October

U2
And the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
What do I care?
And kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
But you go on…and on…

Yesterday was the first day of October!!! I should have spent the day thinking about all things ghoulish, ghostly, gory or otherwise Halloweenish. My Halloween costume! Getting my wife to watch at least two movies from the Halloween franchise with me again. * And of course, planning a Halloween Party!!!!

Instead, I spent the day thinking about Christian rock music, the Jesus Movement, Third Wave Pentecostalism, Neoorthodoxy, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Emergent Church movement and basically all things White Evangelicalism in the last hundred years or so.

I have not done this in a long time. And yes, it is as horrible as it sounds! 

I want to be thinking about Halloween. But this isn’t a normal Halloween. Of course, not much of anything has been normal for my wife and I since COVID. She’s a Long Hauler since June of 2020. That’s mostly her story to tell. But it has of course, effected both of us. Especially financially.

That is part of this abnormal Halloween. You see, she used to be our primary provider. On paper, it sounds like I should have a promising career by now.  I am a 46 year old white male with a Masters degree.  Instead, I have 20 some years experience in retail, with a few moments dabbling in social work, sales, call centers, factories and of course, 18 months in ordained ministry. 

You see, my two religious degrees are useful almost exclusively in fairly conservative, white Evangelical churches. But, in 2015, I was forced out of a ministry position for the following absurd reasons:

I identified as an LGBTQ affirming minister on my Facebook profile. I wasn’t even out – at least to the church – as a bisexual at that point. 

In my very first sermon there, in June of 2014, I declared that what happened to Trayvon Martin was an absolute miscarriage of justice. The senior pastor I was serving under, literally received hate mail about my sermon. 

Then, in the early days of August, 2014 I went a city council meeting where many citizens of Grand Rapids, Michigan gathered to demand that GRPD officers must wear cams when patrolling neighborhoods. This was of course in the days following the execution of  Michael Brown by police officers and the eruption in Ferguson Missouri. Many of us who gathered, were invited by the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement in Grand Rapids.  I wore my clergy collar and I spoke on the microphone in favor of police reform. 

Finally, and this was really the straw that broke the camel’s back, I said in a Bible study that we as Christians didn’t need to fear the word myth. I taught that Myth is a sacred category amongst scholars in most of the world’s major religions. And I stated that parts of the book of Genesis are Myth; and that the Earth (and entire Universe) was billions of years old. This offended a senior member of the congregation, who then withdrew their presence and their financial donation anytime I would preach or lead an adult Bible study. 

So a few years ago, in my early 40’s, after leaving ministry, a devastating divorce, getting remarried and giving up alcohol (which was slowly destroying my life), I finally discovered cannabis! As someone who lives with CPTSD, anxiety, depression and some level of ADHD and OCD like symptoms, this was a life changing positive experience for me: mentally, physically, emotionally and yes, spiritually!

So here I am in Jackson Mississippi in October. We are here, first and foremost for a warmer climate to hopefully mitigate some of my wife’s Long COVID symptoms. Secondly, the cost of living here is much more affordable than the cost of living than in Grand Rapids.

And finally, we are here because I firmly believe in the power of cannabis to change lives for the better. It was legalized this last year, in Mississippi for medicinal purposes. So here I am with a Masters in Divinity, 20 years in retail, a few years of ministry and a few years growing cannabis and serving as a Budtender in Michigan. I think I have finally found my “calling.” or at least a career I won’t find miserable with daily demands to be spiritually and intellectually dishonest with myself and others.

It’s probably a better fit for me than any teaching role, sacred or secular. Pastoral ministry didn’t used to be such a bad gig. At one time pastors visited parishioners, hospitals, prayed with the sick and actually taught people about “godly things” like righteousness, justice, and compassion. After all, I was merely espousing basic science in that Bible study. Along with a theological framework that at one point was considered fairly conservative stuff in Christian circles. But that was before modern day Christian dominionism took complete control of nearly every last white Evangelical church in the United states, and with it, most of the Republican Party.   

A quick Google or Wiki search should suffice to illustrate to even the most unfamiliar reader, that the most prominent adherents of this grotesque, present day amalgamation of utter theological and political bullshit  include: Calvinist Reconstructionists, Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, and the most dangerous, the proponents for a “New Apostolic Reformation.”

I have spent most of my life, as a quiet, fat, closeted queer, looking for Christ, while narrowly escaping all of these very particular fringe groups within Christianity. By the Grace of an indifferent Universe I guess?!?!?

I don’t know!?!? I am still trying to figure all of that out in therapy and daily meditation.  What I do know is that I did NOT inherit any of these particular and increasingly and purposely obtuse ways of being Christian from my mother. My mom was a tongues speaking, demon rebuking, Hell-fire and brimstone Pentecostal at one time. And she was a Reagan Republican when I was a small child!!! But by the time she died, my mom had become a moderate to progressive Evangelical (especially by today’s standards) and for better or worse, to my utter shock as a teenager, a Clinton Democrat!

I can still remember a 15 year old me, telling her I was worried she could go to Hell for voting for old Bill. But my mother never became nearly as fundamentalist or as radicalized as I was becoming at that time. I know that now. But at times in my life, I have blamed all my trauma from Christian fundamentalism all on her. I am sorry mom. 

And I am also deeply sorry that I ever introduced anyone to this toxic form of Christianity. By the time she died, my mom had told and showed me multiple times that she held out hope of Heaven for people who commit suicided (she struggled with ideation most of her life), people of other religions, and even people who reject the church. And whether proactively or inadvertently (sometimes both), she  also taught me to always question authority and at the very least, scrutinize the metaphysical claims of Christianity for your damn self!

Every time we switched churches as a child, it was because my mother had decided for our whole family that a male Pastor was preaching incorrectly or acting unjustly toward her husband, her children or others in the church who were often ignored by all but her: the poor, dirty, differently abled and mentally ill. She even cleaned house regularly for a mentally ill woman, with two rambunctious kids, a fitly house and a husband who was a self proclaimed “Satanist.” Hell, my mother was once kicked out of a Bible study for several months for asking the class if anyone else ever “wondered if the Jews were right about Jesus and that maybe, rather than the Messiah, he was himself some sort of antichrist?!?!?”

I used to be haunted, embarrassed, and worried for my mom about that particular incident, even more than I was about her voting for Bill. I had to tell myself it was her mental illness speaking in order to avoid nightmares of her being torture for eternity in Hell. Now, these are some of my fondest and most cherished moments of my mom, looking back. 

I’m not really a Christian anymore. At least in the sense that I no longer ascribe to a literal interpretation of the Nicene or Apostle’s Creeds as the only appropriate lenses for reading the Bible. But that has nothing to do with theology,  geology, archeology, evolutionary biology or any of the usual culprits blamed for people disbelieving basic tenants of the Christian faith  It’s because of 8th grade astronomy that my 14 year old son can understand.  

That’s still not why I left the church!!! As in every single time, place, religion and culture, there are both “good” and “evil” people and forces at work in every sector of Christianity. But the good folks are getting harder and harder to see and hear. They are being drowned out by this new fangled hyper conservatism that is destroying our county, and I worry could destroy our planet in the not too distant future.

However, I have already spent far too much time today thinking about religion, politics and the deep concerns that can often only be afforded by being from a Bible Belt, Middle Class, white, Christian background. 

At one point in time, there was no such thing as Christian rock music. It was birthed primarily by folks of the well meaning Jesus Movement. They were the hippie Christians that “saved my mom from Catholicism.”  In less than a hundred years, they wrote new praise and worship music (often with modern publishing rights) to usurp and in most cases, completely replace traditional hymns that were hundreds of years old and steeped in nearly two millennia of Christian tradition. They held Christian rock concerts, started Maranatha!, Vineyard Music, Hillsong and a thousand other Christian music groups, record labels, book companies and storefronts and even a film industry, complete with movies about the end of the world. 

U2’s second album was an early experiment by an already established rock band, on a major record label, to be marketed to the then  nascent, Christian music format. The album was sold in Christian bookstores. Commercially and artistically the album is a pretty weak spot in the band’s catalog. 

Still, I’ve always loved this song. It’s minor key, somber tone and lyrics with vague allusions to the Biblical Psalms, seems as good of a soundtrack as any for a cool October day. But for the first time in my 46 years of life, I have had a completely different purview for all things, Autumn, October and Halloween.  This year, I watch as “the trees are stripped bear of all they wear” and I genuinely wonder in the 90 degree Jackson, Mississippi weather if the leaves will turn colors here? Will it ever get cold enough for Hoddie Season here? Will my wife and I make it here?

In addition to my 8 years of school, two degrees in Religion and 18 months in ordained ministry, I have “served” most of my life in retail. I’ve done entry and middle level supervision in retail. And the thought of climbing the later to upper management, just to make more money sounds like a miserable, sad and wasted life. I’ve obviously retained a bit of the oft repeated concern in the passages of the Bible that money and political power corrupt. I didn’t learn that from my brushes with Third Wave Pentecostalism, Neoorthodoxy, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Emergent Church or their spiritual heir, the  “New Apostolic Reformation.”  I learned from my mom, and from 8 years, of academic training in an historic Christian tradition. Training to read the Bible through the lenses of the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds. But most Evangelical churches don’t even do that anymore.

As I watch the church I broke apart from bend more and more towards the pursuit of money and power to the point that some self proclaimed Christians have been able to call themselves “Trump Christians” with a straight face, I can’t think of a better word to describe what mainstream, white Evangelicalism has become other than “satanic.”

While I don’t use this word to point to a “metaphysical reality,” I do use it to refer to how greed, wasteful accumulation of resources, a suspicious disposition towards all non-Christians, and a lack of love towards anyone with a contradictory life experience have combined and produced a spirit of violence and hostility throughout the white, Evangelical church in America. That “spirit” has pervaded conservative church and political culture on a global level. Scary Shit!

I think I am going to need some candy and a movie to divert my mind and heart for a few hours from the truly “evil” forces at work in our world. Forces that are trying to destroy the very fabric of a society, already daily decreasing in civility. We are already – it feels to me – are spinning way out of orbit for a world much too cold. It’s become to cold for simple things like love, mercy, compassion, embrace. White, Conservative, Evangelical Christianity hasn’t merely followed suit. It’s led the way. it feels like all of the citizens of the globe are dangling from a proverbial cliff.  And that’s scarier than anything to do with Michael Meyers.

*A combination of any of the following are acceptable: John Carpenter’s original and it’s direct sequel Halloween II, Halloween 4,5 and 6 or the Rob Zombie reboots. Unacceptable are any of the attempts to bring back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode (H2O, Resurrection or the latest Carpenter sanctioned,  David Gordon Green mess of films).

Tabernacle

Meshuggah – Immutable
Swedish, Progressive/aTechnical Death Metal
“Humanity is immutable, too. We commit the same mistakes over and over. And we are immutable. We do what we do, and we don’t change.” ~ Mårten Hagström

While most of me believes he is right. I hope he is wrong. I guess that’s why I’ve taken up to calling myself a Christian again even though I do not believe in a god that is a creator or personal or interventional or distinct from “creation” the physical universe in any way. I no longer believe in the divinity of Jesus. And I don’t believe in his resurrection or the resurrection of the dead.

So, why have I taken up calling myself a Christian again while all of the other white progressives are busy appropriating Buddhism? I guess because it is culturally/historically accurate. Because I believe in redemption. I believe in resistance. And I still hope the “Lion lays down with the lamb” and that the day comes when war is no more. I hope for a “Messianic Age” even though I do not believe in a literal Messiah, especially one grounded in an ethnic, cultural and historical place and time in human history. That’s the kind of tribalism a messianic age necessarily negates. I am the tabernacle. So are you. So was Jesus. So is Royce Da 5’9.

This is how the story goes
Powerful day
Powerful day
Most significant day in my life
I mean, aside from meetin’ my man Marshall,
My son bein’ born and my granny dying on the same day
My grandma didn’t live anywhere near that hospital I learned a lot this day
I learned that the universe has this way of balancing itself out
For me to lose such a beautiful soul in my granny
And gain such a beautiful soul with my first born son
Little Royce, it showed me that God is real God is real
And you know what they say, God giveth, God taketh away

John 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived* among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

* The word “lived” is so very inadequate because the Greek has “in us”. The exact phrase in Greek is eskēnōsen en hēmin “tented in us” where en is the common Greek prepos­ition for “in”. It literally means “tabernacled” among us. He was a portable house of the divine. So are you.

To paraphrase John Dominic Crossan, it never happened. It always happens.

Until next time,

~wwb

Christian Atheist

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

It was November 7, 1991 when I figured it out. I was watching a very Hallmark-esque, episode of Beverly Hills 90210. The scene has actually aged fairly well. It may sound a bit trite coming from a young Brian Austin Green to a then 23 year old Jason Priestley, playing wealthy, high school sophomore, Brandon Walsh. “It doesn’t matter what you say about somebody once they’re gone; what matters is how you treat them while they’re still here.” But it’s true. And it taps into the meaning of the original song, much more than I understood at age 15.

That’s not Axl Rose singing! Who the fuck is Bootleg Rocks!? Apparently they’re still as obscure as ever. I cannot find out anything about them other than what is associated with this cover, of this song, for this episode. It was likely a band the Producers, or maybe Brian Austin Green (who fancied himself a musician) put together to ride a popular wave, pay royalties to Dylan and not have to reach out to The Most Dangerous band in the world.

Still to this day, when I hear Knockin’ on Heaven’s door by anyone, I still think of Guns ‘N’ Roses before Dylan. And there are plenty of renditions to hear, by a wide and diverse range of artists: Warren Zevon, Eric Clapton, Wyclef Jean, Avril Lavigne. Many of Dylan’s songs are like this. Turn, Turn, Turn will always be by The Byrds to me. Its Dylan. Once John and June Carter Cash recorded It Ain’t Me Babe, it became a whole new piece of art. It bears semblance and similar sentiment to the original, yet the high profile Nashville couple breathed new life and a relational dynamic to the song the lone voice of Dylan could never convey. Yet he has given words to so many.

At any rate, it was November evening in 1991, that I learned one of the first rules of media ecology: Every time we change the medium or the conveyer of a message, we alter the message, at least somewhat.

When you hear “Respect” – you know the one: R-E-S-P-E-C-T – do you instantly think of male soul artist, Otis Redding who originally penned and recoded the song!?!? For many people its become so associated with Aretha Franklin and the empowerment of women, its sometimes still shocking for people to find out it was written by a man. Sometimes meaning has to do with what we choose to throw away, or keep. When Marilyn Manson covered the Eurhythmics’ Sweet Dreams, they left out the only bit of hope that Lennox and Stewart injected into the original lyrics: “Hold your head up, Moving on.” When Disney’s Lion King is translated into Italian, “It’s the Circle of Life” is translated to “It’s a carousel that goes, this life”. Similar sentiment. But it loses some poetry and some of the impact in conveying the songs central, spiritual sentiment: that life is cyclical.

We encounter that same thing when we study the Bible or any text, ancient or contemporary, religious or not. One of my professors in seminary, offered a helpful analogy for the narrative of Jesus’ life that has been constructed from the varying stories in the 3 Synoptic Gospels and the very different Gospel of John. He said it was like a well made omelet, and reading each of the gospel accounts in isolation from the others, digging into their different theological emphases, the different ways they apply the Hebrew scriptures to Jesus. We’d all do well to remember that the New Testament was written between the 60’s and Mid to late 120’s CE. Each community had developed nuanced practices and ways of telling and living out the story. Different ways in which they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s Hope. Sometimes it helps to take apart the omelet, in order to see who or what is contributing each flavor to the construction.

Sometimes it can really help to see the passages of all four gospels side by side in rough “chronological” order to better discern who said what, how they said it differently and why and what some communities and their gospel writers left out all together. In today’s lectionary passages for the Fourth week of Advent, Mathew has something he wants to say about the Jewishness of Jesus:

As you can see Matthew and Luke both have a lot more to say about the birth of Jesus than Mark or John. What Mathew does differently here, and throughout his gospel, is in many ways common only to Matthew. This can be summed up simply as Matthew’s emphases of the Jewishness of Jesus as well as Jesus as fulfillment of Israel’s history and messianic hopes. Luke grounds Jesus’ origins in the “Adam” story and the origins of humanity. Matthew only goes as far back as Israel’s “pre-history” and stories of Patriarchs, grounding Jesus in Royal Jewish bloodline. Only Matthew and Luke make mention of a “virgin birth.”

But they also present quite different images of Jesus. For Luke, the infant Jesus is born in the most humble of circumstance, in a barn. Luke does his best to ground Jesus in history: It was the year Caesar Augustus called for “all of the world” to enroll in the world’s first census program. For Mathew, Jesus had to flee from Herod into Egypt quite similarly to the way Moses had to floated up the river into Egypt to Pharaoh’s daughter to be protected from Pharaoh. Matthew takes some sayings of Jesus, that Luke has Jesus saying out on on a plain. Instead, Matthew has Jesus looking like a new Moses, summing up the law and all of the prophets and saying things like, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

I was so offended when Rob Bell first told me I needed a “trampoline” theology that I could stretch if something should ever challenge our notion of the virgin birth. Little did I know that had already long been done and Bell was just softly and gently suggesting to people what several hundred years of post enlightenment study and some critical scrutiny.

Is that where you’re at? does the whole thing fall apart for you if you learn each author had their own motives and moreover, a lot of these stories are simply not historically accurate. Matthew underlines the virginity of Mary by references to the Book of Isaiah, using the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint, rather than the mostly Hebrew Masoretic Text. Why? to emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus and recast him as one whose teachings supersede that of Moses.

These claims can convey important theological meaning, even if the Hebrew text is better translated as young lady than virgin. These claims can convey important theological meaning, even if you doubt the historicity of Jesus as a historical figure completely.

When I was a kid, I thought for sure Axl Rose had penned Knockin’ on Heavens’ door for people like him and myself. Axl Rose – while repulsively misogynistic and slightly xenophobic at times – was still a childhood hero of sorts to me. He was plain white trash from Indiana. I was plain white trash from Middleville, MI. And he sang about that and wore it like a badge of honor almost as much as he tried to escape that image. It gave me hope and was my life anthem for like 30+ years.

While I sometimes still feel like I am at heaven’s gate pleading and begging for mercy like a recently departed soul, I need a song that conveys my confidence that whatever the fuck the kingdom of Heaven is, it is is more important than mine or Mathew’s word choice.

And whatever it is, it is surly already inside of me. Inside of us all. The more we lean into to dispensing love, grace and mercy ourselves, the more divine and simultaneously more human we become. When act inhumane, unloving, or unkind we diminish our own humanity and divinity.

I wish I could say so much more to you! Alas, I have probably already said too much for now. Until Next week, peace to you.

~wwb
Christian Atheist

Sleeping Queen

“What of this world
Foucault was right, we just discipline and punish
There nothing left, my head, my heart
My hands are empty, empty
My heart is empty, empty“

In a time of cultural turmoil, during a period of personal crisis, Amythyst Kiah was woke by “a siren with broken wings.” She rose up and sang this song, Sleeping Queen. It is a a song that Kiah describes as a lament. She grieves for the unjust world described by philosopher, Michel Foucault. It is the world we live in. It is a world where power is abused and the torture of human beings continues, in the name of discipline and punishment.

In a time of cultural turmoil, during a period of personal crisis, a young betrothed woman called Mary was woke by an angel. Mary rose up and sang a song of celebration. Her soul “magnifies God” and Mary rejoices about a world described by the Hebrew Prophets. It is the world we live in. It is a world where power is abused and the torture of human beings continues, not only in the name of discipline but all too often in the name of God.

Today is the third Sunday of Advent. Traditionally, the third Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday. From the Latin term gaudēte – meaning rejoice – in churches everywhere, this is traditionally a day of joy of anticipation at the approach of the Christmas celebration. During Advent, Christians traditionally focus on “three comings of Christ.” The first coming of Christ was into human history via Mary’s body and what Christians call the Incarnation. The last coming of Christ is the now ever delayed Parousia. But most importantly, on this day Christians celebrate and look forward to the daily coming of Christ into the lives of those who are “in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

I grew up in a Christian household and went to a Christian Church. But it was not a liturgical church. The Bible was “important.” But 2,000 years of Christian traditions, teachings and creeds seemed of very little, if any importance. It was not until I was in my first year as a Religion major at Calvin college that I remember hearing my first (and still the best) Advent sermon I ever heard. The Pastor’s name was Mara Joy. And she radiated with joy as she invited all of us within the sound of her voice to vigilantly watch for “the coming of Christ” into human lives each and every day. I guess in some ways. I’ve been working on this “sermon” or reflection ever since hearing that one some 15 years ago.

If you’re just tuning in, the first two weeks of Advent, we looked at some of the literary and theological parallels between the lectionary passages from the Prophet, Isiah and Matthew’s gospel. This Sunday’s Readings provide a welcome break in the alternative gospel reading from Luke: Mary’s Magnificat. It is Mary’s song of joy, exclaimed shortly after her visit from the angel, and upon her arrival in the home of her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth is also pregnant with a slightly different kind of miraculous conception. According to the stories those babies turned out to be John the Baptist and Jesus. It’s a boy times two!

But, could Mary and Elizabeth’s conversation and Mary’s subsequent song pass the The Bechdel test? I think so! The dozen or so male pronouns in Mary’s song betrays the weakness of religious language and language in general. Whatever God is, God probably doesn’t have a penis. Right?!? And this song is not primarily about what God is going to do in her son. No! In this song, Mary recounts to Elizabeth the miraculous stories passed down through the generations about the things God has done. She sings of a God that abounds with mercy and steadfast love from one generation to another. Mary sings of a God that humbles the haughty and powerful and lifts up the downtrodden. Most of all, Mary expresses gratitude and joy God had chosen her.

Most often, pastors love to preach that Mary was surprised, honored and above all that she surrendered to the will of God. Maybe you’re like me and you’ve heard the story so many times that the scandal of it all gets a bit lost on us.

I am not talking about the silly “was she simply a young woman or a virgin” arguments. But the real scandal: Its in the song. Its in today’s story from Luke. Its a story told in song from one woman to another. It is a story about one woman being filled with God – literally.

Today, the vast majority of American Christians are heretical by creedal standards. But in 431 CE things were a lot different. In the first few centuries of Christianity, if you were a prominent Bishop and you said the wrong thing about Jesus, you could get your ass killed! Or worse, you could be condemned to eternal damnation in Hell upon death. In fact,in 431, at what today is called the “Third Ecumenical Council” of the church condemned q guy named Nestorius and all of his followers for arguing that Mary was merely Christotokos, meaning “Bearer of the Christ” rather than Theotokos, “Bearer of God.”

For Nestorius it was first and foremost a rejection of associating God almighty too closely with humanity and human flesh. This was no longer the easily digestible and intelligible stuff about Jesus having two distinct natures in one person or three distinct personhoods of the “Trinity” subsisting in one “triune” God. This was truly radical stuff about divine personhood not only dwelling in flesh, but also passing through another human body. The body of a young woman. For out of her vagina, in a “manger” presumably with blood, a placenta, and other bodily fluids on the barn floor next to some poor Bethlehem Farmer’s ox and ass, would come… God.

Mary had a dream. Amythyst Kiah had a dream. Both women in one way or another confront the difficult reality of living in a world where the bodies of women are superficially critiqued by the society around them. a society that makes false Character judgements based almost exclusively on outward appearance and what they do or don’t do with their bodies in private. One woman praises God for what she sees as God’s faithfulness in times past. This lends weight to her expression of joy and praise about what she believes God will do, in part through her.

I wish I could say the world has changed tremendously since Mary’s Magnificat. But Amythyst Kiah just wrote Sleeping Queen in 2016. She wrote it in a time where elected leaders in a “free” Republic can go on national TV and brag about what they do to the bodies of women without consent. She wrote it in a world where men still regulate what women can and cannot do with their own sexual and reproductive health. She wrote this song somewhere around the time of The Pulse night club massacre in 2016. The recent attack at Club Q exposes the dark, xenophobic underbelly of our “free” society. Its a song of Lament, yes! Absolutely! But like Mary’s, it is also a song of hope. And like Mary’s Magnificat it is a song of radical hope in the face of a cruel world. It is a world in which people still find a perverse satisfaction in inflicting torture and cruelty in the name of “justice.” In this world of injustice where it seems like Mary’s song will never come to fruition, I don’t blame Kiah for going back to sleep that day.

But still I wait fight for the world these women collectively envision. I fight for my mother who showed me by example -her words were something different – that the creative power of the “divine” and the destructive force of the “demonic” lives in each and every one of us. I am thankful to the Mother of my children, for doing that which divinity does: encompassing and bearing new life. Thank you to my daughter for teaching me that I just don’t know shit! Seriously! All the time. Thank you to Leigh and Leanne for believing in me when I simply could not. And of course, thank you to my wife, and best friend for teaching me the true meaning of love that is patient. love that is kind, love that does not brag, envy, or boast. I want to love more like her each day.

I also want to dedicate this post to the women who taught me how to sing!!! Shuhada Sadaqat, who most of my life I have known as Sinéad MF O’Connor, thank you for living! Simply put, without you and your music I might not be alive today. Your music, has been a healing balm throughout most of my life! I really, truly hope I get to meet you while we both still share air and space on this earth. I give a huge shout out to Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson made me feel like me and my Dead Beat Club friends were going to be okay (someday). Thank you, thank you, thank you to Ani Difranco for teaching me that I didn’t have to be In or Out.

Last but certainly not least, thank you to Amythyst Kiah for this beautiful artistic statement. I hope do right by you. And I hope you have a beautiful, awesome, amazing, fanfuckingtastic Birthday! Celebrate you today! All day! And every day! Thanks one & all for reading. Until next Sunday, peace to you.

~wwb
Christian Atheist



The Man Comes Around

“There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names And he decides who to free and who to blame Everybody won’t be treated all the same There’ll be a golden ladder reachin’ down When the man comes around”

Today is the second Sunday of the Christian season of Advent. Each Sunday in advent I’m offering a reflection on one or more of the passages for Sunday’s Liturgical readings. You can read this week’s passages here.

All of this week’s passages are concerned with the topic of Eschatology. Much of contemporary eschatological conversations – across religious traditions – usually focus on “the end of the world. ” However the word derived from the Greek, eskhatos simply meaning last things. Most worldviews and religions that provide some sort of myth for the origins of cosmology, also propose some sort of “end of days” or at least “end of an age” rooted in the mythology used to explain human origins.

In India, Some Hindus await the tenth and final incarnation of the god Vishnu. He is described to appear in order to end the Kali Yuga (the current age of confusion, despair and wickedness) and bring about the Satya Yuga (or new epoch in which humanity is righteous and governed by the gods). In most Eastern religions, time itself is understood to be more cyclical than linear. So these are extended periods of order and chaos that repeat themselves. Ancient Germanic tribes would await Ragnarök, a final battle in which the gods of Germainic and Norse mythology – Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki – would wage war that would mean the death of gods, a time of turmoil on earth.

Long before the rise of Islam, Zoroastrianism, was the ancient native religion to the indigenous people of Iran. Zoroastrianism probably had more interplay and impact and Jewish and Christian theology more than any other distinct religion of the Ancient Near East. Zoroastrianism has a dualistic but ultimately Monotheistic cosmology of good and evil. It is within this monotheistic framework, the Zoroastrians developed an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good.

All of this is to say that Eschatology is not a category that belongs solely to Christianity or even the broader Judeo-Christian tradition(s). And within both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament there are nuanced and varying – if not conflicting – eschatological hopes.

The Hebrew Bible or what Christians call “The Old Testament” can be broken down into three major divisions: Torah (Instruction, or Law, also called the Pentateuch), Neviʾim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). The Hebrew Bible is often called Tanakh, an acronym derived from the names of the these three divisions. Further, the Neviʾim is divided up into two distinct eras: Nevi’im Rishonim or “Former Prophets” and Nevi’im Akharonim: “Latter Prophets.” The primary role of the prophet in either case is to speak boldly to Israel’s political and religious leaders, pronounce god’s judgement on Israel and “the Nations” and to intercede to god on behalf of the people.

For instance, in the more narrative books of the Former Prophets, Nathan confronts David about his grotesque misuse of power, his raping of Bathsheba (not much choice involved when a king calls upon a subject), and his vicarious murder of her husband, Uriah. Elijah stood up to Ahab when he stole Naboth’s vineyard. Collectively, the Former Prophets tell the story of a nomadic collective of 12 tribes becoming two divided Kingdoms and the fall of the norther kingdom to the Assyrian Empire.

The Latter Prophets focus on gods judgement end looming Babylonian Exile and the rebuilding of the temple after the Babylonian Captivity. In this liminal space between being a crushed and wounded people and the efforts to rebuild Judah and the temple the notion of a Messiah (an anointed liberator) begins to develop. The book of Isaiah is pregnant with messianic expectation.

Today’s reading from Isaiah 11 is about a leader who will have the spirit of God rest on him. This leader would be righteous and faithful. He will bring about a time so peaceful that “the cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together.” Please remember that Prophets spoke truth to power in their own time! They did not just ramble about things hundreds of years in the future that would be nonintegrable to the prophet’s first audience. I will leave it to others to argue about whether this was about Hezekiah or some other Southern leader in the “house of David.”

No doubt this passage also envisions a deeper fulfilment that still has not come to pass. War, violence, famine, and inequity permeate the air we live in. The air we have always lived in.

But look how much the “center” of this eschatological hope – especially in Christianity – has dramatically changed and mutated. The notion of God coming to humanity by way of an anointed leader has turned into God coming in the person of Jesus to take humanity away.

That may be a bit of an overstatement that doesn’t find a home in doctrinal statements that still talk about a renewal of the earth and God Reigning on earth.

I remember as a child coming home from church many a warm Sunday to sit on my dad’s wood pile, making percussion instruments of the logs and singing, “Our God Reigns.” Or I would just lay on my back on our family’s large trampoline and stare into the sky. In the warmth of the sun I would wait and stair for Jesus to part the Clouds. Have you ever seen the Hanna-Barbera animated series, Super Friends (DC’s Justice League)? I waited every Sunday for Jesus to part the clouds and appear like a 1000 foot Apache Chief, come to carry me “home.”

But earth is my home. Earth is my only home. During this advent season, I do long for and work towards whatever bit of heaven, of light, of good, of “divinity” we can manifest on earth.

I no longer wait for “the man to come around” and drop a golden ladder for me to climb out of this world. To continue to do so, would require tremendous cognitive dissonance. However, we can all live like we are eager for a time of justice, peace and equality. It is often said that the linear notion time that is the genius of the Hebrew scriptures when compared to more cyclical world views like the cyclical epochs in Hinduism. I would contend the true genius – especially as it is seen in Isaiah and the prophets – is not that time is linear or will come to an end per se. Rather, they present a case that while time goes on, and on, and on… a day is coming – or at the very least a day is possible – when the status quo of tyranny and oppression are overthrown and replaced with justice and a spirit of freedom. This is the kind of messianic age I light a candle, hope for and work towards this Advent Season.

~wwb
Christian Atheist

Running from Jesus and Social Darwinism, into the arms of the Cosmic Christ