enlightenment p. 2

It’s really about truth, then, isn’t it?  Does one faith have a “monopoly” on truth?  And whether your answer is yes or no to that question, then the question is (a very Lutheran question, at that): “What does that mean?”

Can one believe in the risen Christ and in Karma?  In Mohammad and the Buddha?  That the Messiah is yet to come and that the Messiah has died and risen?  It’s true, you probably can’t believe it all.  But what is truth?  And can I find truth, at least some of the truth, in two (or more) different “streams” of faith?  Can I believe, as I claim to now, that, “I’m willing to say my way is right, but I’m not willing to say that your way is wrong.”  And how does that work?

I think it comes back again to the phrase I heard Sunday morning: “Led by the Spirit.”  I participated last night in a discussion with others discerning a possible call to seminary/rostered ministry, and we talked about gifts.  We read a passage (early in 1 Corinthians), and we heard it telling us that the important part is to trust enough to let the Spirit do all the ministry through you.  As a minister, that is so powerful, but I think that is really the important thing for each of us.

How is the Spirit moving?  Is it moving the Jew and the Christian, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and those practicing so many other religions around the world?

I want to point you to an interesting story: The Coffee-House of Surat, by Leo Tolstoy.  Here we find the question of truth being revealed in different ways, with no one having that “monopoly.”  Is that the way it really is?  Do we only see part of the elephant, as another story goes?  Maybe that’s what one means when one says that God is incomprehensible.  And maybe not.  But I will say that one who is led by the “Spirit” cannot err in their path.

enlightenment

Yesterday was quite the day for me.  I went to three different “worship” services of three different groups of Christians.  It was great to be surrounded by so many people seeking to become connected to the divine.  Each experience was beautiful in its own way, but I want to talk about the one that affected me most yesterday, and that was my experience at the Friends Meeting, a group commonly known as the Quakers.

What was so amazing?  Firstly, I really felt the Holy Spirit’s presence there.  There were no scripture readings, no music, and no pastor or sermon, but there were two amazing things of beauty.

First, there was silence.  And lots of it!  How often do you sit in silence for 20 minutes, as we did to begin the Meeting?  How often do you sit in silence to reflect on what has just been spoken?  In many churches, you are lucky to receive 30 seconds to contemplate a sermon after it is delivered.  Having a chance to be totally present is something I haven’t done in a long, long time, if ever.

Second, there were beautiful words of testimony and hope that made me think on and contemplate God.  One man spoke of Quaker children who went (were forced to go) to Meeting growing up but never came back, mentioning his own son, now 41, as well as people like Dan Boone and Annie Oakley.  But within that, he found hope, and that was something special for me to think about and chew on.

He found his hope in the realization that what he and others in the Society of Friends want most is for each to be led by the Spirit.  For some that might mean going to Meeting, but maybe for many others it means something else.  How does the Spirit move?  Where will the Spirit lead?  Must it always be continued participation in one’s current/first religious/faith tradition?

I’m close to finishing the book Living Buddha, Living Christ, in which the author, Thich Nhat Hanh does some comparative study of Buddhism and Christianity and how they overlap in many ways.  Can one be both Christian and Buddhist?  Is the same Spirit leading both Buddhist and Christians?  Thich Nhat Hanh believes himself a follower of both the Buddha and of Christ.  Is this possibile?

I think in our quest to label everything, we sometimes disregard the fact that different people do the same things differently.  Does this happen in religion, too?  I think one might be able to say that within a certain religion, such as Christianity, enough is similar to make things pretty much the same, but how much “overlap” or “similarity” must one find to make things “pretty much the same?”  As I seek to be led by the Spirit, these are some of the questions I ask.

less meat=less methane (save the earth!)

It’s not every day that one comes across an article that talks about “methane flatulence,” but such was the case yesterday.

It’s quite to argument — eat less meat to fight global warming.  (Of course, you have to believe global warming is real before you’d accept this as a reason to eat less met, but I’ll operate under the assumption you’re not that dense.)

When the year started, I challenged my friends and family (in one of my updates) to the “100 Servings” challenge.  It was a simple way to encourage people to eat less meat without giving it up totally — only two meals with meat per week.  Is this so hard?  Well, the article reveals things a few ways.  First, the statement that, “In developed countries, people typically eat about 224 grams (of meat) per day. But in Africa, most people only get about 31 grams a day,” shows the disparity we have in our country compared with other countries. From an environmental outlook, “if the global average were 90 grams per day, that would prevent the levels of gases from speeding up climate change.”

I also liked the quote by Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York: “As a society, we are over-consuming protein.” Most people I share my vegetarian habits with are concerned about my protein intake — as they should be — but when you hear a line like that, you wonder if people are a little too concerned about protein and meat eating.

So will you take up the challenge and eat less meat?  There were always good reasons to eat less or no meat before, and now there seems to be another one.  Will this one, or maybe the sum total of them all, change your eating habits?  I hope so…

globalization (or: talking to someone from India)

Yesterday I had to call my former health insurance people about a claim (it’s all good), so I dialed their toll free number and went through whatever prompts they had and was transferred to someone to take care of me.  After she had said a few words, I noticed her accent.  I recognize anyone can have an accent, but I’ve heard the stories (and wondered, “are they true?”) about people driving up to a drive through window, speaking their order into the microphone, and having someone across the world take their order and send it back to the restaurant for processing.  That got me thinking about my current situation.

After only a few seconds of thought I knew I wanted to ask the question, and with their computers running a little slow, it gave me the perfect opportunity.  “I was wondering where this call center is located,” I said, pretty professionally, if you ask me.  “Delhi (India),” came the reply.  I said thank you, and we went on with the business of our call.

What is my motive for writing this?  I don’t particularly have one.  But if we’re wondering about some of the job losses in America, we can thank globalization.  Is globalization bad?  Yes and no.  It is a multi-layered issue that I don’t want to get into here.  But the idea that people lived great lives 50 years ago before we had such a global marketplace makes me wonder.  (Though lives were shorter years ago, I think we can thank modern medicine pretty much exclusively for that, and we would likely have those advances without globalization.)

Now I don’t want to diss the idea of a global worldview, or the opportunities creating a worldwide community bring us, but I do want to think about how things have changed because of the exploitation of others around the world by those in this country (and others) who are seeking profit over human wellbeing.  When we say “advancements,” who or what are we saying is advancing, and who is being hurt or harmed by new ways of doing things?  There are no easy answers, but it’s surely something to think about.

judging, or making one question?

So again tonight (this time now quite so subtly) I was told by someone that I often times come off as judgmental. Now, I’m assuming you probably wouldn’t want to be called such an adjective by others, so, as you might expect, I tend to go on the defensive. But tonight I looked at it as a question to grow from and went a little further in my inquisition, getting a few examples for me to ponder over, and I’ve come up with a few possibilities. Do they seem to ring true?

The obvious: I’m judgmental and don’t do a very good job hiding it. But really, aren’t we all judgmental to a sense, so are my actions really wrong or just faux pas?

Another option: It’s more about me letting you know I’m questioning your thoughts or actions and that I think you should be questioning them, too. It may come across as I think I’m right and you’re wrong (which is sometimes how I feel — we all do), but it might also be that I’m not totally sure what I think, so why not let this be something for further thought within each of us?

Both of these, though, lead me back to a key question I’ve discussed with friends and still haven’t been able to come up with a really good answer for (we’d enjoy your help):
How does a person get someone to change actions or ideas that are confirmed (sometimes even scientifically) to be bad or harmful or unjust or just plain wrong?

How does one get another to truly believe in the need to recycle in a way that changes their behavior? How does one get another with the ability (i.e. they live in a city) to use less fossil fuels to do so in order to stop global warming? How does one get another person to believe in only producing one child per person, thus not increasing the population?

These are pretty scientific things listed above, so shouldn’t there be some kind of logical and sensible way to make others see what should be done? Or am I even now being judgmental and egotistical? Do tell…