Deconstruction

No one told us that if we deconstructed our theories in physics we would be cast into a lake of fire. 

People often label their experience of coming out of a set of beliefs as deconstruction. 

I have a difficult time with the term deconstruction. 

Words matter. 

The words we give our children to explain their feelings, and the words we speak to ourselves have tremendous power over whether we experience things as positive, negative or neutral. 

 “anxious and nervous”  vs. “eager and excited”

“bored and lonely”  vs.  “calm and peaceful”

“Stage fright or performance anxiety”  vs.  “ excitement and adrenaline”

Words matter. 

They can define what we feel, even when the physical experience or emotional experience is the same.

Language shapes us.  

I’ve never felt like my spiritual journey involved a “deconstruction”.  I’ve always felt it was just an adventure.  Just  learning, revising,  letting go, learning differently, revising, letting go, learning more, revising further, letting go. 

Either way, it’s the same process and the same life experience. 

But somehow “deconstruction” feels scary and negative.  Adventure feels fun and exciting.      

Like all of life really. 

Deconstruction or adventure?

In other areas of knowledge and exploration (art, science, technology, even in relationships), we seem more able to welcome changes, shifts, and discoveries as positive progress, but in religion it gets framed as de-construction, or even heresy.

Of course no one taught us that if we got our art wrong we were going to hell.  No one told us that if we deconstructed our theories in physics we would be cast into a lake of fire.  No one told us that if we came up with new software, new types of music, new types of poetry, or new styles of writing we were a heretic and our souls were in danger.

How we experience growth spiritually has much to do with our idea of God.

If God is wrathful, and punishing, it will be very important to know what’s right and GET IT RIGHT!  And, if we deconstruct one set of dogmas because they were incorrect, we will feel like we need to reconstruct a new set.  Better, improved, more enlightened, more correct.  We will likely be stuck with dogmas for life, even if it is an ever-changing set.

If God is love and grace and the creative force behind infinite possibilities.  If God is NOT about our knowledge of good and evil but rather the space within which we make all the mistakes and misunderstandings we will experience in our adventure in this world:

Our growth and evolution just might feel positive and not at all like a deconstruction.

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Guns and Roses

I just finished work and finished a post about Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s day and opened facebook to discover that we’ve had yet another school shooting in our country.

On Valentines day.

I don’t have any words.  No great words of wisdom or fabulous spiritual reflections on this. 

We are a society steeped in violence.  Our speech is violent, our streets are violent, our playgrounds are violent, our homes are violent, our corporations are violent, our sports are violent, our economics are violent, our politics are violent. 

World dominance and super-power status is the goal.

Power and control is king.

…. and kids get shot at school. 

Regardless of all the twists and turns my spiritual path has taken, I keep returning to Jesus.  The prince of peace.  A man who taught non-violence.  Who taught us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek.  A man who taught us that if we are asked for our coat, to give our shirt also and if we are asked to walk one mile, walk two.  A man who said that power comes from serving others and joy comes through suffering.

A man whose example was to die rather than to meet violence with violence. 

That’s the kind of god I believe in. 

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Happy Valashentine Wednesday

It’s Ash Wednesday  …. And Valentine’s day

Ashes and chocolate. 

Love and repentance. 

Disclaimer:  I grew up low church.  We didn’t do Ash Wednesday.  We really had no liturgy of any kind other than three songs and a prayer-communion-collection- sermon- song-prayer.  So my knowledge of Ash Wednesday was pretty much that it is the beginning of Lent, and that the ashes signify repentance (as in “repent in sackcloth and ashes”).  So my disclaimer is that  because of my seriously limited knowledge of what Ash Wednesday is all about, and the fact I’ve never participated in it, lots of this information – which I got from the internet – could be highly inaccurate or just simply bullshit.   (Can I use the word bullshit in a post about Ash Wednesday?  Maybe I’ll have to repent of that.)

Either way here’s some stuff I learned and some thoughts about today:

First of all, I love that it comes right after carnivale - a huge period of indulgence culminating in Mardi Gras.    Just because that's some truth about human nature right there. 

I read that when the ashes are put on your forehead the minister or priest often says, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."    I kind of love that.  It’s way better than some statement about the sins I’m repenting of.  Instead of some statement of guilt, it’s a statement of my humanity.  And honestly, can’t we just do away with the guilt-baggage around the idea of “sin”?  I mean if “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” isn’t that just basically saying  “hey guys, you’re all human and you aren’t God” ? 

That we are all just dust? 

I read there is “Ashes to Go” program in which clergy go outside of their churches to public places, such as downtowns, sidewalks and train stations, to distribute ashes to passersby, even to people waiting in their cars for a stoplight to change.   So, if the ashes are a declaration of our imperfection and our humanity, I like that we can declare our humanity while waiting at a stoplight.  It seems about right. 

I learned that the Catholic Church does not exclude from placing of ashes on the head, those who are not Catholics, those who are not baptized, and even those who have been excommunicated from receiving the ashes.    That’s cool. 

Since we are all dust. 

I learned that in the Republic of Ireland, Ash Wednesday is National No Smoking Day.They decided on this date so that quitting smoking can tie into giving up a luxury for Lent.  That seems fitting.  Give up your ashes on ash Wednesday.

As far as Valentine’s day goes, I’m really not a fan.  It seems to put a lot of pressure on people to come up with just the right romantic gesture.

This often ends in ashes.  

Unless you're my husband - who even when he's sick in bed with Type A flu and can't get out to buy a valentine comes through with this gem.  A definite valentine's WIN in my book

Love is tough that way.   I can put forth my very best effort to show love to my loved ones, but it will usually fall short.   In the end, they have to give me grace.  They have to give me and my love the benefit of the doubt.  They have to have faith in me – that I love them, because I suck at expressing it perfectly. 

So maybe the fact that Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday is the perfect duo.   I mean, since we are human and all of our attempts to love and to express love will come out imperfect.   Since we are

just dust. 

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I tried to contain myself but I escaped

When i was going through my divorce, I saw someone wearing a T shirt with the Gary Paulsen quote, "I tried to contain myself but I escaped."   That was the T shirt I needed.

I had tried for years to be the person my first husband wanted me to be, the woman my religion wanted me to be,  the person God wanted me to be. 

In the end, I just ended up being false.  To myself and to others.  And eventually I just couldn't keep it up. Turns out religion and my first husband couldn't contain me.  And god sure didn't want to. 

I escaped.

We can try to apply our judgments and dualisms to people, however they will refuse to be contained. 

They will continually defy our categorizations. 

The “bad” person will do good and surprise us. 

The “good” person will do evil and surprise us. 

We will find ourselves trying to control others so as not to be surprised, disappointed, hurt, abandoned or deceived.  

Or, we will exit relationships, one after another so as to avoid that type of uncertainty. 

Grace that says that a human being can’t really be dealt with in this way.  Can’t be boxed or caged.

 A human is as infinite and unknowable as God himself -- made in the image of God in this way and others. 

Grace means a person is free to evolve in any direction and into endless possibilities and outcomes. 

A human being is unpredictable, unknowable.   If it were not so, we would become bored and lonely with human beings.  They would be no different than objects and possessions.  Our very control of them would render them uninteresting.   

How can we possibly have relationships with such unpredictable beings?   It's just too risky. 

Grace. 

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Don't you just hate Grace?

Let's be honest - we hate Grace. 

Let's be honest - we hate Grace.  We like to control things.  We like predictability, security and knowledge of what the future holds -- at least to some degree.  

But Grace is in its very essence unpredictable and infinite. 

We don't want to give others Grace. 
It's scary.  

They might do something we don't like.

We don't want the people we love to change too much, we don't want our bodies or our health to change too much, we want secure jobs, secure homes, secure incomes, secure economies, secure stock markets, secure political systems.  

We objectify people in an effort to create an illusion that the person we are interacting with is a secure and stable entity that we can understand. 

It's way too scary to try to love something that we don't understand, something we cannot control, something that is always shifting and changing and evolving.  So we objectify in order to love. 

We set our specifications

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Evolution is grace

 I had a weird dream a few months ago.  A rush of something I can only describe as "gray-ness" came toward me and I awoke to a loud voice that said:  

"Evolution is Grace." 

I'm a scientist and I'm fascinated with evolution.  When I taught science at a Christian school I told my students that I found a God who created evolution to be far more interesting and miraculous than one who could only create non-changeable things.  

Grace is an infinite number.  Grace is evolution.  Evolution is grace.

Grace says:  everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. 

Grace says:  The LAW is fulfilled.  There is no longer a system of RIGHT and WRONG.  But Grace. 

So anything can happen. 

Anything.

 Grace says there are endless possibilities and outcomes.  

Grace is an infinite number.   

With Grace we are out of control. 

With Grace error CAN occur and error DOES occur. 

Let's be honest - we hate this.  We like to control things.  We like predictability, security and knowledge of what the future holds -- at least to some degree.  

We don't want the people we love to change too much, we don't want our bodies or our health to change too much, we want secure jobs, secure homes, secure incomes, secure economies, secure stock markets, secure political systems.  We like to analyze things and put them into neat little categories so that we can feel like we understand them.  So that we feel some measure of control.

Right/wrong. 

Good/bad. 

Dualisms. 

Laws.

I'm a biologist and I like to think about spiritual things in light of biology.  I feel like creation reveals a lot about the creative force behind it.  I use the word "god" for that force, but you might dislike that word and prefer another one - or none at all.  That's fine.  I find the principles are the important thing, not the metaphors and words we use to try to describe them.  A rose by any other name......

In the very essence of life – the DNA – we find “rules” (the law).  Rules about replication that lead to life.  But we also find that error can and does always occur.  Errors that lead to variance, mutation, even death.

In religious terms, some will say that this error occurs only by chance, another will say it is God's plan, and still another will say it is NOT God’s plan, but rather a part of the "fallen-ness" of creation. 

Regardless of your beliefs about whether error is PART of God’s plan , or part of human’s diverting from God’s plan (the fall), or if you believe in a God at all, we all know the error DOES occur. 

Let's take DNA.  In the DNA of a cell, an error in replication will occur. Many errors are benign and go nowhere.  Some errors lead to death and suffering in the organism –tumors grow,  cancer begins, birth defects, a non-viable fetus, disease, death. 

If you were the one suffering due to this genetic error, you might call it evil.  

But , this capacity for error, this mechanism that can bring death and suffering, this "evil",  is in fact, the very thing that may allow a certain organism to survive environmental or ecological pressure.  A particular mutation that might be detrimental in good times, might prove beneficial in different environmental conditions and might provide a survival benefit to the organism. Thus, the central aspect of our very genetic makeup that has the capacity for error – the very error that brings suffering and death, the very EVIL – IS also the very thing that also contains the capacity for change, growth, survival, 

LIFE

If you were the organism that survived due to this error, you might call it good.

From death springs life.  

Good and evil are bound up in the same thing. 

It's not either/or,  it's both/and. 

In religion and philosophy the question of evil is debated.  If God is good, can he create evil?  If God is love, why is there evil? 

But in nature error exists so that life can and will continue.  It brings life. 

Error need not be pigeonholed into a nice neat little box of "good" or "bad".  

The debate of can love create evil, can good create evil does not need to arrive at an either/or conclusion. 

It's both/and.  

Both are God’s grace. 

The story of the Garden of Eden is often interpreted as a story about the introduction of evil into the world.  And then the question arises, "why did God even put the tree there?  Why would he tempt people with evil?"     And whether you read the story as allegorical, mythological or literal, the answer to that question may be the same.   The very fact that God (or creation, or biology, or the ground of all being), allows for freedom for error -- is Grace.

Grace is the full openness to an infinite number of options. 

Grace cannot be infinite if options are limited only to those options we call good. 

Grace makes space for error.  Life cannot occur without it.  Grace makes life out of error.  Life that results out of error is evolution – both biological , emotional and spiritual.

"First there is the fall, then there is the recovery from the fall.  Both are the Grace of God” - Julian of Norwich

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Covenants and desire

Nothing is required.  You are obligated to nothing.  You are free.

Part 4 

From Law to desire

When we move from head (law) to heart (desire), desire becomes “written on our hearts”. 

It’s only here that real intimacy can occur. 

Here is where “he will be our God and we will be his people. “

This is true whether it is intimacy with God or with another person. 

This dynamic is the dynamic of grace.  Nothing is required.  You are obligated to nothing.  You are free.

In grace we discover or re-discover desire. 

“Let us draw near to God with a glad and sincere heart”

Why don’t we do it?

Why don’t we enter into the new covenant of grace?  I mean real grace that says everything is permissible?

1.       We don't trust ourselves.  We don’t enter into this new covenant, we don’t set ourselves and our perceived demons free because we don’t trust ourselves.  We don’t really believe that behind all the selfish, hedonistic desires, are good desires waiting to be lived out through us.

2.   We don’t trust God.  We don’t really think that grace is grace.  We still believe some law is necessary to mix in, or chaos will ensue.

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Covenants and Desire

It is desire for the reality of the present moment.

Part 3

GRATIFYING OUR DESIRES

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart”

There are two kinds of desire.

Old covenant desire that says we don’t have something we want.  We LACK something.  We NEED something.   If we are living in this space spiritually, our relationship with God becomes about gratification of unmet desires.  We think that God will give us whatever we desire. God becomes Santa Claus.

And new covenant desire is desire for what is.  It is desire for the reality of the present moment.  It is the desire of the “I am”.   It does not say we will get everything we desire.  It says nothing more is needed.  All is well in this present moment.  New covenant desire does not say everything we desire is right here, right now but rather our desire is to BE right HERE, right NOW.  

This is the place where we drop the restriction and stop trying to change things.  We exist in grace and allow ourselves to be present with what is.  As-is.   This is where we discover that our desires are OK and God's desires are not to punish because there is nothing to punish after all.  Nothing to change.  

The right here, right now is where God is.  It's the only place we can delight in the Lord.  

In our culture we seldom SIT with desire.  We deny it, we suppress it, we mask it by indulging in some kind of immediate gratification.     

SIT with desire. 

I want…

I won’t take…..

I lack ……

It’s OK.

This is where God is.  In the place of your desires.  In your  present moment reality.  In what is.  In your want, your lack, your emptiness.  In your “I am”.

This is the new covenant. 

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Covenants and Desires

Part 2 - The new covenant

Most Christians live as though the new covenant is simply a different set of criteria that protect us from God’s punishment.

Have faith in Christ so that you won’t go to hell. 

Obey God, follow Christ and you will live the abundant life.

How is this any different from the old covenant?  If the old covenant was law that existed to protect us from punishment, how is the new covenant any different?

Maybe the new covenant has nothing to do with protecting us from punishment.  Maybe it liberates us in an entirely different way.  

Hebrews 8 says:

“If there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, there would have been no need for another.  But God found fault and said, ‘The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Isreal and the people of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors ….. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. …. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord’; because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

That doesn’t sound much like modern day Christianity.  All around us we see churches evangelizing their neighbor and saying to them, ‘know the Lord’. 

But the new covenant says NO LONGER.

The new covenant is DIFFERENT than the old covenant. 

Completely.

It doesn’t protect us from God's "desire" to punish, nor does it produce a false desire from the restrictions itself (as in Part 1 of this post series), it CONNECTS us to desire.  And in this process we come to know God.

Not in an academic or legalistic way.  But through the heart.  

We come to know ourselves, and in doing so we find God.

When the law (the obstacle) is removed, we find that some things we thought we desired go away.  We thought we really wanted them but once they are made accessible, we really don’t want them that much after all.  When I can eat all the ice cream I want without any fear of negative consequences, I will get tired of it.  It won’t seem like a treat anymore and my desire for it may wane.  This stripping away of the desire that was manufactured by the prohibition, and simultaneously being naked and unprotected from the desire of the other (ie. Having no old covenant of law to protect you), allows us to finally see with clarity our own desires and the desires of God.   No longer are we bad persons who want any number of bad things.  Nor is God a god who desires to punish us for this badness.  

Try it. Try it for a week – just do the things you want and do nothing out of obligation, law or restriction. 

Every time I discuss this subject with someone, the rebuttal is that it’s just not practical to live that way.  We have obligations to jobs, to people.   And it’s true – we do.   But just try it.   I’ve tried it and what you find is that you don’t know your own mind.  You don’t know your own heart.  You THINK you want things you don’t want.  You THINK you want to eat nothing but sugar and chocolate.  You THINK you want to lay in bed all day binge-watching Netflix.  You THINK you want to be selfish, lazy, indulgent, hedonistic.   And you think it is discipline that has kept you from it all.

And on one level, it’s true.  It IS discipline that has held back the demon.  

So -  let the demon free. 

Too afraid to try it?

 Try it.

Try it in one area of your life. 

Just to see what happens. 

 I think you will find that at first, if you pick an area that is meaningful to you, it’s scary.  But if you throw yourself into it, next you will find that it’s fun.  And then, what happens, after you’ve played it out for a while, is that it’s just not fun anymore.  The demon is not really a demon at all.  It’s all a façade.  Behind the desire you are indulging in is another desire, the desire that says, “hey wait – I don’t really want to live this way after all.  I don’t want to spend my life like this.”  And behind that is the question:

Then what DO I want?”  

And that’s the question we all need to get to.

To discover the true desires of our heart. 

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Covenants and desires

The ‘should’ disconnects us from our desires. 

PART 1:

We draw up covenants and contracts so that if the other person; spouse, business partner, seller, buyer or whomever, desires something different than us, we have some kind of document protecting us.  What is it protecting us from?  It protects us from what they may want to do to us, or not do for us.  It protects us from their desires. 

At their essence, covenants protect us from the desire of the “other”. 

The old covenant

 In the old testament, we read stories about God making covenants with his people.  From the perspective of the people, these covenants protect them from God’s wrath and destruction. 

‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ Exodus 19: 4-6

God makes a covenant with the Isrealites.  He will make them his special people, he will give them victory over their enemies, he will bestow upon them special status and protection.  If they keep this covenant with God, they won’t be like the rest of the nations, vulnerable to their enemies, destruction, plague, famine, annihilation.  We see throughout the Old Testament narrative that when they are unfaithful to the covenant, all manner of evil visits them.  They are enslaved and defeated and lose their special protection.  

Protection from what?

In that particular covenant – the protection was from God’s desire to punish.  The wrath of God. 

The old covenant involved a set of rules - laws to be followed. 

It was a covenant of if-then, quid pro quo.

 “If you obey me fully….”   

But no one can do that.

All have sinned and fall short.  

Not only that, the covenant itself produces a desire to violate it. 

Paul says in the book of Romans  chapter 7 :

 I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 

You know how it is, once you can’t eat the brownie, there’s not much you want more than the brownie.

Philosopher Jacques Lacan said that desire is not a relation to an object, but rather a relation to the obstacle to that desire or the lack of the desired object. 

Simply put, we want what we can’t have.

One could say that this law then helps us to know our desire, and in one way that is true.  But the desire we come to know is only the one that is manufactured by the restriction itself.  It is not the truest desire.  I believe when Paul says he would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet”, he is saying that the restriction brings into LIFE the desire to transgress and break free of the restriction.  It then becomes its own false desire and thus masks or disconnects us from our real desires.

You may have heard it said that whatever it is we truly want, that is what we already have.  What this is saying is that we may think we want one thing, but what we have manifested in our lives is more indicative of what we truly want – our real desires.  We may say that we want to lose 20 pounds because the restrictions and mores of our cultural group tell us we should weigh 20 pounds less, but the truer desire is that we want to enjoy and indulge in food.   We distract ourselves from the truth of our real desires by saying we want something other than what we have. 

It’s not just the old covenant in the Bible that produces this dynamic, but any obstacle, law or restriction. 

The ‘should’ disconnects us from our desires. 

1)      It produces a desire born solely due to the obstacle or the lack (as in Lacan)

2)       It disconnects us from our desire by keeping us focused on what we believe is the desire of the other.  We try to become what they want, do what they want.  We say we want the things that we know we should want. 

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