I BELIEVE IN GOD-NESS

from I PRAY ANYWAY: Devotions for the Ambivalent

—Do I believe in God?
'Goodness' only knows
I believe in God-ness
I am totally open to mystery
God is not knowable
How we create language for the divine changes
We live in a paradigm shift for all things spiritual
Things fall apart before a new form emerges
We are caught in-between
New language and thought is emerging
The sacred continues outside of time and our paradigms
I hang on waiting for the next wave of knowing—


My thinking, my reflections all seem trite to me.
My wrestling with all things spiritual  is a luxury
My book is sacred lite
And yet I will turn for guidance
Into silence
Should I let this book die??

WORK OR WORSHIP, YOUNG ADULTS WANT THE SAME THINGS

I didn't know when I wrote I PRAY ANYWAY that I was tapping into a growing trend and expressing that trend in my daily reflections. That trend is people being disappointed if not disgusted with much of organized religion for its hypocrisy of not walking the talk. And with instant exposure to other religions, young adults find all theologies too narrow to fit with with their life experience and with new understanding of the history of religions and how they came to be. It's not that the theology needs to be diluted so much as opened up.

There are many books and studies coming out about the "nones"--the non-affiliated to any religion. There are many concerns in formal religions about the lack of passing on belief and commitment on to the next generation. 
Ed Stetzer in his book LOST AND FOUND consolidates, from many sources, what it is that young adults want.
I've put them into my own words.

—Deeper Community
  Young adults want lasting connections and small groups seem to work best in creating a sense of belonging.

—Making a Difference 
Young adults want to be of service to something bigger than themselves and to be seen as competent and able to use their talent

—A Conversational Style
Real talk, not stylized preaching about important content is what works. The style of the communicator needs to be 'real' and not put on or out of sync with who the person is. No phoniness

—Use of Technology
Young adults want to see technology to support the work of the church that is familiar to them and feels like their world whether that is reading scripture from an iPad or keeping in touch through Facebook.

—Cross-Generational Relationships 
 Young adults appreciate interaction with older people to challenge them and to share their wisdom. Effort and structure is needed to support this type of interaction, whether mentoring, or coaching or other kinds of support.

—Authentic, transparent Leadership is what young adults look for. With so much compromised leadership in the world, young adults want leaders who are honest and open and share their own continuiing learning in spiritual growth. They want to see leaders who make mistakes and own them and show how human and vulnerable they are.

—Leading by team
A participation culture is what works rather than a command and control kind of leader. Young adults want to be actively involved in running the place where they worship

—Experience of Worship 
 This is a fundamental desire that makes or breaks attracting young adults to formal religion even when the  other aspects makes are present. Young adults want vertical worship (a kind of trendy description). Vertical worship reaches up to the adoration of God--the sole purpose of worshhip. It is not about the horizontal concerns of loving one another better or avoiding certain behaviors. They follow the vertical. First worship God fully. Let all else come from that.

As a former Global Executive, these are certainly what most associates want in the workplace today.
Churches, Synagogues and Mosques should all borrow from the best practices in the workplace.
Even the vertical worship translates in to the secular arena of business. People want to work where the ultimate goal is worthy and prominent and rings true and is held as most important.

THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD MAY BE TRANSGENDER

I'm re-reading THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD by Sherry Ruth Anderson & Patricia Hopkins published in 1991. You know how we think nothing really changes (which is totally crazy in today's world?). 
We get numb until we have perspective from a distance to see all the shifts. This book was written to tell the story of how women explore and experience the sacred at a time when we were still experiencing men and women as very different.  The patriarchal DNA of organized religion was still very active. And it was anathema to women. I would say that is is also repugnant now to many men wanting to respect their spiritually and not see it as feminine nor brutally hierarchical and demeaning to the wisdom and experience of male searchers. 

We are all, male and female, searching for a pertinent and personally meaningful spiritual side to our lives. And not finding it in organized religion. That is what my book I PRAY ANYWAY made me see as I wrote it. We are in a historic moment or re-organizing what could be next in religion, if anything. But the spiritual yearning doesn't go away. And so we turn to our own experience of the divine as a starting point. Discussing our yearning or history or experience of the sacred has not been acceptable. It was either too intimate or capable of creating enemies or embarrassing for the assumptions that could be made about who you are. When I first wrote I PRAY ANYWAY: Devotions for the ambivalent, I was soon bashful if not ashamed to talk about prayer in an everyday way. Now I ask strangers, "Do you pray?, How? Why?"  People respond immediately, after being taken slightly aback. As I once blurted out, "I'm spiritually cranky and I talk about it."  Restless may be a better word than cranky. Enjoy these quotes from THE FEMININE FACE OF GOD.

Here are some fun quotes from the book:

—What does it mean to accept spiritual responsibility in our lives? How can we be still enough or clear enough or compassionate enough to let the deep truth emerge? Is there a “new way”? If so, how do we go about finding it—

—This means questioning everything we have been taught or taken for granted that is not validated by our own experience. Simply by asking one key question, Is this true for me? About each “truth” we hear, we challenge ourselves to become what we truly are.—

—it was disheartening to recognize that as a society we place no importance on sacred sharing in our daily interactions—

—So profound is this longing for our essential self that even when we are feeling alienated and estranged, our so-called negative feelings point toward the reality our soul knows as home.—

—I was swinging back and forth between a very deep cosmic urging and my feeling of terrible limitation. And what it all came down to was: Can I trust myself—

—However, prayer for is never limited to religious forms—

—Our culture offers us no support for periods of spiritual deepening in our lives. 

—Out of a yearning for what is personally real and true comes a yearning that is essential because it comes from the immediacy of our lives, and that is just what we need to find and live from: the penetrating alertness that lets us connect with what is sacred.—


All of these quotes and their content are ideas and feelings will be explored and played with in a 'playshop' I will be giving in September. More on that to come. I have it outlined to be fun and outrageously irreverently reverent and challenging and clarifying and satisfying as we tell our truths.

MAYBE GOD IS IN YOUR GUT

All I know is that when I am doing something very right, my gut lets me know.
I am headiing to California with my daughter and her daught to visit my former mother-in-law.
Peace and Joy galore.
Now for an uneventful trip
Prayers welcome.
Talk nest week. Traveling without computer!!!

THEOLOGICAL PURITY

I'm doing a kind of virtual Snoopy happy dance.
Here's why:
I love when someone reads my book and is struck by one of the reflections.
AND I love it when they let me know what the impact was AND then let me post it here AND the author happens to me my adult nephew. Good and good and good.



Here is the reflection and his comments:

243

Theological purity causes so many ills
Do you know

How many religious hairs can be split
In how many books

Over how many centuries?
Which came first?
Prayer or theology?

Experience or concept?

I honestly felt I could have no prayer life

Until I knew what was 'true'

Thought C.S. Lewis could tell me

Or Thomas Merton

Maybe ancient mystics had the key

No such luck

Sometimes you just have to dive in

Here is my nephew's response:
—Randomly flipping through your book today, the words "Theological Purity" jumped out at me. Yes, I am praying, yes I am back in church, yes, my spiritual hunger has been rekindled, but my theological views are certainly not what many would consider pure.

I believe in...Something. There is something greater than ourselves in the universe. Is that the Abrahamic God, or the Native American Great Spirit, or the Wiccan Earth Mother, or the God of Sikhism, or an even less definable energy as viewed by some mystic traditions? Why can't there be some degree of truth in various belief systems?

I fall back on Christianity because it is what I know and am most familiar with but...

I believe that theological purity is a byproduct of avoiding theological certainty—

Hey you readers!!!
Do the same.
I will soooo happy dance and post me doing it on Facebook.
Do I mean that?
Yep.

SPIRITUALLY CRANKY

It happens. 
I'm living up to the dedication in my book--"to those who can't grab on but won't let go".
And I'm irritated by it.
I wrote a book about my own spiritual ambivalence and confusion.
Who wants to read that?  As they say in marketing, "what is the reader's problem and what is your solution for it?"  
Duh.
I dunno.

Then again. Maybe I write for those of us who just can't say a full blown yes to a theology that no longer makes sense. I am so not talking only Christian. Maybe I write for those who have given up any spiritual aspect in their life and don't know they want it and need it. Maybe I write for those of us who are willing to talk about our confused time in history and have some fun talking God, faith, doubt, prayer, updating spiritual words, affirming mystery, and experimenting with something transcendent. Who knows.

By the way, while I'm cranky, I hate the word "spiritual". Give me some alternatives please!!

So here I am in an irritated moment. I do know this will pass because as I sit here I am still interested in the stack of books surrounding me. This topic of prayer and transcendent energy will not leave me alone. And I will take some time right now to do my kind of prayer and it will probably right my ship.

Hang in there with me.

TELL EVERYONE--"YOU ARE OFF THE HOOK"

I'll take wisdom wherever it comes from

—Tell everyone you know: "My happiness depends on me, so you're off the hook." And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they're doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel -- and then, you'll love them all. Because the only reason you don't love them, is because you're using them as your excuse to not feel good—

Excerpted from Asheville, NC - Saturday, April 30th, 2005
Our Love,
Esther (and Abraham and Jerry) Hicks

This is what I call a spiritual practice, meaning it takes awareness and emotional discipline to get back to a place of love "NO MATTER WHAT".  Ugh. Just thinking about few of my own examples makes me want to rebel. (If you really knew how awful she is, you would be on my side. She makes me so mad, sad, disgusted, irritated, outraged, shocked, frustrated. See what I mean. Not an easy practice. Have to stop and adjust your feelings to a good place BEFORE anything can come right. Then go forth and love.  Sounds bass-ackwards, right?

Anyway, I think there is wisdom here.
This kind of love is hard work. Extreme love. Grand master love. Olympic quality love.