Being threatened is comforting with "THE DIVINE MAGICIAN" by Peter Rollins

"I wish to argue that this founding event—which I will explore as we go along—is not concerned with a set of beliefs concerning the world, but rather calls us to enter into a different way of existing within the world. The good news of Christianity—that is to say the life-giving event harbored within the tradition—is not an invitation to join an exclusive party. Indeed, as I hope to show, this good news involves discovering that those parties aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and that there is a way of celebrating life that is more authentic, enriching, and healing than anything we might find through membership to some special club." PR

I read books like "The Divine Magician  for the following reasons: 

My faith trajectory needs a little support

My mental discoveries need some affirmation

My insecurities need to die

"When a child goes to college there’s always a threat that she might learn new ideas and come back with a very different way of viewing the world—a way that might threaten the fabric of the traditions that once comforted her." PR

I feel alone on my journey, but the evidence is overwhelming that I am not.  I am not the only person who has looked at the traditions she came from and put a big question mark in front of them.  I am not the only person looking for a narrative that makes more sense  than the one that resembles more of a worn out hand-me-down sweater.  I am not the only one trying to find authenticity in a world of stage plays.  

"Faith not only demands that we create systems, but reminds us that any structure we form is ultimately made for people; people are not made for the structure. Faith thus demands that we both form views and opinions about how best to live in the world and acknowledge that these views need to be fluid, open, and rethought in relation to new situations." PR

There is a term known as "shit-disturbing" that has its origin in the back of the farmyard.  Over the years, piles of manure collect as the farmer continues to add to the pile.  Then one day, that farmer wants to take that manure and spread it on the field.  The process of disturbing releases a powerful odour.  This is known as "shit disturbing". 

What may turn away someone from the putrid smell, will also be a catalyst for growth.  For only when the shit is disturbed and spread on the ground, can true growth occur.  

Christianity, as a religious system, does not aim to transform the way we believe, but strives to mold and shape the content of our beliefs. What is judged here to be of prime importance is the actual belief that one affirms. So those who agree are deemed “saved,” and those who disagree are at best heretics, or at worst “lost.” PR

I am spending a lot of time mining the manure piles of this world (shit disturbing).  This is the stuff that may stink to the one not familiar with it, but when added to the ground of my life, I am hopeful for amazing growth.  In the end, it doesn't matter what ideology I embrace, what creed I sign off on, what language I speak or how I imagine the cosmos... what matters is how I love in this world.  

'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.'

When Paul writes against “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world,” he is making it clear that the life of faith is not some worldview that can be learned in school. One could have the perfect philosophy and still be nothing but a clanging cymbal. PR

I think I could stop reading now and have my conclusion on how my life will best be spend.  I think I figured that out quite a few books ago.  But I keep reading and I keep getting reminded that Love is the ultimate of everything.

Thank you Peter Rollins.  This was a great read and it has helped me more to understand that there is still value in the narrative, even through I am 2000 years past a story that I can't prove in my mind.  Maybe it is a waste of time to wade in the murky waters of proof and evidence, when I can swim in a much bigger ocean of Faith, Hope and above all LOVE!!! . 

"The word supernatural is almost universally tied to a religious worldview. Regardless of whether we affirm the supernatural or deny it, the term seems inextricably and necessarily connected with belief in higher powers. Interestingly, however, this religious definition of the supernatural is concerned almost only with the purely natural realm. For instance, miracles are ascribed to physical occurrences like a resuscitation of someone who was dead or the feeding of a vast crowd with a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish.

In contrast, there is a different way of approaching the supernatural, one that doesn’t see it as describing a change in the natural realm, but rather as describing a change in how we interact with the natural realm (hence supernatural). This is a view of the supernatural that can be affirmed by the theist and the atheist alike." PR

The Butterfly View of "THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS" with Huston Smith

"What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life.  How does it sound from above?  Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony?  Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?"  HS

I won’t be able to go to a university to take a course in World Religions… but I did the next best thing. I picked up a book. Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions” has been such an eye opening and inspiring read. Smith takes the reader on a flight over the world’s religions and from a very elevated perspective. Instead of writing it from the position of a caterpillar in the ground surrounded by one expression of “faith”, he takes the reader on a butterfly’s vantage point to see what one can see from the top. There doesn’t seem to be any agenda except to see what every one has to offer in beauty of expression. It’s not a technical primer, but an invitation to see the world differently through the eyes of other humans. 

"But if we take those religions seriously, we need not fail miserably.   And to take them seriously we need do only two things.  First we need to see their adherents as men and women who faced problems much like our own.  And second, we must rid our minds of all preconceptions that could dull our sensitivity or alertness to fresh insights.  If we lay aside our preconceptions about these religions, seeing each as forged by people who were struggling to see something that would give help and meaning to their lives; and if we then try without prejudice to see ourselves what they saw-- if we do these things, the veil that separates us from them can turn to gauze." HS

In the years I traversed religion and my own expressions of it, I kept looking for "the right one".  There was no such thing as beauty in diversity, there was only a dualism in the works.  Someone was right and the rest were wrong.  So as I changed expressions over the years, I kept hidden within me the yucky feeling that was telling me that maybe we are all right or all wrong and maybe it isn't even about right and wrong.  What if every expression out in this great big world is beautiful and just a human attempt at the impossible... to understand the meaning and cause of our existence.  What if that venture is truly out of our reach, and the best we can do is imagine what could be?  

"That Hinduism has shared her land for centuries with Jains, Buddhists, Parsees, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians may help explain a final idea that comes out more clearly through her than through the other great religions;  namely, her convictions that the various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal. " HS

I have an admiration for the Hindu way of looking at life and people.  I spend two weeks in person and forty five years in relationship with my longest friend, Jenny.  In the two weeks I spent in her home in the tropics of Trinidad, I was never asked to change who I was, I was never shamed for who I was, I was only loved for who I was and that made a huge difference to me.   Because that was in 1991... and something in me then was taught and still believed that because of where she lived, the family in which she was raised and the way she prayed... she was not embraced by the Creator of the Cosmos.  In fact, in order to be embraced, she would have to change everything about her.  But for those two weeks, something in me greater than the religion I brought with me came to the surface... that something was a little thing called love.  For two weeks, I just learned and listened and took in what I could.  I left that country enriched because of the openness of their culture and their love for me.  

"To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not the next, in this attire, but not another. Normally people will follow the path that rises from the plains of their own civilization;  those who circle the mountain, trying to bring others around to their paths, are not climbing." HS

This book can encourage you to climb the mountain.  If your goal in life is just to circle the base and convince others that you are right and they are wrong... then maybe a book like this will have no place in your library.  But if you want to climb the mountain and gain an appreciation and love for the other climbers, then this book will give you a peek inside different worlds and different paths on that mountain.  

Religion may begin in ritual, but explanations are soon called for, so speculation enters as a third religious feature.  Whence do we come, whither do we go, why are we here?  -- people want answers to these questions. HS

I am in my fifties just starting to ask questions.  I am in my fifties just discovering my own passion.  I am in my fifties just wanting to see what love really looks like in this home we know as Earth. 

"Being finite, the human mind cannot begin to fathom the Infinite it is drawn to." HS

Here is my biggest question.  If we are truly finite and beyond us is an Infinite that we have no hope of fully comprehending or understanding, then why the need for so many soloists?  Is there not a place in this world for a vast choir of different voices?  

"We listen first because, as this book opened by noting, our times require it.  The community today can be no single tradition;  it is the planet.  Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home." HS

If this book does anything for the reader, I would hope it opens a door to understanding and love.  I used to believe I needed to change the world to think like me... I now want to embrace the only thing that can change the world... love.  And the way I understand love... it doesn't require that I change anyone... it only invites me into its flow and that is the most beautiful thing.  

For understanding, at least in realms as inherently noble as the great faiths of human kind, brings respect; and respect prepares the way for a higher power, love -- the only power that can quench the flames of fear, suspicion, and prejudice, and provide the means by which the people of this small but precious Earth can become one to one another." HS

It is possible!... FAITH AFTER DOUBT by Brian McLaren (Part 2)

"Blessed are the curious, for their curiosity honors reality.

Blessed are the uncertain and those with second thoughts, 

    for their minds are still open.

Blessed are the wonderers, for they shall find what is wonderful.

Blessed are those who question their answers, 

    for their horizons will expand forever.

Blessed are those who often feel foolish, 

    for they are wiser than those who always think themselves wise.

Blessed are those who are scolded, suspected, 

    and labeled as heretics by the gatekeepers, 

    for the prophets and mystics were treated in the same way 

    by the gatekeepers of their day.

Blessed are those who know their unknowing,

    for they shall have the last laugh.

Blessed are the perplexed, 

    for they have reached the frontiers of contemplation.

Blessed are they who become cynical about their cynicism

    and suspicious of their suspicion,

    for they will enter the second innocence.

Blessed are the doubters, for they shall see through false gods.

Blessed are the lovers, for they shall see God everywhere." BM

I finished the book on November 11.  I have enjoyed journalling through this book.  Brian takes us on a journey that in a way is just reminding us that we are all on a journey already.  He is just helping us move forward as is the design of nature.  We were not meant to stay still but to continue and to discover beyond what we were given and handed down from our ancestors.  As we grow as humans we have our own story that needs to be incorporated into the story of life.  I started this journey in Simplicity, moved through Complexity and find myself somewhat lost in Perplexity and yet longing for Harmony.  

Brian shares this "benediction" modelled after the Beatitudes and it was such an encouragement for me.  I want to print it off and hang it on my office wall.  

At the end of each chapter, Brian gave some questions that helped make this journey personal for me and that helped me to process where I was and gave me some hope that I could find some "Faith after Doubt" and it didn't have to look like what I had, but in fact was a beautiful new space where I could rest with the unknown and yet embrace the Creator that seems to still be there though the tumultuous journey.  

I will pick three questions and my responses to those questions.  This book became personal because I was invited to delve into my own soul as learn from not just Brian McLaren but others that he invited along on the journey.  

How did you relate to Rob’s and Hannah’s stories? BM

The following quotes from Rob and Hannah I resonate with.  

Rob: “It’s strange,” he said. “But to the degree I stare into the abyss and accept the inevitability that I will someday die and the possibility that humanity will eventually go extinct and our little human DNA story will be over forever, to the degree I face this without trying to suppress it, candy-coat it with some beliefs, or fix it with some dogma, something happens. I stop trying to explain away all the pain in the universe and my life. I stop having some ironclad explanation for everything, and I admit that I don’t know. I feel less and less like I’m trying to play God and have all the answers, and I feel more and more like the tiny human being I actually am.”

Hannah: “I feel like I’ve lost faith,” she said, protest sign raised high. “Faith in God, faith in humanity, faith in government, faith in markets … it’s all gone.” She made a gesture with her free hand to indicate her faith had vanished in a puff of smoke. “I’ve even lost faith that my research will make any difference, or that marching and protesting will make any difference. I’ve reached the depressing conclusion that the world runs on money, not wisdom or common sense or justice.”

"How do you respond to my conviction that, in spite of all their problems, faith communities still have a vital role to play in our world?" BM

I agree with the premise that we can't get rid of religious communities and organizations… but not for a lack of wishing we could one day.  But that is just my perspective.  I wish we could see all walls down, but that doesn't mean we have to stop with how we process the world.  Can we still hold our beliefs and perspectives of how this planet operates and not have the borders that separate us? 

"Do your best to put the ideas of dualism and non-dual or post-dual consciousness into your own words." BM

I like jigsaw puzzles.  They come in all different sizes, but I have never seen a puzzle with just two pieces.  The smallest children's puzzle I have seen still had four pieces.  Life is a puzzle and to imagine it being less complex than a toddler's jigsaw… that doesn't make a lot of sense.  Right now I am working on a 2000 piecer… and that doesn't seem as complex as life.  Maybe some things in life can appear simple and dualistic, but even looking at the simple things, one can find more than one way to address them. 

For example:  I am thirsty.   Dualism says either drink this or die.  Non dualism asks "What do you want to drink… there are countless ways to quench your thirst."  

Thank you Brian McLaren for taking me and so many others on this journey of understanding and hope.  I don't think I ever wanted to abandon the idea of faith or the hope of what is beyond me to see and know and comprehend in this world.  I just wanted it to make sense.  I just wanted it to be real. 

Like you, I am an Enneagram 4.  I want my journey to be authentic and I want to matter for who I am as me.  The biggest struggle I have is that my journey of discovery will hurt the people I love.  I grieve when that happens.  You have opened up the world of possibilities to me.  I can continue on and discover who I am and discover a faith beyond what I was given that is real to me and still embrace the Creator that gives me air to breathe, people to love and a beautiful world to play in.  I don't have to know everything, or even know anything to embrace a "Faith beyond Doubt".  Faith doesn't require knowledge, it gives hope.  What a beautiful thing.   Thank you so much.  

"The road to faith after doubt is often lonely. But beyond the loneliness, you discover a place of solidarity where everything is sacred and everything belongs, including your doubts and including you. " BM

 

Is it really possible?... FAITH AFTER DOUBT by Brian McLaren (Part 1)

The “me” I saw in that bathroom mirror had been formed by my faith. God sat at the top of the pyramid of my conceptual universe, like that weird eye on the back of the U.S. dollar bill. If I lost faith in God, if I lost faith in Christianity, what would be left of me?... Yes, there were other complications, practical matters like the question of how I would make a living if I lost faith. But the deepest question that stared me in the face was not financial or professional. It was existential: who would I be without God, without Jesus, without the Holy Spirit, without Christian faith? Would there even be a recognizable me left if I lost my faith?  BM

Some books, like this one, cross my path and invite me into the story. It's those books that stay with me.  I have yet to decide if this one is yet transformational or "life-changing".  I'm not as quick to label my books that way so soon after reading them.  But they stay with me... whether that means they take up space on my bookshelf or megabytes in my iPhone storage.  

I am still on a quest.  I want to feel good about myself for where I am on my journey.  I want to feel that who I am and who I am becoming and what I think about both of those things actually matters. I am still not there.  I still think I am flawed.  I still look to others to validate my existence.  I still need authors like Brian McLaren to remind me that I am okay.  

Something in us wants to belong. But something in us also wants to be free, to be authentic, to be the truest, most genuine version of ourselves that we can. Those two desires can be in tension.

Something in us wants to be honest. But something in us also wants to be liked by those around us. And those two desires can be in tension.

Something in us wants to be good. But something in us also wants to be thought of as good by others. And those two desires are often in tension.

Something in us wants to be consistent. But something in us also wants to keep growing, and growing often means changing. So those two desires often conflict." BM

There it is... the desire to be authentic.  Brian McLaren, like me, values authenticity... (Enneagram 4).  I figure I have a choice in life... and it's not in choosing what I believe.  I agree with Bart Campolo on that premise... I don't choose what I believe, I just believe or I don't believe.  But I think my choice come in what I do as a response to myself and to others.  I think I chose to feel like I don't matter.  I think I could chose to feel like I do matter.  I chose to let others opinions dictate my worth.  I think I could chose to have faith in my own opinions.   Wow... that is a revelation.  

"If we dare take a first step, we discover that faith can be a road, a doorway out of the fortress prison of certainty and into the adventure of living.

Before us lies the unknown, which is our life." BM

This book is an invitation to anyone who has been feeling the tremors beneath their feet.  The ground they stand on is shaking and there seems like nothing to hold on to that makes any sense.  What Brian McLaren offers is not something concrete to hold onto, but a dance lesson to learn how to move one's feet with the tremors. 

For the first time, it dawned on me: there’s a difference between doubting God and doubting my understanding of God, just as there’s a difference between trusting God and trusting my understanding of God. Would I be able to doubt my understanding of God while simultaneously trusting God beyond my understanding? In a strange way, that question for the first time in my life allowed me to see God as a mystery distinct from my concepts of God. BM

As one can see from my other blog posts... labels have been easier for me to let go of.  Especially the label of "God"... but even in letting go of the label because of what it has come to define in my culture, I long to have a connection with that which gave me breath.  So maybe it is the same concept... I could let go of the understanding and just embrace that which I fail to understand but long to still embrace.  

"I was a very loyal person, respectful of authority and always ready to give the benefit of the doubt to my tradition and its spokespeople. But over time, I not only lost confidence in many of the beliefs that gatekeepers required: I lost faith in the gatekeepers themselves and their whole system of using beliefs as markers of belonging. If I was going to be a person of faith, it couldn’t be in a community that was obsessed with policing my beliefs. I needed a different understanding of faith entirely, as something beyond beliefs."BM

I get this... I have been disillusioned with the gatekeepers, and yet scared of them, but conflicted because of the admiration and love I have for some of those gatekeepers.   I don't blame them for holding tight to their beliefs.  I held tight to my beliefs because it was the only security I was given.  I think security is a human need.  So where do we go when that which was secure for us becomes an earthquake.  Maybe we start dancing with the tremors.  

"In that light, the word doubt can mean two very different things. When it is applied to faith that expresses itself in beliefs, it means one thing. When it is applied to faith that expresses itself in revolutionary love, it means something very different. Sometimes, it is only by doubting a religion that expresses itself in beliefs that we can discover a faith that expresses itself in revolutionary love.

That is what I mean by faith after doubt.

To some, that will sound like heresy. To others, it sounds like liberation." BM

I have taken up colouring.  I like the guide lines and creative pictures that have been given me, but I get to fill in the colours.  And lately,  I discovered that I also get to decide how much gets coloured in and how much stays black and white.  I don't need to have all the holes filled in.  It takes the stress out of "completing" something that is so intricate and detailed in design.  I colour what I can and then it becomes something beautiful in its "unfinishedness".  That is my journey.  Life offers me a black and white picture and gives me a bucket of pencil crayons and says "Have at it, be creative, but remember that this is a journey not a destination.  Your picture will still be beautiful even if there are parts of the picture not filled in with your pencil crayons. "

"Faith was about love all along. We just didn’t realize it, and it took doubt to help us see it. " BM

(here is where I get honest... I am only two thirds of the way through the book... so when I get done reading the book, I will do a follow up blog post with my conclusions.  I just got so much already from reading that I wanted to post something. ) 

TO BE CONTINUED...

A New Way to Navigate the Narrative with INSURRECTION by Peter Rollins.

 

"If our faith does not throw us into the arms of the world, if it does not lead to our experience of responsibility, love, celebration, and our commitment to transformation, then, whatever we call it, we have nothing but an empty shell." PR

I continue to find books and authors that mess me up.  Peter Rollins is no exception to that finding.  I went through the book to find some of the quotes that I highlighted and I had so many that it was hard to choose.  I found some to scatter through my blog,  much like Peter Rollins has scattered my brain with this book.  

"Resurrection faith is then manifested in a freedom and liberation in which we are able to courageously and fully embrace this world without repression, resentment, and fear. It is a way of living in love, a love that embraces existence, not because it is perfect, but because it is beautiful in the midst of its very imperfection." PR

I entitled this post "A New Way to Navigate the Narrative".  I've been listening to Pete Rollins on Youtube and on his Podcast and so much of what he says has been helping me to Navigate the Narrative of Christianity in a very different light.  The cover synopsis gives a good overview of Rollins whole direction with a very different message.  

"In this incendiary new work, the controversial author and speaker Peter Rollins proclaims that Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death.

In order to unearth this truth, Rollins prescribes a radical and wholesale critique of contemporary Christianity that he calls pyro-theology.  It is only when we submit our spiritual practices, religious rituals and dogmatic affirmations to the flames of fearless interrogation that we come into contact with the reality that Christianity is in the business of transforming our world rather than offering a way of interpreting or escaping it.  Belief in the Resurrection means but one thing: 

 PARTICIPATION IN AN INSURRECTION"

Rollins offers a radical way of looking at Christianity, not what it has become, but what it needs to be.  I thought I was good to toss out the whole enchilada.  But there seems to be something redeemable, a new way to navigate the narrative.  

This book is already ten years old.  I feel like I am very behind.  I don't know if I want to find a way back to the "baby or the bathwater", but I don't mind entertaining the idea that maybe the narrative has something for me that I don't need to toss. 

"Donating money to the poor without asking why the poor exist in the first place, for instance, allows us to alleviate our guilt without fundamentally challenging the system that perpetuates poverty. As the Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”" PR

I want to be brave.  I want to say things like this.  I want to call out the world for its insane beliefs.  But I don't.  Maybe that is why I read authors like Peter Rollins.  It gives me great hope that there are voices out there like his reaching people with a different way to see and understand.  

"For Mother Teresa the work itself was the truth. She feared that if her subjective reflections entered the public world then people might lose sight of what really mattered. Mother Teresa never attempted to run away from her experience of divine loss, but neither did she let it destroy her. Rather she was able to find peace with it. She carried the wounds of her Crucifixion, neither hiding them nor showing them off.

Her strength is not staggering because she was able to banish all her doubts, but rather because she was able to acknowledge them without entering into some nihilistic prison. In her utter devotion to bringing life, protecting life, and enriching life, she utterly lost herself. And in losing herself she found joy, peace, happiness, and life." PR

I long for more role models like Mother Teresa.  She was a woman who just did.  Her foundation wasn't on her dogma or theology.  She loved in spite of her doubts and uncertainties and she wasn't pushing for an end to them as much as she just forged ahead in spite of them.  She is to be honored for her doubt, not hidden because of it.  

"I would love to see churches take seriously the idea that mystery, unknowing, brokenness, doubt, and mourning should be expressed in the very structure of the church itself. Religion is a system that gives us a sense of being right, of having the answers and knowing how to stay on the right team. I want to see churches that break religion open through the sermons, music, and prayers; churches that bring us face-to-face with the truth of our unknowing and pain. Not so that we despair, but so that, in bringing it to light and sharing it, we can find healing and light. I would love to see churches emphasize that the highest principle is not some object that we need to love, but rather the act of love itself. That in loving we break open the depth and beauty of what we mean when we say “God." PR

I've often wondered what kind of church would entice me into its circle.  I miss community.  I don't miss the doctrinal expectations or the polarization and division it provided. I don't miss the meaningless to me rituals and addict-like behaviours.  I don't miss the certainty gospel and the uninformed, unquestioned, close-minded gospel.    I do adore people and gathering of people.  I just wish that is all that mattered.  I haven't found anything in my world that would offer that to me so I go without.  

It seems that Peter Rollins is trying to resurrect labels and identities that I am willing to let die in my own life.  Over all this was a great read, challenging and enlightening.  I wish I could be as brave... I'm just not.  

"To experience is to encounter something. But in the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection we discover that God is not something we encounter directly and thus is not something that we experience. Rather, God is that which transforms how we experience everything, i.e., love. God is the name we give to the way of living in which we experience the world as worthy of living for, fighting for, and dying for." PR