Bill Ellis

Spiritual Leadership and the Re-humanizing of our World

Bill Ellis — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:08:00 GMT

This post is part of a synchroblog of Christian writers on the topic of leadership. When I think about spiritual leadership from the perspective of the Christian tradition I find myself in an odd place. I begin with the conviction that it is not possible...(read more)

The Spirituality of Politics and the Politics of Spirituality

Bill Ellis — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:25:00 GMT

Beth's recent blog inspired me to offer a few thoughts of my own on the connection between spirituality and politics. Here they are. These days most of us can see the difference between religion and spirituality. Some of us, like me, believe the two can...(read more)

OK, Lets Try This One More Time, From the Top

Bill Ellis — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:28:00 GMT

Ever since I became acquainted with 12 Step spirituality when I was working one day a week at an inpatient drug treatment center I have been convinced that people can get addicted to just about anything. Recently I had an experience of discovering my...(read more)

Celebrate Peace Starting on September 11

Bill Ellis — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:29:00 GMT

The Unity Church here in Spokane is sponsoring an eleven day "Celebration of Peace" starting on September 11th. On that day, and for the ten days thereafter they will host a series of forums with guest speakers and panels, and hope to spread this celebration...(read more)

"What we have here is a failure to communicate"

Bill Ellis — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:39:00 GMT

I had intended to start this blog by blaming life for my getting behind in my posts. You know how it goes: begin with an "I have just been too busy to do this..." kind of thing, then perhaps a ...."sorry about that" and perhaps even a coda in which I...(read more)

Life, the Universe, and Everything: The world and the world view

Bill Ellis — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:38:00 GMT

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As I was meditating on "life, the universe, and everything" just as Douglas Adams encouraged us all to do, it suddenly occurred to me that both fundamentalists and people of progressive spiritualities experience some strife at least periodically that emerges as a direct result of their faith systems. But that strife is of two very different sorts and helps to explain why it is so difficult to communicate across the spiritual divide between the two. Progressives tend to find themselves at odds with their world, while fundamentalists tend to find themselves at odds with their world view. They are two very different things.

I, for example, find myself at odds with my world. The ongoing rape of the earth, the war in Iraq, a tax structure that favors the very rich, a health care delivery system rationed not on the basis of need, but on the basis of ability to pay, American claims not simply to commercial and military hegemony, but to spiritual hegemony as well, and a bunch of other things are distressing to me. A good part of this stress is a result of my spiritual perspective, for my faith leads me to believe that all of this is not quite right, and does not accord with the will of Whatever-Made-Life-The-Universe-and-Everything possible in the first place. I can find nothing in my particular tradition, Christianity Episcopal style, to suggest that Jesus would have nodded approvingly at the way we are doing things now.

On the other hand, I am at peace with my world view. I am not merely comfortable with the idea that the universe is roughly 14 billion years old and expanding at more or less the speed of light, I am excited by that notion. I accept evolution not simply as the best explanation of how we got here, but as the very core of all biological sciences. I rather like the idea of the water cycle, and am deeply indebted to the notion of cause and effect as a sufficient explanation for all sorts of things. As a result I tend to believe that earthquakes are not caused by an angry god, but rather by shifts in tectonic plates. While I am not a scientist, my world view is profoundly shaped by science, and I understand my whole spiritual experience within the world view created by science. Thus, though I am often in conflict with my world, I am rarely in conflict with my world view.

It strikes me that very nearly the opposite is true of my fundamentalist brothers and sisters. In order to interpret the sacred scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as literally and historically accurate in every detail these good people need to reject much of the modern scientific world view. The laws of physics, for example, are quite expendable on occasion, if we are to believe in the physical resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus, and if we are to believe that people walk on water, and float up into the air as Elijah, Jesus and even Mohammad did. When we get right down to it, the Copernican view of the solar system becomes suspect as well, since in Joshua the sun stood still for an hour while Joshua's troops mowed down their enemies. To sustain a literalist approach to texts that are between fifteen hundred and three thousand years old, it becomes necessary to adopt selectively the world view of that era. Beyond this, when scriptures of these sorts are the only criterion of judgment, then whatever science teaches us about, for example, human sexuality, must be rejected as irrelevant at best, deliberately false and misleading at worst. Thus, what looks like the fundamentalist conflict with the world over things like evolution and human sexuality is not that at all, but rather these battles are manifestations of a deeper conflict with the modern scientific world view. If fundamentalism made peace with the modern world view, these conflicts would fade away as in a dream.

On the other hand much of fundamentalism today seems quite sanguine about the world itself. Social, economic and ecological justice are not crucial, both because the real issue in life is a saving relationship with God and because we are in the end times. The Spiritual hegemony America has been trying to assert is not a problem at all; it is the solution to the problem of radical Islam, and the way forward into redemption for those who would otherwise be lost. Seen in this light, fundamentalism has no real problem with the world. It is the modern world view that presents the problem.

It is therefore no wonder that progressives and fundamentalists have so much trouble with each other these days. We are all under stress, and both sides claim that stress is in reality a kind of divine discontent. But that stress comes from two entirely different sources, the world for progressives, and the world view for fundamentalists. I don't know how this will all work out, no one does. But I do believe that if we are able to treat each other with love and compassion then we will weather the current storm and emerge with a vigorous spirituality and a renewed sense of purpose. This of course will require us all to abandon the abstraction of claiming that it is sufficient to believe that God loves everyone even as we denigrate each other, and instead to concentrate on loving each other as we claim God loves us. If we cannot do that, and instead continue to see this as a battle between good and bad that we must win at all costs, (whoever "we" is) then we will not deserve such an outcome, and God will not vouchsafe it to us.

Reflections on a Trip to New Orleans

Bill Ellis — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:34:00 GMT

I just got back from a conference in New Orleans, a city I have never before visited. It took me more than just a moment to sort out my feelings and impressions, but, O so tentatively I have settled on a few bits and pieces.

New Orleans is not one place any more; it is two. First it is a city of intense and conflicting energy, Second, it is an uninhabitable ruin.

As a city at first it sent me into the kind of cognitive dissonance Dorothy felt when she opened the door of her home and stepped into Oz. I was pretty sure I was still in the United States, but this wasn't Kansas anymore, that was for sure. My nose helped me overcome the vertigo. That peculiar mixture of aromas from the flowers of lush green vegetation - some of it rotting - moist humid marine air, human sweat, automobile exhaust, and garbage was exactly what I encountered in Managua, Nicaragua. Then it all made sense. New Orleans is much more like Central America than the United States, even the Southern United States. The old crowded together buildings with their Spanish architecture, most of which are not in good repair, the narrow, narrow streets of the French Quarter, full of cracks and potholes, the crowds of people, who for the most part seemed very friendly, the street bands on every third or fourth block which gave the impression of a city that loves to sing, and dance and play. It is impossible not to get caught up in the positive and powerful energy, an energy that arises not from ignoring loss and pain, but from staring it in the face and refusing to be overcome by it. I was reminded of the song "How Can I Keep From Singing?"

Then there were the Voo Doo shops dotting Royal Street, and the palm readers and diviners - perhaps half a dozen of them - plying their trade in Jackson Square under the statue of the Hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and the stores full of obscene curios and souvenirs. And I realized that right along side the energy that seemed to be pulling New Orleans into a positive future is this different sort of energy, with a different sort of intensity to it, an energy that doesn't so much celebrate life as try to control it, manipulate it, manage it for the benefit of those who know the secrets and are willing to use them. I can't honestly say I thought it was evil, though the banality of the shops was striking, but it was a very different sort of energy, and it made for a remarkable contrast. I glimpsed in that moment the riddle which is the part of the city that wasn't affected by Katrina. Is this a place that dares to hope in the midst of despair, or a city that despairs in the midst of hope?

Then we left the city and saw the ruin. The riddle was reinforced.

We drove past an abandoned convent and heard its' story. As the flood waters neared the top of the first floor something shorted out and a fire started. It was left to burn since no fire fighting equipment could get anywhere near it. The result was something out of Hamburg or Dresden during the Second World War. The roof was nothing but charred timbers, and through the the holes that had once been windows we could see the blackened interior. On we drove through blocks of abandoned houses, derelicts that no one now would, or could, claim. On each house was spray painted an "X" and in each quadrant was a number. In the top quardant was the date the place had been searched. To the right was the number of people found. The bottom quadrant was for indicating how many of those people were dead, and on the left was the symbol for the team that had done the searching. Still more heartbreaking was the trip to the Lower Ninth Ward, or what I should say once was the Lower Ninth. There were still a few houses, and even a few people trying to live there, but mostly the Lower Ninth was gone. All that was left of a place that once was home to 25,000 people were bits of foundation and occasionally two or three lonely stone steps leading to nothing.

Yet, even in the midst of this devastation are signs of real life. Several Churches and Habitat for Humanity had teamed up to begin building houses, brightly colored, brand new houses in the parts of the flood plain least likely to be inundated again. The owners of those homes, without a dime of their own to invest, were providing the sweat equity which would give them a place once again to call their own. Compared to what had been there the numbers were small, and I am certain that greater New Orleans will not again be home to a million people, or perhaps even half that many. But people were rebuilding not just homes, but lives, and once again I was left with the riddle of the city itself. More important than even this was a scene I saw as we left; an older man, the homes around his abandoned, sweeping his sidewalk. Was this a futile gesture, a monument to denial? Or was he simply living his life, participating in his world as it is, and not just wishing for something else? Is this hope in the midst of despair, or despair in the midst of hope?

Of course the answer to the riddle is that it is both. Part of the spirit of the New Orleans that flooded simply cracked under the weight of the water, the bungling mismanagment and the corruption. And part of the spirit of that place got up and said "you shall not die, but live." Spiritual energy cuts both ways, and in this sense we are all at least a little like New Orleans.

What Color is God?

Bill Ellis — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:10:00 GMT

I have noticed over the years (I bet we all have) that most color images of God end up emphasizing light and even whiteness. The whiteness business may be racist, or at least ethnocentric, but I am reluctant to ascribe the lightness theme to that cause, first because many of the biblical authors who came up with these images were at least olive skinned, and perhaps darker, and second because even in Africa it is possible to find color images of the divine that hearken to the theme of light and even white. I think rather this tendency comes from being a diurnal species whose primary way of relating to the world is through vision, which requires light to work effectively, and often the more the better. Moreover, we have an inordinate attachment to our brains. We gain mastery over our environment first by understanding it, and then by inventing fantastic gizmos which turn that understanding into control. It makes perfect sense therefore that we conflate those two facts about us into color metaphors for God that equate relationship with understanding, and understanding with sight. So, God comes out as pure light, and often pure white.

But ask an owl what color image it most associates with God and I bet euros to field mice that you get something dark, maybe even black. Owls are nocturnal creatures and even though they have excellent eyesight they relate to the world, especially when hunting, more by hearing than vision. So it isn’t much of a guess to suggest that for them God would be the color of the enfolding night that covers, protects and sustains them as they make their way in the world.

I finally admitted to myself a couple of weeks ago as I sang a hymn in church which goes in part: “In Him there is no darkness at all” that I am with owls. I just don’t like that image of God with no darkness. It doesn’t even sound mentally or spiritually healthy to me, though I realize that I have to misinterpret the text in order to conclude that. Certainly light is fine, but too much of it feels Las Vegas strip garish, or more, it feels sterile, cold, even polar to me. Since I long ago gave up trying to understand God – which to me is like an ameba trying to understand a human – the notion of needing enough light to “see” is no longer for me all that relevant a metaphor. The color metaphor that works for me is dark, inky, even black, the deep dark blue of the late summer sky after sunset in those few minutes before the very last bit of light fades, the color of rich black soil whose fecundity you can not only smell and feel, but see. It is precisely the enfolding darkness, the womb-like darkness that doesn’t just surround, but truly envelopes you, that to me is the color of God.

I realize that I am in a very small minority in imagining God in this way; a few mystics maybe and that is about it. But I do wonder how many people are really happy with that “light perpetual” thing. So here is a question, what color is God for you?

Believing is Seeing

Bill Ellis — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:17:00 GMT

Once upon a time I imagined that I was a rational person who formed opinions on the basis of the available evidence. I suppose most of us go through a period in our lives when we believe that. In some small ways life even works that way once in a while. But now I realize that the vast majority of the time I don’t decide what to think on the basis of where the evidence points, I decide where the evidence points on the basis of what I think. I didn’t meet my wife Beth and figure out, through the application of some sort of objective criteria, that she was a good person and then fall in love with her; I met Beth, fell in love with her, and then decided she was a good person. I am quite convinced this is true even with things that feel quite objective and rational to us, like the rise of the scientific method. The history of the whole thing actually illustrates that we didn’t stop what we now call superstitious behavior because we invented science. Rather, we invented science because we lost faith in superstitious behavior.

I have seen that this is most clearly true in my spiritual life. I amuse myself now and again with the fiction that the reason I rejected the idea of the bible as literal history, Christianity as the only path to relationship with God, and a host of other things that I don’t believe is because I got better educated, which is quite a lot of nonsense, and is, by the way, the exact same argument given by people who do believe that the bible is literal history and Christianity is the only path to God.

But none of us get the truth that way. I believe what I believe because my thought processes, for reasons that are quite obscure to me, are quite naturally tuned into ambiguity and mystery, metaphor and analogy. I didn’t decide to become that way, I just am. And because I look at the world through that kind of thinking process, I draw conclusions which are consistent with it, and fit into it, which is all any of us ever do. In this sense the red queen is right, it is always “verdict first” and then the trial. Faith precedes the evidence and we look at the evidence through the lens of our faith. In the case of my own faith, Christianity, for example, the first Christians didn’t come to faith because someone told them the stories, they told the stories – and even invented several -because they had already come to faith, and that is how the gospels got written. With modern Christians, the process is the same; it is that we come to believe and so are able to make sense of the stories, not that we make sense of the stories and then decide to believe. We lose that faith when it no longer provides an adequate way to make sense of the stories.

Certainly spiritual life changes over time. I now believe that happens because the lens through which we look at life sometimes gets shattered and then we have to change. But that change doesn’t happen because we examine the evidence with new objectivity. It happens because sometimes life patterns break down, and so we begin to look at the old evidence with a new kind of faith. Once I began to think this way I realized I had no choice but to look upon everyone with a maximum of compassion. After all, I didn’t decide how I was going to look at life, and those who look at life quite differently than I didn’t either. We are all living out of the best faith we have right now, and looking at life and interpreting the evidence through the lens of that faith. If I want compassion for myself, then how can I do anything else than have compassion for others who are doing exactly the same thing?

Being a Bear (or not)

Bill Ellis — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:09:00 GMT

I don't remember where I heard this, or read it, but I am going to pretend it is true anyway because maybe it is. They say that a fairly short time after their babies are weaned bears no longer recognize their own cubs. Suddenly, it is just another bear in the woods, one with which there is no special connection. I thought about that this past weekend as I sat in a gymnasium in San Luis Obispo, California watching my youngest daughter recieve her Masters degree in mathematics. It was a moment for which there was plenty of pride to go around, but it was also a moment for some wistfulness, and as it turned out, some tears as well. Now Karen is off to Connecticut to be with her quasi-fiancé, get a job, and apply for PhD programs. We won't see her for a long time, and so the sense of separation that begins to grow in children when they reach adolescence, and in parents some time later than that, now reaches a new level for my wife and me. Unlike bears, people never lose the sense of being parents, and so every new triumph for the child contains within it a small drop of pain for the parent, a little sense of loss as we give up something of what we had with the child that we will never have again. Ever.

The pain of course is worth it at several levels. Karen's development is necessary for her; any effort on our part of maintain the kind of dependency that was crucial for her survival when she was younger would be terrible for her now. It is good for us as well; we too need to grow out of being parents into being, well I don't know what, but not quite parents, and not quite not parents, any more. So with the sense of loss comes a sense of hope as well that what is to be in this relationship will be just as deep, just as rich, as whatever it was we have to give up. Moreover, I am well aware that every parent has gone through this, for just as there are rites of passage for sons and daughters, so are there rites of passage for parents, and I just went through one.

Nevertheless I don't like feeling separated; just as I was undoubtedly traumatized by the realization I made when I was an infant that I was not my mother, so too am I now pained by the realization, made once again, that I am not my daughter, and mustn't try to make my daughter into me. I am sure that some people like feeling separate, unique, alone in the universe, but I live with that feeling quite enough, and don't much like it.

I have come to believe that all the separations I feel are simply pointers at that big sense of separation from God that is so much part of my life, and the life of everyone else I know. that is why I returned to one of my favorite poems by Hafiz, who really got it right about seven hundred years ago when he wrote "A Cushion for your Head." "Just sit there right now/ Dont do a thing/ Just rest. For your separation from God, From love, Is the hardest work/ In this/ World. Let me bring you trays of food/ And something/ That you like to/ Drink. You can use my soft words/ As a cushion/ for your/Head."

The Poet is Hafiz, but the speaker is God. God is right. Maintaining that illusion of separation from God is really hard work, and it is what makes life painful and hard. I am going to make a cup of tea and use those soft words as a pillow for my head. Being a bear is OK; it has its advantages, but there are times when I get reminded that I don't have to work quite so hard to maintain that sense of separation, and at those times being a human is OK too.

Eyes of the World

Bill Ellis — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:39:00 GMT

In the circles in which I run, Celtic sprituality has become enormously popular in the last decade or so, and I can't even imagine how many books have been written. In the denomination where I make my living as a professional Christian there are now Celtic liturgies, Celtic prayers, Celtic theology, Celtic art. It is in fact, nearly all Celtic, all the time. I was well into becoming bored with all this until I went to Ireland recently, and discovered for the first time that in spite of our best efforts to make this spirituality complicated enough to sustain a market, it is fundamentally simple and very profound.

As a result, I was reconverted to the Celtic way. Maybe it is simply that if you want want to really understand something you have to go back to its roots, back to the expression of it in its simplest form. When I did that I realized that this spirituality is not intellectual at all. It isn't about doctrines or formulations, it isn't about theological nuance. Certainly it is not about hundreds of how-to books. It can be summarized in a sentence: "we are surrounded here folks; the divine is absolutely everywhere and in everything, and you can either notice that or not." The little goat that runs to you every morning with teats full of milk bleating to be relieved, that little goat is also full of God. That green, green grass you walk over every morning is suffused with that same divine presence. The bus you ride on the way to work every day, that bus is a place where God dwells. There is no place you can go, and nothing you can do that is not blessed by That Presence before you got there, while you do whatever you do, and after you leave.

The same of course is true of all of us. As part of creation, being neither better than, worse than, or other than, all that has been made, we too are full of that same Spirit. I even saw this in the way in which the Irish identify important places. In Ireland the shrines to the saints are not places where ordinary people did extraordinary things and so raised themselves above the common run. In Ireland the shrines are places where extraordinary people did ordinary things, and thus exemplified the simple Celtic truth, that everything is hallowed, everything blessed. I stood at the place where Brigid fetched her water, Kevin slept, and Patrick celebrated Easter. Not a heroic moment in the whole thing. But seeing the holiness in fetching water or sleeping over there opens one up to seeing that same holiness in doing laundry and taking a nap here.

I never really thought of walking my dog (a welsh Corgi, by the way. See, all-Celtic-all-the-time) as a sacred enterprise, but after Ireland I can't see it as anything but that. That deep and vital grief that Beth wrote about in another post, that life giving grief is borne with and in and by and through the divine. By comparison I realized that here in America, and in much of Christianity at least, to the extent that we are spiritual at all, we live in kind of a dream world, a world of illusion. We dream that we are separate from God, we live under the illusion that God is...well, I don't know, but just not here. It is a wonderfully convenient illusion, because it creates room for people like me to become the brokers of God's presence, but an illusion it is, and one that we are better off without.

My favorite poet, Robert Hunter (and I realize that is cheating just a bit because all of his poetry ends up in songs) called us all to "Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.... Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning sings." I am still very sleepy, I still dream of a world in which all is separate, distinct and apart. But slowly I am beginning to wake up.