Category: Reflections - Page 141 - We Get There By Walking

Splitsville

I have been a part of the Presbyterian Church all my life and a Presbyterian pastor for almost 30 years. I share that only as backdrop for this.

For more than 30 years the Presbyterian Church has been fighting over the issue of homosexuality. And, now that the national Presbyterian Church has become more open and more welcoming of gays and lesbians, a significant number of congregations are taking steps to leave the denomination. I know this is a justice issue for LGBT folks and I will continue to work against discrimination and for full inclusion in all parts of our community and corporate life but as a denomination I am tired of fighting about it. No amount of money or reasoning or argument or debate is going to change their minds or mine. Both sides have already tried that in spades. So, they are going to leave because they think that pastors like me are wrong and that congregations like mine are wrong and that somehow our “wrongness” is more than they can live with. That makes me sad.

But, what really makes me sad is this.
The dynamic that is playing itself out in the Presbyterian Church is the same dynamic that is playing itself out in our country. No longer are we able to talk with and reason with and show respect for those who disagree with us. Instead we turn our backs or call them names, and even tell them they should just leave. And, instead of being a voice of reason and civility and community. A voice that reminds all of us of our best selves and our best values faith communities and religious leaders are acting just like the culture at large. And,that is what really makes me sad.

Canyon of Heroes

Yesterday New York City hosted a parade for the New York Giants football team down the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan. Thousands of people gathered to cheer the winners of the football’s Super Bowl. But, lingering in the background, is a debate about whether or not New York City should host a similar parade for the returning veterans of the Iraq War. A veterans group is pushing for it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that the Defense Department has asked that he wait until the war in Afghanistan is over as well.

I have to admit to mixed feelings about it all.
On one hand we have made sports a religion and we worship its victors.
And, we speak about games being battles and plays being “fought out in the trenches.” Maybe we all need to reread All Quiet on the Western Front to remember what we are really speaking about when we use those words.

On the other hand, I wonder about a parade for our returning armed forces.
Please, don’t get me wrong.
We certainly should honor their service and their sacrifice.
We certainly should recognize the sacrifice of their families.
We certainly should do all we can to help them reintegrate into the life of the community with jobs and mental health support and medical care when needed.
But, I can’t help feeling we are being a bit disingenuous about it all.
Much has been made about thanking our service men and women, and they deserve our thanks, but those who serve are coming from a smaller and smaller segment of our population. The community in which I live doesn’t have 50% of its high school graduates entering the armed forces. My children are not subject to call ups and to repeated deployments. To tell you the truth, I am not sure what to make of it all. Are we thanking them for doing something that, if we really believe in the war being fought, all of us should have a greater stake in, as well?

And, while I want to honor and to respect those who have served, I do not want to glorify war. We should be abhorred by it. The casualties and the destruction should make us sick to our stomach. The suffering of both the combatants and the innocent civilians should bring tears to our eyes.
If it doesn’t…
If war remains sanitized…
It will continue to be far too easy to go to war again.

Religion at its best…

I came across this quote today as I was reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book 12 Steps to A Compassionate Life. In it she writes, “Religion is at its best when it helps us to ask questions and holds us in state of wonder and at its worst when it tries to answer them authoritively or dogmatically.”

I find her observation refreshing and reassuring because I have far more questions and far less certainty today than I did 20 years ago. And, it is not the doctrine or the dogma that hold my faith together now, but things like gratitude and grace and forgiveness and awe.

I can’t believe I am the only one who experiences faith that way.
Or, experiences that which we know and name as God that way.
Maybe the way forward for all of us in this wonderful, crazy, sometimes awful, often awesome world is less about thinking the same way or believing the same thing and more about all of us learning to take a step back and to look at it all and to look at each other and simply say “Thank you.”

What do you think?

Small Things…

“You cannot do great things. You can only do small things with great love.”
– Mother Teresa

Our house is littered with scraps of paper, bumper stickers, and posters.
On our bulletin boards.
On our refrigerator.
On the walls of the stairway from our back door up to our kitchen.
Each on a reminder of values and dreams and hopes of what is truly important.
This quote is one of those scraps of paper.

I found myself thinking about it today because this evening I will be meeting with the group of high school students and adults with whom I will be going to Nicaragua in a couple of weeks. While there we will work with masons and community members to build homes for several families who need them. For the families who will move into the homes which we build, it is a godsend. But, in the larger scheme of things…millions and millions of families across the globe who also need a home…it is a drop in the bucket. But, what else can I do?

All I can do is to keep doing my small things with all of the love and all of the hope and all of the faith and all of the compassion that I can muster. And, then, to link them the best that I can with the small things that you do and you do and you do. And so on and so on and so on…
Until that day.
Until that day.

This Is What Gives Christianity (and religion) A Bad Name

Did you see the article in today’s New York Times (https://nyti.ms/zBCJcQ)?
A 16 year old Cranston, RI high school student, who is an atheist, sued her school district over a prayer that hangs in her school auditorium. The prayer talks about being our best, growing mentally and morally, being kind and being helpful.
Qualities towards which all of us should aspire.
You might wish her concern over the prayer had lead to thoughtful and respectful discussion rather than a lawsuit or that the outcome of the lawsuit was different, but here is what I fiind most offensive.
A State Representative called her “an evil little thing” on a talk radio program.
The young woman, for standing up for her constitutional rights, has received online threats. I assume from anonymous persons, because it is much safer that way.
And, she now has to be escorted at school by the police.
What is wrong with this picture?
Am I wrong to assume that, at least, some of those who have spoken out or threatened this young woman call themselves Christian?
And how about taking to heart living towards the words of the prayer – being helpful and kind and doing and being our best rather than calling names and making threats?

No wonder more and more people in our country are turning away from religion in general and Christianity specifically.
They may be longing for what I know and name as God, and searching for meaning and hope and purpose in their lives, but this? No, way. And, who can blame them. I certainly can’t.

Gabby Giffords

I watched the State of the Union address last night.
One of the most touching moments was the arrival of Representative Gabby Giffords and the standing ovation she received. Then there was the President, surrounded by those who wanted to shake his hand or whisper something to him, stopping to speak with her and to give her a hug. Tears easily come to my eyes and tears were in my eyes last night as the camera zoomed in on Representative Giffords’ face at that moment.

It is just a little over a year since she was shot, and we were uncertain whether or not she would even survive.
Today, Gabby Giffords resigned here seat in Congress.
The reason she gave was so she can concentrate on her continued recovery.
But, I also wonder if, at least, a part of the reason for her resignation came from her sense of duty and her commitment to her constituents knowing that she could not represent them in the way she would like and which they deserved.
I am sure that today on the floor of Congress there speeches made and best wishes conveyed, but here is what I wish would have happened. I wish that Congress, as a part of their good-bye to Gabby Giffords, had said to her something like this:
“Gabby, never again.
To the best of our ability, we will do what we can to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of those who do not know how to use them and out of the hands of those who have not been trained to use them properly and out of the hands of those whose mental ability or mental state would make it unwise to entrust them with a gun.
Gabby, we almost lost you.
And, we have lost your insight and passion and intellect in this chamber.
We cannot afford to lose another.”

I wish they had said something like that today.
But, even without listening to the news, I know that they didn’t.
And, that brings tears to my eyes once again.

Tags

Several things I believe: