WORKING ON MY ADVENT SKILLS, PART ONE

          In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

          Religious traditions (and Star Trek) speak often about being a better person. My own religious tradition, Baptist Christian, urges me to be a better man in principle, but I am often at odds with the ideal human being posited by that tradition.  

          I was raised to believe a better Christian is growing spiritually the more legalistic he or she is, the more magical his or her knowledge is, and the more ascetic is his or her spirit. 

          I truck not with that.  On the contrary, I’ve latched onto something else that seems more authentic.

          A truer faith urges me to believe a better Christian is growing spiritually the more loving he or she is, the more truth and fact based his or her knowledge is, and the more abundant is his or her spirit.  

          Allow me to be more specific.  Being kind, loving kindness, is essential to growing spiritually.  Seeking justice, which includes the knowledge and work that lessens suffering and defends those the world could not care less about is growing spiritually.  Making love incarnate so it overflows in my life and reaches those I love is growing spiritually.  

            I could go my entire life and never cuss, never take a drink, never miss a church service, never doubt life started out in a garden with a talking snake, never stop believing women are second class Kingdom of God citizens, never forget to insist self-righteously to everyone else that my interpretation of the Bible, my theology, and God's theology are identical--yes, I could do all that and still be mean as hell to others.

          I truck not in that.  That crap is way too easy, especially when you have the personality for it.  What's hard as quantum physics is believing all that Sermon on the Mount/Plains stuff is what Jesus intended us to be in this world...now...and not waiting until we get to Sky World.

          Advent proclaims this gospel.  Advent proclaims it with the hope that a new Emperor dwells among us, a son of God who is not a Caesar, but a Son of God who is a Messiah whose peace is not a Pax Romana enforced by violence, but a Kingdom of God enforced by love and justice.  

          Enacting that program is being a better human being and then some.  I so long to be perfect at that, but the plain truth is, I suck at it.

          You see, the problem is this: I might turn the other cheek a hundred times, and speak kindly to insolent others a thousand times, but one moment of meanness reveals to me how I’m no more steadfast than those pillars of Dagon that Samson caused to collapse.

          Next time, I’ll share the event that inspired this post.  The event itself was an Advent inspired good-deed-for-the-day exalting my inner Boy Scout until my big mouth screwed it up.

          Blessings…

ADVENT, SPACE, AND TIME

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Yesterday, I wrote about space and time.  Let’s think some more about that in relation to Advent.

All of us, when we die, may be remembered fondly for those things we say over and over again.  My family will remember me always for saying about any event in the past, good or awful, “If there had been a hair’s difference in the past, I never  would have met my wife.”

I say that because it’s a miracle I met her, and the greatest miracle of all: she agreed to go on a date. 

In the Bible, when space and time were experienced as sacred, the person gave the place a name and erected an altar.  All of us have places and times in our lives that are unforgettable to us.

Susan and I first met in a space, a teacher’s paper and supply store which was the right place.  We met after school, about 4:00 PM on a Wednesday, which was the right time.

Momentous events unfolded rapidly that transcended mere clock time.  Coincidences fell into place so naturally the word “synchronicity” comes to mind (note one of the root words for time embedded in that word). 

First of all, we never should have happened.  I hate shopping, especially after school, but I was in desperate need of dry erase markers. No dry erase markers meant no Essential Question on my dry erase board which meant all my instruction would have blown apart until such time I purchased dry erase markers--according to the educational fad of that time.

Indeed, being ensconced on my sofa, nullifying with movies or video games the object permanence of angry, defiant inner city students would have been normal chronos time for me. 

Second of all, when it did happen, it never should have happened.  I sported a mullet at the time. I thought it was cool. She did not.  Susan hated mullets.  But the kairos kicked in with good conversation and one synchronicity that made it all happen.

I happened to have in my back pocket at the time, a card that represented another space and a future time.  In that space, five ballroom dancing lessons awaited me.  I imagine anyone who knows how to Foxtrot experiences kairos as they glide across the floor.  But I had no partner until in that space and time Susan said, “Call me," after I asked her.

          That first date was kairos time too.  I knew then I wanted to spend all my time, any kind of time, with her. 

Ray Bradbury once wrote a science fiction story about a man who traveled back in time and stepped on a butterfly he should not have stepped on, hence “the butterfly effect,” and by doing so he changed the outcome of an election in the future from a democrat before he time-traveled to a fascist after he returned.

If I had stepped on other insects than I did, if I had been afraid and not ridden that horse that threw me off and broke my glasses, if my beloved sister had not died in a car accident, if I had become an atheist instead of a Christian, if I had joined any denomination other than Baptist, if I had taken a bus to seminary from Chattanooga to San Francisco instead of completing a third of the journey on my bicycle, if I had only read the King James Version of the Bible, if I had never drunk a beer, never smoked a joint, or if I had called AAA just once to change my flat tire which I was perfectly capable of changing myself, I doubt I would have met my wife. 

          Let me bring this to Advent.  Anyone who has ever been in a place where and during a time when the presence of God has elevated life to pure joy has experienced Advent.  Anyone who dreads a day, yet feels dread dissipate the second one remembers all our days belong to God knows the experience of Advent.

The stories tell us all about it.  Indeed, they do more than that.  They show us so we might experience Advent again every year.

I know the wonder of it all.  In a paper and supply store, my future wife and I made wonderful kairos together. 

          Blessings…

HEARD AT CHURCH

                         In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  Let’s talk about space and time.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which my pastor tells us is a season all to itself.  He began his sermon with a story about a 1974 encounter with a woman at Vanderbilt University who told him she had met a man who changed her life. 

So, I’m thinking she met her husband, or she met a doctor whose surgery saved her life, or she met a celebrity.

She had met Sun Myung Moon.  He would turn out to be the founder of the Unification Church.

          My pastor said he and a friend went to hear Mr. Moon that day.  The meeting place was not a mountaintop, not a stadium, not beside a river, and not in heaven, but in the Nashville Ramada Inn.  My pastor said it was the most remarkable two hours of his life.  I wish he had elaborated on the latter. 

          As the sermon unfolded, as indeed all sermons must at least do, the impression of the story was to illustrate how uneventful the first Advent would have seemed outsiders.  Furthermore, the event it proclaimed, Jesus’s birth, also would have all the excitement of a Ramada Inn religious gathering circa 1974. 

          Indeed, the Christian Bible suggests that Jesus’s birth was not so earth shaking.  Much about his birth is obscure.  We have the earliest Christian writer, Paul, never mentioning a nativity. Mark, the first gospel, contains no birth narrative.  The nativity is absent in the last gospel written which is John.  Only Luke and Matthew, who include a lot of their words and timelines of Jesus’s life from Mark, have birth narratives.  They are not the same.  Do they agree?

          Yes, they do agree.  Here’s where and when:  something wonderful happened for humanity in space and time. 

Space:  something wonderful happened where Jesus was born.  It happened locally to the shepherds and townspeople; it happened globally to itinerant Magi who visited from other nations; it happened politically within Judea, a conquered nation of the Roman Empire.

Time: something wonderful happened for humanity when Jesus was born.  We have one word for time.  The Ancient Greeks had two words: chronos and kairos.  We get our word chronology from chronos. Anyone who has ever recorded their plans on a calendar knows about chronos.  That word indicates clock time. 

We do not have a word for kairos, but we experience it.  Kairos means the right time, which we know in our experience in phrases like “Seize the day” or “Opportunity knocks.”  Kairos is the right time, the right moment that had to happen the way it did because it was supposed to happen the way it did given what preceded it.  Because it happened the way it did and when it did, then other events must happen the way they will and when they will. 

In Luke and Matthew’s birth narratives Advent proclaimed the birth of God’s Messiah in chronos time, which is the hour in history when Jesus was born; and in kairos time, which is that divine moment when Hebrew, Greek, and Roman history came together at that one birth--where and when events that would usher in God’s kingdom on earth were just beginning.

It would take decades before that "Nashville-Ramada-Inn" event would become meaningful to millions.  It would take centuries before it would become meaningful to me.

Blessings…

THEY WILL KNOW US BY OUR LOVE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Let’s talk about Buddhists.

          It’s embarrassing to admit, but Buddhists appear to be the only people of faith who are kind, loving, and accepting. We Christians were meant to be such people of faith, but are we?

          We had it all at first. The carrion world reeked with violence, domination, imperialism, corruption, bigotry, and greed. 

          We Christians had our Lord and his gospel. Unto all the world we went with the message of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, of love and peace, of common fellowship at the dinner table.  The Way must have come as a word too good to be true to those who heard it, for we were nothing like the world.

          Furthermore, we had our Lord’s presence, the spirit of the living God loving within us. We had a vision and philosophy of unconditional love, of forgiveness, of kindness, and of joy. 

         Having God we had everything and needed nothing.  

          I heard a seminary professor say that for the first two hundred years of its existence on earth, there has been no record of a Christian fighting in the Roman army. Turning the other cheek was looking past revenge toward something greater.

          Somewhere, somehow, it all frayed, then unraveled, leaving a few threads to hold the faith together. Believers fought among themselves about how to worship Jesus and forgot to be like Jesus.  Believers made worldliness about sex, pleasure, and—if you can believe it—the love of money and power.

          Sex and pleasure make it easier to endure the world when it turns to crap, but money and power drives everything indecent. 

          History shows us how money and power has turned many Christians into rapacious fiends like those European Christians who murdered millions of Native Americans for Jesus and gold. 

         That’s just one time.

         Moreover, the love of money and power drives indecent ministers into preaching that lucre and empire are signs of God’s blessings. These modern indulgences extol the virtue of war, torture, and the gospel of wealth.

          It was never supposed to be this way for us, the Christians.

          If we become a nation of ascetics and have not love, how are we different from the world?  We are the world and joyless too. Indeed, if for any reason we, the Christians, make others into strangers, and then treat them with vile cruelty--that’s the everlasting sin of all cultures and governments.

          What the world needs is love. It needs a faith that believes in the power of unconditional love. It yearns for a people of faith who pray for peace and work for justice. 

          Thank God, there is such a people of faith. I wish it were us.

          Nobody ever heard of a Jim Crow Buddhist, a radical Buddhist terrorist, a Buddhist empire, Buddhist lust for gold, colonial Buddhist missionaries, and when was the last time anyone saw a slasher Buddhist film?

          So let us, the Christians refuse to get self righteous on the Muslims. When we start following Christ, and the world knows us by our love, then we can whisper to God Almighty, “We’re as good as the Buddhists, Lord.”

          Indeed, if they know us by our love, we may not think that way anymore. We'll be too busy following Jesus.

          Next time I’ll write about Christian politicians.

          Blessings…

A WORD FROM THE VOID

FOR VICTIMS

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Last time when I ended my post, I shared that I would write about Christian politicians, but I must write about the Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual and Trans-gendered men and women who were murdered in Orlando on June 12.

          My heart, my mind, and my spirit have been in the void. That is the place where no words or thoughts stir. It is the place where the breath of God moves until God speaks.

          Do not be deceived. I can write a lot of words, and I will. I’ll talk a lot too. But I am compelled to not remain silent when a disaster occurs, so these words pour out of my mind, not the void.

          I’ve known the void before. It was a year ago on June 17^th. I could not believe my eyes would see and my ears would hear of such a massacre as what happened in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

          Nine of my Christian brothers and sisters were slaughtered by a young man who looked as old as the high school students I teach. He walked into their church, listened to their Bible Study and prayer, and murdered them.

          The void presented itself to me then; it presents itself to me now for Orlando.

          When an unspeakable tragedy happens, a shroud of inexpressible silence blanks the mind as if the cosmos has become such a place where nothing can ever be uttered again.

          For Christians, this is a dreadful nothingness. The word is everything to us. The Greek word “logos” is translated as “word,” and it points to that presence of God that created everything.

              “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not grasp.”

          No Word means no creation, no life, and no salvation.

          A lot of words will be said about Orlando. A lot are being said already about Orlando. Many words sound insincere, spoken for the sake of public bluster by those who have everlastingly fought or fretted for the rights of gun makers and owners, but who have habitually come up blank for LGBT people except to condemn them. Their words sound rehearsed. Maybe they are rehearsed. Maybe they’ve articulated their rote revulsion too often after young Americans, very young Americans, and all the rest are massacred.

          We can tell when someone speaks words that are authentic, and we know they are true when the emotional loss flows from their bodies as much as from their voices. 

          We also know their words are true when they are transformed by tragedy. So often words abound about “these heinous acts,” but I see no transformation among the proclaimers.

          I wonder if the void does not seize us all when, “blood and destruction become so in use, and dreadful objects so familiar.” It can be a long time before the inexpressible is forthcoming. The word lies in silent abeyance.

          So we must wait. The word when it comes will explode in a big bang or glide in a gentle breath. It will create from our hearts, from our scriptures, our wisdom, our worship, our hands and feet, our work, our God of love.

          The victims who died were dancers, singers, tour guides, retail sales people, managers, a McDonald’s worker, salon workers, business owners, a lot of students, an Army reserve captain, and a mother who went to The Pulse to show support for her son by dancing with him. 

          She is gone, and he lives.

          Let us multiply by forty-nine the number of years these victims might have lived before dreadful murder ended them. Calculate the thousands of life years lost—void.

          These words are all I have written. I wait for another word. It could be a long wait. My soul feels as broken up as Anderson Cooper’s voice when he told us the names and occupations of those massacred.

          Next time, I hope to write about Buddhists and Christian politicians.

          Blessings… 

         WINGARDIUM RADICAL     ISLAMIC TERRORIST

          In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Let’s talk about condemnation.

          Try as I might I just can’t force myself to condemn Omar Mateen as a radical Islamic terrorist. He was a destroyed man long before he fired his first shot. However, the argument that America will finally end those evil Muslims if we condemn them by the right name is a silly argument unless you believe in spells and potions.

          In the spell wingardium radical Islamic terrorist do we emphasize the first syllable in Islamic or the last syllable to make the magic work?  Does it matter so long as we remember to flick and switch?

          Those words do not belong together. We who are Christians must disagree when we hear them. Here’s one reason why those words do not belong together. When Muslims hear the words “radical Islamic terrorist” after a degenerate fanatic who claims to be doing the work of Allah has ended his bloodbath, which resembles the bloodbath of that nut who fancies himself to be the Angel of Death for the Lord Jesus Christ, good Muslims are not inspired to do good in the world; rather they must contend with the wicked trinity of rage, despair, and fear trembling in their hearts and minds.

          You see, when those words are uttered, a whole lot of Muslims do not  hear a presidential candidate say them, or an American say them, or a Westerner say them. They hear Christians saying them and feel the dark ancient hatred stir within them.

          I’ve got to be very honest here. Our Christian forebears forgot about those commandments that fulfill God’s law, you know, the three commandments about loving God, loving the neighbor, loving the enemy. They conveniently forgot the Golden Rule too, or they did what people do today and cast it aside as some rule impossible to follow on earth yet entirely doable in heaven.

          Had believers turned away from the way of the world, a way of violence, domination, imperialism, and bigotry, the history of Western Civilization might have proceeded with greater respect and concern for other human beings.

          The words, “She’s a Christian” would have meant something through the centuries instead of becoming the weighted words they are today. How hard it is to uplift those words when they are heavy with other meanings:  anti-intellectual, delusional, duped, hypocritical, pious, self righteous, resentful, coercive, and inhospitable.

          That last one really hurts. It drives a stake in the heart of Christ. Being hospitable to others was his way of showing how the kingdom of God looked when it happened.

          Alas, history tells a torn again tale. We, the Christians, embraced violence as a truth that did not contradict our Christ, and see where we are now. We’re no different than anyone else who murders in the name of their God.

          If we had acted with kindness and forgiveness throughout history, people of all faiths would have been our friends. They might have felt themselves to be everlastingly invited to come to us for refuge. Instead, we truck with the world and the ways of the world. This bad company has given us the same stink as any other disturbed servant of a god who proclaims his truth with murder.

          Though hatred is a part of our heritage, it has never been God’s way. The historical stain of Christian condemnation, intimidation, and violence can never be transformed until we act as followers of Christ who love and worship the God of love.

          It’s never too late to love, nor too foolish to refuse hate.

          Ponder that for a day. Next time, I’ll write about our Christian politicians and how they’ve turned faith, which is an ultimate concern into patriotism, which is beneath God and humanity.

          Blessings…

         

WORDS WORTH GIVING FOR ORLANDO

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

            Welcome back.  Let’s talk about words and their power.

            About this time last summer, I could not sleep.  I was heartbroken.  A young man, a stranger,  entered a Charleston church and murdered nine Christian brothers and sisters after being invited by them to stay and study the Bible.  I feel the same misery today after hearing about Orlando.

            When something this tragic happens, healing must stir anew and immediately.  I heard healing words today when a Muslim man on the news said that Omar Mateen is not a Muslim because he murdered  people during Ramadan.  He went on to say that Islam preaches peace and love.  Jihad, he said, is a struggle against life, not individuals.

            We have a presidential candidate, a news network, numerous radio voices, and a political party that proclaims that saying the words "radical Islamic terrorist" is crucial to preventing murders like the ones in Orlando.

            That sounds like the old superstition that you know something or control something when you name it.  Hebrews and Muslims believe God can never be represented by any image or name because God is beyond knowledge and control. 

            What happens when we name things is we label them.  We forge them into thought idols.  We need not spend intellectual energy understanding an idol.  That gives us free time to think about other important things like faulty air bags and sharks inviting themselves over to our legs for dinner.

            I doubt very seriously that the people spewing the lame brain name vomit believe it.  Their voters believe it, and for their overly vexed fluster drives certain words and flake issues act like an aphrodisiac, so the hurling never ceases to arouse rage.

            Most of the vexation the past eight years has been stoked by the presence of President Obama in the White House.  Mr. Obama has been so busy taking away our guns and giving them to Muslims that he has not stopped and labeled Mateen with a designation that will please his critics.  He does not use the words "radical Islamic terrorist," and now Mr. Obama is flying flags at half staff--the Hitler.

            Yes, once again these Pharisees of the right are rending their garments and pulling out their hair and we all stay mad at each other until the next day comes along with a new slight that is the worst in American history and is destroying Western Civilization as we know it. 

            Does hair grow back when we rip it out?

            To be honest, I don't have an opinion about Old Glory flying at half staff except to say if we must fly our flag every time any soldier is murdered in this country, or any massacre occurs in this country, then do it.  Fly it every time.  Make it a new precedent.  Who’s to say we can’t.

            Maybe if we see every day that we cannot raise the Stars and Stripes full mast because the butchery will not be sated, the guns will not be silent, and the hatred will not take a holiday, then so be it.  Maybe after a year or so, we will weary of a half mast culture and  find a way to heal so Old Glory can fly full staff—proud and free--again.

            That being written, I do have an opinion about name calling.  For the past few posts, I've been writing about Justin Martyr's claim that truth belongs to Christians. What happened in Orlando had interrupted my purpose.

            Or has it?

            Martyr's claim is truth is no threat to Christians.  Truth comes from God.  Since the murders in Orlando, I must point out that lies can never be true and, therefore, acceptable to us, the Christians.  Indeed, like should not be acceptable to human beings.

            The most pernicious lie that many who call themselves Christians believe is the lie that God wants the church to enforce God's will by condemning other people, intimidating other people, and murdering other people.

            Name calling is a form of condemnation and intimidation.  Calling a fiend who murders in the name of Allah a radical Islamic terrorist condemns Islam by implication and intimidates Muslims by recrimination. There are a billion Muslims who must cringe when they hear word strangers like “radical” and “terrorist” entering in the holy presence of “Islamic.”

            I know because I cringe every time Westboro Baptist Church is in the news.  They make Christians, that is, me, my pastor, my church members, Justin Martyr, Paul, Jesus, and our God of love seem like low class jerks.  Even worse Christian Baptists look like donkey asses.  That’s a redundant ass, the worst kind you can be.

           

            Ponder that (the lie, not the donkey).  Next time, I will write about words worth more than gold.

            Blessings…

             

             

CAPTIOUS CARTOONS CANTANKERZING US ALL

        Welcome back. This isn’t like me to blog on a Saturday, but the cartoon above really bothered me. I'm blogging about the cartoon above to point out what is wrong with it. It resorts to shame, that an old tactic taken from the Demagogue Bag of Gooey Calumny and Shame.

        We resort to tricks when we are too lazy to talk to one another and try to understand one another.

        I see calumny all the time between Republicans and Democrats. Theirs is an ideological antagonism. The animosity between Bernie and Hillary supporters is that between bad sports and lousy winners.

        In any case, when we talk to each other some of us have already switched our minds and our tongues to the COCKFIGHT setting whereby we hope to spur each other to humiliation by seeing who can come up with the most provocative put down.

        I can't refute the other guy so I change the subject by calling him names or shaming him. Changing the subject does not address the issue of who would be the best person to run our country. How much of the antagonism against Hillary is due to smear instead of truth? Who will leave a better country when they leave office, or at least a nation that has not gone backwards?  If he is not nominated, Mr. Sanders must be reckoned with and allowed to influence the Democratic Party so that it shifts toward “them that brung it.”

        There is nobody more progressive than I. Indeed, once I became conscious I could never agree that capitalism worked well for people who work. Trickle down to me was just a deceitful way of saying, "letting the crumbs fall off the table."

        That is because I watched my step father work eighty hours a week in a Chattanooga factory so he could have the overtime pay that would allow him to afford the luxury of keeping up a house, feeding four kids and a wife, giving a tithe to a church, buying a new car every five years, taking a vacation occasionally and never farther than Florida, and going to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville six times a year.

        As long as he could do all that with middling trouble, he was okay with the status quo.

        He could say he made a good living. He earned a decent pension, but like Job, if God took away those Neyland Stadium tickets I suspect he would have raised hell.

        It never bothered him that the DuPont family got filthy rich off of his labor and the labor of hundreds of others who stood on their feet eight to sixteen hours a day operating those machines that produced DuPont nylon.

You can bet the Duponts kept their labor budget as low as they could get away with because they did not give a shit about my dad or anyone else's dad.

        For the sake of my stepfather, other family, and friends who work my heart and head say Mr. Sanders is right, but Mrs. Clinton is right too for other reasons. I wish they would run on the same ticket. I don’t know if they will. No matter what happens, I believe progressives will come around.

        We must all stand and vote. For we find ourselves in a predicament unlike any I can recall. We have a candidate who must be defeated or God knows what he might do.

        No one really knows what a Trump presidency would look like because he refuses to explain it. Instead of explanation, we get insults. It is a tactic designed to change the subject. Mr. Trump insults anyone who disagrees with him or requires facts from him.

        The poet, William Butler Yeats, wrote about the furious politics roiling in Ireland at the turn of the 20^th century. Consider this line from “The Second Coming”:

        "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." 

        The fury is here, now, and roiling at the heart of Mr. Trump’s campaign. We need to stop it.

        It is a dangerous thing when a candidate can articulate any absurdity with a straight face and enjoy a surge in his popularity. We need to vote against it.

        Indeed, Mr. Trump could say, “I can turn water into wine. I promise. I can. I do it all the time. I’ll turn every drop of water into wine when I’m president. I drink a lot of wine. I know what good wine is. I will do it. And it will be good wine too. The best you ever had. Elect me. You’ll see.” 

        Shame is not going to build a wall around that level of falsity. Shame will not persuade anyone to vote against Mr. Trump. What we need is a culling. We need to gather all the commonalities shared among Democrats that make winning urgent for the United States.

        If you don’t know what they are, listen to what Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton are saying. One commonality is my stepfather. The other guy has nothing for him except an aphrodisiac for his racism.

        Finally, Democrats should never stop debating among themselves, but this time is unlike any time in the history of national elections. Circumstances are compelling us to get up, get out, and vote.

        That’s where we should start. Forget the shame. The future demands we communicate, offer good information, question without condemning, and agree to disagree. The present demands that we vote Democrat.

        Blessings…

SABBATH PRAYER FOR A GREAT MUSLIM

Welcome back.  Today, I would like to offer a Sabbath prayer in remembrance of one whose name means "worthy of all praise most high."

Muhammad Ali's funeral was held today. I was sad to hear of his death.  I followed his career with great interest because my mother told me when I was very young that he was the best boxer in the world.  

I do not recall when she said it.  Was it before or after the first Liston fight?  

Time Magazine's commemorative issue arrived in my mailbox today.  A young Ali is on the cover.  In its pages you will find an excellent article about the man written by Robert Lipsyte.  I read it in one sitting and enjoyed it thoroughly.  There are many anecdotes and many surprises that no medium can express except excellent writing.

Ali was a great fighter in all the ways we can say a man fought greatly. As we recognize and remember his greatness as a man, we must never forget that he was a great sinner.  He could be unfair, mean, and promiscuous with the amount of transgression one might expect of any man of true faith.

Despite his transgressions, Ali waged jihad in life for truth and justice. He loved with a heart that revealed much of the grace we Christians know in Christ.  His journey revealed Allah to be a God of love.  That love manifested itself in the life of Muhammad Ali despite his humanity and maybe because of his humanity.

I will miss you, Champ.  You are one of those blessed ones who make the world a little more interesting as long as you are alive.

I offer this Sabbath prayer to honor my Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. Truly, I offer it to all the world.

May the LORD know you and reveal you to yourself.  
May the LORD bless you and grace you with God's love all your days.  

May ALLAH bless Ali.
May ALLAH keep him in death as providentially as ALLAH kept him in life.  
May ALLAH bless his family and console their grief.

May ALLAH bless and keep you in love everlasting.
May ALLAH bless and keep you in grace ever abounding.
May ALLAH bless and keep you in providence ever nurturing.

On this day of rest, make us more kind and just, O LORD.
Turn our lights to your flame, O LORD, so we may carry it into all darkness and never despair.

AMEN

Blessings...

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF WISDOM

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Yesterday was my nine year wedding anniversary.  My beloved selfmate and I celebrated, so I did not post. Of course, I realize I should celebrate my marriage every year and day and hour and minute and second, but I have work and other stuff to do. I feel bad about it sometimes, but it can’t be helped. That being said, let's think about philosophy and wisdom.

          There’s a redundant relationship between philosophy and wisdom. Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom.”  When we think of philosophy we think of the Greeks first because they are the first philosophers of Western Civilization. After Plato and Aristotle we find many notable philosophers emerging among the British, the Germans, one Danish guy, a handful of French thinkers, a few boring Americans who are logical positivists and a few interesting Americans who are not.

          There is much wisdom in philosophy, and it would be obvious to us, were we not distracted by philosophers' attempts to explain the nature of reality.

          Wisdom as wisdom belongs to religion. Hebrew and Jewish writers wrote wisdom texts. Just about every sentence in Buddhist and Hindu texts contains wisdom. The Koran is so much like the Bible it would be folly to think there is no wisdom there. Shintoism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and other isms have given us texts that admonish us how to live.

          What does this say about humanity and humanity's religions that so much wisdom exists among all the spiritual traditions of the world?

          We do not have to look very far to find wisdom in the Bible. Wisdom is a tradition all its own that speaks to us along with Israel’s other traditions:  the Deuteronomic Tradition, the Priestly Tradition, the Prophetic Tradition, the Apocalyptic Tradition, and the Christian Tradition. Among them all the Wisdom Tradition is a river of life flowing concurrently with all the other traditions since the first stories were told and then written down centuries later. I would argue that the Wisdom Tradition transformed from river of life to word of life in the Christian Tradition.

           The Wisdom Tradition was a genuine alternative to the Apocalyptic Tradition, as it is today. Personally, I care not for the latter. It frames false hopes in superstitious language.  It makes lousy preachers, excellent dupes, and inane books; although I will admit apocalypticism inspires exciting fiction and movies. 

          The Apocalyptic Tradition is pessimistic.  It preaches that creation is so crappy God has to come and make it clean again, or to put it a Jewish way, the world is so impure, God must send his Messiah to make it kosher again. There is no hope for human effort.  Apocalypticism relies on magical thinking, numerology, and Arnold Schwarzenegger for validation. 

          If you are Jewish the end times will be gingerbread clocks and treacle tarts. Original apocalypticism imagines a future when Jewish people will be in power, ruled by a King David-like Messiah, and all of us unclean Gentiles will use separate restrooms. Christian apocalypti-cism restores Gentiles to their accustomed place of power, and Jewish people have hell to pay.

           Personally, I believe a Jewish king would be better than all these trigger happy Gentiles murdering each other daily. I'd be willing to use an unclean restroom as long as it was sanitary and King David took away the Gentiles' weapons.

          The Bible offers another way. Wisdom is an alternative to the Apocalyptic Tradition. Wisdom is an optimistic philosophy. It posits a creation that is good. True, there is evil, but it never lasts. Hitlers come and go, but the goodness of creation lasts forever. Stalins can be prevented. Pol Pots can be extinguished. Only the good remains in the world long after evil has departed for another time and place. 

          
          Thus, speaks the Wisdom Tradition.

          The primary wisdom texts in the Jewish Bible are Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. These works preach the philosophy of the Jewish people. There's a reason why they clash with the other, more storied traditions. Wisdom by its nature lights up the shadows of that which is perishing.

          Wisdom exists in other Jewish writings. The Midrash and Talmud are full of words and stories that seek to ask and answer existential questions. Furthermore, there have been Jewish philosophers like Spinoza who write about the nature of reality as well as the nature of wisdom. 

          In the Christian Bible, the Q Gospel embedded in Luke and Matthew, as well as the Gospel of Thomas, are wisdom texts. Like the Jewish Bible, wisdom can be found in all books of the Christian Bible. Hence, I would argue, philosophy is as biblical as it gets insofar as wisdom is loved in the Bible.

          Next time, I’ll explain the relationship between wisdom and truth.

          Blessings…