FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

Living Room Gathering - Song of Songs: A Ritualized Reading of the Sexiest Book in the Bible

Last Saturday evening (June 13, 2009) the Faith House Living Room gathering was focused around an exquisite little treasure of literature integral to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all people who love Love. Check out the pics. Over the years, our director Bowie Snodgrass has become an expert in this piece of literature and has developed an amazingly simple way to experience the seductiveness of God. Here is the outline that she has created and we utilized, which includes the entire text of the book. I hope you will catch another opportunity to hear Bowie leading this ritual. The second best would be to do it yourself in your synagogue, church, mosque, local library, or with friends! The story of the Universe is a love story and your own experiences of love with people around you (your lovers, friends, children, parents, neighbors) are all retelling that story of the Universe. To the intoxication! (~ Samir Selmanovic)

PRELUDE – Play music inspired by the Song of Songs while people gather

WELCOME & INTRODUCTION – Bowie Snodgrass (5-10 min)

OPENING TOUCH & SMELL – Pass around Frankincense & Myrrh or Pomegranate scented Lotion for people to put on themselves

BACKGROUND ON SONG OF SONGS – Poet Harry Ellison on importance of Song of Songs in Jewish history and as a source of inspiration for spiritual lovers of God, artists, poets, and in his own life.  (5 min)

MOMENT OF SILENT ANTICIPATION (1 min)

RITUALIZED READING – See script below (20-25 min)

COMMUNITY SHARING – People share around their table or in small groups (10 min) then share with whole group (10 min)

CLOSING – Smell spices (like in a Havdalah service)

POSTLUDE – Play recorded music inspired by the Song of Songs

Approximate Running Time: 1 hour

* * *

The Song of Songs

5 Females
4 Males
1 Royal Messenger (male or female)

Supplies

•    Script with full text of Song of Songs for readers.  Recommended that people listen to readers, rather than read text in a bulletin. We used the JPS Translation, with selections from a translation by Union Theological Seminary professor, David Carr
•    Posters, or projections, or leaflets with activities and verses everyone reads together
•    Scented lotion, preferably with scents from the Song, e.g. Pomegranate or Myrrh
•    Drinks to sip, wine and/or milk & honey and/or pomegranate juice
•    Fruits to eat, fresh or dried, e.g. apples, apricots, grapes, dates
•    Images, e.g. prints of paintings inspired by the Song of Songs; we used images of flowers by Sadie Rosenthal
•    Fragrant spices, e.g. cloves, cardamom
•    NOTE: The place we met did not allow candles or incense.  I recommend adding them somewhere below if allowed. 

SCRIPT

MALE 1:    
The Song of Songs, by Solomon.

FEMALE 1:    
[speaking to male]    

Oh, give me of the kisses of your mouth,
For your love is more delightful than wine.
Your ointments yield a sweet fragrance,
Your name is like finest oil—
That’s why the young women love you.
Draw me after you, let us run!
Bring me, O King, to your chambers.
Let us delight and rejoice in your love,
Savoring it more than wine—
Like new wine they love you!

A Book Review: A Puzzle, But the Pieces Fit

~ by Melody Tan

Nathan Brown is a writer and editor, based just out of Melbourne, Australia. He has written for a wide variety of publications in Australia and around the world, and is a regular contributor to the Faith House website.

Nemesis Train could simply have been a notebook filled with the journey of the author’s ponderings and explorations of various people’s lives. But what makes it a compelling read is the fact that the reader not only joins the ride as a mere commuter, but becomes a participant in a very real way as well.

This is not a book in the old-fashioned sense of the word, as chapters often appear unstructured and the flow of the book will take most readers by surprise. However, like Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, readers of Nemesis Train will find themselves unwittingly and inexplicably drawn into a story that makes them want to find out more, if only to discover how all the characters fit into the story.

Nemesis Train provokes thought and, more often, encourages the reader to ask questions rather than provides any real answers. Brown chooses to dwell deep in the thought processes of the characters, paying a lot of attention to their state of mind and what spurs them to do what they do.

Brown has a real talent in seeing details that may have been missed by most writers, and certainly by people going about their normal everyday life. Because he takes the time to pause and study the surroundings, he succeeds in painting a clear and real picture in the mind’s eye. The reader is drawn into the world that Brown has created and becomes a part of the book. The interesting, and sometimes quirky descriptions are also often unique and unexpected.

There is often an overarching sense of loss and loneliness present in the book, a sense that life may be a waste of time without any real meaning. However, there are also rare glimpses of wry humor and, through the character Jed Hill, the reader sees hope.

A book that makes a strong statement against war and the detrimental impact it has on war veterans and perhaps the world in general, it also offers grace and understanding to all those involved. But perhaps, it also offers these gifts to everybody, encouraging patience and kindness to those we come in contact with.

And what makes Nemesis Train a rare treasure is the fact that the surprise ending not only helps everything fall into place for the reader, it makes you want to go back to the platform and board the train all over again with your newfound piece of puzzle.

To learn more about Nathan Brown and Nemesis Train, click HERE.

Living Room Gathering - Moonwalk: A Mythological Perspective

April 25, 2009 | 5 PM at Intersections, 274 5th Avenue

Prelude Music: Cat Stevens “Where Do The Children Play?”

Opening Song: “Dreamer’s Song” by Phil Robinson

Welcome & Family Time

Reading: excerpt from “The Moon Walk – the Outward Journey” by Joseph Campbell (Campbell, Joseph.  Myths to Live By. Arkana, AR: Penguin Compass, 1993.)

Picture: Earthrise – William Anders, 1968

~~~
Context for Reading:
1543 – Heliocentrism! Copernicus advances theory of sun-centric system, displacing Earth
1968 – Earthrise!  William Anders takes photo of Earth rising over moon during Apollo 8
1969 – Moonwalk! Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
~~~

The only really adequate public comment on the occasion of the first moon walk that I have found reported in the world press was the exclamation of an Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti, published in the picture magazine Epoca.  In its vivid issue of July 27, 1969, we see a photo of this white-haired old gentleman pointing in rapture to his television screen, and in the caption beneath are his thrilling words: "A different night from all other nights of the world".

For indeed that was "a different night from all other nights of the world"!  Who will ever in his days forget the spell of the incredible hour, July 20, 1969, when our television sets brought directly into our living rooms the image of that strange craft up there and Neil Armstrong's booted foot coming down...?  ..."All humanity," Buckminster Fuller once said..., "is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe."

God Is Not a White Man

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Here is the video that is as comforting as it is challenging. Any thoughts? Thank you Rev. Vince for sending this to us.

From my Whirling Cousin In Istanbul

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Following is an email and pictures I have received from my second cousin Bekir Yenerer who lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and is following Faith House on the web. This is published with his permission.

The first picture, I took last year in Istanbul at the 800-year celebration of the birth of Rumi Mevlana. It was published in the newspapers here in Turkey. The others are from Yalova, taken during the yearly meeting of an international Mevlana organization, including people from 44 different countries and religions. The meeting went on non-stop for 40 days. I went for four days and we all felt like brothers and sisters there. In this prayerful whirling dance, all the incidents and details of life disappear and the only thing left is God's love, everything else, including me, disappears. The whole cosmos is God's shadow. Enjoy the pictures. I am so glad we have connected again.

 

Answering Christian Critics of Faith House (Part 2): God Our Stranger

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Throughout the history of human interaction, we have been faced with the problem of the stranger. For every “us” there has to be “them.” To describe ourselves, we have to differentiate ourselves—me and you, kin and non-kin, friends and enemies, neighbors and foreigners. Without dividing the world, we would have no identity. Since the beginning of humanity, belonging to a group has been a matter of survival and, over the ages, multiple identity boundaries have been drawn—gender, tribe, race, religions, nations, possessions, political parties. The stranger is different from us.

We are engaged with strangers in inverse proportion to the distance that separates us. With globalisation, however, the distance between “us” and “them” has been rapidly vanishing. Through the media, in our workplace and in our families, the stranger has come close. Now, the other is not only “out there.” They have moved into our physical, intellectual and emotional neighborhoods. The distance that used to separate us is being abolished and our perspectives are changing.

In this new relationship, we are confronted not only with a new view of those we used to consider “outsiders” but with a new view of ourselves. They see in us what we could not recognize in ourselves and, when we let them, they tell us what we cannot tell ourselves. They have arrived into our daily lives with their beauty, wisdom, and vulnerabilities, as well as their suffering, grievances and aspirations. Like an uninvited company consultant who can see what the company cannot see, the stranger reveals. And that’s the problem of the stranger. To survive we need to protect ourselves from the stranger; to survive we need the stranger to help us see.

In the Scripture, this problem has been inversed and transformed into one of the most potent commandments for God’s people. While the Hebrew Bible commands, “you shall love your neighbor” only once, it commands no less than 36 times to “love the stranger.” For example, it demands, “When a stranger lives with you in your land, do not ill-treat him. The stranger who lives with you shall be treated like the native-born. Love him as yourself” (Leviticus 19:33). In the New Testament, Jesus insists the ultimate judgment of our acts will come from the way we treat the stranger (see Matthew 25:31-46). In the Muslim world, informed by the Quranic texts, one is expected to take a stranger into one’s home and treat him with honor and care no less than three days, even when one is considered an enemy. This may seem as nothing but a simple invitation to a virtue of neighborly love, but there is far more to this insistent call of God.

Abraham, the father of three monotheistic faiths, was ordained by the priest Melchizedek, an outsider to the covenantal family. Although a stranger, he was called “the priest of the Most High.” We have no idea where and how he became a priest before Abraham was called to follow God. Later, Abraham and Sarah were visited in their tent by three strangers to whom they offered hospitality, only to discover they were God’s angels. In what is generally known as the Christmas story, “wise men” from the East who look to the stars for answers—outsiders to the race and religion of Israel—after following an unusual star to Bethlehem, visited baby Jesus to confirm the identity of Jesus as Messiah. The entire history of people who follow God has been held together by the visits, wisdom and care of strangers, people who were not “us” but “them”—the other. Why the other? Why does God insist on speaking to his followers through strangers?

Because understanding our relationship and life with the Divine Other—the Holy One who will always confound us—is inextricably intertwined with our relationship and life with the human other—humanity that also confounds us. God comes in the form of and works through a stranger because the otherness of a stranger is akin to the otherness of God. The human other is a trace of the Divine Other in whose image the stranger has been made. The challenge God poses to us is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image. The less strangers we know the more truncated out vision of God will be.

The blessings and corrections of God come to us from the outside of the boundaries we have made for our groups, through those who can tell us the truths we cannot tell ourselves.  If we could know these truths on our own, they would not be strangers. Strangers bring not only danger to us, but also advice, solutions, beauty, opening for us new vistas into understanding the humanity, the world and God. But the blessing of the stranger goes deeper. When encountering another, we also encounter ourselves in a new way. Each encounter challenges our isolated and ingrown ideas and helps us become our better selves. And this is where the grand invitation of God to humanity lies: without knowing and caring for the other, we cannot know neither God nor ourselves.

Religion has been one of the most potent identity-forming mechanisms. It has bound people together in common purpose, joy and action as well as contributed to the prejudice, exclusion and violence toward the outsider. Now when globalization has turned our societies into societies of strangers, every religion has a chance to transcend its own limitations. We live in a society where relativism—claim that no differences really matter—is too weak to stop the aberrations of religious or anti-religious fervor. Mere tolerance of the other will not do. As Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of England, points out, “Only an equal and opposite fervor can do that. Healing . . . must come, if anywhere, from the heart of the whirlwind itself.”

We are all part of a larger web of life in which “the other” is part of our own life. Those not in our image are, however, in the image of God. In the past, the whirlwind of religious passion came from our experiences of being visited, corrected, and blessed by God. Today, God has not withdrawn Himself. He is calling us to a profound experience of meeting Him in a stranger. For those open to the strangers, the whirlwind never stops.

(from Signs of the Times, Australia, adapted by the author)

Post-surgical Reflections

~ by Bill Ashlock (see recent picture from the day before surgery), a seasoned business executive, writer, want-to-be wood turner with a passion and calling to tend God’s trees, and a great friend of Faith House. His tools include innovation, excellence, and compassion with an unending view of community. Bill lives in California and is often found in the city he loves - New York.

The idea of stepping out of the high-powered business world during a period of massive financial uncertainty to undergo brain surgery was unthinkable. Yet a few weeks ago doctors, family, and God convinced me I had to do just that. Brain tumors, even when benign, are powerful reminders about what really matters in our upside-down world.

Looking back on the journey I have taken since last July is still overwhelming. Initially, I saw the numerous barriers as uniquely mine, regulated by physicians and lengthy periods of sleep and silence. My fears, uncertainties, and doubts overwhelmed my ability to see beyond the immediate. 

As I now inch back into the world of business, it is hard to believe how much has changed in such a brief period of time. Banks, investment houses, and financial services are in a totally different place than they were before my surgery. Every financial fact I knew and depended on to guide me in my work has been challenged. I have to examine everything I knew with a fresh perspective to see what is true today. Whatever certainty I thought was with us appears to have disappeared. Nothing is certain. It is a daunting situation.

And I am not alone.

My business community in New York, like economists and business people globally, are being tested in a wholly unique way. Traditionalists are no longer sure if their traditions are to be trusted. Conservatives despair of the values being abandoned. Everyone, even progressive and liberals, are struggling to live with unending change. The future is chaotically fuzzy even to the most optimistic. The present is filled with unknowns, uncertainties, and forces outside of our control.

Where does this leave you and me? The answer is all too obvious. We are in the same place we were yesterday, a month ago, a year ago. We are living in the present moment; we cannot live in any other time. The only realty we can know for sure is what is right now.

This may not seem like much. However, it is as much as we have ever had. The wonder of today¹s chaos is that we have been forced to face how much we do not know. Yesterday we thought we knew much. It turns out we did not.

In my self-centric world, I blissfully forget that the rest of the world is walking on regardless of where I am in my recovery process. It is sadly funny. In far too many ways, I had learned to behave as if the world revolves around what is in my vision.

The reality is that we are in a boat together. Each of us knows someone who is struggling with difficulties greater than our own. Family and friends are struggling to survive day to day. Hope seems to be a slippery commodity. Support, often taken for granted, is tentative at best.

I find myself thankful for what I have, in awe of the moments in which I live, and in a place where I can help someone near me. Members of the family have reminded me that we are in a boat together. I can see God's light in the darkness.

The question for me is one of listening and responding--do I hear, am I helping? Am I making a difference in someone else¹s life? There are actions I can take. In times of such uncertainty, I can share hope. For pain, I can offer compassion and empathy. I have experienced compassion and love; I can share.

We all can.

Circumstancial Faith?

~ by Nathan Brown, a writer and editor, based near Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of three books, including the novel Nemesis Train.

As a believer—for present purposes, defined simply as one who believes—I have often wondered what and how I would believe differently had I been born into a family and culture with different beliefs. Obviously I believe what I believe because I believe it to include truth but would I have believed in that truth if I had not been raised and taught in the way that I have? Is what I believe so “true” that I can reassure myself that if I had not “inherited” it, I would still have searched for it, found it and embraced it?

Of course, for my belief to be of value to me, I have had to make it my own, not merely “inherit” it. In its own way, this is a kind of conversion—moving from one belief to another—but perhaps a gentler process than many. But how would that process have been different and how would it have changed the way I believe if I had come to the set of beliefs I now hold from a background further removed? Indeed, would—or even could—I have arrived at that set of beliefs?

And perhaps the most difficult decision for believers to accept is when fellow believers choose differently. So what about friends with whom I have shared various aspects of my faith tradition, experience and education but who have chosen to be less committed to it or even chosen other beliefs to pursue? What in their experience or circumstances has made the difference? Not only does it strain the friendship that has existed and had been reinforced by shared belief, it must also critique one’s own belief. Are they less committed and less focused or do they demonstrate greater courage in stepping away from the safe and the assumed? And is my belief somehow diminished without the community support offered by the formerly fellow believer?

Religious News Service Features Faith House Manhattan

Pastor creates interfaith church where `Christians are not in charge’ (By Nicole Neroulias)

Leta Selmanovic, 10, helps hand out informational cards about Faith House Manhattan, a weekly interfaith gathering led by her father, Samir Selmanovic. Religion News Service photo by Nicole Neroulias.

NEW YORK -- A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist and an atheist walk into a prayer meeting.

Any number of punch lines could follow, but the members of Faith House Manhattan have serious business in mind: creating a spiritual community for people from any -- or no -- religious tradition.

The fledgling group of about three dozen regular participants is overseen by Samir Selmanovic, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor for whom interfaith ideals come naturally: He describes himself as an "atheist Muslim" who converted to Christianity during his military service in the former Yugoslavia.

"I wanted to build a church where Christians are not in charge," he explained after a Saturday afternoon gathering of Jewish prayers and Beatles music. "We wanted to include all the people who have a right to belong and be partners in the discussion, not as outsiders that need to be converted, but as insiders that we need to be interdependent with."

Similar interfaith centers are on the rise across the country, according to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, which reported a surge in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There are now more than 550 such groups in America, with the largest numbers in New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois.

In addition to easing religious tensions and encouraging joint philanthropic and community activities, Pluralism Project spokeswoman Kathryn Lohre said, these groups create new roles for women, which has been the case for Faith House.

TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE BY RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE CLICK HERE.

Live Words: A Fourfold Song

There is one who sings the song of his own life, and in himself he finds everything, his full spiritual satisfaction.

There is another who sings the song of his people. He leaves the circle of his own individual self, because he finds it without sufficient breadth, without an idealistic basis. He aspires towards the heights, and he attaches himself with a gentle love to the whole community of Israel. Together with her he sings her songs. He feels grieved in her afflictions and delights in her hopes. He contemplates noble and pure thoughts about her future and probes with love and wisdom her inner spiritual essence.

There is another who reaches toward more distant realms, and he goes beyond the boundary of Israel to sing the song of man. His spirit extends to the wider vistas of the majesty of man generally, and his noble essence. He aspires towards mans general goal and looks forward to his higher perfection. From this source of life he draws the subjects of his meditation and study, his aspirations and his visions.

Then there is one who rises toward wider horizons, until he links himself with all existence, with all God's creatures, with all worlds, and he sings his song with all of them. It is of one such as this that tradition has said that whoever sings a portion of song each day is assured of having a share in the world to come.

And then there is one who rises with all these songs in one ensemble, and they all join voices. Together they sing their songs with beauty, each one lends vitality and life to the other. They are sounds of joy and gladness, sounds of jubilation and celebration, sounds of ecstasy and holiness.

The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of man, the song of the world all merge in him at all times, in every hour.

                                ~ Rabbi Kook (1865 - 1935)

God and the Human Face: A Shavuot Reflection

~ Rabbi Or N. Rose is an associate dean at the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College and the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (Jewish Lights Publishing). Rabbi Rose is a friend  and precious source of wisdom and encouragement to Faith House.

The festival of Shavuot celebrates God’s revelation of the Torah to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai.  Throughout the ages, Jewish thinkers have interpreted this foundational narrative in a variety of ways, reflecting their beliefs and experiences.  One teaching on matan Torah (“the giving of the Torah”) that I find particularly inspiring is a sermon by the Hasidic sage, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi of Ropshitz (1760-1827), recorded in the book Zera Kodesh.*

The Ropshitzer (as he is called by Hasidim) begins his commentary by quoting his teacher, Rabbi Mendl of Rymanov, who asserts that at Sinai the people of Israel heard “nothing from the mouth of God other than the letter aleph of the first utterance—‘Anokhi, I am the Lord Your God’ (Exodus 20:2).**”   In other words, what the Israelites heard at Sinai from God was undifferentiated sound or the “sound of silence,” for a freestanding aleph makes no sound at all.  In either case, this interpretation is a significant revision of the biblical text (see Exodus 20:1), as it denies that God articulated any specific content to Israel. 

What leads this Hasidic master to reach such a daring conclusion?  He bases his comment on a statement from the book of Psalms, “One thing God has spoken but two things I have heard” (62:12).  That is to say, while the Divine-human encounter is pregnant with meaning, it always requires interpretation to determine its significance for an individual or community.

Following his teacher’s comments about the aural dimension of the revelation, the Ropshitzer inquires about what the Israelites saw at Sinai.  This is a thorny question because in the book of Deuteronomy there are two contradictory statements about the issue. Deuteronomy 4:15 states, “You saw no image when the Lord your God spoke to you,” but just one chapter later it reads, “The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain” (5:4).

The Ropshitzer’s resolution of this contradiction builds upon Rabbi Mendel’s insight about the aleph.  He states that while God was indeed formless at Sinai, the people did see a representation of the Divine—the letter aleph.  Where did the Israelites see the aleph?  Was it projected in the sky as a sign of God’s presence, did it take the form of a pillar of fire or a cloud of smoke?  No, the aleph appeared on the faces of the people of Israel.
 

 

Thinking visually, the Ropshitzer explains that if one deconstructs the figure of the aleph, detaching the upper and lower markings from the central line, the components can be restructured to create two eyes and a nose, the outline of a human face. 

He goes on to say that each eye resembles the letter yud (the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet), and the nose between them looks like a vav (the sixth letter).  And when one adds up the two yuds and the vav they equal 26 (10+10+6=26).  Amazingly, this number is the same as God’s most sacred name—Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh (10+5+6+5=26), sometimes rendered as “Yahweh” in English, but considered ineffable, unpronounceable, by Jewish authorities.

   

So what does all of this fanciful exegesis mean?  It means, according to the Ropshitzer, that “every human face” represents both the essence of Torah—the aleph—and the sanctity of God’s name—Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh.  It means that at Sinai the community of Israel came to a heightened awareness of the holiness of every person in their midst—from the prophet to the water carrier, from the priest to the wood chopper.  As the Ropshitzer points out, this notion is first articulated in the book of Genesis (1:27), where the Bible describes Adam, the first human, as a being created “in the image of God.”  

The implication of such teachings is that every person—Jew and non-Jew alike (since we are all descendents of Adam and Eve)—must be treated as a holy being, as a bearer of revelation, as a unique manifestation of the Divine.  This is the meaning, says the Ropshitzer, of the teaching in Psalm 16:8, “I set the Lord before me continually.”  In his words, “The seal of the Holy Blessed One is literally on our faces.”

May we be blessed this Shavuot to experience the great and ongoing revelation of God and Torah in the faces of all those who we encounter.

______________

* I wish to thank my teacher, Rabbi Arthur Green, for sharing this text with me.  See his brief comments on this teaching in Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology, pp. 111-112 (Jewish Lights).

**  My translation is based on that of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in his The Way Into Jewish Mysticism, pp. 65-69 (Jewish Lights).

Songs About All of Us: Dan Bern's God Said No

~ by Samir Selmanovic

This song has been coming back to me over and over again, ever since I first heard it on Dan Bern's 2001 album New American Language (thank you Ralf for this gift!). Dan is an indie acoustic folk/rock singer-songwriter. God Said No is a time-travel song that questions our desire to change the past (and by extension, see into the future).  Dan's vision of an encounter with God implies we cannot escape from now, where God is. This song, once it enters your system, can help free you from some illusions you might have about yourself.

I could not find Dan Bern's video performance of this song. Following are the lyrics and a video rendition from a YouTube dude with shades, named Malvasio.

Welcome to a walk to the edge of town.

God Said No

I met God On the edge of town
Where the wind meets the stillness
Where the darkness meets the light
Where the ocean meets the sky
Where the desert meets the rain
Where the earth meets the heavens
On the edge of town
I met God

I asked God
Do one thing for me
Send me back in time, send me to Seattle
Let me go find Kurt Cobain
Take away his gun, take away his bullets
Talk to him, make him wanna live
Tell him how we love him, help him see his glory
God Said No

If I sent you back
If you really found him
You would only ask him
If he could help you get a deal
If he knows a lawyer, if he can help you
God Said No

I asked God
Do one thing for me
Send me back in time, send me to Berlin
Let me find the one they call Hitler
I will stalk him, I will bring him down
I will bring along a powerful gun, loaded with bullets
Obliterate his memory

God Said No
If I sent you back
You would get caught up in theory and discussion
You would let your fears delay and distract you
You would make friends, you would take a lover
God Said No

I asked God
Do one thing for me
Send me back in time, send me to Jerusalem
Let me go, let me go find Jesus
Let me save his life as they try to kill him
Let me take him down, down from the cross
Take the iron from his body, try to heal his wounds
God Said No

If I let you go
If you really found him
Walking with the cross you would stare
Your tongue no longer working,
Eyes no longer seeing
Ears no longer hearing

God said Time
Time belongs to me
Time's my secret weapon
My final advantage
God turned away
From the edge of town
I knew I was beaten
And that now was all I had

God Said No

For more Songs About All of Us click:

Susan Werner's Heaven So Small

Sting's Fragile

Two Poems That Will Stop You In Your Religious Tracks

~ by Samir Selmanovic

April is National Poetry Month. Here are two poems of war I recently came across (thank you Robert Darken for “Revenge” and Erica Wright for “The Diameter of the Bomb”). Read them and be prepared to carry them inside of you for weeks to come.  These are about you and me, no matter what our religion, race, or nationality. We fall within the diameter of every bomb and we all find solace in suffering of our enemies. And we have a say about the wars raging close and far away. No war is ever merely their war.

THE DIAMETER OF THE BOMB

(by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000),
translated from Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes,
Selected Poems edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort)

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its
effective range –
about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometers away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

                REVENGE

                (Nazareth, April 15, 2006,
                by Taha Muhammad Ali,
                translated from Arabic by Peter Cole,
                Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin)

                At times ... I wish
                I could meet in a duel
                the man who killed my father
                and razed our home,
                expelling me
                into
                a narrow country.
                And if he killed me,
                I’d rest at last,
                and if I were ready—
                I would take my revenge!

                *

                But if it came to light,
                when my rival appeared,
                that he had a mother
                waiting for him,
                or a father who’d put
                his right hand over
                the heart’s place in his chest
                whenever his son was late
                even by just a quarter-hour
                for a meeting they’d set—
                then I would not kill him,
                even if I could.

                *

                Likewise ... I
                would not murder him
                if it were soon made clear
                that he had a brother or sisters
                who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
                Or if he had a wife to greet him
                and children who
                couldn’t bear his absence
                and whom his gifts would thrill.
                Or if he had
                friends or companions,
                neighbors he knew
                or allies from prison
                or a hospital room,
                or classmates from his school …
                asking about him
                and sending him regards.

                *

                But if he turned
                out to be on his own—
                cut off like a branch from a tree—
                without a mother or father,
                with neither a brother nor sister,
                wifeless, without a child,
                and without kin or neighbors or friends,
                colleagues or companions,
                then I’d add not a thing to his pain
                within that aloneness—
                not the torment of death,
                and not the sorrow of passing away.
                Instead I’d be content
                to ignore him when I passed him by
                on the street—as I
                convinced myself
                that paying him no attention
                in itself was a kind of revenge.

Good Atheism, Bad Atheism

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Even though there haven’t been any new arguments against the existence of God since late 18th century, atheism is hot again. The enlightenment—a powerful movement in recent centuries that helped us question superstitious stories told by our grandmother as well as theology taught by respected university professors—has triumphed. One glance at the Google News page makes this abundantly clear. Religion is not in charge of the world anymore.

However, spurred by fear of religious fundamentalism, new atheists want to go further than their forefathers. Instead of arguing about the existence of God, they are fighting against the existence of religion itself, calling humanity to brace for an apocalyptic showdown between faith and reason. 

Religion does deserve to be challenged. “Deserves” has two meanings. First, religion deserves the pain of criticism and correction because of its failures to live up to its own ideals. Second, religion deserves the blessing of criticism and correction because it has often been a precious catalyst for justice, peace and beauty in the world. Recent challenges should therefore be welcome by religious people as a chance to see, to grieve, to repent, and then with renewed wisdom act for the common good.

Atheism at its best is crucial in this process of religious renewal. With its own set of beliefs, constructive atheism—often described as humanism—sees God as a human creation and not vice versa. It therefore locates the mystery of life in this world, this matter, this humanity, as the only one we have. It insists that all religion must land on the ground where we humans actually live. Religion must learn to live on earth. If religion is not valuable on earth, it is not valuable at all.

Constructive humanism’s contribution to our life together on this planet is its insistence that every religion ought to embrace, not just its adherents, but the whole planet as their ethical community. In our newly small planet, this is not a matter of humility or virtue any more, but of survival. In this way, these atheists are like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, calling people out of their hypocrisy toward better faith and a better world.

However, attacks that fight against all religion, instead of bad religion, are bad atheism. It reinforces the suspicion of people who cling to the status quo in religion that atheists are on a power trip of their own, on a mission to strip the world of mystery, beauty and spirit—getting rid of anything and everything that humans cannot understand, control or subjugate.

The problem with anti-religionist atheism is not that it questions the existence or character of God. It is problematic because it embodies a contempt for any faith at all—any belief or practice toward creating value and meaning for ourselves. In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Lee Siegel writes,

“The leap of faith is really a very ordinary operation. We take it every time we fall in love, expect kindness from someone, impulsively sacrifice some little piece of our self-interest. After all, you cannot prove the existence of truth, beauty, goodness and decency; you cannot prove the dignity of being human, or your obligation to treat people as ends and not just as means. You take a gamble on the existence of these inestimable things. For that reason, when you lay scientific, logical and empirical siege to the leap of faith at the core of the religious impulse, you are not just attacking faith in God. You are attacking the act of faith itself, faith in anything that can’t be proved. But it just so happens that the qualities that make life rich, joyful and humane cannot be proved.”

Atheistic fundamentalism is a dogmatic expression of a worldview equally capable of destroying humanity with zeal and effectiveness as any fundamentalist religion. Shutting out the spiritual, mystical, metaphorical and transcendent, atheistic fundamentalism resorts to cleaning up the world of those who disagree and creating a naked public square, devoid of any options but its own.

While philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche rightfully observed that “Every truth is a tool in the hands of those in power,” atheistic fundamentalists have come to an irrational belief that they are an exception as they are trying to sell their ideas to those to whom they so openly condescend. What can be a greater power trip than believing everyone is on a power trip except oneself? Instead of promoting a secularization that fosters religious pluralism, these atheists impose secularism—a closed worldview, devoid of the windows and doors of self-doubt and hope.

To the end of his life, Sigmund Freud was an uncompromising atheist, describing belief in God in his book The Future of an Illusion as a “collective neurosis.” But his last book was titled Moses and Monotheism, in which he suggested a surprising view about religion, recognizing the poetry and promise of religion. He argued that Judaism and other expressions of monotheism helped free humanity from bondage to the immediate, empirical world, opening up fresh and renewing possibilities for human spirit and practice. He argued that people who can worship what is presented in symbolic terms, practice the ultimate exploration of the invisible inner life. For Freud, faith in God opened a gift of inwardness and imagination.

Both faith and doubt are opposites of certainty and therefore part of the same whole that refuses to see only the obvious. To end religion, would be to end imagination.

The stingy polemics of religionists who defend religion at all costs on one side and anti-religionists on the other seem like arguments fought in an attempt to justify closing one’s ears to hearing the Other and sharing the planet with others. Both of their identities depend on a divided world. Instead of leading us to generosity and great hope toward an unknown future, and instead of enlightening and inspiring us, religionists and anti-religionists are moving us into a new dark age, both using God to bring an end to imagination.

People will not stop looking into the past and mining religion for its spiritual treasures and hard-learned historical lessons. And they will not stop organizing themselves into new kinds of religious communities. For we have learned from human history that religion does not have to be the opium, but can be the poetry of the people.

(from Signs of the Times, Australia, March 2008, adapted by the author)

"I don't know"

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

“One of my main efforts as a teacher has been to train people to say those (apparently difficult) words ‘we don’t know,’” commented Christian writer and long-time tutor at Oxford University, C S Lewis. Those “apparently difficult” words don’t come easily to any of us—and perhaps they are even more difficult in the mouths of people of conviction, whether religious or not.

But to admit “I don’t know” is an important spiritual discipline that we need to practice, precisely because it does not come easily. “You think that everyone should agree with your perfect knowledge,” wrote the Apostle Paul in the Bible. “While knowledge may make us feel important, it is love that really builds up … Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much” (1 Cor 8:1, 2).

To some, this might seem a denial of certainty or hope. But confessing “I don’t know” does not mean we know nothing. Admitting our imperfect knowledge, our fuzzy understanding and our stuttering explanations means we do not have to force our limited knowledge and understandings to answer questions much larger than those for which they are fitted. It is an expression of intellectual, faith-filled honesty and humility that opens us to fresh possibilities.

As Paul suggests, the more we learn, the more we discover we don’t know. But this should not be grounds for either a loss of faith, or discouragement and despair. The vastness and wonder of the world and ways of God are our greatest evidence of who we believe God to be. A God merely like us, understandable by us, managed by us, is ultimately of little use to us. Instead of roadblocks to faith, the challenges of explaining God are the starting points for contemplation.

Drawing on the Jewish tradition of exploring God by intense study of the Scriptures, Rob Bell points out that “the rabbis even say a specific blessing when they don’t understand a portion of the text. When it eludes them, when it makes no sense, they say a word of thanks to God because of the blessing that will be theirs someday. ‘Thank you, God, that at some point in the future, the lights are going to come on for me.'" By doing so, they assume that what they do not know or understand is better than they could guess at or imagine and so are content—for the time being—to trust the goodness of the God they seek.

Of course, such an attitude also has practical significance.  One of the greatest challenges of reaching out to those who are hurting and sorrowing around us is our assumption that we need to be able to answer their inevitable questions. That frightens us—we might be exposed as something less than the confident person of faith we wish we were. But when we are comfortable to say “I don’t know,” we can be simply human together, sharing their pain and grief—becoming agents of hope and healing to them by our presence and openness.

When we recognize that we are able to live by faith, even amid the questions we might try to suppress within ourselves, we realize that others can also live with, learn from and even appreciate our uncertainties. Freed from our assumptions that we have to have it all “nailed down” and “together” as a complete package of faith products to market to those around us, we can be more healthily comfortable in our faith and our faithful interactions with others.

Sometimes, “I don’t know” is the best, most satisfying and honest answer to many of our questions. Indeed, this might be the secret to sustainable faith in a God we will always struggle to comprehend.

About God (part 3): The Problem of Joy

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

One of the most common objections to faith in God is what people often refer to as the problem of pain. The question is how could pain exist–and particularly how can apparently good people suffer it–in a world ruled by a supposedly good, loving, and all-powerful God. Because pain obviously exists, therefore it is impossible to believe in the God asserted by Christians, Jews, or Muslims. It is a vexing question, and many writers have sought to defend religion by meeting the question head on--with varying degrees of success.

However, those who want to disprove, discount, or discard God themselves face a problem possibly even more difficult to explain. It involves the good things in life--the joy and the beauty. Rather than asking “Why do bad things happen to good people?” (by which we probably mean us), we can just as legitimately ponder “Why do good things happen to bad people?” (which can also refer to us). Countless instances of inexplicable joy, beauty, and variety surround us. The world would be much simpler and would conceivably operate just as well without all of them.

For example, rather than the 850 species of birds in Australia (as listed in the Field Guide to Australian Birds), a half dozen generic species of birds would surely suffice. Similarly, the variety of colors, aromas, and tastes found in a selection of fruit or vegetables might seem unnecessary in practical terms. If we only pause to observe, we will find an astounding range of trees, fish, insects, rocks, and almost any other category we might choose. Or the world could easily be black and white, and we–not knowing any better–would get along quite satisfactorily. After all, some animals such as cats do not see color at all, and they do fine. There often seem no functional or practical reasons for so much of the beauty and sources of joy surrounding us in our everyday lives. And if we try to explain the world without God, then we also have to account for the abundance and even inefficiency of beauty.

Yes, both the philosophical and experiential problems of pain continue to persist—as well as the issue of why we find beauty even in a world filled with so much suffering.  Speaking of the natural world, C. S. Lewis, a Christian writer, asks: “How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?” However, even the apparent futility of so much of the natural world itself raises the question of the temporary beauty. For example, why does an insect living for less than 24 hours have such delicate and finely detailed wings?

The difference is how we see it. As poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

Creator of the hidden colors in coral reefs, the fragile wings of butterflies, and the spectacular glory of the sunset, He is a God of both endless repetition and endless variety, but above all a God of endless beauty and joy.

Maybe the universe is not as silent and solemn as we often imagine:

“We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear” (G. K. Chesterton).

(adapted from 7 Reasons Life Is Better with God by Nathan Brown, 2007)

Live Words: Defending God

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. They faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.

                                                                        ~by Yann Martel

Less Anti-theism, More Humanism

~ Greg Epstein serves as the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University. He recently agreed to write his first book, Good Without God, for William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Epstein was the primary organizer of “The New Humanism,” an international conference in honor of the 30th Humanist Chaplaincy of Harvard University, which drew one of the largest and most diverse audiences of any Humanist gathering in North American history. He blogs for Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post, and his work as a Humanist rabbi and Chaplain has been featured by National Public Radio, BBC Radio, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The Jewish Daily Forward, and more. 

Endorsement of Faith House Manhattan:

"Faith House Manhattan is a really intriguing idea, and quite possibly a necessary one. I would encourage my fellow Humanists, atheists, agnostics and the non-religious to check it out, and to consider getting involved. Samir Selmanovic should be commended for reaching out earnestly, in respect and friendship, to our community. We secularists and freethinkers should do the same to him and to theistically-oriented Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religious people everywhere. Global warming doesn’t care what we believe or disbelieve about a god, and that’s just one of the many dangers that may doom us if we can’t figure out how to work together and care about one another despite differences. I’m hopeful this project can help build common ground and enable us to learn from one another in New York City and beyond."

Following post is adapted for Faith House by Greg Epstein, originally posted on On Faith, an online conversation about religion facilitated by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn.

Christopher Hitchens, author of the bestselling book God Is Not Great writes that "Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."

In this quote, Sally and Jon identify a classic example of the way in which Christopher Hitchens’s approach to religion goes far beyond atheism and is really better understood as anti-theism.

While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.

Anti-theists are often brilliant scientific thinkers. The ones I know tend to be passionately ethical in their personal lives. And as in the case of Hitchens, they can be ferociously eloquent. So why hasn’t anti-theism ever gained any real political or social power?

In most people’s minds, “religion” does not just stand merely for belief in an unseen, all-seeing deity with a baritone voice and a flowing beard. It stands for the things we hold most dear: family, tradition, and community. Memories of lost loved ones and consolation in the face of death. The organized pursuit of social justice. Not to mention music, art, architecture, and I could go on and on.

These things are all good. If you take a rhetorical blowtorch to religion without acknowledging the way it provides them, you get precisely what we have today: a nation and world where despite all our scientific knowledge, 80 to 90 percent of people say they are religious.

Now let me be perfectly clear about myself. I have zero belief in god, gods, goddesses, or any other manner of supernatural spirits. I affirm that there is one and only one world: this natural world. As far as any human being will ever know we get only one life, from womb to tomb.

My conviction that this life is all I have, however, is precisely why I don’t want to spend my days focused on the worst in religion. I prefer seeking the best in each of us. I am not an antitheist, and not simply an atheist, but a Humanist.

Humanism is the non-religious pursuit of all that is best in human life. It is based on reason, compassion, and creativity, and promotes loving and ethical connections with family, community, all human beings, and the natural world surrounding us. It is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to the greater good of humanity.

Simply put, Humanism is being good and living well without god. And that is no small matter, because it is hard to live a good life in this world regardless of what you believe. We human beings are all so imperfect—we are hurt so easily and too quick to hurt others. We get sick and die just when it is least fair and most painful.

Ultimately, we are social animals. We need each other. Our lives are best when we take part in an ethical community that extends far beyond ourselves; for thousands of years, religion has been the best human institution at providing that community. So if all we stand for is anti-theism, we will get nowhere, even though Hitchens is right -- partially -- about the evil religion can do.

Today, the billion of us around the world who are not religious can and must join together to create a humanistic alternative to religion. And let us do so while honoring the good in those of our religious sisters and brothers who are trying to live well according to a belief system we cannot share.

For a Humanist, it is not enough to simply rage, rage against the dying of the enlightenment. Let us get involved in Humanism and make this world, though it will never be perfect, a better place.

Links to explore:

The New Humanism
American Humanist Association
Institute for Humanist Studies
International Humanist and Ethical Union

While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in god and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.

Anti-theists are often brilliant scientific thinkers. The ones I know tend to be passionately ethical in their personal lives. And as in the case of Hitchens, they can be ferociously eloquent. So why hasn’t anti-theism ever gained any real political or social power?

In most people’s minds, “religion” does not just stand merely for belief in an unseen, all-seeing deity with a baritone voice and a flowing beard. It stands for the things we hold most dear: family, tradition, and community. Memories of lost loved ones and consolation in the face of death. The organized pursuit of social justice. Not to mention music, art, architecture, and I could go on and on.

Walking with an Atheist

~ by Titus Müller, born 1977 in Leipzig, Germany, and studied Literature and Medieval History in Berlin. He published his first novel at age 24. The sixth—The Mystery—was published this year. His books have won literary awards and together sold more than 250,000 copies. Titus Mueller is a Seventh-day Adventist Christian who lives in Germany. More information at the Author's Website (sorry, German only).

Recently, I was invited to a science fiction conference in Germany, the annual meeting of the readers of “Perry Rhodan,” one of the world’s most ubiquitous science fiction series. Materialistic science fiction portrays the future as technically and morally advanced (“Star Trek” is an example for this way of thinking), therefore depicting humanity as self-sufficient and in no need for God. On the other hand, the darker wing of science fiction asks the question: Can we trust our senses? In works like The Matrix, for example, the information we receive from our five senses is an illusion created by machines that have spun out of human control and are using humanity as an energy supply system. 

I was speaking to this audience of atheists on the topic the host had given me: “God in Science Fiction.” I had written a science fiction novel for the “Perry Rhodan” series—the first since 1963 in which someone prayed to God and believed in him. For this, a Christian publishing house awarded me with the C.S. Lewis Prize, including the opportunity to spend 40 days on the Isle of Wight. I had received hundreds of reader’s letters after that book was published. Half of them hated my novel; the other half loved it. Now the science fiction lovers wanted to know what my thoughts on God really were. 

After I gave my speech to the science fiction fans, some of them furiously attacked me, saying that the belief in God is nothing but weakness, originating from fear. A Roman Catholic priest who was in the audience tried to calm them down by saying things like: “God is not a separate being, he is in every one of us, he is what happens when we do an unselfish act.” I began to sweat.

After offering a silent prayer, I took a step forward and said: “I don’t know whether I am right in what I believe. Maybe I have to learn that what I believe is in fact wrong. Maybe I will come to different conclusions later in life. But right now, I firmly believe that God is not only in each one of us, but that he is a being of himself, an alien. You as science fiction readers will understand that thought. He is not from here, not from earth. I believe he listens when I think, feel, or talk to him. He is pure wisdom. He is smarter than all of humankind put together.”

This changed everything. My most aggressive critic talked to me afterwards: “I am the one who wrote the devastating review on your book. I didn’t know you are a seeker. I thought you think you already know everything. I didn’t know you are still open and on the way. Thank you for being sympathetic to everyone who seeks. I hadn’t thought that one can be a believer and a seeker.”

When I heard Samir speak in Germany last week I was reminded of this atheist brother who was seeking along with me. He would have liked to hear what Samir had to say. Christians who aren’t seekers anymore pretend to know all about God—which only makes God smaller and more distant. And at the same time, they turn away other seekers on the journey, forfeiting a chance to give and receive. I am glad to learn—from Samir and others—to keep going on my way to God in company with all who seek.

Interview with an Arab Atheist

~ by Esra'a Bahrain (Mideast Youth)

I’m interviewing an Arab atheist from Kuwait: Sara Sultan.  I will first make it clear that I’m happily a Muslim, and am in no way promoting atheism by conducting these interviews. Young atheists in the Arab world are extremely frowned upon and thus hardly ever given a voice, and if we really want to represent all kinds of people then we should include the voices of those we disagree with as well.

Q: Firstly, why did you agree to do this interview? Aren’t you scared of voicing such controversial opinions?
A: I agreed to do this interview because I have the interest in sharing my thoughts and beliefs with you. Why should I be scared? I have a right to express my opinions and I have no fear from doing so. People try to bully us into believing things… into being part of a “larger mass.” They kick us into buying anything from political opinions to religious beliefs. I refuse to be a product of such attempts at misleading us. They can call me what they want, at the end of the day I’m just an independent woman with a firm opinion.

Q: When did you become an atheist?

About God (part 2): The Prayer Flower

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

Prayer is a lot like radio broadcasting. We sit alone—perhaps in a small room—and talk to the wall in the hope that someone, somewhere, is listening. Through a process and technology we barely understand we try to reach out to the unseen listener. Although we can prepare beforehand for the communication, as often as not it might be just as well to make it up as we go along. Perhaps sometimes the best arises from spontaneity. But on other occasions the progress is awkward, and we cannot even begin to imagine what might lie beyond the blank walls enclosing us.

Then, every so often, we receive a response, faint though it might be. A voice comes back--a message of encouragement or even criticism. The important thing is that it briefly reassures us that someone is out there. But that someone—or Someone—is all-important.

It is perhaps most difficult to reach beyond our tiny bare-walled rooms, to hope for anything or Anyone beyond them, during times of suffering and anguish. Then, even our prayers—our attempts to communicate with the “outside”—can add to our pain. Reflecting on his own experience of sorrow, C. S. Lewis comments: “And one prays; but mainly such prayers as are themselves a form of anguish” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). When our prayers just seem to bounce back to us from the surrounding walls, the room feels smaller still and the ricocheting pleas wound us further.

While in some ways suffering is easier for people of faith—having a hope and strength beyond themselves—in other ways belief makes it more complicated and difficult. The problem of pain is also a problem of faith—but only for those who already believe. “The ‘hiddenness’ of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to God” (ibid.). For those of us who live in the expectancy of His presence and goodness, God’s apparent absence and silence compound our pain and fear.

And there come moments when we are simply unable to believe, when a primitive nothingness seems our only visible option. Even then, by sheer force of will or habit we still cry out, in the style of Job, David’s anguished psalms, and Jeremiah’s lamentations, and in some incredible way our cry of hopelessness is still a prayer.

Robert McCrum was a successful London publishing executive who suffered a severe stroke at just 40 years of age. Despite his avowed atheism, he found himself reaching out to something in his periods of greatest desperation. “I pray to a God I don’t believe in. But I had an absurd thought the other day, that the thing about God is that even if you don’t believe in him, he listens to you” (McCrum, My Year Off).

It’s a huge thought. Even during the moments when we are so hurt, grief-stricken, or frightened that we cannot see any way to reach out to God, He still hears those cries—and somehow, in His humility and graciousness, they can count as prayers. Maybe that’s part of God’s promise that “I will answer them before they even call to me” (Isa. 65:24). Before we are able to summon the willpower, the focus, the right words, or whatever we think we might need to pray “properly,” God is already answering. In prayer, it seems, His readiness to listen is infinitely more important than our readiness to pray.

In his novel Lilith George MacDonald has one of his characters discover a tiny flower he is unable to identify. The character asks his traveling companion about the mysterious bloom. The raven tells him it is a unique prayer-flower: “Not one prayer-flower is ever quite like another.” Its beauty, form, color, and scent overwhelm the story character. “I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever seen before,” he reflects. “Therefore I knew I must be seeing a shadow of the prayer in it; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart listening to the flower.”

That heart is the heart of God. The heartbeat that sustains the universe pauses to hear our stumbling, desperate, and even doubting cries.

(adapted from 7 Reasons Life Is Better with God by Nathan Brown, 2007)

About God (part1): The Big Bet?

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

In Pascal’s Pensees the seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher proposed a suitably mathematical approach to faith. In a formulation that has come to be known as Pascal’s wager he suggests we can look at the truth of the God of Christianity as a game of chance. When it comes down to it, he argues, “either God is or He is not.” The difficulty is that reason alone cannot get us beyond this point. We cannot argue conclusively either His existence or nonexistence. However, Pascal maintains it is an unavoidable choice--it is simply a matter of which way to choose. Because of its inevitability, “your reason is no more affronted by choosing one rather than the other,” he writes–both are equally legitimate options.

Pascal’s solution is to look at what is to be won and lost in the cosmic wager he proposes: “If you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing.” In other words, if God exists as we believe, we receive eternal life and all the promises of the Bible, and if He does not exist, we die. While that is the end of the story for us, it is what would have happened anyway. According to Pascal, while the odds of God existing may be only one in an infinite number of possibilities, we risk nothing by betting that way–and have everything to gain.

Christians have adopted and repeated the argument in a variety of forms since he first published Pensees in the 1660s. But the question remains whether his wager constitutes sufficient justification of and foundation for a credible belief in God. Doubt still nags us. As William James, an American philosopher writing in the 1890s, suggested, “you probably feel that when religious faith expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming table, it is put to its last trumps” (The Will to Believe).

It seems that even Paul, writing in the New Testament, was uncomfortable with arguments along the lines of Pascal’s. “If Christ has not been raised [the central tenet of Christian faith], our preaching is useless and so is your faith. … If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Cor. 15:14-19, NIV). For Paul, it is not good enough to conclude that if it is not true, we have not lost anything. The truth or otherwise of God and the claims of Christianity are of utmost importance.

Another problem James identifies in Pascal’s proposition is that we can equally apply it to any other formulation of belief–Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever promise of eternal reward. Thus it can only be a clinching argument for a Christian God when the prospective believer has a preexisting tendency toward such a belief.

So we find ourselves back at the uncertain position in which we began, unable to argue our way forward. However, it does not have to be the end of our search for God or faith. “In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing” (James, The Will to Believe). Thankfully, the possibility of faith in God does not depend upon our ability to argue philosophy.

James argues for a freedom to choose: “a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there would be an irrational rule” (ibid.). In addition, it is not irrational to believe in that for which rationality can provide no answers. Even then, we find evidence of God in our lives, in the world around us, and in history–“too much to deny and too little to be sure” (Pascal)–and it is always a matter of choice. But we respond not as a gambler but as a pilgrim on a journey toward truth.

(adapted from 7 Reasons Life Is Better with God by Nathan Brown, 2007)

Atheism At Its Best

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Atheistic Fundamentalism is atheism at its worst, a dogmatic expression of a worldview equally capable of destroying humanity with zeal and effectiveness as any fundamentalist religion. Shutting out the spiritual, mystical, metaphorical, and transcendent, atheistic fundamentalism resorts to cleaning up the world of those who disagree with it and creating a naked public square, devoid of any options but its own.

Atheism at its best is an expression of faith in humanity, even faith in religious humanity, first by asking the difficult but legitimate questions that religious people are prone to dismiss. And then by dedication to a kind of believing that is committed to denying the existence of God until a picture of “a God worth believing in” emerges. Atheism at its best is a rebellion against the god offered in the market of religions, a demand that God ought to be what God should be, if God is in fact there at all. Atheism at its best grabs us by our collars and throws us on the ground, demanding to see the righteousness we talk about, forcing us to dig deeper and harder into the best of our own religions. Atheism at its best is hanging on to the hope that our religions have not grasped reality adequately, and that there must be more to the mystery, beauty, and justice of life than what we have offered.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam need such atheists. They have a prophetic ministry to us. For the option of believing that God is not there is always available to the world. And it sometimes makes more sense than God we are conveying to the world.

James Kavanugh is a Catholic priest, a poet and a writer.  His poem entitled My Easy God is Gone is one of the great examples of atheism at its best.  If you are a believer, I think this poem will hurt you.  And somehow help you heal. 

Milorad Kojic, a genetic scientist from Manhattan, New York, sent it to me after our conversation about "God with eyes too blue to understand" (Thank you Milo!).

My Easy God is Gone

I have lost my easy God - the one whose name
I knew since childhood.
I knew his temper, his sullen outrage,
his ritual forgiveness.
I knew the strength of his arm, the sound
of his insistent voice.
His beard bristling, his lips full and red
with moisture at the moustache,
His eyes clear and piercing, too blue
to understand all,
His face too unwrinkled to feel my
child's pain.
He was a good God - so he told me -
a long suffering and manageable one.
I knelt at his feet and kissed them.
I felt the smooth countenance of his forgiveness.

I never told him how he frightened me,
How he followed me as a child,
When I played with friends or begged
for candy on Halloween.
He was a predictable God, I was the
unpredictable one.
He was unchanging, omnipotent, all-seeing,
I was volatile and helpless.

He taught me to thank him for the concern
which gave me no chance to breathe,
For the love which demanded only love in
return - and obedience.
He made pain sensible and patience possible
and the future foreseeable.
He, the mysterious, took all mystery away,
corroded my imagination,
Controlled the stars and would not let
them speak for themselves.

Now he haunts me seldom:  some fierce
umbilical is broken,
I live with my own fragile hopes and
sudden rising despair.
Now I do not weep for my sins; I have
learned to love them.
And to know that they are the wounds that
make love real.
His face alludes me; his voice, with all
its pity, does not ring in my ear.
His maxims memorized in boyhood do not
make fruitless and pointless my experience.
I walk alone, but not so terrified as when
he held my hand.

I do not splash in the blood of his son
nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns
piercing protesting flesh.
I am a boy again - I whose boyhood was
turned to manhood in a brutal myth.
Now wine is only wine with drops that do
not taste of blood.
The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation,
I, too - and together the bread and I embrace,
Each grateful to be what we are, each loving
from our own reality.
Now the bread is warm in my mouth and
I am warm in its mouth as well.

Now my easy God is gone - he knew too
much to be real,
He talked too much to listen, he knew
my words before I spoke.
But I knew his answers as well - computerized
and turned to dogma.
His stamp was on my soul, his law locked
cross-like on my heart,
His imperatives tattooed on my breast, his
aloofness canonized in ritual.

Now he is gone - my easy, stuffy God - God,
the father - master, the mother - whiner, the
Dull, whoring God who offered love bought
by an infant's fear.
Now the world is mine with all its pain and
warmth, with its every color and sound;
The setting sun is my priest with the ocean for it's alter.
The rising sun redeems me with rolling
waves warmed in its arms.
A dog barks and I weep to be alive, a
cat studies me and my job is boundless.
I lie on the grass and boy-like, search the sky.
The clouds do not turn to angels, the winds
do not whisper of heaven or hell.

Perhaps I have no God - what does it matter?
I have beauty and joy and transcending loneliness,
I have the beginning of love - as beautiful as it
is feeble - as free as it is human.
I have the mountains that whisper secrets
held before men could speak,
I have the oceans that belches life on
the beach and caresses it in the sand,
I have a friend who smiles when he sees
me, who weeps when he hears my pain,
I have a future of wonder.
I have no past - the steps have disappeared
the wind has blown them away.

I stand in the Heavens and on earth, I
feel the breeze in my hair,
I can drink to the North Star and shout
on a bar stool,
I can feel the teeth of a hangover, the
job of laziness,
The flush of my own rudeness, the surge of
my own ineptitude.
And I can know my own gentleness as well
my wonder, my nobility.
I sense the call of creation, I feel its
swelling in my hands.
I can lust and love, eat and drink, sleep
and rise,
But my easy God is gone - and in his stead
The mystery of loneliness and love!

(source: The Recovery Emporium, © Copyright -  James Kavanaugh)