The Mirror Has Been Held Up. Are We Brave Enough To Look?

This is the text of the entire service held Wednesday evening, February 28, 2018.  It was to have been a service celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the Congregation -- there was to have been a time for families together, a community dinner, a service of celebration, and ... cake!  A racist event which took place earlier in the week demanded a change of plans.  Simply, how could we sit around together, eating cake, when something like this happened within, and from within, the very community we were to be celebrating?  The celebration has not been canceled, but it has been postponed, because congregational leadership recognized that what we really needed at this time was an honest look at what happened, and what it says about our community.  [I will be reflecting on these themes further in my sermon this coming Sunday.]

GREETINGS

Good evening.  This was to be a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of this congregation.  But then, just three days ago, on Monday morning, our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, was doing her job, going through the mail that had accumulated over the weekend.  Along with the bills and the solicitations there was a plain piece of paper which said,

“quit your whining.  it’s always about racism with you.  you have a job to do do it.  we went into debt for your full time and now you complain?  your kids must be so proud at least they are just half and maybe they are learning from their dad.  you should be thankful and get to working.”

Someone had had those thoughts about a member of our staff, a fellow Unitarian Universalist, about another human being, and that person apparently thought that it was okay to type those thoughts up, print them out, and place them, anonymously, into the mailbox on Chris’ door.  It seems virtually certain that whoever did this is a member of the congregation, and it appears likely that they committed this undeniably and inexcusably racist act on Sunday.  With the knowledge of this hateful incident swirling around us, this just doesn’t seem like the time to be celebrating.

Yet our history is not irrelevant to what’s happening now.  75 years ago today 15 women and men declared that they wanted to be – that they were – a church.  The woman who started it all by placing a classified ad in The Daily Progress had been told that it was unlikely a town as small as Charlottesville was then would be able to create and nurture a Unitarian congregation.  She was, in fact, discouraged from trying to do this.  Yet, as she said at the time in a letter to a friend, “I am not easily discouraged and we can see what we can do.” 

Carrie Baker was not easily discouraged, and throughout the 75 years of our existence this congregation has shown time and time again that we are not “easily discouraged” either.  It hasn’t always been smooth sailing – there have been times when events in the wider world or right here in the congregation have caused real uneasiness and distress; times when the ordained minister or the lay leadership were taking the congregation in a direction not everyone wanted to go; times when support (financial and otherwise) dropped off precipitously; times when even beloved members felt the need to break off their connection to this place and these people; times when we have disappointed one another, hurt one another, damaged one another and it seemed that the fabric of the community was being damaged, too … perhaps damaged beyond repair.  Yet in looking back over the history of this congregation it is clear that while we have no doubt been discouraged more than a few times, we have yet to be so discouraged as to truly give up on one another.

WORDS OF WELCOME   

Adam Slate, the President of our Board of Trustees, likes to say that he looks at this church as a family.  What we witnessed this week is not how families – is not how healthy families – behave.  It’s not who we say we are, or want to be.

Each Sunday morning we say with one another Words of Welcome that are intended to describe the kind of community we wish to be, a community that, as I often say, “welcomes all who would work to make this a world in which all are welcome.”  So I’d invite us to say those words together now:

Whoever you are, Whomever you love,
However you express your identity;
Whatever your situation in life,
Whatever your experience of the holy,
Your presence here is a gift.
Whether you are filled with sadness,
Overflowing with joy,
Needing to be alone with yourself,
Or eager to engage with others,
You have a place here.
We all have a place here.
We all are welcome here.                                      

LIGHTING THE CHALICE 

We kindle a flame of power, illuminating the Holy in each of our faces.
We recognize in the flame a passionate commitment to our shared faith.
We are held and carried from day to day, week to week, in the shining of the light.
This flame is mine, as well as yours.
We are brought together on this day, called to growth, to expansion, within its glow.
What does your heart know while beholding this holy fire?
~ Adrian L.H. Graham

I invite you to think about that question as James plays our Prelude, to think about what your heart knows while you behold this holy fire here tonight.

PRELUDE

REFLECTION

In the first sermon delivered here, in the then brand-new building, the Rev. Malcolm Sutherland said this:

You are invited to draw your attention to the fact that in all its simplicity and its beauty, this building is not a church.  It was designed to serve a church.  It was designed to make more effective a church.  It was designed to inspire a church.  But it is not a church.

You are the church .  […]

So we are not opening a church this morning.. We are opening a home for our church.  This physical home is fully worthy of our highest aspirations.  The question is simply – can we prove ourselves worthy of our new home?

If it is to be a beautiful church – as beautiful as its home – it will be because you are living beautiful lives.  And how we need beauty today:  there is ugliness and distortion enough. 

How we need beauty today:  there is ugliness and distortion enough.

He said in that first sermon that to be a church worthy of this beautiful home we would need to be strong, significant, courageous, fearless, and devoted.  In his last sermon here he said that the congregation needed to ask itself (as each of us individually needs to ask ourselves, he was quick to point out):  Why is it so damned hard to live up to and out from our values?  Again and again he returned to the question, “Why don’t we?”   Why don’t we do the things we know we should do?  Why aren’t we being the kind of people we know we want to be?  Why don’t we take the kind of risks we know our faith calls us to?  Why don’t we really, deeply trust each other more than we do?  Why don’t we recognize how much we, ourselves, have to change, instead of focusing so much of our attention on the ways other folks are falling short? 

I’m not even necessarily talking about the “big things” here.  The obvious things.  The things we can justifiably say we are doing, or which we can honestly say simply aren’t possible for us to do.  I’m really talking about all of the little ways we betray ourselves, betray our values, don’t do the something that we could have done.  Why don’t we do those things?  But all of these questions really boil down to one: Why don’t we live our faith?

I don’t know how any of you would respond to that question, but I know that I am chastened, humbled.  And I know that it really gets real when I stop myself from asking these questions of the vague “we” and, instead, force myself to ask them only of myself.  Why don’t I?  Because it’s easier not to.  Why don’t I?  Because I already feel overstretched, and my life can be hard enough as it is.  Why don’t I?  Because I figure someone else is going to do it, and it’s not really my problem.  Why don’t I?  Because I’m not so bad, right?  I mean, other people are a lot worse than me – look at those guys over there!  Why don’t I?  Because I’m afraid that I’ll be rejected somehow if I do.  Why don’t I?  Because I’m comfortable the way things are, and I know – I know – that if I do I’ll be less comfortable.  Why don’t I?  That’s a question worth pondering. 

The last words of Malcolm’s last sermon to this congregation were the question:  “Why don’t we?”.

The person who anonymously wrote and then delivered that hateful (and hate-filled) message to Chris has done something reprehensible – and they dragged Christina’s two incredible boys and her lovely husband into it.  What this person did is inexcusable, and I cannot say clearly or forcefully enough that such behavior will not be tolerated – can not be tolerated if we’re who we say we are.  The person who sent that message has placed themselves so far outside the boundaries of our covenant that I can’t imagine how they can say the words “Beloved Community,” or “inherent worth and dignity,” without bursting into flame because of the blaspheme of their hypocrisy.

Yet I need to say with equal clarity and conviction that the rest of us are not without responsibility for what happened this week.  Each of us, all of us – and I do mean “us,” myself no less than anyone else, maybe even more so because of my role here – we all have to recognize our complicity, because some how we have allowed a climate, an atmosphere, an environment to exist in which something like this can happen.  A climate in which one of us could believe this violent racist act was okay.

What happened this week is the most egregious, yet it’s not the only example of what we have allowed to grow in our community.  I talked several weeks ago at some length in my sermon about how upset some members of the congregation were about my January report to the Board. I shared that several of the people who were upset had contacted the Board and/or the Committee on the Ministry to share their feelings, as well they should have. You may or may not know, however, that someone else created an anonymous email account, and then sent an anonymous email, seemingly for the express purpose of directing a select group of congregants to check out that report, and then, after sending that email, immediately closed the account.  Let me be clear – the anonymous nature of this act was not okay.  Sharing my Board report and encouraging others to read it – fine.  Essential to the honest life of our community, actually.  It’s doing so anonymously, having no accountability and taking no responsibility – that is what’s out of covenant.

People expressed their dismay over this person’s behavior, of course, yet it really shouldn’t have been too surprising.  We think it unfortunate, yet accept, that there are groups of congregants who get together informally to talk with each other about their concerns and complaints.  They do this outside of any committee or leadership structure – which is why these have often been called “parking lot conversations.” And because they do this “offline,” as it were, there is no accountability to the larger congregation.  None of this is secret, yet no one calls them back into covenant – and they are out of covenant because they rarely, if ever, actually try to reach out to the people they’re concerned or complaining about.  Please make no mistake, we give this behavior our tacit approval each time one of us says that we really wish this kind of thing wasn’t happening but we engage in it ourselves, or see others doing it, and do not say directly and forthrightly that such behavior is out of covenant, that it’s not constructive, that it’s destructive and has no place in our Unitarian Universalist community.

Please hear that I am not saying any of this to divide us, to make this about any kind of “us” and “them.”   My goal, instead, is quite the opposite – I’m saying what I’m saying because I want to help us be more unified, with a clearer and deeper understanding of just what it means, and just what it takes, to be who we say we are and want to be.  That’s my job here.  So I’m going to take this a little further, knowing that I’ll upset some people.  (Knowing that I already have.)  We show our tacit approval of anonymous notes in people’s mailboxes every time we insist that members of the congregation must have the option of giving feedback anonymously in surveys, questionnaires, and communications with the Committee on the Ministry.  I’ve heard the argument that some people are afraid to attach their name to their opinions, that they won’t feel comfortable or safe if they have to sign their name.  But if that’s really the case, our community has much greater problems than whatever it is the person’s complaining about. 

If we have not created a community in which people know that it’s safe to express themselves, no matter who they disagree with; a congregation in which we hold one another – and want to be held, ourselves – accountable for our behavior; in which we can be clear that there are things antithetical to our values and our visions, that not everything is welcome – then we have created a community in which someone can feel okay about leaving an anonymous note that a Klansman would be proud to have written in the mailbox of one of our staff members.

Back in Divinity School I learned that the Biblical word Christians translate into English as “sin” is actually seven or eight words, each with its own meaning.  One is, “sitting down when I should have stood up,” and I know that I am guilty of that.  And I’ll say without hesitation or apology, that I know everyone else in here is, too.  Can anyone honestly say that they have never let pass a racist joke, or some behind-their-back gossip, or some subtle or not-so-subtle bullying behavior, or someone shutting someone else down, or any other kind of behavior that you knew was not what we’d be doing as a community if we were at our best?  If we’re really honest with ourselves, how can we not recognize that we all share culpability?

I am sure that some of you may be feeling castigated, attacked, reprimanded and chastised.  I understand because, remember, I’ve also been talking to and about myself this whole time.  I haven’t laid anything on any of you that I haven’t also laid on myself.  And even as I’m saying this I’m feeling uneasy and a little bit defensive.  But I have learned that sometimes – maybe even often – the umbrage we feel when someone points out our flaws and failings is an incredibly effective deflection device.  I get angry at you for saying harsh things about me rather than taking the opportunity to listen with an open mind and heart, and then to ask myself, deeply and sincerely, if there might be any truth in what you’ve said. 

Oh that’s hard.  That’s really, really hard.  It is so much easier to just write you off.  But we can’t write this off, friends.  Our covenant doesn’t call on us to be so kind to one another that people believe – even unconsciously – that they can get away with saying or doing just about anything.  Our covenant calls us, as Malcolm Sutherland said that first morning in this space, to be “strong, significant, courageous, fearless, and devoted” to the values and visions of our faith.  A mirror has been held up for us to look at ourselves.  My questions is whether we are brave enough to look at what it shows us.

A TIME OF SILENCE, CANDLES, AND SAND

There is no question – the work of building Beloved Community is hard.  It’s dirty.  It’s bruising.  We’ll hunger and thirst.  Yet it is the work we have committed ourselves to doing; it’s the work we have been called on to do.  But it’s not work we can do in the head alone, and there have been a lot of words tonight (and there are still a few more to come).  So why don’t we now, as we do each Sunday, take a time for silence, a time for letting go of the words, letting go of the thoughts, and getting down into the feelings.  After a time I will invite the chime to sound, and some of us may feel the urge to come forward to light Candles of Hope and Remembrance, or write in the Sands of Forgiveness and Atonement.  Others may choose to stay right where you are now, continuing to hold the silence and the stillness in your body as well as your heart.  Through all of this, James will play, and when this time is done, we will move directly into singing together the hymn so many feel as a prayer, “#123, “Spirit of Life.”

HYMN:  #123, “Spirit of Life”

LITANY: THE PROMISE THAT BINDS  (By Viola Abbitt)

About a month ago we joined with Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country in designing our worship experience so that the voices of black Unitarian Universalists were centered, so that the experiences of black Unitarian Universalists could be heard, without comment or qualifiers, without interpretation, within the discomfort which that caused for many of us – us UUs who identify as white who’d never experienced our faith in those ways.  Who’d never imagined that it could be experienced in those ways.  Many of us left that service stunned, saddened, and unable to un-see or un-hear what we’d heard and seen that morning.

One of the elements of that service was a litany written by Viola Abbitt which she calls “The Promise That Binds.”  I would note that there are three different responses in your Order of Service.  Each is subtly different, and those differences are important.  (We’ll say the first response several times, and I’ll give you a visual clue when it’s time to change to the second, and then to the third.)

Loving inclusion has been an elusive goal within our congregations.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.

 Many hearts have been, and often continue to be, broken, time and again.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.

The names of many of those of us who helped to make this denomination great were erased, their existence forgotten.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.

The pulpits and pews which should have been warm and welcoming, were instead sometimes cold and unforgiving.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.

People who were considered pillars in their communities, were sometimes considered pariahs within the walls of our congregations.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love.

Many of us straddle two worlds: one of filiation and one of faith.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should be enough to bind us together in love.

Our beauty is that we are all different, and yet not different from one another.  None of us should be considered exceptions, nor should we be subjected to baseless assumptions.

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should be enough to bind us together in love.

The future of this faith is reliant on and belongs to all who embrace religious liberalism. Let us never forget that…

We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, is enough to bind us together in love.

OFFERING

If we really want to make a difference, if we really want to see real change so that we can become who we know we need to be – as individuals, as congregations, and as a movement – then we need to not only appreciate those who have for far too long been marginalized members of our communities, we have to actively support them.  Our offering tonight – and again this Sunday, as well – will be dedicated to helping a newly formed organization within our Unitarian Universalist Association: the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism Organizing Collective.  As a national ministry for and by black-identified Unitarian Universalists, BLUU embodies a liberating community of all ages. A community that lifts up the lives, and stories and the leadership of those who have been marginalized and silenced. A community that brings hope, when hope is hard to find. And a community that calls us to wrestle with the gap between our theology and our practice in the world.

In October of 2016, the UUA Board of Trustees made a bold $5.3 million commitment to fund black leaders in Unitarian Universalism, and to support ministry to black-identified Unitarian Universalists. In the late 1960s, our Association was asked to take steps to address the silencing and marginalization of Black Unitarian Universalists. Though there was an initial affirmation of this commitment, it ultimately went unfulfilled and the promise was broken.  This commitment of the UUA Board is, in part, an attempt to fulfill that promise.

Tonight, I am asking you to help fulfill this promise. This effort needs your help.  Please be as generous as you can.

DEDICATION OF THE OFFERING

We accept these gifts with gratitude.

May we use them wisely, and for the highest good.

HYMN:  #1, “May Nothing Evil Cross This Door”

BENEDICTION & EXTINGUISHING THE CHALICE  

Each Sunday our Benediction begins, "Go out into the world in peace."  But I can't say that tonight.  Dr. King said that there are some things to which we all should be maladjusted.  So ... Go out into the world maladjusted.   Have courage.  Hold on to what is good.  Return to no person evil for evil, strengthen the fainthearted, support the weak, help the suffering, and be who you know you should be, and help us be who we know we should be.  There is so much ugliness and distortion in the world.  Blessed Be.

POSTLUDE  

This came to one of us, from one of us.  We MUST do better!

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Does the Government Have an Obligation to "The Least of These"?: a response to Rush Limbaugh

A few days ago, during the visit of the Pope to the US, Rush Limbaugh asked a question on his show.  He said that he wasn't asking it rhetorically, that he really was curious and wanted to know.  I assume that the people who read through what must be a tremendous volume of correspondence will never pass this on to him, yet I'll send it to him nonetheless.  I thought I'd post my musing here, too.

Limbaugh's question was this, "Is there anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says that the government should help people?  Or does he say that individuals should help one another?"  I've heard other conservative pundits ask this same question and, obviously, their implication is the same -- that the moral argument of the government doing anything to address income inequality (and its related social consequences) is fundamentally misguided.  Jesus told people to help one another.  He didn't tell people to ask the government to do it.

I've heard this assertion put forward enough times that when Rush recently did as well I found myself really musing over it.  He's right, of course, as far as it goes and as far as I know.  I do not believe that Jesus is remember as every saying that it was the job of government to take care of the people.  But here's what else I know:

First, it seems obvious to me that we don't really know what Jesus said.  He didn't have a stenographer following him around.  Instead, people told one another what they remembered him as saying.  Those people told other people and the telling of the stories continued for a hundred years or so until people began to write them down.  Those writings, then, went through a myriad of translations -- not just among various languages but also through the eyes of people with different understandings and purposes.  What we have to look at today, then, is the heavily interpreted memory of people's memories of earlier people's remembrances of what Jesus said.  While I know that this is generally identified as liberal interpretation of Scripture, I also don't believe that Rush and the others are among those who believe the alternative theory that the New Testament texts were originally dictated by God for inerrant word, and that God has since guided the efforts of all of the many translators.

Second, even if you do subscribe to the idea that the Christian scriptures are not just "God-inspired" texts but "God-written" texts, you still can't claim to know everything that Jesus said.  After all, in the Gospel of John (21:25) it is written, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."  So ... did Jesus ever say that the government had a responsibility to care for its citizens?  We don't know, and never will, because, "Jesus did many other things as well."

Third, the question itself is flawed.  The government of Jesus' time was the local branch, if you will, of the occupying Roman government.  It was not the government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."  It was an occupying force that obliterated the governing structures of the Jewish people themselves.  When the Jews did have their own independent nation the Prophets did call the government to task for not taking care of the people -- especially the poor and the strangers among them.  And Jesus is remembered as revering the Prophets, and is remembered as chastising the closest thing the Jews had to their own government -- the Temple structure.  Remember his condemnation of the money changers, and the entire system that upheld the Temple hierarchy?  (If not, re-read Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-48, and John 2:12-25)  Think of the many times he called the Pharisees and Scribes to account for not caring for the poor and the suffering -- these stories are not remembrances of his just talking to and about individuals, but of his critique of those who held power.  So, it is apparently possible to demonstrate that Jesus is remembered as saying that it was the responsibility of "the powers that be" to take care of its people.  But if you want to be strict in your interpretation and limit yourself to whether or not he spoke of the official government, the government of Rome, it is a false parallel to whether or not he would call our own government to account.

Fourth, there is not only the fact that the occupying Roman government is not an appropriate analog to our democratic government today, there is also a difference of scope.  Jesus lived his entire life in an area smaller than the state of Vermont.  It is one thing to expect the poor and the suffering to be cared for by individuals alone in such a small geographic area, but when we're talking about the entire United States?  Our problems are incredibly larger, more complex, and more intimately intertwined than could possibly be handled on a local lever alone.  The reasons people are hungry, and homeless, and in a myriad of other ways in need are national in scope.  Whatever Jesus is remembered as having said he said in and to his own people in his own time and place.  A community the size of the United States was never, could never have been, imagined.

Fifth, the closet followers of Jesus, those whose stories are told in the Book of Acts, organized their communities with care for one another a foundational principle.  It is written of them that,
  "all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need." (Acts 2:45).  Further, it is remembered that, "[T]he congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. ... there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.…" (Acts 4:32 & 34)  Apparently this egalitarian, some might even say "socialist," approach so seriously that we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) in which two of the community who decided to hold back some of their wealth for themselves were struck dead as a result.  If Rush and the others are really suggesting that we look to the teachings of Jesus to inform our social structures, this is the way those who are remembered as knowing him best organized themselves.  

Finally, after the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 C.E., and the formation of what, by the 13th century would come to be called "the Holy Roman Empire," we did see a government that at least in name was rooted in Christian principles.  In a book called Germany and the Holy Roman Empire the author notes that there was imperial legislation in 1530, 1548, and 1577 that, "obliged all rulers to take care of their poor," and that, "even in times of crisis, measures that almost all governments had in place undoubtedly brought relief to many.  The deserving poor were neither demonized nor criminalized."  Did Jesus say, specifically, that governments should take care of the poor?  Not that I can tell if we're being strictly precise, but it does seem that those governments that claimed to be following his teachings and example felt that they should do so.

And that, I suppose, is the ultimate response I have to Limbaugh's question:  even if Jesus did not specifically say that governments had to take care of the poor; even if he did intend to limit his overwhelmingly undeniable and inescapable emphasis on mercy, compassion, and "the least of these;" even if we capitulate to all of that ... why not do it anyway?  What is the government?  Representatives of the people, and, for that matter, a just a group of people.  Why should they not feel the same obligations that individual people are supposed to have just because they have come together as "government."  (Specifically, to quote Lincoln again, a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people.)  Some may wonder if Jesus ever said that the government should be obliged to take care of its own poor and needy.  I'll just ask in return, "Did he ever say it shouldn't"?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

If You're Lucky, You'll Read This Book!

James Ishmael Ford has just published a new book:  If You're Lucky, Your Heart Will Break:  Field Notes from a Zen Life.  (Wisdom Publications, 2012.)   It follows on the heels of the anthology he co-edited, The Book of Mu:  essential writings on zen's most important koan (Wisdom Publications, 2011), and sits on my shelf right next to his earlier Zen Master Who?  A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen (Wisdom Publications, 2006) and his essential in this very moment:  a simple guide to Zen Buddhism (Skinner House, 2002, 1996).  James is a prolific writer.  (Check out his blog Monkey Mind!)

He's also a unique figure in the sphere of liberal religion.  A Soto Zen Priest, he is also a Unitarian Universalist minister.  If anyone can be said to be involved in the evolution of Buddhism as it encounters the 21st century West, James is the guy.  And in his new book he offers notes on his forty years of being in the middle of it.

And by "it" I mean both Western, or as James calls it, Liberal Buddhism and also the Big IT -- Life.  As I noted in my review on Amazon, in If You're Lucky James manages to write an informative history of Buddhism, an analysis of modern Western Buddhism, and profound teachings on what I've always called The Big Questions.

There is so much in this little book.  I know that I'll be digesting what I've read for a good long while.  Already I can see some of my thinking shifting because of it.

Here's one example.  It's not exactly paradigmatic of the book as a whole, but it is a passage that hit me like a kick in the chest when I first read these three lines.  (But in a good way.)

"We are responsible in a way no other creature I'm aware of is.  We have eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and we have become as gods.  And that godlike quality is responsibility." (p.121)

That's it.  A mere 38 words, and my understanding of God, of myself, and of my place in the universe is forever changed.  It hit me like one of those optical illusions where you see one image if you focus on the foreground and something all together different if your focus is the background.  Usually at first I stare and stare and stare, able to only see one of the two images.  I am honestly unable to see anything but the thing I first see.  And then something shifts.  Or, maybe, everything shifts.  The second image comes into view and I can never not see it again.

That's how this passage affected me -- "that godlike quality is responsibility."  Somehow, out of all of the ways I've heard people describing that thing some call God, I don't think that the word "responsible" has ever been uttered.  And when I've heard people trying to make sense of the idea that "we are made in the image of God," I've heard a lot of talk about how we share the trait of Creativity, or Compassion, or even the Ability to Will, but I've never heard someone say that we're made in the image of God because we, also, are Responsible.

As I said, I need to digest this.  I need to sit with it for a while.  Maybe a long while.  But here are two things that I see right now:

First, it removes for me the capriciousness that is sometimes attributed to "God."  Sometimes it is unintentional and accidental, and sometimes it seems to verge on purposive, but the way people often talk about God implies that God can -- and does -- do anything he/she/it wants.  Because God is declared to be omnipotent -- all powerful, able to do anything -- God can act on God's own whims.  Of course, the whims of God are usually described as making up some kind of cosmic plan, yet so many different things are attributed to God's doing -- everything from hurricanes to Super Bowl victories -- that it certainly seems to me that God doesn't really have a plan after all or that, at least, it's a very unfocused one.

Yet if the quality that describes God best is "responsibility," then that changes everything.  It offers proof, if you will, that three quarters of the things attributed to God's will are not.  Because a truly responsible God would behave a lot differently than Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps would have us believe.  A truly responsible God might be worth . . . well . . . might be worth calling "God."

And if we are "made in God's image," and if our "eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" has, indeed, "made us as gods," and if what changed for us is that now we are responsible, than that makes "responsibility" part of my essential make up.  It makes "responsibility" part of the essence of my humanity.  And this, too, changes everything.  Because the word "responsible" implies, to me at least, a mutual relationship, a sense of equality.  I cannot be responsible to or with someone or something that I see myself as either "above" or "below."  Being responsible, it seems to me, recognizing my innate responsibility in life, is acknowledging that there's a claim on me.  It is a companion to freedom (and free will) and, in many ways, a corrective.

I like books that make me think.  I like books that encourage me to think in new ways.  I like If You're Lucky, Your Heart Will Break very, very much.  I hope you will read it to.

In Gassho,

RevWik