Real Live Preacher - Christianity

Hubble Deep Field Image

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 19:35:57 -0500

My friend Milton posted this picture of the Hubble Deep Field Image the other day. The pretty little smudges are galaxies.

Click for larger image

In case you don’t know the story of this image, it represents a “keyhole” view of the universe. The Hubble Space Telescope focused on one small patch of the sky for about 10 days, pulling in ancient light from across the universe. This image is only a speck in our sky. It’s about the size of a dime when viewed from 75 feet away.

And this little speck is absolutely filled with galaxies. About 1500 can be counted using an enlarged image. 1500 galaxies in a single dot of our night sky.

The universe is so large that it causes my mind to reboot whenever I try to think about it. You can’t really think about the size of the universe in any accurate way, of course. It's far too big to understand. But here’s a way you could try to think about it:

Our solar system exists on a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across and contains between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. There is a star that is relatively close to us; Alpha Centauri is a mere 4.4 light years away. Given the size of our galaxy, we’re practically on top of each other.

Click for larger image

Voyager 1, launched in the late 1970s, has only recently left our solar system. The two Voyager spacecrafts are the fastest things humans have ever made. Currently they travel at a speed of about 1 million miles a day, which is pretty damn fast. Still, it took a good-sized chunk of your lifetime for the fastest thing we have to make it out of our own solar system.

The Voyager mission does not include traveling to Alpha Centauri, but if it did, it would take 70,000 years to get there at its current speed. So says a combination of Wikipedia and my calculator.

Chew on that for a moment. Our two stars, almost touching in the photo. Seventy Thousand Years.

When I consider the stars and the universe – or more accurately when I consider my inability to consider them – I experience a strange combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual reactions.

First I feel a kind of mild vertigo, the sort of thing that you would expect to feel if you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a shaky rope bridge over a deep canyon. Our world normally feels so big and solid to me, and my place in this world seems entrenched and well-established after 45 years of living. But suddenly, I am a speck of dust in an instant of time so brief that it can’t be measured. My feet feel light, as if I might float off our spinning planet any second. I want to throw myself on the ground and grab two fistfuls of grass for good measure.

My mind reels. Everything seems to be shrinking.

Then I feel a sorrowful panic. Christianity has already shrunk in my lifetime from being the shining center of all truth and purpose to something less than that. Even looking at things from the inside, even willing to give the benefit of every doubt, Christianity seems like a bumbling, prosaic movement which is, as often as not, violent, anti-intellectual, and xenophobic.

But I love Christianity so much. Or at least I love what it could be. I want to hug it. I want to throw my arms around the beautiful language of salvation and redemption. I want to curl up in the warmth of my faith community, the people I love so deeply in this world. Truly they are like family to me. I feel I could get drunk on our ancient symbols, myths and stories, the ones that speak in luscious tones vibrating through a million voices across the centuries.

So first vertigo, then panic, then longing. After that I generally calm down a bit. My tiny mind and delicate emotions cannot bear even my small thoughts of the universe for more than a few minutes. I relax. Sometimes a shrinking reality can be a comfort. My sins, the things that I have done wrong and the ways that I cannot be what I should be, also shrink. I feel I can forgive myself for them, small man that I am. Why the hell not? Look at the size of the universe!

This forgiveness is the Grace that Christians speak of. The main story of our faith tells us that we must be forgiven and can be. Funny how it takes science to bring that reality to my guts.

For some reason, this experience always ends with a crazy happiness that I cannot easily explain. I become giddy with the knowledge that ultimate reality is so far beyond our grasp. This lets me off the hook, to a certain extent. We’ll never know reality. We’ll never even map our solar system, you and I. We’re small people, but we have grasped the idea of existence. We know love, seek knowledge, and recognize goodness and evil.

Our saintly scientists, single-minded and incredibly committed to the search for truth, draw down amazing pictures from the ancient light in the sky. These pictures help me to know that it is okay to be nothing more or less than what we are.

People. Human beings, strangely warped and trying to understand that. Trying to worship what cannot be known, trying to learn, trying to find our place in the Cosmos.

rlp

Learn about Voyager

Dear RLP

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:19:00 -0600

Dear RLP,

I've often wondered, since you're an unusual sort of Baptist, what your thoughts are on "progressive" (for lack of a better word) Christianity. I've just finished The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur and I have been reading a lot of books by John Spong, Marcus Borg and the like. I think I would have left the church forever if not for the insights of some of the authors.

All the best,

Tina

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

Dear Tina,

Much of my life has been spent trying to find a balance between progressive, or liberal Christian ideas and the conservative, evangelical Christianity of my youth. That’s probably why I’m still a Baptist. The Baptist community is broad and diverse.

I think The Church needs the full spectrum of her theology. Look, when it comes to God, our language isn’t going to cut it anyway. How descriptive can we be of a being that is utterly beyond our comprehension? The language of conservative Christianity speaks to many people. I appreciate that. Hell, I love it. It brings me to tears.

On the other hand, liberal or progressive Christianity speaks to others, myself included. There was a time when liberal theology came to my rescue. It kept me in the game, you might say, while I worked things out for myself. It also made me intellectually proud, and that is a dangerous thing. Pride, in all of its many forms, is truly a spiritual killer.

Were we to be given a glimpse of the true nature of God, I wonder if our theological differences would be vaporized in that blinding moment of enlightenment. We might come away from that experience laughing at words like liberal, conservative, doctrine, and theology.

But whether you use conservative or liberal theological language, the central issue of our faith – as I see it – is finding a passion for the life and teachings of Christ and giving yourself to Him. Becoming a disciple, as we say, and by that I mean trying to live a Christ-like life. The details of your theology are far less important than that commitment.

Trying to live as Jesus lived is a humbling experience. It tends to shatter the pride of the intellectual and subdue the dogmatism of the provincial. Christian living drives us to a place in the middle that we might call Grace.

Theology is nothing more than language. And as nice as language is, it cannot stand up to the beauty of a life given in the service of God and humanity.

Peace,

rlp

Zeno and the Gospel Paradox

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:05:10 -0600

In the 1900 Olympic games, Frank Jarvis won the gold medal in the 100 meter dash with a time of 11 seconds. He was a full second faster than the gold medal time of the previous Olympics.

That's never going to happen again.

These days records are broken by mere hundredths of a second. The reason is obvious; we are reaching the limits of human ability. Even in an imaginary future with genetically engineered sprinters, a person cannot run a hundred meters much faster than we do now...

Click here to read the rest of this essay at The Christian Century online.

Archive of Christian Century Articles by Gordon Atkinson

a Christian Magazine
Christian Writing

rlp

What if We Could Talk?

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 17:07:56 -0600

What if you and I could set aside all the church bullshit for a little while? I'm serious. Just for the purpose of a good conversation we would forget all the huge buildings and the tortured, organizational labyrinth that supports them, the marketing sound bites, the appalling TV shows, the whole Christian subculture that is such a mystery to the outside world, the creepy “I love Jesus so much” language, the stunning hypocrisy, all of it. What if we could just forget all of that for a time?

I know we can't really set all that aside because McLuhan was right. The Church is our medium and this medium is now our message. Most definitely our message. The only message we know anymore. There's no escaping that. But you and I are friends, and we can do whatever we want when we've had a couple of beers and are talking about crazy things that should be but are not and perhaps never will be.

You see the battered, black New Testament sticking out the back pocket of my jeans, and you ask to look at it. You bend the leather back and forth, noticing how loose and worn it is. The gold letters are long gone from the cover and the pages have pulled away from the spine.

“Wow, you really read this thing, don't you?”

“Yep.”

“So you think it's a good thing to read? I mean, there's good stuff in here, right?”

“Absolutely, but it takes some work. It's not easy reading. I wouldn't recommend doing it alone. Not in the beginning anyway.”

“Well, just could you maybe tell me what the deal is with Christianity? What's it all about? Is it just learning everything that's in the Bible, like an academic exercise or something? Cause that's kind of unsatisfying to think about, you know? Actually, I'm sorta interested in why Christianity exists in the first place. Is there something fundamental you guys are saying about reality? I know this is kind of impossible, but could you sum it up for me or something?”

I take back my Bible and look at it. I put my thumb on the edge of the pages, bend the cover, and flip quickly through it. The whole New Testament rests in my mind, ordered, progressing, some parts working against others and toward creative tension, the stories of HIM, the first stories of us, our first God words, our first problems, finding grace, finding faith, trying to live well, the shocking end.

But these stories cannot be told quickly, and there is something further back that you want to know, something beneath and behind this book.

I lift the Bible to my nose and smell the pages for some odd reason that even I do not understand. I close my eyes and try to think about how I want to say whatever it is that I'm going to say. There's so much, my whole life, this journey, primitive impulses, archetype, desire. One word jumps into my mind - poetry. I decide to run with that idea. I have only a vague sense of what I'm going to say, and I know that I'll be working a lot of it out even as I speak.

“You know I like to write a little bit.”

“Uh, yeah. I HAVE been reading Real Live Preacher.”

“Oh yeah, that was stupid. Okay, whatever. Anyway, when I write an essay I have to finish it. I could keep going over it and over it, but finally I have to put it online or send it to an editor or something. That's always a little hard, but that's the way it is. You have to finish it and move on.”

“Yeah?”

“Poetry is different, I think. I wonder if poems are ever really done. It's like Whitman with “Leaves of Grass,” you know? Sometimes I think of starting a poem that I would never even consider finishing. I'd just keep working with it until I died. And over the years it would change because I would change. I would work it until it was like the smoothest music that ever caressed your ears. Just the sound of it would be incredible, and maybe the sound of it would be all you'd need. And I'd never be able to send it to any editor because it would never be finished.”

“See, I think Christianity is like a human poem, written over thousands of years by people who have a sense that there is something more important for us than just waking up every day and going about our business. I'm one of those people, I'm afraid. I know that makes me seem a little foolish to you, but maybe you have room in your life for one goofy friend, huh?”

“Lord! Just go on with what you were gonna say, for Chrisake!”

“Okay, for Christ's sake I will.”

“Yeah yeah, you're funny. Whatever.”

“Anyway, so what we feel or sense - or whatever you want to call it - is so far down inside that it's unthinkable to let go of that feeling, that need, that urge to keep looking upwards and outwards. It's like Someone is trying to break through and give us hints along the way, but the hints are all we have, powerful and compelling though they may be.”

“I would say that if Christianity is poetry, then the Bible is our syntax, meter, and rhyme. The Bible contains the rules, but sometimes we are free verse poets, pushing on the boundaries, edges, and gray areas. We stretch this grammar to the very breaking point at times, led by the Spirit. We are engaging the Creator morally, putting theological meat on our bones. And the poem we are creating is our very lives, filled with the hints we've received along the way and the stories of our search for God.”

“The story behind our poem is the one that was given to us out of the mists of the past and between the pages of this book. It is a story about the goodness of the world and the searing reality of the evil that tears at the fabric of creation. Setting things right is unimaginably expensive and impossible for anyone but the ONE who stands behind it all.”

“Our poem, I would say, is an ongoing and never-ending attempt to put all that we feel and have learned into words that anyone can hear, the rich and the poor, the brilliant and the simple-minded, people of today and people of tomorrow. And it's only poetry, you see, that speaks across so many barriers. Only poetry can do this."

"So we read this book over and over, struggling with it, trying to understand the sense and the structure of what is beyond us. And sometimes we do get a sense of what lies beyond, a whiff of Him, a feel for Her, a love of It. And when you begin to get It, you see things in a new way and begin to live boldly in this world like crazy people and like brave people and like silly people, even like old and very young people.”

“But that's just the way I see it, so take that with a grain of salt. Everyone gets to be involved in this poem, which makes things very messy, I know. There is no escaping the big mess that we call Church, but somehow a stunning grace exists that helps us to know that even our mess is an important part of this poem.”

“I guess this wonderfully “human” poem will never be finished. There is an editor, I think, but he/she/it apparently has no firm deadline and a lot of patience. We keep getting our manuscripts back with a lot of red marks, but also a smiley face and these words:”

Keep at it. I like where we are going with this.

rlp

About Marshall McLuhan

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass