Seeing Ourselves in Myths It’s hard to know how an ancient culture viewed its myths. There are indications that the Greeks believed in their gods as much as did any group of people. They worshiped them and sacrificed to them because they hoped these powerful beings might bless them and their loved ones. The stories told about these gods, however, were something else. In Christianity, Biblical literalism is a recent phenomenon, arising in Europe and America in the 18th century, according to the French writer, Dennis Diderot, [1] and the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Marcus Borg. [2] Ancient Hebrews and first-century Christians understood that their religious stories were…
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On Being Human
Being Human as Being Set Apart What does it mean to be human? Although a few individuals are born with limitations or predilections or capacities different from the bell curve’s norm, people throughout the world share certain traits. We all have a consciousness that recognizes our selfhood, bodies that experience pain and pleasure, and minds with the capacity to notice, to interpret, and to draw conclusions. Most of us long for intimate connection and supportive community. At times, our emotions get the better of us, especially when our instinct to survive is threatened, and all of us can feel threatened by the most benign thing if it touches on our…
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Universal Consciousness
Serendipity As part of my duties as a hospital chaplain, I say prayers with the pre-surgery patients who request it. One day, I was on the prep unit, visiting someone, when I saw another man being prepped. There was nothing special about him, but somehow I felt he would want a prayer. Still, he hadn’t asked for one, so I returned to my office. It wasn’t long before his name appeared in my inbasket for a visit. Returning to his bedside, I introduced myself. He was friendly, enough, but he didn’t seem to know why I was there. “Did you ask for a chaplain?” I asked him. He said he…
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As Above, So Below
In the Image of God No one can describe the ultimate. We lack words for that experience of eternity, vastness, that state and place and existence that is both embodied and a disembodied. Whatever this essence is that we think of as the divine, it exists beyond seeing and hearing. It is like a knowing without thought. In other words, God is awesome, magnificent, and terrifying, and it is utterly foreign. No account of this holy being, whether whispered in private conversations or written down in books, comes close to revealing its essence. For this endeavor, language is futile. So is painting, music, dance, and even fairy tale. Not that…
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To Live a Simple Life
Should We All Choose a Simple Life? Many of us in our hectic societies long to live a simple life, but not everyone is attracted to simplicity. Some people prefer wildness and passion, the frenetic dashing from here to there, the unexpected marvels of unknown lands. The young especially enjoy the thrill of adventure and the promise of power, though some of us never outgrow our grasping for the glittering things of the world. Others of us love chaos. Some people choose to have many children. Then they encourage their children’s friends to join them, preferring the noise of the horde over the anxiety of wondering where their children are.…
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One Who Loves Me
Someone for Whom I Am Life He was young to have a stroke, but that didn’t make it any less debilitating. No one knew how much of his old self he’d recover. When I met him, his right arm was cramped, his fingers unwieldy. Speaking was not easy. He needed help with simple tasks. His nurse said he often refused to try to feed himself or brush his teeth. He seemed to have lost the will to live. Call him Jacob. It seems he’d wrestled with angels, though his wound was more severe than his namesake’s, and he felt anything but blessed. Since we rarely recognize godsends when they come…
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Peter Walks on Water
Walking on Water The story of Peter’s attempt to defy gravity is told in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 14. Jesus had just finished feeding five thousand people with loaves and fishes. He wanted some time by himself. So he sent the disciples ahead of him in a boat, and he spent the night praying. For the disciples, it was a long night. By evening, waves were battering the boat. The wind buffeted the craft, keeping the men from reaching shore. When morning dawned, they were worn out from rowing and shaken by the turbulence of the sea. In that vulnerable state, with the sky still gray, and the water…
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Life Stages and Spiritual Growth
Learning Right from Wrong Living with my two- and four-year-old grandchildren reminds me that, not only is childhood about discovering the shapes and movements and idiosyncrasies of the world, but also about learning to manage one’s inner experience and behavior. In the best of all possible worlds, we receive help labeling those strange sensations in our chest, the rumblings in our belly. Maybe they’re fear, sadness, rage, embarrassment, frustration. Once we give them a name, we can figure out what to do with them, how to express them in word or picture, in play and movement. Then there’s morality. We have to learn what our culture deems proper, what our…
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Animal Intelligence
Animals as Sacred For the Creek Indians, animal intelligence is a given. Indeed, not only do they, and many indigenous people, consider animals to be smart, but they see them as superior to humans. They were here first, after all. As Creek stories explain, animals created the world and then made us. We are related to them, but they are spiritually advanced, and we owe them respect. [1] The native people of the Arctic believe reindeer and caribou can understand and respond to human thought. [2] Australian aborigines recognize that animals are sentient. [3] David Aftandilian suspects that native peoples came to understand the wisdom and spiritual maturity of animals…
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Shattering Images of God
The First Cause It may be an illusion, this world we inhabit: a virtual reality machine, a dream, a joke. But if so, who’s running it all? If it’s all smoke and mirrors, surely something is tending the fire, polishing the glass? Perhaps the Big Bang is truth, and a singularity randomly popped into existence, just as quanta wink in and out, without someone or something controlling it. Alternately, quantum fluctuations may have created a series of Big Bounces, resulting in one multiple universes. Some people imagine there was no beginning, that space always existed. When conditions were right, time manifested, and the universe-building began. No god required. It’s hard…