Feelings, nothing more than feelings?

A friend and I had another installment of a long running conversation regarding theology and it's application to humans. This seems important to us because a theology that doesn't somehow reference humans is sterile. It may be true, it may be useful, it may give glory to the divine but if somehow it doesn't touch the human condition it's merely an esoteric discussion without any chance of transformation of people's lives.

I would submit that the subject of my theology, God, is about having relationship with humans.

When I said this in one online forum, I got a terse reply; "state Scripture, chapter and verse."

I choose to ignore him and he still wants an answer. It seemed so obvious that it would be insulting to him and me to respond.

One reason the discussion with my friend is interesting is that we by our personalities and life histories are interested in different aspects of truth. He seems to want to get as clear as possible regarding rational, conceptual, dialectic truth.

I on the other hand want to know "truth" in the sense of how does it express God's personal love for humans. I want to understand the implications of rational, conceptual truth as it would be "felt" by humans.

This will come as no surprise to friends of mine that are clear that "feelings" are a focus of mine. (all together now; Whoooo, feelings, nothing more than... )

Certainly guilty as charged. But for me the connection between "truth" and feelings is compelling because for some reason I didn't have much connection with my feelings for much of my life. And I was strongly taught in "truth." This state of mind became painful and I deconstructed and started to rebuild my life. Recovering the ability to "feel" was an important part of this.

This conversation with this friend is important to me because as much as I value feelings because God said he "so loved the world" and I think he expects that love to be felt, ultimately there is truth that undergirds that love.

Love and truth support each other.

If there is anything to the quote; "The glory of God is man fully alive," than thinking and feeling are partners in that delicate dance.

Boston harmonies

I love cities. I suppose growing up in a practically virginal valley in the western edges of the Catskills shouldn't set me up for this but it did. But even now I live on the main street of a small NH town and I can walk out my door across a couple of yards and I'm back in the woods from where the deer sometimes glide out and eat the yews around the houses.

I love the hustle and bustle, I love the traffic confusion, I love looking at huge buildings and looking in the window trying to see past the drapes and wondering who lives their life up there?

Recently I've been in Boston more than usual as I am having dental work done at Tufts Dental School to save money and also to support students who need practice.

As I stand waiting near the windows of the 12th floor I look out over Chinatown and can see lots of roof tops. This reminds me of one drapery job I did in Cambridge just over the river from Boston was installing a 30' wide motorized drape (into the concrete ceiling!) into a penthouse the building owner had built on top of his apartment building so that his daughter could live there while she went to Havard or something. Just threw a penthouse up on top of his apartment building! For his daughter to live in while she goes to college! Hey, presto; empty rooftop now penthouse.

This is what I'm talking about. Another world, another way of living.

So I had been to the dentist and was driving away when I looked out at the scene ahead of me; Chinatown stores, tall residential buildings, people scurrying around, construction going on and suddenly I was elevated by having this urban scene overlaid in my head with this section from The Message;

"From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. 
So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross." 
 Colossians 1

It was a surreal moment. I felt a kinship, a joy in this huge, gritty, intimidating world. A vibrant harmony.

In Reaching Out, by Henri Nouwen, Nouwen describes the ability to engage in solitude anywhere you are, people or no people, quiet or no quiet. It's an inner attitude that I can choose. And in so doing be where I am for others.

This is in contrast to the emotion of loneliness I'm sure I would have felt in a big city a few years ago. Sad, anxious, and always living in the future of getting back to where my partner in co-dependency, my wife, was. Taken up with the impossible assuaging of my own feelings of loneliness that I was choosing.

Now in this celebration of vibrancy in the midst of the ebb and flow of traffic and bustling people I was able to engage a God's eye view. What could be seen as "broken and dislocated pieces" fitting together in smooth harmony. All the diversity and activity flowed as a beautiful river through the canyon walls of brick and mortar and glass.

And I was part of a larger whole. 

40 year time warp

Yesterday I attended my 40th High School reunion out in the beautiful hills of New York. I had connected recently with a few of my classmates on Face Book and had enjoyed the connection so I wanted to follow up on that.

High School was miserable for me. ADD and belonging to an obscure religious group and living out in the country in what could be considered a commune of sorts set me up for all sorts of weirdness.

I always felt that I was a geek or outside bouncing around everyone else's world. I had for religious reasons very little social interactions with classmates so I seemed to have very little in common with them.

One thing I was very clear about. I didn't want anyone to notice my ears (which are not all that pronounced) but I noticed how someone else received the name "Ears (Last name) and I was petrified that that would happen to me.

So with all of this trying to be invisible I'm sure that I created some of the awkward relationship dynamics that existed. Classmate now tell me that they just thought I was shy. I was certain that they would have used the word "weird". I haven't checked with Gordy Temple about that. He I'm sure, would honor my request for honesty! He and Bill Briggs were just a much fun to be around as they were in HS.

So, the reunion was fun because I had fun meeting everyone and hanging out. I actually miss being closer to them. And now it's interesting to me that I so could wait to get out of High School and move on.

What I didn't expect was driving by some depressing place along the road on the way and having a groundswell of emotion from the past. Self-loathing, disgust, embarrassment, shame, you name it it because fully present to me. All the mistakes I made, jobs that I didn't finish, High School projects I barely finished or got a zero on all the negative came up and smacked me like a dead fish.

I was able to notice it and move on by it but wow, was it not fun to be reminded of what I lived in emotionally for so many years.

No wonder at some point when my wife started to recover from her emotional issues and she wanted me to be "present and available" I was confused and scared"

I was used to hiding out and had no idea what the heck she meant when she said "present and available." I'm sure I must have looked blankly at her and said that I'm right here!

So here I am 58 years old, feeling ageless really and enjoying the process of living life in the moment, present and available for myself and others.

Emerging Church conference quotes

Phyllis Tickle:* The central question that arises each time the church goes through one of these 500 year rummage sales is “Where now is our authority?” * Another important question: What does it mean to be a human being? Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” no longer cuts it * Sola Scriptura: Luther took a flesh & blood Pope and replaced it with a paper one. Protestantism’s great gift to the world was universal literacy. It’s other gift was divisiveness * Jerusalem is good, but the energy is in Antioch. We are here to serve the Kingdom of God, not the old or the new.

Brian McLaren:* What you focus on determines what you miss * Our traditional understanding of Jesus may not have been wrong, but partial * We must learn to see Jesus through the sight lines of his ancestors rather than his descendants only * Jesus went to Galilee. It meant something. If he came today would he go to Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ninth Ward… where?

Richard Rohr:* With dualistic thinking, someone always has to be blamed. The system caves in on itself * The sun rises on the just and unjust. You can’t form a system of exclusion on that! * Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about humanity. He came to change humanity’s mind about God * We have fly-paper minds… everything that gets close sticks. Don’t call that ‘thinking’. It is narcissistic, egocentric, needy, and fragile * “I have no doubt that the Spirit was in the works of the Reformation.” But you can’t have the need to prove the other wrong (adversarial thinking) and be the contemplative mind * We don’t want to be contemplative because we have to give up control * Belonging/belief systems have come to replace transformation. We must turn from a belief system to an inner experience. Know them, don’t believe them * Recognize that I am living inside a mind bigger than my own. Someone is loving through me, and all I am is the conduit. * Francis didn’t run off and join the Franciscans – He just did it.

Alexi Torres-Fleming:* God doesn’t call the qualified but surely qualifies the called. * Am I a fan or a follower of Jesus? * When we pray for God to ‘fix’ a problem, maybe Jesus kneels and prays for us to go out and be the solution * Maybe we’re given a little piece of God’s heart. We couldn’t deal with the entirety of God’s sadness for His children. (Note: Maybe this is what it means to be “made in the image of God”) * If we are free, and God’s poor are not free, then we are not free. * We cannot talk about church and theology without talking about justice. * We like our poor to look a certain way. The poor come to us in many different packages, and some may not be palatable. Some are angry. We must learn to see them as Christ sees them. (Note: Otherwise it’s just about us) * We must model incarnation: You cannot redeem what you will not assume.

Shane Claiborne:* Stop explaining/complaining about the church we have experienced and work at becoming the church we dream of. * We need to be relevant to the big questions of the day while retaining our cultural peculiarity * Fascinate the world with grace! * The church needs discontent. Don’t leave the church but submit to the authority of the larger Body of Christ * You can have all the right answers and still be mean. And if you’re mean, no one will listen to you.

Conversations from an egotistical, self-righteous malcontent.

I'm thinking about having been called a self-righteous, egotistical malcontent because of my involvement in a committee (Veritas) given the mandate to consider how vital a church we are. (Just for the record, this is not new feedback and is something about myself I'm committed to noticing and stopping).
An interesting point to consider here is that for anyone to even be willing to air an opinion, (even if it's wrong) they must have some strength of ego and the committee would De facto be a waste of time if the mandate included being happy with what was going on now.
The tension here is that even if I am all of the above, I still sincerely believe that something more is possible for our church and that to have that "new something" it's entirely possible that the old has to be interrupted.
The irony is that a major concern of mine with our church is our inability to communicate well. To illustrate the point, I indirectly found out that someone had the above candid opinion of me and others in the committee.

In having a lot of communication with others, two people have had a fair amount of energy in those conversations with me about "triangulation" (using a third party to communicate something to another) such that I'm making up that possibly those two people have been talking about my supposed inclination to "triangulate" which I find amusing. And frankly I'm aware that writing this blog may actually be a indirect way of communicating because in some settings here it feels like moving through very thick molasses to communicate clearly directly tho I am doing better at that.
I think the first rule to remember in anything we do is to not "take ourselves to damn seriously". Usually that posture of heart shows an insecurity that we probably don't want to own up to.
I just came out of a church meeting that really was momentous and really tragic. After over 200 years of being in the meeting house on the common, (pictured above) we, the congregation, voted to do what we said we would do and leave when our lease is up in April.
In essence we were forced to leave because of a group in town using the power of another national group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wanted the selectmen to dictate what our policies were.
What was good about the meeting was that there was more honest questions and considerations than I think in any previous meeting. This made it a unusually uncomfortable meeting for me because in my family of origin nothing was talked about openly and honestly and I'm still learning that direct, clear, challenging, investigative discussions are not "bad".
I attribute some of the new ability to state opinions and voice concerns being a result of the meetings of the Veritas committee and a new feeling of empowerment to speak honestly about what is really so. Thus probably the not surprising assessment that people are being self righteous and egotistical. I probably have been that way in this.
I don't think I was the only one uncomfortable with the strength of conversation because others voiced the opinion that what was going on was "discouraging and lacked a sense of hope". Others apparently felt like the Devil was involved and others may have thought God wasn't paying good attention to what was going on because they thought we needed to stop and pray. Or maybe that was their way of cautioning people to remember God was watching.
Any of the above may certainly have been true but personally I think we are a powerful group of followers of God and that we can have honest, forthright, even disagreeing conversations and that those might actually be a sign of a vital, growing church.

Wide streets and strip malls

I've been visiting my son and daughter in Colorado. They both live with homes all round them with very little interaction with whoever lives near them. They and their neighbors live near ubiquitous 5 lane streets that quickly lead them to strip mall heaven.

To get exercise and my morning coffee at both homes I walk about 5 blocks to either a 7-11 or MacDonald's. This experience is almost surreal because I meet no one else walking. One morning I said hello to the Asian lady who works at the liquor store nearby as she brought her trash container in from the curb, but otherwise I felt that I was somehow perhaps out of sync with the rest of the world by being out there walking.

I do the same routine in Greenfield as well, with the same feeling of being "weird" for being out of my car. I recently read in some novel the opinion that something died when the first Ford car was invented. Somewhat to my surprise I'm finding that I am turning into some kind of reactionary to civilization as we know it. Now I don't want to live back in the woods and grow a beard and not use deodorant you understand, I guess I'm just reacting to the depersonalization and commercialization all around us.

In Henri Nouwen's amazing book, "Reaching Out" he speaks of being able to enjoy a personal sense of solitude even in the midst of this environment. In fact he believes it essential and a gift to those who are trapped without awareness of this for there to be people who can be " in the world but not of it". So I'm realizing that instead of complaining and resisting the culture I am in, I can be in to world really loving anyone I meet and wondering how God is making himself know to that person.

I believe that it doesn't matter how we get into relationship with others, what matters is that we be clear from the start that we know very little or nothing about some one's relationship with God. My assumption is that God is always in some relationship with every person so my task is to effectively come alongside whatever God is doing in that person's life.

Sometimes I wonder if we followers of Christ are more alienated from God than the average person on the street. At least holding that assumption as truth means I enter every encounter with every human from a position of curiosity and respect even to the point of wondering if they might have some healing of the alienation from God that can exist in my life!

It seems that much of what we Christians present to the world is all about our opinions, our judgements, our agendas. If it's the Holy Spirit's responsibility to bring conviction then I'm left with the responsibility to love God and then love my neighbor in whatever way feels like love to them. Even if it means I get over my aversion to strip malls and commercialisation, get out and really be with people.

Old poetry

This is a poem I wrote during a tough time in my life.

Dark Birth

Brown and dark,
Cold and crushed,
Spring’s green glory.
Fall’s red revelation
Moldering down.
Beneath glistening snow
decay, dissolution,
April’s fresh promise passing away.

Passing away?
Inexorable green tips,
Far ranging rootlets,
Potent bulb, restless rhizome,
Leaf mold’s new incarnation.
Life quivering, expectant.


Will there be new life?
Will life’s leafy litter encounter
Incarnation's blood and water?
Leaves to litter, litter to humus,
New growth’s fertile bed.
Weariness to quietness, quietness to surrender
Grace’s deceptive door.
All that now springs up is incarnation's
mysterious fruit.