For any longtime readers of this blog, you know that “faith and doubt” has been a major theme here. I’ve started a new blog, faithedout.com, to focus on just that topic, and I invite you to visit and pass it along to anyone else you think may be interested. Thanks!
Faith and doubt
Scarcity Vs. Abundance
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.
The Rain
The rain, the rain, the rain on the roof. Her seven-year-old questions, large and painful as my 35-year-old ones. My quavering replies – it’s okay to not know . . . I don’t know for sure if we’ll live again . . . there’s so much that no one really understands . . .
I talk about Jesus. I say that we have stories from people who knew him that after he died he lived again, that he said we can too. She asks, what if they were lying? How do we know the stories are true?
She asks, what if I never see you again? What if after one of us dies we never see each other again? She is crying. What if? she insists. I attempt no more words. I am crying too, and we face one another in love through tears. The rain, the rain, the rain in the room.
I tell her that I do know for sure that I love her. I do know there is much goodness and beauty in the world, that life itself is mysterious in ways that comfort me, that I am trying my best to believe and hope that all will turn out well.
But what if it’s all a lie? she persists. And then she thinks some more. She talks about the trees, the kitty (who has climbed up the bunkbed ladder and nuzzled in next to her), the planets, the sun. Nobody could make that stuff up, she notes. That makes me think there must be a God, she says.
I agree, and I tell her there are people throughout history who have spoken of their experiences with God. I tell her I think God did bring forth life and does care about us.
It’s the best I can do. Into the silence creeps the echo of the words she prayed a few minutes ago, entreating God to help our friends feel better, our friends who last week held their newborn baby girls as they died in their arms. I wonder if she hears it too.
She asks if she can tell Jesus she’s sorry for all the bad things she’s done and then go to Heaven when she dies. I say she can always tell Jesus she is sorry for doing bad things. I have more to say about my hope in neverending life bigger than the Sunday School notions of Heaven she’s heard. But she speaks again.
Why would people just invent Heaven if it’s not really true? she asks. If I find out it’s not true, I’m going to be so mad, she rages, and she cries some more.
I was seven once. I had questions like these. But I didn’t ask them; at least, not for long. My parents and my Sunday School teachers had a ready answer for everything, in the form of a Bible verse or a doctrinal statement, and I went to sleep knowing I was saved and on my way to Heaven.
Tonight I failed to give my daughter the same thing. She handed me her painful questions and I didn’t make them go away like my parents did – at least for the short term. My questions never did go away; they just burrowed deeper and lay dormant, only to blossom forth in a withering sort of spring in my thirties.
Maybe I’m doing alright by my seven-year-old, letting her keep her questions closer to the surface, closer to the nourishing light of the everyday. She was crying tears of pain, even darkness and fear. But I hope they are cleansing tears, and I believe it is better to openly express the pain and darkness and fear than to feel ashamed of it, to believe it is incorrect, a sign of disobedience, and let it fester in a deep hole where it can do serious internal damage.
David the psalmist wasn’t afraid to express these things. He said, “Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; they heap up and do not know who will gather.
“And now, O Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool. I am silent; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it. Remove your stroke from me; I am worn down by the blows of your hand.
“You chastise mortals in punishment for sin, consuming like a moth what is dear to them; surely everyone is a mere breath.
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” (Psalm 39)
Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again! Ironically, when I had no more words for Luthien, I sang her the “Barocha” blessing – “the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you, and give you peace forever . . . the Lord be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you, and give you peace forever.”
But she did lie down in peace, soft kitty cuddled close, soft raindrops on the roof.
Heaven, Hell, and Rachel Held (Evans)
I haven’t been posting much lately. First, February always gets me down. It is the most melancholy of months for me. But it’s March first now, and I’ve emerged from yet another February, though I’m sure I bear extra wrinkles and gray hairs as evidence of the struggle.
Another reason for less postings, I suppose, is more typical of blogging – I said a lot of what I’d been storing up for years.
Another, is that the *even* more I learn these days, the things I have to say often seem repetitive or only halfway-thought-out. Songwriting continues to be my first love, I think because it’s easier for me to express myself through poetic language and music than through reasoned (or un-reasoned!) essays.
Anyhoo, I came here to post a link to someone else’s blog post. Here it is.
The faith question continues to spin in me, and personally, I have a difficult time even believing in an afterlife of any sort these days. But I try to hold on to hope even when belief fails. And I am refreshed to hear evangelical Christians stirring the pot about this whole eternal damnation thing.
Here’s to honest people and their courageous questions.
Anunciation
New videosong for Advent season –
Lyrics-
Annunciation
copyright 2010 Julia Bloom
Her angel was a plastic strip with two lines colored pink
No spirit overshadowed her except a couple drinks
No holy child was prophesied, no savior for the world
No mystical experience, just cliche boy and girl
But this baby is a miracle
This baby is a mystery
This baby shakes the universe
This baby rattles history.
In Flanders Fields the poppies grow, the larks fly overhead
At Buchenwald they laid them out, the dead upon the dead
In my house at my kitchen sink, I wash everything clean
Tomorrow I’ll be here again, doing the same thing
We point and stare at miracles
We smile and nod at mysteries
We stagger through the universe
Regurgitating history.
Arise and shine, your light has come, this glory rises over you
Though darkness covers everything, this glory rises over you
The people walking in the dark have seen a great light
And in the land of death’s shadow, there has dawned a light
An inconvenient miracle
Swaddled round with mystery
Growing from the universe
Kept alive through history.
Julia Bloom 