The Open Soul - Part 4

Grace is not the forgiveness of sin, but rather it is the space for sin. It creates the conditions under which creation can occur.

Spirituality is full of imagery of light and darkness.

The apostle John uses light and darkness imagery to describe God when he says God is light that contains no darkness at all (1 John 1:5, NRSV), and that all things are created through light that is Christ (John 1:3-4, NRSV).

Traditionally, and perhaps because of scriptures such as these, light has been equated to holiness, purity and righteousness and darkness has been synonymous with impurity, sin and evil. Access to God and God’s creative force has been understood to be a life in the light of holiness and an avoidance of darkness and sin.  Julian of Norwich’s insights into the idea of sin were a beautiful glimpse into a type of radical grace that Christendom has largely missed.

She saw that God was in everything and for this reason, sin cannot be a thing.[1] This revelation that sin is no-thing is new to Julian and she asks Jesus about it. Jesus reveals to her that “sin is necessary,”[2] because it “purges us and makes us know ourselves.”[3] In this way, sin is not a darkness that is an antithesis to the light that creates, but is instead a creative force within us and the light-as-good vs. darkness-as-evil duality is broken down.

This is much like the biological principal of error on the genome which, although it has the potential to destroy, also contains the mechanism for evolution, adaptation and continued life.

Julian concludes from her revelations that “sin is not shameful to man, but his glory”[4] This view of sin takes us away from shame, and is the very definition of grace.

In this way, grace opens a space that allows for sin. Grace is not the forgiveness of sin, but rather it is the space for sin. It creates the conditions under which creation can occur.

Grace does not reject or erect walls through shame, it embraces and makes no judgement or condemnation. It is only through grace that we can hold our souls open to both good and error. It is only through a loving embrace of all that is, that Christ can create something new in us, even when the mechanism for creation comes through sin.

It is grace that releases judgement and takes us into the place described by Meister Eckhart where we have let go of our pre-conceived ideas.[5]

Grace lets go of all things and simultaneously opens up to all things. It opens the soul to accept every aspect of our humanity and the humanity of others – even our enemies.

In this way, light is not about a purity culture that accepts some things as good and rejects others as evil, but light takes on a new meaning – the meaning of grace – and darkness becomes nothing more than not consenting to grace.

[1] Julian of Norwich. Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 136, 166.

[2] Ibid, 148

[3] Ibid, 149

[4] Amy Laura Hall. Laughing at the Devil: Seeing the World with Julian of Norwich (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 85.

[5] Eckhart, 34, 36, 49. 55.

Scorpion or Egg?

maybe, just maybe…….

there are no scorpions.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for f a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

I’ve had a strained relationship with this passage for awhile.   When I was young, it seemed simple.  Ask god boldly for what you want and god will give it to you.  At least that’s what they said in church.  But it just didn’t pan out that way in life.  I asked.  I didn’t get it.    I asked for my first marriage to be healed.  A noble request I thought.  Surely an “egg” in the example above.  I got an ugly and messy divorce.  Surely a scorpion.   What was the deal?  Maybe my faith?  Or maybe god?  Maybe the scorpion came from the devil?

Who knew?

Eventually, I just didn’t care.

I spent the next ten years learning how to let go.  Learning to live a life of surrender to whatever god had for me. 

I got way more into “Not my will but thy will be done.”

and “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be unto me as you have said”

I decided that if god was good (and I was bargaining that whatever god was - it was good), this god knew better than I what agenda should play out in my life. I stopped doing much “asking boldly.”

This was a shift that was full of freedom.  I no longer felt rage toward the god who seemed to be handing me scorpions. I no longer felt that I was in some kind of a war game with some sadistic devil. I no longer felt guilt and pressure to be more faithful and more bold in my requests.  I was released from blame and had released god and the devil from blame as well. 

But then, what to do with this story that Jesus hands me about asking and seeking and knocking? 

Maybe – the story had just been presented all wrong.  Maybe it’s not about whether or not this bad thing that happens in my life is god’s fault, or my fault, or some devil’s fault. 

Maybe the story is putting forth that the thing that seems like a scorpion is really an egg. 

If god is everything and everything is god. If god is in all, and through all and over all. Then maybe, just maybe…….

there are no scorpions.

Back to my marriage example.  I prayed for my marriage to survive.  It didn’t.  At the time it felt like a scorpion.  Guess what?  It was an egg.  I ended up with a man who was loving, and fun, and nourishing to my soul.   Just the kind of “egg” I needed. 

Maybe this verse is about trusting that whatever we are handed in life, no matter how poisonous or toxic or deadly it may appear to be is actually going to nourish and feed us in the long run.  That takes a lot of trust, because many, many times the scorpion is really, really huge. And many, many times we don’t see the egg for a really, really long time.

But….

Whether we can see it or not, maybe that “scorpion” is the holy spirit, the divine energy that is moving to make us grow. 

To comment click on the title of this post, “Scorpion or Egg”

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Fertile soil

happiness is a tyrant

It has been my experience that the most fertile soil of my life was the shit.  The parts of life that I raged against and dreamed of escaping.  The trash, the refuse, the parts I wanted to throw out so I could get back to strength, peace, certainty, happiness and joy. 

I like to garden.  Here's how I "make" fertile soil:

1) compost - which is nothing more than putting all the rotting organic trash in a pile and letting it turn into soil. It does this pretty much without any help from me. The only part I play is knowing what to put in and what not to put in - and what I put in is DEAD material, rotten vegetable matter, leaves and such.  It's a great metaphor for life.  Just toss in your trash, your dead material and the stuff you absolutely can't stomach.  Toss in the trash that life hands you and let it do it's work. 

Voila!  Fertile soil.

2) Manure - aka shit.  On our little hobby farm, we shovel it and add it to the compost pile. Again, we don't really have to do anything, just collect it and shovel it in. Another great metaphor - take all the crap you create, all your filth that you are ashamed of and: 

Voila!  Fertile soil.

I'm not saying anything profound here or anything we all don't already know.  And yet, we are continually fighting and struggling to avoid the shit and get back to the "good" stuff.  We are looking for a way to avoid the darkness and get back to the light.  We are drinking and taking pills, and playing games, and going from one person to the next, and distracting ourselves with countless hours of Netflix in an attempt to avoid the struggle, forget the struggle, drown out the struggle and get back to the ease.   We are obsessed with happiness.  But happiness is a tyrant and a gaping maw that will never be satisfied.   It's so much more peaceful to just shovel the shit and work the soil.   

(to comment, click on the blog title "Fertile soil") 

Embracing Darkness

"...if you are willing to enter the cloud of unknowing and meet God in the dark—maybe even the dark of a tomb—you might be in for a surprise."

I came across this article today on religionnews.com.  I couldn't agree with BBT more.  

https://religionnews.com/2014/04/14/barbara-brown-taylor-encourages-christians-embrace-darkness/

She’s been called a heretic by some and a prophet by others. Baylor University even named her one of the 12 most effective speakers in the English-speaking world.  Her name is Barbara Brown Taylor, and she is on a mission to redeem the darkness.

“Christianity has never has anything nice to say about darkness,” says the 62-year-old Episcopal priest in her new book, Learning to Walk in The Dark.  Taylor charges churches with propagating a “full solar spirituality” that “focuses on staying in the light of God around the clock.” But she says the faithful need to discover a “lunar spirituality,” which recognizes that humans need both darkness and the divine light .

It’s fitting that Taylor’s book should release before Holy Week, a time when Jesus entered what many Christians would call one of the darkest periods in his own life.  Was Christ’s dark period a positive thing overall? I imagine most Christians would say “yes.” Yet, some of those same Christians resist embracing darkness in their lives.

In the first part of my interview, Taylor and I discuss her message about darkness and why she thinks Christians need it. In part two, which will be posted tomorrow, we explore hot topics such as what she believes makes one Christian, if she believes in a literal devil, and whether she is afraid of dying.

RNS: How do you think modern Christians have misunderstood darkness, both in scripture and in life?

BBT: Once you start listening to how people use the words dark or darkness, it doesn’t take long to realize that the references are 99% negative. I don’t know how that happened in every day speech. Maybe it’s a linguistic fossil leftover from our days in caves or maybe it is a predictable association for people who’ve become addicted to light.

Where scripture is concerned, I don’t think Christians have misunderstood much of anything. From Genesis to Revelation, darkness is used a synonym for ignorance and sin and evil and death. But there are also narrative passages that form an easily missed minority report.

RNS: You also talk about the positive use of darkness Isaiah 45 (“I will give you hidden treasures in the darkness”). You obviously think we have misunderstood something, no?

BBT: When I say we haven’t misunderstood anything, that’s if you go through a concordance and look up the words. If you look up “dark” and “darkness,” scripture is unanimous. But if you look up the stories, it’s a whole different thing.

In Genesis, darkness existed before God even got to work as a primal substance. Everything was made by God from dark. In Exodus, God promises to come to Moses on Mount Sinai in a dense or dark cloud. Here, darkness is divine and where God dwells. Abraham meets God in the darkness, Jacob wrestles an angel in the middle of the night, and angels announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds at night. There’s so much that happens in the dark that is essential to the Christian story.

Linguistically, it’s the pits. Narratively, it is a different story.

RNS: What’s your working definition of darkness?

BBT: Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.

RNS: You say “many old-time Christians are looking into the dark right now.” How might your message help them?

BBT: I mean “mainline” Christians. It only takes about a minute in any news source to notice in decline in everything from membership to budgets to congregations combining and buildings going up for sale. Sometimes when I visit these embattled churches, I feel almost like I’m working for hospice visiting churches that are just scared to death they’re dying. You can almost smell the sweat in the room as they fret about what in the world they’re going to do.

But if you really work for hospice you learn to work with what is left. The remaining time, resources, relationships. Even for mainline Christians who are looking into the dark, there is reconciliation and healing and intimacy and community that can take place in the dark. There’s also a lot of humility in the dark, which might be a great curative for a religious tradition that’s been on top for a long time.

RNS: You critique many some churches for having a “full solar spirituality.” But don’t people—those wrestling with depression and fear, for example–want and need hope?

BBT: First, you equate full solar spirituality with hope. But there’s plenty of hope in the dark too. And you also equate darkness with depression and fear. But there’s a lot of healing and liberation in the dark. So you’re using those speech patters that I’ve noticed more and more.

There is a lot of what happens these days that I would call “spiritual bypassing,” where one offers a religious formula to will help you stay on top. But I cannot sell out the Christian message, which at its heart says that when the bottom drops out and you’re screaming your guts out at God, there’s more. It says that if you are willing to enter the cloud of unknowing and meet God in the dark—maybe even the dark of a tomb—you might be in for a surprise.

The great hope in the Christian message is not that you will be rescued from the dark but if you are able to trust God all the way into the dark, you may be surprised.

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Darkness is light

"For darkness is as light to you."

In church, we sing about the light, the glory, the beauty, the majesty.  And we feel lifted up.    

We pray for blessings and strength, peace and happiness. And we feel hope.

And when those prayers are answered we are grateful.

Whether we intend it or not, our hearts build up walls within and without.  We develop judgments and categories.  Light =  good.  Darkness = bad.  Strength = good.  Weakness = bad.  Peace = good.  Chaos = bad. 

We forget that light and darkness are bound up together.  Death and life.  Heaven and hell. 

From the darkness under the soil, a seed sprouts and pushes into the light. 

From the darkness of the womb and through pain and blood, life emerges.

The chaos and terror of an electrical storm sets a forest ablaze and some seeds are released from their dormancy to life.

The universe is full of light and beauty. 

And darkness and chaos.

And it’s all wonderful, and awful at the same time.

But we proceed as though only some parts of us, or the earth, or of others are worthy;   the good parts, the strong parts, the useful parts, the beautiful parts.

In doing this we create a separation within ourselves, within the creation and within our relationships with others. 

This separation needs to be reconciled.  We need a reconciling embrace with ourselves, with the nations, and with all species of the earth, an embrace that opens wide to the darkness in ourselves, others and the earth. 

A welcome for the unclean, and even for death in order to learn it is at the heart of life.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

……….

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

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