This month I am reading Keith Anderson’s book ‘A Spirituality of Listening: living what we hear’ and I am reminded that the world is simultaneously much bigger and much smaller than I realise. In the midst of a dense period of brain fog, migraine and depression, it has been good to be challenged to keep looking up from bed to hear the wild wind rustle of God’s Grandeur out of the window and to be confirmed that the path I have chosen, to see God in the tiniest details of my small life, is indeed a fruitful way forward. The gold thread twisting through Anderson’s book is that ‘God speaks in ordinary things often silenced because we forget to listen’ (60) and that ‘our work done in the most ordinary ways becomes extraordinary if we remember one thing: the most ordinary things are transformed by the possibility of God’s presence’ (61). His conviction is that ‘wisdom still cries out if we can learn how and where to listen’ (24).
Nearly four years ago I started writing about the intersection between contemplative spirituality and photography on a blog called shot at ten paces. The name emerged out of a conversation with the poet Gillian Wallace about my frustrations with my photography. I characterized my seeming inability to learn and retain the most basic technical knowledge, which would develop my photography skills to commercial levels, as an inability to ‘see the big picture’. All I did was take photographs of was what was in front of me at home, or of what I could see from my wheelchair, my front doorstep, or out of a car window. My photos reflected my mental and emotional state – I needed to find my God in my here and my now, because God felt a long way distant.
But the presence of rain drops held inside a net of lobelia on the edge of a hanging basket, or the colour of a pot on a windowsill, or the weeds thrusting up through the concrete path, all began to catch at my notice and I explored them in countless close ups with camera in hand. Yet it was only during this conversation with Gillian that I discerned that this way of seeing really was what I was interested in. Far from it being a limited way of seeing imposed by physical and mental illness, it was a freeing gift that I was naturally attracted to. I had been given the opportunity to see what others often overlooked, and by being open to receive images through a camera, I had the opportunity to become a co-creator with God.
Since that conversation I have become passionate about communicating, like Anderson, that ‘there is an invitation to an orientation of one’s life to a universe that is alive with presence and voice, always with “more that can be told”’ 14). So with camera in hand, (a DSLR when I am well enough to hold it, an iPhone on a more daily basis) I explore my faith conviction that God is in the small things, God is in the details. And so, to use Lucy Ellman Clark’s phrase I am on a ‘Pilgrimage of the Quotidian’. God asks me to pay attention, to be present to God’s presence, which will always be right in front of me, if I have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
As Keith Anderson affirms, such exploration requires a ‘posture of expectancy’ (39). I need to get curious about what God is doing, what God is saying, where God is living in whatever this day brings. My approach needs to be one of wonder, although as soon as I write that word I am reminded how far short I fall of living with such imaginative openness in most moments of my life. Yet I know that we are all beginners in this way of listening. I can begin again an intentional practice to have a conversation with God which begins with my receptivity, not my words; and rest safe in the knowledge God’s presence can pierce the blanked blockedness of an exhausted mind.
It seems no coincidence that as I read Keith Anderson’s encouragement to cultivate ways of listening for God’s presence in the ordinary tasks that face me this day, I stumbled over this:
Wisdom is
so kind and wise
that wherever you may look
you can learn something
about God.
Why
would not
the omnipresent
teach that
way?
St Catherine of Siena/ Daniel Ladinsky
Kate Kennington Steer is a writer and photographer with a deep abiding passion for contemplative photography and spirituality. She writes about these things on her Shot at Ten Paces blog. She has recently begun an offshoot project, posting a daily iPhone image as a ‘act of daily seeing’ on Facebook. Join in with gentle ambling conversations about contemplative photography by visiting Act of Daily Seeing.
All the above images are iPhone images.
The year is almost halfway over. We are racing towards the Celtic Prayer Retreat in August and, at the same time, working hard to complete our leadership transition. Thank you to those of you who have responded with words of encouragement, prayers for guidance, and donations of support.
This has not been a sudden transition. We began the process in July 2014 when we embarked on a discernment process with our staff, board and a few friends. We started with some hard questions:
- Is it worth continuing MSA beyond Tom and Christine Sine, and, if so, what could the organization look like in five years’ time?
- What do we need to do in each of the next five years to accomplish that?
The answer to our first question was a resounding “yes”. Our process affirmed the mission of MSA: to unleash the creative potential of ordinary people to make a difference in their communities and a world of urgent need.
It also emphasized the importance of our MSA process and the fact that we invite people into a creative process of discernment and seek to redeem the creative spark that God has placed within all of us. It encouraged us to return to the principles of MSA and our values statement: MSA is a community-based organization that fosters shared values of simplicity, spirituality, sustainability, service and hospitality.
We view every MSA venture as a collaborative opportunity, inviting people into a creative process of group discernment and spiritual retreat.
In the process of transition, we have identified three threads that need to be unraveled and grown into the future:
- Godspace
- the MSA Centre of Creativity and Imagination, and
- the personal ministry of Tom and Christine Sine.
The New Godspace
Godspace – not just the blog, but the publications it spawns, the social media sites it fosters, and the events it inspires. This is currently the most developed aspect of MSA, and we are already a long way down the transition pathway.
One major step occurred last year when we invited many of you to become regular contributors to Godspace and converted it from my personal blog to a community blog, now with over forty-five regular contributors from eight countries and many different perspectives.
Godspace continues to grow in its reach and is considered by many to be one of the top 100 blogs on spirituality. The formation of a global community like this — with our emphasis on spirituality, sustainability, community and social justice — is unique, and I know that our resources, meditations and prayers have helped to equip many of you in your churches and ministries.
Andy Wade brings other exciting aspects to this growth of Godspace as he fleshes out new possibilities for collaborative products and workshop presentations for the future. He is also working to expand our annual Celtic Prayer Retreat into a more substantial and enriching event with the addition of workshops, music and enhanced spaces for prayer and reflection.
The New Center for Imagination and Creativity
Forrest Inslee and our new MSA Board are currently discussing the possible development of a Centre that would incorporate the construction of the Mustard Seed Village into its structure.
We appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment as this process moves forward.
The Ministry of Tom and Christine Sine
Tom, as many of you know, is in the process of launching his new book Live Like You Give A Damn: Join the Changemaking Celebration. He has also created a new blog, The New Changemakers, and is participating in speaking events around the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.
I am looking forward to more time to write and conduct workshops and retreats. Both of us expect to act as consultants for MSA when invited. We will also continue to reside at the Mustard Seed House community and provide hospitality for friends and strangers near and far.
This is an exciting, though at times overwhelming, season as we grapple with all that this transition encompasses. We appreciate your prayers and support in all that we are doing as we move together into God’s new possibilities.
God bless,
Christine Sine
photo Christine Sine
My garden’s primary export is weeds.
I’m new at gardening – this is only my second year tending to this little plot of land in my care. So I try to have grace when I pluck more dandelions from the soil than I do vegetables.
I find myself thinking a lot about Jesus’s story of wheat and weeds — the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, as we normally call it. He tells this story about wheat (God’s children) and tares (the evil one’s children) growing all together in a field. The two are allowed to grow together until, eventually, at maturity, the weeds will be gathered and burnt.
It seems that Jesus views humanity in two distinct types of people. The first sort of person is wheat, which is useful and good, the intended and desired children of God. The second sort of person are the weeds: unwanted, undesirable, competing with and detrimental to the health of useful plants like wheat.
Sometimes people are certain of knowing exactly who is in which category.
On the news recently, I saw a woman — she was at a protest for stronger border control between Mexico and US America. She was shouting: “Jesus wouldn’t break the law.” She was so certain that those labeled “illegal immigrants” are the weeds.
Across the country, Christians organize outside women’s health centers to pray for life while holding signs that say “murderer,” certain that the only reason a woman would need contraception or an abortion is because she is a child of the enemy, an invasive plant that chokes out life.
Many people are certain of knowing just who the weeds are. I’m not here to tell you that border-crossing children and pro-choice women are going to burn. Rather, I want to ask: how do you feel about the people who do say such things? Are you certain of their weediness?
Perhaps you work to follow God’s call to care for the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner — how do you feel about those who, in the name of the same God, oppose such a call? How do you feel towards those who actively work against caring for the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner? Perhaps their behavior seems not dissimilar to the way an invasive species of weeds hinders the goodness and usefulness of wheat.
Jesus’s parable, by sorting humanity into two groups, seems to condone this sort of classification of human souls, yet perhaps the story is not about the fact that humanity could be easily categorized into two groups, but rather the parable might be about the tendency, the desire to place humanity into two groups. Perhaps the issue is not that weeds exist; perhaps the issue is that our desire to name people as weeds does exist, and this breeds the desire to distance, to separate, to grow apart from those people.
As any gardener knows (and I am certainly learning), the presence of weeds may feel like a cause for battle. But, my wiser garden mentors tell me, weeds are actually a very useful tool. To the gardener who knows how to read the signs, weeds are an indicator of the condition of the soil. If the soil is too wet, it will attract certain weeds; if it’s too compacted, different weeds; if it is too acidic, too alkaline, too full of phosphorous — each situation will attract its own type of weeds.
A wise farmer pays attention to the weeds, digs down into the dirt to discover what they are indicating about the soil, and learns from their presence.
What we would like to tear from the field, remove from ourselves, and dismiss as problems are actually very useful tools, when we pay attention. When we want to remove something from the field, perhaps we would be wise to first move closer with curiosity.
Jesus tells us a crucial step in this work: “Let the wheat and the weeds grow together.” He does not say to let them grow at the same time, in parallel and yet separate from one another, but to let them grow together, their roots intertwined.
If we are wise gardeners, we will not ignore the people with behaviors that we might tend to view as weeds. If we are wise farmers, we will pay attention to what those weeds are indicating about the world in which they grow. We will not obliterate them, but will move closer to them to find out what is going on to grow such a plant — Move so close as to allow our root systems to become entangled and intertwined so thoroughly as to be inseparable. We will allow God to grow us together so intimately that the well-being of one plant is deeply connected with the well-being of the other. When our growth is intimately tied to their growth — whoever we might understand “them” to be — the field will be changed; and the flourishing of all people will be possible.
The protester that I mentioned earlier, the woman desiring stronger border control: if she spent time learning from the ones she calls law-breakers, perhaps she might be able to see their illegal weediness not as a core characteristic of their souls, but as a symptom of the soil of our world, a symptom of scarcity and globalization and desperation. The Christians outside women’s health clinics might be surprised to discover that those who enter such clinics often do so because of uncertain relationships and insufficient community support — deeper concerns in the systems of our world.
And if we allow ourselves to grow together with the Christians that make some of us want to say “I’m not that kind of Christian” –perhaps we can see them as symptoms of a struggling church in a broken world, if we can be wise gardeners. Perhaps we can recognize that what looks like hatred is the sincere attempt to follow the call of a God who is beyond all understanding in a rapidly shifting culture. Perhaps we can learn that what looks like hatred is fear of a God who is beyond our control; fear of a God who tells us to grow together with those we fear.
Please visit Kate’s website Here
Kate Rae Davis
By Andy Wade –
For me to gain means you must lose. That’s the basis of a zero-sum relationship. This kind of thinking is deeply embedded in our western culture, especially within the “free market” culture. Life is a competition and, while I might choose to be charitable from time to time, for me to get ahead means others must sacrifice.
This is also the approach we take with nature. It’s assumed that to grow a plant means the soil will lose nutrients. On the surface, that makes sense. But what if that’s not the way God designed creation? What if God’s design was one of interdependence and self-sacrifice? And what if our misunderstanding of creation and our part in God’s creation plan has influenced our theological framework? Could it be that we have oversimplified the purpose and message of the cross? Have we over simplified Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, reducing it to “God sacrificed, I win” –zero-sum in action.
But a closer look at what Jesus actually says about it reveals something quite different: Jesus sacrificed so that we all may become one as he and the Father are one. Or as the Apostle Paul phrases it, “ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Col 1:19-20). This is not zero-sum but rather self-sacrifice for the flourishing of the whole creation!
It’s interesting that when we go all the way back to the story of the Garden of Eden, zero-sum is introduced by Adam when he blames Eve for their mutual disobedience. The result? Fractured relationships between God and humans, between human and human, and between humans and creation. In the very next chapter (4) Cain takes the life of his brother, Abel, and when confronted by God exclaims, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Choosing to live into the fracture rather than the hope, Cain experiences dislocation from the flourishing life of mutuality God intended.
These are some of the thoughts swirling through my mind as I watched Michael Pollen’s presentation on restorative food systems at the Bioneers conference in 2013. While his is not an intentional theological reflection on our relationship with creation, it is, nonetheless, deeply theological. God’s power and purposes are visible in creation. Anyone, no matter their theological persuasion, can observe God’s creation and see how it was designed for mutual flourishing and sacrifice. As I’ve said in other posts, we may choose to live into the “curse”, our broken relationships with each other and the whole creation, or we can live into the promise and hope the whole creation was founded upon, and to which the cross beckons, healing, wholeness, mutuality, and sacrifice.
Watch the video and see what you think.
This post was first published on the Mustard Seed Associates blog
Love by Johnhain, used with permission
By Rowan Wyatt
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you”. Matthew 6:6 ESV
As an ex professional musician I have always sought to take care of my ears and my hearing. When I first started out there wasn’t a lot of choice for hearing protection, either foam earplugs, which made it impossible to hear what you were doing, or nothing at all which at times was just as bad. I learned to position myself better so I could buffer the other noises away and just hear my own guitar amplifier and if the stage was big enough I would position myself right at the front to get as far away from the, very high wattage, amps we would use. Then a few years ago, as I was winding down my music and just playing for fun I discovered some new types of ear plugs on the market. These silicone buds fitted in your ears but had different filter levels you could adjust to achieve your desired filter level. I could finally hear what I was playing without the deafening distraction of all that was going on around me.
I like to pray in the way Jesus prescribed in the above scripture, for as much as praying is talking to God a huge part is listening to him. I like to spend time in intimate reflection and quiet contemplation to hear that still small voice, sometimes a ‘knock you off your feet’ gust! Free from distraction and conducive to being able to hear with a degree of clarity, away from distracting noise. Filtering out the distractions just like I did with the expensive ear plugs I mentioned above.
I love this poem by my fellow Welshman W.H. Davies which I first encountered as a quiet boy at school, to me it is a total reflection of modern spiritual life, it’s lack of quiet listening and its words should be heeded: –
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
How wonderful those words and how poignant with the rush and immediacy of the modern world. Everything is required immediately, a quick fix whilst bustling on with the busy, noisy and hectic lives we lead. Who wants to waste time listening for Gods voice, see his beauty in nature or feel his hand on your back. It seems few people do today, lost amid the fancy big screens, ego laden worship bands and the game show host leaders of the mega churches. I guess God does reach people in these places but not this pilgrim.
Listening to God is the most important aspect of your Christian life for if you are not taking the time or even bothering to try and listen to what he has to say to you then prayer just becomes a one sided babble. You hear it said so often that people are waiting to hear from God despite their constant prayer, are they taking the time to listen?
I had been struggling with some issues recently and despite praying I wasn’t hearing from God, felt no presence, felt no comfort and so whilst out one day I popped into the local Catholic church to sit and spend some time in silent contemplation. I began to pray and after giving thanks I asked for help, I heard from God, dramatically, to the point where I had to fall to my knees shaking. I realized that before while praying I was talking AT God not WITH Him and that all I could hear was my own voice, my own self-pity drowning out the voice of God.
But Rowan, surely God is all powerful and omnipresent and can be heard no matter what or where? I hear people asking that as they read this and I totally agree with that statement but I feel, and have experienced many times, that God likes and prefers to talk with us when we are in a peaceful place together, a conversation between just the two of us, intimate, a ‘just between you and me’ state, at least that’s how it works with me. Often when I pray alone, I sit or lie on the floor and as I talk to God I feel a hand on my back, comforting, protecting, fatherly. You don’t get that experience of God if your sole prayer time is a quick two minutes whilst running for your train.
Just listen. Talk to God and then be quiet and wait for him to talk to you. It may be a direct word or just the faintest hint of a whisper in the breeze rustling some leaves in the yard which brings you comfort. Take that time out, make time for it and let God talk to you.
Just listen and see what you can hear, filter out the unwanted noise of life. It may change your life.
Book Review of The Power of Listening: Building Skills for Mission and Ministry
by Lynne M. Baab, a monthly contributor to Godspace.
Reviewed by Sarah Sanderson
I’m not a natural-born listener. I’m definitely not one of those people who chose a vocation as a counsellor at age twelve because her friends were always confiding in her. No, I’m more of a natural-born interrupter. Start to tell me something important, and my tendency is to get so excited about whatever it is you’re talking about that I have to share my own thoughts, right away, right now, before you’ve even finished.
When I first tried to reform my ways, I thought that listening was simply the opposite of talking. Instead of jumping in and interrupting my friends, I would bite my tongue and concentrate on keeping my mouth shut. Remaining silent equals listening, right? Not if you’re so worried about not talking that you still can’t hear anything the other person says.
It turns out that listening is a much more complex and nuanced skill than simply putting a clamp on your tongue. Thankfully, God has graciously given me role models and road maps as I seek to grow in my listening capabilities. Lynne Baab’s book, The Power of Listening, offers both: the role models and the road map. Sharing quotes and examples from great listeners, as well as laying out a broad framework for how listening functions in many different settings, this book is a trustworthy guide. Baab has much to offer both for listening novices like me and for those lifelong listeners out there who seek to understand and apply their innate skills in new ways.
Listening requires not just staying quiet, but paying attention. In this fast-paced world of ours, we can become so overwhelmed that we stop paying attention to much of anything. The Power of Listening shows us how and why to bring our attention back into focus.
The book begins with a compelling true story: a missionary returned, after years of overseas service, to a declining congregation. By patiently listening for the latent passions buried deep in the hearts of the beleaguered church members, and then showing them how to listen to the needs of their community, the missionary helped to spark new enthusiasm, outreach, and growth. In this real-life example, listening was not confined to a single conversation, but became the bedrock of a months-, even years-long process of revitalization.
How can we learn to listen like that, in a way that matters, for our church, our community, and our world? What does it mean to listen to communication that is unspoken, such as creation, art, and even the architectural spaces and online messages around us? What role does posture play in prayer? What do we do with the anxiety that naturally arises within us as we listen to another’s pain? The Power of Listening raises and addresses question after question like this, ranging from the practical to the profound.
Baab gives particular primacy to the role of listening in churches. This book will be useful for clergy and lay leaders, as well as for church members. Each chapter offers questions at the end for use in small groups or personal reflection.
I first read The Power of Listening when it was released a couple of years ago. One story in particular stuck with me. Baab relates a time when she was recovering from surgery. She noticed that well-wishers often didn’t sit with the topic of her recovery process as long as she wished they would. Her experience as one who needed listening led to an insight: when talking with trauma survivors, it can be helpful to gently return to the topic of trauma again, even after the first “how are you” question has been lobbed and volleyed.
I used this concept just this morning. A friend told me how she was struggling with her mother’s advanced cancer. I listened, and prayed for her. The conversation continued on. But I sensed further sadness in my friend.
“I’m still feeling sad about your mom,” I offered. This kind of reflective empathy is one of the practical tools Baab offers in her book.
“I’m sad, too,” my friend replied, and she went on to give me new information that hadn’t come up in our first conversation. We continued on to have an even deeper time of prayer.
If The Power of Listening can help even a natural-born interrupter like me become a better listener, it’s a powerful book indeed.
(Sarah Sanderson is an MFA student at Seattle Pacific University, a pastor’s wife, and a mom of four. Her writing, on topics like faith, mental illness, parenting, and everyday life, can be found at confessionsofahumanmom.blogspot.com and www.sarahlsanderson.com.)
Photographer Daniel Etter.
There are few who haven’t been moved by the visible anguish of Laith Majid as he and his family finally landed safely on the shores of a Greek island. Clutching his little ones, he arrived drenched and freezing in a rubber dinghy barely afloat, with an entire nation’s pain written on his face. His bravery and suffering awakened my heart like a stinging slap of icy salt water.
I wept for him. I tried to imagine what it was like to be him.
I have never been so very desperate as to dare to bring my family and others across a huge sea in a rubber dinghy meant for 3.
I have never had to leave absolutely everything behind, showing up in a new land as a pauper with children in tow, fully dependent on the good will of others.
I have never had to test the courage it takes to simply choose to live.
It’s easy to go throughout my busy week and forget that millions of people live on this planet with refugee status. The UN says that there are “currently some 43 million uprooted victims of conflict and persecution worldwide. More than 15 million of them are refugees who have fled their countries, while another 27 million are people who remain displaced by conflict inside their own homelands — so-called ‘internally displaced people’.” The sheer numbers of desperate people are overwhelming. They are people who love and are loved, people who have hopes and dreams. And for the many who are housed in refugee camps, generations will pass before anything really changes for them.
I don’t believe we forget because we don’t care. A good many of us are simply trying to love God and our families, do our jobs, pay our bills, and surf the ups and downs of our lives. It’s not lost on us that in America we have it pretty good.
But here are desperate human beings asking the world for help.
This brings up lots of legitimate questions and concerns. How many refugees can a local economy take at once? How do we designate resources for all the people in need? Is there enough to go around? Is there enough for us? And what if they have terrorist leanings? Are we inviting the horrific cruelty of ISIL into our midst? We all know that the political struggle over the issues has been divisive and brutal.
I’m tired of arguing a “side”. I can only dare myself to gaze at Mr. Majid’s face and encounter his need. It scares me.
I am grateful that we have our stories, our sacred narratives that can speak to the humbling truth that I have no idea what to do. The refugee situation is a worldwide crisis. The battle of the Left and Right keeps us stuck. But I have been reading some of the work of theologian Walter Brueggemann who brings us to the stories that deal with overwhelming pain and stuckness.
[Note: These next paragraphs are my attempt to synthesize and summarize Dr. Brueggemann’s brilliant words and work from The Prophetic Imagination. The first edition of this book was written in 1978 but I find it uncannily fitting for today. Any and all brilliance in the following paragraphs is purely his.]
The story of the Exodus is a powerful point of identity for Israel. They had been were slaves in Egypt. They had become accustomed to life under Pharaoh. It was the only social reality that could be imagined. Even the religion of the Hebrew people was subverted to work for the Pharaoh’s purposes to keep the machinations of his kingdom moving. Life was hard but at least there was work and food. But Israel cried out under their bondage. And God heard.
In the stories that follow, we see that the claims of Pharaohs’ empire are ended by the disclosure of the freedom of God, that is, that God is not beholden to maintain the purposes of the dominant culture. God is not captive to anyone’s social perception or purposes. The God of Moses subverts the comfortable reality of Pharaoh and sides with the oppressed and the marginalized. The God of Moses dismantled the politics of oppression and exploitation by countering it with the politics of justice and compassion. The Hebrews found themselves being formed into a new way of being, to match the vision of God’s freedom.
The revolution of Moses was sustained for generations (with some significant ups and downs) until under King Solomon, Israel itself became “empire”. The kingdom of Solomon was one of incredible affluence. Whereas the alternative consciousness of Moses arose in a time of scarcity, there were enough consumer goods in Israel under Solomon to remove much of their anxiety about survival. The alternative consciousness brought by Moses began to lose ground. It is difficult to maintain a revolution of justice and freedom when there is satiation. In our own economy for example, says Brueggemann, it is hard to maintain passion for civil rights when we are so overly fed.
However, he continues, the great Solomonic achievement was achieved by oppressive social policy. The affluence was hierarchal and unevenly distributed. Brueggemann also suggests that the religion of the Hebrews once again became a static religion in which the freedom of God was subverted into servicing the purposes of the King. He calls this a “religion of immanence” which means that the prevailing idea was that God was at the disposal of the King. When religion becomes static in order to maintain the purposes of empire, the people are conditioned to become afraid of anything that might change the status quo. The passion for real freedom and justice has been co-opted for lesser things. Those in power know that all it takes to counter an alternative consciousness is satiation.
Brueggemann describes the effects of the empire’s numbing satiation of the people: In the royal program of achievable satiation there is a religion of optimism in which God has no business other than to maintain our standard of living. There are no mysteries to honor but only problems to be solved using the cost accounting of management mentality. The value of a soul is calculated by statistics and financial speculations. This numbing satiation also requires the annulment of neighbor as life giver. It imagines we can “live outside history as self-made men and women.”
America, in all her splendor, is not unlike the empire of Solomon and Pharaoh. We boast unprecedented affluence and yet, the distribution of such affluence is extremely inequitable. As with Solomon and Pharaoh, the working class supports the upper echelon. American Christianity has in large part become conflated with the American dream, the religion of optimism. Being self-made and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps has become a religious value. American Christianity has become static in that we cannot see beyond our infighting to imagine a different reality this side of heaven. In our sleepy satiation, pockmarked with bouts of fear, we only can see to preserve ourselves.
But just as it was with Israel, it seems we have come to a time when God has tired of indifferent affluence. Like the prophets of old, the sopping, traumatized travelers that are washing up on the earth’s shores serve as a means of startling our hearts awake beyond our fears, our politics, and our comforts. The reality of human suffering – all of our suffering- can awaken us to seek a better vision that matches the freedom of God.
Even as empire lives by numbness and controlled perceptions, Jesus penetrates numbness and enters into the hurt of desperate people, and eventually comes to embody it. He reveals a very different value system than empire, where the outcast and the loser are the valued ones, where he calls into question even all moral distinction on which the society was based, and where he transforms through his own vulnerable solidarity with poor, empty and grieving.
The answers we seek lie in the awakening of our consciousness. Our future is not bound by this present. It cannot be assured or guaranteed by the values of empire. However, Jesus shows us the way to this alternative consciousness, this new mind. It is the way that empire can never imagine. It is the way of self-emptying. Jesus does not numb himself to the pain of the hurting; he joins it. He is mercy.
Brueggemann says that the future is an unqualified yes from God. God is free from the mechanistic ways of our best systems, our “what if’s”, and our fears around fairness and deservingness. If we believe this is true, we are also free to imagine a reality different from the one we have created. We are free to risk and to enter into the pain of the refugee. We are free to awaken the passion of mercy.
“Passion is the capacity and readiness to care, to suffer, to die, and to feel is the enemy of imperial reality. Imperial economy is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice. Its politics tend to block out the cries of the denied ones. Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns misery alive in the heart of God.” The misery of Mr. Majid is the misery of God. As we awaken again to the freedom of God, we may just find a way to join Mr. Majid there in God’s aching heart. We may awaken enough to dare to imagine God’s alternative reality, and we may just heal the world.
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