to their meaning, much of which feels so irrelevant and discordant with what I know of God's love to be.  And I’m determined to be on my way.

Lenten reflection 1: Ashes on my third eye

Lenten reflection 2: Having it my way

Lenten reflection 3: Hell is breaking out in the kingdom of God

Lenten reflection 4: Four words

I recently met a new friend, who is a friend of several ‘old’ friends (most of them in the 20’s and 30’s!).  David has the gravitas of an elder, even though he is young in years.  I am sitting with his new book, ‘The Way Home’, soon to be released, and marveling at the message and the messenger.  More about David and his journey later, as he will soon be a blogger for the Virtual Tea House.  For now, here’s an intro to the message and hence, the book.  NOTE: The title of the book caught my breath, as we hosted the contest a couple of years back about ‘where’s home?’ here on the VTH.  It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart and grows in importance each day.    --Beth, VTH Host  

2012 and The River of Time: An Intro to the Hopi Poem

Thank you for inviting me into the Virtual Tea House community! I am very glad to be here with you all.

In my newly published book "The Way Home" I use the he structure of the Hopi poem, “We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For,” to convey the need for authenticity and fearlessness in every action in these very important times:

We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your Truth.

Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep your eyes open, and our heads above the water. See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

                                           ---The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

This poem is about many things: our relationships, our livelihood, our community, but mostly it is about embodying the essence of our truth. It is my opinion that if we do this, if we live our most authentic life, then we not only feed ourselves but we feed others, we feed our communities, we feed the earth, we feed all of consciousness. When we live authentically, when we let go of the shore, we free ourselves from living in heartache and blame, and we live in love. This is the journey. This is true healing.    --David Santangelo

Working with dreams is a little like creating a stained glass window blindfolded.

While in Mexico recently I had dream of which I remember only a fragment.  In the dream I am falling through layers of glass ceilings.

In each of the four layers there are circles of stained glass, and I am falling face down in the middle of each of them, spread eagle like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.  The first window that I fall through was similar to the Vitruvian Man and that I was matching his wide open stance.  As I fell through that first circle, the glass shattered like safety glass and I felt it falling on me like sleet or heavy rain, but it did not hurt me.  Immediately I fell through another circular glass window much like the Rose windows of Gothic cathedrals.  Next was a yellow and blue window that may have  had Celtic knots in its design.  As I hit the fourth window I woke up.  I don’t remember what it looked like, but it seemed to have some earth tones.  I was unharmed by all the shattered glass and distinctly remember it falling on my back without any pain. 

I was startled at hitting the first stained glass window, but the next two were not even startling.  I don’t know why I woke up at the fourth window.

This is all I remember of the dream.   Whatever do you think it means? Any impressions that you have, I’d love to hear.  They will all be helpful in unpacking this mystery…

I grabbed these images from wikipedia because I can’t do justice to the beauty of the  dream-windows;  these images help illustrate the impressions made of the windows.

First window

“The kingdom of God is like a feast where everyone is welcomed with a jubilant divine indiscriminacy, like the prodigal son whose return brings tears to his father’s eyes or the lost sheep that counts more than the ninety-nine that never strayed.

“The kingdom of God is like a great party that is thrown for everyone, where even slightly seedy characters who were never invited are compelled to come in and have a drink.

“The kingdom of God is opened up by the event of hospitality the way the day is opened up the rising of the sun.

“The kingdom of god is a community without community, a city without walls, a nation without borders, unconditional hospitality without sovereign power, where the decision procedure for admission is based on a holy undecidability between insider and outsider. 

“For all the world it looks as if hell has broken out, the holy hell that we have been insisting all along is the stuff of sacred anarchy.”

 

Last night at a birthday party for a friend, one of my Lenten study—mates and I were discussing, actually commiserating about, the Lenten biblical texts that are being sent to us each day by Christine over at  Abbey of the Arts (the abbey without walls!).  I know this won’t be a surprise to regular visitors to the VTH but one of the emerging themes in the study group  is our struggle with the scripture as it is written: much of it is exclusive, punitive and divisive.  It was written from and for the times that it served.  We understand that the language is half the problem, but we’re not sure what the other half-problem is.  However, we’re persevering, knowing that we need to struggle with those images and words that are deep in our cultural and religious DNA.  We want to find out why we’re half-breeds, why we can’t take the stuff lying down.  Why we have felt that we’d rather put ourselves out in the cold rather than succumb to the numbing of how the words are interpreted by some, if not many, religious institutions. 

So when my friend leaned over and said, ‘maybe what we’re supposed to be wrestling with is the abuse that has been brought about by the words, and not the words themselves’, a bell went off in my head.  Not a siren…but a chime, a call to attention. 

The abuse perpetrated by these words is what rankles me, stirs up my holy ire. Or at least it feels holy.

Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
"If you forgive men their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.

How can we be sure that our forgiveness for sins-that we may know or not know about-is contingent on our forgiving others?  From that stance we’ve become doormats for systemic abuse, forgiving and trying to forget.  What if the meaning  is actually more like:

“If you do the work to know that you are no different from those you assume have trespassed against you, you will see that we’re all in this together.  And if you take it deeper, you’ll see that the state of being fallen from grace really is about not understanding who you are in the big picture. As your Father, I co-created you better than that!  For God’s sake, stand up-take it all on! Acknowledge your co-creative powers and get on with it!  You’re a child of God, made of the same star-stuff.  You, the human race, are not God, but you are a piece of God.  Forgiving other Pieces of God is a slam dunk. Youse guys have got bigger things to do than that.”  

And reflection this morning on yesterday’s text…

"Ask and it will be given to you
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

…got me to thinking about the kingdom of God.  Who’s in?  How could we possibly be ‘out’?  For whom does the door not open?  Who, at some point in their life has not asked the important question, knocked on the only door there is?   And why don’t we recognize the door as open?  Is it because we’re so fearful that it could possibly be not open that we assume that it isn’t?  And the fear would come from…worrying that we’ve not been forgiven, because we haven’t forgiven. Other than human stupidity, is there anything to actually forgive?  And can we forgive ourselves for having been abused by not accepting our power, rightful rank and responsibility?

Yikes.  Can you see how confounding and enriching this lectio divina stuff is?

I’d saved the beginning quote of this post from somewhere, and I don’t know where—so if anyone knows, please let me know so I can credit it.  The reason it spoke to me when I first came across it was that last thought about sacred anarchy.  About blowing up the walls of the kingdom so that we can no longer speak to in/out.  

The sacred chaos of this act of anarchy, dark and purple, is stunning me into silence.

However, the blathering of holy blither will continue soon, in a kingdom near you.   Very near.   Closer-than-your-own-skin kind of near.

Lenten reflection 1: Ashes on my third eye

Lenten reflection 2: Having it my way

Ok.  So there’s all these words and characters (some noble, some not so much) in the Bible, but for those of us born as buttoned-down Christians, or even as cultural ones, the primary relationship is with Jesus.  So I’m going out on a limb here in this post.  You don’t have to follow.  Maybe you shouldn’t even stand close this week, as inexplicable things may happen to me.  If they do, you know who to blame.  Don’t you?

Duck and dodge.

That’s how I’ve related to Jesus.

He’s my teacher

   and I’m afraid of him.

What if I don’t get my lessons?

What if I don’t get any of it right?

What if he really doesn’t care?

What if he’s jealous about my relationship with the Buddha (I have slept with the Buddha after all—but that’s another post).

What if he doesn’t like all the shuckin’ and jivin’ of my beloved Sufi mystics and poets?  

What if there is some small bone in his little finger that is full of brimstone?

So, after years of theological work and spiritual longing

I’ve decided that his place in my heart as a far-distant cousin, twice removed

   is not close enough.

Does that mean that I have to sit next to him and hold his hand, for God’s sake?

He didn’t want us to start a religion in his name. Peter made that up.

He was a reformer of the practices as they were, of Judaism.  He was a catalyst.

He was a radical.

   He wanted us to rend our heart, not our garments.

   He wants us to rend our heart, not our garments.

The mistakes of Adam and yes, too, of Eve

   are as present in my heart as they were in theirs.

I want to have it my way.  Like Burger King says I can.

What if Jesus says, ‘ That’s cool.  Your way to rest is really the same as mine?’

Then what?

The passage for this past week’s group Lent study was:

Yahweh says this:

‘Put yourselves in the ways of long ago

Inquire about ancient paths.

Which was the good way?

Take it and then you shall find rest.’

But what if I find what I’m really looking for  when I look into his eyes?

 
Flowchart from Dave Pollard’s unabashedly irreverent blog: how to save the world. Dave borrowed it from holytaco, a site full of funny stuff.

Someone wise said something like:

‘I wouldn’t walk across the street to talk to

a God I could understand.’

Not this.  Not that.

The process of elimination

   the via negativa

   these are the most meaningful

personal pilgrimages

to God.

Meanwhile

The apricot sapling

springs joyfully

from the compost pile.

And my heart leaps in love.

So there you have it.

God in and of the compost.

Who knew?

Written as a response to Christine Valters Paintner’s ‘God in 100 Words or Less’ blog theme for Patheos.  I invite you to post your own entry to this theme on either of those sites, on your own blog, or joy of joy, right here below in the comments!

One of my teachers, Jonathan,  says:

There are three things that we need to know, deeper than our own breath:

1. We are Love: nothing more, nothing less. 

        Calcified, reified, rarified, embodied love.

2. There is enough of everything in the universe.

        No need to snatch, grab, greed, lust, crave, despair about anything, especially love.

3. And finally:  laughter opens the heart.

      Crackled, as with specialty paint.

     A broken heart is an open heart.

Being single is like most things:

    both sides of the coin are graced.

 What I remember from those days of pride

   nights of rumbling and range-fed angst

   was suspecting in my heart of hearts

   that the three pillars noted above

Were all I needed.

The distinction is

Now I know.

  
Daydreamers by Oleg Zhivetin

Thanks to the Amateur Poet of Figments of Imagination for this week's  One Single Impression prompt: single.  Visit OSI for more than a single perspective on this prompt!

I will be out of the country for the next week, and will visit my OSI friends’ posts as soon as possible when I return!

Left. Right.

It doesn’t really matter.

It doesn’t even matter if you turn.

But if you’re going to take the curve on two wheels

you better be ready.

Consequences abound.

                 
Kansas State Parks-Wilson Lake  (Hell Creek Area)

  
Submission for the One Single Impression prompt: blowing the curve.    Mojo of  "Why, What Have You Heard?" brings us this prompt. Check out the variety of ways this prompt is interpreted by a bunch of blown-curve poets.