Wrestling With Why

November 18, 2009 — 2 Comments

Researchers tell us that most humans only use 5-10% of their brain capacity. As I watch my small children, I am convinced that they are using much more than that. They are always busy creating, discovering, exploring, trying something new. I, however, find it easy to believe that I’m only using a tiny fraction of my brain capacity. I have to work hard at creating, learning, trying new things. It’s no longer my natural inclination. To my children, it seems effortless.

I spent much of last year gorging on the writings of Madeleine L’Engle, a noted author whose “children’s novels” are plenty good reading for this adult. While pondering the generation gap and the sometimes-rebellious behavior of adolescents, L’Engle wrote in her reflective book A Circle of Quiet, “. . . the challenge I face with children is the redemption of adulthood. We must make it evident that maturity is the fulfillment of childhood and adolescence, not a diminishing; that it is an affirmation of life, not a denial; that it is entering fully into our essential selves.”

Hmm. Is it possible that children’s natural inclination towards discovery and creative thinking is something that should be encouraged, developed to even greater heights as they move into adulthood? Is it possible that the rebelliousness we’ve come to expect from adolescents mainly exists because the adult world for which we are preparing them is seriously flawed, because this world commands them to give up the seed of life and joy with which all children are born? Do we ask them to stop feeding the very thing that many of us go seeking in our midlife crises?

Currently I’m reading True Believers Don’t Ask Why by John Fischer, which I found on a ‘free books’ table at a local church that was cleaning out their library. Fischer’s book was published in 1989, but applies all too well today. Fischer, a singer and writer of the 1960s Jesus movement, wrote in this book that the youth of the 1980s were disappointingly less radical than he, a then middle-aged man, was.

Fischer wrote that this generation was much more interested in answering “how-to” questions rather than “why” ones. “How-to” questions are easily answered by the appropriate specialist. Answering “how-to” questions ensures success in an endeavor, and assumes that the answer is out there, fully obtainable if one knows who to ask.

“Why” questions, however, rarely have concrete answers. The same “why” questions have been asked and explored over and over again through the millennia of human history. Those who have wrestled with them have soared and suffered, produced brilliant work and been driven to madness – but have rarely remained the same after the struggle as they were before.

A person or generation who never asks “why” questions loses a sense of wonder, lacks the wisdom that the world, life, faith, everything true, is bigger than words, cannot be contained in a concrete answer. This person or generation lives superficially, fearful of new ideas and different perspectives, using not more than 5-10% of their brain power to explore the world around and within them.

So here’s to the askers of “why,” including my own especially fervent questioners Luthien and Silas. May the life I live encourage their continuing quests. May each of us grown-ups be a little more courageous this week in facing the “why” questions we’ve all-too-successfully grown out of asking.

I Doubt It

October 24, 2009 — 15 Comments

These days I am losing my faith. The faith of my past, that is. I’m not sure how it will grow from here, and I’m doing my best to live in the tension and uncertainty of asking questions I’ve pushed away at other times in my life. Questions like, was Jesus’ crucifixion necessary to redeem humanity, or was it more of an inevitability for someone who loved so fully and stood so faithfully with the marginalized in the face of corrupt power, both religious and political? Did God really require an innocent sacrifice to compensate for the sins of the world? I seek to emulate a savior who is the prince of peace. Why would the God with whom that savior is one be thirsty for innocent blood (taking alone the teaching that Jesus is God’s son, differentiated from God the father?) Is there really ‘power in the blood’ of Jesus, and if so, does that power come from his blood crucified, or is it the living, healing, incarnate and resurrected Christ alone that was only ever necessary for the salvation of the world? (I understand resurrection could not happen without death, but my question is, did that death have to be an execution, a bloody sacrifice to appease a wrathful God?)

That’s a significant question for a lifelong evangelical, ever-so-familiar with the simple drawing of a stick man, a chasm, and God at the other side, with a cross bridging the man and God. There is much more I am pondering about this question, and I am hungry to ask other questions too – to research the canonization of scripture, the formation of the doctrines considered fundamental to my faith tradition – not to disprove, but to understand.

It’s clear to me that I couldn’t have faced these questions honestly or bravely earlier in my life. I would not have been able to live in the tension of uncertainty. For the years that these questions have been forming in me, I have often chosen to remain willfully ignorant, believing that my only other choice was to make a clean break and declare myself an atheist or agnostic. It’s complicated and difficult to face doubts and questions, to speak honestly about them, and at the same time to remain in community with other believers with whom I really do want to commune. It’s tempting and would be easier, in the short run, to be the extremist I often have been – to throw it all out, even the stuff I love and believe, rather than pursue the path of growth my inner life is demanding in all its twists and turns and switchbacks.

There is so much of my faith tradition that I do love and believe. At the core of these half-understood, inconsistent doctrines and dogma is something alive, a power and a love and grace that has undeniably pursued me, carried me, drawn me to itself. I have always called that presence God, understanding God to be three persons – a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. But my hungry mind is dissatisfied these days with leaving it at that when it has not meaningfully wrestled with the larger questions of who God is, who Jesus is, how these doctrines and ideas we call orthodox have been decided.

Some of us are dancers, some dreamers, some thinkers, most of us are unique combinations of these and more. The thinker in me wants to build a faith she can sink her teeth into.

The people-pleasing pastor’s kid in me, however, shrinks from all this. She sees the agnostic shortcut as much less messy – “just cut the cord and be done with it!” she begs. “What will people think if I ask these questions out loud and expect to still be accepted as a fellow believer? Escape, escape!”

It’s my mounting suspicion, however, that most of us – at least, those of us with significant ‘thinker’ sides – have doubts we are afraid to voice; and that the fear of what others will say or do in response to our doubts keeps us paralyzed, going through religious motions or else walking away from it all. I’ve decided to be more transparent with my own doubts and questions, and to hold fast to my faith that God and God’s people have arms wide enough for every seeker, every believer, every doubter, every messy mix of believer and doubter.

When I started this blog, I titled it “The More I Learn the More I Wonder,” with the intention of hashing out some of these doubts and questions, musings and wonderings I have, and hoping others will interact, challenge, agree or disagree, move the conversation along. I’ve done that a bit, and I hope to keep working at it – not just in cyberspace but in every space of my life.

Just Say No . . . So You Can Say Yes

October 22, 2009 — Leave a comment

Most of us need to say ‘no’ to most of the requests we receive, so that we can say a committed ‘yes’ to a few. It seems to me that it is usually ignorance, arrogance, or fear that drives us to overcommit: ignorance of our limitations, arrogance that denies those limitations, or fear of people’s responses if we don’t say ‘yes.’

As I heard a wise woman say last night, much of the time we explain too much when we do say ‘no.’ There is usually nothing wrong with just saying ‘no’ and leaving it at that. The first time I did that was on the phone with a telemarketer, and I surprised myself and her, who apparently had no prepared script to respond to someone simply saying ‘no’ without excuse. This particular telemarketer, by the way, was from a charity – a good charity, one with which I have no qualms. I said ‘no,’ and nothing else, and she said, ‘Oh. . . well, thank you. Goodbye.’

There are, thankfully, scads and scads of good charities and organizations, causes and movements out there, and no one person can or should possibly commit or give to all, most, or even a significant fraction of them. We do better when we identify the causes we are most passionate about, the tasks we are most suited to accomplish, and say a big ‘yes’ to one or two of them; remembering that these commitments are in addition to the everyday ones we already seek to faithfully keep – our everyday work, care of ourselves and our families, and time with our friends, to name a few.

“Our Need for Everything . . . “

October 14, 2009 — 1 Comment

This morning I am reading Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker) and came across these words quoting Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373):

“The inhabitants of the world fill in the common need from the common excess. We should rejoice in this need on that part of us all . . . Our need for everything binds us with a love for everything.”

I’m thinking today of the World Vision Christmas catalog that my young daughter Luthien and I were paging through a few days ago. You could buy medicine for sick children, food for hungry ones, animals to provide a livelihood for destitute families – and while the pictures were vibrant with joy and my daughter was enthusiastically deciding what she wanted to give, I found myself crying as page after page lengthened the list of needs. There is no way our family can give enough to meet all those needs.

But what a preposterous idea! Our family is one small piece of this circle of love and need. How often I forget, in this individualistic culture, that no one person or family or group is charged with saving the world. Neither is anyone only needy or only loaded with gifts for others. We are all of us needy, and we can each give something – a smile, a well-spoken word, a sum of money, a box of food, an hour of our time – as we affirm the life, the need, the beauty, love, and pain that make up the reality of the world in which we live.

May we all be courageous enough to live more faithfully within this circle of need and love, of vulnerability and generosity.

Sustaining Motion

September 28, 2009 — 4 Comments

I used to believe that with the right amount of effort, therapy, money, discipline, and time, I would achieve the perfect state and then maintain it. I would live in the right town, in the perfect house, with the right person, drive the right car to the perfect job, be the right weight, achieve the perfect hairstyle, have the furniture arranged and the yard landscaped just right . . . and then hold that pose – forever! Perfect! Permanent!

One moment in the life of my late grandmother, Hazel Dominguez Tindall.

One frozen moment in the life of my late grandmother, Hazel Dominguez Tindall.

But not possible. Nothing is ever standing still. My body moves involuntarily with every breath, my heart pumps without my conscious consent, my cells are factories in constant production. Even when I die, my body will not be still, as decay takes over and every atom moves on to become part of something else. The earth on which I stand spins at nearly 1,000 miles per hour, one small mover in a vast expanding universe.

Plenty of movement is required simply to sustain life. But the time and place where I live has “progressed” to a state far beyond simple sustenance. I can get anywhere in the world in a matter of hours or days, learn about anything with a few mouse clicks, communicate my ideas through a plethora of instant media options. Because so much is possible, it takes plenty of energy for me simply to sift through it all, to decide what I will do, buy, wear, eat; and to deal with my own and other people’s expectations and reactions to my choices.

With all this motion around and within me, I find deep healing in the disciplines of rest and reflection. Rest is not perfect stillness, but a deliberate slowing down, setting aside the oars and moving with the water rather than forcing my way through. Reflection is not absolute silence, but a thoughtful tuning out of the noises I ordinarily attend to, so that I can listen to the echoes of the recent moments through which I’ve moved.

Beneath all the layers of progress-driven sound and light, life is still a flowing river. The more I try to hold a living thing in a freeze-frame squeeze, the more energy I must expend – and even as I inflict any level of un-natural stasis upon that thing – be it my face, a relationship, a belief system or a zucchini, it slowly begins to wither in my grasp – or speeds up the natural rhythms that end in death, another way of saying the same thing.

This is why the bugs and baby bunnies my daughter captures usually convalesce until either they are released or they die. It explains why my marriage has suffered seasons of stagnancy, and why the fresh greens I stash in my refrigerator often need to be re-classified as compost.

Healthy living things are always growing. Evolution is the heartbeat of life. We deny the goodness of life when we try to force living things to stand still. Paradoxically, we affirm the goodness of life when we regularly and deliberately slow the pace we’ve picked up trying to keep up with those Joneses, and choose instead to move with the rhythm of the forces that sustain us.