Dreaming Different Futures

I read too much science fiction as a child - well - to be honest, Sci-Fi is still my staple.

And for the most part, the "type" of science fiction that I gravitate towards is the imaginative dystopian hard science stuff where authors are dreaming of a future state of being and how that affects us.

So, for example, Robert Heinlein was one of my mentors in the field and he talked about everything from religion to race, sex and politics in his groundbreaking work like Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.

Or think about Orson Scott Card and Ender's Game.

These works were meant to criticise the way we do things, the way we are, and to subtly point to other possibilities.

Like what if the marriage idea was wrong and we should be polyamorous? What if men were, in fact, inferior to women? What if militarism was left unchecked?

But I digress from what I was going to write about - which was just a quick sketch of a dream I just came up with for moving forward with society after the pandemic.

(by the way - this is by far the perfect science fiction story - and in fact, has been written a few times check our Steven King's the Stand or Margaret Atwood's MadAdam series)

So - here is my science fiction suggestion for moving forward.

First and foremost - every household, everywhere, every class and country - needs free high-speed internet, probably from Elon Musk's Starlink Satellites. We also all need free state of the art computer systems and "smart" enabled devices.

These should no longer be for-profit creations - well, in a perfect world nothing should - but I am willing to start there.

This is step one - and you are not going to immediately agree with me on step two - but suspend your disbelief for a second.

Step two is that we sell off every school, every police station, every doctor's office, every church, every psychiatric clinic, every public health clinic, etc. Especially those that are government-funded or require tax breaks.

Step three is that we build campus organizations where all of these professionals work, together, along with high tech infrastructure and broadcasting studios.

NOW

Here is the thing, we start having multidisciplinary teams producing educational and creative resources that educate children, teach holistic health, manage conflict, embrace spirituality, and provide - through the internet - all the resources necessary to create "health" in the population.

Yes, we would still need hospitals, and teams that could be dispatched to deal with crime or emergent situations.

But in reality, we would be approaching the human situation from a whole different perspective while at the same time cutting an incredible amount of cost. Each of these campuses would create content that is regional, that honours every culture and race and sexuality and background - but at the same time does not have to reinvent the wheel as they would all be networked as well.

We would instantly level up humanity worldwide.

The reason we do not do this is that we are stuck in archaic patterns of professional services that are stuck in outdated thought patterns and traditions.

And I would argue that this is because of racism and elitism, classism and sexism - all of those isms.

Otherwise, we would have been working together on all this stuff long ago.

Why do we have two dental clinics in the same small town, one of which offers better care for higher prices and one of which offers to take anyone?

Why do we have food banks, churches, and social workers all doing the work while not communicating with each other?

Because we believe some people deserve better care. It is as plain, as simple, and as horrible as that.

Oh, and it also has to do with turning a profit. That is why I am fed up with capitalism and our current economic lie of trickle-down wealth.

So my solution might not be the best, and it might not be feasible, I am not a city planner or a sociologist.

But here is the thing. Even I in my little corner of the world can come up with a better solution than how we currently do it. I am willing to bet there are hundreds, if not millions of solutions that would make the world a better, and safer place - that would allow us to accomplish more with less, and that would keep us safe.

We do not implement them because they do not make anyone rich.

So here is my idea. Close the schools and make teaching an online resource. But while we are at it. Close the rest and force us to work together. I am 99% certain that it would only make the world worse for the 1%.

Rebellion in Creation

As a progressive Christian writer - I walk the fine line of apologist for a faith that I often find no longer speaks in a way that engages us. The specifically Christian ethos and attitudes that once were seen as the norm are no longer a part of the society we live in - with good reason, and with good riddance. 

But as a spiritual being, one who finds meaning in the deeper things, the thin places between the infinite and the known - I find the stories of our tradition are useful to set us in a context that allows us to recognize the reality of the world in a slightly askew way. Being able to question the "it just is" answer that so likely follows any plaintiff cry of "why."

It is for this precise reason that we created myths of our earliest beginnings. 

We all did. 

The Christian "God created the world in seven days, formed Adam from the ground and Eve from Adam" is just one of a thousand - itself a copy and reworking of older near eastern myths such as the Babylonian Enuma Elis. 

They are just that - cultural, religious, and traditional stories that set the stage and create a narrative for our continuing existence. 

Since I live on the East Coast of Canada, the oldest actual creation story of my "place" is that of the Wabanaki Confederacy peoples. I came to know the story through the Mi'kmaq, who tell of the creative spirit of all, Grandfather, who brought Glooscap into life. Glooscap roamed the entire planet and learned much about it - but was not complete until the Eagle came from the Great Spirit and told him he would be joined by his family. His family turns out to be a grandmother who teaches him the wisdom of the earth - and then various nephews, sisters, and others who teach him the ways of all of creation. 

It is a wonderful story that is meant to show us that alone we are not understanding the larger reality - and it is only when we become harmonious in our relationship with every aspect of creation - when we see everything as brother and sister, from the raven to the martin, to Susie on the corner - that we are fully "born."

I do not speak for the First People and so it is their story and I am only giving you a glimpse of what I heard and read so that you can, perhaps, want to learn more - from the keepers of such a sacred story. 

But more than that, I, as a keeper of my seven-day story of Adam and Eve - want you to see that no matter whether you are looking at a story written by near Asian, European, African, or North American peoples thousands of years ago - our creation stories all say the same thing: 

When "human" came to be - they were lost and alone. And in order to find wholeness they simply needed to recognize that they were part of everything - and only whole when all was in harmony. Every animal is a sister and brother, while every plant is a thing of sacred beauty. 

Of course, many of those stories go on to point out that almost immediately we rebelled against this wisdom - that human nature is, unfortunately, broken. And by broken, we mean that it is self-centred and violent and individualistic. These are not things to be proud of, the legends remind us, but problems to be overcome. 

How did we get so far away from the stories our ancestors told around the fires?

My grandfather once took me and a cousin out to supper - we were teenagers who were visiting Florida "on our own" after a fashion and in order to be the "big man" I kept insisting that I pay for my own supper. 

My grandmother turned to me at one point and said, "Put your wallet away, Your grandfather is trying to do a nice thing, you are better than that." 

It is a meaningless example, but it was powerful to me and in nearly 30 years I have never even forgotten the annoyed tone of her voice and the way it instantly brought me back to realizing how I was insulting him by trying to be important myself. 

It is her voice I hear always ringing in my ears - "you are better than that."

To reclaim the myths of our ancestors is a scary thing. Mostly because it would mean acknowledging how far we are from how we were created to be. 

It was, after all, this lie that we tell ourselves, that I am more important, that I am different, that I am capable of forging my own destiny, and that no one else matters, that is at the heart of the reason we no longer live in the garden of Eden. 

Earth ceased being a paradise when we started thinking the individual mattered more than the whole. 

And I am ashamed to say that it was the church, almost from the very beginning, that has brought us here - to the place where the only way a black woman can have her voice heard is to shout it violently in the streets. It is the church who says God created everything to be "Good" but then relegates Native Wisdom to the mutterings of savages. It is the church that somehow twisted the message of Jesus to love everyone and everything with our whole heart, mind and soul - into some sort of personal salvation mantra that comes on the backs of everyone else. 

We need to rediscover the wisdom of our ancients - but more importantly, we need to realize we are the problem and figure out how to become part of the solution. 

It starts with admitting we were wrong. 

God's Preferential Option For the Poor and why clergy get it wrong

When Modern Western Society was being formed, there came to be what was called "The Three Estates." In other words - there were three types of people in the world:

The Clergy - the Nobility - The Masses.

You were either, a priest, a prince, or a nobody. Life was that simple.

I think the church at that point had forgotten its roots. It forgot that Jesus was part of the third estate, a nobody, a poor person with a social agenda. I don't think we ever really got it back.

The church has always had an identity problem. It is caused by the fact that Jesus was poor and talked about helping the poor - but the church is almost exclusively made up of middle-class folks, and ruled by the societal elite.

I know we do not want to hear this - I know so many pastors, clergy, priests - who over and over claim they are just common ordinary folk.

Well. No.

Like it or not - we are different.

And I do not mean made holy and set apart by God. That is either a construct of our powerful hierarchy or it is something we say to make ourselves feel better.

I mean we are different in that we are part of the ruling elite - we are just not paid enough for it to be part of the societal elite in our hyper financialized class structure. 

Clergy are hyper-educated. Even the minority of people who go straight into the first estate have a minimum of two University Degrees. Many of us have a whole other career we trained for as well, and a huge percentage of us have more than two degrees.

Secondly - we get decision making power in a society that is really out of tune with the average jane. I can talk to the mayor about how I think something should be done - and they will probably consider it. People listen to me for advice on everything from how to bake bread to whether or not to leave their spouse. A clergy person has a scary amount of power when it comes to influencing.

People tell us their secrets. Almost everyone.

All of this, for as long as there have been professional religious leaders, has gotten us into trouble repeatedly. Think about Rasputin in the Russian Court or Richelieu in the French Court. Think about paedophile priests and native residential schools.

I wonder if it causes more problems now than it ever did.

And I wonder if this is because we pretend it is not true.

The current pandemic is changing the social landscape. I no longer think it will last long enough to change it permanently. But something else will probably happen and continue the work the virus began.

Which is the work of rebalancing society?

And what we are discovering is that the third estate, the ones we always discount as being not the elite of society, are the only ones making society function. I mean, if you take away a priest or a politician from a local community - there will still be food, and water, and fire, and shelter... as long as there are farmers, carpenters, labourers... There will still be joy and spiritual depth as long as there are still poets and musicians...

Here is the secret that everyone has always known - the third estate, the huddled masses, the poor... they are the ones who matter the most.

And when we use religious language, when we sing hymns from hymn books, when we make prayers responsive and use words that no one understands - we shut everyone out from experiencing what Religion is all about.

Greta Vosper talked about removing the magical language from religion and stop making it like we are talking to some other "being" like the great Santa Clause in the sky... and this was a good corrective.

But I think there is another step necessary here. We need to strip religion of class. That is the far more dangerous aspect of what we do - maintain a class structure that no longer serves anyone well.

We need to abandon religious trappings and become "plain" in what we do. We need to realize that the Quakers and Mennonites were the ones who best understood Luther and the whole point of the church reformation back in the early 1500's. They were trying to make faith accessible to the common person.

So no more words like epiclesis, exhortation, benediction, or sacrament. No more reading King James Bibles from the pulpit as if those words meant anything to anyone any more. No more robes and collars and ridiculousness.

If these days have taught us anything - it is that the stories of faith, the stories of goodness, the actions and language we need to use to change the world - are not ours, they belong to those who live life every single day from the gutter up.

I have a friend I have never met in Memphis - a guitar player who knows my wife - who was outside of a Walgreen's on the weekend and gave some Gatorade and protein snacks to a homeless guy... A minute later another homeless guy ambled across the street and the first one, now with a bag of groceries, says, "I got ya covered man" and hands him a Gatorade and Lunchable.

See - that is what Jesus was like. And that is what we should be like too. That is religion and those are the stories we need to tell.

We All Need Somebody... to Hay ay ate...

I posted a small philosophical rant on Facebook around the reality of mass shootings. Or perhaps the prevalence of mass shootings. In those short paragraphs, I suggested that it was once not a part of my reality at all - but the shootings in Montreal at the Polytechnique and in 'Merica at Columbine began a slippery slope in which mass shootings happen more often and in more places.

So what happened?

I should back up a moment and tell you that yes, I do realize this to be an oversimplification. I realize there was violence previous to this. The stonewall riots for example. Or the Northern Ireland conflicts. We have always been a species prone to violence.

But when I stop and examine what I am saying a little more closely - what has changed is the specificity of the violence.

"Back in my day," which I am getting old enough to actually say now, the targets of violence made sense. It was not correct. It was not moral. But... you could sit back in your armchair while watching the nightly news and say - oh... they are after the blacks again. Or the gays. It was domestic violence. It was... you see what I am saying - there was a rhyme and a reason.

But now, buddy in Nova Scotia kills 18 or more people whom he randomly pulls over. A guy drives a van through a crowd. In  Las Vegas a man takes random shots into a concert crowd - and we sit back trying to figure out what in tarnation caused them to decide to go on a shooting spree. Usually never finding an answer.

So there were replies to my post. There was a fairly good discussion. But I had another discussion with a colleague in the background that made me wonder about another possibility.

Something we do not say out loud.

Maybe we were happier when there was someone to look down on.

I am not advocating what I am about to say. I am examining it from a philosophical and sociological point of view. So bear with me just a second and reserve judgement in terms of writing this off.

You see, once upon a time - in my lifetime... black people, indigenous people, gay people, women, poor people, welfare recipients, mentally challenged people and even crippled people were inferior to me. It was shown to me in subtle and overt ways. Jokes and movie portrayals, right through to outright acts of belligerence. They were all sort of normal because, well, they were inferior.

Again - this is not how I feel now, nor do I believe it "should" have been how I felt then.

But back in the day, it was politically correct to find someone in another category of life, and determine that they were the enemy, or at least if not the enemy, then inferior to me.

Which in turn allowed me to feel good about myself.

There was an old prayer once in one of our religious traditions, I won't call them out, but it was a famous prayer that you said when you woke up in the morning and part of it said "Thank God I am not a woman, I am not a..." it was an actual, written prayer, counting blessings, by pointing out that if God had hated us, he would have made us.... (black, female, gay, poor...)

And by default - being a white male person of privilege was to be blessed.

I wonder, if by creating political correctness, we took away, not only the easy target, but also our own self-worth. Certainly, we have heard men, in particular, speak like this as feminism was taking root in the '80s and '90s. If we were not the superior species, then what were we? All of a sudden there was a crisis of identity. And it was necessary, and it was good, and the way men are now is way, way, way better. But...

Think of this on a global scale. Now, no matter who you are - woman, indigenous, gay, white, crazy... no matter who you are, we live in a society where everyone is equal and everyone has value.

On the surface that is a wonderful thing. But is it also forcing those people on the outer edges of sanity to not be able to make peace with their own inner demons?

Was the ability to express anger and outrage at another "group" one of the safety factors that vented hostility which would otherwise be focused on the self?

I keep feeling I have to go back and say, once more, I am not advocating a return to racism, sexism,  classism, ableism, heteronomous though or anything of the sort. I am merely trying to ask if we might see this as a possible turning point in society from whence came crazy unfocused violence.

Is it really rage at the self, at the parts of the self we do not like, outwardly manifested as a shooting spree?

And is this rage exacerbated by the fact that there is no one we can focus that negativity on? Did hating gays at least allow me to repress the violence I felt towards my own homoerotic ideas? for example.

Did hating women allow me to feel that at least as a man I had built in masculinity and power and so I did not feel weak and powerless?

I wonder...

I wonder if that is behind the rise of random violence?

And the solution, by the way, if I am even close to correct, would not be going back to a less egalitarian way of thinking. The solution would be to recognize that there is darkness in people that we are not addressing.

I think perhaps whenever we change systems or ways of thought we tend to gloss over some of the negative consequences and feel they will just go away. No one wanted to admit that there was actually a sociological reason why having a group be "lesser" helped soothe the ego of people in the group that was "greater." And because no one ever admitted that, no one worked at finding other, healthier ways, for us to cope with our inner demons.

As an aside, the more I thought about this the more other factors of modern society have clicked into place for me. Again, no science behind any of this, just observational data and it could be false - but I am an op/ed writer, not a scientist.

For example, the rise in populism within politics and the way Donald Trump, and now others, gathered large swathes of supporters simply by putting other people down.

Does this back up what I am saying? We are actually hungry for someone to hate so that we can feel better about ourselves. And in a world that tells us, it is so terribly morally wrong to hate anyone - we feel lost. But along comes Trump and essentially ignores the last 40 years. Women, gays, blacks, Mexicans, Islamic folks, they are all the enemy now...

And it makes the listener feel like, finally, I am the winner! Without having to do anything to earn that praise. By being a white, racist, male, I am perfect! And so there is a rise of self-worth, a rise of pride, and we jump on the bandwagon.

It is not America First that Trump actually sold. It is a white male first.

Seeing how effective this rhetoric was for him, and others only solidify my assumption that there is something dark and unaddressed in the modern human psyche that has to do with my need to feel better than others.

How do we fix this?

Quarentine Roulette

I have posted memes on Facebook which amount to saying this: Things were broken, let's not go back.

The black and white divide between the past and the future I am calling out is, of course, artificial. And I have attributed those posts to economics, capitalism, lack of socialism, broken health and tax systems... a number of "culprits" who when taken at face value, are probably not to blame.

The other thing I have seen over the last few weeks is a so called divide opening up between introverts and extroverts. Those who are okay with being locked in a house and those who are needing to leave.

Now this divide is also artificial but has equally black and white factors attributed to it. I need to see people, I need a hug, I never liked people anyway, I read books, I have a cat... all kinds of people saying all kinds of things as if they were the one and only answer.

A problem with social media has always been presentation of ideas. How I present something makes a difference, and in social media most people present "opinions" as not merely "facts" but as somehow brought down from the mountain on stone tablets.

Carved in stone truth for everyone is rarely found in social discussion.

But we sort of know that.

So I wonder what is really behind the messages. What is at the root of thrive or failure to thrive in the pandemic world?

I am going to present some ideas born from discussion with my wife and consideration of our families and see if they might not round out some of the edges of what is causing problems both now, before, and potentially after.

None of this might ring true for you - but I think good discussion makes you think, and so I am presenting this as something to think about.

Extrovert and Introvert is a false label. Or rather, has become a shortcut, used to describe very limited understandings. To be an extrovert means more than needing to go outside. To be an introvert means more than needing to be alone.

Here are some issues around that - how comfortable are you reflecting on your own life? How comfortable are you in your own house? How much do you need to be around other people? Do you like to be in a crowd? When new ideas crop up in your head do you need to talk to other people about them? How much television is actually healthy?

You see - the ideas are complex. And when we say, I am an introvert I am ok - it could mean SO many different things that there is no easy label on why that is true.

Take me, I am somewhat introverted in that I recharge emotional energy by being alone. However, I cannot for the life of me sit in one place for longer than, say, half an hour. In the round of a week I usually travel, say, 400 km just driving from one place to the next - sometimes for no reason.

I cannot not have my mind occupied - so I need to be "doing" something all the time. But is that an extrovert quality or ADHD?

I have anxiety and PTSD but that does not mean that I do not thrive off of constant newness. I do not even drive home from the store using the same route I took.

So jsut for myself, there is no easy label. And I imagine that is true for others as well.

How about the economy, social safety net, etc.

I say it was broken but the reasons I say it was broken may not resonate with anyone else.

I think it sucks that the main point of most of our lives is sustenance employment. It takes two breadwinners most of their week to earn enough money to provide human basic needs. That should not be true. We should have way more time to paint, make music, love, food, etc. Or at least that is how I feel.

I always thought communal living would be a better answer. Still do. If we were in groups of 10-15 now instead of groups of 2-4 would that not be better? But again, that is me.

I do not value "stuff" the way others do. I wear old clothes and buy most of what I own at Giant Tiger. But I need high end tech and expensive rum, as well as trips across the country.

What we value and why differs from each person, and it differs greatly.

I guess when I say the old system was broken I am meaning the system that said getting rich was the plan, having 1.4 kids was the plan, working more than 40 hours per week was the plan, always buying the next new thing was the plan... these are the things I am glad have been taken away by the pandemic.

Now what is important is keeping healthy. What is important is finding joy where you are. What is important is spending time with family. What is important is making do with what you have.

And in those ways I feel joy in my heart.

But "I" think, and again, this is an opinion, that what needed to change, and may yet perhaps change in this - is that our value system needs to change.

And it is not about how we run an economy, it is not about whether we are introverted or extroverted, it is not about rich or poor, gender, sexuality, or anything that we have been fighting over before...

What needs to change is the recognition that each individual person is just that. And what I need, how I meet those needs, and how I fit in with others is unique to me alone. And I wish we could create a society that valued that - the individual and how they fit into the common good without losing their identity.

That is why I keep saying I want to go back to the hippy movement. I think they were on to something when they claimed that each person was a wonderful person just for being them.

But maybe I am wrong...

Either way - each of us needs to find how THEY thrive in this new world. I don't think we will go back to the way it was two months ago - there will be more diseases, more natural disasters, more political turmoil in the months and years to come. And they will change us. So maybe be patient with each other and try hard to help everyone be the best person they can be.

Sufficient Unto the Day...

I have always had this sense that everything was going to be all right.

People accuse me of being too laid back, and I get that. I do not worry or panic about the things that normal people worry or panic about.

(as an aside - the things I DO worry about are weird as well. I worry about what the "best" thing to have for supper is. I worry about how to get 8 hours of sleep. I worry about which shirt to wear today. I worry about whether strangers think I am attractive... But when I get cancer, when there is a pandemic, when the money runs out... no worry at all)

I would love to be able to claim this is the result of faith - that I let go and let God - or put it at the feet of Jesus or some other trite and meaningless convention of faith. But it has nothing to do with faith in that sense.

I have been thinking in the midst of this pandemic and I guess the way my mind works is basically this:

I will probably be dead tomorrow. How do I have the best day ever today?

That is it in a nutshell.

So it totally explains my worries and lack of worry. I really do not care about tomorrow at any deep level. I really do not care about yesterday at any deep level. If it is happening today, then it means everything to me.

Now, as I said, this is not classical faith the way it has evolved through theology - but I wonder if it is closer to the way Jesus intended us to see the world. Is this in fact what "being religious" means?

As you can imagine, I am weathering the pandemic fairly well because I am focused almost completely on today. And today is absolutely no different from any other day in my life - except for some minor variations, and every day has minor variations, so it does not surprise me.

And because of that, I would like to make the case for ancient spiritual wisdom actually giving us the tools we need in times like this.

In my own tradition there is this whole speech Jesus gives where he says that birds of the air and flowers of the field do not worry about tomorrow - and yet they have magnificent lives. He follows this up by saying "sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof" (in the old fashioned way of our bibles) or perhaps if he was speaking to us now he might say - "there is enough to worry about right in front of you - for my sake - let it go."

And the other big spiritual gurus were pretty clear on the same thing... from Buddha who essentially said that concentrating on the here and now is the path to salvation through all the rest of them.

Live in the present. Give thanks for the present. Celebrate the goodness you see.

That is faith in action.

It is hard to do. But it is not impossible. And I guess that is where I hope we can get to. An ability to wake up and see the snow falling outside our windows, where we are locked away from the pandemic, and think - wow, pretty - and go make some toast.

The moment is all that there is. Make the most of it. That is what Jesus would have done.

The Good of the Many - Leads to Loneliness

I grew up watching Star Trek.

Well - obsessing over Star Trek.

I suppose I am lucky that I chose a show that reflected a deep sense of moral value back into the world. Or perhaps I was already someone who held the values of love and inclusion close to my heart and so I loved the show because I saw myself in it.

Nonetheless - I have lived 50 years with the idea of  "do no harm" and that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one. I have lived my life believing that race does not matter and that interfering with the way another person saw the world was wrong.

So the measures being taken to flatten the curve already make sense to me.

I also have been reading about how the same things happened in the early 1900's around the Spanish Flu. The Universities and schools shut down, for example. And there are undoubtedly many other examples.

The real difference I suppose is ease of travel. Back in the day we had to wait weeks till the ship crossed the ocean. Now we are there this afternoon.

I will not pretend that I mind social isolation. I am not a gregariously needy person when it comes to social interaction. I prefer writing on my laptop or playing skyrim.

But my role in life is to interact and care for those who are vulnerable and who need attention. And to offer a spiritual dimension to the reality I witness. Being the op ed type of journalist who tries to delve deep into issues that others find impermanent - like art and faith and society - sometimes means taking a different view of things.

So here is a thought that I think you might all agree with but that not many are putting out there.

The world is a lonely place.

It has been becoming lonelier and lonelier as we spend more time at home, on the internet, as we move away from family and become a global citizens.

We already struggle to find meaningful connection. And this is going to make it worse.

I fear, not the loss of 20% of the population or whatever this pandemic may do in the short term (which, I do not dismiss, it is sad and scary - but reality) What I truly fear is the aftermath.

9/11 changed the world forever. In subtle but interesting ways. We became a nanny state where agreement with the majority became the greatest social value.

It changed us.

Looking back sociologists will be able to point to that one event and say that society was moving in one direction and the twin towers altered the trajectory of social development.

Somehow 9/11 also changed science. I do not know if you remember, but before that we could clone people, we could build space stations, teleportation was right around the corner...

A decade later people turned against science and now we cannot even convince people that the planet is getting warmer or that they should wash their hands.

So what will the outcome of the Corona virus Pandemic be? How much will this change who we are?

That is my fear. That perhaps social contact and the idea of togetherness is at risk. Perhaps we will come to see people who want to be around other people as abnormal. Perhaps we will no longer have group events, concerts, sports...

I don't know. Things never happen in obvious ways because human beings are bizarrely unpredictable. Witness the fact of toilet paper shortages with a disease that does not alter your "regularity" at all.

So I might be wrong about "what" will be forever changed. Still, I worry that something will be forever changed - and not for the better.

I guess my hope is that we continue to value the good things - love, peace, hope, joy and that we fight to remember to keep those things alive even as the world shifts beneath our feet.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun! (They Just - a - wanna)

I'm having a hard time these days.

See - I am someone who does everything from the point of view of how wonderful life is.

I have been accused of Pollyanna thinking, and I do understand that. I do admit that even my own life is harder than I tell myself. After all, I have problems with my kids, I have health issues, I have failed relationships and I have suffered loss.

The thing is, Cyndi Lauper really got to me, and I think girls (and boys) just want to have fun.

Can I defend this theologically? No. Can I defend this sociologically? No.

My only possible defense is two lesser used biblical lines - Moses says to the people of Israel when they are almost done wandering around in the desert - I put before you this day life or death... Choose life; while Jesus has this whole I came so that you might have abundant life bit (Deuteronomy 30 and John 10 - just in case you want to fact check me)

But the thing is - I think we are supposed to look for the good in life - and we are supposed to soak up the sunshine, the sunsets, the moments that make life worth living - and relax and let go of the negativity which would kill our mood.

But, as I said, I am having a hard time.

I see so much negativity. So much hate. So much pain. And I see people reveling in it.

I see religious folks saying that treating others as "less than" is appropriate and right. I see boomers attacking millenials and vice versa. I see entire systems of leadership devolving to grudge matches.

And yet, day after day, week after week, I write columns, and articles, and sermons trying to point us towards the good. 

And there are days I do not know how to justify it. If I write a column on winter tourism telling you to take in the ice caves on a hiking trail - or if I interview Dave Gunning and convince you to go to his concert - am I just promoting escapism from the real, painful, world we should immerse ourselves in?

If I preach a sermon and tell you that there are glimmers of good breaking through the cracks of a broken world am I just pulling the wool over your eyes?

A friend posted a question on the Facebook asking if Satan was beyond saving. It was not a metaphor - it was a religious question by someone who studies these things. And that led me down a rabbit hole of wondering about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

What is bad? What is good? How do you tell?

And is it pollyanna to say - we should be looking at how to enjoy ourselves in the midst of it all?

Just some pondering for all y'all.

My Way or the Highway?

The New Year has dawned.

Poets through the centuries have penned sonnets and limerick's galore as well as everything in between capturing the mood, the hope, the expectation, that a new year can bring. 

For every rhyming couplet of hope there is also an exposition of danger. Writers and thinkers over the aeons have also put word to the dangers each year is fraught with from Isaiah in the older religious writings, through Nostradamus and his predictions, right up to Gary on twitter who posted that the world is on fire. 

The Rabbinical way of engaging the world has always appealed to me. Whenever I have asked a Rabbi a serious question about anything they are quick to answer and make no bones about it. But then they are also quick to change their mind...

"Rabbi Jones, I killed this guy..."
"Killing is forbidden by the laws of God, it is a sin to take away the life that God has given."
"I know...."
"On the other hand..." the Rabbi continues, "tell me about this man you killed - perhaps death was too good for him..."

I think it is incredible that most deep thought can hold opposing viewpoints. On the one hand killing is always wrong - on the other, some people need killing... (just in case you have never met me - I do not think anyone deserves killing - I am using an extreme example because this is the way of it. No matter how outside the norm a question is to a Rabbi, they will still be able to consider the other side, and I love them for that)

Now

I see everyone posting New Years Resolutions. I see all the New Years Blessings and Well Wishes.

And I agree with each and every one. We are all on a journey to fulfillment that winds its way through different valleys and over different mountain peaks for each individual. And the idea of a new start during the change of a year, or a decade, is amazing.

I also see that Australia is on fire. The United States, or some part of it, just risked another world war by illegally taking out half of Baghdad, people are still not listening to Greta Thunberg the way they should be, and believe it or not, before dawn on New Year's Eve 15 people had been shot to death by strangers in different locations in the United States. 

Hope and Fear, Joy and Pain. Not to wax too eloquent, but one wonders if they are merely sides of the same coin?

I wonder if we started embracing this idea that there are many, many, many sides to everything if we would find our lot in life easier to bear?

It might be hard for us. We live in an age of extreme polarization. Wherever we look someone is yelling to us that we either see the world as black and white or we are the enemy.

Don't believe them.

And perhaps in this one act of rebellion, where we move away from believing we ever have the definitive answer for anything, we would find it to be enough to tip the balance of 2020 to being a place where we can find joy and pain and be okay with both.

There is literally no highway. There is literally no my way. All ways are paths to the centre. All ways spiral in and out of reality, of usefulness, of destination. All ways are valid for the person in the moment they are in.... It is all they know.

And yet... there is so much more....

May this be the year that we discover new paths and are okay with the fact that they are still not the right ones to be on...

The Past as Present - On Essential Agreement

This post is more United Church of Canada than some - but should perhaps allow anyone to think about the relationship we have to the thinking of the past...

In explanation - when one is ordained into ministry in the United Church, we make a promise, backed up by people who have examined us, that we are in essential agreement with the recorded faith position of the church.

In our case that is taken to be the four positions we have taken: The 20 Articles of Faith (1925), The Statement of Faith (1940), the New Creed (1968) and the Song of Faith (2006)

It is interesting that if you take the last and read it - our faith is very poetic, very accessible, and very much based on the idea of human development towards the good. It seems, tilted, towards a modern way of thinking.

If you start the other way around and read the 1925 version is it like the King James Bible - jarring in its use of words we no longer use in phrases we no longer use. The tilt in this case is towards the power of God. God did things, in fact, everything, and we respond.

But like it or not, if you sit down and read carefully the "words" of all of these positions, carefully trying to weed out the poetic voice, they are, to quote the church, in essential agreement with each other.

You, as an average reader, would not want to do that, trust me. But in fact, the 20 articles are a bit repetitive, and thus with each version it gets shorter.... but almost nothing changes.

in 1940 We added the idea that God made us to be in "loving" relationship - not just relationship, while we admitted that Jesus, though God, also lived the perfect human life.

in 1968 we added the tag line, "to live with respect in Creation" which was pretty much the first time we officially suggested the idea of respect, or relationship with the created world around us.

and in 2006 God became less the old man in the sky, adjectives like Mother were added. The other major thing that I can see is that it says Jesus was put to death by the people... in other words, we are to blame. Where before it was stated as being more part of God's original plan.

But when we say essential agreement we are basically saying this:

We believe there is one God, who somehow exists in three: Creator, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Who is active in the world and in the heart of people. Who gives us free choice to turn away from the path, but who has planned out the path. Adam and Eve sinned and all of us have that kernel of sin within us, but God calls us and redeems us. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, came to earth and taught us how to be more faithful before being executed. By being executed as an innocent Jesus paid off our debt and saved us. Believe that and try hard to allow the Holy Spirit to work within you and you will be judged good after death and live forever with God, if not, you will be cast out.

Now, as you can imagine, there is more. It defines ministry, and church, and right action, and so much more... but "essential agreement" does not boil down to the nitty gritty, it boils down to the core of what is being said. Which is as above. Yes, yes, I know if you are a theologian you are going to say I did not express some stuff well enough, or deep enough, ok, it is more complicated than that, I agree.

NOW

In the United Church we have come under scrutiny of late because the fact is, clergy have, for some time, defined essentially pretty loosely.

I believe there is good and bad - so if you want to define it with personalities, ok. Let's call "Good" "God" 

(I made that up - but you get the point - do you, essentially agree with the above... there is a lot of wiggle room.)

It is being argued that the wiggle room did not include the modern post-theistic, radical progressive views that are held by many on one side of our church. And to be honest, I think they have a point. The reworking of those 20 articles over the last 100 years never touched the core belief. We have to admit that the United Church, for all of its social justice and left leaning history has stayed true to what it said it believed in 1925. We just say it in modern ways.

Which leads to a big problem.

And here is how I see the problem. The problem is that the faith statement of the United Church is bound to an antique way of understanding science, sociology, psychology and culture.

It is not the church that has moved - it is the world that has moved.

And somewhere along the way we forgot to write into our faith the belief that everything changes. In fact, we wrote the opposite - saying that things like God, the church, Jesus... are forever the same. Unchanging, immutable, etc.

But... no.  Galileo famously came up hard against the church when he claimed the Earth rotated around the Sun and not vice versa. They put him in jail and let him rot as a heretic. To be honest, the church did not care about celestial mechanics at all. Whether it is a circle or an ellipse, that meteors might seem to disappear and come back... who cares. What matters is that God is from Earth and therefore Earth is the centre of everything. That is what Galileo denied.

And we know he was right.

And because, eventually (in reality it took 350 years and the church only admitted he was right in 1992) we came to see that he was right, societal understanding changed. God was up/out there and not on earth. But we were still the favourites.

The reason people do not come to church these days, I think, has a lot to do with how far we have moved in our cultural understanding such that being in essential agreement with those 20 articles seems somehow wrong.

In basic ways, why would God only save the Jews? Why would the Messiah only come and save the western world? How do Buddha and Mohammed fit in? What "plan" are we talking about? The world certainly does not seem to be getting better and better every year? What do you mean prayers are answered? Most of us suffer greatly despite asking for help repeatedly... And on and on we could go.

You see, even the Bible, which is a record of peoples thoughts about God over 1000 years or so, portrays God as being so radically different at different times, that a lot of people assume the God of the Old Testament was a whole other person.

So when Jesus taught, he taught a radically different way of seeing holiness and humanity than that which had come before.... Which makes me wonder.... if someone comes along now... are they not also going to radically alter the way we see holiness and humanity?

Was it not the pharisees and the sadduccees, those we now consider the enemies of truth, but who were at the time, the church, who tried to stop Jesus from saying new and heretical things?

Maybe, just maybe, the essential agreement we should be adhering to is agreement to the statement:

WE CANNOT SEEM TO GET HOW TO BE GOOD - WE NEED TO KEEP TRYING NEW WAYS TO EXPLAIN IT 

In the Beginning... Was the WAY

Before the church councils, before the church fathers, before the Gospel writers, there was a creed that was the central tenet of belief for the fledgling group of followers mourning the loss of Jesus.

"Jesus is Lord!"

That is it. That's all. No Trinitarian formulations, no doctrine of salvation... just a claim that at the centre of all we are and all we think is Jesus. 

Now, scholars and folks will tell you that this had serious overtones and repercussions. "Lord" (Kurios in Greek and Adonai in Hebrew) was a term of social understanding given to one who is your better. But at its core it simply means ruler. 

One of the main problems was that the Roman Emperor at the time, Octavian, carried the title Augustus, a fancy religious term for Lord. In other words - the Emperor was Lord, not Jesus - or vice versa depending on where you stand. 

Most agree however, that whether you said this for political or religious reasons, the point of Jesus is Lord is that you give yourself completely over to the teachings and examples of this guru and become someone who owes everything and does everything for Jesus. 

I occasionally find myself pausing to wonder if 2,000 years of interpretation and development within the church did not lead us astray from everything Jesus stood for. But to say it less dramatically, I wonder if we are too often putting our thought and emphasis on the wrong thing.

The "Church" is an institution. The Creeds are interpretation. The priests are intermediaries. And we are a hundred steps away from being actual followers of Jesus. 

Even - and I mean this in the best possible way - even if we could determine what Jesus actually meant without it going through the filter of Paul, and the church, and all of those writings and sermons.... Even then - would most of us who attend or work for a denomination of this global network of institutions be able to say we are following Jesus? 

I had a professor once, and I cannot remember who or where or when, sorry, who told us that the original title for the movement that came about after Jesus was "The Way" The people of the Way were the people who followed the example of Jesus.

And in the early church they took this stuff seriously. They gave away their possessions, they decided not to get married or buy property, they lived together and shared everything in a good socialist way - knowing that this brought them closer to being able to live like Jesus... who was, by all accounts, a wandering, poor, itinerant preacher and teacher. 

Now, none of this is new thought - I want to make that clear. Some of the best minds of recent years within the Christian Thought Factory have written and dissected the idea of Empire and how Jesus lived in opposition to it.

But as a progressive who is trying to make their way in the dying days of ecclesial empire, I think about this at a much more practical level.

How far away am I from living and thinking like Jesus. How would I reclaim the original intent of the faith which was much more of a social reform movement than anything else? How do I lead a congregation in a way that actually honours what Jesus was trying to get across and does not just build on the last millennium or two of Christian Empire building.

First off - I no longer like to use the word Christian. I think we should go back to People of the Way.

Secondly - I think the focus of worship and work within existing church structures should change to be about social justice as the main path to spiritual enlightenment. Or, to be more direct, love and loving everyone should be the main path to spiritual enlightenment.

But mostly I think we need to let go of all the division and fighting that happens in the modern church as we struggle to take our last gasp before going under. We need to understand that almost everything we fight about is made up, an interpretation, or at best, our opinion.

Whether you are left, right, up or down in your own thinking, we can all agree that Jesus basic answer to every question was "love everybody"

how about we focus on that for a while? 

Pronouns, God, and Laziness

Some of the things I do in church and services go unnoticed.

For example, I never use pronouns for God. I try very very hard to not say he, his, her, him, she etc.

Now, a basic reason for this is I am very, very sure that God is not a person. After all, that would be creating something in our own image - and it would be arrogant to think that of all life in the universe, the supreme form of life is just like me.

In reality, however, my reason is deeper and fundamentally different. It is not that I do not think God has genitalia. It is that I do not think God has agency. This is why I do not consider myself a theist.

A key portion of theism is the idea that "God interacts in the affairs of men" (to put it in the old fashioned sexist way) and most people see that and immediately get their hackles up about the idea of it being only "men"... while my hackles go up because of the idea of "interacts".

Again, my problem is deeper than the traditional surface problem.

Here is where it falls down for most people. If God pulls the strings why is there bad? Why do saints get cancer? Why are children abused? etc. etc. etc. Which in and of itself is a compelling argument against a God who controls everything?

But I suggest the original reason we dreamt up omnipotence (all powerfulness) was laziness, pure and simple. And not just wanting to sleep in laziness, but a deep-down flaw in human nature that makes us look for the easy way out of the hardest circumstances.

In other words, instead of doing the hard work of understanding reality and our place in it - we pass the buck and throw our hands into the air saying only God knows why things like this happen.

If you think that you do not pass the buck consider if these sorts of words have ever passed your lips - "God doesn't give us more than we can handle" "It will all become known when we get to heaven" "this must be according to God's plan" "Ours is not to reason why" "Leave it at the foot of the cross" or even "have faith"

Not only are these patently untrue statements - but they are cop-outs.

Hear me out, God is not a person who is doing things actively, God is a power that we can tap in to.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The problem with statements like the above is that we give up our agency and make it about whether or not God is going to do it.

I have seen some worst-case scenarios for this - a colleague who believed if God wanted us to get to the retreat then God would somehow figure out a way to fill the tank with Gas. (that way ended up being me paying for gas) or a parent who lets their child die because God must have willed it and medicine is for the unfaithful.

But on a less harsh tact, the problem could be as simple as saying that God must want me to be lonely or else someone would show up at my doorstep with flowers in hand.

It is part of us giving up on our own power and sitting back waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Only on a larger, global, supernatural scale.

So when I write prayers I carefully go through and take out the agency for God and put it back onto us. God grant us the grace to becomes, may we find the grace to... The love of God be with you becomes may God's love work through you. and things like that.

Because I firmly believe that Jesus and the boys who came to help us find spirituality were always about us realizing that the Kingdom of God was within us - that the power of God was within us... etc.

So back to God being the power we can tap into. Let us say that there is no old man in the sky, but let us look to that most visionary of spiritual authorities, George Lucas, who in the original Star Wars trilogy defined God as "The Force" a connection between all living things that we could tap into in order to be more fully who we were meant to be.

That is a god which makes sense. There IS God. It is, however you label it, force, goodness, love, universal harmony - some power base in and behind everything. It is there for us to tap into at any time. But it is not, of itself, doing anything.

So God did not give me cancer, nor did God take cancer away from me. Bad health decisions followed by good science did that. But what is more important is that me facing cancer with humour, empathy, warmth and grace was me tapping into God.

And the only way anyone could know God is by witnessing someone tapping into that strength.

When I view it this way everything falls into place. There is no reason God is or is not doing anything - life is random. How we react to life, however, is the real test of faith and the real place that God is present.

It is not just philosophically true, it makes sense on so many levels, including Jesus' teaching where he said things like when you take care of widows and orphans God is there.

So Marx was right - we use religion to pass the buck - but we do not have to.

Dark Times as Colonialism Dies

Yesterday I listened to an interview on the CBC with author Alexandra Fuller who was brought up by white and English parents in Rhodesia, which has since become Zimbabwe.

Her candour in describing systemic racism and white supremacy as a matter of course was really astonishing. However, in the midst of the interview, she said a casual throwaway line that reverberated in my brain for the last twenty-four hours. She said, "These were the last days of colonial rule, and in the end times, the people hold on the hardest."

It was as if a light bulb went off in my thinking about the modern world.

In the last days of a system - instead of accepting the coming change and working to move carefully and harmoniously into the new world order, we fight tooth and nail against said change and seek to hold ever more tightly to the past.

Wow.

First off, the whole populist political shift in the world all of a sudden makes sense. We know, intuitively, that these are the last days of capitalism and our current economic system. We know that these are the last days of nationalism and independence. We see through travel, global economies, and transnational corporations that, well, everything is changing and what will be remains to be seen.

When I first started to become interested in the church, in religion and the like - I was still in the tail end of the era when we thought everything was set in stone. The '80s were a rich and heady time when everything was working. Systems and institutions had power. Racism and Sexism were being addressed. Life looked good for a few years there before it inevitably fell hard.

As the world tilts on its axis, we are finding ourselves deeper and deeper into shifts where we do not see the outcome. Whether we are talking the move from a goods-based to an information-based society, whether we are talking about the divide and class structures, or whether we are speaking of the climate disaster that will destroy most of what is left - things are changing and the final form of our politics, economy, and even global map seems unwritten.

But then it clicked in terms of church.

We are dying faster than most.

Or, rather, becoming irrelevant in the new system.

At our full power, the church controlled the medical, educational, and perhaps even the political realm. Now we have trouble influencing the crosswalk guard.

(see, this is where it clicked for me - I have for a decade been questioning how the mainline, progressive, left-wing United Church is attracting clergy, leaders, and even congregants who are right-leaning and traditionalist - that simply is not our jam, or was not our jam when I decided to play with the band) 

It only makes sense that what we see in our dying congregation is the last gasp of holding on to something of the past. Ministers are becoming more authoritarian and old fashioned. People are actually talking about heresy and fundamentals and things that would have been laughed out of an annual meeting not that many years ago. Our church who once fought the government for inclusion of LBGQT++ issues now turns inward and fights about the nature of biblical inerrancy or Christological significance.

I have been riding along, wondering who cares, and why, and how we got so off track from the socialist hippy message of loving everyone and sharing that Jesus taught us in kindergarten.

And it really is just fear. It really is just a lack of acceptance that those days are over. It is the hardcore believers in the institution and in the Christian Kingdom refusing to let go and say this is no longer Rhodesia and controlled by the Whites, it is now Zimbabwe and open to everyone getting their say.

(I realize it might not be the best example because Zimbabwe and most of the post-colonial countries had a hard go of it too - but I hope you get the meaning behind the example - the "church" we grew up in is not coming back...)

I think that we are seeing staunch belief in old fashioned religious ways of thinking because we are witnessing the fear of death. And the reality that death leads to resurrection is not good enough for most, because we cannot control the form of resurrection.

What will "faith" look like on the other side of this period of upheaval and change? We cannot know. But it too, like global boundaries, politics, and economic systems, will change. The change will be rapid and continue to be painful.

It could be easier if we let go.

But I admit it is always scary when you need to let go in order to fall into the unknown. It is hard to go with the flow and live in the moment and realize you cannot control tomorrow...

Still... we should try

Daisies Pushing Through

Today is 9/11. The first 9/11 I have been in full-time ministry for quite some time.

The original 9/11 was a bit of a problem for me. See, I was a young Turk, second pastoral charge, South Shore Suburban Montreal, meteoric career path, doing graduate studies, and I had a lot of answers.

I also had a parishioner, who worked in the Twin Towers, who had married the love of her life that summer. A Jewish guy from New York who seemed really cool and they seemed perfect together.

They died. Horrifically. Their death certificates said they were murdered. I sat with the family for weeks while they waited for news. More weeks while they confronted the inevitable. Then we set down to plan the largest funeral of my life.

Two years before this the worst funeral I did was for a young teenager, whose friends had stolen his clothes while he was in the river swimming with them. He was too embarrassed to get out, and they watched him drown.

9/11 was when I stopped believing in God.

9/11 was when I became an A/Theist

I gave up graduate school. I left Quebec. I left my wife. I left the church. Eventually.

Nothing was ever the same after that because I knew I was a fraud. I was a fraud because I told people that God loved them, that God had a plan, that History unfolded according to some predetermined but ultimately glorious outcome.

That outcome, it turns out, is hatred and death.

And God? God does nothing.

I am a master theologian. I studied ethics with Gregory Baum, Systematics with Doug Hall, Reformation History with Ed Furcha. If I had of written my Theses I would have ended up with five university degrees in Systematic Theology and Religious Studies instead of the three I have now.

And in one fell swoop, thousands of years of the greatest thought on the nature and essence of God meant nothing to me. My experience. My feelings. My mind told me there was no old man in the clouds who could make things better. If there was, he would.

18 years later and I am back in the pulpit.

And I believe in God.

And I am an Athiest.

But it took me a long time, a lot of reading, and a lot of feeling to put Humpty back together again.

Atheism got a lot of press for a while with the Christopher Hutchins of the world, and then the Greta Vosper debacle in the United Church of Canada. I read all that too.

I know that most people should have looked this up before if they follow any of this stuff - but Atheism does not mean "does not believe in God" it means "against theism"

And theism is a belief in the existence of one God, as the creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.

Which is nonsense. There is no old man in the sky deciding who lives and dies. That idea is just untenable. And causes nothing but problems. For example, if we pray hard enough to our god, then he will listen and vanquish our enemies. Or I am cured of my cancer because God loves me. But Billy over there dies from the same surgery because of... what? God hates him?

We are a people of stories - that is what defines us - and throughout history, we have told stories where God is on our side, because it makes us feel better, and because we wanted something.

We created God in our image because it was the best that we could do. But we have had thousands of years of history and development and thought and grace and love and hate and it should have taught us how to move past this.

To me God is the collective spirit of Good in the universe, perhaps drawn from the living organic creatures in the same way we name Gaia the collective spirit of or energy from the planet.

People said of Greta Vosper, how can an atheist remain a minister. Well, the simple answer is that theism is a small part of our understanding of what God is or could be, and not subscribing to theism does not mean that one does not subscribe to the idea of divinity, of God(s), of the spiritual, or the magical.

So I am back in full time because, I guess, the thing of it is, I still believe in the idea of goodness and that we need to actively work at being good, helping each other to love, and spreading the message of hope.

I have a social media presence. I just need to turn on my computer to feel bad about the world. But we still have a role to play by being followers of Jesus, who basically wanted us to enjoy life and love abundantly.

That is what 9/11 did to me. It made me into the person Jesus would have loved to drink with.

Face(book)ing Depression

Everyone has their triggers. Everyone has something that annoys them.

It has been a year now since the Journal of Social and Clinical  Psychology published a study saying that Facebook leads to depression. Other studies have come to a similar conclusion and it may not be limited to Facebook as a platform.

In my way of seeing it, there could be many reasons for this link. First off social media presents a lot of the world in an easily digestible form. Therefore I end up knowing and hearing all too often that the polar ice is melting, whale carcasses are washing up, mass murder is going on, death, destruction etc... All of the things that would normally depress us are amplified. Then there is the whole comparative factor where I get to see my contemporaries who are enjoying their hot tubs and SeaDoos while I am trying to decide if I can afford to get a coffee at Tim's this morning.

Last but not least there is the way that it somehow makes us lose our faith in humanity. I blame this mostly on the comments section. It is as if we gave all the crazies who used to write letters to the editor (and get weeded out) free reign to instantly publish their diatribe to an audience of millions. Thus anti-vaxxers and climate emergency deniers, evolution protesters and, well, mean people, seem to be getting a louder and louder voice. 

I have my own problem that combines the two of these things. Triggers, depression, and "fake news."

It all started when I went to seminary yet continued my unabashed love of storytelling and movies. I watched a lot of movies. There are religious people in a lot of movies. They are by and large Catholics. I remember saying to anyone and everyone who listened that this was a pretty one-sided view of the church and clergy.

Then the Millenium brought to the forefront the wackadoodles, which is the official term, who thought that the world was ending.

But now... Now... I cannot turn to Facebook and scroll without seeing religion portrayed as some abomination. Whether it is people talking about Trump and therefore the conservative right-wing church in the states, or anti LGBQT+ propaganda, or, well, anything.

We have created a world where the wackadoodles get top billing and the moderates or liberals are left shaking their heads.

The thing is, I am depressed because this is becoming the way most people understand the church. Understand me. And I more than ever think we need the opposite.

I know I am over-educated, I know I am liberal and left-wing, but seriously... how can anyone believe some of the rhetoric of these people who have stolen Christianity and made it so narrow and hateful?

Jesus and his followers were exactly like me. left-wing, lovey-dovey, radical protestors who talked about the hippy ideals of love, peace, and understanding. That is not an opinion, that is not a guess, it is historically and accurately portrayed in every facet of not only the Bible but of Roman history. That is why he was killed, as a traitor to the Roman government, for inciting rebellion, in the name of peaceful civil protest for equality.

It is just not really debatable. "Love everyone," said Jesus... and no matter what anyone else said - "you don't mean Romans? Slaves? Blacks? Jews? Samaritans? Cops? Politicians? Sick People? Poor People?" Jesus said, "Did I stutter? EVERYONE!"

But I turn to Facebook and there is a priest supporting Donald Trump. There is a pastor saying gays are going to burn in hell. There is a sociologist blaming the church for racist political agendas.

And I have been forced into the place of an apologist (for those who do not study church history - I mean that academically as the type of Christian writer who writes about the faith for non-believers in order to point out that it is actually a pretty cool thing).

And it is hard. It is what made me take a break from ministry for a while. It is what keeps me up at night. I don't want to be associated with the wackadoodles. But they seem to be multiplying.

Even in the progressive and left-wing United Church of Canada we are becoming more and more conservative and literalist. Both of which are SO not Jesus like that I cannot believe people are not seeing it.

I don't know. Maybe the psychiatrists are right and the only thing I can do is abandon social media.

But then again - someone has to keep trying to present the other side. 

This is Us!

Donald Trump relies on the fact that you believe in stereotypes.

Other people have said this or things like my opening statement to various degrees and purposes. But for now, let me point out that Mexicans are violent drug addicts who somehow live their entire lives trying to steal jobs from ordinary working-class Americans.

One trip to Mexico City should dissuade most people of this. And if that does not work make your way over to the Museo Nacional de Antropología, one of the ten best museums in Mexico City (yes, one of the top ten - there are more than ten) and you will get a pretty complete education of the cultural and historical people of Mexico.

Defining Mexican people as lazy violent sheep stealing vagabonds is about as useful as defining Americans as orange haired megalomaniac sexist racist narcissists.

Most of the world sees this - right? Very few people are so narrow-minded as to say all Americans are, all blacks are, all natives are, all Irish are... It is impossible to lump a whole people into a category and have it hold up (except for Cape Bretoners - they are all the same, what?)

In fact - white male Maritimers like me range from ignorant bastards right through to saints. From smart to dumb and rich to poor. Some are faithful and some are criminals. And that pretty much is just looking at my High School graduation class for statistical analysis.

And then we come to church.

There is this most bizarre of phenomenon where "Are you a Christian" usually means, are you a clone of me. Which is ridiculous.

I overheard a story where a minister actually said: "We don't believe that." to someone. And I am afraid it sort of set me off as this column testifies to. There is no "we." There really isn't. There never was.

If I preach a sermon to 50 people and say something fairly benign. Like, Jesus wants you to be good people. Then I guarantee I have just encountered 51 completely different definitions of the word "good."

Even should I choose to go completely religious on people and say Salvation through Jesus means acceptance into heaven, I have now exponentially diversified belief.  Every single person in the room has their own definition of Jesus, salvation, acceptance, and heaven.

"We believe that Jesus saves us so we get into heaven" is almost a nonsensical statement when you stop and think about it.

And this is where religion has always broken down in my mind - there is no US.

There does not need to be, there should not be. I was asked in an interview "what is your theology" and my answer was that it did not matter. I am not there to make you believe what I believe, I am there to help you work out your own existential questions and come to peace with the universe.

And when we say, people are not coming to church anymore, people are not Christian anymore, etc. The truth is we are defining narrowly again. People are having trouble subscribing to a set of beliefs that institute one way of thinking and declare it to be universally right for everyone.

People are still asking religious questions like why am I here, and what is my purpose, etc. But they want to come up with answers that echo truth and their own experience.

People like Richard Rohr on the one hand, or John Shelby Spong, or Greta Vosper or even Michael Hutchins are actually doing a better job of evangelizing God than most churches. Why? because they are the ones pointing out that the know it all answers of a hierarchical and medieval church might not actually capture faith for the majority of people.

When we step out of the comfort zone and realize that there is no universal truth in the way the church has argued, then we begin to allow people space to actually find faith.

And it is faith in the axioms, the overarching things that human experience reminds us are part of the sacred, part of the divine, like love, like acceptance, like grace, like passion...

Jesus said different things to different people. So did Muhammed and Buddha. All of them were trying to help people find deeper meaning within themselves, to get in touch with their own divinity.

And the only way we are going to contribute to this endeavour, to this "work of God" is to stop with the narrow definitions. To stop with the assertion that there is a right and a wrong way.

I am a Christian who thinks reincarnation makes more sense than heaven (or at the very least I am for Elysium Fields and Valhalla) I am a Christian who thinks Jesus was no more divine than I am. I am a Christian who thinks God is the force from Star Wars. I am a Christian who thinks that Shamanism makes complete sense in a way that Christian Theology does not.

But most of all - I am a guy, who wants you to find and be your best self. I want to explore that with people in song and story and conversations over hot or cold beverages and try to make this world soooo much better. That to me is at the core of the ministry. It has nothing to do with what I proclaim from the pulpit unless what I am saying is, you are loved, you got this, whatever you believe is valid if it brings you a sense of the sacred, and we are all in this together.

Saying there is one true path has never helped anyone. Ever. Ask Jesus.

Deck Chairs

I just came back from the Annual General Meeting for my church Region. Well. For two church Regions that used to be one Conference. If you are not part of the United Church of Canada ignore the second sentence and focus on the first.

I want to be particularly careful in what I say here because for once, what I am about to say is not judgement but an observation. I do not think this is anyone's fault - and I do not think it is unique to the world of churches and their ecclesial hierarchy. I wager those of you who have annual corporate or shareholder, or NGO, or even parliamentary meetings could echo what I am about to say.

What a waste of time that was.

And perhaps this is human nature. Perhaps this is corporate culture. Perhaps there is absolutely no way to satisfy the needs and wants of any group larger than, say, one.

Still, and not to put anyone down, I am going to use an example from three days of church meetings involving 350 people. I don't say I have a better answer or understanding or anything - so don't hear this as chastisement or ego driven or anything - it is... as I have said... observational.

Last year the church voted to divide this group in half - for efficiency, for cost, for a new vision of how we work and are in community. So we began the next phase of church life as Regions 14 and 15 - and hired separate staff and began a separate journey of identity.

We then promptly voted to meet together for our annual meeting anyway.

And then, I kid you not, we spent somewhere up from six hours of business time debating whether or not to continue to meet together.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Okay - think about that a second. 350 people spent 6 hours debating how to circumvent a change to modernize our meeting and governance practices to ensure that they remained the exact same as they have been since 1925. 

That is 2100 work hours of the church to decide we need to spend the weekend together once a year. 

Do you know what other discussions or business we had? Others might interpret reality differently, but I would say nothing. Sure - we rubber-stamped a few things that now we actually do not have a say in any more - such as who was ordained and what the budget is.

Generally, this is what the changes that went into effect six months ago did - gave the power to decide things to a higher court or paid staff and made it easier to get things done.

Except for this meeting.

Now, I am not complaining. I get to take a Sunday off, go there, have my room and board paid for, hang out with friends, drink beer and commiserate.

But this is not a necessary business meeting, although people will stand up and say the reason we need to be together in this fashion is to do then work of the church. And it is not a spiritual retreat although some people will stand up and say it is. And it is not networking although that happens...

Like most of the corporate culture, no one can quite put their finger on why we do it this way and whether or not it works.

I really think this will be the epitaph on the tombstones the cockroaches erect to remember us all. "They always did it this way."

and gosh darnit, we will die trying not to change.

Too Bad We Don't Believe this Whole Death and Resurrection Thing

(as an aside - my brain is constantly at work - but I have to admit that is often because of the conversations I have with many people wiser and more experienced than myself - some of the impetus of my thoughts comes from them - but I do not tell you "Dave said this" because I want to be fully responsible for the upset and ire my blogs create. But I am humbly grateful for those who share their deeper thinking with me)

I am not talking about Jesus.

I am not talking about us.

I am talking about the general philosophical principle that in reality was once the centrepoint of our theology. Things die - things are reborn.

It is at the very beginning of the Bible for God's sake - we get kicked out of the garden and have to start over. The world floods and we have to start over. The prophets are replaced by a monarchy. Deportation and Exile to rebuilding and restoring... Our history, whether written or experienced is one of the old ways dying and the new ways emerging.

To be fair - this often does not go as well as we might hope... just ask Martin Luther - whether you are talking about the medieval or the modern one. When we stand up and admit things have to die, no one wants to hear it. (For that matter, ask Jesus...)

And this is where we find ourselves.

The prophetic voices in the midst of most congregations stand up and say this is a failing enterprise. There are those who admit that our resources are almost depleted and the doors will soon close. And often they are told to hush... that negativity will not win the day... that we should focus on what we have... or some variation of the type of thinking that I fear got us into this mess in the first place.

"What can we do to bring people back into the church" has become our sacred mantra. We invent program, services, music, and outreach based on our belief that the way we do things is not only right but has more meaning than the rest of the world understands.

And I wonder - does all of this mean that we, at our core, do not believe the central tenet of death and resurrection.

See, the whole story of Jesus dying and coming back from the grave on Easter morning was never meant to be about one person - or about supernatural powers - or about heaven... Instead, it was meant to be the philosophical underpinning of kingdom thinking.

Everything Dies - Something New Rises Up

We should all get tattoos of that phrase. We should be required to say it as a mantra. We should come to understand that when Jesus taught us to pray that things on earth would be more like things in heaven - this is what he meant - that we would be able to see that life leads to death leads to resurrection.

And again - it is not about me. It is not about getting into heaven. It is about seeing that everything has a time and place, energy and enthusiasm, an impact and meaning - AND THEN IT DIES.

It is only then that something else comes along to continue on in a different form.

Imagine if this really was our core belief. Imagine if I could say that the people in imaginaryville built this church when the town was founded to give a sense of community and purpose and holiness to the endeavour of creating a town - but that work is finished, it has lived its life, and it is time to die... Let's burn the church and figure out what comes next.

Look around - the modern world does not find meaning in the things it once did. People have changed so quickly and dramatically - the traditional church will not ever come back to life - it has served its purpose....

Now people find meaning in nature. They find meaning in art. They find meaning in online social arguments. They find meaning in the "religious" experiences of a rock concert, or a party, or even a vacation to Disney.

If our goal is to see the Kingdom of Heaven become an accepted reality, why are we holding on to a "kingdom" that was never of heaven and no longer exists? Why are we not looking at the real world and real experiences and saying - how do we find holiness, spirituality, sanctuary, nirvana - however you want to define those thin moments - in the actual day to day reality we face.

What would it be like if we believed that it is possible the local church needs to die in order for something to be reborn from the ashes.

After all - aren't we all about celebrating resurrection?

So Was Marx Right?

It is Holy Week.

A very traditional high holy time where we focus on one or two ideas which force us to equate Jesus with God and, perhaps, limit our understanding to a black and white reality.

To wit, Jesus died for our sins. Or. Jesus rose again to conquer death.

Somewhere along the way, we added layers of dimension which broaden the script somewhat: Death, Suffering, Rebirth. Although psycho-emotionally deeper they still maintain the black and white naivete of people who believe they are bad and believe some external force can save them.

It is this jarring juxtaposition to our understanding of mental and emotional health that really forces me to dig deep in order to do justice to the festival while failing to accept the premise.

Have any of you ever read the poem Bio: Black Baptist/Bastard by George Elliot Clarke?

It is from a book of poems exploring racial identity within Black Canadian - and specifically, Nova Scotian culture... But I am fascinated by the imagery of church that it evokes and essentially blames for the predicament of self-hatred... I present it here in its entirety for your perusal:

 History fell upon us like the lash.

(I am not rash.) Black Baptists wept out prayers—

Passion—to hector tar into nectar,

To harvest undeniable honey,

But our scorched eyes were stooped by white faces,

We sank, stupefied by white capital,

Eating grained self-hatred in our churches,

Gulping Welch's grape juice, bile, and venom,

While chalked Jesus carped at us like a cop,

His sneered face crapping, "God damn your black ass."

Slavery was dead, wasn't it? But blood

Crusted on our rusty-tasting sermons,

A taint of blood for saint-plush lips. We could

Not look at the Adantic and not cry,

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" We knew

The terror of evacuated faith.

The stars had fallen cold where they were stalled—

For no one had believed—loved—for aeons.

The air swerves cold with such calamity.

I chronicle a cold, pockmarked epoch,

Map a county where trains gnaw their way home,

Blackened mummies pitch, gutted by gypsum,

Frail Baptists fall, their crotches worm-eaten,

Debris escalates when black ice sleets in.

I come from Windsor Plains, wine-stained poet,

Choosing not to imbibe William Williams'

Rain in the galvanized pail by the well.

Well, as a child, I spread blackstrap on bread

Between bitter dollops of the Bible.

I had to. I was guilty. I had spied

My sun-skinned mother's glaring skin. (I eyed,

Self-condemned, her shimmering, mixed-race breasts.)

Enough snow has fallen without license.

A Putsch arrests my heart. My life's naked.

Listen closely. I am trying to cry.

That's my condemned blood on the page.

Now - I do not mean to appropriate this poem - it is clearly about Black identity and the way self-hatred is ingrained... But what I do want to point out is that the poet himself feels the church, specifically his black Baptist church with a chalk white Jesus has been complicit in this understanding of self as less than.

Is it not at least worth a second of our consideration that this experience is also part of what has driven the masses from our halls? What if we viewed Easter through this lens?

It was Augustine, not Jesus, who claimed we were so evil that only the sacrifice of the blood of a God would save us. He made that up echoing Jewish traditions of sacrifice and scapegoat he probably never really understood in order to appease his own self-hatred for his lust, adultery, and an illegitimate child. (okay, I am being simplistic and harsh - but it is true)

Years later Marx would famously quip that the church was the opiate of the people - that we used it to feel better about our sorry state knowing we would be rewarded in heaven. What Marx also believed but we do not remember is that the church was complicit in the creation of the said sorry state. 

When we declare people sinful - and then offer a way of salvation - are we not just using the system to perpetuate elitism and classism? 

Perhaps. 

But these are the things we don't preach from the pulpit. These are the things that we don't ponder out loud.

It makes one wonder if we are not the enemy to all that Jesus was trying to accomplish. We are a part of the powers of imperialism - whether capitalistic or monarchist - that enslave the children of God through self-hatred.

Why are we not asking if this is not at least a part of why people are falling away - they no longer see "Good News" in what we say because they are capable of seeing the historic and cultural significance in a way they were not before the information age.

So - back to Holy Week. It is not death as atonement followed by universal salvation through defeat of death and rebirth - that is a cultural layer added by the imperialistic church.

For Jesus I think it was political rebellion followed by execution, leading to a new movement.

Jesus wanted us to stop being led by status, by riches, by grasping - and instead to be led by love and compassion. And he was willing to die for his beleif that if we accomplished this, it would be heaven on earth.

I think if presented this way - more people could get behind Easter.