Author: Doug Slagle

Message 97, “Destination Life: Heartbreak Hotel”, 6-10-12;  © Doug Slagle

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In the classic story about suffering, one that has its roots in myths dating to before 1000 BCE, a good, righteous and faithful man named Job suddenly finds himself in the midst of almost unimaginable distress.  As described in the Biblical Old Testament, Job is very wealthy, he has a large family with many sons – a good thing in his male oriented culture – and he is quite happy.  His trust, in what he believes to be a loving God, is strong.  Life for Job is as good as it gets.

The story describes how Satan, walking to and fro in the heavens, notices Job’s life and begins to taunt God about the nature of Job’s faith.  Is it real or is it a mere byproduct of a very comfortable life?  Would Job be so faithful if he were not so blessed?  Satan is finally allowed by God to have complete power over Job’s life and thus test him.

Soon, Job’s abundant flocks of cattle, sheep and camels are either killed or stolen.  Such flocks were the currency of his day, a living bank account of wealth.  As Job is financially ruined, he is also devastated by the deaths of his seven sons and three daughters.  Children were beloved family members but in ancient cultures they were also sources for parents of future security.  In short order, Job is reduced to wrenching grief and total destitution.

But all is not over for poor Job.  Satan knows Job’s suffering is not complete and so he asks God for permission to directly attack Job’s health.  Soon, large and painful boils erupted all over Job.  Having a visible and nasty appearing skin condition are particularly hideous in traditional Jewish cultures – a sign of uncleanness and God’s disfavor.  Along with other unusual commands in the Book of Leviticus, people with boils, rashes or leprosy are to be shunned.  At this point, Job could not fall any lower.  Even his wife tells Job that he should curse God and die.  Give up, she implies.  You have no life that is worth living.

In this June message series entitled “Destination Life”, I want to consider a spirituality of life itself.  As we looked at last week, who or what controls our lives?  How do we respond to the powerful forces that seem to determine our destiny?  Are we captains of our souls?  And when we figuratively check into the “Heartbreak Hotel” – as we will consider today – how do we conduct ourselves?  What is a spiritual response to hardship?  Finally, as we will examine next Sunday, when we land on “Easy Street”, what is our response then?

Woody Hayes, the former and infamous Ohio State football coach, once said, “There’s nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.”  An apparent confirmation of such wisdom is the Chinese written word for “crisis”.  It is comprised of two characters – one represents “danger” and the other represents “opportunity”.  This Chinese blending of two meanings into one word can inform our understanding of “hardship”.  In any calamity, setback or problem is a seed for potential growth and change.  Indeed, we rarely change our ways when we are successful.  Prosperity, or coasting along with no problems in life, too often breeds contentment which can encourage complacency.

What we find in the story of Job is that hardships in life have always elicited age the same responses – those of shock, confusion, denial, anger and then, hopefully, acceptance and change.  Job is confronted after his fall by a trio of friends who tell him he must repent of grave sin in his life, but they cannot diagnose what that sin might be.  Indeed, such advice has been common for thousands of years.  Too often we believe, as I discussed last week, that individuals are alone responsible for their good or bad fortune.  Such is the myth that “free-will” alone determines fate and that the poor, sick or destitute deserve their hardship because of poor choices, just as the successful deserve their largesse solely because of their right choices.

Job refuses to accept the advice that his hardships must be his fault.  Even so, he remains unsure what his response should be.  He had been a faithful man, after all.  What sin could he have committed that is so grave as to deserve his distress?  If he had not sinned, why was God punishing him?  Absent any great sin in his life, Job must struggle with the eternal question of why bad things happen to good people.  Answers to that question are difficult for most world religions to address – either God is in control and thus allows for evil and suffering, or else he is not in control and is therefore impotent in the face of human pain.  The former idea points to an indifferent God who is NOT compassionate and loving.  The latter idea, points to a God who is unable to prevent evil.  Both ideas run contrary to most religious thinking about the Divine.  Job, as I said, does not know what to think.

He eventually confronts God with anger and bitterness.  Just as it is said Jesus lamented on the Cross – “Why have you forsaken me God?”, Job also demands answers.  “What have I done to deserve this form of living hell?”

Whether or not we believe in a theistic God, we must still wrestle with why evil and misfortune exist in our world.  The conclusions we reach about why hardships exist will shape our understanding of how to respond.

If we believe gods or goddesses cause, or allow for, our hardships, then our likely response is to live in fear of these deities.  We obey them.  We honor them in an effort to please them.  We profess belief in them in order to win their favor.  Fear, as we have discussed in here before, is not a sound basis for life.

If we believe hardships are the result of natural but uncaring forces in our universe, then we respond either with abject resignation (what can we do in the face of such forces working against us?) or, we work to change them and thus be sources of light and love in a pain filled universe.  Fear or love: which do we choose?

In order to survive the suffering in our lives, we must change.  We must grow.  We must refuse to give up.  We must fight and work and rally against human suffering – that which we experience and that which others experience.  And this, my friends, this is the “Ah-ha” moment for us about the reason for heartbreak and evil.  They exist for our good.  They exist for our growth.  They exist in order that we change.  Of all the forces active in our world, what seems like evil may not be evil after all.  Indeed, so-called evil serves a good purpose.

Such an idea is not mere platitude.  It is a literal and scientific fact.  When a weightlifter or long distance runner exclaims that there is no gain without pain, such is a biological fact – the fibers of our muscles must be microscopically torn in order to gain new strength.  Trees grow stronger and more resilient – their roots grow deeper – the more they are stressed by wind or drought.  Psychologically, we know that only when we deal with our pain, when we confront our inner demons, when we acknowledge our addictions or depressions and the harm they do to us, do we begin a road to recovery.  For many of us, we refuse to change unless pain begins to outweigh pleasure.  Pain forces a response – avoid it or confront it.  But first, we must reach a point where we cry out into a dark and indifferent universe – “Why me, God?  Why me?”

And in that moment of brokenness, we will hopefully find clarity and answers.  “Why NOT me?  Why am I so special that I should not suffer like everyone else?  What can I learn in the midst of this crisis?  Where is the opportunity from my pain?”

Charles Stanley, an evangelical Pastor at a large church in Atlanta, compares dealing with adversity to medical surgery.  We willingly undergo surgery knowing it is for our good – even if it will be painful and difficult.  Surgery is the means to a healthy end.  Adversity works in the same manner, he says.  It is surgery to our souls.

Muslims offer similar wisdom.  Islamic teaching points out that everybody suffers.  As the Quran says, all of the great Scriptural prophets suffered.  Noah was laughed at.  Abraham was denied a son until he was an old man and then he was ordered to personally sacrifice that son.  Elijah was physically attacked by his critics.  Isaiah was ridiculed and insulted.  Jesus was crucified.  Muhammad never knew his father, his mother died when he was young, his wife was killed, his son died and he was stoned almost senseless.  Of modern day prophets, Gandhi was jailed and murdered; Martin Luther King was also jailed, mocked and martyred.  From the ashes of their misery, from the depths of their personal hells, came flowers of insight, strength and greatness.

We too must be humble in our suffering.  By crying out “Why me?”, we claim to be special and somehow less deserving of pain than other people.  If we accept the fact that pain in our lives is to be expected, that everybody suffers at some point, we might stop feeling so isolated and alone.  Indeed, adversity is a fact of life – one from which we cannot escape.  Instead of seeing life as a series of misfortunes, we can see it as a series of learning opportunities.

Such is the ironic mystery of hardship.  Ultimately, our distress should not even be seen as something bad.  Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous philosopher, frequently wished his friends ill fortune – and he did so with the purest of motivations.  He knew adversity would strengthen his friends and cause them to grow into better people.  As he said, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

And that is precisely the understanding that Job finds.  He did not suffer because he was bad.  He suffered expressly because he was good and in need of further refinement.  In his complacency, in his comfortable cocoon of easy street living, Job was like many of us.  A fortress of well-being induces feelings of invulnerability, self-righteousness and egotism.  What good are such attitudes in shaping us as better people?

Job needed to be stretched.  While it might be said that God was cruel in his testing of Job, we should remember the story was not intended to be literal history.  As with all allegories and myths, exaggeration was necessary to teach a point.

Job’s long search for understanding in the depths of his despair is a journey of growth and of finding inner strength.  He found that he could endure.  He would not give up, curse God and die as his wife suggested.  He would even find a way to offer thanks for his suffering and offer his appreciation to God for the tough love.   Left alone to a life of ease, Job would have died a shallow and incomplete man.  Through his suffering, he gained wisdom, humility and perspective.  Ultimately, the Biblical and religious lesson is that humans must trust God no matter what.  His or her ways are perfect and not ours to question.  What might seem like suffering is really a part of the Divine plan.

For others who do not believe in a theistic God, the lesson from the story is similar.  We must trust the little ‘g’ god inside of us – the god who does not give up, the god who struggles against adverse forces, the god who accepts that pain is a soul cleansing agent, as Woody Hayes said.  If we truly accept that hardship is good for us, we do not mock it by pursuing it in some masochistic manner.  Instead, we accept hardship as fact and as opportunity.

Most experts assert that resiliency and positive thinking, in the face of hardship, are self-fulfilling.  Those who are resilient, who bounce back despite adversity, are happier people.  And, happier people are more resilient when faced with adversity.   Studies show that resilient people are those who actively seek strong relationships in their lives – with friends, family members, clubs and organizations like faith communities.  In doing so, they have a built-in network of support when adversity strikes.  Resilient people are confident in their abilities and have a positive view of themselves – they believe in their power to overcome.  Resilient people have strong common sense and problem solving abilities – they are able to understand and think about situations they face.  And, they are able to manage and control the powerful emotions that affect any of us.  They can control temptations, anger, depression and loneliness.  They have learned hardship coping skills.

In the midst of adversity, there are several suggested ways to cope.  First, we should plan ahead for difficulties – the more we think through strategies for coping ahead of time, the less influenced we will be by emotion.  Second, it is OK to grieve and mourn any loss or difficulty.  Grief is a part of the healing process.  Third, it is OK to laugh and experience joy in times of trouble.  If we cannot find humor on our own, we should seek it by watching funny movies or TV shows or reading a book that is light and silly.  Fourth, we should make goals for ourselves and then take action to accomplish them.  Inaction encourages further depression and self-pity.  Fourth, we should be aware of our growth and what we have learned.  In any hardship, we often discover new friends, a new sense of spiritual awareness, a greater feeling of strength, an improved sense of self-worth or a deeper appreciation for life.  It is a cliché to say, but there are always silver linings along the dark shroud of difficulty.  Fifth, we should remain hopeful and refuse to give in to the feeling that all is lost.  Sixth, we can diffuse feelings of loss by serving and helping others.  Finally, we must find opportunities to pamper ourselves just a bit – eating a delicious meal, spending fun time with a friend, taking time off to shop, visit a park, or exercise.

One additional lesson from the Book of Job is that while friends and family are helpful, we should avoid those who choose to lecture.  At the conclusion of the story, God condemns the friends of Job for their lack of empathy.  They represent an analytical approach to problem solving instead of a deeper, heart-felt and introspective examination of hardship.  If we choose to piously tell someone who suffers that it is for their own good, how have we helped?  Indeed, I pray my message today is not taken as insensitive to those who are in the midst of a difficult time.

Most people have amazing abilities to cope with crisis.  What people need in such times is not advice, but empathy.  And empathy is not simplistic sympathy.  It is an effort to listen and understand the other.  Empathy involves putting oneself in the other’s shoes and feeling their pain.  Those who are empathetic to suffering do far, far more listening than they do talking.

Job’s friends were not truly there for him in his suffering.  They were too busy showing how self-righteous they could be.  Job, on the other hand, was finding his own way through the darkness.  What he wanted was help in finding the god within himself – the power to persevere, overcome and be thankful.  When we act as a loving and empathetic god to someone who is suffering, we are joining them on the path to healing.  We are implicitly telling them that we too understand pain.  They are not alone in that journey.

Dearest friends, we all ache at the pain we see others experience.  We all wish that hardship did not affect our own lives.  Why, oh why, is there hurt in the world?  Why must the Heartbreak Hotel be a frequent destination and yet never display a “No Vacancy” sign?  It can be a dark and lonely place.  Or, it can be a bright and hopeful transition to a new life.  Paradoxically, adversity is a necessity in our wondrous world.  Without hardship, how would we experience joy?  Without evil, how would we understand goodness and love?  Without death, how can we truly appreciate life?

I imagine in my mind’s eye individuals before me and listening online who are coming to terms with who they are as a gay or lesbian, who are working to support a family, who are fighting to create justice in an unfair world, who are doing all they can to find healing and power in their bodies and in their minds.   Let us inspire one another with our determination in the face of hardship.  Let us check in to the Heartbreak Hotel of life and, with loved ones beside us, may we find our stay short but full of promise and change for the better.

Peace, I pray, be with you…

 

Message 96: “Destination Life: Are We Captain of Our Souls?, 6-3-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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In my never ending search for message topics of interest and meaning, a few months ago I came across the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.  The poet contracted tuberculosis of the bones at a very young age.  By the time he reached adulthood, both his legs required amputation.  He faced an uncertain future as the disease continued to ravage his body.  Like all of us, Henley thought deeply about his life, his destiny and how to make sense of it.  Unlike many who face tragedy or suffering, Henley turned not to God and religion for solace but to an inner core of strength and to Atheism.  The poem “Invictus” echoes his beliefs.  The poem reads as follows:

Out of the night that covers me,   Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be   For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,  I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance  My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears  Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:  I am the captain of my soul.

The victors in life, the poem implies, do not wince or cry in the clutch of tragic circumstance.  With head bloody but unbowed, one faces the dark shade – death – without fear.  In complete renunciation of a wrath filled god waiting to render judgement, Henley declares that religious parameters for eternal salvation – the narrow gate of eternal judgement cited in the Bible – do not matter to him since, as he writes in the poem’s famous last lines, “I am master of my fate: I am captain of my soul.”

From a theological perspective, Henley stakes out a position on one side of an eternal human debate.  What controls our destiny and our lives?  Are we motes of dust floating in a vast universe whose destinies are controlled by gods or forces beyond our control?  Are we born, given life, forced to suffer, given prosperity and then die all by some capricious design?  Is there a master puppeteer pulling strings of our lives?

For some in the Gathering who come from a Presbyterian past, you might find such theology familiar.  Drawing from Paul’s words in the Biblical book of Romans which states that God shows mercy and saves some, while he hardens the hearts and condemns others, John Calvin originated this theology of Divine predestination.  It is a hallmark of Presbyterian belief and doctrine.  God ordered our lives long before we were born and He even dictates the decisions we believe we make on our own.

Other seventeenth and eighteenth century theologians like John Wesley, who founded Methodism, argued strongly to the contrary.  God gives us each the free will to choose and determine our destiny.  We are not predestined to hell or heaven before we are born – as Calvin believed.  We choose.  We decide.   We are captains of our souls – although God will render judgement on our decisions and we will pass through the narrow gate to Heaven or the gaping abyss into hell.

What struck me as interesting about the “Invictus” poem is that it also calls into question science that has emerged over the last hundred years – since the poem was written.  Moving beyond theology, scientists point to startling studies indicating that we are not controlled by a capricious god but by a capricious design embedded within our individual genetic codes.  Our personalities, our bodies, our intelligence, sexuality and longevity are all determined, according to many geneticists, by the DNA strands in our cellular make-up.  Whether or not we get cancer or become a star athlete, all aspects of our unique selves, and thus our actions, are predetermined by the genes we inherit.  The god of genetics controls us and, as biological determinists argue, we are not captains of our souls irregardless of whether or not a theistic god exists.

Lest the physical scientists believe they have all of the answers in regard to our destiny, social scientists have weighed into this debate and shown equally significant studies that it is our environment – and not just our genes – that plays a dramatic role in our destinies.  Recent studies indicate that the degree to which parents attach themselves to children at very early ages determines things like personality and sexuality.  Time magazine recently featured a profile of Dr. Bill Sears and his theories on parental attachment.  He soundly rebukes ideas from baby psychologists like Dr. Benjamin Spock who encouraged parents to foster independence in children by, for instance, allowing babies to cry themselves to sleep.  Dr. Sears, however, says that babies who are showered with affection, who are breast-fed for at least a year and who are nurtured and attended to on an almost constant basis grow into more secure, confident and empathetic adults.  Parents do not spoil young children, he says, as much as they act like loving parents should.

What all of these competing ideas mean for us on a spiritual level is of profound importance.  Not only do these theological and scientific theories propose from whence we came and where we are headed, they deeply affect how we live and how we treat our fellow humans.  Do we resign ourselves to having no control over what happens to us – accepting that we are mere puppets of a distant god or, even more disconcerting, of uncaring biochemistry like DNA strands?

What we discover, however, is that like Henley proposed, we are captains of our souls even if we allow for the fact that genes and environmental forces try their best to determine our fate.

Enlightenment philosophers determined, in efforts to diminish the role of God in human life, that free will rational thinking is a sole determinant of destiny.  Rene Descartes and others proposed that our minds and our mental choices alone chart our lives.  Such rationalist theories place the individual at the figurative center of the universe.  Humans choose their destiny.  They are in control.

How humanity understands the forces that shape individual lives determines our ethical, moral, spiritual and social ideas about human society.  Biological determinism or social Darwinism can be a slippery slope toward human profiling based on genetics.  A gay or lesbian gene might be isolated, studied and then tested for – thus prompting some parents to abort fetuses with a gay gene.  The same might be true for all sorts of genetic characteristics – from a propensity to being overweight to having only average intelligence.   Parents might eliminate fetuses or even choose their mating partners based on genes alone.

On the other hand, those who believe in the complete free will of any person will argue that we alone receive the credit or blame for our fate.  According to such thinking, if we are rich, smart and successful, we made good choices in life.  Good for us.  If we are poor, homely and struggle just to eat, we made bad choices in life and we deserve our ill fortune.  The plutocrats of Wall Street deserve their fortunes just as the homeless person outside our doors deserve their suffering.  Is that free will theory about fate one which we want to follow?

In the 1920’s, some scientists believed criminal behavior was genetic and thus encouraged the forced sterilization and even castration of convicted criminals.  Sterilization programs were carried out in many prisons.  Nazi Germans and racists in our own nation have used genetic profiling to support their prejudices.  Such theories believe a person is predetermined by their race to act in certain ways and thus racial stereotypes are acceptable because they are grounded in supposed science.  Is this a theory we wish to follow.

Recent studies, however, show environmental influences and our genes work together.  One study indicates that parents and other adults strongly – but unconsciously – favor attractive and calm babies.  Those babies who are unattractive or who have agitated demeanors receive less attention from parents, teachers and coaches.  Attention from adults toward babies is shown to significantly affect things like intelligence, personality, social skills and overall emotional stability.

Such studies not only show nurture and environment influence our destiny, they also indicate these factors interact in tandem with our genes.  If our genes make us physically unattractive, according to the research I just cited, our parents won’t nurture us as much as they do babies with good looks.  From the genes we inherit to how we were raised, we can blame all our faults on our parents!

But can we?  No.  And that gets to the rub in determining our life destiny.  To use William Henley’s poem as a guide and drawing from his analogy that we are captains of our souls, we should think about a true ship’s captain.  He or she sets a course and then navigates a boat throughout its journey by making thousands of big and small decisions.  But wind, weather, water currents, actions by other crew members and even the condition of the ship itself strongly affect how the journey ends.  A captain reacts to factors beyond his or her control.   His or her hand is firmly on the ship’s tiller, but forces beyond control heavily influence the ship’s course for good or bad.

Completing this analogy, one’s early environment, parents and genes may have strong influence, but we can course correct for those  influences.  We have the innate power to change the seemingly uncontrollable effects on us.  Through friendships, advice from others, reflection, study, cognitive change and / or psychological therapy, a person can reassert control over his or her destiny.

Recent news stories describe the fact that Barack Obama heavily used marijuana as a Hawaiian teenager.  His absent father and the lures of tropical hedonism were leading him astray.  He and his teenage friends used pot heavily for a time.  He admits to this fact in his autobiography but, he also writes that through the influence of his mother and his own resolve, he turned away from a life path that led to no good.  As the biracial son of a single mom living in Hawaii, Obama could have succumbed to the adverse forces shaping his life – those over which he had no control.  Instead, he chose to help determine his own life – working to overcome his genetic and environmental obstacles.  As we know, he went on to Harvard College and Chicago Law School – places where potheads do not often end up.

As an added sobering fact,  we not only make decisions affecting our own lives, we dramatically affect the lives of others.  Such is the intersection between our personal free will and how that freedom can changes other lives – people who have little control over what we choose to do.  If we reflect on this fact, we realize we are like gods and goddesses to others – manipulating strings of power over them.  And in such a recognition, we find a great responsibility to act appropriately and with care.  This is the stuff of great mystery and spirituality – our ability to irrevocably shape other lives.  We find then, that not only do genetics and our environments influence our destiny, but so do the actions of other people – friends and strangers alike.

I’ve talked to some of you about a chance meeting I had with of a member of Mount Auburn Presbyterian church out in Sedona, Arizona several years ago.  I met Dan by chance on a hike and after exclaiming surprise at both of us being from Cincinnati, I shared a bit of my life story.  He highly recommended that I visit a small church called the Gathering where he has many friends.  On my return, I did so and my life has not been the same ever since.  For good or bad, I now have some small influence over other lives at the Gathering.  From one minor and completely random event – one that may not have taken place had I slept in that morning or chosen another hiking trail – my life destiny and the lives of others were changed.

From experiences like that, we learn that there are mysterious forces beyond our control that heavily influence who we are today.  We might, as the poem “Invictus” implies, despair at random influences that seemingly dictate our lives.  We might protest any influence that hurts or controls us.  But the poem is ultimately a victory song we should follow.  Yes, life is unfair to some and overly generous to others.  Yes, we meet life forces over which we cannot control – from our genes, to our parents, to the random events of life.

But we are not impotent pawns in this game of life.  As I have asserted many times, God is not some outside force controlling our destiny.  God is us!  We are him or her.  A spiritual force works within our genes, our birth and our lives to help shape who we are…….but we too, we too have that same force in us that we use to shape our destiny.  We work to build heaven or hell in our lives.  We work to build heaven or hell in the lives of others.  Such is the ironic message in the poem “Invictus”.  As much as Henley claimed to be an Atheist, he exalts the little ‘g’ god in himself and in others.

The wind might batter our ship.  Waves might push us towards rocky shoals.  Rain and storm might threaten to sink us.  As captains, though, we fight against such challenges.  We steer our ship and no matter what happens, we do not give up until we claim a victory over fate itself.  We worship the god of our own victorious selves.

In my last message here about Dr. Seuss’ book Oh, The Places You Will Go, I related the life history of a woman I know named Mary who lives in Madisonville.  I talked about her persistent hard work to overcome great obstacles in life and how I believe we as a society are responsible to help people like her.  Mary is appropriately named, however.  As the grandmother to a young boy she raises by herself, she asserts a god-like power over him.  His mother was an addict and the boy was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.  He has some learning disabilities.  But Mary is a ferocious grandmother tiger to him – challenging him, sternly disciplining him, protecting him from indifferent teachers and neighborhood bullies.   She also smothers him with affection and love.   The whims of fate did not deal a great hand to this young boy and yet Mary is a god influence in his life, determined to help create for him a version of heaven where he can succeed and flourish.

Such is also our call and our responsibility.  We cannot allow fate to control us.  We cannot sit by and allow capricious forces at work in our universe to dominate.  Indeed, as human beings endowed with fantastic abilities of intelligence, reason, compassion and empathy, we are perhaps one of the most powerful forces active in our world.  We cannot begin to understand the thousands of small and large influences that shape our destiny but we can enlist ourselves in the effort to help control them.

We strive to overcome forces in our lives.  We do not give up.  We press on.  We work.  We persevere in life no matter what.  We seek growth and understanding.  That is one reason why we are a part of this congregation – to nourish our lives with spiritual wisdom and thus change ourselves and our world.

To someone like Lisa Blankenship, a former member here whose longtime partner Gen Critel just died at the age of 31, how does Lisa  reconcile this idea to press on when the love of her life is now gone?  How do any of us reconcile such a death – of someone in the full flower of life, who just finished her doctoral degree and had realized her dream to be a professor teaching young minds?  For all of her planning and diligence to set her life course and be captain of her ship, a rogue wave came out of nowhere to snuff the breath from Gen Critel in her sleep.  What can we say about such circumstances?  We shudder at the realization such fate could happen to any of us – we go to sleep tonight and simply do not waken in the morning. But do we despair for too long?  Do we give up knowing our lives are so fragile?

We must never give up.  Never, ever give up.  As long as there is breath in our lungs, thoughts in our minds, and love in our hearts – we must choose to remain at the helm of life – doing battle with wind and wave – and forbidding that unseen and unknown forces should find us defeated or giving up.  No matter how old, how young, how strong, how weak, how sick or how healthy, life and all we have to give others are too precious to waste and too dear to abandon.

We do, indeed, worship a great god and goddess.  You will find that god sitting next to you.  You will find her when you next look in a mirror.  She was in Gen Critel.  He is in you as he is in me.  May we praise that spiritual force inside us from whom all blessings flow…the captain of our souls.

Message 95, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss:  Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”, 5-20-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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As most of you hopefully know, I try my best to avoid politics in my messages.  As Jesus pointedly told his followers, we are to render unto Caesar what is his and unto the Divine what is hers.  In other words, the civic realm must be kept separate from the spiritual.  And vice versa.  This is an ideal enshrined in our constitution and one that I take very seriously.

I say all of that as a preface to my words today which might, to some, seem political.  They are not so intended.  I hope to pose spiritual questions.

Last October 11th, on the conservative website RedState.com, a man posted the following statement: “I am making $5 an hour less in my current job than in my previous one.  My wife and I live in a house that we are upside down on.   We have 2 used cars and couldn’t afford a new one if we wanted to.  I don’t blame anyone who is successful for my situation.   I don’t want the government to fix things for me.  Pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.   That’s what I am doing.”

On the exact same day, a woman posted the following on the website “We Are the 99 percent.com”:  “My husband lost his job 2 years ago and can’t find full-time work—he takes temp jobs at low pay to help make ends meet.   He still owes money on student loans.   I work 40 plus hours a week for barely over minimum wage.  We need a government that helps those who are trying to help themselves.”

What fascinates me are the similar situations of these two people but their very different attitudes about assistance to folks like themselves.  The man speaks to an American ideal of self-help, hard-work, initiative and persistence.  He echoes what Theodore Geisel wrote in his book Oh!  The Places You Will Go.  The woman, on the other hand, speaks to a belief that governments are instituted among people to assist in the well-being and protection of society.   Such is the ethos that we are stronger together than we are alone.

Most characters in Dr.Seuss books have no identifiable ethnicity.  They are animals or funny, unknown creatures of his own imagination.  This makes them universal in appeal because they embody aspects in us all.  In Oh! The Places You Will Go, however, the main character is a young, Caucasian boy.  Some critics contend this diminishes the impact of his book – how can it speak to females or those of different races?

In truth, Dr. Seuss or Theodore Geisel expressed in Oh! The Places You Will Go an autobiographical understanding of his own life – one marked by both extreme highs and great lows.  Success as an author came to him in his sixties.  Such success came after long years of hard work and persistence – a theme of this book.

Just as meaningful for Geisel in terms of understanding his success, was coming to terms with his failures.  He divorced his first wife of over thirty years and married his lover – the woman who became his second wife and trustee of his legacy.  He was also not universally loved or admired.  He was widely attacked for influencing young minds in ways that many did not approve.  Seuss’ determination despite such failures and criticisms is also a theme of Oh! The Places You Will Go.

Writing this book only two years before his death, Geisel describes his theory on success in life – mostly from his own life experiences.  Success comes to those who work, to those who create their own opportunity, to those who refuse to sit and wait for good luck.  We are masters of our own fate, he implies.  We choose the paths to follow and, if we do so with discernment and a willingness to be adventurous, we will succeed.

Despite fear, setbacks and enemies, those who continue the hike up their mountain will reach its summit.  Success is virtually guaranteed to anyone who is diligent, hard working and who never gives up.

As ironic as it might seem for a man who worked in the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal administration and who wrote for several progressive magazines, Geisel’s advice in Oh! The Places You Will Go is remarkably traditional.  Our lives are guided by decisions we alone make, by common sense, by persistence and by sheer hard work.  To those who practice such ideals, success is assured.  And, the implied corollary to this notion is that those who do not succeed are people who give up in the face of hardship, who are lazy, make poor decisions, are timid or sit and wait for good fortune.

Much like the man whom I quoted at the beginning of this message, Geisel expresses an American ethic: success comes to the rugged individualist who achieves it by determination, brains, and hard work.  Geisel’s book is the Horatio Alger story set to rhyme – no matter who you are or where you were born, you can succeed no matter what.  To accept help, to ask for the compassion of others, or of society in general, is to admit failure.  In America, one is solely responsible for their success or failure.  According to Oh! The Places You Will Go, we either pull ourselves up by our bootstraps or we don’t.

Is this gospel according to Dr. Seuss – this gospel of American life – reality?  As inspiring as his words might be for youth embarking on the journey of life, is success guaranteed to anyone who just works hard?  Can any person, after suffering a setback, reverse their ill fortune by sheer determination?  If our answer to such questions is “yes”, what should our response be to those who are in need – those whom it appears have failed at the game of life?  Is Geisel’s formula for reaching mountain top of achievement – something that applies to everyone?   What do we say to individuals like those whom I quoted at the beginning who have worked hard and tried to make good decisions but who are still far below the mountain-top?

The Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs that, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.  The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.”  In the New Testament, Paul writes that those who do not work should not eat.  For them to expect a hand-out is the same as theft.

In his parable of talents, Jesus tells a story about a rich man who gives to each of his servants several talents of gold – a talent being a unit of money.  This rich man then goes away and does not return for several months.  When he returns, he asks his servants what they did with money he gave them.  One man says he bought land and used it to grow abundant crops.  Another invested in flocks of sheep which also prospered.  But the final servant tells the rich man that he simply buried the gold entrusted to him – the better to save it.  He is immediately and soundly rebuked for his laziness and lack of initiative.  The implied moral of the parable is that we are to work and invest and not, as Dr. Seuss says, simply sit in the waiting room of life.

But just as the Bible seems to echo the words of Dr. Seuss in praise of industrious people, it also teaches us to have compassion and understanding for those who live on the margins of life – those who seemingly have not succeeded.  God tells the Jewish people in the Old Testament that, “There will always be some people who are poor and in need, and so I command you to be generous to them.” 

Jesus offers a guiding principle for us: “Come into my kingdom…I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome in your home, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was imprisoned and you visited me.  I tell you, if you did this for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me.”

There are over 300 Bible verses that encourage care for the poor.  Alms giving to the poor is one of the five pillars of Islam – a pivotal requirement for Muslims.  In Hinduism and Buddhism, concern for the poor is part of becoming enlightened .  Does one focus on the self or on others?  Clearly, this is a spiritual matter of grave importance to people of all faiths.  If one is thankful, if one is empathetic, if one feels a part of the whole human family, one cannot help but love, serve and give to the so-called unsuccessful in life.

As much as I admire Theodore Geisel for his creative and insightful books, where are charitable ideals in Oh! The Places You Will Go?  Where does success in life also require serving the least of god’s children?  Do we implicitly assume such people are lazy, unwise, and lack determination?  Is that what Jesus would assume?

Indeed not.  Jesus tells a story about a poor beggar named Lazarus and a rich man.  Lazarus is in heaven and resting comfortably while the rich man suffers in a type of hell.  The rich man asks to be shown mercy and released from hell but he is told that in life he ignored the suffering of Lazarus who was poor and sick.  Even dogs showed compassion to Lazarus while the rich man did not.  Both men, according to Jesus, are reaping the consequences of their lives.

The implied message of Jesus’ parable is NOT that wealth or success is bad. Greed and indifference to others are wrong.  The Bible is not inconsistent in its values.  Hard work IS a virtue.  Those who choose not to work when they can, should NOT expect hand-outs.  But the higher ethic, the one that beckons us to follow our better angels, is far more nuanced.

Once again, I repeat myself in stating that truth lies somewhere between two extremes – between a liberality of giving to anyone who is poor and the Horatio Alger idea that anyone can succeed if they work hard.   Which is better and more loving for someone in need – a handout or a hand up?

BUT, should we also echo the platitude in Seuss’ book that diligence, hard work and brains automatically insures success?  Do we implicitly assume those who are successful were hard working and those who are not were lazy?

Elizabeth Warren, a current Massachusetts Senate candidate, said a few months ago, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there – good for you. But I want to be clear.  You moved your products to market on roads everybody paid for. You hired workers everybody paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that everybody paid for.” 

That is not just a political statement.  It is also a spiritual one if we think about it.  Each of us who have achieved some success owe debts of gratitude to the many sources that helped us.  To echo a contemporary proverb, it takes a village to succeed in life.  Dr. Seuss’ story contains many insights that can lead to success in life – hard work, initiative, determination.  But we are NOT islands unto ourselves.  Other forces, factors and people also shape our lives and cause us to either succeed or not.

I am a white male raised most of my early life in a well off Cincinnati suburb.  I attended safe and well funded schools.  My parents were successful and attentive to the importance of my education.  I went off to, and graduated from, a top rated private college.  I embarked on my own at twenty-two with many, many advantages.

Just down the hill from where I was raised, in a community called Madisonville, lives a woman my age named Mary who was raised by a single mother.  As an African-American, she came of age in the 1960’s and 1970’s when opportunities for black women were very few.  Mary graduated from high school and has since worked as an aide at day care centers.  She had one daughter whose father abandoned them.  That daughter fell in with the wrong crowd and is now a drug addict.  The daughter had a son whom Mary now raises by herself.  She deeply loves her grandson.  She reads to him, raises him with a stern hand, and works a full-time job to support him.  And yet, Mary has travelled no farther than Indiana during her entire life.  Pleasures in her life are few.  Having enough money – on a minimum wage salary – to pay her rent and buy groceries is extremely difficult.

I have worked to earn my way as an adult.  I studied, I applied myself, I continue to try and earn what I eat.  Even more important, though, I have also been wonderfully blessed and very, very lucky in life.  But Mary, who grew up just a few miles from me and is my same age, has worked far harder.  She has persevered despite many barriers in her life – those she did not cause.  I cannot begin to imagine the struggles she has faced almost from her birth.  Yet, by purely outward appearances, I have succeeded and she has not.  Were Mary to read Oh! The Places You Will Go, she might find it funny – a book of fiction instead of insight.  Where is her 98 and ¾ percent guarantee of success in life because of her hard work and perseverance?   With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, this well-loved book is a joke to people like Mary.

An anonymous commentator once said that for us to expect life to be fair because we are a good person – is like expecting a bull not to charge at someone because he or she is a vegetarian!  But, while LIFE is indeed NOT fair, humanity must fill that gap and help create greater fairness for one another.  Our better angels call each of us who have been blessed in life to assist the Mary’s of our nation and world.

A spiritual addendum to Dr. Seuss’ book Oh! The Places You Will Go should insist that to those whom much is given, much is expected.  For those of us who have been richly blessed, our hearts ought to respond with an outpouring of grace to those in need.  This is the spiritual outworking of gratitude.  It is the spirituality of loving as we have been loved, of giving as we have been given to, of seeking justice for all as we have enjoyed the same.

As much as the American dream and Dr. Seuss’ words may have come true for me and for many of you, they have been a nightmare for many others.  Let us not smugly satisfy ourselves that we were not the recipients of help from others – including our nation and our government.  That is a lie no matter who we are.  Let us not indulge in stereotype and assume all those who struggle also lack ambition or don’t work.  There are indeed sluggards in life.  Such people are not the norm.  The majority of struggling people in our world work hard.  They persist in spite of great obstacles and yet suffer due to bad luck, abuse, disability or injustice.

If this nation is a faith based nation as many assert, then our national spirituality must show evidence of that faith.  As the Biblical book of James says, faith without works – without effort to assist the poor – is no faith at all.  It is dead.  Let it be said of us – as a church, city and as a nation, that our faith is alive!  Our faith in the worth of all humanity is one that offers compassion and fairness to all people.

I wish each of you much peace and much joy.

 

 

 

 

 

Message 94, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss: The Lorax”, 5-13-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Click here to listen to the message or see below to read it:

 

Last year I announced that I was not going to specifically celebrate Mother’s or Father’s Day anymore.  They seem like anachronistic events designed more as marketing tools to sell flowers or boost restaurant sales than heartfelt celebrations.  If one truly appreciates his or her mother, than one ought to be expressing that each and every day of the year – much like I do for my mom – I tell her I love her each and every day………..  (Not really, but I like to make myself look good!)

But, in keeping with this month’s theme on the “Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”, I decided to break my own rule and acknowledge today our one true mother – the one true womb from whom we each have come, the one true nurturer and sustainer of all life, our mother earth.  I don’t intend to engage in an environmental rant, however.  Rather, just as Seuss did in his children’s book The Lorax, (show slide One) which is the focus of my message today, I hope we can consider the value of the environment from a spiritual perspective.  Do we pay lip service to its well-being or can we be environmentalists in an honestly balanced way – one that offers respect and protection while still enjoying the benefits of nature?

Theodore Geisel published The Lorax in 1971 – a year when the environment was very much in the news with oil spills staining the California coastline and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga river infamously catching fire.  While Dr. Seuss said he wrote his books mostly for the reading pleasure of children, it is clear that The Lorax has a very pointed message.

The story opens with a young boy visiting a grim and polluted place to meet a reclusive figure whom we never fully see – the Once-ler.  (show slide 2)  The boy asks the Once-ler why the surroundings are so devastated, barren and grey.  The Once-ler says that when he first arrived, the area was a pristine place – a bright and colorful Eden teeming with Brown Bar-ba-loots, Humming-Fish and large tufted Truffula trees. (show slide 3)  The trees were of particular interest to Once-ler since they could be used in the manufacture of his invention – a “Thneed” that is apparently invaluable to any person. (show slide 4)  “A Thneed’s A Fine Something That All People Need!  It’s a shirt. It’s a sock.  It’s a glove.  It’s a hat.  But it has other uses.  Yes, far beyond that!”

The Once-ler then began to mass produce Thneeds – all to meet insatiable consumer demand.  A factory is built, employees are hired and Truffula trees are cut down all in the name of progress and the production of Thneeds.  (show slide 5)  A creature called The Lorax protests this mass deforestation.  “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues” he tells the Once-ler.  (show slide 6)

But the Once-ler admits that he paid no attention to the nagging Lorax.  In his greed and pursuit of profit, he pushed ahead until, after a while, every Truffula tree had been chopped down.  (show slide 7)  With no more Thneeds to be made, the factory shuts down, employees lose their jobs, the Brown Bar-ba-loots and Humming Fish leave the new wasteland and even the Lorax departs for a better world.  (show slide 8) The Once-ler is left to live in a grey world of his own creation – one with polluted air, no trees, a shuttered factory and, of course, no people or creatures.

Dr. Seuss does not end the story here, though.  He concludes on a hopeful note as the Once-ler bestows on the boy the very last Truffula tree seed.  (slide 9)  “You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds”  the Once-ler tells the boy.  “And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.  Plant a new Truffula.  Treat it with care.  Give it clean water.  And feed it fresh air.  Grow a forest.   Protect it from axes that hack.  Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.”

Equal to his many other books, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax is filled with creative characters, vibrant illustrations and humorous, rhyming verse.  As a children’s book, it tells a compelling story while respecting the active minds of young people.   This is no simple story.  Its characters are complex and imaginative.  The plot is alive and interesting.  While its message is not as subtle or perhaps as funny as that of Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax encourages its young readers to think about a great issue of 1971 and even of today.  As an ardent progressive Christian, Geisel was also making a strong spiritual appeal.

That fits well with my intention today to celebrate the earth as our ultimate mother.  As we often say at the Gathering, spirituality is not about offering answers and ironclad doctrine regarding what we should believe.  Rather, spirituality is concerned with asking questions about ourselves and our world.  It is about grounding us in the reality of what is true of human nature and then encouraging us to change for the better – to reform ourselves such that our better angels guide our actions.   If our purpose is to live so that we improve ourselves and the world, then care for our mother earth is a spiritual endeavor.  It is a spiritual task to ask ourselves how we are doing in that regard.

Indeed, we each accept that ALL creation is sacred – all plants, animals and humans – even rocks and soil – are bound together in a divine unity.  We share one creator, one source, one mother and are thus interconnected in a vastly complex system.  The dust of the earth and the trees of a forest will one day be me just as you and I are made of the stuff of ancient plant and animals.  All life is dependent on other life for existence.  While this is not only scientific fact, it is also a spiritual one.

And that is the message of Dr. Seuss in The Lorax.  The book is not, however, an environmental scream at humanity to be better.  Nowhere in the book does it imply or say that a tree should not be cut down.  Nowhere does it suggest that nature should not be used to provide for our needs.  Indeed, the book implies that good can come from nature – useful products and employment for workers who make them.  Dr. Seuss uses the Lorax character to voice an ironically conservative message regarding human nature and the environment – “Sometimes progress progresses too fast.”

What the book suggests IS bad, is human excess – our propensity to want more and more of anything good.  Human greed is the problem.  Not human need.  How do we fulfill our purpose to build heaven on earth with less disease, hunger and poverty – while still ensuring we do no harm to the earth?  That is a spiritual question facing humanity.  Can we increase food production to feed the world, can we find new drugs to cure disease, can we create new technology to make life easier, can we offer meaningful employment to all – can we do all these things and yet preserve our natural world?

The Dalai Lama says that care for our earth is a simple spiritual matter.  It is as simple as taking care of one’s house.  The earth, after all, is our one and only home.  The Book of Ecclesiastes, part of the Jewish and Christian Old Testament, quotes Gods as saying, “Look at My world, how beautiful and perfect is everything that I created.  I created it for you.  Be careful not to ruin and destroy My world.  If you ruin it, there is nobody to restore it after you.”

Acting contrary to God’s appeal, however, humanity is quickly eliminating much of the world’s primeval forests – just as foretold in The Lorax.  These are forests untouched by human development – places where vast numbers of unique species exist and where indigenous human tribes have dwelled for thousands of years.

The Amazon rainforest, the forests of Madagascar, Indonesia and southwest China are all in peril.  Over 150 acres of untouched forest are destroyed each and every minute – the loss of of 216,000 acres a day – all cut down for logging, mining and farming.  At this rate, scientists estimate the world will be devoid of primeval forest within forty years.

And such a loss comes with significant consequence to humanity.  Over three-hundred drugs have been derived solely from rainforests.  These are drugs that treat cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and AIDS.  Muscle relaxants and plant based steroids to treat multiple sclerosis were just recently discovered in the Amazon.  25% of all current drugs on the market have at least one chemical compound found within the Amazon rainforest.  And yet scientists have analyzed only 1% of Amazon plants for their pharmacological potential.  What miracle cures could yet be discovered if the Amazon rainforest is somehow saved?

Human diversity is also being destroyed along with the forests.  Before Europeans first landed in the Americas, experts estimate that over 10 million indigenous people lived within the Amazon basin.  Today, fewer than 200,000 native people live in the forest – and that number is rapidly declining as Amazon tribes are encouraged to develop, clear land, begin farming and thus, supposedly, improve their lives.

A number of years ago, I travelled to the Central American nation of Belize with an outreach team to work at building homes.  We did not travel to the resort and beach towns along the coast of that Carribbean nation – the Belize most tourists see.  We ventured to small inland villages many miles from the coast where people lived in huts made of tree branches and thatched roofs.  Pigs and chickens ran wild, the young children were unclothed, the villages lacked running water and electricity.  People survived through subsistence farming, hunting and foraging.  Initially, I believed such villages were terribly poor and in need of assistance.

With an arrogant western attitude, I assumed that by building cinder block houses with cement floors, the lives of these people would be improved.  Other agencies were helping to dig wells and run electrical lines.  Slowly, some of these villages were being transformed.  Progress was coming.

But was it?  I came to conclude that perhaps what we were doing – supposedly building better homes – was not for the best.  Is a house with a tin roof and cement floor better?  In a tropical climate, are young children richer if they wear clothes and watch TV instead of run and play naked outdoors?  Indeed, I was forced to ask myself that, when comparing native village life and its close to nature existence with my own life of houses, cars and grocery stores, which is richer and which is poorer?  Who is happier and more fulfilled?

While Theodore Geisel was a progressive and he even described his writing as subversive, he was a NOT a wild-eyed radical.  The Lorax was initially banned in many schools and libraries, however.  Even today, it is regarded as controversial.  But just as Geisel encouraged kids to have open minds and free thinking in Green Eggs and Ham, as we discussed last week – he implicitly asks the same in The Lorax about nature.   Industry is not bad by itself nor is the use of wood products derived from trees bad.  Geisel’s books and his profits, after all, were printed on paper made from trees!  We are grossly mistaken if we assume The Lorax promotes a radical environmentalism that forbids any development.

As I have often said in here, answers to difficult questions and issues usually lie somewhere between two extremes – somewhere in the middle.  This is true in politics, religion and life in general.  It is comfortable and easy to stake out an extreme position on any matter.  Truth, however, is far more complex.  With regard to the environment, human beings are simply one species here on earth who are not to abandon the use of nature, but to coexist, protect and sustain it.  The indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest or of any other forest in the world do not live apart from nature.  They are a part of it and they USE it for their very survival.  We must do the same.

What Geisel promotes is greater regulation on excessive greed – a frailty of human nature that no amount of religion or morality has been able to eliminate.  He does not speak against development, factories or jobs – merely that such advantages cannot be focused solely on short-term profit.  Indeed, he echoes an important spiritual theme.  As the Bible says, money is NOT the root of all evil.  We are NOT told we must live in poverty without any money or resources.  Rather, the Bible says that it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil.  Such a love of money is what causes misuse of the environment.  In The Lorax, manufacturing Thneeds from the Truffula trees is not evil.  It is the greed of the Once-ler in cutting down ALL of the Truffula trees that is evil.  As ironic as it might seem, Geisel’s appeal to regulate greed is actually an appeal to insure that development and progress might continue.  Spiritually speaking, he is asking humans to save themselves from themselves!

A nuanced and balanced approach to celebrating and protecting mother earth acknowledges her resources and the benefits they provide.  With such a recognition, must come an important effort to protect her long-term well-being.  If we are to reap the benefits of new drugs found in rainforests, we must protect them from being wiped out just as we must protect any part of the environment from unrestrained destruction.

And this is not a matter of simple tree-hugging.  As I said earlier, it is a spiritual concern.  The Bible tells us that God put all creation under the dominion of humanity to use and enjoy its fruits.  A spiritually balanced approach, though, tells us that we must protect and preserve creation for the long term – just as the Dalai Lama says we protect and preserve our homes for our own benefit.

Even more, we protect and preserve our earth mother because she is an intrinsic part of us and we are a part of her.  Just as we are sacred, so is she.  It is holy, right, moral and spiritual to be concerned with preserving the earth since doing so preserves human life.

Towards the end of The Lorax, the Once-ler shows the boy a small pile of rocks, one of which has the word “Unless” inscribed on it.  (slide 10)  “Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn’t guess”, writes Seuss.  “That was long, long ago.  But each day since that day I’ve sat here and worried and worried away.  Through the years, while my buildings have fallen apart, I’ve worried about it with all of my heart.  ‘But now,’ says the Once-ler, ‘Now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.  UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”  (slide 11)

On this day of the year when we are asked to celebrate the perfect ideals of motherhood, we can heed the same message toward our mother earth.  Good moms, like my mom, are nurturing, supportive, protective and giving.  In their presence, we feel love and security.  When we walk through a local forest, hike across mountain meadows or gaze upon vast oceans, we experience the same feelings of love and security.  In the bosom of this earth we are fed, housed, healed and entertained.  Such is a sacred gift offered to all humanity and all creation.  For our sake and for the sake of creating heaven on earth, we must honor and protect this mother of all life so that we may continue to benefit from her.  We must restrain human propensity toward greed and misuse.  In that regard, may we wish our true mother a happy mother’s day – one that she might celebrate for many, many years to come.

I wish you all peace and joy…

 

Message 93, “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss: Cats in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham”, 5-6-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, All Rights Reserved

 

 

 

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”  So said Dr. Seuss in one of his books – an author who has arguably had more influence on the last three generations of children than any other writer.  The genius of Dr. Seuss – or Theodore Geisel – was that he influenced kids not with facts or bland fables about good and bad, but with seemingly nonsensical rhymes and funny, cartoonish characters.  Many adults of my age and younger owe their ability to read to Dr. Seuss.  As children, he caught our imagination, made us laugh and offered rhyming patterns and words that drilled into our memories the often complicated phonetic spelling necessary for learning how to read.

As important as he was as a beginner books author, Theodore Geisel subtly influenced the thinking of young minds.  Geisel was a progressive – and a progressive Christian – all his life.  After years working for progressive publications, he reached his height of influence during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when homogeneity and so-called middle class values were dominant in America.  He spoke first to the 1960’s generation – Baby Boom kids who came of age and dominated the discussion in that pivotal decade of civil rights, social security and anti-war protests.

It is not an exaggeration to assert that Dr. Seuss helped shape the 1960’s generation in their activism and thus shape history.  Books like The Butter Battle, Yertle the Turtle, Horton Hears a Who and The Sneetches mirrored the sixties youthful assault on prevailing attitudes about race, class, religion, war and the environment.  Dr. Seuss was one of many who helped set the 1960’s agenda.  American culture, politics and spirituality were dramatically changed as a result.

While the topic of this month’s series is “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”, I must be careful not to over-read or over-interpret his many books.  While no author writes a book without any viewpoint or theme, Geisel said that people interpreted his books in different and often incorrect ways.  His primary mission was to write books that young children would want to read – and thus help them learn to read.  He had heard from many teachers that the standard Dick, Jane and Sally early reading books were uninspiring for kids.  And so, in response to an article in Life magazine about the sorry state of reading education in the US, Geisel’s publisher challenged him to write a compelling beginning reader that contained most of the 348 words it was deemed every first grader should know.  Geisel thought the book would take him a week to write.  It took him nine months.  He used 223 of the words on that list and in 1957 published a book that was an instant hit and defined Seuss for the rest of his life – The Cat in the Hat.

In 1960, on a bet from his publisher that he could not write another engaging children’s book using only 50 distinct words, Seuss published his other great work, Green Eggs and Ham.

These two silly and outwardly ridiculous books set the standard for early readers.  I read them.  My daughters read them.  They are read and widely sold today.  Young Eli will one day, no doubt, read them.

As seemingly simple books with funny rhymes, they nevertheless offer serious themes about life – how to have fun, how to be flexible, how to challenge authority and thus grow up.  Seuss was a master at making reading and learning great fun.  But he was equally adept at guiding children to intuitively think about universal spiritual attitudes of respect for ideas, people and cultures that are different from the norm.

Over the last year and a half, I have taken regular yoga classes which have helped me immensely.  I had no idea, when I began, that yoga is a challenging and strenuous form of exercise.  My core strength and joint flexibility have dramatically improved.   Such abilities will only help me as I grow older.

Just as important as physical balance and flexibility, though, is the need to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually flexible.  And Theodore Geisel knew this and encouraged the same in his books – especially his first two works – The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.

In his first book, The Cat in the Hat, two young children sit forlornly at home alone, looking out on a rainy day with nothing to do.  Suddenly, a strange creature appears at the door – a tall cat who walks upright and wears a red and white striped hat.  He enters the house and proceeds to engage in all sorts of stunts to create fun and activity for the brother and sister.  They are scolded, however, by their pet fish to make the cat go away and to stop making such a mess.  Their absent mother will be angry, the fish tells them.  But the cat proceeds and even brings into the home a large box from which emerge two fun-loving creatures – Thing 1 and Thing 2 – to add more play to the household.  Kites are flown, closets are opened wide and general mayhem ensues.  But the fish does not let up with his nagging and it chides the children to get rid of the fun-loving cat before their mother returns.  Soon, the brother chases down the two Things while the cat swoops in on a large riding vacuum cleaner to clean up the mess.  All is restored, the cat departs, the fish is happy and the mother returns.  The kids then consider whether to tell their mom about everything that has happened.  “What would you do, if your mother asked you?” is the final question Seuss poses.

His imaginative illustrations and his fanciful character of a jaunty cat are mesmerizing.  What kid, indeed what adult, does not enjoy the entertainment of a comic jester who tells us that, “It is fun to have fun, but we have to know how!”  Readers of the book can identify with wanting to engage in play when they are told they shouldn’t.  And readers want to know what happens in this simple, but surprisingly tense, story.  Do the dire warnings of the fish come true or can the kids have innocent fun while their mother is away?

And that is the subtle question posed by Dr. Seuss.  Can we have fun for fun’s sake?  Can we let loose, open up the proverbial Pandora box of pleasure, be a little bit naughty and still be OK?  While the book has been interpreted by some to be a Freudian parable about budding sexuality and the tension we feel whether to indulge or repress, it seems obvious that Theodore Geisel was speaking to the children of  a repressed 1950’s culture to open up, challenge authority just a bit, and have fun!  Indeed, to seven and eight year old beginning readers in 1957 – kids who would be seventeen and eighteen year olds in 1967 – it is easy to see how this book helped encourage the Woodstock generation to let loose, challenge authority and thus change the American ideas about racism and needless war.  The Cat in the Hat was not just an innocent children’s book.  It was quite revolutionary.  Theodore Geisel even claimed that in writing the Cat in the Hat, he was “as subversive as hell!”

As a progressive Christian, though, Geisel was also encouraging a looser set of spiritual beliefs.   It seems clear that the house in the story is a type of Garden of Eden with its mother – or God – absent.  The brother and sister, Adam and Eve types, are left alone with nothing to do.  In walks a cat who – like the Biblical serpent – entices them to have fun.  He even opens up a symbolic Pandora box of play (what some might call sin) and lets loose even more playfulness.  All the while, the narrow minded fish, drawn by Geisel as living in a very small fishbowl, tells the children to stop having fun, it’s not right!  The fish is an unmistakable symbol of the Christian church, or religion in general, and its many rules against supposed sin.  But Geisel does not end his story with calamity and disaster – as what took place in the Garden of Eden.  Instead, the Cat in the Hat is not a sinister Satan but a creature of fun who is able to contain such fun within playful innocence and then cleans up afterward.  Earth and humanity are not destroyed by the symbolic sin.  The God figure or mom in the book even returns and all is still good.  Geisel then asks at the end of the book not that the kids simply tell their mom what happened but he implicitly pleads for an honesty that is free of guilt and shame.  Go ahead and tell God about your fun!  Stop listening to man-made religion.  Having fun is OK!  It’s NOT a sin!!

And we are encouraged – by this gospel according to Dr. Seuss – to approach life in the same manner.  Organized religion can be a source of freedom and solace or a life-long force for psychological harm – one that induces guilt, shame, fear and doubt.  We were created to enjoy the beauty and joys of this earth, to live responsibly within it and help others to also enjoy its fruits.

And just as we are to enjoy life, we are to be flexible and open minded in our outlook.  Cultural and religious standards of so-called morality and decency should be questioned.  The same is true for cultural norms on politics, spirituality and thinking.  Will humanity be known for close minded attitudes or open and free thinking?

Such are the implicit questions posed by Dr. Seuss’ second book Green Eggs and Ham.   A strange character is introduced on the first page and proclaims himself to be, “I am Sam.  Sam I am.”  Sam entices an unnamed Everyman to try a plate of green eggs and ham.  Everyman turns up his nose at the strange food and declares “I do not like them, Sam-I-am.  I do not like green eggs and ham.”  But Sam is relentless in pushing his plate of different edibles – he asks Everyman if he’d eat them in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, in a car, in a tree, on a train or in a boat.  “You do not like them.  So you say.  Try them! Try them!  And you may.”   But Everyman is just as steadfast in refusing.  Until, that is, when he plunges into the sea and, in a type of baptismal rebirth, finally succumbs.  He tries green eggs and ham and, in a joyful epiphany, declares he likes them and will eat them here or there or anywhere.  “Thank you, thank you Sam-I-am”, he finally says.

What a funny rhyming story we might think.  What a great book to get young minds to learn and read new words.  Once again, though, Geisel had a purpose to his seeming madness.  Sam-I-Am’s name is an obvious play on God’s self description to Moses at the burning bush – “I am who I am”.  Indeed, with his insistent encouragement for Everyman to experience real freedom and unfetter the chains of a narrow mind, Sam is a type of Jesus.  And his relentless encouragement to Everyman to try new things is an appeal for us too.  Green eggs and ham are metaphors for the things each of us reflexively and impulsively reject.  In life, in relationships, in politics, in spirituality, in attitudes towards others who are different races, religions or sexualities, Geisel promotes free thinking, tolerance and flexibility.  Indeed, he assaults any rigid dogma, prejudice or belief.   No way of thinking, no ideology, theology, or lifestyle is so sacred that we should not at least be willing to consider an opposing viewpoint.  Indeed, we’re encouraged to be adventurous and not just conserve the status quo but to be open to different beliefs, strategies and lifestyles.  Do we stay the same and stew in our rigidity or do we move forward with bold new visions for better lives and a better world?

And this encouragement to openness speaks to all of us.  Many in the Gathering are politically progressive.  But are we willing to consider the views of political conservatives?  Are we willing to concede they might be right in some matters?  Are they willing to adopt the same flexibility toward liberals?  And what about our faith?  Do religious fundamentalists offer spiritual views that have any validity?  Can we be open-minded?  Can we empathize with the other who is different or dirty or just not like us?  Can we humble ourselves in any of our beliefs and attitudes such that we acknowledge potential flaws in our thinking?  Can we, instead, seek common ground with others, refuse to assert our own superiority and thus create solutions that everyone can embrace?  To do so, we must – each and everyone of us – be willing to symbolically eat green eggs and ham – the stuff we each say is intolerable.  We must stretch ourselves and be flexible.  Indeed, the Biblical writer of Proverbs said that a person who does not listen to advice, after many words are spoken to him or her, will ultimately come to ruin.

To be a spiritually flexible person and a spiritually flexible church we should be forgiving to those who hurt us, empathetic to those who are different, inclined to live in peace with others, courteous, patient, fair and affirming.  That is who and what we are at the Gathering.  We are defined not by doctrines but by openness to other ideas and other people.  Around every corner, in every individual, from every ideology is a kernel of truth which can enlighten and inform us.  Is the person next to you a bit different in appearance or personality?  Does he or she believe different things from you?  Is he or she gay, atheist, physically or mentally challenged, vegan, African-American, conservative, liberal, omnivore?  And what if they are?  Is that so bad?  No, it is not.  The person next to you is a wondrous child of the Divine…..as you are yourself.

When I spoke a few weeks ago to Vanessa Lefebvre and asked her why she and Boris wanted to dedicate Eli at the Gathering, she told me that she wanted his first public celebration to be at a place that honors ideals of tolerance.  She wants Eli to grow into manhood loved and supported in such a way so that he can decide for himself what values and spiritual beliefs to adopt.  Life is not easy for any of us – and it has not been easy for Vanessa and Boris – but Eli is such a gift, such a beautiful blessing, and Vanessa deeply knows this and she celebrates the hope and joy he gives her.  As parents, both Vanessa and Boris want their son to feel love in his childhood, to feel accepted for who he is, to be embraced within a caring extended family and community, and be a person with expansive dreams and ideas.

Vanessa could not have echoed more succinctly the gospel according to Dr. Seuss.  We need Cat in the Hat and Sam-I-Am figures in our lives – those who challenge us to embrace life, to enjoy it to its fullest, to shed ourselves of guilt, to be open and free in our thinking, to ask questions, to be humble in what we believe, to honor and respect all people, all faiths, all beliefs, all lifestyles ALL the time.  An anonymous person once said, “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.”  Indeed, let that be said for me and of you – that we are a flexible people who are constantly stretching beyond ourselves…

 

 

 

 

Please click below to listen to Imam Siyam of the Clifton Mosque in Cincinnati, speaking at the Gathering

Message 92, “Finding Spiritual Truths from World Religions: Hindu Change”, 4-15-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Click here to listen to the message.  See below to read it.

There is an old Hindu proverb about a master who grew weary of his ever complaining apprentice.  “Life is not fair!” the young man would say.  “It is full of pain and there are so many people who hurt me.”

The master finally had enough and asked the apprentice to go and grab a handful of salt.  When he returned, the master told him to put the salt in a glass of water and then drink it.  “How does it taste?” the master asked.  “Bitter.” was the reply.

The master then asked the boy to go and grab another handful of salt.  When he returned, the master led the boy to a very large lake and told him to put the salt in it and swirl it around.  “Now drink from the lake” the master said.

As the water dripped from the boy’s chin, he was asked how that water tasted.  “Fresh!” was the reply.  “Do you taste the salt?” the master asked.  “No.” said the boy.

And then the master sat down with the apprentice and took his hands in his own.  “The pain and hurts of life are always the same” the master said, “no more and no less.  How you think about such pain and whether or not you choose to be a victim depends on the vessel you put the pain into.  The thing we must do is to enlarge our sense of things……..stop being a small minded glass.  Become a lake.”

Now, I often hate it when I read such parables and at first don’t really understand what they mean – especially those of eastern religions or philosophies which are difficult for a western mind to comprehend.  How do we enlarge our sense of things?  How do we become something we are not – like a lake?  How do we change for the better  – which seems to be the message of that parable – and thus find the peace and happiness we all seek?

In life, we each yearn to be free of pain, failure, anger, disease, injustice, worry, fear and poverty.  We want to be perpetually happy and most of us want that for all humanity.

As we have spent the last two months examining a spiritual truth from each of various world religions, we might have lapsed into a common mistake.  We can too often isolate one virtue or one ideal at the expense of an overriding principle – we can’t see the forest in the midst of trees.  My purpose in looking to each of the major world religions – Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism – those that represent the beliefs of over 95% of the world’s population – is for us to realize that there are many truths, many ethics and many ideals we would be wise to learn from and adopt.  In other words, each world faith calls us to reach beyond the selves we superficially know and aspire to the spiritual truth each promotes.  Ultimately, they all point us to the same goal – total and complete peace.

Another Hindu parable, one which many of you may have heard, talks about five blind folks who are asked to examine an elephant and then describe what an elephant is.  The first feels the trunk and exclaims that an elephant is like a hose.  The next feels a leg and declares an elephant is like a tree.  The next person touches the ear and says an elephant is like a giant fan.  The final person grabs a hold of the tail and proudly says an elephant is like a rope!

We all know that an elephant is the totality of all those things, and more, but to isolate only one aspect and define it that way is to miss the larger picture.  And the same holds true for spirituality and our quest for truth, peace and happiness.  We will not find them just by grabbing a hold of a tail, or a trunk or an ear.  We must strive to grow in ALL ways.  We must be willing to continue learning about ourselves and our world from many sources.  We must be willing to continuously change our perspective and understanding of life and the big picture – or elephant!

And, in that way, it is fitting that we conclude this series with a look at Hinduism which emphasizes the importance of constant change in one’s life – the kind of holistic and total change that will lead one eventually to perfect peace.

Hinduism is the third largest religion.  But, it is often referred to as less of a religion than a way of life – a practice and tradition that is deeply embedded in Hindu cultures.  There are two primary Scriptures for Hindus – the ancient Rig Veda and the more recent Bhagavad Gita.  Both are compilations of stories, parables and wise teachings.  Hindus are henotheistic- they believe in a supreme god – the Brahman – but they also believe in a multiplicity of gods which support, but are less than, the Brahman.  As such, Hindus will refer to the Brahman as the one true god but still pray and offer sacrifices to thousands of minor gods – those who can help them in more minor ways.

The goal of Hindus is to undergo what they call “moksha” or escape from constant cycle of birth and rebirth which they believe all souls experience.  Reincarnation for Hindus is the way by which human souls evolve, or devolve, over many lifetimes – into higher states of being and happiness or into lower states of hurt and misery.   When one arrives at a place of true enlightenment about self, love and compassion for others, when one has the ultimate epiphany and can cry out, “I get it!!”, one enters eternal Nirvana.  One then becomes a part of the Brahman.  As imagined, this is not an easy process and a soul might spend many lifetimes before reaching this elusive goal.

The key theory in all of this is not that humans are controlled by the gods and goddesses.  We can draw on their power but only to a limited extent.   Human souls are NOT rewarded or punished by any Divine or supernatural force.  Humans are in control of their OWN destiny through Karma – or a natural law of cause and effect.  We reap what we sow, as the Bible says.  What happens to us – good or bad – is determined by what we are BECOMING – how we are constantly changing for the good or bad.  The goal, therefore, is to evolve and change and become a better soul – one that, as we have discussed over the last several weeks, does not simply DO good spiritual things but rather IS content, IS devoted, IS hopeful, and IS unconditionally loving.

Creating positive karma is thus not about doing acts of goodness.  It is about BECOMING and then BEING good.  It is about moving from one imperfect state of being to a better state of being – by learning more about the self and one’s flaws, by changing those flaws, by growing in compassion for all creation, by letting go of anger and hatred and learning to really love, by shedding the fear, guilt and shame of our past, by becoming a fully authentic human – a person who lives true to what he or she believes.  Do you believe in love?  Then become love.   Do you believe in justice?  Then become just.  Do you believe in contentment?  Then become content.

And, as I said, this is not a simple process.  Indeed, Hindus were first aware of the human subconscious or hidden soul that really determines who we are.  That inner soul or subconscious reflects our true nature – not the things we outwardly DO.  That is the substance of who we really are.  In other words, we as people are not defined by our outward appearance and actions.  We are defined from the inside out.  Our actions should be, therefore, reflections of the inner soul.

Good or bad Karma results from a willingness to change and grow our souls.  If we continually seek after good energy, we will find such energy attracted to us.  Good things will naturally happen for us.

And that is the essential point.  We must always change.  We must be ever transformed.  We must never worship any belief or any part of ourselves as an idol – something that we refuse to question or change.  Other than the one ethic to which we all agree, to love other people as much as we love ourselves, we should be willing to at least question and possibly change anything – our politics, our faith, our approach to life, our values.  This is the cycle of birth and death, literal and figurative, which Hindus believe happens to every soul.  As Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs, “Those who are not busy being born, are dying.”

All of us may believe, for instance, that we are each loving people.  But we also know that on some deeper, subconscious level, that we could be much better.  We alone know of hidden hatreds we harbor, the hidden anger we hold, the hidden prejudices or hurts or unforgiving attitudes that can fester within us.  The more we dig into ourselves, discover these flaws about ourselves and then work to change them, the more we grow.  And the more we evolve toward finding that elusive total peace.

This takes us back to the parable about the master and his apprentice.  If the boy continues to drink the bitter and angry water of a closed and small glass, that is how he will continue to experience life.  He will be a bitter, angry and self-pitying man.  If he chooses to instead drink the fresh water of a large and expansive lake – to see his pain in the totality of all life – he will come to realize his problems are not so bad after all.  He will see his problems are much smaller than those of others.  He might, indeed, develop more gratitude for the blessings he does have.  He will be positive and hopeful that life is good.  He will grow in compassion for the hurts of others – since he is so much better off.

The key is that he must BECOME something else, as the master tells him.  He must change his outlook and his attitude.  Strive to stop the anger.  Strive to stop acting like a victim.  Stop complaining.  Start becoming.  Be a wide, fresh and limitless lake!

Maya Angelou, the modern poet laureate, once said, “If you don’t like something, change it!  If you can’t change it, change your attitude.  Don’t complain!”

And that also gets to a core belief of Hinduism.  There are no victims in the world.  We are masters of our own destiny and we create our own good or bad karma.  We are responsible for our own lives.  We must stop the complaining about our imperfect lives and set out, instead, to be people who overcome.

This does not mean that there are not hurting people in our midst or people who suffer profoundly – because of their own actions or because of forces acting against them – disease, poverty, or injustice.  Even so, we also know people who, while they do hurt and suffer, they refuse to be victims or complainers.  These are people who remain positive despite their pain.  They harbor hope for a better life.  They continue to selflessly give and love and serve.  They never complain.  They never give up.  They love others as much as they love themselves.  They know their own flaws and ways they can still grow.  These are people who create their own happiness and good Karma by the attitude and outlook they choose to have.   We are what we choose to believe and think – loser and victim OR person of great love, peace and ability to change.  Those are inspiring people.  Those are people I want to be like.

So often in life we set out to find the perfect experience or person for ourselves.  We spend countless hours seeking the perfect spouse, the perfect lover, the perfect friend, the perfect doctor, Pastor, accountant, house, church, vacation or whatever.  In doing so, we are wasting our time.  Such perfection does not exist.

What we should pursue, instead, is the inner change – the ability to create a more perfect soul .  How do we find the perfect spouse or lover?  He or she is inside us.  How do find the perfect friend?  He or she is inside us.  How do find the perfect experience that will give us happiness?  That experience is deep within us.  Quite simply, we must BE the change we want.  As I alluded to last week, just imagine the kind of humanity that might exist if every person cared less about how others should change or life should change and focused more on how we ourselves should change?

My friends, the Gathering is a small church operating without big budgets or elaborate programs and buildings.  All of those things are superfluous.  The great prophets of history did not require such expensive trappings.  It was the power and force of their ideas that drew people to them and propelled the change they sought.  For us, our purpose is not to come here every Sunday and have a nice, simple time with friends.  If all we are about is a club in which to feel good, we should close up immediately.  If, however, we come here because we want to change and we seek growth, and we are committed to use what this place offers, then the Gathering is serving its purpose.  And, indeed, as much as it is my role to help you and me think, reflect and grow, we each also have a personal responsibility to change on our own.  Doing church is not a passive exercise.  We actively choose to come here to listen and change.  We actively choose to be a part of the change process that goes on here – serving on Sundays, helping in our outreach efforts, giving financially to our work, sharing our own growth insights.  And, in some big and small ways, we should be inwardly changing as a result.  We should be growing.  We should not be the same people we were last month or last year.  If we are not a bit wiser than we were before we come in on any Sunday, than we have either not listened, not participated or I have failed miserably.

I encourage us all to read, listen and learn about spiritual ideals.  I encourage us to reflect, meditate and pray.  I encourage us all to revisit the topics we discuss in here – to read or listen again to the messages in this series on contentment or hope or unconditional love.  Our website and archive of written and audio messages is a resource for doing so.  And there are other countless other resources, of much better insight, that we should also read or listen to.

As Hindus the world over know, change is an inevitable part of existence.  The only thing that does not change is the reality of change.  It will happen for good or for bad, but that is ours to create.  Let us spiritually look out into the heavens to glimpse, from afar, those angels of our better natures – those angels we want to become.  To do become like them, let us ever change our minds, our hearts and our souls.

I wish you all much peace and even more joy.

Message 91, Finding Spiritual Truths from World Religions: Christian Unconditional Love, Easter Sunday, 4-8-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

Click here to listen to the Easter message or see below to read it.

 

As millions of people the world over celebrate Easter today, most seem to forget that in the Easter story – on that first Easter morning – all was not good, happy and bright.   A tomb was visited.  Death had to be confronted in all of its fearful ugliness.

The followers of Jesus on that morning were scattered, disorganized and devastated.  This man in whom they had invested their lives – this prophet of revolutionary change – had been humiliated and executed as a common criminal.  Not only was the man dead, the movement he had started, in order to change human attitudes about life, compassion and the heart of the Divine, was also effectively dead.

Over the ensuing years, as the teachings and life examples of Jesus were told and retold, his followers and those who admired him came to understand with increasing clarity the underlying message of this great prophet.  Not only were his actual life and teachings interpreted and shared, but the ultimate meaning and purpose of his life were shaped and then condensed into one overall message.  And a new religion was created as a result – one that would honor and perpetuate his teachings.

The shock and sorrow of that first Easter morning were reinterpreted by his admirers into one of celebration and joy.  Easter morning was changed to symbolize, and thus prove, the real message of Jesus – a man of history who actually did live and die.

As humans, we are prone to think and ACT, in order to solve the problems of life.  And our biggest problem in life is the fear we have of our own demise.  Of all the created beings, we alone know we will one day die.  We are chained to this realization – it imprisons many of us in lives of fear, worry and an inability to really live and truly love.  Humanity invented religion as a way to mitigate this fear – to offer solace and comfort.  Religion tells us that if we believe and if we ACT in a certain ways – as moral and good people – we will not die but be rewarded with eternal life.

Jesus taught something entirely different.  We do not need to ACT in certain ways.  We do not need to DO certain things to earn Divine favor.  We must simply BE.  We must simply BE like the heart of all Truth and all purity.  We must BE like the Divine.  And our intuition, combined with messages from the Bible and most other world religions, tells us that the Divine – or God if you wish – is love.

If this is true, and I assert that it is, what does it mean to BE love?  For most people, love is a matter of doing.  It is an act of performance.  It is a transaction.  I will DO acts of love to show you that I care about you.  But, I will only do those acts in return for similar acts of love which you DO for me – acts of praise, thanks, helping, giving or physical affection.

But the overall message of Jesus – and what Easter morning came to represent – is that DOING love is not real love.  Doing acts of love often becomes perfunctory and obligatory.  As time goes on, we can become resentful of our need to DO acts of love in order to earn the love of God or another person.  Jesus condemned such an approach to love – those who prayed in public and on display and thought they were loving the Divine, or those who made a show of the money they gave and thought they were buying Divine love, or those who acted moral on the outside but were full of hate and anger on the inside.  Such people are like dirty and cobweb filled tombs, he said.  There is no substance to their supposed love.  It is hypocritical and false.

Indeed, many of us fall into the same trap.  We say we love another person or other people.  We do acts of kindness for them.  We lavish them with money or gifts.  We judge them – and decide whether or not to love them – based on their ability to love us, thank us, be like us or do good things for us.   And when they disappoint, as all people do since we are not perfect creatures, we often fall out of love.  We have been hurt.  We have been cheated in the transaction of love.  I have given love and gotten little or nothing in return, we tell ourselves.  We equate love with DOING, which always falls short since we cannot do anything with perfection.  And we equate religion with doing.  As lovers or as religious people, we are like runners on an endless treadmill – never able to get off our perceived need to DO and ACT and perform, and thus earn love.

If you have listened to or followed our two month message series on finding spiritual truths from world religions, you will hear a familiar refrain in each message.  Contentment for the Buddhist, which we discussed last month, is not about doing contented things like meditation or letting go.  It is about achieving a state of BEING that is content and at peace.  And the same is true for the devotional attitudes of Muslims – they ARE devoted instead of DOING acts of devotion like praying and fasting.

For Christianity, the one hallmark of that faith is what Jesus asked of his followers and, indeed, asked of all humanity.  We must follow the DIVINE example and simply BE love personified.  How can we BE love, and not just DO acts of love?  We must love unconditionally – love which is given without any condition or strings attached.  We must love as the DIVINE loves – without expectation of returned love, without rehearsal, without thought, without any standard of beauty, wealth or so-called morality.  God loves the thief and the murderer as much as the saint.  Indeed, we are called to love the unlovable.  We must love the one who hurts us.  We must love those on the margins – those who most so-called “decent” people do not love: the criminals, the AIDS victims, the poor, the dirty, the addicts, the persons of a different race, religion or sexuality, the enemy, the person who can in no way DO anything of value for us.  As Mother Theresa once said, “Unconditional love does not measure, it just gives.”

The ultimate message of the historic Jesus and the ultimate message of Christianity – one that any person of any faith or non-faith can appreciate – is a message that tells us the Divine loves ALL people and ALL creation no…….matter…….what.  And, if we wish to be enlightened and like the Divine, then we must also love others no…..matter….. what.  We must strive to become people known by, and personified by, our total, complete and unconditional love.

Most of us have heard and know the story of the Prodigal Son – the parable used by Jesus to teach about unconditional or Divine love.  In the story, the youngest son goes to his father and demands his inheritance right then – he wants it long before his father has died.  Such an act would be humiliating to any parent – this boy cares more about money than his dad.  But the father gives him the money anyway and the son lives true to his arrogant and impetuous attitudes.  He departs the family home to live in Las Vegas!  No.  Not really.  But he does go off to the big city and the money is soon wasted and spent on high living – on the so-called sins of sex, booze, drugs and rock and roll!  And he predictably hits rock bottom – having to work and scavenge with pigs for his food – something no respectable Jew would ever do.  Remembering that his dad was an easy mark the first time, the son rehearses a nice speech for his dad about repenting and asking for a job as a worker on the family farm.  As the boy approaches the farm, the father sees him long before he is close.  According to a tradition of the time, the father should have then smashed a clay pot at the boy’s feet as a symbolic gesture to humiliate and forever reject him.  The boy had dishonored his dad in the eyes of the community and then he had further brought dishonor by living as an immoral wastrel and fool.  The audiences hearing Jesus teach this parable would have expected such an action by the dad.

Instead, the father confounds all normal expectations of justice and transactional love.  He does not merely tolerate his son’s return, he lavishly and joyously celebrates it!  He is uninhibited in his happiness at the boy’s return – he runs to the boy – something considered unseemly in that culture for men of his age to do.  By running, he would have had to lift his robes – something also undignified and humiliating.  He wraps the boy in a huge embrace, covers the boy’s neck with kisses, puts an expensive robe on the boy’s shoulders, gives him the family signet ring and orders that a fatted calf be roasted and a banquet be held to celebrate the boy’s return.  Such abundant and costly love was totally spontaneous, as the parable tells us.  The father saw the boy a long way off and instantly runs to him – no thinking or planning involved.  The boy had symbolically spit in his dad’s face, humiliated the family name and then came crawling back – but he was extravagantly loved anyway.

Who among us has not hungered for such a loving response from a parent, spouse, lover, stranger or child – to have a person joyously, uncontrollably and excessively run to, hug and kiss us – especially after we have done something wrong or hurtful?  Such forgiveness and such love is overwhelming and almost miraculous.

It is then and there, at the impact of his father’s unbelievable love, that the boy changes – that his heart is transformed.  In what would likely be a scene of crying and happiness all at once, the boy claims he is unworthy to be his father’s son.  Indeed, any person would be both challenged and changed by such love.    What enemy, what bigot, what act of hatred and violence cannot be ultimately changed by love and forgiveness?  As Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. proved, the power of unconditional love is greater than any force on earth.

But soon the older son of the father shares the views of most religions and most people – that the father’s lavish love is unjust.  It is not fair that the father should show such love to a son who has been so bad.  It is not fair that he, the oldest son, has not been similarly rewarded for all he has DONE morally and correctly to earn the love of the dad.  The father reminds him that he has always had his love and that his actions have not impacted that love, just as the younger son’s actions did not impact his love.  The father loves his boys without any judgment.   For his children, the father is the very embodiment of love.  It is a part of his very being.

This is the breathtaking vision of love that Jesus and genuine Christianity offer us.  When we consciously ponder such love and understand its implications, we are dumbfounded.  We are like the oldest son in the parable – protesting that such love is not natural.  Indeed, it is not.  Such love is a miracle, it is super-natural, it defines the one GREAT force in our universe.  It is the real message of Jesus and of this holiday, this Easter we celebrate.

For myself, I have hungered for so long to experience the kind of love the father shows in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  I have yearned not just to have things DONE for me by my dad – acts by him which have always been generous and kind.  I have hungered, instead, to be embraced and accepted and truly loved for the man who I am – not the man my dad wishes I could be.  I cherish the one time my dad told me he loved me – when he put his hand on my shoulder and said so.  That moment is seared in my memory.  But, oh!!!!  To be hugged and kissed and made to feel as if I am an honored, loved and respected man in his eyes – that is the stuff of my dreams.

And I have resolved to, as much as possible, be such love for my daughters.  I have determined to never end a conversation or phone call with them, no matter how trivial, without saying “I love you.”  I have determined, no matter how reluctant they might be if we are in public, to deeply hug them and kiss them.  I am not a perfect dad and my actions are not perfect towards them.  I have fallen short many times.   But my love for them is true and unconditional.  They can never do anything that will destroy my love for them.  I saw their little heads emerge into the world for the first time, I hugged and carried and cried and worried for them.  I still do.  I would die for them.   They are the solace I have for not having been courageous at an early age and come out as a gay man.  Had I done so, I would likely not have them.  They are my window into the supernatural world of total and unconditional love.  With them, I understand it and am so very grateful to experience it.

But Jesus’ teachings about unconditional love are not limited to parental love.  He called us to BE such love for all people and all creatures.  He called us to BE that love for our enemies, our partners and spouses, our friends, and our fellow humans who suffer and live at the margins of life.  In his teachings, he called us to BE gentle, to BE forgiving, to BE kind, to BE compassionate, to incorporate into our very nature – into the definition of who we are as a people – a way of living that is like the Divine.  Much like a flower cannot cease to be a flower, or God cannot cease to be God, a loving person cannot stop BEING love.  He or she simply IS love.  That kind of love is spontaneous.  It is unthinking.  It is free and lavish.  It is blind to flaws, failures, and hurts.  Imagine the kind of relationships we could have and the world we might create if every person loved in such a manner?

It is a standard Christian cliché – one employed by Christian Pastors many times in their messages – to say that on the cross Jesus’ arms were spread wide as a symbolic gesture of total love for humanity and the total love we must also have.  But cliché or not, it is an effective image.  It is one much like the running embrace of the father to his prodigal boy – arms spread wide and open.  On Easter, we are reminded of this spiritual truth from Christianity – that love should be pure and unlimited; that without thinking, we are called to continue becoming people who love without condition.  We are to go out into our families and neighborhoods and simply BE the face of the Divine – a force of super-natural, miraculous, and unconditional love for all – a power so great that it will change you……. and change the world.

I wish you all much peace, joy and love this Easter day.

 

 

 

 

 

Message 90, “Finding Spiritual Truths from World Religions: Jewish Hope”, 4-1-12

© Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

To listen to Doug’s message, click here.  To read the message, please see below.

 

 

Most people can understand, on some gut level, the deprivations and horrors of what it must be like to be a slave.  One’s work, happiness, life and very soul are not one’s own.  It is a form of degradation we can easily imagine – another human telling a fellow human she or he is somehow less worthy, less valuable, less human.  For us as Americans, we are still confronting the sins of that institution – white Americans coming to terms with past and present racism in their ancestors and within themselves.  African-Americans still struggling to emerge from the lasting consequences of slavery – the cycles of soul stealing violence visited upon them simply for the color their skin.  The Travon Martin shooting death is a recent example.

Too often, we forget that escaping from slavery and dealing with millenias of violence against their race is also a hallmark of the Jewish people.  While most historians cannot say with certitude that ancient Egyptian slavery of the Jews is fact, the Biblical story of it as recounted in the Book of Exodus, however, is THE defining event of Jewish identity.  Moses led his people out of bondage and into the promised land – despair and triumph all wrapped into one story that literally embodies Jewish heritage.

As Jews the world over begin this week to celebrate Passover, the holiday is a celebration of that story and of the larger theme of Jewish hope.  Indeed, the story is a symbolic metaphor for all of Jewish history – how Jews time and time again suffer oppression, abuse, and murder simply for being Jewish – and then their almost miraculous rise from such defeats time and time again.

During the 1930’s and early forties, the Jewish race was nearly wiped out.  As we all know, nearly six million of their number were exterminated.  Irene Zisblatt was one of the fortunate survivors of that time.  She is the only one out of her family of 8 to live to tell her family’s story – one that she continues to tell even today.

She grew up in a small town in Hungary.  Nearly three hundred Jews lived in the town of about a thousand.  When the Nazis invaded Hungary, the horrors began.  She was thrown out of school along with other Jewish children.  Her father’s business was confiscated.  They were forced to wear a yellow star of David patch and were relocated to a cramped and dirty ghetto in Poland.  Soon after, they were sent to Auschwitz.  Irene’s mother was determined to hold onto what little of their former life she could save.  She gave four diamonds to young Irene and asked her swallow them – and to repeatedly do so in order to keep them out of Nazi hands.  “The strength and the sacrifice that the diamonds carried were so strong,” Zisblatt said. “It was much stronger than the Nazi hatred, so I couldn’t throw them away. I often thought, ‘I can’t die today, I have to save the diamonds.”  In doing so, Irene became the very embodiment of her mother’s hope.

Young Irene was soon selected by the infamous Dr. Mengele to undergo medical experiments of a gruesome nature.  After multiple and painful procedures, she was picked with five others to have dye injected into their eyes to try and change the color.  Five of the six went blind – but not Irene.  Even so, all were sent to the gas chambers to die.  By some twist of fate, Irene was saved by a compassionate gas chamber worker – a fellow Jew who was himself scheduled to die a few days later.  He took pity on Irene and hid her.  He later put her on a train out of Auschwitz.  As he was about to leave her on the train, Irene asked him who he was.  He told her that his name did not matter.  He would soon be dead.  But he begged her to live her life for him and the others.  “If you make it to safety,” he said, “live a little for me.”

Irene later made it to safety and soon caught the attention of a wealthy American Jew who was bringing surviving concentration camp children to the U.S.  At the age of 16, she settled into a farm in New Jersey and began her new life.  Her mother, father and five siblings did not survive.  She is the only Zisblatt left.  Irene still has her mother’s diamonds – symbols of the determination her mother had given her.  “Use these to survive,” her mother told her.  Irene never sold them – instead using their power of hope to sustain her.  They are her symbols of hope.

Irene Zisblatt’s story is just one of thousands.  But it is representative of the holocaust stain on human nature.  The assembly line of death perpetrated on the Jews by Nazi Germany is the single greatest act of cruelty and mass murder in human history.  The indifference of average Germans to what was going on around them, the look the other way attitude even of Americans and British who knew of the atrocities while they were happening, is astonishing.  But such cruelty and world-wide indifference to their plight did not extinguish Jewish hope.  In a poetic book on the Holocaust and how God did not abandon Jews, Marcus Zusak writes in his novel The Book Thief, “When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”  God did not abandon the Jews during the Holocaust and in that love, they were saved.

Barely twenty-five years later, at the conclusion of the so-called six day 1967 war between Israel and a host of Arab countries, young Israeli soldiers – children of Holocaust survivors – openly wept with joy as they marched triumphantly to the Western Wall, or “wailing wall”, of the Jewish second Temple.  Not since 78 CE – nearly two-thousand years earlier – had Jews controlled their holiest spot on earth, the place believed to be where Yahweh dwells, the repository for the Arc of the Covenant, the closest point any Jew can come to his or her God.  The sublime power of that moment for Jews, after centuries of struggle and oppression, cannot begin to be imagined.

From the depths of utter despair and the ashes of millions came historic jubilation.  Israel had not only been born in the aftermath of the Holocaust, it had thrived and beaten back multiple armies of much greater numbers.  The dreams of countless Jews since the time of ancient Rome were realized.  Jewish hope was once again shown to be more than idle religious myth.  Hope is the distinctive identity for any Jew – hope in a better life, hope in the promise of God, hope in a world that will one day live in peace, hope that all lands – not just Israel – will overflow with milk and honey for all people.

Indeed, the realization of the nation of Israel in 1948 and its return to Jerusalem in 1967 seemed to confirm Biblical prophecy which Jews have read countless times over the centuries of their oppression – from Egyptian slavery to Babylonian conquest and destruction of their nation to Roman rule and obliteration of Israel and their Temple, to the scattering of their people all over the globe, to Medieval pogrom campaigns to intimidate and kill Jews as the Jesus killers, to the ultimate horror of the  Holocaust………the prophet Jeremiah’s words were recited millions of times:

“Fear not thou, O Israel, My servant, neither be dismayed; For, lo I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of captivity and tears.  Israel shall again be quiet and at ease, and none shall make her afraid.”

Such Biblical words and others like them have been a comfort to Jews for they express the hope of their faith.  From the earliest words in the Jewish Pentateuch – the first five books of a Christian Bible – God promises Abraham and all Jews that they are Her chosen people and She will bless them and their descendants forever.  The value of that assurance is immense.  In it, Jews have been able to see their distress and pain in the context that all will eventually be well – God’s Messiah or Chosen One will save Israel and all creation from their tears, heartaches and fears.  A glorious realm of peace, goodwill and perfect existence will reign on earth again – when the Messiah comes.  And so Jews the world over wait and rest in the comfort, not of naive faith, but in the tangible belief that by never giving up on God, She or He will never give up on them.   Their hope is real.  Their hope is powerful.  It gives them almost unbelievable strength to endure any hardship, any hatred, any setback and to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER give up.

In our current series on finding spiritual truths from world religions, we cannot ignore the power of Jewish hope.  Such hope for Jews is unique to their identity – much like contentment is to the Buddhist or daily devotion is to the Muslim.  But hope is a universal ideal that all humans share.  What is it?  How can we use it, like the Jewish people, to help us endure and ultimately thrive?

Oscar Wilde, the famous nineteenth century gay writer and poet, once wrote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.”  For a man who was put on trial for loving another man and then imprisoned for it, he refused to allow his spirit to dwell in the gutter.  There is a latin proverb which says, “Dum spiro, spero.”  “While I breathe, I hope.”  That is the essence of what it means to hope.  It must never die.  It must never be extinguished even as the proverb says – up until our last breath.  With each breath, we cherish the hope of life, the hope we invest in our families and friends and the hope we have worked for to build a better earth.  Such hope is our resurrection and our assurance of life ever after.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. said near the end of his life, “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to BE, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.  And so today I still have a dream.”

Hope for Jews and, indeed, for any survivor or person who overcomes a struggle, incorporates a mindset that remains determined and positive.  It is a well-known truth that people who survive near death experiences, when others around them give up and perish, are those who looked death in the eye and made a conscious decision to fight.  Hope, as many experts assert, is not mindless optimism or fantasy.  It is grounded in reality and observes the possible while choosing not to give up.  It accepts the fact that nothing in life is a guarantee but such a fact cannot allow one to be a pessimist.  Using hope to one’s advantage, a person must refuse to be defeated by setbacks but rather to learn and be encouraged by them.  Hope is not mindless but is rather strategic and rational – one uses the mind to analyze a situation and then plan the best way forward.  A person incorporates his or her values into hope – am I yearning only for self-gratification or does my hope aspire to something greater than myself – to be alive and thus empowered to do more good for others?  A person with realistic hopes heeds the advice from other people and does not allow pride to stand in the way of listening and accepting  appropriate wisdom.  Such assistance gives hope added substance and power.  As much as good hope is not rooted in pride and gladly accepts help, one must also concentrate on helping oneself.  This involves actual work to realize what one desires.  It also involves continual efforts to eliminate barriers to growth and learning.  What can I do to actively create the hope I have?  How does my negative thinking hold me back from positive hope and positive action?  How can I change my negative thoughts and, instead, look ahead with realistic dreams?  Finally, hopeful persons are creative and adventurous.  They see possibilities around every corner: they are curious and excited about new opportunities in life.

I have said before that one of the most satisfying perks of my work is the privilege to get to know many people in deeply personal ways.  The stories I hear inspire me and give me hope in the goodness and beauty of all humanity.  From a mother who is back at college and cares for challenged children – determined to create a good life for them, to one who fights great health challenges with grace and peace, to those who are emerging from the closet into a brave new world of gay identity, to one who is resolute about finding a new and exciting job, to activists who fight for the rights of prisoners, animals, students, addicts, gays and lesbians, the homeless and poor, to parents who tirelessly yearn and work for the health and well-being of children, partner and family – such people are hope personified.  Indeed, a message about hope could simply be a recital of yours and other’s life stories.

Too often I lose sight of the hope I have within me – to make a difference, to live with joy, to leave this world at peace.  I can despair and I can mourn petty challenges.  But the few dark days of my very blessed life – when I was fired for coming out as a gay man, when I lost too many good friends, when I have parted ways with those I still deeply love, the pilot light of hope harbored in my soul was somehow never extinguished.  In time, such hope burned bright again and I was restored, I survived.  In working through a few minor struggles even today, I must hold onto that hope.  Life is too precious.  Life is filled with too many good and caring people.  It offers new adventures every day.  Life challenges us to do the work of building better selves and, a better world.  I must remind myself that as long as such truths are self-evident, there is hope.  In the midst of any darkness, we must yearn for hope’s bright flame and then we must help light it.  No matter the difficulty, no matter the pain, no matter the sorrow, the loneliness, the loss, or the nearness of death – may we never give up, never give up, Never……Ever……Give Up!

I wish all of you much peace and even more joy.

 

(c) Nicholas Hoesl, guest speaker at the Gathering UCC, All Rights Reserved

 

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