God Unbound

 Brian McLaren's God Unbound: Theology in the Wild, which I read recently, is a fascinating mix of travelogue and theology, as McLaren reflects on the wonder of nature and the way in which that demonstrates the presence of God.

He describes an amazing trip to the Galápagos Islands with some stunning descriptions of the wonderful things he encounters. For example, "I come upon two kinds of sea stars I haven't seen before, one red like the sand with orange spikes on the side, one wheat-coloured with coffee-brown lines radiating from the centre. I pick up a beautiful shell that contains a hermit crab.”

Again: “In another area, several especially beautiful pyramids sea stars cling to a tower of rock. Their five slender legs vary from mottled olive to mustard yellow. Beneath them in patches of sand I see a half-dozen rounded chocolate chip sea stars also clustered together, their bodies the colour of café au lait, with a chocolate stripe running from the centre the blunt end of each broad, rounded foot, chocolate chips scattered generously between the stripes."

He goes on to reflect theologically on the experience, not least on the connection between theology and science and the perceived (by some) challenge to the theological perspective of Charles Darwin. McLaren comments: "Anyone who investigates Darwin's story fairly and honestly will agree: he was no iconoclastic rebel, brash, bold, and eager to challenge every convention. No, he worked patiently and painstakingly for twenty years to test his argument and face every objection, from the theory’s Inception by 1839, to his first intention to write on the subject in 1844, to his firm decision to begin what he considered a short book on the subject in 1854, to the final publication of On the Origin of the Species in 1859.”

He then draws a link with St Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, which has a large mural of Christ leading a dance and "joining him are suns, moons, stars, four animals, and ninety larger-than-life-sized saints." 

The dancing saints include Darwin and McLaren adds: “Jesus himself, I would venture to say, would be proud to have Darwin pictured as one of his dancing companions. After all, their life's work was similar, as if they were moving to the same rhythm. They both challenged the long-established and nearly universally affirmed understandings of God. They both dared to utter, after a pious truism, the revolutionary word but. They both dared to say aloud the simple but revolutionary truth that what is has not always been, and what is will not always be. And they both were seen by some as monsters for doing so.”

Like There's No Tomorrow

I met Frances Ward probably only once or twice when she was the Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds and I was Moderator of the Eastern Synod for the United Reformed Church - but that was what made me notice  her book Like There's No Tomorrow: Climate Crisis, Eco-Anxiety and God - and what a great discovery. I think it's one of the best books that I have read for a while. She is describing a time of sabbatical spent on a narrowboat on the canals. The book is a mix of describing her travels and reflecting on 'stuff', particularly around the climate crisis and the anxieties it evokes in her. There is a good deal of theological reflection, in particular a dipping into the Psalms. It just really worked for me.

She is undoubtedly, and rightly, alarmed by the situation in which we find ourselves - but she cannot abandon the hope that we find in God. Hope is generated every time we turn towards the God who creates, seeking God’s love and forgiveness, looking for signs of the grace that energizes each particle of existence. Hope springs eternal, when we align ourselves with God’s creative power.

Again, she comments: Even as it seems the whole of creation plummets towards catastrophe, God does not give up on the wonderful creation that God continues to create.

Also: To focus on our own hopelessness is to miss the meaning of God.

I particularly liked a reference to Luther: Luther apparently said, “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.” That impulse is a good and true one: that even in the face of utter disaster and tragedy, we can still do things as if there is a tomorrow, trusting, hopeful in a love that transcends death.

The book is abundantly clear as to the serious situation we face, but not to the exclusion of the God of hope. 

Peacework

I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Peacework in which he offers a helpful, but challenging, look at the question of peace-making, but doing so through three particular lens, those of prayer, resistance and community.

 

I particularly like some of what he says about prayer in this volume. For example, he comments: “Prayer is such a radical act because it asks us to criticise our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves, and to accept our new self, which is Christ. This is what Paul has in mind when he calls us to die with Christ so that we can live with Christ. It is to this experience of death and rebirth that Paul witnesses when he writes: “I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).”

 

He also says: “Prayer can never be a panicky request to avoid disaster. In the daily life of the community prayer is first of all an expression of thanks for what we already have received. A life in community is a life lived in unceasing gratitude to the Lord with whom we dwell. Community reveals that true prayer always moves us to thanksgiving for what already has been given us. Even a cry for God's help cannot be separated from a spirit of gratitude.”

 

Prayer is at the centre of his thesis, but so is the fact that we need to treat people as people and recognise that how we are with each other is the proper expression of the principles and ideas we adopt.

 

So, Nouwen says: “When our “Yes” remains compassionate, that is, people-oriented, the complex issues of our time will not drag us down into despair and our hearts will burn with love. We cannot love issues, but we can love people, and the love of people reveals to us the way to deal with issues. A compassionate resister always looks straight into the eyes of real people and overcomes the human inclination to diagnose the “real problem” too soon. …….. Jesus understood the problems of the world in the most radical way, but wherever he went he responded to the concrete needs of people. A blind man saw again; a sick woman was healed; a mother saw her dead son come back to life; an embarrassed wedding host was given the wine he needed; thousands of hungry people received bread and fish to eat. Jesus left no doubt that the help he offered was only a sign of a much greater renewal. However, he never let that truth prevent him from responding to the concrete and immediate concerns of the people he met.”

Julian of Norwich on the Question of a Pandemic

I have just finished reading Matthew Fox's Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic - and Beyond and found it to be full of useful and challenging insights. Julian lived through a time of what was then called the plague, and without all the possibilities of modern science. She knew well the challenge of such a time, and yet maintains a positive spin. As Fox points out: "Julian also knew something about fostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While others all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her spiritual and intellectual composure, staying grounded and true to her belief in the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms, inviting others to do the same.”

She offers a vision of engaging with life, even in the midst of grave difficulty. “The first thing we must learn from this vision is the bluntness and directness with which she faces Jesus’s—and, correspondingly, our—suffering. She is teaching us not to sentimentalize, cover over, or (like many politicians) go into denial about the suffering we are undergoing as we face both the coronavirus and climate change. We should not run from the sorrow, fear, and grief, but we should stay connected to our feelings. Only the truth will make us free, and we must confront that truth directly. James Baldwin put it this way: “Not everything faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Fox, commenting on Julian and the lessons she teaches, reminds of the importance of discovering a ‘new normal’ that takes account of what we have been through and the opportunities for learning that it has provided. Pandemics do have their positive side, and the risk is that we don’t see the important things that are staring us in the face.

“It is not enough to “return to normal” after this coronavirus, even if it does finally go away. That “normal” was far from healthy to begin with. It brought us climate change, the extinction of millions of species, with our own species on the cusp of extinction as well, and, of course, lots of denial in the name of those whose gods are Wall Street and multinational corporations. It brought us racism and sexism as a way of life, and it has distorted education and religion, politics, media, and economics. Who wants to return to that? A pandemic is too important to waste. This pandemic is here to wake us up. To what? To a “new normal.” One that honors the sacredness of the earth and of all its life forms. One that honors the divine feminine alongside a sacred masculine. One that honors the human body and its basic needs, along with those of the earth’s body, and on that basis gives birth to a new body politic. One that does not put billionaires and the structures that create them on pedestals. And one that does not elect narcissistic politicians who incarnate the very meaning of fatalistic selfhatred by watching hundreds of thousands die with a shrug of the shoulder (“It is what it is”). Julian absolutely lays waste to a punitive Father God who operates on anger, punishment, and what she calls “vengeance.” She found none of that in Divinity—only in humans (who project it onto Divinity)!” 

We live in a world that needs to learn a lot. Let’s hope the pandemic lessons take us to a better place.

Forsaken

Samuel Wells' book A Cross in the Heart of God: Reflections on the Death of Jesus offers some fascinating and challenging insights on Jesus' being abandoned, which, I think, help us in engaging with questions of despair and desolation as we can know that Jesus has been there.

Wells writes:  "The gospel isn’t about some contest of pain in which Jesus came out the winner. The gospel is not that Jesus physically suffered. It’s that he was forsaken.’"

"Forsaken. Jesus’ last words, in Mark’s gospel, are, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ At first sight, this is simply the last in a chain of abandonments. The disciples flee, Peter denies, Judas betrays, now the Father forsakes. It’s a litany of desertion. And there’s something in this litany. Remember, if the crucial word in the gospel is with, then the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion are a heartless and wholesale dismantling of that with. Jesus is left without all those he worked so hard to be with – the disciples, the authorities, the poor – and all of them have not just disappeared, but actively deserted or betrayed him. Jesus is still with us, but we, at this most precious moment of all, are not with him."

The fact is that Jesus re-defines so much. Wells also comments: "in the wonder of the incarnation and in the horror of the cross: God hasn’t stopped being a king; God’s redefined what it means to be a king. If we’re to look for true kingship, it’s to be found among those who do as Christ has done; among those who set aside the power, acclaim and influence to discover love in true encounter. In Christ, in the crucified Lord, God is presenting us with a transformed picture of what it means to be a king."

Our problem is trying to stick to the old models,

Learning from Julian of Norwich

Part of my Lenten reading has been Sheila Upjohn’s The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. I have found it a fascinating drawing on the insights of Julian of Norwich. Julian clearly still has much to say of relevance, despite the passing of the years.

I was especially struck by some of the comments on prayer. Prayer is essentially the expression of a relationship. As Upjohn reminds, drawing on Julian’s insights: “Julian tells us that prayer is not one-sided. God is longing to hear from us.”

She also stresses that prayer is worth the effort. It takes effort, may produces surprises, but certainly brings us close to God. “Praying can be hard work, and it also needs time. And finding time seems to get harder and harder in our busy world.” ….    “All prayer has a result, whether or not we recognize it at the time, but such repeated prayer often has dramatic and unexpected consequences, as Julian found. We can be sure that St Paul was praying repeatedly – and praying for the wrong thing – when he stormed down to Damascus to seek and destroy the blasphemous heretics whom he believed were profaning his God’s name. The result overturned not just his mistaken expectations but his whole life.”

Prayer should be integral to our life with God but, just as someone we know in human terms may relate to us in a very particular way, so our prayer life should not be bound to a particular pattern. “We all pray in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all. But pray we must if we are to come to know God. And we can begin no matter what state we are in.”

Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Akala's Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire is a powerful and important exploration of the way in which prejudice, especially racial prejudice, but also class prejudice, has had such a devastating impact on so many, often doing a great deal to dent the views and opportunities of those who are seen as not fitting. He holds nothing back, but rightly so, in demonstrating how limited perspectives create an unfair society.

For example, he writes: "The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but ‘rather that Britain had come to us’. They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of the colonies. No one explained that our grandparents were not immigrants, that they were literally British citizens –many of them Second World War veterans – with British passports to match, moving from one of Britain’s outposts to the metropole. Nobody told white Britain that, over there in the colonies, Caribbeans and Asians were being told that Britain was their mother country, that it was the home of peace and justice and prosperity and that they would be welcomed with open arms by their loving motherland."

He points out that the way people are treated contributes heavily to how they respond. As he says of himself - "I was not born with an opinion of the world but it clearly seemed that the world had an opinion of people like me. I did not know what race and class supposedly were but the world taught me very quickly, and the irrational manifestations of its prejudices forced me to search for answers."

Here is a telling reminder of what prejudice can do; and it ought to be a clear call to find ways, however difficult that is, to address our wrong and unfair perspectives. A powerful and compelling read - well worth it!