We Must Create Meaning While leading a group about grief, I mentioned that, as part of the process of moving on, “we must create a sense of meaning.” I meant this in two ways. First, we must make sense of what happened. Was God involved? If so, how? What does the event tell us about fairness, and how important it is that life be fair? Is someone to blame? Do we need to forgive that person, or do we need to forgive ourselves? Do we want to forgive, or will doing so betray our values? Is there something we can learn from our loss, or was it a random act…
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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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Communicating with God
Does God Communicate? Her parents talk to God. Her partner feel God’s presence. They all say that the Holy Spirit guides them. Yet God has never spoken to her. That doesn’t mean she stopped believing in God. She believes. How could she not when she has been taught since infancy that this Christian God was real, that he created the universe, walked through a perfect garden with Adam and Eve, and blessed the faithful. This woman tried so hard to be faithful. She did not feel blessed. What was wrong with her? Had God forsaken her because of some terrible thing she had done, something she could not remember? She…
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Is There a Sentient God?
When the World Is Burning As I write this, forest fires in California, Oregon, and Washington are destroying vegetation and property, displacing families, and killing animals and people. Although this is just one more hit in an ongoing attack by a warming world, just one more season of worsts, these fires have sent hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In areas that aren’t burning, smoke hangs like a thick and acrid fog, making our eyes sting, leaving grit in our mouths. Many people are suffering. When the world is burning, we flee, or we fight. In the face of immediate danger, we’re unlikely to wonder if the god…
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Ownership, Complacency, and Giving Up Privilege
Change Is Coming The United States, along with many countries in the world, is in turmoil. Tension has been festering for decades, but because of the pandemic, a widening income gap, black and brown deaths at the hands of police, a broken healthcare system, and inequities caused by global warming, social unrest has erupted. Across the political spectrum, people feel threatened. Rebellion is a time-honored American tradition. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence declares “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of” the ability of its citizens to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the people have the right “to alter or to abolish it.” [1] Is this…
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The Mutuality of Friendship
Friends Care There are many ways to understand friendship, but one thing everyone agrees on is that friends care about one another. In some circles, this looks like going to parties or movies together. It might mean we help each other when times are hard. For some, friendship is about gossip or encouragement. Some friends garden, sew, or cook together. Others exercise together. Some hang out, drinking coffee and talking. Regardless of what they do, friends enjoy spending time together, they support you when you’re down, and they try not to betray you because they don’t want to see you hurt. All this is a way of caring. Professionals Care…
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Honesty in the Face of Challenge
A Cycle of Lies Let’s call her Honey. She’d gotten pregnant. Her boyfriend was thrilled; she was not. If her parents learned she’d had sex outside of marriage, they’d be crestfallen. If her conservative Christian college found out, she’d be expelled. Since she was in a special program that would allow her to get a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in only five years, she didn’t want to transfer someplace where she wouldn’t have the same opportunity. Besides, regardless of where she studied, Honey knew how stressful it would be to raise an infant while in school, and her career was important to her. She wouldn’t jeopardize that. To make…
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Choosing Redemption, Choosing Life
Choosing Redemption Last month, while talking about forgiveness and redemption at the Recovery Church circle, the question came up of whether or not we can be redeemed from God’s love. Hearing that phrase, I imagined a demon bargaining with God to gain control of some poor peasant’s soul, as if God were in the business of buying and selling. Originally, redemption meant to buy back what one had sold. In ancient Mesopotamia, as Robert C. Ellickson and Charles DiA Thorland point out, life was precarious. Families were vulnerable to “crop failures, illness, and attack by pillagers.” [1] Families often had to borrow money, then were unable to pay it back.…
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Does God Feel Grateful?
Does God Feel Gratitude? Although we start each of our Sunday-afternoon circles with a particular topic, one can never be certain what we will end up talking about. For instance, we once got sidetracked when one of our members asked, “Does God feel gratitude?” How do you answer a question like that? First, what do we mean by “God”? Second, even if we could define that ultimate entity, how can we understand its experiences? After all, we don’t know that the Divine has emotions, at least as we understand them, and gratitude, as I am defining it, is an emotion. Which brings us to our third question: what is gratitude,…
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Balance and the Autumn Equinox
Where Is the Balance? The equinox is a time of balance, when night and day are equal. In that moment of symmetry, all is well with the world and with the heart. For an instant, at least, there is calm. Or so I imagine. In reality, I fly through the equinox like though any other day, managing a smattering of exercise, scraping together enough food to keep me well, cleaning when I must, and creating when I can. In between, I snatch moments for rest and relationship. Time passes in a blur. Balance eludes me. Not everyone feels out of balance because of busyness. Some people are bored. The seconds…