Words Less Spoken

Maybe you were one of those snobby rich kids that had everything they ever wanted growing up, or maybe you were the kid who saved up every dollar and bought your own pair of designer jeans twice a year and took exquisite care of them. I was neither. I had nice things but Levi’s were the extent of my brand loyalties. Aside from the trendy things we all focus on as teenagers, there are a myriad of other mundane everyday things in our adolescent lives that we use because they are available to us. Toothpaste, ketchup, shaving cream, etc.

When you leave home for the first time, whether for college, marriage, or the working world, you are suddenly faced with more choices than you ever thought possible. You take for granted all the common utilitarian things your parents provided for you. Do you remember the first time you went out to buy toothpaste for yourself? What do you get? Do you buy what your mom had always bought for you? Do you stretch your rebellious wings in protest and go for something new? As simple and foolish as it sounds, it is a microcosm of the process we go through into adulthood. How much do we cling to? How far do we run away?

I still remember vividly walking into my first dorm room at La Tech and finding a nicely packaged shoe-sized box on my bed. Inside were Edge shaving cream, Coast soap, Crest toothpaste and several other necessities and loads of marketing flyers and coupons. Thirteen years later I’m still using those same brands. I did not consciously choose to try something different. Had I wandered down to Wal-Mart after running out of whatever I brought from home, I very well may have bought Aquafresh toothpaste because I had used it all my life, but I was given the opportunity to consider an alternative.

My trips down to the food court and cafeteria in the student center were just as life-altering. They had Bullseye BBQ sauce and Log Cabin syrup. I never had that before, and I really liked them. We always used Kraft BBQ sauce and Blackburn syrup at home. I don’t know how many kids ask their parents to try a different BBQ sauce. You just use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. To this day I still buy those brand at the grocery store. It was a conscious minute rebellious stand on my part. “This is different. I am on my own.”

The religions we grow up with are not all that different than the foods and everyday items we are comfortable with from our childhood. We all know (and you may have been) one of teens who ran away from the church of your childhood as fast and hard as you could the moment you were out the door. I wasn’t. I went deeper. I changed schools, switched my major to religion, married my high school sweetheart, and began pastoring churches by my sophomore year in college.

[Can we take an aside for just a moment and address something here? Who the hell lets a 19 year old kid pastor a church? For crying out loud, I don't care how mature or intelligent you are. It borders on child abuse. I know now that I was no where near mentally and emotionally mature enough to be in that situation. There is a lot to be said for the Methodist system that requires training, accountability, and assignment. This Baptist free-for-all independent streak can be detremental to the emotional well being of all concerned. Okay, just had to get that off my chest.]

It was later after several years of pastoral ministry, graduating college, and lots of life experiences that I began to move away from the comfortable religion of my childhood and seriously question the tenets and methods intensively. Once I stopped going to church every Sunday, it became easier to think clearly. While we may enjoy the fellowship and worship, there is an enormous amount of direct and indirect conditioning taking place. Whenever you remove yourself from that environment and begin to think independently, you may come up with different answers than those you were taught in Sunday School.

I don’t know which label is most appropriate to describe my theological quandry. It’s like trying to hit a moving target because I’m in a constant state of evolution. Maybe I’m a very liberal Christian, but there’s more that I disagree with in the church than I agree with, so it seems disingenuous to consider myself a Christian. I personally feel somewhere in the middle of agnosticism and atheism. My simple understanding of those terms is that one says we can’t know whether or not God is and the other says he is not.

I don’t really know whether God exists or not. If there is a God, he cannot possibly be anything like the Judeo-Christian version we’ve all been brought up to believe in. I’m much more inclined to believe in a unifying field or consciousness than a divine deity. Science and theoretical physics have given me answers to who we are, how we came to be, and what we’re doing here more than any sermon I’ve ever heard. It’s not really important to me which label fits me best, but I’ve felt more and more pressure to have a “coming out.”

I have no desire to diminish the faith of others or make a spectacle of myself. I just don’t believe the same way anymore. There are reasons why I turn down invitations to preach, why I don’t read the Bible the same way as others expect me to, why I don’t care about going to church, etc. I think it’s only a matter of time before family members, friends, or peers force the issue. I’d rather avoid the shock waves and the fallout, because I know that people get angry, they get hurt, they feel the need to put your name on the prayer list. I’m not interested. I may be called an atheist, an agnostic, or a liberal, but I’m happiest just being me. In fact I’m happier being me than I have ever been in my entire life, and for the first time in my entire life I chose to be me.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. ~ Luke 23:42

For all of our religious observances to remember Jesus, perhaps it is our greatest desire to be remembered, hoping that in this life through all of our trials and suffering that we will not be forgotten.. praying that when life comes to a close we will not be lost.

When we step outside the religious worldview we were raised with, we discover that there are very deep, very primitive motivations at work in us even without our knowing. We want to be accepted, to be desired, to be safe, to have significance. Religion offers all of those but at a price. Do this, don’t do that, and you will be saved.

Personally, I’ve always related more to the thief on the cross than the saints on the ground. His prayer is our prayer. His hope, our hope. Jesus stands at odds with much of the religion devoted to his remembrance. He says that you are accepted. You are loved. You have worth and meaning not because of anything you have done but because you are. Your life alone is so rare and precious a gift that no other acts of devotion could make God love you more. If we understood that, if we believed that, we would value others just as much, even do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

“Jesus, remember me”from Taize community (.mp3)

In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me. ~ John 16:16

Today is a day of last things. No matter what you believe about the resurrection or deity of Jesus, it is indisputable that there was a last meal, a last message, a last embrace… a last breath. All of us will also experience last things. Although the certainties of my faith have given way to questions and mystery, these days are still holy for me. They are days of reflection and remembrance.

Too often the humanity of Jesus is swallowed up in reflections on his deity. I don’t believe Jesus had a death wish, but he knowingly challenged the powers that be in a time when it was dangerous to do so. He could have easily incited people to violence as a revolutionary. He could have caved to religious authority as a coward, but he chose the middle way, the hard way, to die for what he lived for.

I love Patty Griffin. She is a brilliant song writer and passionate performer. “Mary” is one of my favorite songs of hers. I invite you to listen to it and look at the passion of Christ through the eyes of one whose heart it touched most deeply.

Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ashes
You’re covered in rain
You’re covered in babies, you’re covered in slashes
You’re covered in wilderness, you’re covered in stains
You cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud
Of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
On some sunny day and always you stay, Mary

Jesus says, ‘Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer’
He flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin’ his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Oh Mary she moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere
Everytime the snow drifts, every way the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts, she’s always there

Jesus said, ‘Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer’
He flys right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin’ his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ruins
you’re covered in secrets
Your’e covered in treetops, you’re covered in birds
who can sing a million songs without any words
You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always you stay
Mary, Mary, Mary

~ “Mary” by Patty Griffin

The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgement.
~ J. Krishnamurti

This quote resonated strongly with me when I read it recently. I realize that it is a very Buddhist statement that can apply to ‘emptying your mind,’ enlightenment, higher states of consciousness, etc., but it says something more to me. Much of my life has been consumed by judgement from the church, my family, my peers, but mostly myself. I have been my own worst critic without a doubt, and it was only made worse by neurotic guilt over ’sin’ and the desire to be accepted by God. For a time I found a tremendous source of release in embracing the grace of God, discovering that I was already accepted based upon the sacrificial atoning death of Christ on the cross. While that brought more peace than I had known up to that point, all of my failures and shortcomings continued to plague me because although they were forgiven, they remained a disappointment to God and ultimately myself. I could not live up to the ridiculous standard I set for myself, a standard I never expected of anyone else.

 Only in these later years when I took the blasphemous step of concluding that hell and sin are the constructs of a religious system and not reality, did I begin to find the kind of freedom that the church had been selling for years. (see To Sin or Not to Sin, Is It Even Possible?) Ironically, I was listening to a Michael Tolcher song this morning, “Sooner or Later,” which talks about all of the rules we are given as kids. We grow up only to discover that the grown ups didn’t know what they were talking about anymore than we do now.

Somethings you have to learn them all on your own
You can’t rely on anybody else
Or the point of view of a source unknown
If it feels good and sounds nice
Then it’s your choice don’t doubt yourself
Don’t even think twice

I know that the Christians reading this would say it sounds like hedonism, a “if it feels good, do it” mentality, but I’ve come to believe that each of us have an internal compass pointing us in the direction that we were meant to go. No amount of religious browbeating can deter you from who you are. In the end it is more important to be accepted by yourself than by others. Again, many Christians I know would say that my conscience has been “seared by a hot iron,” that I’ve lost spiritual sensitivity to conviction and to God Himself. Honestly, I disagree. I’ve never felt more connected to the divine source than I do right now.

There is something to be said for clearing your mind, living in the present moment, and just being, especially in this crazy rat race we live in, but there is even more to be said for clearing your soul of a lifetime of religious clutter. While it may be impossible to observe yourself with absolutely no judgement, I know that I have much less of it now. While it may be regarded as the “highest form of human intelligence,” I believe it is the highest form of human freedom to live at peace with yourself and with others.

When I first started this blog in December 2005, I chose the title based upon Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. I’ve used this outlet to talk about everything from my years as a pastor, to gardening, to wines, movies, books, and of course politics. I’ve been reflecting the last few days on relationships, mine and others, which have gone awry. To oversimplify complex problems, it seems that much of the friction that I have observed between people is the result of words left unspoken.

Things need to be said, but most importantly the right things need to be said. Too often we dance around the issue and assume communication is taking place. None of us are mind readers. Not only do certain things need to be said to another, but they must also be spoken soon. The longer you wait to say them, the harder they become to verbalize.

I’m a bit of an odd duck, I know, but I’d rather have heated words than silence. Sometimes the situation can be resolved on the other side of an argument but seldom after silence. Part of this is inherited behavior. My wife’s family talks about nothing. They watch t.v. by leaning over to see around the 2 ton elephant in the middle of the room. My family talks about everything, even if not always politely. I prefer the latter. At least everything is laid on the table. It’s seemed to work for these 31 years of my life, because we all still get along even if we don’t always agree.

What I mean to say more than anything in this post is that words matter. Your words matter. Say them. Say them often. Say them soon. Scream them if you must, but say what must be said not only for the health of your relationships but for the sake of your own sanity. Tell someone you love that you love them. Then tell them again as often as you can. Tell someone that’s hurt you that it hurts. Tell someone heading for trouble that you care enough to warn them. You never know when you’ll have one last chance. Don’t let words that must be spoken go unsaid.