more about Synchronicity

(see previous blog)

By paralleling Colorado's vote to oust legislators supporting gun control with the devastating floods that swept the state immediately following, some might presume I was implying God's vengeance.  Not so! I do not believe in a vengeful God; rather, a God of love awaiting humanity to realize its mandate for recognizing life's interconnectedness.  It is our choices, not God's intervening that sets the stage for world events.

All life shares a tiny blue ball suspended in a vast universe--but only man makes choices.  If we don't learn to make sustainable choices we face extinction--from wars and violence, ecological degradation, economic imbalance, political polarization, denial of moral values . . .

Too often we ignore a problem and collectively make choices on behalf of special interest groups who prevail because they are organized and funded and so are able to manipulate public perception to serve their purpose while diverting attention from the actual problem.  Climate change is one such problem that has largely been ignored while industry actively blocks movement toward solutions.  The unprecedented weather disasters in this and the last decade demonstrate catastrophic results of bad choices.  So too we have a violence problem in our nation, to ignore it and punish those actively seeking reasonable solutions is to invite disaster.  What I see as the meaningful connection between the two unrelated Colorado events is that both illustrate inappropriate choices in response to obvious needs.  Is this a wake up call?

There are those who believe there are no random coincidences, that all happenings are part  of a greater plan . . .

Synchronicity

There are those who believe there are no random coincidences; that all happenings are part of a greater plan -- I find that an interesting idea but take no stand on it.

Ummm -- with no implication of cause and effect I observe this week's news:

1)  Because two state politicians in Colorado had spear-headed new gun control legislation the NRA and gun lovers initiated a referendum to oust the two from office.  The legislation did not take away guns, only required tighter background checks and a restriction on the size of ammunition magazines holding more than 15 rounds--not an unreasonable move to curb the violence infecting our society--yet on Tuesday's vote the two were ousted.

2)  The next day, Wednesday and continuing through Thursday the state has been ravaged by floods.  A freak storm dumped unprecedented rainfall on the state with devastating effects--roads and bridges washed away, homes threatened by mud slides and loosened boulders.

Karl Jung would here use the term synchronicity:  an apparently meaningful coincidence but causally unrelated.

Moral Dilema

This seems an appropriate time to give ‘serious thought’ to moral dilemmas.  A simple definition of dilemma is: a required choice between conflicting alternatives.  A moral dilemma is never a choice between right and wrong (that choice is obvious); it is a forced choice requiring evaluation and judgment.  While moral dilemmas can be either positive or negative, the more apparent moral dilemma is one where there is no desirable outcome, yet the situation demands a choice.  This is the current situation we face regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

            I don’t presume to know the best answer, but I clearly see the dilemma.  The Assad regime is at war with its own people; in its attempt to subdue the rebels it has loosed chemical weapons that have killed thousands of non-combatants, mostly women and children.  In the Geneva Accord of post-WWI, nations came to an agreement to ban chemical weapons for use in conflicts.  The Assad regime ignored than ban and the world has viewed dying children gasping for breathe and rows and rows of bodies wrapped in shrouds.  The question before the world and our nation is: How do we respond to this abomination?  There is no ‘good’ alternative and the issue of military retaliation is on the table.  We as a people are called upon to choose the course of action.  We cannot know the outcome of ANY of the potential choices.  The current choice before us seems to be between military reprisals or to do nothing.  Either seems abhorrent!  It may seem that ‘do nothing’ takes us off the hook—but non-action IS a choice: the choice to squarely face what we know to be morally abhorrent and simply look the other way—ignore it.  Is that not what the German public did as the Nazis rounded up Jews and sent them off to concentration camps that ultimately led to gas chambers? 

            To do nothing is a choice!  Yet I ask, are there choices other than: bomb or ignore?  If our leaders choose not to use military force, let us not lose our moral outrage, but put all effort into finding another way to retaliate against this monstrous immoral regime. 

            I believe the biggest challenge of our era is to learn to make moral choices.

Psalm 6 for the contemporary world

An exercise I enjoy is taking a Bible Psalm and re-writing it to fit that theme into today's world.

In Psalm 6 David seeks deliverance in a younger world;  in mine, an older and different world, the story  changes while the prayer remains.
David is pursued by enemies and fears his sin has ignited God's wrath causing God to turn from him.  His prayer describes the agony he feels at God's absence.


       . . . I too have felt God's absence . . .
I have walked the edge of the void
       and peered into the darkness . . .
Not God's wrath do I find
       but man's thunderous denial!

Life is a precarious balance
       between God's goodness and man's selfishness
When God is taken out of the equation
       man is free to create hell.

My heart has never been without a longing for God,
but the rest of me lives in a world of ever present denial of His being
       not just by words of brilliant men from Fredrick Nietzsche
                                                                 to Karl Marks
                                                                 to Steven Hawking
       but by daily demonstrations:
such as obscenities and pornography protected by law
       while prayer is banned from schools;
as the few luxuriating in opulent wealth while
       orphaned children sift through garbage heaps;
as men of power willingly destroy cities and
       slaughter their citizens to keep that power.
On a daily basis the God of Love is mocked and slandered by our
       entertainment saturated society.

I live in this reality we've created which ever makes the case
                                                                  for a godless universe . . .
and the plausibility of that conclusion seeps through to threaten . . .
                                                                  Awareness asks: IS GOD?
                                   The shouts of 'No' drown the whispers of 'Yes'
                                                                  6 . . . 7 . . . 8? billion people . . .
       In my aloneness I become a grain of sand on an endless desert

           
                     My soul is in anguish,
              How long O Lord, how long?
       When your absence is all that I feel,
              my soul is inconsolable
              my eyes grow weak with sorrow
       when I realize the strength of my enemy!

                                 . . . still I pray
                     Turn, O Lord, and deliver me
              save me because of your unfailing love!

Such Wonder!

Out of the void
       God called forth life.
              It was good!

Through millenniums
       that call expanded and continued.
              Marvelous diversity!

Then came beings with awareness
       who could look back and ahead,
              to know and comprehend.

Life flowed on and on . . .
       Marvelous complexity
              ever expanding thru eons.

                       ___

And one day against all odds of possibility
       I came into being
              . . . and was to become a conduit

Life continued through me:
       My baby, my child.
              Mine, but not wholly mine,
                     rather, life's own.

Such Wonder!

                                                     2/2/08

Retelling the Story

I initiated this blog with the prose poem Un-Named God because it captures the central concerns of my 'serious thoughts'; next, I turn to one of my journals for some stray thoughts.  In this entry from a decade ago; I was thinking about how different perspectives change things and how our images of God are formed.  In scripture stories there are essential messages, but both the message and our images of God are colored by the story told.

                                                                                                            December 17, 2004

Thoughts . . .

          Men and women see the world through different eyes and express understanding with different voices.

          Each human awareness is colored by the observer.

          When we turn to scripture, what we know of God comes through words of individual men. 

          Accepting that God’s message is true . . . we might ask: how has it been effected by those who are giving voice to the message?

          And we might ask further: where are the women’s voices?

          The voice as spoken becomes the ‘reality’ that shapes the living.

          And what is ‘divine inspiration’?  I doubt that God dictated any story whole to anyone; rather, one received the essence of a thought/idea, weighed it against Truth as he understood it, then wrote it into a story        __      thus did the Bible come into being.

          The first thing the Bible tells of is creation; followed by the appearance of the human and the condition of innocence, lost innocence, and consequences.

Retelling the Story

          If we look at Genesis—the very beginning of scripture—as written, the story is told of God placing the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the center of the Garden of Eden and forbidding the human couple to eat of the fruit . . . but Satan tempts them, saying they will be like God if they eat the fruit.  The woman picks the fruit and eats, then gives it to the man to eat . . . (here we see the male author blaming women for original sin . . . and thus justifying millenniums of oppression of women and establishing the superiority of the male gender) and then we see God, learning they disobeyed, so in anger, drives them from the Garden.

          Had a woman written the story it might have gone differently . . .

          In the beginning, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, saying to the human couple it was their choice to eat or not; but for their own good he cautioned them not eat it because it was the nature of The Garden to hold only the good, so if they ate of the fruit and came to know evil (it would become part of them) they would have to leave. They would then have to make their own way in the world.

          When Satan told them that if they ate the fruit they’d know all things like God, Adam became restless.  He wanted to be like God.  He was curious, ‘what was this thing called evil?’ and he longed to see that world beyond the Garden.  He talked of adventure to Eve, how exciting it would be to explore the unknown.  She’d listen and agree that it sounded interesting, but she was more content with the garden and it didn’t seem wise to go against God’s advice.  One day as they sat under the tree Adam said:

          “Eve, reach up and pick me one of the fruit.”

          “I think that’s not a good idea” she said.

          He laughed and said, “Come on, Hun, trust me, it will be OK.”

          “But God said not to”

          “No, God just advised against it—and how do we know what we are missing if we don’t’ try it?”

          “No, we shouldn’t” she pleaded.

          “Come on, if you really love me you’ll do it.”

          “Well,  . . . I don’t know.”

          “Go ahead, just pick one.  That one right above your head.”

          As she reached up gingerly, he said, “Great going, Hon!  Now take a bite and give it to me.”  She did.

          After a while as the awareness of evil seeped into them, they knew they could no longer live there.  Together they walked out of the garden as God watched them leave with great sadness, knowing the tribulation ahead.

          If we distill each story to the basic point, we find the same essence in each: The garden can only be occupied by the innocent, in human nature there is a desire to be god-like, to know all things, and the lure of the forbidden is strong.  God gave human brings the freedom of choice; with that freedom they often make choices to their own detriment.

          But the basic point is cloaked in a story, and the story often eclipses the point.  In the masculine story we see the character of God as demanding, wrathful and punishing.  We see blame assigned only to the woman.  In the feminine story we see a God advising and explaining while leaving the choice open and the consequences spelled out.  We see an interaction between the man and woman, with the woman yielding to the man’s persuasion, pointing to shared responsibility . . . while a compassionate God sadly watches as the no-longer-innocent children go forth.

          Where is truth to be found?  In the essence only.   The story suggests a possibility, and different perspectives illuminate different possibilities.  When complex understanding is filtered through only one perspective truth is distorted.

Un-Named God

You are the un-named God

the soul-giver

Who or what you are

is a mystery requiring humble acceptance

not a problem demanding final solutions.

You gifted man with consciousness--

the invitation to participate in the mystery

by shaping the world he occupies.

Kings of the earth responded with arrogance--

employing the law of the jungle 

that “might means right”.

Each ruler interpreted the mystery differently

seeking to amass power and control.

                  - - -

Foolishly, men of power became god-namers

and for a time. . .

The god-namers ruled

presuming to control both God and men.

The god-namers ruled

dividing humanity into controllers and the controlled

The god-namers ruled

luxuriating in glamour and arrogance

The god-namers ruled

losing the quest for the Holy Grail.

- - -

How wise the admonition

to not utter God’s name!

We ignored it to our peril--

we named You and contained You;

We locked You within dogmas,

confined You to denominations;

We borrowed your power to levy control,

stole from You your glory to praise our creations;

We molded and made You into our images,

choosing and selecting what pleased our design.

- - -

We are the inheritors of all that came before

We’ve misinterpreted what and who You are,

We’ve misconcluded who and what we are!

And so history unfolded. . .

Till finally the controlled awakened,

forever beyond blind obedience.

They looked and saw the illusion--

The gods named weren’t as they’d been told!

They saw empty dogma and warring denomination,

They saw corrupted power and tainted glory, 

They saw false idols and self-serving gestures.

Ordinary men turned, first on the god-namers,

--then on God!

Yet foolishly they accepted the divisions of 

controllers and controlled

And everyone raced to be in charge

while denying responsibility for control.

The 20th Century ‘common man’

Intrigued by the proclamation

of God’s death

tried it on and in so doing, brought about

...his own

Emptiness

Soullessness

Meaninglessness. . . 

- - - 

The structure of civilization 

  has been built upon domination and control.

The hope for its continuation 

  hangs upon humankind freely embracing true Wisdom.

The formula is there for us to discover

Beyond controllers

Beyond dogmas

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”

“Love one another”

“Go and sin no more”

“Forgive your enemies” 

                                                                         

                               - - -

Is it that God IS NOT. . .

  or

Is it that God is beyond our containing?

--our naming?

God is Unity, Totality, Infinity

God is Love, Justice, Truth

God is Benevolent Transcendent Power.

- - -

Without God upon whom to center

my life,

My Life becomes the center of 

my universe.

  Alienation!

Exit warmth and compassion,

honor and integrity:

“Take care of #1!”

“If it feels good, do it!”

“Grab what you can, it’s only once around!”

“The one who dies with the most toys wins!”

- - -

But we’re made to seek God

It’s programmed into our being

so imitations fill the vacuum:

sex replaces Love

legalisms replace Justice

data replaces Truth

and the almighty dollar replaces Benevolent

Transcendent

Power.

Soul-less

We’ve become the hollow men!

- - -

Louder, Faster!

Louder, Faster!!  Hide the hollowness!                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

But no matter how loud and how fast

there are moments of 

self alone with self

and the hollow places echo

the absence of the soul

. . . another suicide

                                 and more senseless violence.

Here and there, a tear is shed, a cry is heard

another tear, another cry

and another, and another. . .

till the Louder and Faster

aren’t loud enough or fast enough

and we finally realize

There’s a cry echoing across the land. . .

The cry of a hollow generation

wailing for its lost soul!

With our own hands, we fashioned hell!

We refuse to see how we did it to ourselves--

We not only named God, but dictated the spelling

- - -

But You are the un-named God

The soul-giver

I know you by your absence.

When we turn from You

we dispossess our soul--

soon to discover

we are the hollow men.

Without You we cannot save ourselves

                            from ourselves.

Only in Your presence do we partake of the mystery--

Only in Your presence do we reach beyond ourselves--

Only in Your presence do we find fulfillment.