Radical Views on Facebook....

I have friends on Facebook who are far right and far left; ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal; polar opposites of each other. The stuff they post on their walls supports their radical views.

Yes, both sides have radical views.

I am thankful for the folks who tend to hang out in the middle and are more moderate in the opinions, status updates and links that they share. I believe that the truth usually lies somewhere around the middle of the radical opinions voiced by the two opposite ends of the spectrum.  Both ends tend to see only through the lens of their own worldview, rarely stepping out of character, but it seems to me that the ones on the right have the most ridiculous, biased, “are you kidding me” ideas.

Today one of these far righters posted a link to an article that talked about the third mosque bombing in Sweden. The site is “israelnationalnews.com”

"People saw a man throwing something burning at the building," police in Uppsala, where the latest arson took place, said in a statement quoted by AFP. They added that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind "a text on the door expressing contempt for religion."

The slur on the door said, “Go home Muslim shit.”

Although the article did not reek of bias, the opinions expressed in the comments were disgusting.

And meanwhile on Facebook, there was high-fiving about a place of worship being vandalized.

Really?

Wishing you a Merry Christmas

I haven’t posted anything about the Christmas Wars this year which is my usual holiday tradition. So here is my a day late and a dollar short snippet….

Have you read about the grumpy guy who, in true Grinch-like fashion, disrupted an entire plane full of travelers because he was irate that the ticket agent and a flight attendant wished him a “Merry Christmas?” He was eventually booted from the plane amidst cheers from fellow passengers.

Really, bud, you need to just chill. I know airline travel sucks and I’ve seen grumpy, surly, scowling, seasoned travelers when I’ve traveled. They have that “don’t eff with me” demeanor. Perhaps you are one of those guys. We aren’t privy to the private details of your life that might have added to the duress brought on by the cheerfulness of the staff who had to work on the holiday. Still, you don’t get points for being bright since you should realize airlines just don’t mess around anymore. Toe the line or you are off the plane….or arrested!

Really, we all need to chill. Accept the holiday greetings (whatever form they take) as a gesture of goodwill and peace on earth. That is something we can surely all agree are in too short of supply during the holidays and all the year long…..

Image courtesy of samarttiw at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Ann Voskamp - a treasure

I need to type fast because I have a lot to say and it is already three minutes past the time I should be up and moving toward my final goal for this morning.  My goal this morning? Clocking in before my start time (instead of shortly after.) Nobody is really watching. I am allowed to be independent like that because I have willingly taken on a lion’s share of work and I have permission and the willingness to stay long after my normal clock out time. 

A department within our larger department is in transition. There is a lot I could say about that, but I won’t.  We really aren't supposed to talk specifics about our job on social media. Well, I really think it is probably more that we are not allowed to talk TRASH about our job on social media.  No problem….about this situation, I have no trash to talk.  

It is very challenging. As they say in PC speak, it is one of those “opportunities to grow.”  I should take notes so I can write about it….my methodology, my thought process…..the life jacket systems that are keeping me from drowning. Ad lib, ad hoc, systems …… improvising as I go along. I’m  pedaling….or should I say paddling…..as fast as I can.  

But that is not what I wanted to write about this morning. l wanted to write about someone named Ann Voskamp. You may be familiar with her but I wasn't. She is a repeat NY Times best selling author. Mother, wife to a farmer, home schooler, missionary, Christian, blogger, photographer, author, baker, hard worker. She has a way with words unlike most...any?....I have read before.  Using them in peculiar ways and places in her prose. Pairing unlikely words together in a sentence. Sometimes a phrase takes me aback.  A sharp inhale of resonating recognition. “Wow,” I think to myself. “Profound,” I silently whisper.  

Somehow her blog comes to my AOL email. I can’t remember how I ended up on her website. I vaguely remember it was via Pinterest….and she had something free that I wanted.  The price….sign up for her mailing list. I am so glad I did.  She “waxes poetic” several times a week in my in box. 

I encourage you to check out her blog, her ministries, (scroll down to the bottom for links to ministries like Compassion and the Esther Initiative and more) and her books.

What is Interfaith?

A weekend or so ago, on our way to the airport for a quick Saturday morning look at the last of the fall foliage...from 4000 feet in the air, Keith and I got into a discussion about the Muslim prayer service held at National Cathedral in Washington, DC. That morning I watched a video of the woman who stood up during the prayer service, disrupting everything, pointing to what must have been a picture of Jesus….declaring him Lord of Lords, King of Kings as she proclaimed the Christian way as the right way...the only way….THE way.

Keith sided with the woman and commended her for standing up for what she truly believed. I sided against the women, pointing out she should not have disrupted the service. He didn't think the prayer service should have been in the church to begin with. I thought it was perfectly fine and an example of what “interfaith” looks like. But the more I think about it, the more I question whether it really was such a good idea to hold a Muslim prayer service in an Episcopal church.

Now I am all into interfaith, inclusion, pluralism. I love the Co-exist picture that shows the symbols for many faiths. I truly believe that there is a TRUTH that is higher and more profound than the truth that is found in separate religions. There are truths in all religions. There are untruths in all religions. But THE TRUTH supersedes every religion.

My own personal “finger pointing at the moon” is Christianity. Sometimes the loud ramblings of some of the far right fundamentalists make me a bit reluctant to voluntarily place myself in the same religious category they claim to belong to. Things like Fred Hamm’s Creation Museum, theocracy and the War on Christmas campaign are just….embarrassing….. to, in any way, associate myself with. But then, Jesus associates himself with the far right fundamentalist Christians so who am I to get all uppity and on my high horse? Besides, I don’t fit in any other category. I truly believe that Jesus was the clearest image of the invisible God. Emmanuel, God with us, name above all names….blessed redeemer…..living word.

I do wonder sometimes if the far right understands the things he said and commanded and proclaimed. Their world view seems so far from the example he set in words, deeds and beliefs. His teachings are pretty clear and straightforward….and just in case we don’t get it the first time when we read the book of Matthew, there are three more gospels that proclaim his sayings and doings. Why the redundancy? So we clearly see HIM from the perspective of four different gospel writers? So we get the point? So we can’t be all wishy washy and unclear on what he said and did...and where he came and went….and the outcasts and sinners he associated with? I think so. Some of his sayings, which are often ignored by so many of his followers are clear cut and unambiguous.

Oh sure, since scripture is like an onion, layer upon layer, there are nuances and depths and meanings hidden beneath (contained within?) the plain meaning. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “When Jesus said to love your enemies, I’m pretty sure he meant don’t kill them.” Love your enemies. Forgive 7 times 70. Go the extra mile….give them your cape too...don’t murder in your heart or commit adultery in your thoughts, don’t be all judgy or you will be judged. Do I have these things all down pat? Hell, no. I don’t even really like it that he said some of these things that totally go against my instincts. But I don’t deny they are there and “yes, but” and talk around them and make excuses about them or explain them away. I’m a work in progress, I guess….and I am a Christian who is gung ho for the interfaith movement.

So getting back to the subject of this post…lf the local mosque had burned to the ground or was in some way unusable then, yes, it could be considered a gracious, generous move to allow that “congregation” to worship in a local Christian church on a Friday night. But that was not the case and I don’t think it was the brightest or purest idea to hold a Muslim prayer service in an Episcopal church. This was an overkill moment in interfaith, a showy, staged demonstration of pluralism. Except that it wasn't. It was not inclusive but rather exclusive….focusing only on the Muslim faith (a faith I have NO problem with...other than those radical extremists bent on killing the infidel and waging jihad) If the service had been all faiths, worshiping together….a rabbi, a priest, a preacher and an imam leading the service in solidarity and blending the sacred from all of those faith traditions, that is my version of interfaith.

Realizing that we all see through a glass darkly and holding fast to our beliefs while respectfully giving others the same courtesy is interfaith. Focusing on our similarities instead of our differences while raising our voices in praise to the most high God is interfaith. Discussing, mulling, pondering and considering other views...that is interfaith.

A while back I saw pictures of several examples that moved me and demonstrate the true spirit of interfaith. Christians formed a human chain around praying Muslims and Muslims returning the favor by protecting a church during Mass. Links to the original articles and some of the pictures follow….

Here, Here, Here and Here.....

The Lovely Trees

Last weekend, I drove from my home in Williamsport, Pennsylvania to visit my mom in Ellwood City. Williamsport is in the middle of the state…. toward the north. Ellwood City is about an hour from the Ohio border so the trip involves driving across a big chunk of Pennsylvania on Interstate 80.

Interstate 80 is bordered by mountains almost the whole length of the drive. The trip is scenic in any season, sometimes breathtakingly so. Usually  my attention is honed in on  driving defensively….checking my mirrors, keeping an eye on the trucks and the hot shots trying to drive 20 or 30 mph over the speed limit. But on this trip, my eyes were repeatedly drawn to the hillsides.

They were varying, blended shades of a dark, rusty, tannish, blackish brown. They reminded me of the color of sienna, umber and burnt umber crayons; drab colors that made a  perfect background for the few trees whose leaves are still almost shockingly vivid and aglow. Bright, bright yellows; the crayon  you might pick to draw the yolk of an egg. Almost illuminated. Glowing...shimmery.  And the RED ones.  Capital letter red. Just the most breathtaking shades of red. I shook my head and exclaimed  “wow”a time or two, amazed at the splendor. And really….the colors could only be described with words like splendor.

It was raining a lot of the way but even the dark mistiness served as a contrast to those iridescent trees.  

There is a message there someone. Some spiritual implication.  Keith has always been fond of saying that things in the natural are reflections of profound spiritual truths. As above, so below. I can’t quite put my finger on it...but something is there hiding. It’s nagging at me like a name I can’t remember, the words to a song, a memory that is almost, but not quite clear.

Some things that come to mind….

The quote from Ann Voskamp, a blogger/author I've been reading lately. In one post she said she told her husband, the Farmer

…..that it was brave, the way the trees made dying look glorious.

And the controversy in the news and Christian circles recently about the young woman with incurable, terminal, late stage brain cancer. She chose to take her own life before the ravages of the disease plunged her into a real living hell. Some folks say she is brave. Other folks say she is a coward.

I’m inclined to say that it’s easy to take the high road when it’s not your path to walk.

And then another thought that is a game changer, a different perspective on this process we witness every fall as we sigh and lament that “winter is just around the corner.” Leaves do not just fall from the trees. The trees actively shed them.

Apparently, when the days start getting shorter and colder, trees start to seal off the place where leaf stem meets tree branch with a row of cells called "abscission" cells. The tree could not survive the winter with leaves attached because of moisture loss and such so the leaves have to go.

So really, it is the leaf that dies….not the tree. Come spring, the tree is good to go and sprouts new leaves. The leaf that fell in the fall is gone. Hmmmmmm….

If the natural hints at the spiritual, what do the trees and their colorful, dying leaves tell us?

We have one of those trees with tenacious leaves that hang on and on (and on) in our front yard. It is an ornamental pear tree that we planted when it was about the same height as I am now.  They are slow growers but  it is probably 20 feet tall….and a lovely, sturdy (yet elegant) tree. Our neighbor has a much bigger one in her front yard. They seem to be in sync and their leaves are still there late into the fall.

Our pear trees are still all green with only the tips of a few leaves showing some reddish tinges at the edges. Keith grumbled the other day that he will be raking leaves in mid November.  

The world is tired, the year is old,The faded leaves are glad to die...~Sara Teasdale, "November"

Not the leaves on our pear trees..... 

More about Prayer....

I was going through the list of prayer quotes I have stashed away in Evernote. I came upon a quote that I wanted to include in this series of posts. I hadn’t saved the source of the quote. A quick copy and paste into Google provided the answer right away. The source was Richard Rohr. He said:

The traditional and most universal word to describe a different access to truth was simply “to pray about something.” But that lovely word “prayer” has been so deadened by pious use and misuse that we now have to describe this different mental attitude with new words. I am going to introduce a different word here, so you can perceive in a fresh way, and perhaps appreciate what we mean by contemplation. The word is “resonance.”
Prayer is actually setting out a tuning fork. All you can really do in the spiritual life is get tuned to receive the always-present message. Once you are tuned, you will receive, and it has nothing to do with worthiness or the group you belong to, but only inner resonance and a capacity for mutuality (Matthew 7:7-11). The Sender is absolutely and always present and broadcasting; the only change is with the receiver station.

Or as Anne Lamott wrote in her book, “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

....when you pray, you are not starting the conversation from scratch, just remembering to plug back into a conversation that's always in progress.

One of the sites that popped up in the Google search results led to a blog called “Progressive Redneck Preacher.” He published a post about a week ago entitled “Tuning into the Sacred Song: Our Week in the Living Word.” He included the tuning fork quote in that post.

He mainly wrote about a type of prayer called Breath Prayer. (and his experience with it over the course of a week) A breath prayer is a short phrase uttered soundlessly to the rhythm of our breathing….inhaling and exhaling. Examples that I particularly like…..

Inhale – “Peace”

Exhale – “Be still”

Or how about this one….that fits well with this type of prayer

Inhale – “Closer is He than breathing”

Exhale – “Nearer than hands and feet”

You get the idea. There were several links in the post that led to some websites that went into this prayer (and others) in more detail. I looked around a bit online and couldn’t find any sites better than two of the ones he listed;

Ten Ways to Pray

and

Soul Shepherding

The effectiveness of this prayer (in quieting our body and mind and in honing our listening to God skills) seems to be a blending of the physical and the spiritual. We all know that deep, slow rhythmic breathing calms the body. Take a deep breath. Calm down. Take ten deep breaths. Calm down even more. Sometimes when I am very, very stressed I realize I am barely breathing at all. Short, shallow, hardly there intakes of air. No wonder I feel anxious. I’m suffocating.

I have a thing about the dentist. Not a good thing either. It isn't really about the pain. It is more about the claustrophobic feeling that comes with tubes that suck and spray, grinding drills and all those hands in my face. Keith reminded me once to take deep, calming breaths. It was one of the methods he used to help his scared silly skydiving students stay calm enough to focus as they jumped out of the airplane.

The slow, steady breathing involved with this kind of prayer coupled with a calming phrase from or about scripture seems a perfect combination. On the site that talked about various ways to pray, they recommended using your ten fingers to count…yep…ten deep prayer breaths and then pausing to offer a praise or a petition or even just a moment of silent contemplation. 

And in one of the articles I read, they used Anne Lamott’s simple prayer from Traveling Mercies as an example of a Breath Prayer.

Here are the two best prayers I know:“Help me, help me, help me” and "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Turn that into a Breath Prayer....

Inhale – Help me, help me, help me

Exhale – Thank you, thank you thank you

More coming about different ways to help us pray....

Max and Anne - Views on Prayer

While scrolling down through my Facebook feed, I came upon a snippet of an interview on the 700 Club with Max Lucado. Max is my all-time favorite Christian author. His book, He Still Moves Stones, was one of the first Christian books I ever read. I love his writing style….I love how clearly he expresses the love of God for his children. 

They talked about two things in the interview:

His support of Husain Abdullah in a recent USA editorial where he said:

Which is why the sight of Abdullah, a Muslim who sat out the 2012 season to go on a pilgrimage, being penalized was hard to watch. Tim Tebow brought gridiron prayer to the forefront with his iconic kneeling in gratitude. And countless other professional football players have been seen kneeling in an end zone prayer. 

For decades competitors have bowed their heads, crossed their hearts, kissed their rosaries and lifted their eyes to heaven as they sought favor on the fields of competition. Is a little petition or gratitude so bad? If the act is sincere toward God as opposed to insincere, for show, what is the harm?

Indeed, what is the harm? And while so many evangelical Christians got themselves all worked up at Tebow’s critics, where was the outrage about Abdullah’s fifteen yard penalty? Oh yeah…..he was bowing to the “wrong” God.  I think it was quite gutsy of Max to come out in support of Abdullah.   
         

And anyway, the story had a happy ending because the NFL apologized and said the official was wrong and that players can, indeed, pray.

The other topic of the interview was his new book, Before Amen. Max admits to being a prayer wimp. He’s mentioned his difficulties with prayer in other books he's written. He said “doing something for God” comes more naturally to him that “praying to God.” (That is a paraphrase, by the way) Through the years he’s developed what he refers to as the pocket prayer. He studied all the prayers in the Bible and summed them up into six short sentences.

Father, You are good. I need help. So do they. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.

I love it. He succinctly sums it all up in those short sentences.

I rarely say a traditional prayer. I truly believe I always have God’s ear. I feel like he is paying attention as I go about my day….typing reports, checking my email, eating lunch, going to the bathroom.  Doesn’t “pray without ceasing” mean that I thank him for small blessings throughout the day, tell him I love him, ask his to watch over my children or let him know I am quite miffed at the way he is allowing some things to play out.

Anne Lamott (another of my favorites) also has a book out about prayer. In my next post (no, not an empty promise) I’ll talk about “Help, Thanks, Wow: The ThreeEssential Prayers” by Anne Lamott.