Crucifixion Faith Is Incomplete

The last three months of my blogging life have turned out to be an exploration of different facets of abundance. In November, I explored it from the individual perspective and concluded that a person’s ability to experience abundance doesn’t seem to have much to do with how much money or “stuff” we have at our disposal. In December, I looked at whether our communities of faith support us in feeling abundantly taken care of by God and encourage us to share of this abundance with others beyond our faith community. This month, I’m drawn to looking at whether our beliefs and religious culture contribute to a sense of abundance and joy in life or whether they promote a feeling of scarcity and worry. My own experience is that my particular brand of liberal theology - Quakerism - seems to foster heaviness and a sense of hopelessness about the ills of the world.

What’s the point of considering what emotional state our faith leads us to, the gentle reader may wonder. As a Quaker, don’t you believe that faith arises out of each individual’s encounter with God? It’s not as if a person can just decide to change their faith, is it? Growth and development in faith would arise from an inward experience of God that was different from past experiences, would it not? And that would be up to God, not up the individual, yes?

Yes and no. What I have learned about discernment is to expect that if I am on the right path, on God’s path for me, I will experience the “fruits of the spirit” - a sense of peace and “rightness” at a deeper level than personal emotions of joy, anger, or sadness. If I feel heavy, worried, and that nothing I do can make a difference in the world, it makes me think I may inadvertently have wandered off God’s path.

So when my crucifixion vision (see 1/10/08 blog entry) led me to feel burdened and heavy at a deeper level, and then later to feel drawn toward the joy and hope of evangelical Quakers or a homeless woman (whose experience I wrote about on 1.8.08), I had to conclude that there was something about my past experiences that was, if not wrong, then incomplete. So I asked God if there was something more God wanted to show me, something that was missing or incomplete in my experience. I asked God that I would experience abundance, and only 4 days passed before God answered my prayer and gave me experience of abundance (see 12/11/07 entry), which only went away with the gluttony of Christmas (note to self: I need to do more discernment with my husband and children on how we do Christmas)!

I do think that we can participate in bringing about a change even in an experientially-based faith - if we genuinely desire God to reveal more of the Truth. My presumption is that it isn’t God’s doing if my faith has taken a depressive and hopeless turn. Instead, I probably got ”ahead of my Guide” and at some point started listening more to myself than to God. I am sure God is pleased when I remember that I am a follower of Jesus, and that a follower’s place is behind the Guide. When I follow, the Guide will  show me the fullness of Life.

Prayer:

God, is there something new you would like to show me?

Be Careful What You Pray for…

On 12/5 I wrote about my new spiritual discipline of practicing gratitude and praying that my desire for things that aren’t simple would fade away, that those things would become undesirable to me. I also prayed that I would become more aware of God’s abundance in life. As many others do, I close my prayers by saying ”amen” - let it be so.  

And indeed, that is what came to pass. It became so: Things that aren’t simple have become undesirable to me, they have lost much of their appeal. I have also become much more aware of God’s abundance all over. Am I happy, now that my prayers have been answered?

I feel a deep sense of peace. Things are right with me and the world and I feel more tenderness for and connection with all the children of God who populate this earth, the two-legged kind, the four-legged kind, the ones with fins and wings. I am keenly aware of LIFE pulsing and reverberating in all, through all, among all.  

But I would be lying if I said I were happy. As tender as I feel towards myself and those with whom I speak, most conversation topics are uncomfortable for me, both my own part and my conversation partner’s. I feel low-level distaste for many of the settings I am in and the activities I am engaged in. I had no idea that so much of what normal people say and do revolves around being dissatisfied with things as they are. And in the same instant I become aware of beauty and plenitude, my heart is pierced with how I - we - neglect to care for and nurture all these precious sparks of LIFE.

Gentle reader, when I started my exploration of abundance a month ago, I did so with a spiritual director’s confidence that although only God knows what lies ahead, I can still feel confident about  facilitating the process for myself and for others. Today I have no confidence in my ability to facilitate a process for myself or anyone else. All I have to offer is my own sorrowful sense of peace, my own broken-open-ness, my tenderness towards all LIFE. All I can do is come before God as Samuel did and say and “Here I am…. Speak, for your servant is listening.”

For prayerful consideration:

God, here I am. Speak, for your servant is listening.

Recipe for Upside-Down World

I turned to Matthew 19 to look at the story in which Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. Then my Quaker seminary training reminded me to check the stories that came before and after to see how they would shed more light on the story, and what I found just blew me away. Here’s the deal:

First comes “unless you are like a child, you can’t get into heaven”. Then Jesus talked about how hard it is for a rich person to get into heaven. This is followed by the sons of Zebedee arguing about who gets to sit next to Jesus, and they’re told that the first shall be last and vice versa. They are also scolded for their blindness, immediately following which Jesus gives sight to two beggars, his last act before he rides into Jerusalem to be crucified.

Do I detect a theme?

Jesus places children above adults, poor people above rich people, servants above masters, blind beggars above his own disciples. And these are the final words of his itinerant ministry, so they must have been important.

Jesus tells us who the spiritual giants in society are: people who are unsophisticated, poor, have low status professions, and have a disability. 

Whenever I bring up this topic, I want to emphasize that I’m not suggesting that you maim yourself, take substances that reduce your mental capacity to that of a three-year old, sell all your belongings, or take a low status profession. Guilt is not a language spoken in this blog. My God-given language is Abundance.

Lovingly, promising a life of spiritual abundance, Jesus gives us a recipe for health: turn things upside-down.

 Query for prayerful consideration:

What is God asking me to turn upside-down in my own life?

Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow Me

Hear and meditate upon God’s promise of abundance:

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

                                                                    Psalm 23 (NRSV)

For prayerful reflection:

God promises that I will be OK. God promises to restore my soul. God promises that goodness and mercy will follow me wherever I go in life. Let me accept that life truly is abundant, God!

Fear Not

My soul has continued to ponder how it can be that those of us who have a-plenty seem to spend a lot of time pondering how to safeguard our future. If I were to characterize the mood and mindset of people like myself, I wouldn’t choose words like “gratitude”, “joy” or “awareness of abundance”. I am also struck by how often people who live closer to the margins do seem to sparkle with joy about being alive, and sometimes even gratitude for having made it out of a life of bad choices and hard living.

It seems to me that our ability to experience life abundantly - or lack thereof - has little to do with the state of our checking account or what we own or will own in the future. Could it be that our ability to experience abundance is an indicator of the state of our soul? Is it true then, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven?

Query for prayerful consideration:

What would/does it take for me to experience abundance?

Abundance and LOTR…?

What do my thoughts about abundance and Lord of the Rings (LOTR) have in common (See post from 11/14)? 

J.R.R. Tolkien explained that although LOTR was published soon after World War II (1954-55), the books were neither a metaphor for the evils of war nor the evils the war was intended to conquer. Instead it was a commentary on industrialism and the damage industrialization did to rural living. So I think of LOTR as a parable about people becoming more preoccupied with industrial or commercial productivity and seeing the value of people, things, and time according to their place in “progress”. It is also about losing touch with nature, community, and all the things in life that aren’t productive. It is about wanting more, thinking we don’t have enough. The ring is the opposite of abundance, the ring makes us lose sight of the value of  “unproductive” things like love, compassion, sharing, giving, laughing, playing, resting, spending time in another’s company, just being.  The ring is the thoughts or actions that make us tense our muscles in fear and stiffen our bodies so that God’s abundant love can’t keep us afloat.

Like Frodo, we know that justice and our duty to God demand that we destroy the ring that we all bear, as members of a consumer society. Like Sam, we are filled with God-given love and loyalty to our own family and friends and sometimes the wider community. Like Gollum, most of us can’t even contemplate being separated from our house, car and other stuff - our passion and greed have a hold on us.

So which is ultimately more important in getting the ring into the volcano? Duty, justice, love, loyalty, passion or greed?

In Lord of the Rings, all of the characters and all of their qualities were essential to the destruction of the ring. In life, God can use all of us and all of our traits to destroy our addiction to things and the productive and consumer mindset. The ring will be destroyed, one way or another. As we all know, we can’t take ”things” with us when we go. The question is whether we will lose our life and soul as Gollum did, a finger and our physical and emotional health like Frodo did, or lose nothing in Sam’s case (although he is burdened with sorrow for those he loves).

Query for prayerful consideration: 

How do I want to live my life? Will I fall into Mount Doom holding the ring on a finger I bit off? Will I lose a finger and live a sort of a life? Or will I follow love and loyalty wherever they lead me? 

Abundance

Abundance.

What a difficult concept for a financially comfortable person to comprehend!

As I let myself sink down to float on the ocean of God’s abundant love, my mind encounters thought after thought that causes my muscles to tense with fear and my body to stiffen so that the waters of God’s love can no longer hold me up.

“What if my husband doesn’t desire the same simplicity God invites me to? What if my choice to live more simply causes problems for my children? What if my choice eventually means they can’t go to college - or can’t go without incurring debt? What if our electrical system gives out - where will the money come to pay for it? What if I give more of my money to alleviate poverty, will I have enough to live on when I retire? What if …?”

Am I really that enslaved by fear? Can the power of fear really be stronger than the power of God’s love? 

Take a deep breath, Susanne. Nothing is more powerful than God’s love. Nothing. This is not a question of whether God’s love is powerful enough to cast out fear. Instead it is a question of whether I can release my fear to God.

The story of Frodo, the hobbit in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, comes to mind. (Warning: I am about to reveal how the story ends.) Frodo has come by a ring that gives its bearer incredible power, and of course all the bad guys want the power the ring will give its owner. Frodo knows he must destroy the ring and has been traveling for thousands of pages to get to Mount Doom, a volcano into which he must throw the ring to make sure it is permanently destroyed. Frodo has two companions on the way. One is his faithful friend Sam, who would do anything for Frodo, and indeed has to carry a weakening Frodo the last part of the way up Mount Doom. The other companion is a despicable critter called Gollum, who once owned the ring. Gollum is really only coming along in the hopes that he can get the ring back from Frodo. Frodo is disgusted by Gollum, but he also has compassion once he learns that Gollum used to be a nice little hobbit before his craving for the ring turned him into this disgusting creature. Frodo can relate to Gollum - he knows first-hand how powerfully seductive the ring is and how it weakens its bearer’s will.

On to the climactic ending of the story: As Frodo stands on the edge of the volcano with the ring, he can no longer resist its seductive power and puts it on instead of throwing it into Mount Doom. Gollum bites Frodo’s finger off to get the ring back, but then falls into the volcano holding the ring. The ring, and Gollum, are destroyed. Frodo and Sam go back home, but Frodo never recovers from the spiritual damage the ring did while he owned it and finally goes off to another land, hoping that he will be healed.

And now I will leave you wondering what the point of telling this story was and how it relates to abundance until my next blog entry. Until then,

Queries for prayerful consideration:

Who is most helpful in the ultimate destruction of the ring: the just and dutiful Frodo, loyal and loving Sam, or passionate and greedy Gollum? And what trait is most helpful in the destruction of the ring: justice, duty, loyalty, love, passion or greed?