Parakalein

Today is Memorial Day a day that we remember that the cost of freedom is high, the cost of war is perennial pain and loss very little gain and joy.  We celebrate victories but still mourn the losses.  I recall my dad thinking about his buddies who never came back from storming the beeches of Normandy.  He was in the third wave while friends were in the first wave all died.  We welcome soldiers home from war.  Some soldiers never come home.

Memorial Day is not a victory parade it is an "honoring of the losses and pain of war".  A remembrance that there is a price tag for freedom.

Memorial Day began in response to the Civil War that ravaged our nation.  Abraham Lincoln said it was the worst of times and the best of times for the nation.  In his second Inaugural Address he stated:.  


With malice toward none, with charity (love) for ALL, with firmness in the right as God gives us to know the right,

I walked down for a cup of coffee this morning.  A part of me felt I was lazy as I could brew a cup of coffee for myself.  Another part of me said it is not about coffee it is about connections.  So an excusing part, rationalizing part you be the judge or just suspend the judging part.

I was dressed up as I was preaching in a church about 30 miles away.  Two men were sitting on the bench outside the little town market in West Stockbridge, MA. The town welcomers noticed my memorial day tie. I recognized one of them as the former owner who I had not seen for 6 months.  The other the current owner.  Conversations ensued as connections were made and remade.

Bernie Fallon had just written and published a book, "Goodology".  I told him I was ready to blog about waco-ology that the theology and ecclesiology of the religious world was so confining and constrictive no one was caring much anymore about organized church.  It is all good.  It is what we make it.  Bernie's book from his own life adventures and experiences seemed to coalesce with mine.  We shared learning stories, life lessons, and similar conclusions.

We concluded if everyone spun good into everything there would be more goodness in the world.  With more goodness in the world their would be less spinning.  God had spun a tale in both of us that we were finding strangely parallel.  Our shared stories are not important. That their is a shared story in many of us is profound and propelling.  In a world of pretense and pretext this is neither.  It is real and it is about life.  It is good.

I told him the simplest thing I had heard in my travels: "If it is to be it is up to me".  Ten words none bigger than two letters but with deep meaning.

Can't wait to read "Goodology".  I am sure it is good!

So is your judger off or is it all just good.

The coffee was good the connection great!

I was on my morning walk.  It was 5:45 am.  I was listening to the birds sing as they only do early in the morning.  I was imagining what they were saying.  Al creations seems to have a song in the morning different from the evening.  A violent storm had come through the night before and it was as if nature was celebrating surviving and thriving in the joy of the morning.  Peace and serenity breads peace and serenity as I meditate.  I realize that walking is not just exercise for my body but it is exercise for my meditative soul and spirit.

Then in front of me across the middle of the road making it impossible to pass, I saw a fallen tree.  Struck no doubt by lightening a tree had fallen.  It's life cut down suddenly.  It interrupted my peace and serenity.

I walked through the cemetery, the only way around the fallen tree.  I thought of my brother who two summers ago was cut down suddenly from the land of the living.  It jolted my peace and serenity.  At first yes but over time it actually deepened my peace and serenity over time.  Interestingly later I received from my sister in law the picture of the stone erected in honor of my brother.  "Walking with Jesus" was the script.  I realized that in two different worlds we were both walking with Jesus that day.  I thanked God.

As I passed the fallen tree I noticed that cars and trucks were not yet advised of the fallen tree so I began to try and flag them down to warn them to save them a few 100 feet of travel then a mile, as I kept walking.  Probably about 12 driving machines passed me.  It was still early in the morning.  Some ignored my attempt to help or warn them. Some looked at me like I was a crazy man.  Some waved as if I was a friendly man.  Some honked at me as if I was a rude man in the middle of their road.  I thought how God sends people and events into our lives to warn us and help us and we sometimes drive right by.A few slowed down even stopped.  I informed that that the road was out and they had to turn around.  One person actually on her return by me after she went on and turned around rolled down her window and said, "Thank you very much.  Have a nice day." One in twelve stopped to say thank you.  Human nature is human nature.  We all have one so we all see ourselves in all things and learn and grow.  At first I was upset that no one was listening or thanking me then I realized that I often do not listen or say thank you.

 I reflected how events in life can offer us an opportunity to listen to the warning signs the helpful things and people God puts in our path.  We can often take all life for granted. I breathed a deep breath of fresh air and said.

Thank You, brother Phil for helping me to treasure living.

Someone struggling with their sense of God and with the apparent duplicity of a God of Love on the right hand and a God of Hatred and Wrath on the left hand, cited the passage about Elisha the prophet and the malling of children.

II KIngs 2:23-25 records the story:
Elisha went to Bethel (The House of God).  As he was walking along the road some youth came out of the town and jeered (made fun of) him, "Go on up, old baldy, Go on up you bald-head".  He turned around looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord.  then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty two of the youths.  He went on to Mount Carmel.


This does not make sense on first reading and as it has been interpreted.  This creates confusion and falsehood.  Therefore my conclusion is two fold, one it is authored for that purpose and we have misunderstood it as God is not a God of confusion but a God of peace.  I see no peace here.


The traditional self serving use and interpretation of this passage is to tell people that they need to fear God and fear mocking or treating God's prophets disrespectfully.  If people speak ill of the prophet God will get them.  This serves the prophets and the prophet's organization allowing them to abuse and misuse their authority and calling.  The use of threat and fear are neither good values or serve any value. Fear and intimidation are not Godly.  If I know that as a parent or leader why would I think that this passage supports if not directs that way of thinking.  We have obviously misread something.   So lets look closer at healthy alternatives not because we know them to be true but because we know the current understanding is not true.  We assume that this is God acting.  Assumptions are by definition that, not truths.

So Elisha is walking down the road on a nice sunny spring day.  He is enjoying quiet time and communion with his God.  He is mediating and so is mindful of spirit and soul, body and mind. Some youth see him and see his bald head shining in the suns rays.  They are youth.  They are being kids.  I have had kids taunt me just to see if they can disturb my peace center.  Adults do this too.  If they unnerve me it is on me being drawn off focus.  If I remain focus I ignore them, send them a blessing or maybe in a kidding way try to scare them.  I might say, "Watch out guys or God will get you, then laugh".  So the kids taunted the prophet and the prophet fired back.  We read anger and hostility into his statement. "He turned to them and called down a curse from the Lord God".  I know there is no proof of how he turned or the tone of his voice or his kidding nature.  At the same time would that not make more sense.  If I can spin a story in the way it makes sense or spin it in a way it does not make sense except to use it for my self-serving end, why would I not choose the good spin!

Then the story gets worse.  It appears that the Lord sent a bear out of the woods to maul the youth to teach them a lesson they and humanity will never forget>  Really?  You think that is God.  God sent his son to die to teach us all to never forget the love and grace of God for all humanity no matter what they do or say.

So what if the enemy of truth and grace, the author of confusion, and the original deceiver saw an opportunity to send a bear out of the woods to maul the children and to maul the belief in a God of love and grace.  That would make sense.  That is his purpose.  The youth, 42 of them, were killed by one bear and it was God doing the killing.  The youth, 42 of them, were killed by a bear.  Elisha, undeterred by their jeering, offered God's love and grace to the families of this tragedy and did not see it or interpret it as God's wrath.  He in fact maybe felt bad for his joking remark. He saw this moment as a moment to extend God's love and grace.  He offered grace then went on to Mt Carmel.

I do not know what happened that day.  I do know that when I react with anger, threat and intimidation it is not God in me acting it is a part of me that is triggered that I have responsibility to control and care for.  I also know that when horrible events happen in the world they do not happen because God is mad at any one or they would be happening daily to all of us.  Threats and fears are not of peace and love.  Grace and truth are of peace and love.

Several years ago I was called to serve a church and the former interim pastor and retired missionary stayed on as a 'helpful presence".  Some tension resulted in my asking him to meet me at the top of a mountain to talk through what was going on between us.  I invited him to be honest with me.  He told me that he felt I was not called of God, that I was ego centric and that my psychology was deceiving me so I could not hear or walk with God".  I did not think about asking a bear to come out of the woods but a gentle wind blew and blew his toupee off his head.  He was bald.  I looked at him and said, "so you are not able to let your bald head be seen so have to cover it up but I am the one with an ego problem."
The truth is we all have ego problems, we use and interpret things in a self-serving way.  The fruit of self-control has us see ourselves and events from love and grace perspectives.  As you can imagine a fruitful discussion occurred with little change except he did begin to show up in church without his toupee.  I also committed to never wear a toupee and to just let my now bald head be what it is.  I have had youth mock it a bit.  I respond with the grace that God put in me.

I think Elisha did as well!  Maybe, who knows?

Defining "What we stand for and who we stand with" is a commission challenge to AIPAC by John Boehner a Republican from Ohio and Speaker of the House.

He identified what we stand for as "freedom and justice" and who we stand with as "those nations who yearn and struggle for freedom for their people".   The problem is that when we identify freedom with democracy we set up an arbitrary connection with a particular style of governing rather than aligning with a commitment to "human rights and responsibilities" regardless of the form of the government.  If our agenda and alignment is on a political process rather than human rights and responsibilities we become self serving and self-promoting.

What if we choose to stand for "human rights and responsibilities" and stand with all people and nations who likewise stand for "human rights and responsibilities".  Would we be better able and apt to embrace the divergence forms of government as long as they do not neglect or abuse the human rights and responsibilities of their citizenry.

I have often thought that while we have a "Bill of Rights" we need to formulate a "Bill of Responsibilities".  It is the balance and harmony of rights and responsibilities that create a safe and secure world.  Individual rights and social responsibilities are equally important in developing a polity of peacefulness and justice.

We do not stand with any group against any other group.
We stand with all people of earth who believe in and work for the communion of all people in a balance of and harmony with diversity and distinctiveness.

Malachi the prophet cried out on God's behalf, "Where is the respect due me"

Peter said, "Show proper respect to everyone" (I Peter 1:17).

What we need today is not another truth, or another twist of the truth.  What we need toad is refreshing honesty.  Like cool lemonade on a hot day it would be refreshing in the midst of all the hot issue facing pour world for someone to just be honest and drop the agenda's and attributions that foster war in in the name of peace and community forebear.

Honesty that is not self serving nor self effacing but honesty that is open and welcoming to all truths.

What if all religions would see value and truth in each other by letting go of truths that are self serving and self propagating.  Expanding my kingdom at the expense of others is the old form of kingdom building.  The new form of king-doming building is broadening though respectfulness the parameters of the kingdom to include all people.  The Kingdom of Heave is here and now if we live by the rules of heaven.

Honesty with respectfulness is like Godliness with contentment, it provides great gain.  To achieve it we have to give up our "right faith beliefs" and embrace the faith beliefs of all people.

To do as Peter suggests, "show proper respect to all people".  Perhaps this is the respect due to God to respect all God's people whatever their particular belief system is.

This is not Tolerance, or universalism or pluralism this is "Religious respectfulness" a call to honesty at the deepest level where true Spirit is present in all of us.

I read a piece on the "pursuit of happiness" one of the things our fore fathers and mothers had as a concept of what we as human beings have a right to.

I began to think about the things that make me happy and noticed that they all had to do with some action done by me to someone else or to me from someone else.

A group of 7 co-workers in Albany, NY won the lottery and there 7 way split netted them 19 million dollars after taxes.  Everyone talked as they did of how happy this made them.  I get that.  I could pay off all my debts, quit my job give to family and friends and still have money to spare.  So is that not happiness.

A part of me says yes.  Another part says "not so much".  True happiness I think is more when I am out for my walk filled with gratitude, being gracious toward others who are not in as good health, or not in a place of freedom where they can walk in safety, or not wondering where my next meal is coming from, or not  having a friend to visit, or not having faith, hope or love in my inner being.

Happiness is internal and eternal.  It is about peace inside.  It is about faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.

If I am loved and have people that I love I am happy regardless of anything.

Free to pursue that kind of happiness.  I am.

President Obama said that "religious tolerance" is a key to peace in the world.

There is part of me that says that is true.  Intolerance of other religions is certainly a trigger for wars between nations and groups.  So it follows that tolerance would decrease the need for such divisiveness and duplicity.  I want the freedom to practice my religious faith but I do not want to give you the same freedom.  That certainly is self-serving and not a community building posture.  Tolerance is a key.

However beyond tolerance there is developing the capacity to embrace in am empathetic and empowering way other religious faiths for other people while not lessening the distinctive and dignity of my own religious faith.  I might call this "religious respectfulness".  It would be a call not just for tolerance but for actually embracing the parallel desire of all religious faith groups to encourage and teach people to live in love and peace with oneself, ones God and one's neighbor.

I do not have to agree with you or impose my beliefs on you.  I can simply and profoundly respect and value other people and other people's faith.  this would be more than tolerance it would be embrace.  An empathetic embrace of all communities of faith by all communities of faith would increase respect and dialogue without tension, desire to control, or the fear of being denied mutual respect.

Someone asked me to define leadership.  My response was, "a leader is a model of powerful internal self-control that has that person respond not out of a desire to control others or outcomes but as a willingness to lead by example".

Peter said that the elders of the church are to "be an example to the flock" not as lording to over them.

Leadership is not about controlling people or telling them what to do.  It is modeling how to be with people in a loving and caring way that listens.

The best way to mold other people into good behavior or attitudes is model good behavior and attitudes.  It is not the directors chair that I sit in it is the listeners chair.

I had a conversation with someone who was honestly sharing something of her concern upon reading my blog.  I listened and valued her insight, wisdom, and courage.  

Leading people into change may be slower than telling people what to do.  However it doe snot feed my ego or deplete the other persons ego to listen and lead by example.

Maybe that is why the chief shepherd gave his life for his sheep.

God in Christ announced the gospel of good news.  It has become the gospel of my good news, as the church by any name presents its truth as the truth. 

The church has become the platform of truth to promote a lie.  The truth is all truth comes from God, all who represent God have a story of truth that is not the whole story.  

The whole story is God is in you and God is in me.  When we let stuff any stuff of theology, ecclesiology or science or psychology block the wisdom of Self we lose the pure good news.  This blockage becomes a burden and the result injustice in the name of justice, inequality in the name of equality, bondage in the guise of freedom.

In Jesus' name we need to stop.  If you cannot stop please to not continue to call your actions, attitudes, or attributions christian and I will not call them non-Christian. Who am I to judge.

Then we can receive each other in peace love and joy rather than fighting over who is right or who is wrong.  Perhaps then we will have "liberty and justice for all", peace on earth, and acts of goodwill not self-serving and self-justified violence.  This will be to the glory of God and reflective of the glory of God.  It will simultaneously be to the credit of humanity and to the redemption of humanity.

We will be as God made us free, just and at peace!

The covenant of love will outshine the creed of any church.  The Gospel is covenantal not creedal. This is the Goldmine of Gospel thattheuCC has that needs to be preached from every steeple and seen in every mountain top.  It needs to be seen in the heart of every person

This is the Gospel of the Gospel.  Let us preach it from every steeple and live it in every square until all the world knows and experiences life transforming  mercy and justice.  Then live it out walking into and out of churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and all places of personal or spiritual contemplations with humility.

Humanity walking in step in stride and in sinc with one another because the discipline of loving and being at peace have replaced the dogma and doctrine if the church.

Soren Kirkegaard's vision "to be the truth without embellishing it", without embracing it, without using it for empire building socially, religiously, politically or nationally.  


When any part of a truth is used to advance my cause over your cause. no matter what, it is injustice. There is no just war.  There is not just win without the loser being diminished. No cause at the expense of another persons right to be is a just cause. Conversely if I receive you unjust treatment as an act of discipline with grace and mercy I am living the way that is the "I am the way the truth and the life" way.  It is the only way to the creator who is love.  The way of love is the way of freedom, justice for all.
We place Kirkegaard's challenge to the church: to know the truth and not to be the truth is to embellish that very truth with error". So either there is justice for all or there is no justice at all.

Justice begins inside. The fundamental understandable mistake of human nature is to believe that we must change something outside. So we look in the window to see what we need to change in others when we need to look into a mirror and see and change the injustice the cruely the ignorance of ignoring the work we need to do inside. 



James tells us that wars come from internal conflict between parts inside.  We go inside to heal the hurts and restore the love and peace that we then bring to the outside world.

I was sitting in a room with a person struggling with their understanding of a God who let's tragedies happen in the world.  It reminded me of the left hand of God and the right hand of God debate in seminary days.  Wow that is going back a ways. If God is a loving God and has all power why does God not intervene and keep tragedies from happening in our world.  Is God duplicitous, capricious, disconnected, unaware or just unconcerned?  To maintain a belief in God that is love while experiencing things that hurt like hell makes no sense to most of us.  Duplicity drives some away form God and church while others stay in church and ignore the duplicity of doing.  Is this hell or is this heaven?

Parts of life and the brain seem to point to double bind or duplicity.  In a right wrong world we are set up to think of inconsistencies or consistencies.  Opposing positions on things from how to squeeze the tooth paste to how to bring peace to our divided world are all about the union of opposites.  One side wins while the other loses.  That alone is duplicitous as everyone wants to win, no one wants to lose.  The system that sets up duplicity serves the maintaining of duplicity and the frustration goes on.

The multiplicity of parts maintains that the issue needs not be about winning but stopping to care for all parts without concern for winning, not about union of opposites but of communion of opposites.  When polarized parts that appear duplicitous are equally welcomed, embraced and respected, the multiplicity of parts allows for harmony of oppositional parts not in that one wins and the other loses but in that all are valued.  A balanced system has less competitiveness and more compassion.  Pathologizing duplicity is replaced by empathizing multiplicity.

The God who seems to hate and love me at different times as different things happen to me becomes the God who welcomes all parts, all thoughts and feelings, all experiences and interpretations and interpolations of those experiences as equally respected and respectfully welcomed.  This is an extravagant welcoming of all parts and parallels the UCC (United Church of Christ's current world wide focus of widening the welcome.

Some will judge this "wide welcome of multiplicity" deceptive and misleading.  Just like some of the religious leaders of Jesus' day interpreted Jesu to be of the devil when in fact he was confronting the duplicity of the religious leaders of his day.

The narrow way for those people is the way as they have defined it.   Everyone else is of the wide way of destruction.  Do you hear the duplicity here or there or everywhere.  In multiplicity, all ways are welcome, if they lead to love and peace. This is an unusual, unique, and narrow way of thinking that few people come to believe in.  Is the wide way of "welcoming all ways" really the way that leads to destruction or is the narrow way of rejecting all ways but mine (the right way) the way that really has and continues to lead to destruction.

Are we ready for a new narrow way!  Or will the system continue to destroy itself while resisting to change the systemic problem.

The multiplicity of the mind invites us all to get into our right minds toward each other.  The right mind is not about right verses left but about right attitudes and attributions.  It is about having a "right heart" toward all parts of all people of all groups for all to know and walk in peace.

Is it a narrow way to be the only group calling all people to respectfulness and resiliency.  Multiplicity of parts calls us all to mature responsiveness and mutual respectfulness.   It includes empathetic embracing of all views, all belief systems, all people regardless of anything another with compassion.  It also includes and embracing empathetic responses to all people.  It does not pathologize any person or group for the purpose of negating, denigrating, or devaluing that group.  It is lovingly embracing with empathy all people not in a whimsical indifference to moral or ethical values but due to willful and disciplined  commitment to the covenant of respectfulness and responsibleness toward all.

Multiplicity broadens the welcome to an extensive and extravagant quality and kind of covenant of care that.  As God welcomes all people and invites all people to know and experience love and peace in an internal and eternal way.  God's love is not just unconditional it is also about acceptance-laden, agenda-less amore.

Multiplicity removes duplicity from being a problem into being the reality we all live in.  Multiplicity does not win over duplicity it dissolves the need to win in the embryonic fluid of acceptance and nurturance.  This leads to a rebirth, redemption, and resurgence of energy in the system.

So is is a narrow way that leads to nurturance or is it a wide way that leads to destruction or is it exactly the opposite.  The wide welcome is the narrow way that few embrace.  The narrow way as so many define it results in massive destruction in the name of, you name it.

Open wide!  Do not leave yourself wide open.  They sound duplicitous.  In the multiplicity of all things they are looking at the same thing in different ways and appreciate the value of both.

Multiplicity multiplies the blessing for all.

God bless our world