There are many metaphors with which to speak of God. In truth the language of the imagination is the only way to speak of God. The people of the Islamic faith speak of God as having ninety nine names, emblematic of the awareness that we can never definitively speak of the infinite; but we do have tastes of the infinite captured in the common things of earth...all of creation living metaphors onto who God is, and what God is like.
One such metaphor is change. I was taught most of my life that though everything around me changes, God alone is unchanging and unchangeable. I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe it because the created order entire says otherwise. It is all about change, and if the creation is a view onto who God is, and certainly that is the author's point in the Book of Job, then God is all about change: The always poignant succession of the seasons an outward and visible sign; the waning daylight in the Fall; the inspired lengthening of days in the Spring; the ever changing nuanced color of the Delta; birth and death, siblings from the source of the secret of the universe; the crossing over events of our lives; from sacred ground to sacred ground; a cosmic dance of the coming perfection; and God with us in the dance, changing with us; becoming as the created order becomes.
God is now not the same as God once was, nor are we.... and years hence God will have grown as will we....and God calls this sacred process very good...and so shall we.....and the great surprise, ours and our God's, as we move in time and space....the great surprise is....well it's a surprise.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Of Peril and Dignity
While singing Melita (also known as the "Navy" hymn #608) this past Sunday I was so choked up with emotion I could hardly get the words out. Over the years I have sung this hymn time and again, but I never really felt the words. I guess I heard it as a militaristic sort of thing. Indeed we pray for our Navy sailors...but this Sunday it was different, larger. Jim Von Dreele had just spoken to us about his mission work in the port of Philadelphia and South Jersey. He told us about the hard lives of seafarers: The many months at sea away from home; the cramped quarters aboard ship; the extremely dangerous work; gales and the ever present possibility of fire aboard; the isolation and emotional stress; the lack of advocacy and the indignity that comes with that; and that 95% of what we consume comes via the shipping industry, and yet they are invisible to us.
He was describing yet another manifestation of the marginalized in our world; the invisible ones just beyond the periphery. In the gospel of Matthew the writer tells us that it is at the margins of existence where God is on the move: among the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, the unbefriended stranger, the dispossessed. It is amid the perilous climes of existence that the Spirit afire saves and dignifies. So we must constantly attend to our peripheral vision. Until the marginalized are brought into view and given the privilege of standing with dignity, the creation entire is a broken sacrament, an obfuscated outward and visible sign of what God imagines the world to be. I hear the words of the Navy hymn now as a prayer for the marginalized of our world; a poem about the Creation, the Cosmos growing into its perfection; an ambiguous process, as ambiguous as the sea...at once the source of life and at once a profound danger....but a process of mysterious beauty; a process within which we apprehend the primordial beauty of creation....beauty the DNA of the universe.....beauty that will find its way into the perilous dark corners of our world...until dignity and peace, healing and wholeness are at last upon the earth.
This is the watery, ambiguous and perilous life of Baptism, and we are all in it together bearing up the invisible ones of our world. It is a life perilous and a life that is life-giving. This is the very process of consecrating our world, making holy that which God calls very good. "O hear us as we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea."
He was describing yet another manifestation of the marginalized in our world; the invisible ones just beyond the periphery. In the gospel of Matthew the writer tells us that it is at the margins of existence where God is on the move: among the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, the unbefriended stranger, the dispossessed. It is amid the perilous climes of existence that the Spirit afire saves and dignifies. So we must constantly attend to our peripheral vision. Until the marginalized are brought into view and given the privilege of standing with dignity, the creation entire is a broken sacrament, an obfuscated outward and visible sign of what God imagines the world to be. I hear the words of the Navy hymn now as a prayer for the marginalized of our world; a poem about the Creation, the Cosmos growing into its perfection; an ambiguous process, as ambiguous as the sea...at once the source of life and at once a profound danger....but a process of mysterious beauty; a process within which we apprehend the primordial beauty of creation....beauty the DNA of the universe.....beauty that will find its way into the perilous dark corners of our world...until dignity and peace, healing and wholeness are at last upon the earth.
This is the watery, ambiguous and perilous life of Baptism, and we are all in it together bearing up the invisible ones of our world. It is a life perilous and a life that is life-giving. This is the very process of consecrating our world, making holy that which God calls very good. "O hear us as we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea."
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Racism R.I.P.
November 4th 2008 was perhaps our defining moment as a nation.
Whether one is liberal or conservative; Republican or Democrat, one thing that we can all celebrate in this election is the beginning of the end of racism: the finale of the American Civil War. From the abolition of slavery, Brown versus the Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act, now, seemingly against all odds, a majority of white voters have elected a man of African American descent. In just over one hundred and fifty years a people have been elevated from slavery to equality and dignity. The white supremacist paradigm is now shattered, and we now have the opportunity to live into the fecund multiculturalism that is America. We will be the better for it. Jokes about race won’t be told much any more….can’t be. Possibilities and empowerment are now realities for the heretofore dispossessed of our culture. This is a renaissance for America; and what we have been saying about ourselves for three and a half centuries is now becoming true, that all people…all people are created equal…and that is the Gospel truth.
Whether one is liberal or conservative; Republican or Democrat, one thing that we can all celebrate in this election is the beginning of the end of racism: the finale of the American Civil War. From the abolition of slavery, Brown versus the Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act, now, seemingly against all odds, a majority of white voters have elected a man of African American descent. In just over one hundred and fifty years a people have been elevated from slavery to equality and dignity. The white supremacist paradigm is now shattered, and we now have the opportunity to live into the fecund multiculturalism that is America. We will be the better for it. Jokes about race won’t be told much any more….can’t be. Possibilities and empowerment are now realities for the heretofore dispossessed of our culture. This is a renaissance for America; and what we have been saying about ourselves for three and a half centuries is now becoming true, that all people…all people are created equal…and that is the Gospel truth.
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