Words Less Spoken

Colliding galaxies (photo from Hubble telescope)

Breathtaking! A few years ago my first thought would have been that this is the fingerprint of God. Maybe it is; maybe it’s not. I’m not able to answer that anymore. My first impression on seeing this image today is that we are looking into a mirror at a reflection of ourselves.

I’m in complete awe of the beauty and grandeur of the universe. It is inadequate and inconceivable to even say that it is big. I highly recommend you read this article just to get some perspective on our place in it: Window of Possibility: Why the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most incredible photograph ever taken.

When we see images like this, we cannot even begin to appreciate the significance of them. This image captures the birth pangs of our mother. This is where we all came from. We are the children of stardust, whirling and colliding in massive and spectacular beauty. All life as we know it has this common ancestry.

My 3 year old son was looking at family pictures yesterday. Some of them were taken before he was born with only his mommy, daddy, and older brother. He got very sad and asked where he was and why he wasn’t in the picture. It was a temporary dilemma of sorts for him to imagine that there was a time when he was not, just as it is sometimes difficult for us to imagine a time when we will not be any longer.

Perspective is what is lacking in our culture today… macro perspective. We have none beyond our own narrow selfish interests. Life is rare, precious, and beautiful. Every day, every moment, and every person in ours should be cherished and celebrated. The world and all those in it are not ours to exploit or to ruin. They are ours to love.

Am I a Christian? That’s the question I’m wrestling with this morning. I really don’t know any more, given the world of labels and dogma that we live in. One of my favorite bloggers, Real Live Preacher, wrote about a new blogging community he is supporting called High Calling Blogs, which is about Christians trying to live out their faith in the workplace. It sounds really interesting. I even thought about linking my blog to it for a moment, but then I got to wondering if I qualified. I’m not sure any more that I do. Then there were these categories to fall into: clergy, parenting, writers, business, etc. Panic! I don’t know which category of Christian in the workplace I fall into. I don’t fit into any box just right.

I was raised as a “Christian.” We went to church. I made a “public profession of faith” and followed in baptism. I even felt a “calling” to the ministry and pursued a college degree in religious studies. I pastored churches for almost ten years and occassionally still speak at churches from time to time when asked, but the question “am I a Christian?” sticks with me this morning.

If you have read any number of my posts over the last few years, you would know that I’ve been on a journey, initially trying to flush out what it means to be a Christian and a church in the 21st century, but my quest has turned broader trying to discover what it means to be human, period. I have doubts, serious doubts, about the authenticity of many common core beliefs to Christianity yet I love the person of Jesus for who he was, what he did, and what he said. Even then do we love the real historical Jesus or the one the gospel writers wanted us to know or the one Paul wanted us to know. Who knows for sure? For all that I love about Jesus there are so many things that he said that I just don’t get.

I don’t believe in a “literal hell.” I believe in a literary hell and hell on earth. I question the common conception of heaven and afterlife as it has been taught. I seriously doubt the virgin birth and some days the divinity of Christ. I think Christians are fine with wrecking the environment because they think Jesus is probably coming in the next decade or so, but I don’t really think he’s coming, at least not as fundamentalists would like to believe. I think he comes everyday in the lives of those who embrace love and grace. For all of my infatuation with the church I’m having a hard time just stomaching it lately. The thought of pastoring another church makes me completely nauseous.

So, am I a “Christian?” I honestly don’t know. The label doesn’t matter to me. Whether others consider me one is really irrelevant to me. Asking the question is sort of like the ridiculous question, “Do you believe the Bible?” What kind of question is that? Exactly which Bible are you asking about? Let’s start there first with some basic definitions. KJV, NIV, NRSV, Catholic Bible, or the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic? Even if we’re talking about the ancient language texts, which manuscript are we talking about? You know older more reliable manuscripts contradict some of the newer ones used in translations, but those little footnotes are regarded as heresy among “true believers.” Do you realize the authors, the compilers, and those who closed the canon had a bias, an agenda? Books that did not fit their theological view point were omitted. The same is quickly happening with people who formerly identified themselves as “Christians.” If you don’t buy what they’re selling, you’re out. I’m fine with being out.

I don’t know if I fit the defintion of what it is to be a “Christian” these days. Maybe we need a new word. Maybe we don’t need any words. I’m me. I’m happy with that. Is that ok?

More than 35,000 take to the streets in Burma to march

One monk said: “The protest is not merely for the wellbeing of people, but also for monks struggling for democracy and for people to have an opportunity to determine their own future.”

I’ve been enthralled by Brian Swimme’s book The Universe is a Green Dragon. I trust that you already know that we are children of the stars, literally. The planets, comets, moons, and even life on earth are all products of star dust. For that reason Swimme describes the universe observing itself through us:

We are the self-reflexion of the universe. We allow the universe to know and feel itself. So the universe is aware of itself through self-reflexive mind, which unfurls in the human. We were brought forth so that these experiences of beauty could enter awareness. The primeval fireball existed for twenty billion years without self-awareness. The creative work of the supernovas existed for billions of years without self-reflexive awareness. That star could not, by itself, become aware of its own beauty or sacrifice. But the star can, through us, reflect back on itself. In a sense, you are the star.

This got me to thinking. Often we live our lives trying to discover where it is we came from and wondering where it is we are going, not knowing either for certain. What happens to the world around us once we’re gone? Did our lives really count for something? Make an impact on others? All of those billions of stars had no idea of their own significance until we came along, formed from the leftover dust of their death. Just because we don’t know what will happen in the future doesn’t mean we won’t make a difference. One day we will become dust again, and in time we will return to our source, another star in another time that will one day too explode into a world of new possibilities. It really isn’t such a small world after all, is it?

Much talk has been raised once again about hate crimes following the incident in nearby Jena, Louisiana. Around August 2006 three white boys hung three nooses in a schoolyard tree after black students wanted to sit in the popular hangout of white students. Racial tensions escalated until in December 2006 six black students, now known as the “Jena Six,” got into a fight with a white student beating him unconscious and bloody on school grounds. Was the act of hanging the nooses in the tree a hate crime? The FBI ruled that it wasn’t. Was the beating of a white student, which stemmed from the same ongoing racial tension, a hate crime?During the march in Jena today Martin Luther King III said that federal hate crimes legislation must be forthcoming to address noose hangings. Other speakers also raised the question of hate crimes regarding the public displays of confederate flags on some houses enroute to Jena from Alexandria this morning.

It seems that liberal Democrats face quite a dilemma. Is it possible to champion the burning of an American flag in protest as protected free speech, yet ban hanging of the confederate flag or nooses as hate crimes? I find both equally offensive, but are we really going to start criminalizing the ignorant opinions of the extremists in our society? That seems to be a very dangerous door to open to pandora’s box. What do you think? Share your opinion.