Faith-in-progress

Spending this summer at a Unitarian Universalist retreat/learning center is wonderful-- and deepening my own faith in unexpected ways, renewing my awe at deep, deep grace. Each day here fosters diverse and lively conversation about truth, faith, religion, worldview, the common good, issues, justice, etc. -- passion that leaves me full of hope and also aware of my limited perspective. Perhaps one of the most important ways we journey towards God is through encountering others.

In encountering the spirituality and beliefs of others, I am learning how to occupy the territory of my own faith-- the on-going process of doubts, questions, and revelation. And being witness to the present wounds the lack of consistency between Jesus and we, the church, has inflicted is eye-opening, humbling, and convicting. A UU Christian writer recounted what I've been noticing, "The well, for too many UUs, had been irrevocably poisoned, and they would thereafter drink of the living waters from another source. Any other source, it seemed, but the Christian well." 

Being one of few here who worship God-in-Christ causes me to pay attention to how I marginalize others and how I minimize my own faith in my desire to find common ground. In some ways I feel less diminished or wearily labeled here, it is refreshing to not feel like God is in a box or to feel the tug of red, blue, hippy, evangelical, progressive, blah blah blah. (Especially because I so often feel pulled between identities.) In some ways, its like coming out of the closet, instead of feeling pressured to conform to a particular idea of Christianity, I feel only responsible for myself. And I am already curiously "different." Here there's just the terrifying (mercy-filled) weight of comparison to the Christ I am claiming to follow, the weight of integrity to myself.

The thing that matters most to me is consistency between the internal and external, a genuine expression not of rules, values, morality, or religion (though freedom is most often bounded), but of my own encounter with the Uncreated One and freely embodying my faith and worship. I think of social reformers, of priest, of theologians, who embody their faith in a way that is full of life, engaging, and not defensive. To live bravely and to speak with my own voice, my own conviction. That challenges me. 

* * *
The same writer I mentioned above, explained her path to "Jesus claiming her" this way... 
"Who is Jesus Christ to me? He is both a teacher of the Way, and the Way itself. For one who has always had a hard time grasping the concept of God, let alone developing a working definition of God, Jesus both points me toward a definition of God and then lives that definition. Jesus Christ is the freedom that laughs uproariously at the things of this world, while loving me dearly for being human enough to lust after them. He is my soul’s safety from all harm. He is the avatar of aloneness, a compassionate and unsentimental narrator of the soul’s exile on earth, and proof of the soul’s triumphant homecoming at the end of the incarnational struggle. He is not afraid to put his hands anywhere to affect healing. He mourns, and weeps, and scolds, and invites. He is life more abundant and conqueror of the existential condition of fear.
“By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. There are indeed degenerate branches on the tree of Christian life, but this does not keep me from Christ. There are even disagreements among Unitarian Universalist Christians about the appropriateness of this or that perspective, practice, or teaching—debates that I regard mostly with affection, if occasionally with irritation. We have so much else to do. My daily Christian practice, although it changes frequently and is augmented by wisdom and practices from other traditions, consists mostly of clumsy efforts to love my God with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. That’s work enough for this lifetime.
I call myself a Christian because I am a disciple of Jesus Christ—not just Jesus-that-great-guy-and-teacher-with-the-long-hair-and-sandals but Jesus the living avatar of the great God and Jesus the Christ of Easter morning. ... When we (UUs) say that our living tradition draws from “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life,” I think of that original community of disciples, who had a direct experience of the risen Christ that I revere and respect. ... Do I believe, then, in the resurrection? I believe that the original community of disciples had a direct experience of one who was truly dead, and who soon thereafter sent them out to love the world, to serve, to heal, and to overcome the forces of hatred and oppression.

... And I am convicted."

when we killed the hemlock grove

In a labyrinth of trees, punctuated by flaming azalea and mountain laurel, our inter-generational Elderhostel group pauses at the base of a tree with dry branches. While the children shift restlessly, Liz, a naturalist who has dedicated her studies to the forests of this area explains the hemlocks are being killed by an evasive beetle species carried over on nursery imports from Asia. (This story could be told of Chestnuts, Fraser furs, Dogwoods-- tree species dying or already vanished from their native forests.) The death spreads quickly. A small boy crouching to doodle with a stick asks, "well why do they still let the plants come?" That is a good question. 
Money had been allotted to prevention, to research and policy for scientists and ecologists, funds ear-marked for the EPA and National Forest Service. September 11th changed many paths. The violence of innocent deaths that shakes communities through out the world erupted within America, September 11th.  In the aftermath, our grieving nation flew to the arms of the familiar companion of security with reckless abandon. Our fear carved a new path. The money was re-routed to the newly created Homeland Security Department where the millions of dollars disappeared into the impossible void of alleviating national fears and securing an insecure world. In the process, the American people surrendered their responsibility and freedom to an invisible hand promising the impossible security of an insecure world at the cost of certain freedoms. Slowly the trees die, disappear. It is all connected, our reasons, our greed, our fears, our priorities, and our blindness. Hemlock trees shade the ground cooling the temperature of the water, they are an irreplaceable part of the ecosystem.
Here in the Nantahala and West Appalachia we will probably loose 80% of these ancient trees, some over 500 years old. The water will warm and the trees will not be the only creation to suffer—following them will be trout, insects, and salamanders. The beautiful wood of the Nantahala forest will be another victim sacrificed to our madness, our fear. The desire to have whatever we want- trees from Asia, fruit in any season, parking lots and extravagant houses, everything on demand is another type of insiduous invasive species. The ghost forest whispers caution, dead branches drifting soundlessly, unobserved, joining the long history of forgotten species. Extinction.
            The voices rise to disavow our connection.  There is a protest to shouldering any blame, "this is not our fault, this is not caused by human hands—it’s the beetle’s fault." People like Liz, long familiar to these woods, watch the infection spread from tree to tree and their voices trail off into a silent respect for their role of witnesses to a great tragedy. They cannot convince us to bear it. We shake the responsibility off, in our comfort we will not look at the larger scope, foresight is only wished for in hindsight. The children scamper ahead full of bright energy while their grandparents tsk and amble after them. Liz and I linger for a moment, eyes on the trees.
The ghost trees gaze back at us, scrawny beings below their tall limbs, yet wielding so much power. They whisper, feeble hands reaching, trying to tell us, warn us-- our fears can kill us, our fears can swallow us whole. Fears of all shapes and sizes are still monsters—fear of the other, fear of responsibility, fear of the work of justice or conservation, of humility.
           And it is all connected. What we do not see nevertheless remains present. We stockpile weapons to destroy each other, to force our truths and defend our way of life against others with the same intention. Mother Earth groans, aching for the redemption of the sons and daughters of man. We scorch her with each other’s blood and slowly suck the life from her. Cut her, slay her, use her, rape her. Cut us, slay us, use us, rape us. We are reduced to this monstrosity against each other. Our harm a cycle of fear, a cycle of selfishness, of greed, an arrogant belief in our capability to fix anything and use whatever means we can to seek contentment-- yet our wants only lead to gasping desperation for more.
The hemlocks slowly dry, shrivel, decay, whispering of our power-- to destroy nations of trees, nations of ourselves. Life and death sit before the eyes of a child, but the child laughs and snaps twigs as he races after his friends. The wind howls low and mournful as we continue our descent, below us the waterfall weeps and yet still she offers us the body of her water. Throwing herself at our feet over and over with the gift of nature’s quiet comfort and peace. The sound envelops us like a mother trying to gather us in her arms, like a mother trying to warn us of the price of disregard.
        As Liz takes the role of guide, I set a pace between the children and their grandparents. I think of their shared history like the hemlock’s trunks, tree rings circling outward, encompassing the past. The trees and our grandparents have witnessed the birth and death of civilizations, of nations, they watch the children of man stumble over branches and now they wait. The grandparents slowly aging, still offering life to their grandchildren. As the trees slowly dying at our hands, still offering their shade. As we die at each other’s. If only we could learn the cycles of existing, of taking only what we need. But even now, I now greedily claim my space, I need to speak these words, be heard. Our fear of importance, our independence, our desire to do what we want, to be our own rulers and Gods lures us toward destruction-- at our own hands. 
It matters, not only for the trees, but because this way of the seeing the world is a way we see each other- as means, not ends, as commodities, as replaceable, exploitive, as if all things are ours and ours for the taking. This is the way we fail to consider the consequences, fail to recognize our impact, our bond and responsibility to one another. For community's sake, we must care about the environment; for the environment's sake we must build community. We need new eyes, deeper hopes, more daring ideas, and a bigger dream. Our rings must expand outward, encompassing more, growing to include communities, cities, nations within our concept of those we are connected too. The intensifying of individuality, of selfish ambition, the grandeur of a comfortable, luxurious life is wrong at the expense of others. It is. It is wrong like the death of Hemlocks. Their dry limbs thirst for our understanding—that our lives are interwoven, we are interdependent.  We stand to loose much. Too much.