The Body of a God

Several years ago I saw a T-shirt with this message:

I have the body of a god. Unfortunately, it's the Buddha.

This got me thinking. Why do people assume the Buddha was, shall we say, hefty? Because in the popular mind he is often confused with Hotei, the so-called 'fat Buddha" who is, in reality, one of the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese folklore. Like other religious traditions, when Buddhism moved into new countries it often incorporated the gods and goddesses of earlier religions into its own pantheon. The rotund Hotei was a symbol of abundance, of joy, of blessing; over time, naturally, he became mistaken for the Buddha.

Yet according to the stories of the various Buddhist traditions, young Siddhartha had spent six years engaged in the most sever austerities prior to his six days beneath the Bodhi tree. In fact, just before he embraced the middle way--not too hard, not too soft--he is said to have been subsisting on one grain of rice a day. That's why he is oftentime depicted as slender or, as in the Thai tradition, completely emaciated, so that one can see his spine through his abdomen.

Jesus, on the other hand, is usually popularly imagined as a slim, even gaunt, man, yet according to the Gospels he was accused of being a "glutton and drunkard." (see Lk. 7.34 and Mt. 11.19). Apparently Jesus never met a dinner party he didn't like.

So we have Buddha who is usually thought to be overweight yet was probably skinny, and Jesus who is thought to be skinny but may well have had a few extra pounds on him.

I don't quite know where to go with this--the issue of body image in Eastern and Western cultures?--but I find it fascinating. What do you think?

in Gassho,

RevWik

A New Link

One of the things that's so exciting to me about the Internet--and I'm really still such a neophyte when it comes to these things--is the way we can make links between sometimes seemingly quite dispirit things, place, people, ideas. It's amazing and really rather awe inspiring to me.

I've just added a new link to the right side of this blog, a link to the blog of the Rev. Szilárd Sándor, minister of the Unitarian Church in Jobbágyfalva, Romania. Jobbágyfalva is the partner church of the church I'm currently serving in Brewster, Massachusetts.

It's amazing to me that you could be reading my ruminations of the death of Kurt Vonnegut one minute and then reading the reflections of a Transylvanian minister the next.

What a world we live in!

in Gassho,

RevWik

Unpacking a Prayer

For the past couple of weeks I've been using a "breath prayer" (one of those short, two line prayers you recite giving one line to your in-breath and the other to your out-breath). Mine has been, "Here I am, Grandfathers / Do with me what you will."

In seminary we used to talk a lot about "unpacking" passages, or phrases, or even words that had a depth of meaning in them that might not be immediately apparent from a look at the surface. I feel that these ten words have much to unpack.

Here I am, Grandfathers . . . Right here, in this time and place of my life. I'm not in a monastery. I'm not on retreat. I'm not at the top of a mountain. I'm in the frequently chaotic, often stunningly wonderful, mess that is my life--kids crying, partner getting on my nerves, me doubting myself. I don't have all the answers, I
haven't (yet?) arrived, I'm just here.

Here I am, Grandfathers . . . And it's just me who's here, not some saint. It's not the Buddha or the Christ, just the overweight man with too much anger and too little patience; the me who tries hard but often falters and fails. It's just me, here.

Here I am, Grandfathers . . . When the emphasis shifts to this word I am reminded to be present, to be doing more than merely mouthing these words but to try to really be here, all of me, fully in the present reality of my life. To be alive in the "here" and the "I" of this moment. (I'm often mindful, too, that God's response to Moses at the burning bush was to offer as a name "I am.")

Here I am, Grandfathers . . . When I began using this prayer I said, "Here I am, Lord." After a recent men's weekend, when we often invoked the wisdom and the power of the "grandfathers," I found that this new word speaks volumes to me--about my place in the world as a man, of the need to remember my own ancestors, and of the necessity of connecting to something deep and primordial. (And don't grandparents often have a special relationship--at least in the popular conception--with their grandchildren that even the parents cannot access?)

Do with me what you will . . . This is a reminder that I am here to do something, to be of some service, to be useful; life has a use for me.

Do with me what you will . . . But I'm integral to that usefulness; it is a mutual thing. Whatever God (the Higher Power, the Universe, Life) wants me to do, whatever "plans" there are to accomplish it will be done with me, not to me, or through me. (I remember reading that if Mary had not assented the incarnation could not have occured.)

Do with me what you will . . . This is saying that I am not just open to the "whims of fate" or the capricious desires of a despotic deity. The word "will" implies, to me at least, a lot more than merely wanting or wishing. To will something is to put the full force of myself behind it. And so I invite the grandfathers to work with me to accomplish that which they will to be done (and not merely what they might wish).

Such an exercise can be done with virtually any prayer. (Or piece of scripture, or line of poetry.) This is one of the virtues of reciting "rote" prayers such as the Catholic rosary or the Jewish 23rd Psalm--saying the same words over and over again increases the opportuity to find ever new and deeper meanings in them.

Here I am, Grandfathers. / Do with me what you will.

In Gassho,

RevWik

A New Focus

I've been away from the blogosphere for a while and am returning with a newly developing focus. I once knew an artist named Deborah Jones-Buck who would paint a picture and, as soon as it was done would paint another one over top of it. Three, four, or more layers of different paintings would rest beneath the surface of the one she finally showed to the world. She said that she did this not because she didn't like the earlier pictures but that she simply had so many images in her head that she had to get them out or she'd explode. Too many images, too few canvases.

I feel like that a bit, too. There are a million "mini-sermons" that pop and crackle in my little grey cells, and far too few Sundays. So I'm going to share them here. I'll continue to write my commentaries on this socio and political. I'll just add a few more things "spiritual."

In Gassho,

RevWik

Lucky Mud

Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday.

I haven't read a Vonnegut novel in years, but upon hearing of his death I picked up Cat's Cradle and realized just how deeply I'd imbibed him in my youth. As a teenager I drank deep of Slaughterhouse Five (or The Children's Crusade); Player Piano; The Sirens of Titan; Welcome to the Monkey House; Happy Birthday, Wanda June; Mother Night; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; and Breakfast of Champions. Even after all these years the rhythm of his writing, the style as well as the substance, was so familiar yet utterly fresh.

I am supposed to be doing some writing on a project of my own right now, but I could not let his death pass without comment. I suppose I could quote the Tralfamadorians and say, simply, "So it goes." I could refer to the comment Billy Pilgrim, the hero of Slaughterhouse-Five, says of himself at one point, that "he was doing nothing less now . . . then prescribing corrective lenses for Earthling souls."

But there's a passage in Cat's Cradle which I've long hoped will be said during my own memorial service someday; I hope someone is saying it in his. It's the recitation from the Bokononist Last Rites:

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’
‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God!
Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor.
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.

Good night, Mr. Vonnegut. Sleep well. And thank's for the glasses.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Oh, My God!

I have not been as excited since . . . I don't know . . . the last time I was this excited!

Last night, while doing research for an upcoming sermon on humanism I stumbled along a series of hyperlinks that ultimately brought me to MR. DEITY. This YouTube series is laugh-out-loud-even-if-you're-by-yourself funny. I, personally, especially like the episodes about the "really big favor" and the "top ten list," but there was at least something in each of the nine episodes posted to date that really got me.

Enjoy.

RevWik

What's In A Name?

I'm a sucker for a subtitle. Over the past couple of months I've come across two books with truly wonderful subtitles and, even more exciting, they lived up to and exceeded my expectations!

I heard about the first one from my friend James Ishmael Ford (he of the great blog MonkeyMind and the double threat of being both a Soto Zen Priest and a Unitarian Universalist minister.) The book is by Soko Morinaga Roshi and is called Novice to Master. What really got me, though, is the subtitle: "an ongoing lesson in the extent of my own stupidity." How can you go wrong studying with a Zen master who has plumbed the depth of his own stupidity? And Morinaga Roshi does not disappoint. Reading his book I felt an excitement that I haven't since my first days reading Buddhist literature--I found new insights, and even familiar teachings came alive for me. I highly recommend this book. (If that's enough for you, here's the link to the book at Amazon.com.)

And then, I can't remember where, I came across a book by Anthony De Mello called Awareness: the perils and opportunities of reality. I'd already loved this Indian Jesuit from his earlier Sadhana: a way to God (Christian Exercises in Eastern Form). But reviews of Awareness claimed it to be a life-changing book and I'm always open to a new perspective on dealing with the problem of . . . well . . . me. And while I'm still reading it, so far Awareness seems as though it will live up to such hype. (Here's its page on Amazon.)

So, if you're willing to face the "perils and opportunities of reality," and consider "the extent of [your own] stupidity," these wise teachers may prove for you, as they have for me, true guides.

In Gassho,

RevWik

Rest in Peace, Steve Rogers

I'll admit it.

I still read comic books.

Mostly I keep up with the Dark Knight--a.k.a., the Batman--and his compatriots in the DC Comics universe, but I grew up on the exploits of Spider-Man, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, so from time to time I will pick up one of the comics that spin their stories and those of their friends and foes in the Marvel Universe.

Since my move to Cape Cod, however, I no longer live near to a comic book store, so I sometimes get my comics news from unexpected places. This morning it was National Public Radio!

That's right, such august journalistic institutions as the BBC, the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, NPR, and CNN have all been covering the death of Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. (In case you don't know Captain America, here's a link to his official biography.)

His death came at the end of the Civil War that's been raging in the Marvel world--following a particularly destructive battle, the United States government passes the "Superhuman Registration Act" which requires costumed crime fighters to register themselves (and reveal their secret identities in the process). Some think it's necessary to protect the populace, and others think it's a violation of their civil rights. The two groups fight. There are fairly explicit parallels to the battles raging in our country today around the question of how many freedoms can be sacrificed in the name of protecting freedom.

Pretty heavy stuff for a comic book. Although not unheard of. In fact, comics have often tackled some heavy things in their pages. (See the Wikipedia article on Registration Acts in comic books for some examples, or Wiki's larger article on the so-called Bronze Age of Comic Books during which many titles confronted issues such as drug abuse, racism, etc.)

Yes, a lot of heavy things were going on, still I'm struck by the death of such an iconic figure as Captain America. I put it up there with the death of Superman in 1993 and the breaking of the Batman's back in 1993-1994. These figures--each of whom I grew up with--were legendary, unstoppable, unbeatable; for generations they've been "living symbols" of strength that is good, and honorable, and indomitable. And in the last decade they've been knocked off their pedestals.

It's true that Superman came back from the dead, and the Batman's broken spine was healed, and we may well not have seen the last of Captain America, but we'll never again be able to see them as invincible. And if heroes such as these are not invicible, who or what can be? Perhaps this more acurately reflects the world we live in, but Cap . . . I'll miss you.

In Gassho,

RevWik

More About FUUCSL

Yesterday I wrote about the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life. It turns out that I'm not the only one. (No surprise there!) A colleague of mine, the Rev. Christine Robinson, who serves the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, has written a lot about this virtual congregation in her blog, iMinister. One of her recent posts goes into a fair amount of detail.

Today I also received an e-mail from the (one of the?) founder(s) of FUUCSL in which he wrote:

There is going to be an article published in USA Today next week about the church!!! One of the issues that the reporter, Cathy Grossman, Religion and Spirituality Correspondent, is going to cover is whether a virtual church can serve real spiritual needs. I can assure you that it does and Cathy interviewed several people from our church besides myself, including the Reverend Christine Robinson from Albuquerque and one of our members who is disabled and homebound and who has been able to reconnect to her spirituality through our church and who feels a calling to help others in her situation through online ministry.

Our oldest member of the church is 74 years old and he is an active participant. Many of our other members are in their 40s and 50s. Technology is certainly involved, but it is not so great that it cannot be overcome, as has been demonstrated by the multitude of people who show up at our virtual church who can barely figure out how to walk or sit down, but they do and they stay because of the welcoming, calming and spiritual atmosphere that we provide.

What rich potential there is in this new technology. There's potential for problems, of course, and much has been written and discussed about the danger of this kind of "virtual" community, about how it could lead to even further isolation and alienation, yet people report that they are finding real community there. And if people are going to spend hours upon hours in these virtual worlds, shouldn't we establish outposts of sane and salvific community?

By the way, in terms of stats: the FUUCSL has been in existence for about six months. In that time it has gained 180 members, it has well over 50 people who regularly attend worship , and its membership has doubled in the last two months. FUUCSL is already the second largest church in Second Life. It would be interesting to see how many of these folks are already UUs, or now seek out a brick and mortar UU church, and how many make this their only church home.

in gassho,

RevWik

Virtual Church

It seems that almost everywhere I turn these days I'm hearing about Second Life--the virtual "universe" that is taking our "real" world by storm. People are spending up to forty hours a week--and beyond--in this cyber reality. News organizations like Reuters and the Wall Street Journal now have reporters whose full-time beat is covering the goings on in this virtual reality.

And now, for those who say that they are too busy in Second Life to go to church, there is the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Second Life. Apparently they have worship services on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. If you're interested, here is a link to a promtional video that gives a little flavor.

Who knows where this might lead, but people report that they really do find a real feeling of real community in places like this cyber world. Perhaps we'll one day have full service congregations--just like those brick and mortar churches we're already familar with--speaking to the needs of folks and of the wider Second Life world.

Yours in Gassho,

RevWik

This world is SO wonderful!

I sometimes--actually, with a fair bit of regularity--run across a story that reminds me how truly wonderful this life is. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of my own existence, to begin to believe that what I experience is pretty much what life is like.

And then I hear about a guy like Paul Woods. He's the 44 year old man who's driving from Alaska to Virginia--a trip of more than 4,500 miles--on his Toro lawnmower! He's on his third engine, has only three of his original five gears, and can reach speeds of up to 15 miles an hour . . . when he's not weighed down by the grocery cart he's pulling as a trailer with his tent, his tools, some food, and his dog, Yoda. Oh, and he left in 2005!

Woods says that he was in Alaska caring for his mother, and that with her death he's now on an odyssey to claim the house (in Virginia) that she left him in her will. Why he's doing it on a lawnmower isn't reported in any of the news stories that pop up when you google this. (83 as of tonight!)

But I don't really care why he's doing it. What matters to me is that he is doing it--that somewhere out there there's a guy who's riding across the country on a lawnmower. With his dog in a shopping cart/trailer. And who's living a life I could not even begin to imagine.

What matters to me is that life includes so much more than what I'm experiencing, so much more than I'd ever be able to experience . . . yet it is being experienced! Life is so much more vast and wide than my little parcel, yet I am part of that vastness. My life is a part of the rich tapestry that is Life. Yours, too.

Isn't that wonderful?

in Gassho,

RevWik

More About Angel del Basuero

As a follow up to my most recent posting I want to give you a couple of other links about the Angel del Basuero--the Angel of the Garbage Dump--Hanley Denning.

The Portland Press Herald ran a really nice article about Hanley. And here's a really lovely report on her stateside memorial service, held in Yarmouth.

According to another Press Herald article, there is a film, Recycled Life, that is a 38-minute documentary about the people who live and work on and around the Guatemala City Dump. It has now been nominated for an Academy Award. Here is an article about the film, and here is a link to the film's web site where you can watch the trailer and pre-order a copy of the DVD.

And, of course, if you haven't yet, visit the Safe Passage/Camino Seguro site to see for yourself what this young woman's vision and passion brought into being.

In Gassho,

RevWik

There's One More Star in the Heavens, and the Earth is Less Luminous

Hanley Denning, a young woman from Yarmouth, Maine, went to Antigua to learn Spanish. What she found there was the poverty and the pain of the families living on and around the Guatemala City Dump. Larger than several football fields, the dump was "home" to generations and Hanley knew she had to do something.

Her story could easily be a TV movie--as she told it to me my mouth kept dropping open at the sheer unlikeliness of it all--yet every scene would be true. She sold her car and her computer and began to try offering services to the children of the dump. A priest offered her an unused chapel at the edge of the dump and by herself Hanley began to clean it up. Some local kids started hanging out; then they started helping. The local drug dealers tried to run her out. She stayed. The vision grew.

That was in 1999. Today the organization she founded--Safe Passage/Camino Seguro--serves over 550 children. Each child receives assistance with homework and hands-on learning activities designed to reinforce basic primary school concepts; they also participate in a range of programs such as art, music, sports, English classes, and computer instruction.

Safe Passage also provides nutritional support, an on-site clinic, vocational training, and clubs for children and their mothers. And they have early intervention programs, adult literacy programs, and residential care for children coming from the most dangerous and unstable living situations. Volunteers come from around the world to be a part of this incredible program, all of which came into being because one woman knew she had to do something about the horror she saw in front of her.

When I interviewed Hanley for the radio show I briefly hosted in Portland, Maine, I left the studio knowing that I had been in the presence of a living saint. The fact that she would have been incredibly uncomfortable with that description was one of the reasons I felt so sure. Hanley was a living demonstration of the words of Edward Everett Hale: "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I must not hesitate to do the something that I can."

Hanley died in a car accident yesterday, January 18th, 2007. If it's true that when a person dies a new star shines in the heavens, it is no less true that today the world is less luminous for this loss.

in Gassho,

RevWik

One word . . . plastics

There are some wonderful benefits to having children. Lots of them, actually, but yesterday I was appreciating one in particular--the chance to watch children's television. My youngest and I were watching an episode of Reading Rainbow which was focusing on recylcing. There was a brief piece on the development of technologies that can turn corn into plastic!

Surplus corn can be harvested and turned into plastic that can be made into everything from containers to utensils to clothing, and when the product's usefulness has ended it can be composted. So you can recycle not only your old vegetable scraps but the bags the vegetables came in in the first place!

Is this a great world or what?

in Gassho,

RevWik

How Far Have We Come?

I'm preparing my sermon for the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend and so am considering the state of race in America today. On the one hand, Massachusetts recently swore in its first--and the country's second--African-American governor and Barack Obama is considered by most a serious contender for the White House in 2008.

On the other hand, thanks to the NAACP's magazine The Crisis I came across a truly disturbing seven minute video documentary called A Girl Like Me. A high school student named Kiri Davis was working on a project for her literature class in which she was interviewing young women of color. Over and over again issues having to do with societal assumptions about beauty and the girls' sense of self kept coming up. She thought it might make a good documentary film and, as part of the Reel Works Teen Filmmakers project she created her film. [You can watch it at the Media That Matters Film Festival website. This link brings you to the Festival's home page; this one brings you right to the film.]

A Girl Like Me contains interviews with some young women of color, but the really disturbing thing is Davis' recreation of the 1947 "baby doll" tests of Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. In this test, identical dolls were presented to a child and the child was asked to identify the “nice” doll, the “bad” doll, and the doll he or she would rather play with. As I said, these were identical dolls, down to their clothing, except for the color of the doll’s skin. One was white and one was brown.

In his original experiment, which was used as one of the arguments in the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation decision, Clark found that of the sixteen children between the ages of six and nine he tested, ten of them chose the white doll as their preference, ten of them considered the white doll the "nice" doll, and eleven of the sixteen called the brown doll the "bad" doll.

Ms. Davis recreated this experiment down to the exact wording of the questions for her film in 2005, and of the twenty-one children she studied eleven picked the white doll over the black doll. When asked why the white doll was the “nice” doll she was told, by the most innocent little faces you’ve ever seen, “because it’s white.” When asked why the black doll was “bad,” she was told that it was because “it’s black.” And most heart rending of all, when she asked the kids, as Dr. Clark had asked them in the ‘40s, “Which doll looks like you?” you can see the confusion, the hesitancy, and the hurt as they push forward the black doll they’d just denigrated.

So what's happened to the Rev. Dr. King's dream that people will be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"? We may have come a long way, but we have a long way still to go.

In Gassho,

Rev. Wik

The Real Issue

A member of the congregation I serve in Brewster, MA suggested that we create buttons that read:

"What God has joined together let no one break asunder . . . save gay marriage!"

We may be getting into the button business in the near future (keep watch on this space for more information!), but it's assured that we're going to be getting BACK into the fight for marriage equality. With the recent vote of the State Legislature folks are coming forward more committed than ever.

I want to make two points that just keep coming up for me in all of the debate around this issue:

First, some people say that "marriage" must be reserved for heterosexuals because "the purpose of marriage is procreation." If that's really true, then people who bear children out of wedlock, and folks like my wife and me who are married but unable to conceive children, are likewise a threat to the institution of marriage. Until the opponents of marriage equality begin a campaign to somehow deal with these two groups I will always suspect that this isn't their real concern.

Second, when opponents of marriage equality talk about the "sanctity of marriage" being under attack by gays and lesbians who want their unions to be recognized and don't also demonize adulterers and batterers and, for that matter, the producers of "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" I also find their arguments less than convincing. Which is more destructive of a sense of the sacredness of the institution--no-fault divorce or a couple of women who've been committed to one another for over thirty years wanting to get married? I get the idea that the "sanctity of marriage" isn't really what's worrying them, either.

The last point I want to make is not mine, but Welton Gaddy's. Rev. Gaddy is President of the Interfaith Alliance, a Baptist minister, and host of State of Belief a weekly radio show that airs on AirAmerica Radio. At the time the so-called Defense of Marriage Act was being debated he wrote:

“For those people who want to protect marriage, let me offer a few suggestions: Raise the public’s consciousness of the dignity and importance of women in our still deeply patriarchal society; increase the minimum wage and offer tax breaks to the working poor so that spouses can see each other for quality lengths of time, rather than briefly passing on their way to two jobs; encourage family planning; start a plan to deal with domestic violence; and work to cover mental health care in medical insurance policies so serious emotional difficulties can be prevented from tearing marriages apart.”

But somehow I get the feeling that "defending marriage" isn't really the issue that they're talking about either.

Hmmmmm. I wonder what is.

In Gassho,

Rev. Wik

At the End of Our Rope

The deposed leader of Iraq Saddam Hussein has been hanged before the eyes of the world--quite literally, because of a leaked videotape of the hanging. Called a brutal dictator, a murder, responsible for untold crimes against his neighbors and his own people, his removal from power has been the retrofitted reason the Bush administration has given for our invasion of Iraq. (Before the war, you may recall, it was because of "weapons of mass destruction;" after no such weapons were found, the rationale morphed into "regime change.")

His death may well be justice for his crimes; the world may in fact be better of without Saddam Hussein in it. I am in no position to judge. But the image of a man falling to his death at the end of a rope in a world where that image can be captured on a cell phone and almost instantaneously sent around the world via the Internet--that upsets me. It's like one of those episodes of Star Trek when Kirk and company land on a planet with tremendously futuristic technology on which everyone nonetheless acts as if it's Earth's "old west." The juxtaposition is jarring. What are we doing hanging people--anyone--in the twenty-first century?

Albert Einstein once famously said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” When will we learn that war is not the way to make peace? That fear and hatred cannot bring a shift to love? That murder--even state sanctioned murder, even for one who deserves to die--is simply not right?

I hope it's soon enough because at times I fear that it's we who are at the end of our rope.

in gassho,

RevWik

The Golden Rule

I recently moved to Massachusetts, proud to be living in the first state in Union to recognize that there is no legal impediment to two people--regardless of gender--joining their lives in marriage. Folks may have their own moral, religious, and/or philosophical perspectives--it is still a free country, after all--but from a purely legal standpoint there's no reason heterosexual couples and homosexual couples should be treated differently.

Today the state legislature voted to move forward a proposed ammendment to the language of the state constitution which would define marriage as between one man and one woman. I'm hearted to note that the vote was 61 for to 132 against, but still the measure needed only 50 votes to move forward.

I wish they'd read my recent editorial in the Cape Cod Times. (You have to scroll down a bit to get there, but it's there: "Two dimensions of marriage.") Or, if not me, I wish they'd listened to our state's Governor-elect, Deval Patrick, who said:

"Above all, this is a question of conscience. Using the initiative process to give a minority fewer freedoms than the majority, and to inject the state into fundamentally private affairs, is a dangerous precedent, and an unworthy one for this Commonwealth," he said in a statement. "I hope by whatever means appropriate, the constitutional convention today ends this debate."

But it won't, of course. As with the debates around abolition, and women's sufferage, and civil rights for African Americans, this debate will continue. Why, though, in this nation which so many continue to call a "Christian nation" is it so hard for folks to put into practice what Jesus taught as the heart and soul of his message: do unto others as you would have others do unto you? (Or, as another religious tradition puts it, what you would not have someone do to you, do not do that to someone else.)

Yours in Gassho,

RevWik

How are we doing?

It has been said by some that God created the world in six days, completing the task and resting on the seventh. One week, and all that is was brought into being. Evidence that suggests--strongly suggests--that millenia were involved and that a laborious process of trial and error and chance and adaptation--in other words, "evolution"--is dismissed as being too flimsy to stand against the revealed word of God. (A pretty conclusive way of closing down the argument.) And so people who're open to the discoveries and insights of modern science have often turned their backs on religion since so many religious folks have clearly turned their backs on science.

There are, of course, many religious people who do not find these two worldviews to be incompatible. As with poetry and prose, or classical music and jazz, the same thing can be expressed in different ways and science and religion can be seen as two different lenses offering different ways of looking at the world around and within us. Genesis can be seen as a poetic interpretation of the world's evolution and humanity can be seen as co-creator with the divine in the on-going creation of the world.

I came across sad evidence of humanity's creativity. A new island has emerged in the Pacific Ocean, partway between California and Hawaii. It is roughly twice the size of Texas. And it is entirely made up of pastic bags, fishing nets, empty bottles--garbage. Called the Eastern Garbage Patch it is yet another piece of evidence of human civilization gone wild.

Whether God created the world and appointed us stewards, or we are co-creators, we need to be doing a better job.

in Gassho,

Rev. Wik

Talk About Line Dancing!

Sometimes we human beings are capable of the most sublime vision. Think of the image of one person dancing alone. Now add a partner. Now two or three more. Now see in your mind's eye a hundred people dancing together. Now several hundred.

Now imagine that while those several hundred people are dancing together there are, somewhere nearby, another group dancing. And not that far away, another. Don't you get a sense of the increase in power and connectedness?

On Saturday, June 24th, at 7:00 pm, dancers in seven sites along the Mississippi River--from the headwaters at Lake Itasca to the delta at Plaquemines Parish--will join together in a dance over two thousand miles long! Radio stations in each of the seven cities will simulcast, so that dancers in one place can actually call to, and be heard by, dancers in another. It will be the largest site specific, free dance performance ever.

This just makes me happy. Like the millennial New Years' Eve with its synchronized coverage celebrating midnight as it moved across the globe, the idea of people dancing together along the entire length of the mighty Mississippi fills me with hope. Sure, no one is being fed or clothed. People will be homeless still, and racism and other oppressions will not cease. But what an inspiring manifestation of coming together; what a promise of what's possible when we engage our creativity and ask "why not?" instead of saying "we can't."

For more information on this incredible event, look up One River Mississippi.

In Gassho,

RevWik