Sunday, January 26, 2020

counter-cultural balance: part two...

NOTE: Part two of my reflections on contemplation as balance builds on the insights of Richard Rohr @ https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations /2020 /page/2/. In my experience, poetry, music, and visual art are often the best ways to enter into the wisdom of sacred balance. That's why I try to include examples from artists who illuminate the mystical path. They evoke in our hearts what theologians try to explain to our minds. They honor the mystery rather than try to tame it with linear logic. I am also committed to using the time-tested insights of scripture and prayer as guides on our pilgrimage towards balance.
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Not long ago I came upon this poem by Lelia Chatti, "Confession," that gives shape and form to the quest for balance as I understand it. She is a Tunisian-American poet who currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. The poem begins with words from the Holy Qur'an: 

Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.
Mary giving birth, the Holy Qur’an

Truth be told, I like Mary a little better
when I imagine her like this, crouched
and cursing, a boy-God pushing on
her cervix (I like remembering
she had a cervix, her body ordinary
and so like mine), girl-sweat lacing
rivulets like veins in the sand,
her small hands on her knees
not doves but hands, gripping,
a palm pressed to her spine, fronds
whispering like voyeurs overhead—
(oh Mary, like a God, I too take pleasure
in knowing you were not all
holy, that ache could undo you
like a knot)—and, suffering,
I admire this girl who cared
for a moment not about God
or His plans but her own
distinct life, this fiercer Mary who’d disappear
if it saved her, who’d howl to Hell
with salvation if it meant this pain,
the blessed adolescent who squatted
indignant in a desert, bearing His child
like a secret she never wanted to hear.

The witness and wisdom of Scripture - all Scripture in every tradition - is complicated. It is bathed in the oral history and heritage of our faiths so it is draped with blessing and curse. There is always insight and grace in these traditions. Like Bene Brown writes in another context: they are doing their best - and I trust that this is true for individuals as well as our spiritualities. And yet, wherever there is light, there must also be shadow. And our religious inheritance is saturated in shadows: historic prejudice is embedded within it, our cultural fears and shame live there, too alongside varying expressions of misogyny and homophobia. So, trusting Scripture demands discernment. 

Sadly, my own spiritual tradition, which bubbled up from the transformational crucible of Western Europe's Protestant Reformation, has lost touch with its roots. Once a brilliant center for serious Scriptural reflection in service to social justice and compassion - think Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Edwards, Gladden, Tillich, Barth, and Shinn back in the day; or more recently Trible, MLK, Cone, Cobb, Coakley, Brueggemann, Wink, Buechner, and Davis more recently - it has now slipped into shallow biblical exegesis driven more by ideology than careful reflection on our sacred texts. Paradoxically, the Anglo/Roman Catholic realm that once seemed locked into the limitations of hierarchical mythos, has become my go-to sources for rigorous contemporary Biblical scholarship. Think Rohr, Brown, Vanier, Nouwen, Finney, and Bourgeault. 

A recent example from the January 16, 2020 Daily Meditation by Fr. Richard Rohr is illustrative. In "A Quiet Refusal" Rohr carefully articulates the humble
Biblical consensus re: the way Jesus engaged in social transformation, and, why it matters. It is the best and most honest way of describing the path of Jesus I have found. 

Because Jesus did not directly attack the religious and institutional systems of his time until his final action against the money changers in the temple, his primary social justice critique and action are a disappointment to most radicals and social activists. Jesus’ social program, as far as I can see, was a quiet refusal to participate in almost all external power structures or domination systems. Once we have been told this, we see it everywhere in the four Gospels. Jesus chose a very simple lifestyle which kept him from being constantly co-opted by those very structures, which we can call the sin system. (Note that the word “sin” is often used to describe individual wrongdoing, but I’m using it in a much more corporate way, as I believe Jesus and Paul did.) Here are a few examples:

+ The city of Sepphoris was the Roman regional capital of Galilee and the center for most money, jobs, and power in the region where Jesus lived. It was just nine miles from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Yet there is no record that Jesus ever went there, nor is it mentioned once in the New Testament, even though he and his father, Joseph, were carpenters or “workmen” and Jesus traveled through many other cities much farther away. He also seems to have avoided the money system as much as possible by using “a common purse” (John 12:6, 13:29)—voluntary “communism,” we might say. Go ahead and hate me!

+ Jesus healed the poor woman whose doctors made her spend all she had “while she only grew worse” (Mark 5:26). His three-year ministry was, in effect, offering free healing and healthcare for any who wanted it (Jew and non-Jew, worthy and unworthy)... He clearly respected eunuchs, which would have been the generic term for nonbinary or trans-genders (see Matthew 19:12), probably inspired by the universalism of Isaiah 56:4-5.

Rather than force an anachronistic social construct on Jesus - i.e. revolutionary agitator, political power broker, community organizer, etc. - Rohr synthesizes the witness of Jesus shared in Scriptures and and suggests how this might make sense for us today:

What can we learn from Jesus’ life about how we might address the systems of inequity and oppression in our own cultures? One lesson seems to me that we have to “start local.” Jesus doesn’t begin in Jerusalem or head off to Rome to take on empire. Rather he starts in his own hometown, among his own people, helping those who are hurting and naming those who are responsible without a hint of self-righteousness. He simply goes around doing what he knows to be right, which he surely discovered during his long periods of solitude and silence (a form of contemplation) on the outskirts of town, and others begin to join him.

Rohr refuses to do what some progressive theologians in my tradition like Borg, Spong, or Daly attempt: forming Jesus in their own image. I value the heart of these theological revolutionaries: their commitment to human dignity, freedom, love, and liberation is beyond question. Their quest for the Beloved Community is one I share, too. But the revolution of Jesus is small. Hidden. Quiet and truly counter-cultural. It is not in a hurry and never hyperbolic or puffed-up. This is where I find both liberal and conservative ideologies obscuring the mystical manner of Jesus: to portray him as a contemporary social radical or a purveyor of the gospel of wealth is disingenuous. It requires shallow and manipulative biblical interpretation. And it offers no clues for living sacramentally into the way of grace. The quiet way of Jesus as described in the New Testament, however, tells us that at least these ingredients are involved in living into holy balance:

+ Quiet time and solitude: rest and reflection - the solitude of restoration as well as exploration - is essential so that we might be renewed in body and spirit.

+ Simple acts of compassion:  feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the lonely, sick, imprisoned, and forgotten - what tradition calls the seven corporeal works of mercy - including giving drink to the thirsty, sheltering the homeless and burying the dead is the outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

+ Disengaging from the powers of empire: what Rohr calls Jesus' "quiet refusal" to personally participate in the systems of domination and exploitation. In the 21st century, this is complicated. But finding small ways to reduce our dependence upon and complicity within the structures of violence and injustice is foundational.

+ Rejoicing and feasting in community: Jesus loved a good party - and one of the ways he fought despair was to feast with friends - and encourage them to invite the forgotten to the table of joy, too.

+ Quiet acts of solidarity: silently carrying another's sorrow, grief, or oppression is how we share and experience God's presence. "This is my new commandment," Jesus said after washing the feet of his friends, "that you love one another as I have loved you." As a servant. As a friend. As the hands, eyes, feet and soul of Jesus in our world.  Like the hymn says:

I will hold the Christ-light for you in the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.
I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow till we've seen this journey through.
Most of us must learn to be grateful for all that is small, forgotten, and silent. We have been well-trained to want more and create more rather than seek out the "still small voice of the Lord" in our everyday encounters. The counter-cultural balance of Jesus up-ends our self-importance through humility, humor, feasting, tenderness, silence, and compassion. I think St. Paul hit a home run when he wrote in Romans 12:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect... Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 
credits:
+ Mario Sanchez Nevado
+ https://www.christianartforsale.com/bible-verses-art.html
+ https://www.pinterest.at/pin/373728469064672910/
+ https://fineartamerica.com/featured/jesus-religi
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