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On Suffering, Evolution, and Humanity

September 5, 2012 — 2 Comments

Contrary to the calendar, summer has officially ended. I am all finished road-tripping across the country, my children started school this week, and I now have predictable slots of time to work on this blog.

This week, I want to share with you this On Being interview with Xavier Le Pichon, “Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity.” I listened to the podcast last week, and was touched and challenged by many of Le Pichon’s ideas, as well as the depth of his thoughtfulness and compassion.

While many people, myself included, have pointed to the problem of suffering as a major roadblock to faith in God, Le Pichon sees it as a touchstone for entering into the deep mysteries of life, and a catalyst for further advances in human evolution.

“Our humanity is not an attribute that we have received once and forever with our conception. It is a potentiality that we have to discover within us and progressively develop or destroy through our confrontation with the different experiences of suffering that will meet us throughout our life,” writes Le Pichon in his paper “Ecce Homo,” on which much of the interview is based.

For a recovering Christian fundamentalist like myself, it does my heart (and mind) big-time good to hear someone so obviously committed to his faith intelligently discuss this issue of human suffering in the context of biological evolution.

Whenever I dredge up the problem of “suffering and God” in thought or conversation, a tiny thought recurs in the back of my brain: “what do you really know of suffering?” This interview amplified that thought. Beyond philosophy and reason, there is love and presence with “the other” – and if I am not willing to truly search out these aspects of my humanity, what do I really know after all?

Against My Will

August 16, 2012 — 3 Comments

Every day I get an email with a list of e-books that are free for my Kindle that day. One of these books I recently downloaded is Becoming a Vegetarian Against Your Will by Tiffany Dow.

Tiffany grew up in Texas, eating meat and loving it. One day, as an adult, she picked up a box of fried chicken at a drive-up window. When she opened the box, there was a whole chicken feather still attached to the breast. She couldn’t eat it. “I felt disgusted,” she says. “Yes, I know where fried chicken comes from, but for some reason having it flutter right there in my meal box churned my stomach . . . At that moment I didn’t realize I was a vegetarian. I just knew I wasn’t finishing THAT feathery chicken meal.”

She wrote her book for those people who have chosen vegetarianism for one reason or another but who aren’t black-and-white fundamentalists about it:

I hate reading vegetarian guides where everyone is all smiles and hugs and boasting about all the good you’ll be doing for your body and the planet.

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that you will grieve the loss of meat – unless it’s never been a big part of your life in the first place.

Dow describes being “visibly annoyed” seeing other people eating juicy burgers. “[T]hey’d say, ‘What’s wrong?’ and snicker at me (because they knew). I’d tell them, ‘I wish I could eat a burger.’ And then they’d say something that always made me want to smack them: ‘You can.’ That’s what they didn’t understand. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

I could identify a bit with her journey towards vegetarianism. I too have settled into a vegetarian lifestyle, I who used to stop off for a Quarter Pounder just for a snack now and then.

But in reading her book, I was struck with how familiar this all sounds to me as I open up about my doubts in my faith journey.

I grew up eating dogma. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – if dogma wasn’t on the plate, it wasn’t a real meal. Our largest family and community celebrations placed dogma at the very center of the table, on a huge platter for all to enjoy.

But in recent years, it’s been getting harder for me to swallow dogma. So much so that at this point, I have cut it out of my diet entirely. It’s okay, though – at any given meal, even in social settings, I can usually find enough other food to nourish me; and I’m not offended when other people chow down on the food I can’t eat.

At first it really was hard to be there at the table and watch others eat what I could no longer stomach but still craved. Even though I couldn’t swallow it, I missed it. It was nostalgic for me. It was a connection to my childhood, to people and times in my life that were meaningful to me – and I could no longer access that connection.

Thankfully, even when I was a child, dogma wasn’t my only experience with my faith tradition. It was never the only thing on the table. However marginalized as side dishes they may have been, things like love, hope, encouragement, thoughtfulness and joy were there too. And they are still there. In my own life, I’m trying to learn how to do more with those things, and I’m finding they provide me with enough nourishment for my health.

In short, while I have stopped eating dogma, I haven’t quit eating. I haven’t even quit eating with other dogma-eaters. We all need to eat, and while we may make different choices about what to eat, we can usually figure out a way to eat together peacefully.

Some people stop eating dogma because they think it is the only right choice. I am not one of those people. I’ve come to recognize that there are complex traditions, experiences, thoughts and feelings that influence each person differently; and the best we can do is honestly and courageously walk the path set before us; patiently, graciously loving both our neighbors and ourselves.

Matters of Life and Death

August 3, 2012 — 7 Comments

I wrote this in my journal a few months ago:

To live, you must die. That’s a central idea to the Christian faith, one I am pondering in a new way as I work through my doubts.

I look in the mirror and see a dying woman. I feel and look so alive – healthy, vibrant, strong. But I know, deeper in my bones than ever, that I will die. I will go the way of all flesh. Ironically, yet so cliche, I face my doubts about immortality at the same time of life when I face the plain truth of my own impending demise.

It’s been weighing on me, pushing me towards despair, though I’ve been standing against it stubbornly, unmoving. But in not moving towards despair, I am also not moving towards life.

And so this “die to live” thing is making a new kind of sense to me. It’s like homeopathy. I can see death coming, inevitable. Instead of fighting it by standing still against the push of despair, I will go with death. I will embrace its truth, let it really sink in, body and soul.

Yes, I will die. Yes, my end is inevitable.

I think as it sinks in, I’ll live more freely. I’ll stop holding everything tight and closed, and let life flow. For all its worth.

A few nights ago my five-year-old son chose the wonderful book John Henry by Julius Lester for his bedtime story, and I read this: “Dying ain’t important. Everybody does that. What matters is how well you do your living.”

And earlier this year I listened more than once to the poignant interview Terry Gross had with author Maurice Sendak, the last she would have with him before he died. “Live your life, live your life, live your life,” were his parting words to her.

Unreasonable as it may be, I do still have faith that somehow I may exist beyond my inevitable end. But that is no longer what drives me to live. Maybe I’m making the reverse of Pascal’s Wager – just in case God does not exist, and this one life is all there is to me, shouldn’t I give it everything I’ve got?

Religion has worked long and hard to remove the fear of death from the human psyche, but the result is often a denial or suppression of that fear rather than a removal of it. And in denying our fear, we forgo the opportunity to face it and grow stronger in our real and present life. We pass up the challenge of summoning the courage and vision to live well even in the blank face of apparent meaninglessness.

One of the most haunting parables of Jesus, for me, is the parable of the talents. A master went away and left his servants in charge of different sums of money. When he returned, two of them had invested the money and made more money, and he rewarded them. The third one had hidden the money to keep it safe until the master returned. The master angrily took the money he had hidden and gave it to the other servants, then threw him out of the house.

Elsewhere Jesus said, if you save your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life you will save it.

These words touch me now, differently than when I heard them preached in church. I’m hearing “risk” and “gamble” and “go big or go home.” I’m looking death right in the face, unable to see past or around that face, aware that with every moment I really live, I step closer to that cold, inscrutable face.

But I know there is no other way. I can live boldly right there in front of death’s face, or I can try to hide from death, but either way, death will find me. And when that finally happens, I want to know in those last moments that I have grown my one life into something richer and fuller than what I started with.

Rethinking one’s faith often includes the shock of new uncertainties in these matters of life and death. How has it been going for you?

Failure and Love

June 18, 2012 — 3 Comments

About eight years ago I decided to try gardening. There were raspberries growing in the back yard of our Minneapolis city lot, in a fenced-in area with a brick path down the center. (Previous owners of the house had done some quality landscaping.) On one side of the path where no raspberries were growing, I tilled the ground and planted rows of vegetables. The refreshing spring breeze, the earthy fragrance of the soil, my own enthusiasm and hopes of fresh food from my yard combined to skyrocket my mood into bliss.

Well, that season – and a few seasons afterwards – I was the very model of a “three-day monk.” It may have crossed my mind to water my seeds or pull up weeds, but after a few days, I mostly neglected my garden. My enthusiasm was sapped and I had no habits in place to keep me going.

Needless to say, I failed at gardening in those seasons. But I did learn a few things the first season – mainly, that a sunny spot is imperative for a vegetable garden (my spot was not sunny enough), and so is regular watering and weeding.

Each successive spring, fresh enthusiasm compelled me to plan and plant again; and each year, I had a bit more knowledge and experience and willingness to work at gardening. This spring, thanks to my work over the past few years, we have already been eating asparagus, black raspberries, currants, mulberries, rhubarb, peas, greens, and various fresh herbs from our yard, with plenty more to come throughout the growing season.

I tried and failed at something else once. I wanted to learn pottery. How cool to be able to create something beautiful yet functional! I loved the idea. I took one community education pottery class and made some decent pieces, but overall, I didn’t learn well (the teacher even lost patience with me for my failure to understand how to use the wheel!), and while I had loved the idea, I couldn’t really connect with the activity itself.

Like gardening, I could continue working at pottery, gaining knowledge and experience, until I have attained some basic mastery of the field. But taking that one class was enough for me to know that pottery was not for me.

What was the difference? Both gardening and pottery are creative and useful endeavors that must be learned and practiced to be mastered. I failed at both (actually, I failed more at my first attempt at gardening than my first attempt at pottery). And yet, I have kept gardening but never given pottery another serious thought.

The obvious but important answer is that I really want to garden – I really enjoy it – and I don’t enjoy pottery. In other words, for the love of the thing. Each growing season, I get excited to grow things! But I’ve never wanted to try pottery again.

I couldn’t be sure I loved gardening and not pottery until I had tried them both. When pottery was just an idea in my head, I loved it. When it became an experience I was actively learning and practicing, I couldn’t find any love for the actuality of pottery in my life. But although I mostly failed in my early attempts at learning and practicing gardening, I actually enjoyed the activity, and my love for it only grew.

I think these ideas are important as we think about who we are and what we want to do with our lives. We’ve heard that failure is useful for learning, and is actually necessary for ultimate success (I like this “Accidental Creative” podcast on the topic), but probably equally important is a basic drive, a fundamental love of the thing itself.

And I don’t think this love will always feel positive. Failure is real and sometimes devastating. By some measures, I have only ever “failed” as a singer/songwriter. For fifteen years, I’ve been writing songs, performing and recording them, trying to sell albums and get gigs. And for all that, my “harvest” feels a bit like my early gardening attempts – a handful of pea pods, maybe some undergrown spinach leaves, a couple raspberries.

But I keep doing it. Sometimes “the love of the thing” feels more like banging my head against a wall than gleefully chasing something I adore. But it’s love all the same. No matter the outcome, I must sing and I must write, if only just for my own emotional health and enjoyment.

As with my gardening experience, I am finding there is plenty more experience and skill to be gained as a singer/songwriter.

I’m also learning that my initial starry-eyed definitions of “success” have a way of changing as I work hard at any activity. With gardening, I envisioned myself growing and preserving most of my family’s food supply. As I have learned and worked, however, I’ve discovered this isn’t even something I want anymore. I’ve gained a reasonable understanding of my own capabilities as well as my own interest level and drive, and the place I want gardening to have in my life balanced with all my other commitments and activities.

The same is true of songwriting. I no longer hold vague dreams of stardom. The more I work at my craft, the more realistic I have become about my own capabilities and my own interest level. Through purposefully thinking about and working at this activity, I have better clarified a vision for “success” as it would look in my own real life.

In her book 168 Hours, Laura Vanderkam encourages readers to make a “List of 100 Dreams,” sort-of a “bucket list” – things you want to do or try at some point in your life – and then start making plans to accomplish these dreams. She notes that the very act of trying something may be all you need to discover that you really don’t want to go any further with that activity after all. But if you’d never tried, you may always regret (needlessly) having never done it.

So, I’m glad I tried pottery, fine with failing at it, equally fine with discovering I had no real love for it and laying it aside forever. I’m also glad I tried gardening, fine having failed at it, grateful to discover I loved it and was willing to keep putting in the work – so that today, I can enjoy the fruits of my labors!

What have you learned from failure? Does “love of the thing” keep you going in spite of failure, and do you give yourself permission to quit when you discover you have no love for a certain activity?

Scarcity Vs. Abundance

April 24, 2012 — 7 Comments

Many days, there’s a boxing match going on in my head between the attitudes of scarcity and abundance.

Scarcity throws her punches at all sorts of moments, big and small. Scarcity has told me that my children’s friends can’t share our snacks because we don’t have enough to go around. She has eaten away at my confidence when I listen to amazing musicians or read profound writers, because (by scarcity’s logic) with so much good stuff out there, no one will be interested in what I’m doing. Before I had children, scarcity told me that the world is a dark and crowded place, so I shouldn’t bring more children into it.

These days, scarcity reminds me that my life may already be half-over. She sighs wistfully at my growing children, squinting gloomily into the future, which scarcity assures me is filled with (more) wrinkles, aches and pains, loneliness, failure, and finally, death.

In the other corner, weighing in at immeasurable hope, is abundance. Abundance tells me that there is always room for more, and not only is there always room, but there is always more.

At which scarcity simply scoffs, reminding abundance that we live in a material world, with fixed physical laws.

To which abundance answers, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

And scarcity sneers and makes some joke about fairy tales and fraudulent miracle workers.

Then abundance offers to share her lunch with scarcity, and scarcity turns up her nose at the simple bread and wine she is offered.

I see the problem here. Scarcity and abundance have two different lifestyles in mind.

Scarcity needs the latest and greatest, and she needs it now. She needs fame and immortality, a perfect body, an adoring family, and absolute comfort at all times. She’s right to think that it’s not possible for everyone to have what she “needs.”

Abundance needs food, water, rest, love, shelter, fresh air, and fulfilling work to do. And she is right to think that there is enough of these things to go around.

In fact, the things on abundance’s list of needs almost make a perpetual-motion machine. For example, in the field of “fulfilling work to do,” I would include lifelong learning. An understanding of the same physical laws that scarcity holds as her trump card, held in the context of all the other items on abundance’s needs list, is exactly what we need to build a sustainable global economy.

And never, never let us forget love. Like the apostle Paul, I still think that “the greatest of these is love.” Call me a hippie, call me a commie, but I need love, and I think you do too.

A few years ago, I read Walter Brueggemann’s article “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” and I was reminded of it again when I watched two TED talks last week. The first, by Peter Diamandis, is entitled “Abundance is Our Future.” The second, by Paul Gilding, is called “The Earth is Full.”  All of these are provocative thinking about scarcity and abundance, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.