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KEEPING FAITH WITH LIFE, by Mary Grigolia |
June 3, 2001
THESIS: Faith is our fundamental task: to nurture a dynamic, evolving relationship of mutuality with Life
READING: A Woman’s Journey to God, by Joan Borysenko
I dreamed of [Sai] Baba on the third night in Puttaparthi. We are at a small darshan in a simple little room. He walks down a center aisle and stops beside me. We look into each other’s eyes. I feel nothing…. He tells me that my group has been granted a private audience. One more audience, one more holy person. What difference does it really make? I wake up confused, anxious. In my state of guerilla faithlessness, I couldn’t imagine what I would say.
“Are you really God, Baba? No kidding? What are all these miracles about? And if we are here by your invitation, whatever happened to free will? Are we just puppets in a cosmic drama or are we co-creators? The Buddhists believe that meditation and self-inquiry are required to attain the awareness of the Ground of Being. We are supposed to practice diligently out of compassion for the suffering of others, that we may become Buddhas – awakened ones -- and help set other beings free from the endless wheel of karmic existence. Yet you say that faith and service are more important than meditation. And furthermore, Baba, I have to tell you that as a Jew, avatars are strictly nonkosher. God is Ein Sof, the Endless Mystery. There is no God but God. You may not remember how much trouble it caused the last time we tried to worship an idol, but I sure do.”
We flew next to the ancient city of Cochin on the west coast of India to visit a four-hundred year old synagogue… Even under the protection of the maharaja, the Jews of Cochin were hunted and tortured mercilessly by the influx of Europeans who tried to kill them off, particularly those from Portugal and Spain…. The seventeen remaining Jews of Cochin are old. Ten are women, which means that there are only seven men, three short of the ten required to form a minyan, the minimum number of men needed to pray.
How come the Shacharit , the Jewish Morning Prayers, has a section where the men actually thank God for not having been born a woman or a slave? This is where I got off the bus. But I stopped wasting any anger on it a long time ago, or so I thought. For the third time since our arrival in India, a religious wound that had been surreptitiously draining my faith surfaced for healing. The issues of betrayal by a Hindu guru, anger at the Catholic Church … and anger at the patriarchal nature of Judaism had arisen like a three-headed Hydra from the waters of my unconscious.
No wonder my spiritual life felt dry.
There in the temple I forgave the guru for leading my astray.
In the sweet grace of forgiveness I realized that thanking God for not being born a woman was, unfortunately, a reasonable prayer in biblical times. Religions only mirrored the devaluation of women in the culture. Male minyans and male rabbis are culture-bound traditions from another time and place. They are a small container for an unlimited Mystery beyond time or space, culture or custom. I decided that I could drink the Jewish Mystery without having to eat the box it was packaged in.
Andrea thought that the sweet little synagogue felt lonely. She wanted to sing it to life. Other than our group, there were only four or five other tourists. Two were Jews from Tel Aviv. Andrea drafted them, and we began to sing a medley of Hebrew songs beginning with Yerushalayem, Yerushalayem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem. We were so overcome with emotion that we were practically drowning in tears. I was grateful that my eye makeup was in the luggage still lost two weeks into the journey. The eyes of several of our women friends were on us. They began to leak in empathetic understanding. The presence brushed our souls like gentle feathers.
A peace that the Bible tries to describe as that which “passeth understanding” enveloped me as we boarded the bus for the trip back to the hotel.
God was meditating me. No empty place cried out to know, to be filled with meaning that must eventually be cast off like shoes at the door of a holy place.
I grew and healed through a crisis of faith. Rather than developing more certainty about God, my renewed faith has made me more comfortable with less certainty and more mystery. God is ineffable, knowable only through the love we share on the journey.
SECOND READING: From James Fowler, Stages of Faith
Central among the qualities that make and keep humans human is our capacity for trust and fidelity. As creatures who cannot live without meaning, our meaning making is intrinsically tied up with promises and fidelity. Our lives, our identities, our roles and meanings are sustained by covenants. Some are informal, taken-for-granted. Other of our covenants are explicit. These we formalize, celebrate, renew and occasionally dissolve.
No person can be religious in general. The genuinely transcendent or holy come to expression in particular historic moments and communities. The way toward religious truth leads through the particular memories, stories, images, ethical teachings and rituals of determinate religious traditions.
Luke 18:8 reads, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
The issue is not whether we become Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists or Christians. The real question is will there be faith on earth and will it be good faith—faith sufficiently inclusive so as to counter and transcend the destructive []idolatries of national, ethnic, racial and religious identifications and to bind us as a human community in covenantal trust and loyalty to each other and to the Ground of Being?
She was a quiet and private person; for the last year she had been attending Sunday services. We had exchanged only a few words before she called, asking me to meet with her, hoping I would help with her loss of faith. She asked me what I hold on to spiritually? How I navigate times of spiritual turmoil? I heard the question as: How do you keep faith with life?
DIVERSITY
I invite you to take a moment and look around you. Everyone here is at a somewhat different place on the spiritual journey. We have generational differences: Some of us are seniors, facing the loss of agility and mobility and mental clarity, hearing almost daily about friends and loved ones who are dying. Some of us are coping with the loss of a partner. Some of us are caring for aging parents and while also learning to be parents. Some of us have chosen not to have children. Some of us wish we could have children in our lives. Some of us are just starting out on our adult journeys.
Regardless of our age, some of us are stuck and some of us are forging boldly ahead. Some of us are opening up and others seem to be closing.
We come from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. We bring different expectations. All of us must feed, clothe and house ourselves while responding to suffering in our midst and at a distance. How do we cultivate a faithful relationship with Life amidst temptation, injustice and reminders of our own mortality?
We who gather here have chosen to participate in a Sunday Unitarian Universalist service, an explicitly religious gathering. It is easy to focus on our differences, but what do UU’s have in common, in terms of faith?
UU’S ON FAITH
Several years ago, the continental public relations office of the UUA printed an outdoor sign for congregational use that proclaimed, “A RELIGION THAT PUTS ITS FAITH IN YOU.”
We UU’s share a common vision of an underlying unity in all creation. Our common context is that we are interwoven, an interdependent human family which depends on and responds to the needs of our nonhuman brothers and sisters. It is not enough to identify UU’ism with our differences or with what we don’t believe.
A religion that puts its faith in YOU.
We have no pope or synod or bishopric or presbytery. We’re it. The authority and responsibility reside in congregations. We believe that everyone can choose to live in a way which will benefit all beings, and that it is our duty to support, encourage, and hold each other accountable. Ours is a faith that motivates with love, not fear.
We don’t threaten hell. Historically, ours is a faith system that preaches universal salvation. We are part of a unified creation. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. The mystery continues. Ours is a tradition where we put our faith in one another and in Life itself.
WHAT IS FAITH?
What do we mean by “faith?” In our culture, we tend to equate faith with belief. It is often a short hand for belief in a personal God. When we think of “the faithful,” we imagine people blindly following an irrational leader. Faith is not equal to doctrines or dogmas, beliefs or creeds.
In German, Hebrew and Latin, the words for faith mean “to set one’s heart,” or to tune one’s heart. Traditionally across cultures and across religions faith has been a verb, not a noun.
Theologian Richard Niebuhr wrote of faith as the shared visions and values that hold human groups together, the shared search for an overarching, integrating and grounding trust in a center of value and power worthy to give our lives unity and meaning.
In the 1950s, the Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, described faith as a state of being ultimately concerned, which may or may not be associated with religion.
Our cultural understanding of “Faith” has been going through a fundamental shift described by twentieth century theologian, Wilfred Cantwell Smith as a new form of consciousness that equates knowledge with empirically demonstrable facts; that subordinates ethics to what works; and that reduces intimacy to sex while it degrades sexuality to obsession. This consciousness sees faith as an object, something you either have or lack.
James Fowler describes faith as a dynamic, existential stance, a way of leaning into and finding or giving meaning to the conditions of our lives. It is a way of knowing and seeing conditions of our lives in relation to an ultimate environment.
A way of leaning into the conditions of our lives, finding or making meaning in relationship to an ultimate environment: Truth. Honesty. God. Loving kindness. Compassion. Hospitality. Love. However you express or experience the ultimate.
STAGES OF FAITH
Building on Lawrence Kohlberg’s work on the stages of moral development, Fowler posits six stages of faith development that describe the human journey from the undifferentiated faith of the infant to a universalizing faith in which the individual operates consciously within the evolving web of life.
POOH
Let’s look at Fowler’s stages through the lens of the characters from Pooh Corner:
Pooh is of course the mellow, happy, poet-songwriter who trusts that honey will always be there if he is willing to seek it out. In Fowler’s language, he has successfully navigated the infantile stage of faith, with goal of building trust with the world. He shows the imagination, drama and myth of Stage 2.
Eeyore is the perennial pessimist, trying to protect himself from disappointment by always foreseeing the worst. With his belief that, “No one loves me; I must suffer alone,” he is in stuck between the drama/narrative of Stage 2 and the demands of a positive personal myth for Stage 3.
Tigger, the perennial optimist, seems the opposite of Eeyore. He has faith in himself, the seed developed in Stage 3, necessary for Stage 4, the Individuative-Reflective period. Yet his is a naïve faith which has not yet been tempered by vulnerability to a peer group. And so Tigger shows us that we can be in two different stages simultaneously: He is temperamentally in Stage 4, while developmentally in Stage 1.
Rabbit is the worry wart, the restless mind. He is very literal in his worries, which is classic Stage 2, yet seems to be aware of boundaries and conventions, which is a Stage 4 concern.
Piglet is the realist. His job is to tell it like it is. Always aware of conventions and attempts to enforce them. Stage 4. And proud of it. Perhaps stuck there.
Kanga is focused on mothering Roo. She is the only female character at Pooh Corner. Fowlers stages reflect the exclusively male world of Kohlberg’s structure. So I wonder if the stages will make sense for Kanga’s experience. She might be in Stage 6, taking care of others needs. And yet she seems to have missed a lot of the earlier stages. Can you jump right to Stage 6?
Baby Roo is at the cusp between the infantile stage of undifferentiated consciousness and exploring the world in Stage 1.
Owl is classic Stage 4, the stage of demythologizing the world, explaining everything, aware of one’s boundaries, enamored of one’s own world-view and boundless knowledge.
Which brings us to Christopher Robin who might be God, controlling the world of Pooh Corner, which would place him either in the rarified atmosphere of Stage 6, or outside the stage model entirely. If we see him as the young child he is, we would expect him to be in Stage 1, intuitive projective faith, projecting all his fantasies on his stuffed animals. However, if we analyze his actions in the adventures, he seems to know a lot about the world, which is Stage 2. And he helps the animals and explains how things work, which is both Stages 3 and 5. By his care for everyone, he definitely manifests Stage 5, conjunctive faith.
FAITH DEVELOPMENT IS NON-LINEAR
Fowler’s work may be helpful in presenting the work of keeping faith with Life as a process that changes as we learn and grow. Although he presented a model that appears linear, his observations described more of a spiral than a straight line. One is never really finished with any of these stages.
The Pooh Gestalt suggests that each of us is sometimes the optimist, Tigger. And sometimes the pessimist, Eeyore. At times we cannot hold ourselves back from responding to Life creatively, like Pooh. Sometimes we get thrown into a Rabbit panick. And some people bring out the realist Piglet in us. We cycle through the stages and personas. Keeping faith with life is not a linear or a passive process.
COVENANTAL FAITH
The Pooh Corner stories describe life in community. Our UU faith tradition draws heavily on the Judaic teaching of covenant, the sacred promise between Life and community, between individual and Life, and between the members of the community. Faith is a journey we experience as individuals, as partners, as members of a family and as a religious community.
It is very recently that religious liberals have re-examined, redefined and reclaimed the concept of sacred covenant.
It was a privilege to be asked how I keep faith with life. And it saddened me that we UU’s don’t know to ask that question of one another. Asking and answering is a religious responsibility. Keeping faith with Life is our primary responsibility as human beings. It is the reason organized religion exists.
FAITH OF THE FAITHLESS
Like Joan Borysenko, Fowler observed that faith development / moving from one stage to the next / tended to be catalyzed by disruption, disappointment, betrayal, illness, accident.
WHERE’S MARY?
About a year after my elder son was diagnosed schizophrenic, my younger son, who was 17 at the time, engaged me in a conversation about life after death. I asked what he believed. He responded with barely contained rage, “If this is all there is, someone’s going to have to pay!”
It took me almost two years before I was ready to rage at God about Colin’s illness. In the year leading up to my explosion, I had become more and more depressed, shut down.
What happened to transform the depression into truth telling and to renew my faith with Life?
It was the healing power of relationship. I finally felt safe enough, accepted for who I am: Welcomed, seen, and heard. And then it couldn’t be stopped. It erupted out of me like a geyser. Keeping faith with Life is a natural part of who we are, how we yearn to live.
HOW DO WE KEEP FAITH WITH LIFE? Here are my Ten Faith Builders:
UNLEARNING: We have to unlearn unrealistic expectations we have of ourselves, each other and of God.
GET HELP: Whenever I’m out of touch with God, I find myself seeking out to others’ faith stories. I look for mentors and teachers. I study my tradition for the voices of the elders.
KNOW WHO HOLDS YOU ACCOUNTABLE
GIVE HELP: Make yourself available to others seeking a mentor. Take your place in this human chain through time.
PRACTICE FORGIVENESS. Faith isn’t primarily about ideas. It requqires letting go in the body, freeing, releasing the saddness, anger, betrayal, etc.
HONOR THE BODY. Move out of the head, into the wholeness of body/mind/spirit.
EXPECT RUPTURES, periods of up and down, fullness and emptiness. Keeping faith with life is a dynamic process of growth and change. It’s not a linear or constant.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF: Most of the times when I break off communications with Life, it’s about self-censor. When I’m kind to myself, it’s much easier to keep faith with Life.
SET YOUR COURSE / create a vision and work to manifest it.
TAKE YOUR FAITH SERIOUSLY, which is to say, joyfully. Practice and celebrate everyday.
TRANSFORMATIONAL FAITH
When she was 14, Jean Houston’s parents were divorcing. Jean was angry and devastated. Someone suggested that she could get rid of her anger by running. She thought she’d give it a try. On one of her first attempts, she literally ran into an old man. As she helped him to his feet, he asked her where she was going so fast, hoping she wasn’t running away from life. Suggesting that perhaps they could walk together. He was a Frenchman and young Jean couldn’t pronounce his name. She called him simply, M. Tehr. They met again several days later in the park. They walked together and talked about their lives. One day as they walked, he abruptly stopped, and squatted to watch a caterpillar crossing their path. He watched in fascination, then looked up at her saying, “This caterpillar is going to become a papillon, a butterfly. Turning to look at her he continued, “I wonder what you are becoming, Jean?”
Jean remembers the answer bubbling out of her, as if she had always known, “Why, I’m going to become someone who helps people.”
Years later, Jean Houston, famous author on religion and spirituality was attending a conference. The speaker was reading from a book. She recognized the story of the girl, the caterpillar and the butterfly. She asked who the author was and discovered that the frail humble M. Tehr had been the visiting Jesuit scholar, the internationally renowned and beloved, Teilhard de Chardin.
One ancient school of Hebrew spiritual teachers refused to assign a name for the mysterious power of creation. They referred to it instead as an acronym, YHWH, which meant, I AM WHAT I AM BECOMING.
God or Life or Mystery or Nature is not a remote or unresponsive presence. God is here, with us, as us, remembering, suffering, dreaming, evolving, transforming.
IN SUM
Faith is not belief in a power who will whisk us away from life, away from suffering.
It is courage – literally the strength of heart – to bear witness to what is. Not to run away from life or hide behind fanciful constructs of how we wish our life or our God to be.
Faith is not a passive. When Teilhard asked young Jean what she was becoming, his question catalyzed an answer that was to guide her the rest of her life.
May we have the courage to reach out to those who run into us on the journey.
May we have the presence to notice the caterpillar.
And may we remember to ask ourselves and one another what it is we are becoming,
And in so doing, keep faith with Life.
AMEN.