B
Christmas 2 BFC 2014
January
4, 2015
In his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, University of California at Berkley linguistic
professor, George Lakoff, describes what happens when he begins his 101 class with
an exercise for his students. He challenges
his students to not think of an elephant.
Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant!
Lakoff knows, of course, with that
frame, that students will immediately go to visual images of floppy ears and a
large trunk, perhaps even a visual picture of Disney’s Dumbo. Lakoff created a frame—an elephant. The frame acts like a language box for the
students’ thoughts and imaginations. As
Lakoff defines it, “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the
world.”[1] For example, once I say the phrase “tax
relief”, taxes themselves become a negative and onerous responsibility not a
way to support public schools, pay our public servants, or support infrastructure. Using the word “relief” with taxes, reminds
us that we need some respite from taxes.
Once a frame is created, Lakoff
asserts, we basically create the parameters for thought, discourse, and
imagination. “Reframing is changing the
way the public sees the world. It is changing what counts as common sense.
Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.
Thinking differently requires speaking differently.”[2]
Framing is about using language
that not only evokes your worldview and makes clear your values. Framing and reframing leave us entrenched in
an old way of thinking and being or help our heart follow our head into a new
reality.
So it is in our faith as well. Once we create a frame for faith in prayer
and devotion, we set about thinking of God and faith and life within that
frame. I might tell you to draw a visual
picture of God. Imagine God and, in so
doing, imagine the gifts God wants to give to you. And many of you, though you would resist and
know it not to be true, would picture a grandfatherly-like figure in a white
robe, and a long white beard. These
days, based on the frames we have been given, God might look more like
Dumbledore or Gandalf. Those images then
dictate how we see ourselves, each other, and our world. Though we might not agree with that worldview,
because we employ a well-worn frame, this visual picture of God works on
us.
Gordon Hempton, who refers to
himself as an audio ecologist, shares that he likes to challenge
assumptions. One of the major
assumptions out there is that scientists, who have studied human hearing, have
believed for a long time that our ears evolved to hear the human voice. Intuitively, it sounds right. Sounds natural. Would not human ears be attuned to hear the
timbre and meter of the human voice? But
if that were true, Hempton argues, we would be the only species on the planet
that evolved so separate and apart from the rest of nature.
So Hempton investigated. Is our ear specifically atuned to other human
voices? What he found is that human
nature has a bandwidth of super-sensitive hearing. Most of human speech falls well below that
level. There is a sound that is a
perfect match for the bandwidth of super-sensitive human hearing. What can we hear for miles and miles, ever so
faintly? Does anybody know? Birdsong.
Birdsong is the perfect match.
“Birdsong,” Hempton said, “is the primary indicator of habitats
prosperous to humans.”[3] It is once again those kinds of truths that
remind us that our God loves diversity.
And to ignore God’s love and passion for diversity is to miss out on the
beauty and joy that God intends for us.
What Hempton found in his life’s work
is that humankind was created and evolved to go outside its own melodies and
rhythms to find a life that thrives and prospers. What if God looks more like nature than like
us? What if beauty and joy and thriving
are gifted to us outside frames we might have created? Just waiting to be found?
Wow, where did we miss out on all of
that? How did faith become so much about
rules and regs and hanging on to this stoicism for dear life such that we wring
all the beauty and joy out of faith?
Whether we be conservative, middle of the road, or progressive, this
time of year sometimes seems to be all about starting anew with resolutions
that will make us more dour or stodgy or blechy vanilla than we were the
previous year. Blecchy vanilla, it is
making its way into the English lexicon.
You just wait.
We
look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.[4]
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.[4]
In that poem by Anne Hillman, hear the
joy of not knowing, the risk of transformation, the call to love wildly, and
the adventure of learning something new as a Christian pilgrim beginning a new
year. Rather than resolutions, these are
the points of discernment to which God is calling us for a new year. Spiritual teacher, Parker Palmer, reflects
Hillman’s poem with these questions for 2015.
Ask yourself:
•
How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness?
• What is my next challenge in daring to be human?
• How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature?
• Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next?
• What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me?[5]
• What is my next challenge in daring to be human?
• How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature?
• Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next?
• What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me?[5]
But here’s the thing. We come here together in worship today
because we say that God is involved. And
too often we think we can experience the joy of not knowing, the risk of
transformation, the call to love wildly, and the adventure of learning
something new without having our understanding and knowledge of God, the frame
in which we have long placed God, reframed or radically changed. How can we be more fully alive and
spiritually growing and keep the understandings of God we have had since we
were a small child?
I remember being on a mission trip and looking
in the night sky to see a moon so full and bright, like a moon I had never seen
before. In that moment, I knew that I
needed a new image or frame for God that was different than one I had ever had
before. I became certain that God held
me and was tracking me and I became aware of gifts that God was holding out to
me that I could not possibly have known before.
And I am sure, just sure, that God smiled, She smiled, well aware that I
had grown. From that point forward, I
could never go back to the smaller god I had known before.
As Janet Schaffran and Pat Kozak state in their book, More Than Words, “An image of God held
at the age of five that remains largely unchanged at the age of forty reveals
very little about a God of infinite love and response. It does, however, reveal something tragic
about that individual’s lack of growth and inability to experience and reflect
upon God’s action in his or her own life.”[6]
Some time ago, Tracy shared with me a
matrix she learned in seminary. That
matrix created an X and Y axis with the Trinitarian names for God
(traditionally, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”) above the horizontal line and
the corresponding names we call the world around us and we call ourselves in
relation to God below the horizontal line.
Changes above the horizontal line required corresponding changes below
the horizontal line. For example, if God
is Father then we are God’s children. If
God is loving Creator above the line then below the line might be the “wonderful
world” sung about before the Christmas Eve service. What we call and name God reflects upon what
we call and name ourselves and our world.
In the same way, what we call and name ourselves and our world,
corresponds with what we then call and name God. If we are the diverse strands of community
woven together, then God is the Holy Spirit who calls us together, the Divine
Weaver, the One who in weft and warp makes of us one garment.
In the work I have done as a spiritual
director and teacher, one of the first things I ask people to do is to pick two
images or metaphors of God. The first
image I ask people to select is a name for God they have used historically, the
image or metaphor of God they learned in childhood, most probably an image of
comfort and security. The second image
or metaphor I ask them to select is one of aspiration, an image or metaphor for
God to which they feel God is leading them or calling them. Not surprisingly, almost universally, the
image of comfort and security people choose has been some version of
“Father.” The images of aspiration, the
image or frame to which God is leading or calling us, on the other hand, in my
experience, end up being very diverse.
So think on these things. In this new year, to what image or metaphor
of God are you being led or called? For
it may be that in knowing God differently and in diversity, we begin to discern
the answer to Parker Palmer’s questions.
What image or metaphor of God would move you out of your comfortable
life to one that is alive and what is that life? (God as Walking Partner, Befriender of the
Friendless, or God of Struggle) Out of that image or metaphor, how are you
being challenged by God to be more fully human?
(Maybe a God who is Mystery, Daring One, or Breath of the Cosmos) What
new beauty in humanity or the created world does the image or metaphor of God
open you up to? (Giver of Gifts, Keeper
of Promises, or Flower of My Heart) With this new image or metaphor of God,
what new people or place are you now called to love next? (Immigrant God, Resilient and Homeless Youth)
And then next? (God of My Enemies,
Sister to My Soul) And with this new image or metaphor of God, what is now
being born in you? How will you be
transformed by it over the course of the year?
(Perhaps God acting as Midwife, Birth Mother, Risk Taker.)
As Schaffran and Kozak relate, (quote)
“[T]he development of positive, life-giving images is vital for adult
faith. This use of the imagination
involves openness to being influenced by something or someone outside of
ourselves in order to learn life’s meaning, depth, and possibilities. We will be creating new images of God. In the process, we are changed. We grow.
We respond to a God who is revealed in a marvelous variety of ways. Through these new images of God we find
ourselves challenged to live, to love, and to act justly.”[7]
(end quote)
These names, frames, images, and
metaphors for God orient us in the universe.
And, too often, what we do not realize, is that when we learn new
details of the mystery and breadth of God, gifts we did not know were possible
begin to emerge. The world becomes
bigger and brighter. God’s love expands
in ways we could not have thought possible.
We do not think of God as just an elephant. We become aware that not only a human voice,
but a bird’s song may be calling us to a place where we experience prosperous
health and life we could not have otherwise imagined possible.
Today we read a Scripture passage that
is one of the passages the author of the Gospel of John probably referenced to
write the 1st Chapter of John.
In the beginning was the Word or Wisdom, and Wisdom, the Divine
Architect, the One who seems to be both creature and divine at the beginning of
all creation, is definitively female.
More than any other issue that
gets me in trouble in churches is when I use a metaphor or image for God that
is profoundly female.
In my last church, I preached what
I thought to be a liturgically beautiful sermon. God was a Grandmother who left a light on in
every section of the house, hoping we would come home. When we did not, God, as Grandmother, put on
her best winter coat and tightened her scarf to go out into the wind and snow
to find us. Someone in the church was so
alarmed at this female image, that he campaigned for equal time when a more
conservative voice might offer neglected male images to offset one Sunday when
I used a female reference. Every Sunday
praying “Our Father.” Many Sundays
hearing about Mike’s failed attempts at baseball excellence. And he was alarmed by one Sunday when I
referenced God as Grandmother. Are we
really that afraid of our own growth that we think God needs to be defended by
circling the wagons and battening down the hatches of our souls?
It would seem that one of the reasons we
or others who have left the church might experience faith as “blecchy vanilla”
much too often is that we consistently make choices for our own lives and our
lives together that rhyme with comfort rather than risk. Perhaps we are entangled in frames that are
about what we learned and recited as creed with no thought given to growth,
that do not open us to the many gifts and joys and energy God intends for
us.
In the Scripture read, not unlike an
ode to Celtic spirituality, we learn that Wisdom came forth from the mouth of
the Most High and covered the earth like a mist. She was co-creating the earth and all of its
foundations with God at the beginning of time.
What would it mean if we saw the activity of God not intervening in some
miraculous events once in a grand while, but like a mist that pervaded all of
creation, reflecting and refracting the goodness of God throughout—that the
flower petal was a result of the tender finger of God outstretched to us in
beauty, that the buffalo might be a sign and symbol God intended for our
sustenance and well-being, that you, in all your diverse physical flaws might
be known to God as beautiful and treasured . . . as you are?
I had a colleague in seminary who
would say with frequency, “If we knew God as a poor, pregnant refugee woman, we
would indeed know why God loves so much.”
What might happen in our lives if we learned that God suffered and
struggled in love such that the image or frame we called forward was tender and
kind in mercy because God knew what it was to need tenderness and kindness and
mercy so desperately?
What is that image of aspiration, that
metaphor, that name for God to which you are being called or led? Maybe it is not something you know for
certain but something that allows you to unravel with life’s questions. Perhaps it is like the great poet, Rainer
Marie Rilke wrote in 1903, counseling a young friend:
I want to
beg you, as much as I can, dear Sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved
in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and
like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek now seek the answers, which
cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without
noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.[8]
[1] George Lakoff, Don’t
Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values
and Frame the Debate (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Publishing, 2004), p. xv.
[3] “Interview with Gordon Hempton,” On Being with Krista Tippett, December
25, 2014. http://onbeing.org/program/gordon-hempton-the-last-quiet-places-silence-and-the-presence-of-everything/transcript/7149#main_content.
[4]Anne Hillman, “Life Prayer,” A Pilgrim’s Journey to the Great Better http://heartsteps.org/2014/life-prayer-2/.
[5] Parker Palmer, “Five Questions for Crossing the
Threshhold,” On Being with Krista Tippett,
December 31, 2014, http://onbeing.org/blog/five-questions-for-crossing-the-threshold/7167.
[6] Janet Schaffran and Pat Kozak, More Than Words: Prayer and
Ritual for Inclusive Communities (Oak
Park, IL: Meyer Stone Books, 1986), p.
12.
[7] Ibid, p. 13.
[8] Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Worpswede, near Belgium, July 16,
1903. http://www.carrothers.com/rilke4.htm
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