JESUS IN THE TEMPLE

Yesterday, my son announced on Facebook that he has been officially approved for the next step in his ordination process by his Methodist District Committee on Ministries - unanimously. This is a big deal. As a Methodist candidate, Dan can do all that he can do but still, as a Methodist, other people are responsible for determining his adequacy for ministry in the church.

I could have told them he is ready. I could have told them that he has spent his entire life getting ready. I could have told them about his compassion, his empathy, his fearlessness in living ‘the Jesus life’. I could have, but wouldn’t have, told them that I, too, have been working on getting ready nearly all his life, raising him in a way that might mean he would take things on that might make me just a little bit afraid.

When he was small, I made a bracelet with beautiful beads and beads with the initials WWMD. I somehow felt I NEEDED to do this but did not know why. I did know that 'M' stood for Mary. But as I raised my own son, I often reflected on just how hard it might have been for Mary, Jesus’ mother, to raise a son she knew, according to the circumstances of her pregnancy (as told by Luke 1:26-38), was someone super special. She had been given a unique heads up that she had been chosen for an extraordinary assignment to raise, love and protect Jesus with all her skill and determination. 

And yet even with all that great parenting, and as most of us that were brought up in some sort of Abrahamic faith already knows, Jesus struck out on his own at 12 years old, leaving his parents’ traveling group without their permission, to spend several days learning from the Rabbis in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52). At twelve, Jesus was right on the cusp of being considered fully capable of understanding his spiritual obligations as a Hebrew. Shortly, he would be considered a man.

Still, I often wonder how Mary felt at the moment she knew Jesus was not with her group. When I visualize that moment, I think her thoughts might have been something like this. “Darn that Jesus. He is always trying to push the limits. He is always trying to take on more than I think he is ready for. He’s a bright, capable boy. He probably got caught up in something he felt was important. I just know he’s okay. I don’t need to worry. He’s GOT to be okay. Is he okay?”

I think, already, in her heart of hearts, she knew. She knew he had a destiny that might be filled with great joy and great trauma. And, I’m certain, her heart was sometimes heavy in this knowing. And the Bible verse curiously leaves out any mention of Jesus’ punishment. I personally don’t think there was any and I think at the moment Mary saw her beloved child with the Rabbis her heart pounded with both pride and sorrow. How could she punish, especially after Jesus spoke of his Father’s work? I think this Biblical moment must have carried much clarity for Mary. And I feel for her every time I think of this story.

I, too, have often feel blessed and sometimes a little irritated that I was chosen to raise my own challenging son. As I raised him, I wore my WWMD bracelet and rolled the beads around on occasion of some dissonance in our relatationship.  When I thought he might be getting off track or when I was very angry with him, I asked ‘What Would Mary Do?’. When he sorrowfully and deeply anguished because something was not at all right with his world, I asked ‘What Would Mary Do?’. With my heart in my throat while I was dropping Dan off for his first solo trip to Europe by himself at the tender age of 18, I asked ‘What Would Mary Do?’.  

Mary was my soulmate as I raised this special son. I tried, as I am certain Mary did for Jesus, to help him find ways to exercise his wings so they would be strong enough to fly straight and true according to his own flight plan.

I can’t say I was happy that his flight plan included becoming a minister. Ministers have to help their congregants face all kinds of sad times – deaths, divorces, illness, addictions - as I told him when he first told me he was set on going to seminary. Ministry is not all babies and baptisms. No indeed.

But yesterday, Daniel’s ‘Rabbis’ spoke with their favorable votes. They have recognized his Call as I have and have accepted him into their rather elite company-those men and women who take up the mantle with the intention to walk the walk of Jesus. And, let's face it, Jesus, the Jesus of Jesus Christ Superstar and the Bible, is a very tough act to follow.

TRANSFIGURATION

My son, the minister-to-be, is a sharer. He’s also a thinker, the type that reads then rereads specific Bible texts, to squeeze out one more revelation. A benefit of living in Washington DC and so close to the National Cathedral, my son also goes to Eucharist about three times a week, walking at least part of the way. Upon the convergence of these events, he often calls me so he can unpack his latest revelation.

This morning’s revelation was about the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-14:25, Matthew 17:1-8.1), the event that Christians see as proof that this human Jesus was also the Son of God. Somehow man but somehow God, too. No longer Prophet but Divine.

 

Dan reminded me of the essential elements of the passage – Jesus, Moses and Elijah on a mountain. Peter, James and John nearby, weary and sleepy, suddenly awake to the brightness, the glow surrounding Jesus which enfolds Moses and Elijah as well. Peter, Jesus’ official Doer, immediately suggesting that the three disciples start building shelters for the Prophets and Jesus. Suddenly, while Peter is still speaking, God’s booming voice is heard, saying this Man they have known is truly his Son. Then God’s voice says “Listen to him.”

Up to his last reading of these passages, Dan has focused, like so many before him, on God’s first words. “This is my Son of who I am well-pleased.” This time, his reading provided different insights. Both Matthew and Luke’s passages relate that God interrupted Peter, a nonverbal instruction to “shush” which God reinforces with the command “Listen to Him.”

Dan was particularly excited about his insight that God had specifically instructed Peter, Jesus’s Doer, to listen. To stop doing and start listening, Dan believes, is powerful lesson for Peter as he begins Jesus’ assignment to build his church. Listen, God instructed. For Dan, this insight was rife with possible sermons. Me, a Taoist - I concentrated on how much God’s instruction sounded like meditating.

Meditating is central to Taoism because staying in the Tao requires a constant examination of one’s actions and thoughts to see if one is moving further away or closer to the Tao. Being with Tao is an almost impossible task unless you are a yogi sitting on a mountain doing nothing but meditating. When people are involved, you can bet there is quite a bit of movement away from Tao. But Taoist have to figure out for themselves if their interactions are moving them closer or further away from Tao and this clarification is often most available through meditation.

It seems to me that God’s commandment to Peter, the ‘doingest’ of the Disciples, is both a blueprint for pondering the imponderable fact of Jesus’ death plus a reassurance that Jesus would continue to speak to Peter even though Jesus was on his way to the Christian equivalent of Valhalla. No small reassurance since Peter would soon have to rally the troops and implement the next steps of Jesus’ instructions at the Last Supper.

Peter’s mind must have been wildly wandering as he contemplated his next tasks. As a doer, he was better suited to making lists than ‘coaxing his mind’ from its wondering what to do next. Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of Verse 10 of the Te Ching offers advice not dissimilar to God’s, “Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? …Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light?”  And surely, Peter’s attention was held by this ‘Shining Light’ named Jesus.

When I seek the essence of the Tao, I find it very useful to clear my monkey mind and envision a candlelight or glowing ball in order to open my mind to knowing the essence of Tao. I think this is much the same task God asks of Peter on the mountain and much the way Peter would have understood that God’s command was no longer of  an earthly realm but rather one of Spirit. The intersections of different faith traditions always interests me and the question of how to follow God’s instructions to Peter or to find the essence of Tao do not seem to be too different. 

Honestly, it really does sound like listening is the answer.

ELIJAH

The other night, I found myself around a table with other Believers (not all of them were Christian and most certainly not Taoist) discussing those moments where we literally felt closest to ‘God’. Before we get too distracted, I know you want to know what a Taoist was doing in a Christian ‘Bible Study’ group. A quick answer is that I often read spiritual texts of other faith traditions and usually attend Sunday services at a Methodist Church simply because my understanding of Taoism does not prohibit me from exploring aspects of my own faith through the religious concepts and texts of other Eastern or Western religions.

In my view, God is just another name for Tao but crafted by early church leaders with skin and bones because the concept of a God that we can’t recognize from our own experience is difficult to grasp. For Taoists, we already accept that describing the Tao is impossible. But I am willing to consider that living the Tao, feeling close to that which I call my River of Serenity, can be compared with the experience described in the Hebrew Scriptures of Elijah as he ascended to the heavens into the arms of Yahweh. My Christian Pastor, Jim, calls those moments ‘Elijah moments’, moments we realize we are part of something much greater than ourselves, bringing us closer and closer to the Oneness Christians name God.

As we went round the table sharing our Elijah moments, I was reminded of a particular moment I had sometime last week as I caught up on Facebook. My son’s recent posts reflect the struggles he has had with what he considers very unChristian actions taking place all over the country as families and faith communities are torn apart and deportations of undocumented members of family and faith communities continue under the new administration. My son Daniel's post shared an article on one particularly heart-wrenching action which removed a parent from a family, the American-born children left without that parent’s guidance for perhaps forever as the parent was deported. Above the news article were three simple words ‘Lord have Mercy’’. Three very simple words that struck me with more impact than ever before.

I grew up in Missouri. I would often hear phrases like ‘Lord have Mercy’ or ‘Oh my God’ as a response to finding a snake in the basement window ell or a cockroach under the sink. They were an exclamation of distaste, a recitation without meaning, not really a request or even a preface to one. They were like the 10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers I was routinely assigned to atone for my ‘sins’ in Catholic grade school. I was told that if I recited all 20 of these fixed verbalizations, my soul would be wiped clean. Kind of like if you brushed your teeth you certainly would have fewer cavities. I used to time myself during these recitations. Once I had it down to three minutes for all 20 recitations. To my young soul, it was the recitation that mattered. Otherwise, surely the priest would think of some other things I should do for atonement. Healing the sick, feeding the hungry – stuff that might actually make me a better person.

‘Lord have mercy’ has been part of the Christian Mass and services for so long, I think it, too, has become a recitation. This time, though, even though no words were actually spoken, in my head I clearly heard my son asking his God for guidance, for comfort in the gathering fear and chaos, for clarity on how the chaos could move him forward in his journey to his own River Jordan. This time, I clearly heard a prayer. And at that moment, after several days of feeling out of sync with the Tao, I felt myself move closer to my own River of Serenity. At that moment, my own son had become my Elijah, my opening to Oneness.

I figured out a long time ago that my role as a Teacher of Spirit had been far surpassed by my son’s growing faith and willingness to live that faith. The Student has become the Teacher and the Teacher has become the Student. And last week, I felt myself repeating those simple words, this time laden with meaning. “Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy on us all.” 

GOD IS A CHEEKY BASTARD

Not my words, the words of the minister-to-be who prompted this blog. Funny thing, except for the anthropomorphism, I have thought that exact thing about Tao.

Of course, the most obvious evidence of God’s (or Tao’s) cheekiness is MY son’s call to ministry in a very problematic (as in very conflicted over the homosexuality as unGodlike issue) United Methodist Church. Some say it’s my fault even because, although I no longer worship a good-looking white guy that sends specific messages from above to guide my day from the moment I get out of bed to take my first pee in the morning to the moment I lay my head down on the pillow where Jesus who loves me protects me throughout the night, I am guilty of raising my son in a Progressive Methodist Church. OK, fair enough. In my defense, I was very careful in my selection, searching for the least traditional, most inclusive Christian church I could find in Tucson in 1996.

When Dan first chose Wesley Theological Seminary, his response to my question about why he chose a seminary SO FAR AWAY FROM HOME (he was accepted to all four of his choices, two of which were a lot closer than Washington DC) was that he felt Wesley might be perhaps a bit more conservative than the two California seminaries or ‘peace-loving’ Boston University School of Theology. Having been raised in a church which did not prepare him for intense Biblical discussion, he wanted to be ready to be Pastor and Teacher for the probable Bible-thumpers he might find in rural Montana to whom his own church upbringing would have zero resonance.

I suspect he figured when he got to Wesley he might have to downplay his own Progressive Christian upbringing in his sandal-wearing, vegan-options-at-church-dinners, Mother-Father God, fully inclusive Methodist church. But not long after moving into the dorm, instead of hiding his woo-woo past, he began posting and collecting an entire photo album on his Facebook page called Favorite Religious Memes. These memes are not for the Christian faint of heart. Many directly hit at the institutional conflicts and concerns that drove me completely away from mainstream Christian denominations for over 20 years.

Since Dan’s entry into seminary, I have learned that there is a secret dark underbelly of Progressive Christianity. Firstly, I learned that the satirical film Dogma about two errant angels is possibly one of seminarians’ most favorite films. The film certainly is irreverent and at one point just plain gross but perhaps ‘dark’ and ‘secret’ are too strong.

Let’s just say unless you are ‘in the loop’ or trying to find religious memes and jokes that satirically handle some of the basic, sometimes deeply divisive, issues of Christian ministry, you might never come across the movie Dogma or the cartoon Coffee with Jesus or the Christian doppelgänger of the satirical online news source The Onion called The Babylon Bee, which styles itself as “Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire”.  

But the good news for an ex-Christian Taoist fretting about the power of the Christian far right is that there ARE such institutional reactions to the central conflicts and hypocrisies found in all Christian denominations (including Progressive ones). Coffee with Jesus is probably my favorite. Found on Radio Free Babylon’s website, the 4-panel cartoon deals with real issues of every person of faith, regardless of position on the continuum of Christian faith traditions. 

In the cartoon below, a very approachable Jesus addresses the problematic issue of loving your neighbor as yourself. Carl, one of Jesus’s coffee regulars and wearing a hat with the logo ‘The Scapers’ asks Jesus “...when you say ‘neighbor’ are you talking about the people on my street or people in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean?” Jesus’ reply is an unequivocal “Yes.” It seems pretty clear that the Coffee Jesus doesn't want Muslims and Jamaicans being excluded from Christian love either.

In another cartoon, Jesus and a very white, middle-class Christian couple who appear frequently chatting with Jesus over morning coffee, discuss the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine. Jesus claims this miracle “just happened that way” and his Mom kind of made him do it. Everyone knows how much boys love their Moms.

The Babylon Bee tackles faith issues in much the way the highly political The Onion tackles politics, scandals, the Dugginses current crisis of faith and just about everything else in the mainstream news. Take something that is really newsworthy and turn it on its head in a way that makes the reader think it just might BE the news (I confess to checking to make sure some real news stories DON'T come from The Onion). Babylon Bee article titles range from “Local Woman Searches Bible In Vain For Beloved ‘Footprint in the Sand’ Passage” to “Gridlock Reached as Two Men Both Certain God Told them To Date Same Girl".

Now I know for a fact that Shakespeare is credited with providing an awful lot of common phrases so maybe Local Woman should search Shakespeare instead of the Bible for that passage. And, frankly, we’ve all met those who are convinced God has told them to do or to be something totally in conflict with our own beliefs so either the Bible God is being cheeky with the two gents OR just possibly God doesn’t work that way.

I must admit that I feel better thinking about a Christianity that can laugh at itself while struggling with the same themes it has failed to address in a Jesus way for centuries. Satire has probably existed a long time as one of humanity’s tools for change, using humor as a way to highlight our failings while making us laugh a little instead of being insulted by overt attempts to unveil our weaknesses. And I think the venue of morning coffee at the kitchen table is a brilliant and familiar choice for these little conversations with Jesus in which the cartoonist extends the words of Jesus into micro-commentaries on how his words could challenge our way of being faithful to Jesus’ ministry.

Having said that I am mindful these cartoons and news stories deliver truth in a way that just might change the way some Christians practice their faith and may even enlighten my own path to the Way doesn’t mean that I will be changing my belief system soon and be converted to this thing called Christianity. I might, however, pick up the Book that reconstructs the oral history of this guy called Jesus and see what its Rabbi Jesus had to say. At the very least, it’s possible that some morning I might just set out an extra cup for Jesus and invite him over so we could chat about something with which I am struggling in my own meditations. Coffee with Jesus’s Jesus seems like a pretty wise and thoughtful guy, a guy I might check in with every once in awhile on my own path to Tao. 

BEACH MEDITATIONS

I awoke in a fairly primitive private campground on Bahia de Los Angeles several hours south of Mexicali, Mexico. I spread my yoga mat right above the water mark on the beach to perform my morning meditations and yoga practice, breathing in on my mantra “I know your Greatness”, breathing out to “I feel your love.” This is my usual mantra when I want to quiet my very busy monkey mind before I begin my focused meditation, this morning on the nature of nature around me.

I use a convenient pattern for my meditations in beautiful places with abundant sounds of nature all around. I start with the most distracting – the shrill call of birds or the booming of the waterfall, bringing my meditation into thoughts of how I can interact with nature around me, how I can share the experience of this perfect state to improve my relationship with Tao.

This morning, the penetrating call of various shore birds did not disturb my meditation but morphed it into meditating on how it would feel if I were one of the very same shore birds, flying on the thermals above our small camp, struggling for shared space on an outcropping rock. I felt gratitude for the shore birds that they called my attention to their morning engagements, competing but not competing for the miserly space of the rocks. What must it be like to be of nature, in nature and in communion with nature like that?

My monkey mind feels my foot slip slightly in the sand, seeking a less tenuous foothold. I turn my attention away from being to doing for this moment. But my desire for deep meditation is stronger than my monkey mind and I wonder what it must feel like to be one grain of sand in that vast beach, being tossed around by the waves and the persistent wind? How does it feel supporting my body? Is it fulfilled by its nature? Of course, nature surely does not ‘feel’ as we feel but water must still pass across scruffy rocks and birds must still vie for footholds on mossy rocks and sand must still mold itself in order to support my foot.

My meditations turn to our own natures. Surely I ‘felt’ not only the slipping but also a human emotion when my foot slipped deeper into the sand – annoyance at the interruption? Concern for my stability here on the beach? I quieted my monkey mind, listening with my eyes closed, hearing the ‘beingness’ all around me – the surf, the birds, the sand and even two shore grasses rubbing against each other as the wind shifted their relative positions.

As a Taoist, I believe Chi is an equal-opportunity energy. Birds may have it more naturally, even, because they do not need to ‘think’ about how inconvenient the slippery moss on the rock makes their perch. The waves follow their ancient pattern of ebb and flow without wondering about the rightness or wrongness of their motions. The wind flows around obstacles in its path naturally. Nature exists in ‘being’.

We humans, however, have been gifted this thing that separates us from ‘being’. The Christian Bible says we have been given intelligence through our Foremother Eve for reasons which we may find through our Bible Studies. Perhaps, as some would posit, we have been given this gift in order to be better stewards of all that is nature (pretty much everything on Earth and beyond that is NOT us). My meditations lead me to thinking that Nature is in sync with the Tao at all times and does not need our help to ‘be’. My meditations cause me to think that perhaps it is this need to understand that creates the separation from God (or Tao), that causes lifelong searches for meaning and ‘goodness’ and unending confusion between ‘being’ and ‘doing’.

As a Taoist, I often think human life would be so much simpler and in sync with Tao if intelligence, this special ‘gift’, had never been given. To be one with the Earth in ways which we may never understand due to the ego attached to intelligence is the constant struggle of my meditations. How do I become so humble so that I can properly recognize the contribution of the warm sand under my body? The call of the shore bird losing its foothold on an outcrop reminds me that I am so privileged in my meditation seat on my nice blue yoga mat with the reminder “Breathe” written in blue at the end.

I sit in lotus, my hands outstretched in an attitude of receiving and yet my monkey mind still races to divert my attention from my meditations. I hear the boat cruising by; the bang of the morning skillet in the campground behind me. I let these noises float through my consciousness thanking them for their lesson in proper meditation. I bow to the inevitability of the superior ability of my monkey mind to divert back to ‘busyness’. Yet, I yearn to be one with the shore bird. I wrestle with my monkey mind, finally, finally dipping into that River of Serenity I crave, achieving a deeply relaxed state of 'being'. For just a moment, I am one. And then that moment is gone and my monkey mind triumphs once again.

THE TAO OR THE TABLE?

Another book; another discussion. I have a feeling this is the pattern of the rest of our lives. I have now been given If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World by Quakers Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. I’m just a few pages into the first chapter but I already know I often find Tao in the peacefulness of the Quakers. My grandma was a Quaker and the peace that surrounded her felt like that cool blast of air in your house when you walk in after a really hot day.

I freely admit, as Dan grows in his faith, I am forced to grow in mine. He is a sharer; he wants to explore his faith actively, by sharing what he thinks and discussing the conclusions to which he has come. Practically every night we have conversations about the nature of grace, whether evil really exists, whether the HP (Higher Power) really keeps watch on every single thing that goes on in the cosmos. We talk about books, the Bible, the craziness of the world and whether Donald Trump is really a brilliant actor performing an elaborate piece of performance art as his boredom in a slow economy deepens.

Sometimes I am exhausted by my son’s active mind. Other times I feel the loss of his companionship, which occurred just a few days ago. I have no doubt my son has made me a better person, albeit an exhausted one. Since he accepted his call, I have witnessed him grow in ways I never anticipated. He is wiser, more compassionate and more thoughtful. He is also more likely to question and requestion his responses to everyday challenges. Most of the time, his spiritual lens is getting clearer but still, quite often, it is murkier than before his Call. I’m guessing as he begins his spiritual study, his questioning will be more commonplace than his answering. Doubt is implicit in faith.

It must be an occupational hazard. Questioning as part of the journey is replete in If God is Love. The authors tell of their early years as newly ordained clergymen with answers fresh out of the Bible and their seminary textbooks. They acknowledge the power of a punishing God but argue that this punishing God does not reflect Jesus’ teachings of unconditional love. This is a conundrum of the Christian Church.

The authors also argue that grace, as they describe as God's "unfailing commitment to love all persons regardless of belief,” does not work as a life raft thrown to the repentant by a loving God as so typically portrayed but as a life raft already waiting for you if you trip along the way. The authors propose that Grace is not relational to sin but to love.

As a Taoist, the idea of grace as Gulley and Mulholland describe it is certainly intrinsic to the Tao but an unnecessary explanation of the river of peace the Tao offers. Tao and grace may be similar – they both rely on an interconnected web (The Way in Taoism and God's unending love in Christianity). A believer in the power of the Tao tries always to incorporate in life a constant understanding that every single action and even lack of action affects the Tao, moving the Taoist closer or further away from it. On the other hand, Christians are motivated to be morally appropriate and loving in order to be deserving of God's infinite love.

For me, Tao is somewhat like the brass ring on a carousel. It is always there; you pass it many times as the music of life plays and the carousel turns. Your forward trajectory moves you closer until it begins to move you further away. That is the contradictory nature of Tao. But unless you actively reach for it, by listening to the way Tao is working within you, fully realizing the Tao inevitably remains out of grasp. When faith emanates from within, it is the spiritual practice of listening to the voice within that becomes paramount, not the rules and regulations that early tribes and Christians have proposed for the faithful in order to be 'judged' by God as acceptable for God's love.

I agree that Grace, defined as deeply relative to love rather than redemption, is a far more powerful attraction to the Christ than Judge God. Gulley and Mulholland admit that an unconditionally loving God may be more difficult to ‘sell’ than hell fire and damnation and certainly more difficult to raise funds for but a powerful, vengeful god, looking to separate rather than include, completely misses the point of Spirit, leaving the faithful afraid and paranoid of God’s wrath.

To be afraid of God? What a horrible misuse of God’s love as it is expressed through Grace. If all three Abrahamic faiths always promoted a loving, inclusive God what a wonderful world this would be. And I must admit, perhaps if God’s love had always been the main course of the spiritual meals meted out in my young life, I might still be drawn to the Table rather than the Tao.

READING ECCLESIASTES

For a Taoist, I am reading a lot of the Christian Bible this summer. Most of the time it is entirely my son’s fault. He reads the Bible regularly; he even reads the same chapters in more than one version of the Bible. He’s just that kind of student of the Bible.

The other day, my son asked me to read Ecclesiastes. He told me he found Ecclesiastes to be very confusing to read but he thought I might like it. He cinched it by telling me he would like my ‘take’ on it. When a child asks a parent’s opinion or advice, it’s almost a sure bet the parent is gladly going to give it.

For me, I found reading Ecclesiastes time-consuming and a bit annoying. The writer, who I will call Teacher, offers tale after tale of how he has accomplished everything under the sun and has been left completely unsatisfied. He does everything the various prophets have suggested and he still feels he has not achieved God’s attention. ‘I did good works and found it didn’t get God’s attention.’ ‘I gave away everything and it didn’t get God’s attention.’  ‘I became rich beyond imagination and found it didn’t get God’s attention.’ Teacher whines his way through the first four chapters but by Chapter 5, he seems to have concluded that God doesn’t sweat the details and neither should he. In other words, there is a bigger picture here.

I think I would like to invite Teacher for dinner some night so we could toss this idea around over a glass of good wine. From my perspective as a Taoist, Teacher gets one thing absolutely right. All his efforts are vain attempts to get attention from a God who just doesn’t work that way. “All is vanity,” Teacher cries. For me, the word ‘vanity’[1], repeated over and over in Ecclesiastes, is a word in which motivation is implicit. In our culture, vanity compels people to act in a certain way in order to achieve a reward, in Teacher’s case God’s attention. Going through all the appropriate motions, and all their opposite motions, Teacher never once feels like he has become rewarded for his efforts by getting closer to his God.

This attention-getting motivation, present in so much of the Bible, has been one of my major difficulties with Christianity since I was very small. Christians pray for forgiveness, for intercession on their troubles, to stop war, to end hunger or poverty, or for Lazarus to be raised from the dead. At a very tender age, I prayed that God would grant my father the strength to overcome alcoholism.  But God does not stop wars; God is not going to keep innocent people from dying from hunger, disease, or war nor is God going to help parents overcome their addictions unless that parent is good and ready to do the work.

The Christian God simply does not intervene to keep every human on Earth safe, happy and healthy. And this kind of thinking, the idea that God will solve all the world's problems if we just pray hard enough or do enough good works, shackles Christians in their hopes for a better world. For a Taoist, it is already clear that any attempt at attention-getting is futile (the word used by the NJS). If you want to change the world or at least YOUR world, you have to start with yourself.

As I see it, in addition to relying on the "Big Guy" to solve problems if you just pray hard enough, the largest impediment not only to my belief in the Christian God but to Christianity itself is that Christian humans, more so than the other Abrahamic faiths, fashioned their understanding of God after themselves. This is completely understandable and fashioning concepts of the gods after the known has quite a long tradition in religion.

The Aztec decided their gods lived in volcanoes because they experienced volcanoes as so very much mightier than they and absolutely unconquerable. Volcanology was an infant science just about the time the Aztec culture waned into history and the Aztecs , without the words to think of this enormous natural force in any other way, had to fashion their god thought by examining the mightiest and inexplicable forces around them directing their fear and admiration on those.

The Hebrew people were nomads in an unfriendly desert and many of them came from different god traditions, syncretizing these beliefs into a mostly avenging god who was eventually, after enough years of penance in the desert, going to save them (mostly from themselves) and deliver them to a Promised Land. Once the Christians got hold of the idea of one true God who fashioned humans and especially the Messiah after God’s own image, it became necessary to imbue the Christian God with human emotions and motivations so they could better understand their own motivations for worshipping or fearing something bigger than them. We humans are quite an arrogant bunch.

Humans’ understanding of God pretty much implies a reactive and interactive relationship – give and take. In my point of view, forming the idea of god as humanlike, much the way a potter would form a figurine out of clay, also has seriously limited the Christian God to a very small dominion, a Dominion which is comprehensible by ‘His’ people and imminently controllable by God.

So a loop is established. If one prays with the right intentions and worships and does the things required in the Bible, God will love him or her and give her or him good things – a good life, hope, riches, perhaps a hereafter in a place with angels and harps and rainbows. Sometimes this works if only to give someone a feeing that they have done SOMETHING. I freely admit that I pray this way, too, sometimes forgetting the bigger picture especially in the agony of loss. That is the tradition of my childhood and it is a habit really hard to break.

However, even though I know of no HP that directs the traffic here on Earth, I try to pray all the time, which in Taoist terms means I try to remember to regularly send a steady stream of love and acceptance, checking with my ‘conscience’, that inner voice, to see if my actions are bringing me closer to or further away from Tao. I try to remain in constant contact, broadcasting to whichever HP is listening, propagating the idea of a Humanity so emotionally mature it no longer needs ‘rules’ because it has found ‘love’. I freely admit that this is most, most difficult when I hear someone else spout very unloving things against my black, Mormon, Muslim, gay, Jew, Southern, Northern, Canadian or any other culture or stereotype of human beings that someone needs to put down in order to secure their fleeting feelings of superiority.

As a Taoist, my HP (Higher Power) has no shape, no form, no possibility of description. Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way), the Taoist book of verses that guides thinking about the Way, starts out with the verse:

              The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;

              The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.

If you can wrap your head around that one, it’s just possible you might be a Taoist. I feel frustrated even trying to explain the Tao to people but I guess one of the ways I make it knowable in my heart is to think of it as a constant stream of love I can tap into at any time, at any moment. And this is the intersection that sends me to my very mainstream Progressive Christian church every Sunday morning I can get there. If I think of the Christian God (or the Muslim Allah or the Jewish Yahweh) as a stream of love and light, I always get something from worshipping with my fellow church members because in that sanctuary, love is all around. I literally feel the Tao moving on Sunday morning in that place.

Even if it is indescribable, I am human nonetheless, searching for ways to understand my Cosmos and yearning to put my faith into words in order to explore and share it. I truly believe there is Tao in every ‘good book’, whether it is the Bhagavad Vita, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or whatever other text there is that maps how to treat each other gently and kindly and guides our way of thinking about the One. That has been my experience because I have dear friends who are Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Secular Humanist, Mormon, 'Spiritual' and no religion at all. When I am with these people or even passing messages back and forth to them on Facebook, I feel the Tao moving.

The Tao is real but not real, knowable only by not knowing. But for me the Tao is the great force in my existence calling me to the river of peace it offers. It is a river I long to be immersed in forever.

 

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[1][1] The version I read came from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The Message uses the word “smoke”, the New Jerusalem Bible “futility” the New International Version uses “meaningless” and the Catholic Bible goes along with the NSRV. I like to think of The Message’s ‘smoke’ to mean something like ‘smoke and mirrors’.