Always an Amateur

In a story recently told by a recorder teacher, she described one time when she took intensive lessons with a world famous recorder player. Within minutes of starting the first lesson, the famous one announced, “Well, it is clear you will always be an amateur.” How that must have sunk in deeply and hurt. Yet, it is also the reality of what I encounter in my own recorder practice and music making.

I have just finished working on two measures of a Handel sonata, running through it over and over again to get my fingers to know where to go next and my tongue to know exactly where it needs to be and how to open and close off notes. I spent maybe fifteen minutes on the recalcitrant notes, breaking them down, noticing each movement, trying to get them smooth, graceful and reliable. It was frustrating, hard work, and now I have knots in my shoulders and a bit of a headache.

The difficulty I have reminds me that I will never be more than an amateur, and never will play as well as that “amateur” teacher. So why is it so hard to admit I will never be more than an amateur? Why do I keep pushing up against those barriers of learning as an adult, at a time of life when my mind and my fingers are in decline, and will never reach the heights of technique to which I aspire?

Maybe it is the sense that I am still making progress, that I can get better, and the music will be able to find expression in my efforts? Even though the sonata is not considered among the most challenging or artistic of pieces, it still provides a challenge to my skills. It demands my attention, my practice and my commitment to turn it into something of beauty.

Maybe it is because my audience is so impressed with even the amateur level of playing that I can do? Let’s face it, when the only recorder you have heard is your child in third grade squawking through “All through the night” in a way that is anything but soothing, then my playing is virtuosic. Having an audience with no or little basis of comparison gives me a decided advantage.

Maybe it is because I appear to be having fun with the music, and the pieces are fun to hear? The audience doesn’t need to know how furiously my brain is working, noticing how many glitches there are along the way. If I am lucky, they will not where I lost my place and have to find my way back. They just know that it captured their attention, drew them out of their own distracted thoughts into a new sounding world.

Maybe I can find a way to let go of feeling that being an amateur is a failure? While I will never be paid for making music, I have paid to hear many famous musicians and wondered with some why I wasted my money. I might not be able to make the commitment that being a professional requires, but I can still commit my time and continually learn to be better. I can still be an expert with those who know so much less.

Maybe I can see join with the “amateur” athletes who train for the Olympics. Although they are able to dedicate mcuh more time, I can make the commitment as they have to become as excellent in their chosen sport as they can be. I can maintain a regular discipline of practice and working with coaches to continually refine my technique and build my own style.

There is one etymological perspective on the word amateur that I find appealing. In “What’s an Amateur” the Latin word “amator” which literally means “lover of” is the root of our current work. There is no better way to say it, since I am a lover of the recorder, of its many forms of expressiveness and the music written for it over the centuries.

So, being the lover of the recorder, I can bring my love into other peoples lives, and maybe I can inspire them to try it for themselves.

Sidewalk Directions

I was walking from my home in DC to a movie theater, a journey that takes me across the Mall, with its views of the Capital to the east and the Washington Monument to the west. A young, clean-cut man in his twenties, who was pushing a stroller, asked me which direction he would find the Museum of Natural History. He had emerged from the Metro station and lost his way, several blocks the wrong direction. As I gave him directions, he started out to find it, but since my trip was going the same direction we settled into a conversation.

He told me his name was “Christian.” That caused a bit of surprise, and led me to pay closer attention. It is not everyday you meet a person who introduces himself as Christian! A flag went up in my mind signaling that this could be one of God’s playful intrusions into my life.

It was not a dramatic conversation. He had newly moved into the area and was just beginning to explore it. As a long time resident, I noted how there is always much to do, especially with children. I realize now that I never even saw his child or learned anything about her. Or maybe it was a him? Talking about children isn’t the usual male topic.

He explained why he chose Alexandria after leaving the Air Force, with family near by and lots of opportunities matching his “skill set.” I answered his question about what I do. It is the common getting-to-know-you chatter in a city of career focused people.

As he turned left to walk down towards the museum while I was continuing straight, the goodbye was a simple and understated as our getting to know each other. His “Thank you for helping, Sir” caught me by surprise. Clearly his military training to respect an elder, but I am unused to being called “Sir.”

During those few minutes we walked together along the sidewalk, I experienced more than I expect in casual sidewalk encounters or providing directions around a confusing city. I cannot say with certainty that God was with us. I cannot know that anything happened beyond the unusual event of one man asking another for directions, and our breaking through the usual anonymity of city life to actually talk together for several blocks.

I walked on toward the theater with a new sense of hope for him, for me, for our future as two men journeying through life. For a short time we experienced community, which is definitely a gift from God.

Cross Purposes

I have not been posting here over the last few months as daily life has distracted me from the process of intentional reflection. Now as things settle down, in spite of it being the height of holiday rush, I hope to return to my discipline.

It is not that I haven’t been writing. Pieces were begun but got stuck or lost their focus or became too personal for public reading. So, reaching back to a piece I started about a year ago, here is something for Advent.

In “Joseph’s Dream,” an essay posted on Episcopal Café, the Rev. Dr. Roger Ferlo reviews Joseph’s perspective on the birth of Jesus. Ferlo reminds us how much inner conflict Joseph must have felt when he discovered his wife-to-be was pregnant. How it was during a dream that Joseph learned who this child would be. What caught me was Ferlo’s reflection on how that inner chaos of Joseph matches ours:

“. . . our deepest desires at cross-purposes with each other. We feel it when we want at the same time to embrace our families and to escape them; when we harbor private grief or grievances in the midst of public joy; when in spite of the holiday, or because of it, we seek to escape to a darkened room, to banish all semblance of dreams, to sleep in blankness.”

I have been experiencing that kind of internal chaos. The sharp contrast between simultaneous feelings has been startling and confusing. My desire is to banish the negative and only feel the positive, which is impossible. They both demand attention, and are part of the same experience, engaged in the chaos.

I can only blame myself. I have been working for years to notice my feelings, and to notice when I have moved into denial. In my experience, denial shoves the negativity being avoided into a secret bank account, where it accumulates compound interest at high rates. When the denial fails, the bank account automatically opens to show all of fear and pain that has collected in the darkness, battering my soul.

So, I try to deal with things as they come, not bury them inside. However, that requires being open to my emotions, which do have a life of their own. Last year during a baptism at church, I found myself brimming with hope for the little girl who I don’t even know. I felt proud yet humbled in making the promise aloud that I would support her in her life in Christ. Tears came to my eyes as we sang a hymn while she was processed around the congregation. It was embarrassing, wiping my tears and blowing my nose during the last verse.

My tears came partly from my knowledge that I would not be remaining in that congregation, that my time within that community was temporary. Even as I made the promise, I knew I would not be available to care for her. My path would take me away to a different parish. While I try to justify it by saying I would fulfill my promise with some other child where ever I might be, I had a deeply felt desire to care for that particular infant.

So often, we are all like Joseph, with our “deepest desires at cross purposes.” As we enter Advent this year, “as with Joseph, the dream will come however much we try to block it, making of our mixed desires and the world’s distress the stuff of revelation.”

May God grant all of us the courage to be open to God’s revelation this Advent.

A Time for Empty Space

At the end of September I heard an interview of Dar Williams, a composer and singer, on National Public Radio. She was describing her “need to take the time to structure my life to create the empty spaces, so every story really has its due."

Many of us struggle with setting aside time for the “empty spaces” in which we can pay attention and listen to our inner conversations, maybe even get a peek into our souls. Much of life distracts us from being able to shift our attention that direction. Sometimes, when we are anxious about what we might learn, we search for distractions to avoid listening to what is going on inside.

As the long gap in my entries on this blog indicates, I have been struggling to find that time for several weeks now. It is too easy to postpone it, thinking I will be able to fit it into the weekend, or maybe late at night after turning off the television. Of course other things crowd into the weekend, and I am usually too tired late at night.

I am not complaining, because my life has been rich with many things that engage and challenge me. But, when the “empty spaces” keep slipping away, I also find it much harder to notice God.

Dar Williams describes the necessity of time by herself:

“I say to my husband, to the people around me, sorry I cannot do this right now because I have to go wander in a field. Its really what I do for a living . . .”

So, what if I were to claim the same statement, that “its really what I do for a living.” I don’t mean “living" as punching a time clock or producing a commodity to earn an income, the way she is using that phrase. But “for a living” can mean an intentional, purposeful way of living one’s life.

I know when I insist on regularly including those spaces in my schedule the quality of my life improves significantly. I am more creative in working with others, I can better resist the anxiety of the times, and I can offer a sense of being present to all I meet. All aspects of my living is better.

At one time in my life I believed the promises of a personal planner company, that by using their product and taking their training I would be able to control my schedule, make all of the pieces fit, and live a balanced life. Our society constantly promotes that fantasy in order to manipulate our self-image and sell us products.

Then I asked a coworker, who is also a visual artist, who she keeps her office job and her art in balance. She shocked me by saying there is no way to keep them in balance. She found herself fully focused on one because of the intellectual and emotional demands to do the work while nothing happened with the other. Over a period of months or even years she hoped to get a balance for herself, but not on a daily or weekly basis.

While it is hard keep that longer-term model of balance, I found it to be both true and healthful. Even though I have not been able to do this kind of writing as much as I have liked, I have been able to find times for private writing in my journal, which records thoughts and feelings for later review. There has been time found for making music on my recorder, both individual practice and rehearsing with my group. I have been able to use my time to enjoy different friends and family, while also making time to meet and learn about people at my new church community.

While that has all been good, I have still struggled to fit in the “empty spaces.” But, as long as I keep aware, and asking the question, I believe I will find the blend of what will sustain me, even if it is not in balance.

Thank you Dar Williams for your insight!

P.S. Writing this essay has been an experience in how much I have needed to work through this topic since first hearing the interview three weeks ago. So much has been working in my head, below my awareness, that there is a rush to get it all onto the page, to bring the pieces together, and to follow the newly noticed threads. Writing becomes one way in which I can listen in the “empty spaces” to what is important, meaningful, and what I want to communicate to others.

Learning Something Old and New

At the Amherst Early Music Festival, we gather to engage with music from Renaissance and Baroque periods. Some instruments are eccentric, with strange names like sackbut or cornamuse. Many of us are equally as quirky.

This year I started learning how to play music directly from the hand written or printed notation that was used 500 years ago. As the sample shows, it is only slightly similar to what is currently used, and many of the modern conventions had not been established until later in history.

It is fascinating to make music reading the same images on paper used by musicians more than a dozen generations ago. As one teacher said after practicing a five-part piece over an hour, “I wonder if this is the first time anyone has heard this music in the last 500 years!” That is pretty heady stuff. But my head could also get in the way.

Learning anything entirely new, especially as an adult, takes one back to feeling like a child. Playing from early musical notation led to feelings of ineptness, stupidity and embarrassment, and was deeply humbling. I have had to let go of deeply trained and ingrained habits, and needed to re-learn what to expect from the paper with black ink in front of me.

Those with more experience told me the ways that they adjusted, but all emphasized the importance of relying on my sense of musicality instead of specific rules or techniques. I needed to find a way to trust what I know about music, and to keep my analytical mind out of the way. Trying to process it intellectually while sight reading is impossible.

It is like learning a new language as an adult. You can learn the various verb tenses and memorize definitions of new words. But when speaking to someone, you cannot pause for several seconds to mentally flip through the dictionary in your head. It needs to become much more intuitive and automatic.

It is hard to let go of the sense of control that one’s intellect provides. There were times when the panic would set in, when I felt so overwhelmed there seemed no point in going on. My brain could not process all of what it needed to do any faster, and I would sink into despair.

I tried to monitor myself for those times and then intentionally let go of my anxiety, taking a few deep breaths and put down my instrument. If I could just listen to those playing around me, read the notes and let myself begin to hear the music again, I would settle down. I had to get out of my head and listen with the rest of who I am.

Taking the time to listen to those around me and how they would play a passage a particular way, I began to understand how the rules fit into the music. Each class I would have at least one “Aha” moment in which I saw the why a rule was needed, and the role it played. By discovering those patterns and learning how to recognize them in the process of making the music, I understood it better and was able to apply it more easily n the future.

Eventually, I could pick up my instrument and try again, a bit humbler though more confident that I was understanding the music at a much deeper level.

Curiously, much of what I have described here I have been learning on my spiritual journey. I have worked on the problem of getting stuck in my head. I have learned that I need to find time to withdraw and relax my view of things. I have begun to trust in the knowledge that there is a deeper level which will understand things.

Starting Anew

When people who are seeking a spiritual director phone me to set up that first meeting, I experience a wide range of thoughts and emotions. Having searched for a new spiritual director two times now, I have a sense of what is involved. So, let me describe that process of starting anew as spiritual companions.

I had been given the name of my first spiritual director by my therapist several weeks before I made that first phone call. I kept stalling, not sure if I was ready to take the plunge. When I got her answering machine, I was a bit relieved to leave a short message. But once we started talking on the phone and found several things that we had in common, my anxiety level dropped and I was ready to begin.

When someone telephones me to see if I am available, I am never expecting the call. There is no special phone number, no special office hours so the call could come anytime during my ordinary day. I have to stop whatever it is I am doing and decide if it is a good time to talk. It might be better to set-up a better time when I can focus on the series of questions that help both of us to decide if we will move onto the next step. We need to determine whether our schedules will match-up, what the directee is looking for and what I am trained to provide before scheduling our first meeting.

Sometimes the phone conversation provides a preview about who this person is and what led him or her to reach out. Often there is some specific event, either positive or negative, that started the search. Other times the person is experiencing a staleness or stuckness in his or her journey in faith, and wants to know how to get moving again.

When I first called my first spiritual director, I was in the “feeling stale” situation. I had started a regular time for Morning Prayer a few years earlier, and it was feeling monotonous. I did not want to give it up, but I had no idea how to keep it fresh either. There was also a sense of wanting more, a desire to go deeper than I could with people in my church community who became anxious with my questions about God.

The first face-to-face meeting is often filled with hope that the relationship will be productive and spirit graced. At the same time these is some anxiety for both persons as they consider entering a mutual commitment to an ongoing spiritual direction relationship.

In forming any new relationship, there are questions about who this new person is and how trustworthy he or she will be. I like a conversation where we are each telling the other our personal backgrounds, looking to see where there are similar issues and approaches to life and faith. If there is not some common ground, the relationship may not have enough shared experience to build upon. Either one of us might decide not to continue.

I remember feeling reassured the first time I met with a spiritual director. We had similar experiences and I left with some new ideas of how to enhance my daily Morning Prayer time. Most importantly, she affirmed the yearning I felt for connecting to something beyond my current life.

We continued our relationship for six years, and it was hard to end it. But both of our circumstances had changed, and each needed to move into new things. I knew I needed a different kind of director, with a different focus and skills, and began to seek a new director.

I did not know where that first meeting would lead, and as I look back now, I am deeply appreciative of taking that leap. It did not seem a big leap at the time, but it has led me into a rich new understanding of God. The journey has been scary and challenging alongside the times of satisfaction and newness. I would not have done it by myself. Having a companion has made it possible.

Intimate Wrestling

While researching the story of Jacob with the angel, I looked for images available on the Internet. This drawing by Bonnat makes it dramatically visible how intimate wrestling is. Bare flesh against bare flesh, and faces held just inches from each other. The intimacy is not just physical. It includes all aspects of a person, such as the emotional and intellectual, as two persons battle to gain the upper hand, moving into a position of power.

How does this adult who avoided wrestling in high school gym class engage with this image? As a teenage male, holding another boy closely made me anxious. It was too close to the intimacy I desired even though society told me it was wrong. Even now, I want to avoid the intensity of wrestling, especially with God.

So, how can any of us put himself or herself into this story am imagine we can wrestle with God? As I try to picture what that would be like, I want to make it into an interior rather than an exterior struggle. I am good at intellectual manipulation of ideas and thoughts. That feels much safer. Yet, my own body betrays me with a knot in my stomach and tight shoulders. I am wholly caught up in the struggle.

One of my cherished images of God is a companion on my journey. I have been comforted by the idea of God walking beside me, often in silence, but there to turn to as I needed. There has been a comfortable distance between us, the equivalent of the 30 or so inches that social norms require for friendship. So, when did the One who has been nearby but not deeply engaged become so closely and intensely entangled in my life?

Didn’t I keep saying, praying, and hoping for a closer relationship with God? But I did not expect this kind of conflict between us, this struggle over who would be stronger. I want God to do it my way. Just like Jacob, I want to define the direction and set my own goals.

How dare I take on the all powerful, all knowing creator of my own flesh? Not only is it dangerous but it is totally foolish. There really would have been no match if God chose to be all powerful creator of the universe. I would have been beaten into submission at the first sign of my resistance. Maybe this is an invitation from God to move into a new level of relationship, or intimacy?

Wrestling with Jacob - Reading the Genesis account

At the urging of my spiritual director, I have been reading, marking and inwardly digesting the story in which Jacob struggles with the angel throughout the night (Genesis 32:24-31). She was responding to my describing myself as wrestling with God. So here are some initial thoughts on the Biblical story.

I have a hard time identifying with Jacob, and a brief scan of the preceding chapters reminds me why. You may remember Jacob and his twin brother Esau wrestled in their mother’s womb, but Jacob was born second. As a young man Jacob bought Esau’s birthright for some stew, then deceived his father Isaac to receive the blessing meant for his first-born brother. After Jacob fled fearing recrimination, he is deceived by his father-in-law-to-be into marrying the Leah, the older sister before being allowed to marry her more desirable younger sister Rachel. (I will skip over any discussion of polygamy being the norm for parts of scripture, and ignore the role of Leah’s and Rachel’s maids as fore-mothers of Israel’s tribes. Family values were different in those times!)

At the time we pick up the story, Jacob was facing an encounter with Esau who he had fled some twenty years earlier. The story in Genesis doesn’t say where the man came from who wrestled with Jacob, or even specifically who he was. However, they fought throughout the night with Jacob stubbornly continuing to wrestle, unwilling to give up even though the man put Jacob’s hip out of joint.

I may be stubborn, but not that stubborn. While I recognize some similarity between my life and Jacob, I don’t want to believe I am as deeply as flawed as him. Yes, I deceived my family about my sexuality until I was in my mid twenties, and I tried to be someone I wasn’t to make them and everyone else like me more. Yes, I fled from my parent’s home, attempting to use physical distance from them to establish my own, separate life path. Yes, I hid my relationships from my parents because I was quite sure they would never accept my same sex partners.

Alright, I’ll admit maybe I have done some of the same things and may be a little bit more like Jacob than I want to admit. But I don’t expect to become the father of an entire religious faith, either. Having no children of my own would seem to end that similarity.

So, to see if there are things not visible in the English translation, I read a few scripture commentaries and learned that there are many identities that have been seen in the angel. A common one is the angel is God or at least representing God, but others see Satan or an internal battle of Jacob wrestling with his own internal demons. In my own reading of the story, my wrestling is with God, my will against God’s will, with God trying to make me submit and acknowledge God’s overpowering strength.

I am not willing to submit, though. I find myself going against all of the spiritual masters who say I must submit to God. While there have been times during the wrestling that I will do that briefly, I also know that I am not going to give up. I refuse to lay down my claim to pursue what I deeply believe I have been called to be and to do.

What gets me angry is that this is a very different God than the one who I have known. I have seen God as a companion on my journey, who encouraged my creativity and effectiveness, walking beside me to provide support and encouragement.

What caused the wrestling? What has changed?

Living Openly and Honestly

A recent interview of Bishop V. Gene Robinson in the Church Times, a British newspaper, reminded me of the challenge that gay and lesbian clergy experience in trying to live openly and honestly. In the interview, the Bishop notes:

The degree of openness with which one lives one’s life is a very personal choice. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong about that. The question for any gay or lesbian person is: “Is the price that I’m paying for being quiet exceeding the benefit?

Bishop Robinson is pointing to an unstated contract from the church and society to clergy people who hide their differences in sexual orientation. Society and the church hierarchy will leave gay and lesbian persons alone if those persons do nothing to upset the status quo or to raise suspicions. It is very similar to the military policy of “Don’t ask and don’t tell.” It is a very attractive option that makes the personal price seem reasonable, while also carrying a threat for those who violate the contract.

It is difficult for clergy to hide their personal lives because they are in such public roles. Everything they say or do is watched. One of the common dilemmas of an apparently single clergyperson is the well meaning church member acting as a matchmaker. If the person is not heterosexual and is hiding that, dealing with the situation requires constant energy and self-monitoring.

Twenty five years ago my ordained gay and lesbian friends paid a tremendous price for being ordained. They chose hiding that significant part of their sexuality so they could be ordained. The price was in their being dishonest, telling lies, and hiding any relationships. The emotional strain on my friends was clear. A relationship with a significant partner was almost impossible, requiring clandestine behavior which led to a feeling of shame by one or both persons. The alternatives of forced celibacy or promiscuous sex were equally shame producing and destructive to any sense of integrity. However, those persons felt the price was necessary to respond to their call from God.

Fortunately in the United States the price for being openly gay or lesbian has dropped considerably in the last 25 years. As more and more people tell their friends, family, co-workers and churches about themselves, the specter of prejudice and strangeness disappears. As people are seen for who they are, the ignorance and old assumptions are replaced by real, living, ordinary human beings. It has been happening one person at a time, and will continue to happen as long as open and honest conversations can be held.

For all of the progress that has occurred, there are still many dangers in living openly and honestly. It is seen in the death threats that Bishop Robinson receives, that require him to wear a bullet-proof vest and hire security guards in certain public settings. It is seen in need of gay and lesbian clergy to have a private meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is seen in pressure put upon an openly gay clergyman to withdraw from becoming a bishop in the Church of England.

The personal dangers also became visible to many in the Episcopal Church who were shocked by the vicious and violent statements and actions in response to consecration of Bishop Robinson. We had deluded ourselves about how much progress has been made. We had forgotten how an open and honest persons threatens society that demands secrecy and lies to protect the status quo.

In his book In the Eye of the Storm Gene Robinson describes making the decision to stop hiding and lying to himself, his family, his friends and the church. He expected to pay the price by losing his ability to be a priest, but found welcome and acceptance. Instead of rejection, his call was affirmed and his ministry grew even to the point of being elected to the episcopacy.

I am proud of how Bishop Robinson is able to stand openly and honestly as a person of faith who knows God is with him. I realize he will make mistakes and will do things that will disappoint me. I pray that he might feel the support of so many who are deeply moved by who he is and who he is becoming. I hope my prayer, joined with many others around the world, will keep him safe from the dangers he faces from within and without. May God continue to be present with him, for him and in him in the weeks, months and years of struggle still ahead.

Proceed as the Way Opens

Reading a new-to-me book, Writing the Sacred Journey*, I was surprised by the use of the Quaker phrase “proceed as the way opens.” In the context, it describes an attitude toward writing which respects the ambiguity of the process by allowing the emerging of the words to define the direction and content of what is being written.

Of course, the Quakers are describing an attitude toward the journey of life that doesn’t expect all of the steps to be clear from the beginning, and that expects God will keep showing where to go a bit at a time. The process of discerning where to go is not settled, but must continually be engaged, requiring an ongoing sensitivity to God and listening to one’s life.

This is not to say that this is the only Quaker approach to life and decisions. In fact, the Quakers developed a very different approach in the “clearness committees” to assist individuals to explore what they believe might be a call from God for action. In the clearness process a group of people listens to the individual and asks questions, so that the possible blind spots or unconsidered aspect of the decision can be more deeply explored. It takes advantage of the wisdom of a variety of perspectives to improve the discernment.

They are not mutually exclusive, and both forms could and would be used by the same person or persons at different times. But, it strikes me how regularly I have seen the model of the clearness committee described, adapted and used in both church and society. Yet only this day have I discovered its sibling decision making process of “proceeding as the way opens.”

What does it say about us as people and our society that we expect the clarity to be obtained through a clearness committee and we avoid the ambiguity and insecurity implied by proceeding as the way opens?

I know I want clarity even though my life is mostly lived in watching and wondering what will open up. Openness in this sense is living in the moment, acting in response to ordinary everyday experience. I must pay attention to the world, people, and to God around me.

Just this morning Glenda, who is a priest in Panama, called to me as I walked through the Metro station. If I had not heard her call my name, which I can easily do when I am focused on my clear agenda of getting to my train, I would not have had the pleasure of our short hug and sharing of greetings. God opened a way for us to reconnect.

I am learning to appreciate and trust God will be with me as I proceed as the way opens, even if I am still learning. I certainly have used it as I have written this!

*Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir by Elizabeth J. Andrew p. 17

Crying at Baptims

This Pentecost with the baptism of an infant, Karl, as well as his mother, I found myself crying again. It started early in the presentation and reached full flow when I joined the rest of the congregation in saying “We receive you into the household of God . . .”

I have been much more aware of my emotions during church services in the last few years, and am still learning to adjust to them. Often during some point in the Eucharistic Prayer a few words will suddenly jump out at me, speaking directly to something I have been dealing with in my life. I believe it is a gift, God wanting to reassure me. That doesn’t make it any easier.

It can become incredibly awkward since men are not supposed to be emotional. I have decided that I am not going to stifle the emotions just to make other people more comfortable. That would feel like I am stifling God. In consideration for other’s sensitivities when the crying starts, I wait until people are busy making a joyful noise singing a hymn to blow my nose. Or, when my eyes are full of tears, I blink them back until there is a time for prayer and people are supposed to be paying attention to God rather than the guy several feet away who is dabbing his eyes.

I should not have been surprised by the tears last Sunday, as I looked at the parents and their young son. I saw their hope for Karl and the love of those standing with them. Baptism is a time for hope, for bringing the salvation of Christ into his life and in the welcoming him into a community that pledges to teach and encourage him into the faith.

Alongside that hope, I thought of all of the pain and grief that Karl would experience in growing up and becoming a mature person in faith. I wondered what kinds of problems he will encounter in his life, and if he would be overwhelmed by situations. I prayed that he will be given the strength and courage to face those problems.

The sadness grew because there is nothing any of us, including his parents, his godparents or the rest of the community can do to keep that pain away or to protect this young infant from all that will happen. He alone will have to find his way to cope with and overcome the turmoil. I wish it could be different.

So, one more Sunday, I had to stuff my damp handkerchief into my pocket before turning to those around me to exchange the Peace of God, my eyes still damp from tears, and feeling a bit foolish. Foolish for caring about what might happen to Karl. Foolish for wanting to be emotionally open to God and for God.

Sue’s Reflection on Spiritual Hunger

Sue lived next door to me during our spiritual direction training program. While she and I come from opposite sides of the globe, we found ourselves dealing with similar questions and struggles - searching for where our call was leading.

Recently I wrote Sue, “ I doubt I will ever feel satisfied… because I always seem to want more…” Sue replied, “I smiled as I read your words: I have recognized the same in myself for so long; but you know, I suspect that might be a grace to keep us in touch with what is in fact a deep spiritual hunger.”

I struggle with her response, even though I know that she has described something very true. I started down this path to spiritual growth wanting it to lead to being calm, peaceful, and satisfied. While there are times of quiet and centeredness, those times are only brief, infrequent, and rarely when I really need them.

What keeps emerging for me are feelings of the incompleteness and of not having done enough. I feel it as a failure, so when Sue reminds me to consider it a grace, a gift from God to keep me open, I am startled. Rather than being a failure, she understands that yearning as a gift from God. God is stirring me up, calling me forward.

Sue went on to write, “Some people never tap into that hunger for more and don’t want to, because it’s uncomfortable at least, painful at most.”

It is definitely uncomfortable and gets in my way. I easily slip into distraction from that unsettledness. I can numb myself in different ways, such as watching television, staying busy with work or church business, or fantasizing about creating a perfect garden. But, if the yearning is from God, then numbing myself is denying God’s persisting call.

The yearning often recalls places of pain, either from the past or how my life is being lived today. I become aware of how I failed at something in the past or I feel inadequate to resolve a current dilemma. So again, numbing the pain becomes very tempting and it is very easy to slip away from reality.

Alternatively, wallowing in the pain feels safer than risking God’s desire for more. By becoming stuck in the feelings, I don’t have to take on the hard work and challenge of getting on with my life. It avoids changing those things either within me or around me that have closed me to God’s desire.

In her gentle way, Sue leads to her own response, “I’m learning to befriend it.”

Again, she surprises me with what seems obvious. Rather than push away the yearning and discomfort, she urges me to bring it closer, and get to know it better. If the yearning is from God, than by approaching it I am approaching God.

It is not unlike some yoga positions that I attempt while watching the limber young woman on the DVD. With this aging body, I will never move with the grace and strength that she has achieved. I can still approach the movement with the hope that even in my imperfect execution, I am getting closer.

So Sue asks the final question any good spiritual director would. “What happens when you take that holy longing and restless desire for more to your God?????”

But I am afraid to take it to God. What might God ask or even require of me if I were to directly ask the question? Would I be required to take a radical step out of my current life? More questions rise up to keep me away from God.

I don’t know why I am afraid, if I truly believe that God is loving and wants to bring me into closer relationship. But the fear is there, and perhaps that is what I need to take to God in prayer, at least for now.

Ringing Compassion

I have been thinking about compassion a lot. It started a few weeks ago when I was at a flea market, and noticed many sizes of Tibetan singing bowls in one booth. One large bowl, nine inches in diameter and four inches deep, had a deep pure tone when I rang it with the mallet. The vendor showed me how to hold the bowl in the palm of my hand and rub the edge of the bowl with a suede covered mallet. Soon, soft vibrations began, growing louder as it responded to the friction of the leather.

Around the outside in a strange script is some writing which the man told me is “Om Mane Padme Hum,” a repeated prayer for compassion. That convinced me to buy it. Every few days since then I have rubbed the edge of the bowl so it would ring out a prayer for compassion in its full voice.

I need to hear that prayer for my daily life as well as during my time providing spiritual direction. It is hard to be able to be compassionate and stay present to the pain in others. I am not alone in readily hiding behind a wall by offering advice or by judging and rejecting the person in pain or by being unwilling to listen. It is hard for all of us to lower the protective wall. Being fully present with someone in pain strikes the memory of our own pain like the hard mallet strikes the singing bowl.

Compassion is grounded in being able to listen, completely and lovingly, even when my own pain, whether in the past or the present, claims my attention. My ability to listen is shaped by how I have claimed, respected and healed from my own times of suffering. The more I have been able to accept and remember my struggles, the more likely I am able to decide to let down the wall and really be available to another.

As a man, I am trained by my culture to be invulnerable, to stay in control of the situation, to keep up the wall. So the decision to let myself be affected by other’s wounding, to be vulnerable with any other person is counter-cultural. It challenges my internal habits and others’ expectations.

The model for being counter-cultural became more clear this year as I moved through Holy Week. Throughout the events of the Last Supper, betrayal, sham courts, beatings, and crucifixion, Jesus chose to be vulnerable. He chose to give up control, and to endure the worst that humans can do to each other. God in Christ experienced the full range of the emotional and physical pain.

What the social culture did not understand then and still does not understand is that Jesus’ choice to be vulnerable also opened him to the power God’s healing. So too, when I am able to be vulnerable, I am opened to the power of God’s healing.

Compassion is not ethereal or abstract, but is experienced in our presence with and for each other, just as God became flesh and was available for us. In offering compassion to another person, and in my awareness of God’s continual healing and forgiving compassion for me, I may make manifest God’s presence and compassion to others.

When I hold the singing bowl to strike it, its vibrations touch not only my ears, but all of me. So it is with God’s compassion. We can experience the ringing pure tone that touches body, mind, heart and soul, God with us.

Tree of Hope

When Mom died recently, the neighbors gave us a gift certificate to a local nursery, knowing I am a passionate gardener - just like Mom. Wanting something special to remind me of her, I decided to plant an unusual tree.

The chosen location required a small tree, but being near the front sidewalk, one that would be interesting all year. As I flipped through my mind all the trees I have wanted to grow, I knew it had to be a Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum). Originally from China, they were introduced into this country at the turn of the previous century.

David was curious about what to expect, and while pictures helped, he wanted to see one. So one day we went to the National Arboretum, a place we have visited regularly with our dogs. I was surprised that we quickly found two paperbark maples near the National Capitol Columns. They appeared a bit rough for the wear, but still intriguing.

Then we found a very beautiful young one in the Asian Valley. Even in the early spring, without any leaves, it was a delight to see, with the reddish-orange bark that peeled back in odd places, catching the light and even moving in the breeze.

David checked around to different nurseries before he found one in stock that he brought home. I felt a bit left out of the decision, but knew he has a good eye. When I finally saw it, he had chosen well.

It was only after I planted it that I realized it was more than just reminder of my Mom’s life. It is a tree of hope for our future and for our home with a view of the Chesapeake Bay.

We have been in a time of transition for three years now. David has been professionally in-between for almost five years. I have been trying to keep going with my own professional life and pursuing my call to be a spiritual director while wondering when or how his life might pull mine up by the roots.

Without consciously deciding it, planting the tree was our way of making a commitment to put down our roots in that little piece of land looking out over the water. The experts say paperbark maples will grow to 30 feet in 50 years, and I hope to be there shaping its growth as a fitting memory of Mom.

It reminds me of Jeremiah, who bought the parcel of land as the Israelites were being marched out of Jerusalem to exile in Babylonia, showing his belief that they would be returning some day. While we are not threatened with enslavement or exile, we wonder what life will bring, and how we will be able to keep the house, its garden with the labyrinth, and the view of the Chesapeake Bay.

There is a Paper Bark Maple now growing in the front yard, our statement to God of hope that we will live in our bit of Jerusalem.

What is Distinctive about Masculine Spirituality?

Is there a difference between the ways that men and women approach and grow spiritually? Is it better to call it masculine and feminine since the behaviors are not exclusive to one or the other sex? These questions have been in my mind for few years now, and while I don’t have an answer yet, I am beginning to identify some patterns.

My relationships in providing and receiving spiritual direction have primarily been with women. My spiritual directors have been women, my peer supervision group is women, even my therapist is a woman. I have great respect for all of them, for the understanding and skill they have offered, and all that I have learned. But there have been times when I wondered if they understood me.

Earlier this month I participated in retreat for male spiritual directors. The conversations had a distinctive flow, and in a very short time I felt like those who listened to me really did understand at a deep level. The way we told our stories, slowly sorting through things in our mind and cautiously exposing our feelings was different from how women tell their stories.

In Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men*, Don Bisson describes his perception that men often begin with an insight. Don describes a process in which he asks the man to personalize the insights into his present life struggles which causes the man to move to the center of his passion. As the conversation continues, often there is an “ah-ha” experience, and the man reconnects the insight into an emotional stance where he feels more whole.

My struggle has always been to integrate my head with my heart, to bring them together to create a new whole and basis for faith. Often what first emerges in my awareness is an idea or new insight. Then I grapple my way through my thoughts and emotions by journaling, looking for the ways the thoughts and emotions confirm or contradict each other. I will try out pieces in conversations to see how others respond. I monitor my reactions and try to relate the inner work to outside experiences. I try to listen for how God is acting in all of the conversations and relationships.

Writing for this blog has become another way to move through the process of pulling the thoughts together. By recording the fragments as they appear, and letting them keep arranging themselves as I write, discarding what doesn’t fit, I play with how it all fits together. Each of these essays reaches a point where I decide it is “good enough” as I try to let go of getting it “right” or perfect.

But is this common for other men? Don’t some women also find the same kind of dynamic flow and process? Is it just because I start in my mind, when many of the women I know seem to start with the emotions and their heart?

I don’t know, but the questions keep me on the journey.

*Donald Bisson, FMS. Melting the Iceberg: Spiritual Direction for Men. Presence: The Journal of Spiritual Directors International, vol. 6, no. 2 (May 2000) pp. 31-37.

Alone in the Presence

I had seen it several times during the Spiritual Director’s International Conference at the end of March. It is one of a series of Prayer Vessels by Monica Armstrong, who had liberally spread her art throughout the meeting rooms. Titled Alone in the Presence, Monica honors the spiritual wisdom of Julian of Norwich.

Julian was an anchoress in 14^th century England, which means that she lived the last decades of her life in a small cell with the door locked so she could not go out nor others come in. Her cell had a window into the church from which she could hear the Mass and receive the sacrament. There was a second window on the outside wall where anyone could come and talk to her and ask for her advice.

The prayer vessel represents Julian’s ministry of prayer, contemplation and spiritual guidance. She lived her life physically in the middle, between the church and the world. While observing the daily offices, she was not cloistered from the world but available to any and all who passed by. The prayer vessel creates a similar physical inner space of prayer and meditation, a part of the world while apart from it.

Julian was a holy woman who experienced visions from God and took twenty years to write her understanding of them in Revelations of Divine Love. Her non-punitive understanding of sin was radically different from the Church of her time. Also, Julian often used feminine images of God, even describing Christ as “our mother.” Her sense of the inclusiveness of God’s complete love led her to state: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Alone in the Presence provides a striking contrast to Monica’s other vessels in bowl or bottle shapes which are traditionally seen as feminine forms. It stands tall and narrow as a tower, strong and visible, which is a traditionally masculine shape. While I am not privy to Monica’s vision for her artwork, I can speak to my response. It illustrates one medieval woman’s ability to stand, separate and tall, independent in an age when a woman’s independence often meant ostracism or death. She wrote and spoke God’s truth as she knew it, opposing the fear and turmoil of those days when the plague or violence from other people could strike anytime.

Julian’s cell has not survived and the church was destroyed by a bomb during World War II. However as the first woman to write a book in English, her words continue to inspire many who continue to learn from her vision over six hundred years ago.

Alone in the Presence now sits where I can see it while I provide spiritual direction, a reminder of Julian who preceded me in listening to others on their spiritual journeys.

Walking Prayer and Community

Walking a labyrinth always seemed to be a solitary and internally focused time. When encountering others on the path, one or the other of us would step aside with a simple nod, quickly returning to internal focus. We would be polite to each other, but distant, not wanting to intrude into other person’s prayer time.

That changed one evening in early July walking the gravel and stone labyrinth at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, CA. The participants in the Internship in the Art of Spiritual Direction met in silence at the outdoor labyrinth. One at a time we entered the labyrinth, walking as individuals into the center, pausing for varying times, then back out. As people finished, they sat in the grass on the side, watching until the last person was done.

Starting the walk, I was hoping for the sense of centering and quiet. As I walked, I became very aware of who was around me, their names and what I knew about them. I noted in my journal “what an entirely different feeling it was for me – I was excited to be joining in with all of the others in walking . . . . it is big enough that most of the group fit into it easily. Some greeted me as they went by, others did not.” (July 5, 2006)

I felt connected with each one. There was new kind energy in sharing prayer together, an experience of God’s presence in community prayer rather than personal prayer. In a synergy of spirit and respect for everyone, the feelings stayed with me through the rest of the training program.

During the middle ages, the faithful would walk together in a line or dance in labyrinths. We know this from church documents which record church officials denouncing the activity and forbidding it. I have wanted to experience it, so at the end of the workshop at Mercy Center, I invited the others to join me in walking the labyrinth in a line.

Several gathered at the appointed time at dusk and we walked into the center with one hand on the shoulder of the person in front. We used a simple pattern of three steps forward then one step back, then three more steps forward and one back, over and over. Late arrivals joined the line on the way, until we were circled around the center.

Walking out, we held hands and walked naturally as the darkness was settling around us. “It was quite fun and playful coming out, and fun to see the line of more than a dozen of us stretched out around one side of the labyrinth. The most fun was when we were three to four layers deep near the center.” (July 23, 2006) One person began singing “We are walking in the light of God,” and soon we were all singing it loudly.

Those experiences changed me, and led me to become more attentive to what was going on while I was walking the labyrinth.

A few months ago at the National Cathedral, a several men were all walking one of the labyrinths at the same time. That is unusual, since there are many more women who walk than men, so I became very alert. As I approached the center, I was the second man to enter it. Then three more men entered. I wrote later:

For several minutes there were five of us men in the center – just amazing! I have never seen that many men walking before, much less to all be in the center at the same time. I was aware of all of us, praying that all could share with the others, and that God touch all of the others the way I was being energized by it. (October 30, 2007)

That small group of men, sitting together in prayer, touched me with an unexpected sense of community, even though there was no conversation and we did not even know each others names.

Now, whenever I begin each new walk through a labyrinth, I wonder if I will again sense the community of God.

Walking Prayer

Many of us were taught as children to pray by pressing our flattened hands together, holding them up in front of our chest, bending our heads down, and closing our eyes. We were supposed to stay in place, whether we were sitting or standing, and not move. Finally, no peeking was allowed.

If you ask adults to get ready to pray, they usually adopt a similar pose. They move into a similar body position with eyes closed or downcast, hands held in a particular way, and stop all movement in their limbs. It is an introspective position in which distractions are reduced and busy-ness is stopped, though as squirming children testify, not always successfully.

But as my radical Second Grade Sunday School told me, that is not the only way to pray. She told the class many years ago that prayer can be done with our eyes open, walking down the sidewalk and our hands at our sides. It so startled me at the time that I still remember that class even if I have forgotten her name. I thank her for that gift of a broader understanding of prayer.

So why did it take decades for me to adopt walking a labyrinth as a form of prayer?

In college, I encountered walking meditation based upon Eastern religious practices, which were in vogue. The leader showed us how to slowly extend one foot, putting down the heel, shifting the body weight onto the ball of that foot, lifting up the other foot to extend it, and repeating the motion very slowly. We moved so slowly I was able to feel a anxious sense of imbalance at I lifted up the foot in the back to move it forward.

Surprisingly, that deliberate movement of my body led to stillness in my mind. It was easier to let go of the distractions in my thoughts and feelings than sitting meditation. It remained a singular experience, although never forgotten.

It was a Washington Post article in April 2003 that led me to walking prayer in a labyrinth at the National Cathedral. It was very crowded that evening. I noted in my journal, “There were so many people around – side stepping, passing by, stopping. Yet I felt alone on the path, by myself at my own pace, on my own singular journey, even in the middle of community.”

After my first walk that April 29th, wrote in my journal that I became achingly aware of strong emotions that had been pushed aside. “I was feeling sorrow come up from my center and tears come up, around my eyes, down my cheeks. . . .” Similar experiences have occurred during many other walks since that one.

Since then, I try to walk that canvas pathway in my stocking feet at the National Cathedral every month. Sometimes I am with a friend and other times alone. I like to arrive around 7:30, when it tends to be less crowded. After writing in my journal to clear out the distractions from the day, I often reread the starting lines of Psalm 62, “For God alone my soul in silence waits . . . He alone is my rock and my salvation.” Then I go to whichever of the two labyrinths seems less crowded.

As I walk in toward the center, I repeat those words of the Psalm whenever my mind wanders. When I reach the center, I sit down and try to relax into quietness. I sit there until I sense it is time to leave and start walking back out. Walking in the opposite direction is different, and often feels like I am leaving behind a place that is safe and comforting.

Each time has been different, each time a new experience. Sometimes there is a sense of movement, healing or new possibility. Sometimes there is only emptiness or distraction. Yet I know I will come back again to experience the walking prayer.

I often remember one experience of release and relief. In one section of the Chartres style labyrinth, the last two half-circle paths before starting the final steps into the center, I often remember a time of letting go of deep seated anger, and feeling myself soaring. I had stuck out my arms like airplane wings, and banked my wings into the curves, floating free of the pain and weight of that anger.

It is not something I do everyday, and is not my primary form of prayer. It doesn’t always “work” at leading me into a quiet contemplative place. It does continue to lead my claiming a deeper sense of God in my life.

What is Your Hermeneutic Perspective?

It is a shame that the name for the study of how we read and understand a text is so difficult: hermeneutics. I can imagine anyone’s first encounter with the word, trying to use phonetics to pronounce it, then deciding to watch TV instead. If you want a definition I think the one in Wikipedia is a good start.

Rather than trying to explain it in great detail, I suggest you take a short twenty question Hermeneutic Quiz, sponsored by Christianity Today and Leadership Journal. This quiz will let you experience the range of decisions that people make, rather than try to think it all through. As you take the test, you may wonder why the questions are worded the way they are and if there is something you are missing. Just go ahead, and answer with what seems to make sense to you

There is nothing neutral and accurately quantifiable about the quiz. The questions clearly reflect the bias of the person developing it, and reflect one view of the issues of interpretation. It is thought provoking and may open your eyes to what choices you make as you encounter the more difficult passages of the Bible.

Try it and let me know how you scored, and what you learned in the process.

Let me note that several members of my family have taken it, and the scores ranged from a conservative 49 to mine as the most progressive at 83. Several of the test takers noted that the categories of conservative or progressive for some of the questions seemed strange, and that they were surprised with their ranking.

More importantly, a family as diverse as mine on this scale of biblical hermeneutics still comes together as a family, laughing and crying together, knowing our common bond. We have had our clashes and struggles over the years, but we never called each other names or questioned each other’s Christianity. We are all active in the ministry of our various churches, and know that each one is living a life of faith true to that person’s understanding of the Bible. Someday I hope to be able to say that about my Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Human Limits in the Perception of God

An important first step in any research project is to think clearly about the frame that will be used because it affects both the course of inquiry and its results. Without taking the time to define framing, a short explanation can be found in the introduction to Simple Framing by George Lakoff:

Carry out the following directive: Don't think of an elephant! It is, of course, a directive that cannot be carried out – and that is the point. In order to purposefully not think of an elephant, you have to think of an elephant.

The frame used in the Baylor Religion Survey (BRS) illustrates how a human point of view can limit and distort our perception of God. The report identifies (page 28) the two dimensions that were used to analyze the research analysis: “God’s level of engagement” and “God’s level of anger.”

For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the dimension of anger. Since one side of the graph assumes that God has some degree of anger at humanity, all of the responses to the survey are interpreted with that expectation. In this case the “elephant” in the report is “God’s anger.” All of the analysis done and reported results have that image of the angry God built into them.

This reflects the theological position of Baylor, its founders, its faculty and its students, so it is an honest frame from their personal experience. Even as the survey shows, there are many in the United States that believe in the Authoritarian and Critical God, so the researchers do a good job of describing what they know.

However, there are many of us in this country who do not experience God as angry with humanity. When I was growing up, Sunday School teachers constantly reminded me that “God is Love,” and God’s love is one of acceptance and welcome. Just as Jesus gathered the children to him during his ministry, we sang the song “Jesus Loves Me,” further building up that image of a warm, welcoming and caring God.

The assumption of anger by the BRS researchers does not describe my religious experience. By forcing all religious believers into that assumption of anger, they force a theological and experiential bias that is alien to many other people. Just as you cannot forget the elephant in Lakoff’s example, there is no way to forget the frame of anger built into the research reports.

While I keep trying to find some way to salvage some good from the report, I keep running into that angry elephant. I am disappointed because I had hoped to use the research in my conversations with people as their spiritual director. Yet there are two aspects of this research that I can apply.

First, there are a significant number of people in this country who believe that God is angry at them, either as an Authoritarian or Critical presence. When I am with someone in spiritual direction, I want to be sensitive to that belief, to listen carefully to how it affects their relationship with God, and whether it supports or interferes with their spiritual growth.

Second, I want to be aware of my own spiritual frames, and to avoid imposing them upon those who come to me for direction. I want to listen for how God may be acting in the other person’s life, which may be very different than my own history and experience.

It is only with God’s help that I will move beyond my own human, limited perception of God. I pray that God will challenge and support me.

The Tricky Part

Last night I saw The Tricky Part written and acted by Martin Moran. The play is based upon a book of the same title, which I am now reading.

Martin told of his experience as a twelve year old boy being sexually misused by a 30 year old man, Bob, and how many years later Martin still carries that boy within. It is not the same story as those in the headlines the last few years of priests molesting altar boys, but runs in parallel with them. Martin was an altar boy and attended a Catholic school as a child, and while Bob was not a priest, he was Martin’s camp counselor.

The play is intimate and honest, a blend of emerging sexual awareness, emotional need and loneliness, spiritual questioning and guilt, desire and manipulation. When he describes his relationship with Bob, it is not that Bob was just a trespasser. Bob was also a friend and teacher. The relationship continued off and on for three years because Martin needed much of what Bob offered even as the boy was being manipulated by the man.

This is all in the context of the Catholic school with the nuns and priests, seen with all of their strengths, weakness, and flaws, preparing the children for life. As the boy goes between physical encounters with Bob and conversations with the nuns, none could have known how each person’s ideas of God, Sin and “mortal sin,” sexuality and guilt, and love would be put together. The mind of the not-yet pubescent male tried to make sense of his experiences, and the adult Martin is still exploring the meaning.

What stunned me as I listened to him retell the story – for who knows how many times now – was how gentle and vulnerable he still seemed to be some thirty six years later. Of course, he is being the actor. But he is retelling his own story and the depth of his past could still be felt. The honesty and courage of making public the most intimate of experiences and thoughts was incredibly powerful. I will never forget it. What I heard in that room of 35 people was as intimate as what I hear in the privacy of providing spiritual direction. I am amazed at the ministry he is offering to those trying to understand.

I had decided to buy his book before it was over, and as I stood in the lobby waiting to talk to him, I was aware of how different he seemed. He was greeting friends and members of the audience, being bright and cheerful. He had admitted in the play how shy he had been, and as another person who deals with shyness, I could see him acting in the expected role. It was a necessary separation from the intense experience in the theater.

When he turned to me, with my recently bought book in hand, he asked me my name so he could personalize the note. Feeling awkward, I asked him to repeat the line in the play which summarizes what The Tricky Part is all about. He replied “Is it possible that what harms us might come to restore us?”

His note was short. “To Bruce – with blessings X O Martin”

Baylor’s four views of God

Time magazine had a special report summarizing the ongoing research study American Piety in the 21^st Century at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. This study suggests there are four perceptions of God in the United States:

• The Authoritarian God “is deeply involved in daily life and world events. God is angry at sin and can punish the unfaithful or ungodly.”
• The Benevolent God “is deeply involved in daily life and world events but is mainly a positive force reluctant to punish.”
• The Critical God “does not really interact with the world but is unhappy with its current state and will exact divine justice.”
• The Distant God “does not interact with the world and is not angry. God is more of a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion.”

Perhaps you have already determined which definition fits you, or maybe none of them seem to apply? It might have been quick and simple to say “this is it,” or you found yourself caught between different viewpoints? Possibly you see yourself as having started with one viewpoint, but now being in a very different place? Or, maybe its doesn't work for you at all?

One life journey through the viewpoints

As I consider my own journey, this sociological construct of views of God might be useful for reflecting on that journey. As I proceed, I will take these at face value, without considering possible bias.

I was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination that viewed God as Benevolent. In a protected middle class suburban community in the 60’s and 70’s life was comfortable. While there was conflict in the world, it seemed far away and did not threaten me.

The family church was one that provided safety, support and nurture. In spite of mistakes and stupid things, God was not hovering to criticize or punish.

Leaving home to attend college, there was a mainline Protestant chaplain who convened a student group of like minded believers in a Benevolent God. Unfortunately that chaplain left after my sophomore year because the church was cutting budgets. But at least I found a group of like-minded people.

Freshmen year led to an encounter with the Authoritarian God. Fellow students regularly proselytized everyone. They promoted the “Four Spiritual Laws” and proclaimed only those who followed their view of God would be saved. Their Authoritarian God was involved in human life only through Jesus, who was presented as friend for all. I was not interested in the God they promoted. In fact, I began hiding my Christianity since using the word led people to think I was a part of that group.

It was also in college that I first encountered the Critical God. I assisted a woman student with cerebral palsy. She walked with crutches, so I carried her books and her tray at the cafeteria. She told me how her parents believed that her disability was God’s punishment upon her for some unknown sin. She was raised with that belief, yet struggled with it, wanting to reject it but not being able to overcome its dominance in her life. It was completely foreign to how I understood God, and it seemed a cruel belief system that caused her depression and suicidal thoughts rather than love and acceptance.

After leaving college, and beginning life as an independent adult, I began a period of deep personal questioning and doubt. While I attended congregations that proclaimed the Benevolent God, no one could show me how to know about God’s activity in my life. There were no guides to how to develop a relationship with God.

I attended seminary, hoping that along with the intellectual and professional training I would also find a relationship with God. While I had experiences that I now understand to have been of God, the academic atmosphere could not provide the perspective or the people to assist my understanding of God.

After seminary, I was a member for many years of a congregation in the Episcopal Church that took skepticism seriously and many are agnostic. It matched my growing sense of the Distant God. While God was not unimportant, the Christian education program focused on teaching an existential method for making decisions.

It was a powerful experience to get a practical process to think through how my decisions affect others as well as me. I could clearly own the impacts of the chosen action. No decision was fully right or fully wrong, because both sides of a decision involved costs and promises. That realization freed me to more fully reject the Authoritarian God or Critical God, which do not tolerate ambiguity.

However, as an existential process, God was not considered part of that decision making process. I struggled with that aspect. I wanted God to be involved, to be a presence in my life, and the congregation was uncomfortable with that perspective. The Distant God of the congregation was unable to guide me or comfort me.

But the Baylor model has some deep problems, reflecting many of the same biases as those Four Spiritual Laws that I encountered in college. But that is another topic.