There are two “first” questions in the beginning of the Bible. One comes from God’s adversary, the serpent, who asks Eve, “Did God really say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” And the other comes after that challenge, when God asks Adam and Eve: “Where are you?”
Disinformation and confusion seem to have been hallmarks of our existence as human beings, right from the beginning. As the Preacher writes in Ecclesiastes: “Nothing is new under the sun”, and here we are in the final sprint of an election season! The Preacher might add “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity” – and he does! But we know that our civic decisions are important. They matter to many lives other than our own, as did that original one by Adam and Eve if we uphold the story of our early encounters with free will. In all of this, how we see things is significant.
When I used to prepare people for the bishop’s visit and their confirmation, I would invite them to draw a picture of God. It is intended to ask both those ancient questions: “Did God really say?” is an invitation to align one’s image of God to the one revealed in the law and prophets, “but chiefly” as we say in the Eucharistic prayer, in the person of Jesus Christ. “No one has seen God”, says John the evangelist, “Jesus Christ as the Word has revealed him” – and John assures us that this vision is full of grace and truth.
The second question follows from the first – for our notion of God, the God we envision, also asks us “Where are you?” The implication is that we are in hiding! Connection has broken down. A gap between God imagined and God revealed to us in Jesus has opened. And in that gap lies the opportunity for the disinformation and confusion, prompted by “Did God really say?”
Currently I am reading a very disturbing book: “Life after Doom” by Brian McClaren. The title may say it all. I tell myself that I am in the disturbing section of the book, and I am hoping light will come along anytime soon. I fear, however, as I hide in the bushes, that God will be appearing asking me where I am! It is a question I have asked of God many times in recent days, and it is fair to have the question turned around upon me. When God asks it, we are invited to address disinformation and confusion, and to restrain the chaos of “Did God say?” We are offered a new lens to see things.
I have read sufficiently into McClaren’s book to know that he calls for a new way of seeing, and he endorses a contemplative way of life. He titles that chapter “Mind your mind”. And he describes two primary ways to do that. First is social. “To speak our minds in circles of trust”, “in an atmosphere of mutual respect, listening actively and without judgment, inviting constructive feedback and non-’gotcha’ questions”. All of this is to confer together to seek clearness, “bringing multiple perspectives together to help us move closer to truth together than we could have done alone”.
The second way is personal. He describes his inner processes as a Board of Directors of “Me Incorporated”, which has three subcommittees – survival, belonging and understanding or search for meaning committees – that constantly negotiate with each other in response to the overwhelming experience of life. It is this process that generates our fears and anxieties, our denials or premature closures whether optimistic or despondent. He recommends contemplation by which he means a practice through which “I send my internal negotiations into a time out”. It’s his “focus and release” method. “Contemplation liberates me from being a perpetual prisoner of my trains of thought and feelings; it helps me realize that I am not my thoughts and feelings”. He likens it to stepping off a fast train and letting go. In letting go, he learns to let be, and he finds that there then comes an experience of letting come – setting free to a new way of thinking or seeing. The practice is not only as prayer, but everything that can be a form of prayer – listening to music, cooking, dancing, walking, focusing on what is around me, and yes – a happy place or a happy face!
In his gospel, John tells a story in which Andrew comes to Jesus and asks where he lives. Jesus replied: “Come and see”. When we stop hiding in shame or fear or confusion because we have entertained the question: Did God really say? And begin to hear God calling out asking us where we are, I think we can have the courage to show ourselves and perhaps ask Jesus where he lives. He will invite us to come and see.
I think that is what Church is. It is all of us gathering for the safe and open spaces of trust to share ourselves, and it’s where we learn to nurture like seedlings our new or renewed steps of contemplative learnings: to let go, let be, let come, set free. And, yes, dance and cook and walk and see happy faces and share happy places. It’s where we close the gap between the ancient questions, where we squeeze out room for disinformation and confusion to fester, and where we find a new way of seeing. It’s how we show ourselves and tell God “here we are”, and ask our own question “where do you live?” and get invited to come and see.
+Bishop Alan Scarfe
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