"God was too great and the world was too wide to allow for so little curiosity." BBT
I am going to thank Jen Hatmaker for introducing me to Barbara Brown Taylor. I wondered why Jen found this woman so fascinating and then I read two of her books in my silent month of November and I understood. This woman and her wisdom and understanding of life are transformative.
More recently, I have downloaded books in to my E-Reader before committing to add them to my library. They are cheaper to purchase and it gives me a way to test out a book to see if it will be a valuable addition to my book shelf. I didn't do that this time. I ordered Barbara's books "Holy Envy" and "Learning to Walk in the Dark" without the pretesting process. These books were going to be my companions during my month of silence. Turns out... both were amazing choices and definitely valuable additions to my bookshelf.
HOLY ENVY: Finding God in the Faith of Others
"The God of your understanding is just that; the God of your understanding. What you need is the God just beyond your understanding." (Rami Shapiro: quoted in "Holy Envy")
Barbara taught a World Religions class for a couple of decades in Piedmont College in Georgia, USA. She had the opportunity to invite her students into the worlds of very different world views and cultures of the major world religions. She not only taught about Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity... she brought her students on field trips to experience communities and people whose worlds revolved around these expressions of faith. Her inspiration for the class and the book came from a Swedish Theologian by the name of Krister Stendahl.
Three rules of religious understanding:
1. When trying to understand another religions, you should ask the adherents of that religion, not it's enemies.
2. Don't compare your best with their worst.
3. Leave room for Holy Envy.
The book is a journey for Barbara. A journey through her class program, a journey into the worlds and lives of very different people and a journey taken with some cautious but eager to learn students.
"Those who were religious would learn more about their own faith, and those who were not would learn how other people answer the big questions of human existence: Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? When we die, is that it? Whether the students agreed or disagreed with other people's answers to those questions, taking them seriously would help them ask better questions of themselves." BBT
This book gave me so much, but most importantly it brought me comfort that my choice to embrace people in their differences would not only be okay, but would benefit me in my life.
I spent a great portion of my life in a culture and religious environment that tried telling me that it was my job in this life to change the world and its inhabitants to fit into my mould of religious belief and world view. But thankfully, I was invited into the story of one person, much like Barbara Brown Taylor, and it changed my perspective.
"My best view of divine reality, is still a partial view." BBT
"A world view is a wave, but not the entire ocean." BBT
My longest friend, I call her, is a woman who was raised and still lives and practices her Hindu faith. I had the amazing opportunity to spend two weeks in her home back in 1991 and just take in her story and her culture. Even then, I didn't feel compelled to change her or convert her to my way of believing. I let her and her family teach me what they believed. Maybe inside my head I had conversations about things that didn't make sense to me, but I tried not to let that influence my education. I was there to spend time with her and learn from her. I was not on a Christian missions trip, and to this day, I am so glad those voices in my head trying to convince me otherwise, didn't have the final say. Today, I still have a friend (for forty years), and she still embraces her Hindu faith, and if it gives her a full life and helps her answer those questions, then I couldn't be more happy for her.
"Though I am retired from teaching religion, I am not done searching the scriptures, history, and tradition of my faith for good reasons to engage other people in theirs. Other days I do it because I'm starved for the God I did not make up." BBT
Thank you Barbara for confirming in me that embracing others on their journey can teach me more when I stop and learn, instead of planning to move in and conquer.
[On a side note: I used to enjoy "missions trips" but what was enjoyable was the practicality of my experiences. I helped clean houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I helped build a house in Juarez Mexico... Even through I was taught that evangelism was the motivation for missions, for me, it was never the motivation or the joy. The joy was always helping and lending a hand where there was a need. ]
LEARNING TO WALK IN THE DARK
"Without benefit of maturity or therapy I had no way of knowing that the darkness was as much inside me as it was outside me, or that I had any power to affect its hold on me. No one had ever taught me to talk back to the dark or even to breathe into it. The idea that it might be friendly was absurd. The only strategy I'd ever been taught for dealing with my fear of the dark was to turn on the lights and yell for help." BBT
The introduction on her book cover says it best:
"Follow Barbara Brown Taylor on her journey to understand darkness, which takes her spelunking in unlit caves, learning to eat and cross the street as a blind person, discovering how "dark emotions" are prevented from seeing light from a psychiatrist, and re-reading scripture to see all the times God shows up at night. With her characteristic charm and wisdom, Taylor is our guide through the spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find God even in darkness and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we need to know."
I am convinced that Barbara Brown Taylor is an Enneagram 4... like me. Subjects like Envy and Darkness are familiar ground for those "Eeyores" that dwell on the bottom of the Enneagram.
This book was a fun journey into the idea that darkness is not the enemy. There is something of value to be learned in the dark. I understand the desire and even need to light up our world, but what beauty awaits us in the places we so fear to go. This book is a journey into those places and what they can teach us.
"Back in the cave, I do not know what I am doing either, but I like it. There is no way to tell time, which means there is no rush. There is no light, which means that I do not have to worry about how I look. There is no one beside me, which means that I do not have to come up with something to say. Above all, there is no threat." BBT
Now that doesn't sound like a place where fear dwells, but a place where one can find peace. Maybe fear compels us to turn on the light, whereas peace finds a chair in the darkness and sits down.
This amazing author and woman has a beautiful way of seeing the poetic world that dwells all around her. I need more like her in my world and my life. I am thankful for the insight she has given me and if all I can do is pass her name along and invite someone else along on the journey of discovery, then I will do just that.
I will end this post with three of my favourite BBT quotes.
"If your faith depends on being God's only child, then the discovery that there are others can lead you to decide that someone must be wrong -- or that everyone belongs, which means that no religion, including yours, is the entire ocean." BBT
"Engaging the faith of others is the best way to grow your own." BBT
"I asked God for religious certainty, and God gave me relationships instead." BBT
No comments:
Post a Comment