a lump in the throat

AT ITS HEART, I think, religion is mystical. Moses with his flocks in Midian, Buddha under the Bo tree, Jesus up to his knees in the waters of Jordan: each of them responds to something for which words like shalom, oneness, God even, are only pallid, alphabetic souvenirs. "I have seen things," Aquinas told a friend, "that make all my writings seem like straw." Religion as institution, as ethics, as dogma, as social action—all of this comes later and in the long run maybe counts for less. Religions start, as Frost said poems do, with a lump in the throat, to put it mildly, or with the bush going up in flames, the rain of flowers, the dove coming down out of the sky.

                                                                        Fredrick Buechner

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I am not a big fan of religion

All that dogma

All those rules, and rituals

All that form and government

In the day of my youth Donovan’s plaintive voice

Echoed in my ears

“When rain has hung the leaves with tears

I want you near, to kill my fears

To help me to leave all my blues behind

Standing in your heart is where I want to be

And long to be

Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind”

Ah, but I may well try and catch the wind

In many ways religion feels like our pathetic attempts

to try and catch the Wind

the Wind of the Spirit

which does not mean I do not have faith

I believe in Sacred

I believe in a power

Call it Sacred, God, Love

In a power that draws all together, and holds all together

In a power that is totally, wholly (Holy?) other

and yet is totally, wholly, woven into the fabric of my being

Someone once told me their major issue with faith was their concept of God.  They saw God as some sort of vague being, some great “other”…

and kept picturing tapioca pudding. 

The big guy in the white robe with the lightning bolt isn’t much better.

God, the infinite one is hard to connect to. 

But there is another side to this reality I call God... 

the immanent. 

Immanence is not the opposite of transcendence, it is the correlative. 

Immanence and transcendence are two sides of the same coin....

If transcendence is the infinite God,

Immanence is the intimate God

This is the God who is present,

And this God I experience

and whom we “experience”

and that is the definitive word

experience

This is the lump in the throat,

the bush going up in flames,

the rain of flowers,

the dove coming down out of the sky.

This is inner presence

If I have to use Bible talk

I would say this is the Spirit within. 

The teacher,

helper,

advocate,

comforter that Jesus talks about.

This presence is there

It is woven into my fabric

It is what makes me a Child of God

And makes you one too

But wow!!

This world!

it is so ugly

the wicked flourish

the innocent die

lies, and greed and cruelty seem to win

and win, and win

so much winning

and we wonder

today a friend asked a question

“Do you think g_d is out there somewhere... listening, able to do something... willing to do something? Anything?”

“I used to.”  He wrote, “But there’s seems far too much evidence to the contrary...

that either g_d is not, or does not exist/express as we’ve been taught,

as we often insist/expect. This is my struggle as I cling to hope... hope in hope.”

I do not think g_d is just out there

I think g_d is in here, in me

and yes, I think it makes a difference

Jesus, in his last, intimate talk with his disciples

Who were going to be left in a world that left them wonder

Pleaded with them to stay connected to that Sacred reality,

the way a branch stays connected to a vine

Grab hold of God, Jesus said,

in such a way that the life giving presence is there

and you can be fed

loved

forgiven

nourished

The word he used was abide

maybe a better word is the word cling.

We need to cling to God,

as when

lonely

and afraid

and  hurting

We cling to another

Clinging and finding in the holding

the touch

the experience of the other being there

the healing flow of love

warmth

energy

Of course clinging doesn’t work if it is one sided

And that is the good thing about this infinite, immanent reality

I call God

we don’t just cling to God

God clings to us…

and as we desperately seek to love Love

Love loves us back

So while I am not a big fan, much of the time, of religion

I am sold on that reality

Who showed up in a burning bush

and blew through the disciples souls

and comes to me

on beautiful fall mornings

as a lump in the throat

As Aquinas said

"I have seen things,"

"that make all my writings seem like straw."

I am seeing things that make my theology

Seem like a pile of dry dust

But still

I believe