Spirituality or Religion?

I often hear people say that personal expressions of spirituality are all to the good, but religion? Not so much.

Recently my friend and blogger Martha Woodroof, one of my favorite commentators on WMRA radio, expressed that sentiment eloquently as follows (and which I share with her permission):

I am a person of faith who is not religious. By this I mean that while I live in partnership with God, the great Whatever, I claim no knowledge of God's relatives, nature and modus operandi. I believe that everything about God beyond the simple fact of Its existence and availability is beyond my understanding and so beyond the scope of my words. I make no claim to wisdom of any kind about God, only to experience with God....

So . . . with all due respect, it seems to me desperately wasteful, arrogant and cowardly for us humans to argue so much about religion.... Missing from most of these battles is any recognition that if God is, God is also beyond our comprehension. ...

Arguing about God is, of course, much less troublesome and anxiety-provoking than taking on the demands and responsibilities of a partnership with the Almighty. Indeed, the challenges of any organized religion (or those other God-in-a-box concepts, atheism and agnosticism) begin to seem like effortless glides on greased grooves when compared to the challenges of living one's faith. Perhaps that's why there's been a great deal of public wrangling about the fine points of religion and very little useful public exploration of what it means to live and work together--in this world at this time--as persons of faith.

My response to her on the above focuses on what a “public exploration of what it means to live and work together--in this world at this time--as persons of faith,” might entail, as follows:

Martha, some kind of organized "religion" seems to me to be a necessary thing whenever people covenant together to explore and exercise their faith in difference-making and life-enhancing ways. In other words, one could think of “religion” being to a faith community much like skin is to any other living organism--not its primary essence, but something that serves as a defining boundary between that particular "body" or community of faith and those who choose not to espouse this faith or world view. But a group's skin can be seen as a living and flexible thing, not necessarily an arbitrary or rigid barrier.

I do see personal "faith" as she defines it being absolutely essential for the healthy spiritual life of an individual, of course, but if we want to help form, as I do, communities of compassion--spiritual kinfolks who look after each other's needs and reach out to the needs of others--we will of necessity have to define who we are and what our common vision and values are. That effort can certainly result in something that is stifling and limiting, but it can also represent an evolving consensus of a group that seeks to constantly stretch, learn and grow together. Certain skin cells die and are discarded while others grow in their place, but some kind of skin necessarily remains intact. So spirituality might be to religion what a wineskin is to the wine it contains, a metaphor Jesus himself once used.

In summary, there are faith communities that represent a kind of "bad religion" we both dislike, the kind that limit life, creativity and growth. Then there are those that are examples of "better religion" that promote and nurture the kinds of love and compassion so lacking in our warring and suffering world. In any case, better religion, as I idealize it in my own human Anabaptist/Mennonite/Christian tradition, never imposes itself on anyone, never inflicts harm on anyone and never seeks to dominate or coerce anyone.

The hoped for result, in the case of my own very imperfect denomination, would be to help its member churches learn better how to “... grow as communities of grace, joy and peace, so  that God’s healing and hope may flow though us to the world.”

The Wise-Self/Worried-Self Journal

For any of us dealing with an overload of anxiety, anger or depression, I suggest using a journal as a daily “Worry Book”  in which we do what I call “double-entry journaling.”

Here’s how it works:

On one side of an open journal page we write down our worst fears, worries, angers, griefs or negative beliefs. We record these in raw, unedited form, just as they are repeating themselves endlessly in our mind. This step can help us identify, externalize and vent the negative messages that are coming from our fear-based “worried self.” Putting these distressing, repetitive thoughts and beliefs on paper helps us examine them more objectively to see if they pass the truth, faith and reasonableness test.

Examples of negative, "worried self" statements:

“I’m always messing up. Nothing I do or say ever comes out right.”

“My boss has it in for me. Everybody else at work gets treated better than I do.”

“Everything is just so hopeless. Life is totally unfair, and there’s not any use even trying to make things better.”

When we’re finished getting these off our chest we turn to the opposite page and write responses to each of our expressions of distress or fear, this time speaking from our “wise self.” This doesn’t mean writing down a lot of Pollyannish platitudes simply to make us feel better. Rather, we respond in the same way we would if this worried or depressed person were some other valued friend or family member we really cared about.

Here are some examples of “wise self” responses to the above:

“I’m human, so I do mess up sometimes. But of course I say and do some things right, too, and when I goof up, I can always learn from my mistakes.”

“My boss is unreasonable sometimes, for sure, but that’s his/her problem. My problem is knowing how to either ignore her/him when s/he’s having a bad day, confront him/her about it, or find myself another job.”

“I guess not everything is hopeless, even though some things do seem unfair. With God’s help and with the support of other good people, I can at least do my best to make my life worthwhile.”

When we’re finished reflecting on all that is unreasonably negative (on the left page), and finished affirming alternatives that are reasonably positive (on the right page), we close our “Worry Book” and set it aside, having done as much as we feel we can for the time being. Then whenever we need to, if not on a daily basis, we return to the book, review what we’ve written on both sides of the ledger, add to each column whatever is current, and again close it and set it aside. And then go about living under the guidance of our wise, faith-based and fear-free self to the best of our ability.

Living from our more reasonable, faith- and truth-based side won’t rid us of all our problems, but it  can go a long way to reduce, if not always eliminate, a lot of the anxiety or distress associated with them.

Bottom line: The truth is our friend, and will set us free. If it isn’t freeing us, it probably isn’t the truth.

For another helpful practice for the anxious: https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2017/11/rx-for-anxious-dedicated-worry-hour.html

Grouchiness or Gratitude?

In an episode on Sesame Street, Oscar the Grouch sings this lament,

“Grouches of the world unite! 
Stand up for your grouchly rights! 
Don't let the sunshine spoil the rain, 
Just stand up and complain (heheheh).

“Let this be the grouches' cause: 
Point out everybody's flaws! 
Something is wrong with everything
Except the way I sing!” 

This is followed by the Grouch Choir ooing in the background, then Oscar, in a speaking voice, saying,

“You know what's right with this world? Nuttin! You know what gets me hot under the collar? You name it! And the next time some goody-two-shoes smiles and tells you to have a nice day, just remember:

“Don't let the sunshine spoil the rain, 
Just stand up and complain! 
Just stand up and complain!”

Sometimes I've heard similar sentiments (expressed in ways that are far less humorous!) by people like ourselves, folks in the top 5% of the most well-to-do people in the world, relatively rich by almost any measure.

This not to say we should just paste on a smile when we are truly suffering or in need, nor that an honest venting of a good lament isn’t in order at times. In fact, a third of the psalms in our Hebrew Bible are at least in part laments, but they are mostly by people who are living in third world conditions, always only a step away from extreme want. Yet even these laments tend to evolve into some kind of affirmation of how good God is in spite of everything, and of how important it is to wrap ourselves in as much gratitude as possible.

Her Price is Far Above Rubies

We just got back from an overnight 47th anniversary getaway, marred only by my waking up this morning with a bad case of vertigo.

Of all days, I asked myself, why did I have to be plagued with this illness? Here we were at a nice Quality Inn and I have a recurrence of all of the unpleasant symptoms of my Meniere's Disease--not fatal but just extremely annoying--resulting in periodic cases of vertigo that result in severe nausea and the inability to stay on ones feet. The whole world spins around you and you have to lie flat on your bed or risk a nasty fall if you try to get up and walk around unattended.

There goes the rest of our mini-vacation, I thought, and in one way it did. But it also proved again how blessed I am to be married to a wonderfully caring wife. As always, Alma Jean rose, no soared, to the occasion, and did her usual superb job of taking care of me as in "in sickness and in health," and “for better or for worse.”

Just another proof of how wonderful it is to be in a good, stable marriage, I concluded, and a great example of why married men live longer than their single and/or separated counterparts. Even in simple economic terms, I would have had to pay hundreds of dollars to hire someone to look after my every need as Alma Jean did, and to drive me home this afternoon--and all without complaint, and without the expectation of anything in return but my sincere gratitude. On top of that, with the kind loving touch, prayers and empathy that are priceless, for sure.

I’ve long believed that in God’s economy nothing goes to waste. Our experience today is another example of that. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out to be the way she and I had planned, but something great happened just the same. Our love is stronger and our conviction deeper that what we began at the Lancaster Mennonite High School Chapel August 8, 1964, was truly meant to be. Until death do us part.

Yes!

The 258th Richest Person in the World

Let’s say you buy a $43.5 million, 6,000-square-foot oceanfront estate on 6.5 acres in Sagaponack, Long Island (the country's most expensive zip code, according to BusinessWeek). What's the first thing you do? According to a June 2, 2010 post on the AOL homepage, if you're hedge fund billionaire David Tepper, you tear it down -- along with the guesthouse, swimming pool and tennis court -- to build an even bigger mega-mansion.

According to the Southampton Patch, Tepper bought the home in 2009 from ex-wife of former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, in the area's most expensive transaction of 2010. In April, he got a permit for the demolition, and two months later the site was completely cleared.

The new house is about twice the size of the original, with "ocean views from every room, a sunken tennis court, a three-car garage, a widow's walk, second-floor decks, including one with a Jacuzzi, and a covered porch," according to the minutes of a recent town board meeting at which the construction was reviewed.

From Wikkipedia, we learn that in 2009, Tepper's hedge-fund firm earned about $7 billion by buying distressed financial stocks (including acquiring Bank of America common stock at $3 per share) in February and March of that year and profiting from recovery of those stocks, with $4 billion of these profits going to Tepper's personal wealth. In March 2010, the New York Times reported that Tepper's success made him the top-earning hedge fund manager in the world in 2009, and in 2010 he was ranked by Forbes as the 258th richest person in the world, all through engaging in what Ghandi, in his list of "seven deadly social sins," describes as the wrong of "wealth without work."

This reminds me of a story Jesus once told of a well-to-do farmer who had an exceptionally good harvest one year. Pleased with his newly acquired wealth, he decided, “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.’”

That may sound like a great plan for an early retirement, but what the poor man didn’t realize was that God labeled him as a fool for this kind of self-centered planning, a wealth-blinded mortal whose priorities were short-sighted and whose life was about to be terminated.

Unbeknownst to him, he was about to leave it all behind. Every bit of it.

Re-membering

I heard a story on NPR some time ago of a man using a table saw who accidentally cut off one of his fingers. The severed body part flew off into the corner of his shop among scraps of wood, sawdust and other debris. After he managed to stop the bleeding he and his family looked frantically for the missing finger, hoping they could take it with them to the hospital to reattach and save it.

Remembering is something like that. Sometimes an important part of us becomes lost, has for some reason become dis-membered. Maybe our parents or others have intentionally kept some troublesome parts of our family’s narrative from us. Or maybe we’ve just plain forgotten some things from lack of reviewing significant aspects of our story. Or we may have willfully cut off some painful part of our past we simply didn’t want to deal with, or some relationship we no longer wanted to be a part of.

But distancing ourselves from parts of our past can be like losing a part of ourselves, like a body part, or member. In remembering we are re-attaching, are re-connecting, so that healing and growth can take place.

Waste Amid Want

In his new book "American Wasteland," writer Jonathan Bloom documents how so much food produced in America is wasted along every step of the supply chain from field to fridge. Somewhere between 25-50% of all food produced in America, he says, goes to waste every year.

Journalist and author Bloom documents specific examples, beginning with food crops lying rotting in fields owing to intentional policy, economic factors, and sheer ignorance. And in restaurants, portion sizes have become ever larger and daily buffet meals result in enormous amounts of delicious leftover food being thrown away at the end of every day.

Unlike my mother, who believed wasting food was a mortal sin, Bloom points out how many Americans allow food to spoil in their refrigerators out of carelessness, lack of meal planning, and just plain neglect.

He does find hopeful signs, though, in some grocery stores and restaurants disposing of their surplus through food pantries and other charities. And some socially conscious farmers are even reviving the ancient practice of allowing those in need to glean from their fields after a harvest.

What makes food waste especially appalling is that while in developed nations like ours we throw away massive amounts of food, people all over the globe are starving. Every day we see TV images of dying children and gaunt mothers dying of malnutrition in Somali refugee camps--interspersed with ads urging already overweight Americans to gorge on super-sized burgers and fries and to make yet another trip to an abundance laden supermarket or a restaurant buffet. 

Bloom believes we have trained ourselves to regard food as a symbol of American plenty that should always be available cheaply in all seasons and times, and in limitless quantities. He warns, "Current rates of waste and population growth can't coexist much longer," and makes practical suggestions on how we can all help "keep our Earth and its inhabitants physically and morally healthy."

My mother would like that.

P. S.  Here are some agencies that can help provide urgently needed food relief:  http://www.care.org/    http://www.mcc.org/, http://www.oxfamamerica.org/