Ants 'N Roses "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you fail to bring forth what is within you, what you fail to bring forth will destroy you." ~ Jesus Living in the Sacred Stream A new theme in Ordinary Life Read More Ordinary Life summary for the week of September 1, 2024 ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life * * * Summary of Ordinary Life for September 1, 2024 * * * Dear Ones - First of all, thank you for the flowers. They were/are GORGEOUS. I brought one of the arrangements home for us to enjoy. There is an announcement/link at the end of this posting about the new Ordinary Life newsletter. Please read. There is also an announcement there about the newly-begun Stephen Ministry at St. Paul’s. Next Sunday my topic is “Santa Claus Meets The Good Samaritan.” It is a continuation of my talk this week on epistemology and hermeneutics. This one will be about myth and parable. The Sunday following that we are going to have in Ordinary Life a special presentation on “Faith and Politics.” Rep. James Talarico will be our guest and will be in conversation with Rep. Ann Johnson and our senior pastor, Dr. Jeff McDonald. Rep. Talarico is currently a student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in addition to his legislative work. He is a former public school teacher, and he currently serves on the Public Education Committee, the Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee, and the Calendars Committee. He was elected in 2018 and was named one of the Top 10 Best Legislators by Texas Monthly. Then, the Sunday after that, September, 22nd, the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis will be with us. You can read about and register for the event by clicking here. I called the teaching I offered this week - Ants ’n Roses It is a teaching about the importance of epistemology and hermeneutics. How do we know what we know and what is the meaning of what we think we know? When it comes to religion and spiritual work, this is important because our image and understanding of “god” shapes us. It is from science we learn that there is a creative, energizing, knowing presence embedded in all things. When it comes to the Christian tradition it is helpful to remember that there has not ever been one single or unified way to interpret the Bible and, also, not one word of the Bible was written with us in mind. What is asked of us is openness, honesty, and a willingness to change. That’s a very brief summary of this week’s time in Ordinary Life. The audio/video versions of the talk has some differences from the text I had in front of me. You can read the text below. You can view the presentation slides and find links to audio and video versions of the talk by going to the Ordinary Life website. Our podcast, “In Between,” can be accessed through the Ordinary Life web site. If you are interested in making a contribution to Ordinary Life, click here. There is an option to scroll to “Ordinary Life” as the option for how to designation your gift. Thank you! IMPORTANT NOTICE: Ordinary Life is exploring new ways to foster community, connection, service, and care in our community. To that end, we are launching a monthly community newsletter that will highlight announcements, events, and joys/concerns. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please visit this link to add your name to the list. Rest assured that whether you opt-in to this newsletter or not, you will continue to receive the weekly class previews and summaries for Ordinary Life. St Paul’s is beginning a “Stephen Ministry” program. Stephen Ministry is a caring ministry that equips and empowers trained lay car givers to provide one-on0one care to those going through difficult times such as grief, divorce, job loss, illness, relocation, and other life-changing circumstances. For more information on how to receive care or serve as a Stephen Minister, contact Rev. Melinda Owens at [email protected] Be well and much love, Bill Kerley To view slides and hear the complete audio, click the button below. Slides + Audio Ants and Roses The word “ant” is found in the Bible twice. Both of these times are in the book of Proverbs. In the sixth verse of the sixth chapter of Proverbs we read: “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” Peterson translates that verse this way: “You lazy fool, look at the ant. Watch it closely; let it teach you a thing or two.” The other instance of the use of the word “ant” in the Bible is in the thirtieth chapter of the same book, Proverbs: “Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise: Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.” The other creatures are marmots, locusts, and lizards. The word “rose” is also found only two times in the Bible. One of these is in the Song of Solomon and the verse reads: “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley.” That verse has been the inspiration for several gospel songs. The other usage is from a vision in Isaiah of a future yet to be: “Wilderness and desert will sing joyously, the badlands will celebrate and flower - Like the rose in spring, bursting into blossom, a symphony of song and color.” The title I’ve given this talk is “Ants and Roses.” Which has nothing to do with the rock group Guns N’ Roses, which was formed in the mid-eighties. If you want a more intellectually sounding title, it would be “Epistemology and Hermeneutics.” Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek “episteme,” meaning “knowledge,” and “logos,” meaning, roughly, “study, or science, of.” “Logos” is the root of all terms ending in “-ology” – such as psychology, anthropology – and of “logic,” and has many other related meanings. In short it is the study of “how do we know what we know?” Hermeneutics is the theory and method of interpretation, especially of biblical texts. It is a really old word, found in use as early as 360 BC. A message from God, or more likely the gods, had to be receive accurately. Only one who had a rational method of interpretation, i.e., a hermetic, could determine the truth or falsity of the message. One theory of the origin of the word may have it coming from the mythological Greek god who was the “messenger of the gods” whose name was Hermes. So, it has to do with the correct interpretation of things. In short it is “what is the meaning of what we know.” Since we have long been in the era of knowledge and information exploding, epistemology is an active field. And, since we now live in the era of “alternative facts,” how we know what is the meaning of things, especially what is the truth is something with an ever evolving understanding. I first encountered “epistemology” in philosophy class and “hermeneutics” in theology studies. Hermeneutics has been largely confined to mean “the interpretation of sacred scripture” but now is being use more widely to refer to how information, knowledge and, to some degree, wisdom and understanding are to be interpreted in our time. You noticed that I began this teaching today referring to passages from the Bible. Barbara Robberson in her outstanding presentation last Sunday began with a reference to the story of Abraham leaving home and heading out for a destination he did not at that time know. If you were to go a religious service at a Mosque, a Temple, a Hindu gathering, or a Buddhist one, you would hear some reading from what that tradition considers its founding documents - the Koran, the Talmud, the Upanishads, the Pali Cannon, etc. And, in all of these traditions - it is just more glaring in our own because we are so close to it - the different opinions about how these documents should be interpreted varies widely. I’ll circle back to this before we are done here today. In Christian churches that are in what we called “the liturgical tradition” - the etymology of the word “liturgy” means “work for the people,” meaning something done for the edification of people - four different parts of the church’s scriptures are read, or sung. Here is another bit to contribute to religious and spiritual literacy: when we worship, we don’t worship God, God is not so narcissistic as to need our adoration. Liturgies are to remind the people who perform them who they are. As Richard Rohr is so fond of saying, “You become like the God you worship.” We read a selection from the Hebrew Scriptures, wrongly, in my opinion, called “the Old Testament,” a Psalm from the Hebrew Scripture is usually sung or chanted, there is a reading from some part of the Christian collection that is not one of the Gospels - usually one of the epistles, and, then, a reading from the Gospel appointed for that Sunday. There are, of course, issues with this. When one of the more violent passages is read from the Psalms or from some part of the laws found in Leviticus, if a person doesn’t have a correct understanding about how these writings came to be, it can cause trouble. I cringe every Holy Week when readings are from John blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. Christian Scriptures have been gas on the fire of antisemitism. We don’t stop this sort of thing because - “we’ve always done it this way.” My point in teaching this bit is that most religious groups point to their foundational documents, the writings from which their get their identity, as their source of authority or “how they know what they know.” Epistemology. We’ll talk in a moment about whether this is the best, in our time, starting point or not. When someone asks me, “Do you believe the Bible?” my first response is, “Which Bible are you referring to?” In the Christian tradition, there are generally two accepted collections of writings referred to as “the Bible.” There is the Bible used by Protestants and there is the Bible used by Catholics. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not officially endorse any English translation of the Bible. They recognize the Septuagint (Greek) Old Testament and the Byzantine majority text of the Greek New Testament, and they recognize specific Old Church Slavonic and Arabic translations.The word “bible” literally means “scroll” and came to mean “books” and every religious tradition has a collection of writings that are considered “sacred” in that religion’s tradition. Further there are different translations of what Christians refer to as “the New Testament.” At one time I owned twenty-six different translations of the New Testament. Leaving behind for some other time how the writings that are in what we call the Bible came to be and came to be selected, the Bible contains stories and teachings that are absolutely some of the highest levels of spiritual transformation and encounters with the Spirit. This same collection of writings also contains texts that are punitive, tribal, and downright idiotic. A person can get the Bible to say whatever she or he wants to hear. Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in the history of Christianity was that spirituality got separated from solid biblical knowledge and understanding. The Bible in the hands of an immature person is a dangerous weapon. Anyone who thinks that life or religion is “all about me” quickly uses the Bible like they use the rest of their religion - to be right, to be first, to divide by thinking they are among the “saved” and that others are not. This at such a low level of human consciousness and development that no real encounter with the Sacred happens at that level. If people who call themselves “Christian,” I’m speaking of that population in this country, did not live at the mercy of their own tribal mentality, their own limited education about the writings called the Bible, their own prejudices, their own selective reading of some texts while avoiding others; then slavery, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia would not have done the damage they have to the minds of people and the life of this country by people who claim to love Jesus. Real spiritual transformation creates people who have let go of their need to be first, to be superior, to define themselves as better than other people. I want to be serious about the tradition of my religion, liberated by it, not bound by it, given eyes to see with it, not blinded to the truth because of it. My belief is that correct information and knowledge about our religion’s history is critical. I love this sort of information. However, in my teaching I don’t want to just stop there. What I want, and what I want to share, is an experience of encountering the Sacred. This “encounter with the sacred” is an ever-growing, ever-evolving, ever-involving process and it is important because, as I said, our image or understanding of God creates and shapes us. Our image and understanding of God creates us. Your image and understanding of God creates you. Meanwhile, back at camp epistemology the question remains, and I'm specifically referring to the religious/spiritual arena, how do we know what we know? Let's bring the matter really close to home: Albert Outler, a Methodist theologian, came up with a way to understand the teachings of John Wesley, the founder of the movement that became the Methodist Church. Outler said that Wesley's teachings and sermons were made up of four things. These are known as the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” They are: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. You can see in this diagram that Scripture is the context in which the other three elements - tradition, reason, and experience - are contained. Here Scripture trumps everything - more or less. Of course, a person's view of Scripture and belief about “revelation” can greatly limit or affect the conclusions from the other three. A progressive person will interpret Scripture vastly differently from a Fundamentalist. There are plenty of times when reason and experience trump scripture and tradition. Not a single word in any version of any Bible was written with us in mind. I know this isn't going to happen, not my lifetime at least, but the Weslayan Quadrilateral should be - again, this is just my opinion - expanded to include science, art, culture, and technology. (I'm not sure what order, if any, these need to be in.) If we don't do this, if we continue doing what we are doing in religion and allow both the hard and soft forms of idolatry to dominate the scene, the church as we know it doesn't have much of a future. I'm calling this the "octolateral" that opens the door to the future. Within our own tradition the model for doing this are the Jewish prophets of Israel, as well as other spiritual geniuses who contributed to the shift we call the First Axial Age. They had one foot in Israel and one foot outside and beyond. What we and the world need is that we move beyond belief and worship systems to actual lifestyle choices and changes. This is what Jesus did with is own Jewish religion. He never left it and yet, in some ways, he always left it. Our tradition is the beginning of the Sacred Stream for us but if we do not allow it to flow away from that home base, it becomes stagnant and stinky. If we do shift where we look to inform what we know, not only does that open doors of possibility for the church of the future but insofar as today's teaching goes, it gets us back to the ant hill in Siberia. The last time I taught in here I mentioned an idea that I got from an exchange I had with Michael Morwood. Morwood is the spiritual director, former Roman Catholic priest, who was canned by the church for his progressive teachings. We have had him here twice. The only way you would even consider thinking of an ant nest in far flung outer Siberia is that I, or some other outside source, would bring it up to you. Not only would we never think of such an ant nest, its significance would be virtually nil for us. That, if we multiply that level of insignificance a trillion times, suggests Morwood, is the significance of the earth's place in the universe. If the ant nest disappeared overnight, it would cause us no concern whatsoever. Morwood suggests that this is a good starting point for a renewed understanding of and knowledge about the study of “god.” Given what we know from the realms of science - physics and cosmology, especially - we can no longer have a theology that imagines the earth as the focal point of the universe nor humans on this insignificant planet as the main reason for all that is. It is from science that we derive an understanding of energy present and active everywhere in the universe. We can read that understanding back into the scriptures of our tradition but we don't find it there. It is from science that we see that the notion of a deity watching over creation, listening in and responding to calls, helping football teams win victories, picking one race or country to favor over another is not a useful way to thing of Sacred Mystery at all. Yet, when science came forward with the realization that planet earth was not the center of the known universe, the church rejected that because they allowed the Bible to be the final authority on knowing what is. With this way of thinking about things, return to the picture of the ant nest. The ants in that nest know that their task is to work with other ants to keep the nest sound in order to provide not only a well-functioning home and well-being for now but also for the future of the entire ant community. How do the ants know how to do this? This may not sound like it but this is a very important theological question. There is no "ant god" telling, or commanding, the ants what to do. Ants know instinctively. Not only that, when something comes up that disturbs the nest or impedes their way, they adapt. In the ants there is a creative, energizing, knowing presence and this creative, energizing, knowing presence is embedded in all things. I usually refer to this presence as Sacred Mystery. Paul Tillich referred to the presence as “the Ground of Being.” Richard Rohr simply uses the word “Presence” and asks, “Can be be present to Presence?” Any of these terms is inadequate and we do not have, as of yet, a theological language capable of speaking about this. This is one reason I refer to it as “the God who cannot be spoken of.” In the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa wrote that this reality is “present in everything, pervading, embracing, and penetrating it.” With this understanding in mind, think of us. When I say “us,” I don't mean just “us” gathered here but “us” as every human being on this planet. We are as insignificant to the universe as any nest in Siberia is to us. So what is our task? Is it not the task of each and every human being to live in harmony with other humans; to work together to establish and maintain a human community that thrives and endures? (A quote from Morwood.) There is a presence within every human being that reveals how we should best act to build a community, a country, a world that is healthy for us all. One of the things that makes me hopeful that this might occur is that it has happened before. There was that time when the great philosophical, moral and religious thinkers emerged in different parts of the world all with the same idea. We call that period the First Axial Age and the idea that they came up with was “don't do to someone what you would not want done to you” or “do under others as you would want them to do unto you.” You don't have to believe in a “god in the sky” to embrace these values. Ilia Delio, among others, would say that this is an example of the creative, expanding, entangled, loving energy finding concrete expression in the human community. This compassion and caring energy is already and always within us. Our spiritual work is to turn away from, this is what the word “repentance” means, the message and religion of our culture, and allow this compassion and caring energy to find expression. And, this brings us to the rose. The Sufi mystic Rumi wrote: “What was said to the rose to make it open was said to me here in my chest.” What was said to the rose to make it open was said to me here in my chest. You might like that. I hope you do. More that than, I hope you embrace this as a deep truth about “what is.” This is, by the way, hermeneutics. We are interpreting a message about “what is” from science. The church and the “powers that be” don't like sentiments like this expressed by Rumi - or any other mystic for that matter; including Jesus. Why? Because this belief about inner knowing and about innate goodness being part of our essential essence clashes with the church's traditional theology that says we are lost and need saving, that we are separated from God and need the church to connect with him. (This is a male god.) If you doubt what I am saying, read the official statements from almost any Christian church on the planet, including Methodist. The “official” stance is that people are born in sin and unworthy of God, that they need the church and the sacrament of the church in order to correct this. The nuances of this vary from one major church grouping to another but there is high consistency in the message that we need what the church has to offer in order to be close to God. And, further, without this - and again, the nuances of this vary from one major Christian group to another - but without this, you will not be going to heaven when you die. Ants never get to hear this negative theology. How we know what we know and how we interpret what we know are really important. Epistemology and Hermeneutics. Without clear-headed and up-to-date information and knowledge any claim to wisdom or understanding is suspect. It is because “the Sacred Stream” has gotten polluted that we have had the rise of Christian Nationalism. I don’t think any Christian Nationalists likely listen to me so I’ll leave them be. There is that in every living religion that is worth embracing. I didn’t just say that every religion is the same. They are not. If we plumb the depths, if we clean up the pollution - both are metaphors we can usefully employ - we can find the religion in the Christian religion. For example, and we’ll in time get to many others of these, the church’s message has been to people that they are lost and need saving and that the church conveniently has the ways and means to get this “saving” done. The “believing and belonging” emphasis of the church, codified by the Council of Nicaea but begun before then, is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and gave his life for. Jesus wanted people, as Barbara Robberson reminded us last week, to develop the courage and faith to see ourselves as God see us. Jesus wants people, then, to change the negative understanding they had of themselves and to believe the good news that there was a creative, energizing, knowing presence with themselves. That’s the good news. Not that believing this is an escape plan from this world but an empowering force to change this one. That was the empowering community - mistranslated as the kingdom of heaven - that he desired to create. Jesus wanted to empower people and not make them/us dependent on “middle management” of the church to say who is in and who is out. I have always, ever since I first heard it, loved and taken as a prophetic message the lines by Edward Markham - “He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him in!” This is what Jesus did. The religion and the culture of his time drew lines that shut people out. He went about erasing them. As someone who has spent years of my life learning to read and interpret the writings in what we call the Bible, it really pains me when people misquote, take out of context or in some other way hijack the words in the Bible. Richard Rohr has referred the Bible as the most dangerous book in the world. He means that in two senses: first, when it is misused. The Bible, wrongly understood and wrongly used has caused untold damage. But, secondly, the Bible is also dangerous when correctly understood. Because it threatens the way things are. When people ask me if I believe the Bible, and I’m not being a smart aleck by responding “what Bible do you mean?,” I want to know what they mean by that. Usually when someone says that the Bible is their authority, what they mean is that their authority is what their church has told them the Bible says. There are three helpful things to keep in mind. here. There are likely more but I’ll just stick with these three for now. First, there has never been any single or unified way to interpret the Bible nor has there been any single or unified interpretation of the Bible. Second, not one word of the Bible was written with us in mind. Third, to quote Shelby Spong, “The task of religion is not to turn us into proper believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see.” A wide variety of different things determine how a person interprets the Bible, if they do at all. In our culture, for the most part, and there are some exceptions, the group one belongs to, along with cultural prejudices, determine how the Bible is interpreted. There was a time when, in the Methodist church, the Bible was used to support slavery. Today, for some, it is used to oppose those people in our culture who have red hair and are left handed - I mean, those who have a sexual orientation or preference other than heterosexual. (Sexual orientation is no more freely chosen than being red-haired or left-handed.) So if someone accuses me of interpreting the Bible from a biased point of view, I agree that I do AND so does everyone else. When I spent some time at Union Seminary in NYC, I had a professor who said, “If your interpretation of scripture, or the reason you go to scripture, leaves you feeling comfortable and smug, you’ve misread it.” What he means was that a correct interpretation, and Jesus again is the model for this, of Scripture first confronts us with a bigger picture than we are use to; it deconstructs the “kingdom” we currently live in to encourage and empower us to live in a larger one. This is what “conversion” is really about. Moving us from one world view, from one level of awareness, to another. Only then do we find consolation and healing and are given a new place in a new world with a new mind and a new heart. Now, here is this thing: this process I’ve just described doesn’t have an end point. For some people this is frustrating. Our consumer religion has us so focused on “being successful” and good at what we do. But, not here. This is the single biggest road block I experience in my work as a spiritual director, and in my own life as well. People want to get “good at meditation, to be successful.” You know the saying, “If I had a nickel for every time that” - fill in the blank with whatever here - “I’d be a millionaire.” In doing spiritual direction if I had a nickel for every time someone has said some version of, “Well, I tried having a spiritual practice but I wasn’t very good at it.” Or, “I tried meditation but I didn’t get anything out of it.” You won’t get good at it. You were never intended to get good at it. And having a spiritual practice isn’t like going shopping at the Galleria so you can come home with something. You’re not supposed to “get something.” Hopefully, we are supposed to “become someone.” Faith, hope, and love are not things to have; they are happenings. Recently someone told me that their spiritual practice is cloud gazing. Since Brooke Summers-Perry was here, several of you have reported you are using “black out poetry” as your spiritual practice. (You can see multiple example of this on the Ordinary Life website that has her presentation.) Susan Peterson sent me a graphic of some words by Mary Oliver that I had never seen: “It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones: just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but a doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.” Ants do not worry about whether they are interpreting sacred scripture correctly. They work to maintain the safety and well-being of the colony. Roses bloom because that is the thing roses do. The only thing I wanted to do today was to remind you that this same creative, energizing, knowing presence is in you. You don’t have to go somewhere else to find it nor rely on some “outside authority” to trust it. You do have to be open to it. And, honest with it. And, act on it. Lecture Archives Donate Weekly Podcast Your Opinion Matters to Me I strive to make Ordinary Life interesting and relevant to you and to provide you with principles and practices that can be used to enhance and enlarge every aspect of your life. I invite you to leave me a comment about the latest Ordinary Life presentation or to suggest what you would like to see in Ordinary Life in the future. You can access a short survey here or use your phone's camera on the QR code to the right to take you directly to the survey. What is Ordinary Life about? This year, 2024, the theme I want to pursue in my teaching is Living in the Sacred Stream By “stream” I mean at least three things: First, the stream of “what is,” the actual and factual. We live in the stream of cosmological evolution. As Ilia Delio puts it, we live in an energy field that is evolving, creative, expanding, and entangled. We, humans, are the species that gives the cosmos the capacity to reflect back on itself. We are not behaving well in this stream by polluting it in a large variety of ways. We ignore “what is” at our peril. Second, there is the “stream” of the unconscious - both individual and collective. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus is quoted as saying, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you fail to bring forth what is within you, what you fail to bring forth will destroy you.” The primary focus and purpose of doing the kind of spiritual work Ordinary Life is focused on is “paying attention” and “waking up.” Third, is the “stream” from which we get our spiritual and religious teachings. Ordinary Life is in the Christian tradition so we are interested in going to the source of the teaching of and about Jesus. Over the long period of time since Jesus taught and lived, his teachings have been muddied. Additions have been made, as well as errors. That is, the stream has been polluted. Fortunately, there are able and capable, as well as accessible, scholars who can illuminate our understanding when it comes to the teachings of Jesus. The decision to move into and consciously live in the Sacred Stream is challenging, requires change, and is, ultimately, comforting. Being attentive to the content of Ordinary Life, whether in person or on line, will contribute to knowledge and information. The United States is in the crisis presented by Christian Nationalism precisely because of religious and biblical illiteracy. Ordinary Life seeks to shed the light of truth on the origins of and teachings of the Christian faith. Further, Ordinary Life talks are designed to help us all grow in wisdom and understanding. Our goal is to walk a path with a growing and evolving understanding of God in one hand and a growing and evolving understanding of Self in the other while walking a path illuminated by the life and teaching of Jesus. You are invited to join this journey and engage in this vital personal and communal work. Dr. Bill Kerley www.billkerley.com About Bill Ordinary Life | Saint Paul's UMC 5501 South Main | Houston, TX 77004 US Unsubscribe | Update Profile | Constant Contact Data Notice
