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 intro-level linguistics 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, an 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 can leave
us entrenched in an old way of thinking and being; or, alternatively, 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. The frame we draw in our picture or
naming for God determines how the rest of our faith shall remain stalled in
concrete or, alternatively, ever-flowering and ever-growing.
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 attuned 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 that, as humans, we live in an
interdependent world. To ignore God’s
love and passion for diversity is to miss out on the beauty and joy that God
intends for us, one of the primary ways we know our own safety and security.
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 onto carved-in-concrete realities 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]
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 a new year. 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]
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 Roman Catholic sisters and teachers, 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 by
Louie Armstrong. 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 a
previous church I served, 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, 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]
God
is not an elephant and cannot solely be defined by the frame of Father. We would do best, to live into the joy and
the adventure and risk of a new year by listening for the almost imperceptible
sound of a birdsong that might lead us to a new place where we might grow and
prosper and live into life’s answers. God
has far more intended for us than we could imagine. Ah, but we have to imagine outside the
childhood frames and boxes that a living faith outgrows so that we might
receive the new and extravagant gifts God intends for us.
For the new year, I also had Lily, our new Office
Administrator, send ahead a coloring page with New Year’s frames that you might
decorate and beautify and answer these three questions:
Question 1: What name for God do I use that brings me a sense
of comfort and peace to guide me throughout 2021?
Question 2: What name for God do I use that will call me to
growth and a deeper love in 2021?
Question 3: What name for God will I use in 2021 that will
move me to action?
I invite you to post that coloring page, however you beautify it,
with those answers in the frames, somewhere prominently in your home.
Maybe place it on your night stand near your bed? Or you could use a
magnet to attach it to your fridge? Wherever you place it, make it a
location that helps you to reflect on your relationship with God on a daily
basis. As you reflect, you will become more aware of God's presence
bringing peace, calling you to growth, and move you to action. As
your pastor, my prayer is that these frames will help you to have a faith that
is ever-flowering and ever-growing. May
it be so. Amen.
[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.
[2] Ibid.
[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
