I was tagged by Kay who was tagged by Eileen who was tagged by Carl McColman
Summarize the Bible in five statements (fifteen words). The first statement – one word long, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last five words long. Or possibly you could do this in descending order. Tag five people.
Challenging.
Good news.
Not journalistic fact.
Humanity’s understanding of God.
Protect the widowed, orphaned, poor.
I tag Kristen, Ben, Lindsay, Naked Pastor, and Dr. Beck.
Posted in RELIGION-SPIRITUALITY | 8 Comments »
Well, most of us are already completely aware of this and we didn’t really need science to point it out, but interesting article anyway…
Researchers at the University of Chicago asked volunteers who said they believe in God to give their own views on subjects like abortion and the death penalty (the controversial stuff). They they asked these people what they thought God’s views are, Bill Gates, views, Barack Obama’s views, etc. Not surprisingly their personal views most closely mirrored what they thought God’s views are. Then they asked volunteers to prepare a speech offering an opposite view to their own on say, the death penalty (something controversial). Interestingly, this activity shifted their ideas about what they thought God’s views are, but not their ideas about what Bill Gates’ views are.
“People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want,” the team write. “The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”
“The experiments in which we manipulate people’s own beliefs are the most compelling evidence we have to show that people’s own beliefs influence what they think God believes more substantially than it influences what they think other people believe,” says Epley.
They used brain scans to support this. Volunteers were asked to contemplate themselves, God, and other Americans, etc, When contemplating themselves and God, similar areas of the brain were active. But when they contemplated other American’s beliefs, the area of the brain used to infer other people’s mental states was active. The researchers claim this implies that people map God’s beliefs onto their own.
Most of the volunteers were Christian and all considered themselves to be “believers”. Of course, it’s a very specific group of religious people that profess to know the mind of God and dare claim what it is God believes. It’s a large group, but such people do not comprise all of the Abrahamic faiths. What would be interesting is to do a similar experiment with those who are absolutely certain that God does not exist. My guess is that researchers would discover that those who attribute reality only to reason would discover that reason occupies the same place God does for the believers. Of course, how would you phrase such a question to a non-believer?
Read the entire article here.
Posted in christianity, fundamentalism, psychology | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been having a lot of bizarre dreams lately. Dreams about herding cats and having to decode spools of DNA and stuff like that. I woke up from a much more normal dream this morning and thought I’d jot it down.
In the dream, I was in a Sunday School class. I don’t remember what it was they were discussing, but it was an open, free discussion that had everyone’s brain working. And I had this sort of epiphany during the discussion. In any intentional group (in the cognitive psychological sense), people feel a sense of solidarity. Church is no different. But rather than contribute their sense of well-being to that sense of solidarity, they contribute it to belonging to the “right” thing as though nothing else can provide what it is church provides.
Every intentional group will provide it’s own sense of well-being and that will be unique. But it isn’t confined to church.
So in the dream, I bring this up in the Sunday school class, and of course I am immediately met with resistance. One woman tells me, “you can just tell how blocked you are with this”. That she defines it as being blocked leads to yet another epiphany. It’s not me who is blocked!!! (Well – at least not in terms of this particular understanding within my dream.) Everyone who insists on being somehow “better than”, “morally superior”, or even experiences just a minor feeling of smugness is blocked. They will immediately label those who don’t have that same experience of superiority as blocked because they don’t want to “see”. They desire separation and an elevation from the rest of humanity.
Being a member of a church doesn’t make you anymore special than anyone else. It simply makes you a member of a church. If that church happens to be an intentional one, all the better. But that, in no way, elevates you spiritually above those in other intentional groups. In fact, if you are a member of a church in order to feel better than others, perhaps your intentions are misled? Perhaps we can be members of intentional groups while fully recognizing the fallibility of our humanity at the same time?
Funny – as I’m writing this, a local televised news station has a story on how a church recently moved into a strip mall next to a Comedy Club. The Comedy Club has been there forever – I think it was even there when I lived here in the 1980s. The Church moved in recently and shares a wall with the Comedy Club. And lo and behold – it’s protesting the noise levels of the club. The Church has been asked to leave because they have been there less time and pay less rent than does the Comedy Club and they think this completely unfair. But you have to wonder – why did a church decide to rent space right next to a popular Comedy Club/bar in the first place?? Certainly there is some sort of hidden agenda behind that move!
OK – off to church! We’re dragging our daughter along with us today. 
Posted in christianity | 5 Comments »
OK – so I’m over my brief spell of feeling guitly and dirty about the way we rejoined the Methodist Church. I think we probably should have joined in front of the community and I wouldn’t feel so guilty and dirty. But both my husband and I were afraid that if we didn’t actually join a church we never would. And we joined for reasons of community. Not purity of theology or being or anything.
If I were going for purity of theology, I’d join a Catholic Church, not a protestant church. And if I were seriously in search of purity of being, I’d become a Jain, not a Christian. Christianity doesn’t demand purity of being and that’s cool with me. I’m definitely not enlightened enough to be a Jain. I’m OK with being a vegetarian (going on 4 months now) and even toy with being vegan. But I still use bug spray if the mosquitos are biting. I try to take scorpions out of the house alive, but when they come flying at me from the ceiling fans, I’ve been known panic and squash them. And I drive a car so end up killing tons of sentient beings without meaning to. (Only bugs so far, thankfully.)
I keep thinking about that silly little rhyme with hand movements we all did when we were younger. Here is the church and here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people. Church isn’t theology. It’s people. Maybe most of the people within it are completely brainwashed by theology. But they are still people. And some of that theology isn’t so terrible. Especially the part that teaches us to love our neighbor and to be humbled by gratefulness. People do that in surprising ways, no matter how brainwashed they’ve been by theology. There is something much more basic to our being than what it is we believe. And that’s what matters.
And that’s why I joined a church. Because despite whatever beliefs go on within a church, it is an intentional community. For ten years I’ve been on the lookout for some sort of alternative source of intentional community and I have yet to find any group that does intention as well as church. Well… besides the Zen Buddhist center, and my friend’s Muslim center down the road, and my other friend’s wonderful Jewish synagogue, and another friend’s weekly Hindu gathering in her home.. But I’m culturally Christian. I’m not Jewish, Muslim or Hindu. (Although I do totally resonate with being Buddhist. And to be quite honest, I feel quite at home in my friend’s Jewish synagogue. The Hindu and Muslim practices might take some getting used to. But I imagine if I spent enough time with them, I’d probably feel at home there, too.)
Posted in world religions | 6 Comments »
Carl mentioned Simon’s Cat on his blog today. I hadn’t heard about Simon, his cat or his new book about his cat, but the video Carl posted about Simon’s cat is right on!! We have two cats and Simon’s cat is exactly like one of them. I love how clawed up Simon’s bed is. We have a dining room table that could fall over at any minute because our cat claws on one of it’s legs when we’re not looking. I give the table another 5 years at best.
Here she is. I know, she looks sweet. But click on the picture and look at her face. She’s devising some sort of plan…
The only thing that Simon’s cat doesn’t do that our cat does is knock everything off of every available surface in our bedroom to try and get our attention while we are sleeping. We pretend not to notice, but she always ends up getting our attention in the end. Just this morning, I was soundly sleeping on my side only to be awakened by her purring and cat kneeding. She finally curled up on my side and I was able to go back to sleep. I have no idea what she was doing to me while I was sleeping, however. I don’t doubt she’d make use of a bat if she was able…
Posted in musings | Tagged simon's cat | 2 Comments »
We joined a United Methodist Church today. For us it was a huge deal to finally join a church. But for those who accepted us into the church, no big deal. The minister was in a rush to get it over with and we were the only people who joined.
We hadn’t really intended on joining today. But the church was offering something called “No Stress Sunday”. You just walk into the chapel, transfer your membership, and you’re in! No stress. And it was completely unceremonious which was incredibly anti-climatic given the fact that it was such a big deal for us to be rejoining the church after having been away from it for so long. Plus, the entire focus of the service we had just participated in was about ceremony and celebrating.
I suppose there usually isn’t a lot of ceremony that accompanies transferring a membership from one church to another. But the last two times I became a part of a church community, a lot of ceremony accompanied my joining. For Catholicism, I had gone through years of preparation and participated in a long 3 hour ceremonial service. Those of us who were joining the church were dressed in robes and were the focal point of the entire ceremony. Friends and family were there to share in the event. But I was being confirmed into the Catholic Church. I suppose, if you transfer churches within Catholicism, it’s completely non-ceremonious. Probably even less ceremonious than joining the Methodist Church. Although I’m quite certain the Catholic Church requires those who have not been members of a church for quite some time go back through the confirmation process. Re-entry functions more like an initial entry so would be ceremonial.
When we left the Catholic Church and joined the Methodist Church many moons ago, I suppose it wouldn’t have been a big deal except there was a sort of protocol that everyone had to follow to join the church. You couldn’t just walk up to the front on any given Sunday and say you wanted to become members. You had to attend several short classes and attend a group session in the minister’s home. At periodic intervals throughout the year, there was a welcoming ceremony in place of the typical service and a decent sized group of people were initiated into the church in front of the congregation. When my husband and I joined, a huge group of people went out for lunch afterward, including the minister and associate minister. It was very ceremonious. But it was also a much smaller church.
The church we just joined almost seems to encourage anonymity and perhaps that’s a good thing for us right now. Neither of us wanted to make a big splash, or anything. But I guess I expected something more. Nothing big and ceremonious – just the possibility that one person might recognize and appreciate the journey I had made and what a big event it was for me to be re-entering the church. I thought we’d have more chance to talk with a minister by attending “No Stress Sunday” because it seemed much more intimate than simply transferring membership during the church service. But the minister barely gave us 5 minutes (if that) and let us know she was having to rush off to some other event. We signed papers by a sign that said, “No Stress Sunday”. And I suppose that’s the way it goes in a big church and maybe as it should be.
But why is it I feel so dirty and guilty? Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling.
Posted in christianity | 2 Comments »
I read J. Francis Stroud’s Praying Naked quite some time ago. It was an interesting book, but I wonder why he feels the need to speak through Anthony de Mello? It also felt just a tad too new-agish for me. But there were lots of cool quotes used in the book which I’ve been meaning to jot down before I shelve the book…
Posted in quotes | Leave a Comment »
My son came home with the new Them Crooked Vultures CD (John Paul Jones – Led Zeppelin, Dave Grohl- Foo Fighters/Nirvana, Josh Homme – Queens of the Stone Age). It’s interesting. I enjoyed it! Their last song on the CD ends with a circus song that sounds just like the beginning of the Nick Cave concert on Wings of Desire, which I watched last night and am going to have to watch again. It’s absolutely mesmerizing and reminds me a little of City of Angels. And it’s no wonder! When I went to get the IMDB link for “City of Angels”, I noticed the Director for “Wings of Desire” was the writer for “City of Angels”. Wilhem based the idea of angels becoming human off of Rilke’s poetry. It’s the existential angle – going from one who observes and preserves reality to one who is fully willing to participate in it. The fallen angel, so to speak.
Anyway, it’s been a while since I’d thought about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was fun to watch their concert on “Wings of Desire” and its’ good to know they are still around!
Posted in music | Tagged Nick Cave, Them Crooked Vultures, Wings of Desire | Leave a Comment »
Life is so strange. After ten years of not being part of a Christian community, looks like my husband and I are returning. Of course, both of us have a completely different view of Christianity now than we did when we left. What’s strange is that it seems to both of us that Christianity has changed quite a bit, too.
We’re attending a fairly traditional United Methodist Church. It’s far more traditional than anything we’ve been involved with for probably 15 years! Yet, in our search for a Methodist community, every minister has introduced themselves to us by their first name – not even with a “pastor” preceding it. A church we visited in Round Rock, Texas (an extremely homophobic part of the world) all agreed, without much argument, to become a Reconciling Community. They were surprised at how impressed we were with their willingness to accept the label since only one other Methodist church in Austin has been willing to take it on. For them, it was just plain, common sense and they don’t see anything bold or courageous about it. It’s a little too traditional for us in terms of theology, but what a fantastic community!
The church we are joining is not a Reconciling community. But we both feel incredibly drawn to it, for some reason. It just feels like the right thing to do at this point in our lives. I can’t tell you why and I don’t even want to try. Maybe five years from now it will make sense. Then again, maybe I’m simply finally learning to live life without insisting that it make sense.
Posted in musings, spirituality | 2 Comments »
I wrote this in October and thought I should post it here…
In a recent plane ride home from Rhode Island, a woman in front of me was explaining how to work Sudoku puzzles. She was a patient teacher and I was soon able to complete my own puzzles. At first, it was very enjoyable. But as I do with almost everything, I turned it into a job, having to prove to myself I was worthy of completing the most difficult puzzles and that I could get them right.
I have now completed every single puzzle available on my Centro and I’m all the way up to the Diabolical puzzles. For every other level, I could easily ascertain the patterns and have most puzzles finished in under 15 minutes. Not so with the Diabolical puzzles. These are tough! I get stuck and can’t figure out how to solve them. I finally succombed to reading Sudoku tips on-line and there are ways you can add the figures to decide which number fits best in whatever square. But I don’t want to have to do that! The other alternative the tips suggest is to guess.
GUESS??? I don’t want to have to guess! Sudoku had me hooked because everything made sense. On all of the levels before Diabolical, no matter how difficult, the patterns quickly became apparent and all the numbers eventually fell perfectly into place. Guessing means you might have to get something wrong before you can get it right. I don’t like things like that. I don’t want to have to get things wrong. But if I do, I usually have a string of back-up plans – just in case.
I think it was Edison who said that he hadn’t failed, he’d just figured out 10,000 ways that didn’t work. I can assure you I’m not Edison. I get something wrong and I immediately think of myself as an idiot and failure. Which is probably why I’ve never invented anything. But I guess that’s the way puzzles work, sometimes. You have to keep trying different pieces until you find that one that fits.
Do you suppose our lives are like that? Like puzzles? Are there pieces that fit and that don’t fit? I think that is what I was probably taught – that there is a completed picture at some distant place and time and if I mind my p’s and q’s and don’t mess up, I’ll put everything together in the right way and will be rewarded with that completed picture. Everything will make sense.
I’m beginning to realize, however, that life just doesn’t work like this. After 20 years of marriage, you can’t go back in time and try someone else and see if it works better. Divorce statistics are higher for each subsequent marriage which suggests that chances are good the second marriage will be just as bad as the first, and possibly worse. My second marriage, however, was much better than the first. So maybe the third would be even better? Probably not. I’m perfectly happy in my marriage until I start wondering if there might be a better fit for me out there (the piece that will complete the puzzle).
You can’t take your kids back to the time they were 5 and put them in a different school to see if that makes their lives “better”. There is no way to measure these things. If you made the decision to put your kids in public school, what is the point of wondering if private school would have been better? There is no way to know what the “right” way is. We may decide to take a different route with our younger child. Or our kids may decide they will do things one way or another for their kids, based on their personal experiences. But they can’t know if this will be “better” for their kids, either. It’s simply a choice we make given our experience and available information.
Maybe life isn’t a puzzle? If so, maybe it’s OK to quit searching so frantically for that perfect piece? Maybe we can simply enjoy the process as it unfolds, however imperfect it may be.
Posted in musings, spirituality | Leave a Comment »
