Interpretations

I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book, Sacred Nature, Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. One of her strengths is a thorough understanding of Christianity and her additional willingness to explore the teachings of other faiths and to share them. This book reinforces something that I have come to realize in my own explorations. Faith communities need to play an important role in the conversations around aspects of climate emergency and climate justice that cannot be provided by either science or environmental advocacy groups, important as both are. Ours relates to values, ethics, meanings and the rituals where we enact our understandings.

Armstrong has much in common with the views of Thomas Berry, though it is surprising not to find him listed in her bibliography -though his students, Tucker and Swimme are very much there though.

Other faiths have always the divine in nature and continue to do so. Christianity did in its earlier days, but diverged in the fourteenth century. Western people encounter the God of history, especially as it is understood in the Old Testament, rather than a God of nature. When we are encouraged to look at nature, we are encouraged to see beauty and look for comfort now - while forgetting the ugliness and discomfort that we have wreaked upon it through the notion of domination over it. What we may miss in the process is nature’s power to disrupt and destroy, which other faiths and cultures recognize more fully. Job, for Armstrong, is the Biblical figure who gets it right - but not without going through a major transformation. Armstrong sees it as a lens worth exploring.

Finitude

I have a new word in my vocabulary. It comes from a book that attracted my attention when I escaped from being too involved with a project, walked some final letters to the post office - because there are still people without email - and crossed the street to my neighborhood independent bookstore. Book City combines a large range of magazines, new books and remaindered ones in a relatively small space. I tend to head toward remaindered, after looking at the new releases.

But this time a new one published in 2023 appeared to have my name on it. Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. by Oliver Burkeman. Its cover reads Embrace Your Limits, Change Your Life. My life needed a change. Being burned out as a retiree ought to be an oxymoron.

Four thousand weeks is what you get if you live to be 80 years old. I’m already beyond half way to 4700 weeks if I make it to 90. The introductory chapter is headed, In the Long Run, We’re all Dead. Time Management seems like a solution and I have read all the books for years. This one does take a different and salutary direction.

The author is quite witty and well read - he has lived through both Trump and the Pandemic nad like me, still here. Perhaps the kernel of what he says comes from - of all people, Martin Heidigger, who defeats all students of philosophy by being more obsessed with the subject of finitude than any other. An d there is the addition of the two strikes of being a member of the Nazi party for ten years, and being almost impossible to read. Burkeman though, helps us through Heidigger by pointing to the question, somewhat like Hamlet, :What does it mean to be”? He says the only real question is whether we are willing to confront that one or not. The answer is that we are mortal. We are born here, we live here, we die here. All we can do is live our one miraculous life - a gift that never depended on us.

I’ve also been reading a report this morning of the results of some consultations - with one group of people saying, “If only we could get back to the past when everything was the way we wish it were now, it would be so wonderful” - and another group saying, “What do we have to do to make the future exactly the way we want it to be - which will be so wonderful”. I tend to join the second group with all its worry and anxiety. But the truth dawns. The only life over which I/they have any control is the one I/they have right now. It’s not as if we can manage time. Our life is our time - with limits.. It’s not as though our choices don’t matter because clearly they have consequences. But to pretend that we can fully control the future by our actions or recover the past is crazy. Learning finitude is important before it’s too late - both for me and everyone else.

Gatherings

Gatherings

Historians may one day examine many institutions under the categories of pre-pandemic and post pandemic. Quick development of vaccines created a very different trajectory from earlier plagues.  Many of us, pre-pandemic might have encountered webinars in the business world, or tried new learning on Coursera.  Most of us never heard of live-streaming before the pandemic hit – and suddenly education, performing arts and churches entered a new world.

The kind of streaming we experienced was described technically as OTT – “over the top” was not a comment on the quality of the experience, but instead the ability to receive it from any device with internet access. Suddenly the selection and choices were huge.  We paid less attention to the reality that the performance might be hampered by receiving it via a digital medium.

There were all kinds of advantages initially. Social distancing cannot be accomplished in rows of close seating. We could join in from anywhere and visit places we had not frequented in years. We could reach out to people who were ill or house-bound. Rather than leaving home and having to drive or take public transit with several transfers, we could join in an instant with the pressing of a key or button. If we didn’t want to participate at the assigned time, we could even choose one of our own to go to church or attend a concert. Convenience rules

But what was perceived as a short term solution has become a permanent one for many. At the moment we perceive a need to operate in two worlds even though the online one is shrinking considerably while the in-person one may not be growing. Those eager to help us enhance our life streaming presence are now educating us in “online marketing” for church and concert lands. People like to worship or listen to music alone, they tell us. “Going” is a hassle, when it’s so much more comfortable to stay put. More and more people prefer to “watch” online. You can even do it from the coffee shop or at brunch - and on your mobile phone. Video is replacing text anyway – even on FaceBook.

But what about the disadvantages? Is the kind of community experienced when sitting among others a different one?  Is a physical sense of place – school, concert hall, place of worship - important to a community as a living entity rather than a shuttered place - or one with many unfilled speaces? Is moving our bodies out of doors important to maintain our physical, emotional and spiritual health? Are fixed rituals in place and time necessary to experience life fully? Is “watching” the best way to maintain a civil society? What will be the outcome? Will more of us end up sick and shut-in?

Combining

As I have already said, I’ve been pondering a planning exercise with a logo, slogan, and title that comes from a story in the Bible.  It’s certainly not an unusual way to go for strategic planning in church land.  It’s designed to suggest a new direction coming out of a pandemic.  I wonder though, if it is missing something when asking about where we are and where we are going. This was the time that our institution, along with our schools, our workplaces and our law courts became digital. You can’t start from there and get to here.

People complain now that their buildings are burdens.  They were doing so before the pandemic hit because of the cost of utilities, mortgages and aging infrastructure – but at least the churches were open then. Many places of worship have been locked and mostly dark for months on end. One that I know did put a small altar inside at the entrance – and some people walked up to the closed doors to see it and said their prayers.  The only other time I have observed similar behaviour was when I visited the Czech Republic during its last year under communist rule. Church vestibules were open but further entry was blocked by glass barriers. I frequently saw parents taking small children inside and whispering to explain what the spaces were about. Sometimes there were elderly ladies on their knees saying their beads inside; they must have entered defiantly through side doors but were assumed to be harmless to the regime.

For about 24 months, we couldn’t sing.  Part of my working life has been administering an organization that supports choirs and I have been a lifelong chorister myself. For many, singing in any choir is a lifeline to connecting with other people; we sit physically close to one another; we listen to the nearest voice and try our best to make a blended sound. The pandemic cut the lifeline. To compensate, some singers recorded a few lines on their phones singing at home alone –  heard how that single voice croaked and sounded terrible without the others – and sent a small tape to someone technically sophisticated enough to compile several files into one after dozens of hours – to be sent back out into the world as a one minute recording.

We couldn’t worship together. Clergy read lessons, preached in an empty space, conducted services with one person present and sent recordings one after another into the world. Alternatively a gathered grid of familiar faces appeared on screen. When they spoke at the same time it was a small cacophony of voices. Zoom changed from an active verb to a passive noun. You became joined to Tube – the latter used to refer to a TV screen – but no more. Or nothing happened at all.

Now we say we are coming back to normal.  But what is normal about still singing or preaching through a mask? What is normal about preferring to wear pajamas while watching church online, drinking coffee and checking email at the same time? We are grateful for technology as we advertise our online services. But are we pausing to ask – who are we now?  What is our work now? Where are we going? How are we using technology for our purpose?  How is technology using us?

Never Again

Pope Francis has come and gone with an apology that was healing for some and unsatisfactory for others in both church and First Nations communities. The government’s lack of action has not escaped notice either.

What some, but not all, missed was his indictment of Christianity itself. Our arrogance in assuming that one religion is superior to all others is something we learn well when we are young and much time has to elapse before we even know that there are other possibilities with histories and an integrity of their own.

One of the pundits got it right in noting something that Pope Francis said to his bishops and followers. Nigaan Sinclair probably knew a different story from him father, Senator Murray Sinclair from the beginning of his life. The pope said.

“The pain and the shame we feel must become an occasion for conversion: never again! And thinking about the process of healing and reconciliation with our indigenous brothers and sisters, never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”

Nigaan Sinclair commented to the TV host what a difference it would have made had a pope said this five hundred years ago? How would our history be different in this land? It speaks to the depth of the damage and the need to learn more quickly how to undo it. It will not be easy. It must happen.