Christian Feminism

"

[The perspective of Christian feminist theology] claims the fullness of the religious heritage for women precisely as human, in their own right and independent from personal identification with men. Women are equally created in the image and likeness of God, equally redeemed by Christ, equally sanctified by the Holy Spirit; women are equally involved in the ongoing tragedy of sin and the mystery of grace, equally called to mission in this world, equally destined for life with God in glory.

Feminist theology explicitly recognizes that the contradiction between this theological identity of women and the historical condition of women in theory and practice is glaring. This leads to the clear judgment that sexism is sinful, that it is contrary to God’s intent, that it is a precise and pervasive breaking of the basic commandment ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Lv 19:18; Mt 22:39). It affronts God by defacing the beloved creature created in the image of God. Faced with this sinfulness, church and society are called to repent, to turn around, to sin no more, to be converted.

"

— Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, 10th ed. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), 8 - 9.

The Road to Character: "Joseph and the Big Me"

Please watch/read/listen to these in order:

Scripture: Genesis 37:1-11

Poetry: Last Night as I Was Sleeping by Antonio Machado

Sermon: Joseph and the BIG ME by Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon, Senior Minister at the Congregational Church of San Mateo

Penny’s sermon on Sunday (“Joseph and the Big Me”) offered a unique interpretation of Joseph’s story.  Our traditions often celebrate Joseph in a somewhat one-sided way.  He ultimately rose to greatness, but his hubris made him not-so-great to be around, at least in earlier stages of his life.  His brothers’ violent overreaction is one that Bible interpreters often (rightly) suggest was wrong, but it is less frequently that we hear people ask what leads folks to such desperate acts.  Without condoning their violence, we understand that Joseph’s unexamined privilege led him to act in ways that ultimately fomented an extreme reaction.

In order to make sweet honey out of our past failures, we need to work on them.  Joseph was capable of great things, but not when he thought he was.  His arrogance led him to mistreat his brothers, but furthermore, to do so while oblivious about the impact of his words and behaviors.  That Joseph-- egotistical, oblivious, and overly-confident-- was not the Joseph who rose to greatness.  

One of my professors, Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee, says that we become arrogant when we stop asking questions because we think we know all the answers.  Understanding arrogance as a lack of questioning allows me to see how slippery that slope can be.  To believe I have mastered something can be the route to that mastery slipping away from me.  There is a thin line between confidence and overconfidence.  

Penny’s sermon ended on quite the cliffhanger: we left Joseph at his low point.  While that point was a beginning of upward trajectory for him, Joseph needed to sink that low in order to be humbled.  Penny suggested that true humility is seeing ourselves in the perspective of the whole.  Joseph, at the beginning of his story, truly lacked that perspective.  He was unable to see his privilege, the ways that others perceived him, and his hubris.  

This week, for me, will be about self-examination.  After the cliffhanger ending of the sermon, we heard our choir offer a beautiful rendition of “Down to the River” and we meditated on the rivers of our own lives.  As I spend this week at my internal river in prayer, confronting my own reflection in its water, I am reminded that a river is in continual motion.  To draw from the Disney movies of my childhood, I’m reminded of a line from one of Pocahontas’ pieces of music-- “you never step in the same river twice.”  Each of us is in the process of becoming.  While confronting our reflections is important work, it is done with the confidence that change is not only possible, but inevitable.  

This week I hope to pray at my river and meditate on humility.  What does it mean to see myself from the perspective of the whole?  As David Brooks asks in his book, “What are my circumstances calling me to do?”  

Altar-ing the World

"The ethical implications of a shared narrative require critical attention on the part of preachers, practitioners, and teachers of the Christian community. What we revere as holy can assume profane dimensions. Tradition can lead to idolatry, the antithesis of the esteeming of the being of God and the other."

— Heather Murray Elkins, “Altar-ing the World: Community-forming Word and Worship,” in Preaching in the Context of Worship, ed. David M. Greenshaw and Ronald J. Allen (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000), 19. (via seekinguncertainty)

Is Yellow White or Black?

"Is yellow white or black?"

—
In one of my readings, an API individual offered their perspective on the nature of how race and ethnicity are often approached in American culture.  Often when folks discuss race, they are doing so in terms of "white" and "not white" on a seeming continuum of "white to black."  Inherent in these discussions is often the idea that "white" is somehow better and "black" is somehow worse.  Not only is this a terrible imagining of race, it also leaves People of Color to operate within this continuum wherein their value is seemingly determined by their "closeness" to whiteness.  This is problematic for a plethora of reasons.

When the author asked, "Is yellow (meaning Asian Pacific Islander) white or black?" they asked a question that illustrated the problem.  Clearly, yellow is neither white nor black, but neither should "yellow" be valued by how white or black it seems.  White and black should not have perceived "value" in such ways, either!  Underlying the question was the reality that blackness is often unfavorably presented in our country in a way that posits race is somehow dichotomous with clear "goodness" being assigned to lighter, "whiter" people and "badness" being assigned to people of color according to just how dark they are.  Unpacking these statements and values is dangerous work!

This question seems to imagine race as a continuum.  It is a perspective that I find foreign.  I tend to think of race as circles, overlapping or not, within a larger circle.  Yellow isn’t any more white than it is black– it’s yellow (I feel strange saying “yellow,” but am doing so because it is the word used in the original context).  I don’t mean to imply any meaningful separateness of racial identities (at least not any more meaningful than any particular individual claims such meaningfulness for themselves), but to suggest that my “whiteness” isn’t more black than brown or than yellow (or any other ordering).  My Christianity isn’t somewhere on a continuum of “Hindu to Zoroastrian” because there is no linear progression between religions any more than there is between race… at least not in my imagining.  I also find problematic the inherent suggestion that such a continuum is indicative of value (“whiteness” being good and “blackness” being bad).  While I do not deny that this is a truth (society privileges whiteness), a linear imagining squarely places “blackness” in the position of “bad.”  Not only is this imagining seemingly held by whites who consciously or unconsciously make these associations (white = good, black = bad), but that this paradigm is transferred to people who are neither white nor black, but feel the need to both adopt this paradigm and identify as having a place on the continuum.  The dualism of this understanding seems to be a way we (as a society) effectively teach anti-black racism to communities that identify as neither black nor white.  This is a sad and terrible reality.  I have to wonder the ways this false dichotomy is taught to communities of color and how we can “unteach” it.  I feel that this likely begins with media representation, since pop culture is a primary way that folks “absorb” ideas about race.

• Mary F. Foskett and Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan, eds., Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation (Chalice, 2006).  • Uriah Y.-H. Kim, “The Realpolitik of Liminality in Josiah’s Kingdom and Asian Americans.”  Page 90.

Ego

"By deforming God, we protect our own egotism."

— Juan Luis Segundo

Process Cosmology

"… Abstraction from text and context, whereby a proposition can then be reinserted unilaterally into any life situation, is the temptation of all forms of truth-language, but above all of theology. It is the fertilizer of every atheism."

— Catherine Keller, On the Mystery, p. 13

What is Canon?

Scriptural canon is the collection of texts sanctioned by the religious governing body.  For the Hebrew Scriptures, different communities accept and organize canon differently.  The Protestant canon is roughly the same as the Hebrew Canon, although the books are divided and ordered differently.  Roman Catholic and Ethiopic canons included additional texts.  The Roman Catholic canon was based off of the Septuagint (the Greek translation) and the Ethiopic canon is the only canon to include the Book of Enoch.

John Shelby Spong

"We are not redefining Christianity. We are giving life to a kind of Christianity that never got a chance to live."

— John Shelby Spong

Justice

“Even the problematic metaphor of ‘turning the other cheek’ means, read in context, the very opposite of enabling more enmity: it is a strategy for interrupting it.  The patience of love is not the placation of injustice… We make peace and we make love only inasmuch as we make justice.”

Catherine Keller, On the Mystery, p. 12

Apology, Catechism, and Gospel

One of my assignments for "History of Christianity and Social Change" this week was to read The Didache and an excerpt from Tertullian's Apology. Both are works from early Christianity (before its rise to a body of power). My response was way long and had to be edited a bunch, so I'm posting it here. Also, since this is the non-edited post, the paragraphs are not as organized. Whatevs.

In trying to approach these works with a “hermeneutic of generosity,” I tried to think very contextually about the authors and their motives. The first thing that struck me was the very different tones between Tertullian and the Didache.  However, considering the context of each helps me to understand why each might have adopted such ways of speaking.  

The Didache is an early Christian catechism, so it’s talking to Christians about how to be Christians “correctly.”  As we might expect, it instructs in purity, charity, and orthopraxy (although it, somewhat surprisingly, lacks what I would expect in the way of doctrinal instruction).  There isn’t really talk about Jesus (except maybe a bit at the end), which I find interesting.  Most of how I think of Christian instruction today seems to derive from “because Jesus did/said X, Y, Z,” which is missing from this early work.  Q, also written for Christians, is much more Jesus-centric.  The lessons in the text are derived from his ministry.  While the Didache may also derive its values from his ministry, such methodology seems further from the surface.  Q seems to be about preserving memory as much as values, while the Didache seems to be more about creating a standard.  If we imagine early Christians living in community and sharing all, at a certain point, it seems logical that “house rules” would become necessary.  However, the binary set up immediately (The Way of Life and the Way of DEATH) seems pretty harsh.  Since most of us are better at articulating our values than living up to them (I hope that’s not just me), I wonder how the reality on the ground looked.  Something I try to remember is that if someone’s advising folks not to do certain things, some of those folks must be doing those things, so maybe these communities were more forgiving than their documents might suggest-- maybe they were a community of folks struggling together with their sins.  If that was the reality, I wish their document was more reflective of a theology that allowed room for imperfection and difference.

In my past encounters with the Didache, I’ve noticed an intense puritanism (with a small p) that I don’t notice (as much) in this translation.  In a very brief comparison with another translation, it seems that this particular translator is concerned with the “spirit” of the text in such a way that it has less of the literal “no abortion!  no prostitution!” stuff that felt very “black and white” in contrast with my understanding of a complex world that often asks us to make non-ideal choices.  However, in imagining a first or second century world, I see how puritanical behavioral standards may have been much more practical.  I’d imagine that health concerns were far more wrapped up in sexual behaviors than they are today, in a world where many of us have access ways of having safer sex and are not doomed to poverty because we’ve had more than one sexual partner (the ways that many women would have been in earlier times).  In section 3 of part 1, these ideas of purity and temptation come into play, but I find it very interesting that the author asks adherents to start within.  “Don’t just stop hitting people, stop thinking about hitting people,” the author seems to say.  In that sense, I like where that section is going.  I have trouble with the section on idolatry, since it seems fairly harmless to me, but I suppose folks may have thought that there was a connection between worshiping the wrong gods and terrible things happening, and so may have sensed the “danger” in heresy to be quite literal.  Perhaps in a similar way, I also liked the second section and its overview of orthopraxis.  While there preference for particular ways of doing things (baptism in cold, running water, for instance), there are alternative options.  The rituals themselves are about the spirit of the event, not about the physicality.  

In contrast to the Didache and Q authors, Tertullian is writing to non-Christians, which explains why this document seems least like the others.  His intention is to argue that Christians are not dangerous and crazy.  He insists that they, too, pray for those in power (although perhaps being purposefully ambiguous about the content of those prayers), in a seeming attempt to say they’re not anti-Roman.  Perhaps this is also why there is little (again) mention of Jesus, who was executed by the state.  He is also concerned about the ways that their agape meals are being seen by outsiders.  He insists that they aren’t drunken murderers (“Could a drunken murderer sing from the scriptures or compose music?  Of course not!” he basically says).  Perhaps, however, the reality that he’s defending against such accusations, implies that some Christians got a bit drunk and disorderly at their meals.  

While Tertullian seems to be painting a picture of a rather soft, harmless-puppy-of-a-religion, he’s of course doing so because that’s the entire point: to prove that they are not dangerous to the powers-that-be.  He’s not trying to be a martyr this week, he’s trying to survive under an oppressive regime.  

The (not 100% functional) modern day parallel that pops into my mind is that of the LDS (Mormon) Church.  Mormons are, and have been, a very divisive presence to outsiders.  They believe and behave in ways that most of us think are very strange (perhaps without the self-awareness of the objective absurdity of our own ways of believing and practicing faith-- I mean, many of us do talk to invisible beings and eat food that we expect to have “magic power” despite what science tells us) and most of us have very incomplete understandings of what Mormons believe and what their practice looks like, as is evidenced by the reality that many still believe mainstream Mormons still practice polygamy, when the Church is very severely anti-polygamy at this point and has been for a pretty long time.  As is pretty expected considering this, what you’ll hear and experience in a Mormon worship service or other functions will be very different than what we might hear or experience during the SLC Olympics, on a commercial for the LDS Church, etc.  We might call that difference between messages dishonest or manipulative, but they would probably consider it practical.  

As liberal and progressive Christians, I think most of us can see the ways that some folks might hear what happens in our spaces as “dangerous” (thinking of some of our prophetic, change-seeking ministries) and also recall the ways that we, when we are out in the world, are constantly saying, “We are not dangerous or crazy like that thing you saw on the news.”

Notes

I have notes from “The Fourth Gospel,” a class taught by John Shelby Spong, that say the following:

“Matthew Fox.  God is the water table.  The wells are all different, but if you go down deep enough, they get to the same place.”

Amen.

Process

"Process is ongoing. Amidst trials and tribulations, life is going on. Exoduses happen. But, like Moses, you may not make it to the promised land. That possibility didn’t paralyze him."

— Catherine Keller, On the Mystery, p. 9

Preaching

In preaching you want to be vulnerable, not an exhibitionist.

The Road to Character: Adam 1 and Adam 2

I recommend reading/listening/watching these in the order posted (some follow links).  Current sermon series at church is inspired by David Brooks' The Road to Character.




Scripture Reading (follow link):  Mark 8:34-36

Poetry Reading (follow link):  The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

Listen to Penny's sermon (follow link):  Adam 1 and Adam 2
(delivered 09.13.15 at the Congregational Church of San Mateo)

My reflection:

Penny’s sermon on Sunday highlighted a human commonality: our intention to do good in the world. Most of us hope to be remembered as good people who did good things with their time in the world. Few people get to the ends of their journeys and regret that they were not committed enough to their careers or that they were unable to buy the sports car they wanted. Before I entered seminary, I worked for a company that managed cemeteries. A privilege of that work was to be present for dozens of graveside services. I can attest that few family members celebrate a person’s financial or career success. Each of us will be remembered for our “Adam II” selves, not our “Adam I” selves. Our Adam II journeys (the ways we love, the change we pursue, and the faith we demonstrate) resonate in the lives of those around us far more than our Adam I journeys (our successes in business, finance, and other material things which benefit few beyond ourselves). As Penny pointed out, however, while we seem to have clear strategies and pathways toward cultivating career success, the Road to Character is not so clearly paved.

Perhaps especially for those of us living in the Bay Area, the tension between “eulogy virtues” and “resume virtues” strikes home. Anyone who has interviewed for a job knows that part of resume success is the ability to self-advertise and self-promote. Success in our professional lives often breeds a me-centric way of being in the world that seems at odds with cultivation of character, yet no matter where we call home or what kinds of success we find in our lives, few of us would articulate our values in relation to our careers. Surely many of us work in fields that bring joy, knowledge, and care to others, but we find that we articulate our vocation in terms of our values-- not the other way around. I don’t say I do justice because I am pursuing ministry; I pursue ministry because I am called toward creating justice and peace. Our intentions to be good people in the world are perhaps closer to the surface of our natures than we sometimes realize.

Much of our culture celebrates and asks us to achieve the kinds of success that can be measured in cars and stock portfolios. We can turn on our televisions-- even to the most educational of programming-- and become inundated with advertising which suggests our worth is related to our clothing, vehicles, and how shiny our coffee table is. We’re invited to quench our desires in an endless frenzy of consumerism that transforms “values” into “savings.” We want to be good people, but our world continues to throw distractions our way. To borrow examples from Penny’s sermon, it can feel like Donald Trump is sitting on one shoulder, whispering into our ear, while Pope Francis sits on our other shoulder. It seems clear to me which voice finds the most air time in our culture.

Penny’s sermon asked us to do some honest self-confrontation. If cultivating skills for career success requires time, training, and curricula, why do we not think about cultivating our ethical and spiritual selves in the same way? If I spend a significant amount of my time learning to climb ladders, how might I spend my time learning to build bridges? For me, finding time to reflect on my character during a busy day is often during my commute. “What kind of language did I catch myself using today? How did I interact with the people around me? How did I NOT interact?” Perhaps I will inventory my own time: how do I REALLY use my most precious resource?

Would you like to share your thoughts on Penny’s sermon? In what ways do you resist or succumb to me-centricness in our culture? How do you cultivate (or plan to cultivate) character in your life or the lives of others? Do you have ways of doing careful, honest self-confrontation?

Penny's sermon also reminded me of this:

Fred Craddock

"Take a word and throw it against the clear glass of silence and let it shatter."

— Dr. Fred Caddock (paraphrased)

Process Theology

"The apostle Paul warned of those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Rom. 1:25). But such a lie is so good because it looks and sounds like the truth. The exchange can happen under cover of theology itself! Such spiritual dishonesty will not be answered by a wimp-out relativism (as in “The priest has his opinion, I have another, what is yours?”). It was answered in this case by a spontaneous and confident counter-truth. The capacity to speak truth– sometimes to power, sometimes to the disempowered– is what in the religious traditions we mean by “witness” or “testimony.”"

— Catherine Keller, On the Mystery, page 13

Savior

"Jesus isn’t a savior, he’s a boundary-breaker."

— John Shelby Spong (paraphrased)

God and Symbol

"You lose God if everything’s symbolism."

—

–A defense of fundamentalism

I experience God in breaking open the symbols and lose God in literalism.  We can experience God, but we cannot understand God.

My Privilege

Sometimes I feel like I can’t possibly have much to say since I am a middle class white girl who is straight and identifies comfortably as the gender I was designated at birth.  I mean, sort of an ideal, or at least “easy” identity, right?  My dumb problems are the dumb problems of straight, cisgendered, middle class white girls which pale in comparison to the problems that exist in the world.

But sometimes I can remember that in ministry, I need to look for my strengths.  Maybe I can use my privilege for good.  Maybe I don’t have a powerful story that brings tears to your eyes because inherent in the problem of “eating disorder” is that I have enough food to eat and inherent in “depression” is that I am not overwhelmed by trying to feed my family or escape slavery and I have time to consider how my situation doesn’t merit the way I am reacting to it and that there might be something wrong inside my head.

Privilege.

But the thing is that there are kind of a lot of middle class white girls in this country.  Maybe they need ministry, too.  And maybe they need someone to open their world larger and make their world less about them and maybe sometimes they need a sermon to be about them and their struggles, however much they pale in relation to the struggles of others.  We all need to feel validated in order to feel effective.  We all need to be loved in order to love.

And maybe (and this is terrible, but) some poop who would be disinclined to listen to an Asian man or a a lesbian woman will listen to me because I present in ways that conform to much of society’s expectations about what is “normal.”  I don’t think I am a person who grabs attention as I walk down the street.  I am aware that your purple hair is no reason for character assumptions about you, but I am also aware that the world will make judgments about people based on their appearances.  And so maybe that crotchety old guy will listen to me because I don’t have purple hair and I can start getting him to realize why people with purple hair are nothing to be worried about and maybe we need some justice for people with purple hair.  

I don’t know if that came out right, but sometimes I think being unassuming and boring has its advantages.  I can sneak up on you because you’re not going to assume that I’m a crazy liberal heretic by looking at me because looking at me doesn’t tell you much other than that I am a privileged white girl, which could also mean that I am a crazy conservative dogmatist.  

Anyway.

Preaching and Buffy

I’m reading something in my preaching class about storytelling and how the myths and stories of cultures sustain them and give them identity.  

I tried to search for my stories, for that heritage.  I feel a bit like I don’t have any.  I am Christian, but I didn’t grow up Christian, so my religious tradition feels like my heritage and also not.

While my family likes to claim “Irish,” I know many people from Ireland and know that I have no Irish culture.  My family makes fun of each other a lot and eats a lot of potatoes?  I don’t know if that is culture.  

I want to claim Buffy.  Buffy is a story about a young girl who has a calling that she doesn’t want.  She wants to be “normal,” but finds that she can’t be.  She can’t be mean or judgmental and that means she can’t run in the “cool” crowd.  She starts to accept her calling as integral to who she is.  As a strong woman called to make a difference in the world, she stands up for the weak and fights against oppressive systems and shows people that a tiny girl can be the strongest person you’ve ever met— and while the reality is that in Buffy that strength has a very physical manifestation, it’s not the point.  In fact, by the end of the show, Buffy is not the strongest person in her circle, but she is the leader because of something inside of her— that calling— that makes her powerful in a way that other people with equal strength aren’t.  What Buffy does with her power, at the end of the day, is to share it.  She doesn’t hoard her power and use it to benefit herself.  She makes everyone around her as powerful as she is and asks them to stand up with her and make a difference.  Throughout this entire journey, she makes many mistakes, as do all of the other characters… but the point is the journey.  They journey to self-acceptance in a way that empowers them to live authentically, selflessly, and to cultivate their gifts.  Each of the characters brings whatever they have to the table and offers it up.  As a group, they become far more powerful than each of them is individually.  They love and forgive and try their hardest, no matter how impossible it seems to make progress.  

And for goodness’ sake, it’s a story I “tell” over and over again.  I started watching Buffy in 1998.  I taped it and watched it over and over.  I now have it on DVD and it’s on Netflix and I STILL watch it all the time.  It’s my story.  Buffy is a huge part of who I am.  That may sound ridiculous to some people, but it’s the truth.

Abra Cadabra

I am in “bet” group in my preaching class.

Hebrew lettering has evolved from pictures. Bet is derived from a house. More specifically, it is a picture of a courtyard, which is the center of a middle eastern house. Let us remember that the letters have personality. They are animistic. They’re alive. And the letters are polite. They have to face you. Bet is facing in a way to include and disclude, depending on which way it is facing. Bet can have or not have a dot in the center (a person within the courtyard). It’s a different letter, depending. We are that dot. This letter is so important. The courtyard is a private place, a sacred space. It includes those who belong and leaves out those who don’t. Also, it’s a feminine space. You keep the family in the space. All of the Bible is inside bet. Bet is preempting the garden of Eden.

We should also note that bet is formed, partially, from the letter resh.

Resh. We should recall that resh is the second letter of PRDS. Resh, as a picture, is the back of one’s head. It is the things you do with your mind. Also, it is a problematic letter. Why? Because evil isn’t out there, it’s in here. Things that we consider evil go on in our minds.

“Bet” is the first letter in the Bible.  It begins the story of genesis and holds, by virtue of facing inward at the rest of the text, the Bible “inside” its courtyard.

In the beginning, there was the word…

abra cadabra

This information was from a class called “Jewish Mysticism, Magic, and Folklore,” a class taught by Mira Amiras at SJSU.

I am Bet Group in Preaching Class

Bet, with the dot, is bet. Without the dot, it is vet. They have the same meanings with or without the dot… unless you’re a Kabbalist. If the letter is preceeded by a vowel, it is vet. If it’s at the end of a word, it is vet. If it’s at the beginning or a word, it is bet. Both are feminine.

everything is purposefully ambiguous. The alphabet is extremely contextual.

(ps– the numbers all have numerical values…) Bet = 2.

Information drawn from “Jewish Mysticism,” a class taught by Mira Amiras at SJSU.

Christian

"‘What is Christianity?’ Undoubtedly half will respond, 'A relationship with Jesus.’

That is wrong. The gospel cannot be merely a private transaction. God didn’t break through history, through time and space, to come as a baby, be incarnated, and suffer on the cross just so you can come to him and say, ‘Oh, I accept Jesus and now I can live happily ever after.’ That’s not why he came…. Jesus came as a radical to turn the world upside down. When we believe it is just about Jesus and yourself, we miss the whole point."

—

Chuck Colson, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why it Matters, p. 87 (via blakebaggott)

AMEN

(Source: theringofwords, via notallwhowanderarelostbutiam)

God in the Image of Man

“Man created God in his own image.” Imagine that you are Durkheim and explain briefly what this statement would mean for you. 

Durkheim saw religion as being the product of men and society. Durkheim believed that a society projected its values onto a God, making those values sacred. Worshipping their god was essentially worshiping the values of their society. It gave their values more meaning and provided justification for enforcing their rules and values.

In this way, man created God (or gods…) in his image. Man projected values onto God(/s) and worshiped the god and thusly their values.

The next time you think you’re “justifying” you hateful views with scripture, consider that some parts of scripture were written to justify hateful views… by people, not God.

I'm Having a Moment

Darsan and the Tetragrammaton.  OMG, weird foreign words, this is going to be boring.  Hang on.

In Darsan, Diana Eck defines darsan as “auspicious sight of the deity.”  She further explains:

“When Hindus go to a temple, they do not commonly say, ‘I am going to worship,’ but rather, 'I am going for darsan.’  They go to 'see’ the image of the deity– be it Krsna or Durga, Siva or Visnu– present in the sanctum of the temple, and they go especially at those times of day when the image is most beautifully adorned with fresh flowers and when the curtain is drawn back so that the image is fully visible…

”Darsan is sometimes translated as the 'auspicious sight’ of the divine, and its important in the Hindu ritual complex reminds us that for Hindus 'worship’ is not only a matter of prayers and offerings and the devotional disposition of heart.  Since, in the Hindu understanding, the deity is present in the image, the visual apprehension of the image is charged with religious meaning.“

Religious concepts are always hard to understand from the outside, but I feel like this Hindu concept resonates with me.

I have had mystical experiences, and while explaining them is of little use to anyone, they were darsan.  They were moments of clarity, where I was filled with the knowledge and comfort of God and connection and they were from meaningful sight.  Darsan of the ocean.  Of?  I don’t know.  They were moments when I was completely saturated with God, when I knew God at the core of my being.  They were experience.  They were sight.  They were darsan.

I believe that the tetragrammaton has this kind of power. 

The tetragrammaton is magical, if I can use that word without sounding heretical.  The letters themselves give life.  They give God.  They are unspeakable and shrouded in the mystery of our ancestors’ secrets.  I mean, two heis, guys.  Hei is my favorite letter.  It is life-giving and invokes the name of God.  It is feminine like a wise mother.

The tetragrammaton is the mystery of ancient religion bound into the unspeakable mystery of God, of the one in the many, of the masculine and feminine combined in a powerful word… so powerful that darsan is the only way we can experience it.

Darsan.

My spirit is on fire.

Eck, Diana.  Darsan.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Moksha Through Meditation

The Mundaka Upanishad: Moksha Through Meditation
The Hindu Realization of Destiny

The Upanishads address important philosophical questions for Hindus today, just as they did in the past. Although many Westerners may tend to see Hinduism as a simplistic “pagan” religion, the Upanishads give light to how complex and sophisticated Hinduism is. Life for Hindus is a complex journey, part of a cycle that each seeks to escape. The final goal of a Hindu is the difficult task of overcoming one’s attachment to this world and performing one’s duty to it in order to escape from a cycle of rebirth that is understood as painful because it is contradictory to one’s true nature.

As Hindus understand this world, it is illusory. What we feel and become attached to is not what is really real, and we therefore create painful existences for ourselves by becoming attached to things that have no real worth. We can see the human condition as one of unnecessary pain because of these attachments. Each person is born again and again, endlessly in the cycle of samsara. The person trapped in samsara is “deluded and grieves on account of his helplessness (p. 76).” Because we are attached to things, we hurt. We find that we cannot manipulate this reality so that it perfectly facilitates our happiness. In order to escape the pain of life being reborn into it, Hindus must free themselves of karma. In order to successfully do so, a Hindu must become unattached to the physical world and realize oneness with Brahman, while still performing the duties required of them in this reality (observing the caste system, performing one’s duty in their stage of life, “worshipping” the gods).

Realizing the oneness of Brahman is very difficult, as it is very difficult to even grasp the concept of Brahman. Brahman composes everything and everything is Brahman. Just as the red on an apple, everything is a characteristic of Brahman, inseparable from it. The Mundaka Upanishad describes Brahman as “being, as non-being, as the supreme object to be desired, as the highest point beyond the reach of man’s understanding (p. 74).” As is made obvious by this passage, Hindus have a difficult task before them. It seems that we can never understand Brahman, but we can realize it. Brahman cannot be understood with the mind, as it is beyond human intellect. Brahman is an eternal presence. It existed before creation and precedes everything. It is frequently described as a light, brighter than all others, existing everywhere. It covers and composes everything, outlasts everything, and is beyond a state of being. It is not tangible or seeable in any way, yet we can know it if we know our true natures, since we are all made up ofBrahman.

Since Brahman is all that is real, our cycle of everyday life is a painful illusion, keeping us from realizing the truth of Brahman. Everything that we think is reality can be understood as prakriti, the “everything but Brahman” category. Prakriti is, essentially, the illusory, temporal world that composes our “reality.” It makes up our minds, physical objects, and personalities. It composes samsara, the life cycle. To achieve moksha, liberation from samsara, one must be able to separate prakriti from purusha, that which is really real. This realization requires a lot of work and understanding, as may be apparent.

The Mundaka Upanishad describes meditation as the way to this realization. By meditating, one sharpens one’s mind and develops the ability to “know [Brahman] alone as the one self [and to] dismiss other utterances (p. 75).” The self can be understood as atman, one’s true nature and the truth that we are all Brahman. Paralleling a human with an arrow, the Upanishads and syllable “aum” with a bow, and Brahman as the target, the scripture says that meditation sharpens the arrow so that it may precisely hit and become one with the target (p. 75). We can see then that in order to achieve Brahman, knowledge of the Upanishad’s teachings and mediation are the most important tools. One who understands Brahman knows one’s atman (atman is Brahman and Brahman is atman).

Atman is “vast, divine, of unthinkable form, subtler than the subtle. (p. 76).” Atman is understood as one’s true nature, as one with Brahman, which is clouded in the illusion of samsara for most. The task of realizing atman is a difficult one to take on. It is for this reason that we are reborn so many times. Atman shines forth, farther than the far, yet here near at hand, set down in the secret place [of the heart] [as such] even here it is seen by the intelligent (p. 76).“ Atman is in every living being, since atman is Brahman and Brahman composes all. It is everywhere, yet specifically inside oneself. Atman is one’s true nature, realized by very few. It cannot be realized by the gaining of knowledge, nor by right action. The realization of atman can only be found, through mediation, when one is able to completely separate it from all else and "attains supreme equality with the lord. (p. 76).” This oneness can be achieved only when one sees the world for what it is and denies it.

The Mundaka Upanishad praises ascetics, who have abandoned their imperfections (p. 76), and hold the truth and life of atman. They achieve this “by truth, by austerity, by right knowledge, by the constant [practice] of chastity (p. 76).” We can see then, that asceticism is an admirable practice that fully demonstrates the ideal of non-attachment. Ascetics not only mentally separate purusha from prakriti, but also remove themselves from prakriti in the way they live their lives. However, the Mundaka Upanishad makes it clear that an ascetic lifestyle alone does not necessitate the realization of atman/Brahman. Brahman is “not grasped by… austerity nor by work, but when one’s [intellectual] nature is purified by the light of knowledge then alone he, by meditation, sees Him who is without parts. (p. 76).” While the text praises asceticism, it makes clear that it is not by action that moksha is achieved. This makes sense, as with this understanding, action is part of samsara. Brahman is beyond being and thus cannot be achieved by being. The Mundaka Upanishad, however, does imply that this kind of complete separation is necessary for the realization of atman.

Renunciation is a stage of life for Hindus, but not one that is reached by all.  Dharma, or duty, is to accept one’s life and do what is required of one given one’s position. One’s dharma is justified by karma, which builds as a result of action.  Karma is carried from previous lives and must be discarded by performing one’s dharma. The first stage of life for a Hindu is that of a student. After this, he becomes a householder. In many cases, this stage is not surpassed. However, after being a householder, one becomes a forest-dweller. This is generally in later years of life and involves increased study and devotion. After this stage is the renouncer stage, when one gives up all acknowledgement of identity and possession, completely devoting their energies to meditation and separating themselves as much as they can from prakriti to facilitate the realization of atman. By doing one’s dharma and meditating, one can realize atman and achieve moksha.

The Hindu tradition is philosophically complex and demanding, and perhaps is beyond philosophy, as we cannot understand Brahman with intellect. A Hindu’s ultimate desired destiny, as portrayed in the Upanishads and specifically in the Mundaka Upanishad, is to escape samsara, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, which Hindus view as painful because of attachments. In order to be liberated, one must understand the illusory nature of the world and separate it from the ultimate reality of Brahman. One does this by meditation, austerity, knowledge, and chastity. When one realizes the oneness of Brahman, and realizes atman (one’s true nature as Brahman), one can then achieve moksha, which is liberation from samsara, the painful cycle of this world. This goal is difficult to achieve, and takes many (understatement) lifetimes. For this reason, this goal is highly respectable and can be viewed, at very least, for its philosophical complexity and beauty.