Archives For Agitations

Food for thought on Reformation Sunday

Nathan Aaberg —  October 26, 2014 — Leave a comment

It’s a pleasant surprise anytime I read a news story with good news.

So I was delighted yesterday to read an article in the New York Times (“Gaining in Years and Helping Others to Make Gains”) that highlighted the stories of the six winners of the Purpose Prize, an award given to Americans 60 years old and above who are making a positive impact on the world.

It’s an inspiring article worth reading just for its own sake and for thinking about as you and I consider what we will do with our experience and skills as we get older. Do we head to the beach and the golf course or do we invest as much energy and time as we can back to our communities as long as we can?

What struck me were the stories of two of the winners. Elements of their stories resonated with my growing conviction that Christianity needs a new reformation.

One of the winners is the Reverend Richard Joyner. He is 62 and the pastor of the Conetoe Baptist Church in a rural part of North Carolina. The Purpose Prize award is to recognize the impact of his founding of the Conetoe Family Life Center. Here’s a brief section of the article that describes the Center and its impact:

The center uses its 25-acre garden to improve the health of the congregation members and to increase the members’ high school graduation rates.

“It’s not easy getting people in the South away from fried chicken and sweet tea,” Pastor Joyner said.

In 2005, Pastor Joyner had faced too many funerals at his church of 300 congregants. In one year alone, 30 under the age of 32 had died. Most of the deaths were health-related, stemming from poor diet and no exercise, he said. His own sister and brother had died of heart attacks.

So he founded the center which offers after-school and summer camp programs for children 5 to 18. The youths plan, plant and reap the produce, which, in turn, they peddle at farmers’ markets, roadside stands and to local restaurants. They also maintain beehives to produce and supply honey to low-income neighbors. The income they earn goes to school supplies and scholarships.

Getting involved with farming was not easy for Pastor Joyner. “I was a sharecropper’s son, and we experienced a lot of racism,” he said. “I never wanted to ever have anything to do with farming.”

But that changed. “The eyes of the youth have helped me to see the land in a different perspective,” he said. “Land is the soul. Farming gives these youth, who are struggling, the power to grow something that impacts the health of their family.”

“As healthy eating and exercise have become routine, people in the community have lost weight, emergency room visits for primary health care have dropped by 40 percent, and the number of deaths have dwindled. The youth are enrolling in college and finding jobs.”

What does this story tell us about the relationship between our love for our neighbor and how we care for the land and raise food?

And think about this from another angle – could Pastor Joyner have continued in good faith to preach salvation from the pulpit while ignoring the health problems of his congregants and community members? Could he have ignored the connection between what is done with the land and the food that comes from the land with the health of people around him?

Being completely filled with filled with God’s love compels us to treat God’s earth with love and patience and self-control. This, in turns, requires us to raise food differently and eat differently. And that, in turn, gives us abundant life, both physically and socially.

This awareness needs to be an essential element of what Christians are aware of and what our hearts are full of. This needs to be an essential element of how we as Christians live.

One of other Purpose Prize winners is 76-year old Charles Irvin Fletcher. This former microwave systems engineer has long been interested in the potential healing value of equine therapy for children with disabilities.   To implement the insights he had about how the therapy should be done, he established SpiritHorse International in Corinth, Texas in 2001. Here’s what the article describes:

His ranch is now home to 31 horses and ponies, and is the headquarters for a worldwide network of 91 licensed therapeutic riding centers that serve children with disabilities in the United States, South America, Africa, and Europe.

At Mr. Fletcher’s ranch in Corinth, roughly 400 children with disabilities, some as young as nine months, receive free weekly riding sessions on ponies with names like Buttercup and Peter Pan. The riders have a variety of medical conditions, including autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis and spina bifida. 

More than 5,000 children have been helped through the network since the gates opened.

“I believe that horses can feel spiritual messages,” Mr. Fletch said. “They can feel love. They can feel gratitude. They can feel approval, and they transmit those very simple feelings to the children.”

He added, “The reason this therapy works so well is that children with disabilities also have a very open spirit, and the horses sense it.”

Is there anything in conventional Christian theology and instruction that would prepare us for this? Is there anything we hear in church that would remind us that we share an amazing world with amazing creatures with spirits of their own?

What adds an interesting dimension to this story is that Charles Fletcher is all about science. He is an engineer by training. His unique approach to equine healing is based on his commitment to science and measurable outcomes. Yet, he matter-of-factly points to the spiritual connection between horses and people as one of the fundamental reasons why equine therapy works.

This world and its creatures are, I am convinced, part of God’s story.

And an important, irrevocable part of our right place in the world is to be the shepherds of God’s earth even to the point of service and sacrifice. That service and sacrifice is to be part of our story. 

But too often it isn’t, and we miss opportunities to bring life and healing and beauty into this world and in doing so to honor God.  And in part this is because the Church has a very large blind spot when it comes to how we think about God’s earth.

Now more than ever that must change.

 

 

 

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This Practical World

Nathan Aaberg —  October 12, 2014 — Leave a comment

Call me a fan of Moby Dick. My first reading of this sprawling classic captivated me, even its many meditative interludes dwelling on all things whales and whaling.

Do you remember Captain Bildad? Ishmael meets Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg, the two owners of the Pequod, when he signs up to sail on the ill-fated whaling trip under the direction of the obsessed Captain Ahab. What’s interesting for the purposes of this blog is that Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg are Quakers.

From their reading of the Bible and of the words of Jesus in particular, Quakers have long been marked by their commitment to nonviolence. This has led them to be conscientious objectors in times war. But in Captain Bildad we see a Quaker who…. well, I can’t resist sharing some of Melville’s prose:

Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg – who cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all trifles – Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn – all that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Peleg. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one things, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends.

How do you and I reconcile such things?

Do we believe that a person’s religion is one thing and “this practical world quite another”?

Do the Christian ideals of love and compassion have anything to do with this practical world, especially the world that is not human?

Reading this passage from Moby Dick reminds us that we are not the first ones to note the disconnect between being followers of the Lamb, of the good shepherd and the way we treat God’s earth.

An image from the “illimitable slaughter” of whaling. Walvisvangst by Abraham Storck (courtesy of Rijksmuseum – Amsterdam)

Of course, living in this practical world is not easy. For most of human existence, simply surviving has been a tremendous challenge.  What’s more, we must indeed take from the world in order to survive in the world. And even when we have the best of intentions, we can make mistakes as fallen beings.

But, nevertheless, I believe the degree to which we are willing to truly open our hearts to the transforming work of the Spirit of our loving God reveals itself in the details of exactly how we treat our neighbors and God’s earth day after day, year after year, century after century.

Our faith and our God are in the details.

And, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we will see that we are, as a world and as a Church, getting the details wrong in fundamental ways.

The emptying of the oceans and the filling of those oceans with plastic are testimony that we don’t believe that following God has anything to do with this practical world. The clearing of tropical forests and the death that the clearing brings to the forests’ inhabitants testify to that same disconnect. When we bring no ethical consideration to what we eat and the profound impact our food choices have on our neighbors and God’s earth, then our lives say we don’t believe our religion should enter the practical world.

A story of a real-life Quaker provides inspiration for how being inspired by God can prompt us to look at the world differently than Captain Bildad. John Woolman was a prominent Quaker in the 1700s who gently but tenaciously appealed to his fellow Quakers to not be part of the slave economy. His journals, published only after his death in 1772, are now considered a classic spiritual work of early America.

From The Journal of John Woolman you can read the following passage about a system that paid dividends that he would not be part of:

Stage-coaches frequently go upwards of one hundred miles in twenty-four hours; and I have heard Friends say in several places that is common for horses to be killed with hard driving, and that many others are driven till they go blind. Post-boys pursue their business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys who ride long stages suffer greatly in winter nights, and at several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth the creation at this day doth loudly groan.

As my journey hath been without a horse, I have had several offers of being assisted on my way in these stagecoaches, but have not been in them, nor have I had freedom to send letters by these posts in the present way of riding, the stages being so fixed, and one body dependent on another as to time and going at great speed, that in long cold winter nights the boys suffer much. I heard in America of the way of these posts, and cautioned Friends in the General Meeting of minsters and elders at Philadelphia, and in the Yearly Meeting of ministers and elders in London, not to send letters to me on any common occasion by post. And though on this account I may be likely not to hear so often from my family left behind, yet for righteousness’ sake I am, through Divine favor, made content.

Woolman clearly sees a system that provides the convenience of speedy communication to the system’s users but does so at tremendous cost to its workers and to God’s creatures. He will not ignore it.  He will not go along with it.

How would you and I live differently if our hearts were truly reshaped by God so that we strove every day to make the details of how we treat all people and all of God’s earth reflect the love God fills us with? How would our lives be different? How would our churches and communities be different? How would our country and world be different?

Are we Captain Bildads?  Are we addicted to the dividends that the practical world generates when it is not bound by love and compassion?

Or does God come first?

And what would the details of our life look like if God came first as we try to live in this global, complex, increasingly uber-technological world?

Call me eager, eager to dive into those questions through this blog and with your help.

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Psalm of the Last Tiger

Nathan Aaberg —  October 5, 2014 — Leave a comment

I am reading from Psalms these days. The passionate expressiveness of this poetry moves my heart.   Anger, despair, joy, faith – they pervade the Psalms. I felt compelled to try my hand at writing one myself, and so here is my first attempt. It is inspired by the plight of tigers, especially the Siberian Tiger. Tigers in their own way and in their natural habitats are kings as David was a king. I’ve rooted the psalm in the themes and even some of the words and phrases of the psalms in the Bible. See if you can identify them. Am I being anthropomorphic? Of course. But I believe that one of our roles in the world is to be the voice and celebrator of the whole world. In the Bible, many creatures and even hills and cedars have voices. In Revelation we read of all of life praising the Lamb. So why not in psalms?

Hear my plea, O LORD, and deliver me,
   for I am near death and my people will perish with me.

You are my Creator and Sustainer,
   from your hand I have received my prey.
You watch over the world;
   you care for the land and water it;
   you know every bird in the mountains.
The hills and every living thing sing to you;
   you are worthy of praise without end.
You have known our people from generation to generation;
   you have known that even in our might we worshipped you.
In mysterious ways you gave us stealth and power,
   we have ruled this land of snow and forest at your leave.
   When have we betrayed you?

My enemies seek to take my life and take this kingdom from me.
   Across cold rivers I am driven to my last stronghold.
Men, even men who call upon your name, hunt me day and night;
   I have no rest, no place to rest my head.
You have given men creative power beyond all imagining,
   but they forget you and rule as tyrants,
They are cruel and perverse shepherds;
   They say, “We are gods! The world is here for our pleasure.”
Beasts of steel devour the pines and oaks of the forest;
   the deer and wild boar find their sustenance no more,
Their stomachs empty, they groan and despair;
   I search in vain for them, and in hunger I groan.
I, the hunter, am now hunted;
   on the land and through the air the chariots of men pursue me.
Their hearts overflow with greed and cunning.
   Gold, not your love, is their master.
As men worship you as the Creator and celebrate their salvation,
   I face the end of my days and the fading away of my people.
Alone I find no trace of my kind in all the snowy vastness.
   I have no sons nor daughters to rule after I am gone.
Is this fear? Is this dread that fills me?
   My spirit, like snow in the wind, knows no peace.
 
But I trust in you, my Creator,
   I turn to you for help.
You will not turn your face away forever;
   will you turn your face away forever?
Save me so that we will persist in this land,
   deliver this land and its many creatures.
You have showed men your light and righteousness;
   you can fill them with love and righteousness.
When they follow you and give their lives and hearts to you,
   they bear abundant fruit that brings light and joy.
Change their hearts, LORD, change their hearts;
   help them bear the good fruit of a living earth.

You will not forget me, LORD.
   You will not forget.
You will again sustain me.
   You will deliver me.
The hills and woods will again praise you and I with them.
   We will sing.

 

 

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The Forgotten Covenant (Genesis 9: 8-17)

Nathan Aaberg —  September 27, 2014 — Leave a comment

Six mornings out of seven I wake up early to read the Bible, pray, meditate, and write. A friend recommended the Zondervan Today’s New International Version Study Bible, and I’ve been pleased with its abundance of resources that help me understand the context and meaning of books, chapters, and verses. It even has headings for each chapter and subheadings within chapters for quick orientation.

Recently I came upon a heading that made me do a double take.

It was the chapter heading for Genesis 9. It reads “God’s Covenant with Noah.” It was undoubtedly written by a scholar with far more theological education than I and was then reviewed by other scholars as well. Nevertheless, that heading misrepresents the clear articulation in the chapter of whom the covenant is with.

In the actual covenant section of the chapter (verses 8 to 17), we read as follows:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you–the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

As a parent of three children that sounds to me like a parent doing what it takes to make sure a child gets something really important. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

What’s clearly important in this part of the story are two things: (1) the promise not to destroy all life by water again and (2) that those bound together by the covenant are God, Noah (and his descendants), and all of life on earth.

The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark

The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark (Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1613) 
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Yet, the heading reads “God’s covenant with Noah.”

The heading’s incompleteness is a painfully perfect illustration of the blind spot Christians have had as they’ve read the Bible for centuries. We’ve consistently overlooked and ignored clear references to God’s concern for all of life.

I don’t mean to suggest that there is no ambiguity in the Bible about how God’s earth is portrayed or, for that matter, about a number of other subjects. Nevertheless, I believe we see a relationship between God and all of life in the Bible that is compelling and real.

In the Genesis story, God sees all that he has made (including humans) and says it is all very good.

In Psalms 50:11 we read, “I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.” How intimate that connection is.

In Job, God points to the living world as a testament to his majesty, ineffable mystery, and power.

In Romans 8:22 we read that all of Creation is groaning.

In Revelations we read that “every creature in heaven and earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them” are singing and praising God and the Lamb.

I struggle here with whether I should dwell with anger and frustration on how Christians have ignored the thread of the significance to God of all Creation or whether I should dwell on how right and energizing it is to me that that there is this thread. Do I see the glass half full or half empty?

I’m going to take a different glass.

The reality is that, yes, Christians have missed the boat on many of the core messages of the Bible that stare us right in the face. We’ve had many holes in our gospel. Our faiths and lives have been lacking wholeness throughout history. We are all fallen beings and that has impacted the faiths and lives of Christians for over two millennia.

We’ve hated our enemies. We’ve hated our neighbors. We’ve hated other Christians because they believed different things. Christian nation has warred against Christian nation with utter ferocity. We’ve discriminated. We’ve allowed our countries and our economies to be our masters when God’s will contradicts what those masters call us to do. We’ve read verses in the Bible that are very clear and ignored them.

Yet, that doesn’t change what God’s wishes and intentions are. And over time, in sometimes halting ways, there has been progress around the world in some areas towards a more just and righteous world. The end of slavery and segregation are examples.

It’s time for this to happen much more fully with all of God’s life on this earth. It’s time to remember the complete covenant relationship marked by the rainbow.

This will not be easy. One of the reasons we’ve ignored Creation is that we must use it to survive, and for most of human history, survival has been a hard thing to do. It’s a radically challenging idea to think that how we interact with Creation (which we do continuously) must be given ethical scrutiny, that God’s earth is part of our ethical universe. And we find it so easy to be drunk on our own power and creativity as we shape God’s earth for our purposes.

In fact, in the glory of our astounding capacity today to reshape the world to our purposes, we are tempted to make ourselves the measure of all things. We want to be gods. We love being gods.

Having a faith that is truly centered on God and has concern for all of Creation would compel us to rethink much of our lives and our economies. It would cause us to be radically humble and accepting of limits on what we do for the good of all life on earth.

We don’t want to go there.

We need to go there with God’s help and grace.

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Mourning Elephants

Nathan Aaberg —  September 20, 2014 — Leave a comment

I hope you have heard the story of the mourning elephants. In brief, two different herds of elephants traveled many hours across the Zululand brush in South Africa to stand vigil outside the home of Lawrence Anthony who had passed away on March 2, 2012.

Anthony had saved many of these elephants. He had accepted many of them as his charges at the Thula Thula game reserve he had created when other reserves no longer wanted them and were ready to shoot them because of their rogue behavior.  He had helped, through love and patience and the offering of a place of sanctuary, to restore their spirits to the point he had become known as the “elephant whisperer.” (There is a book of the same name by Anthony that is well worth reading. You can also read his obituary in the New York Times and a post at Belief.net.)

Reports say that both herds appeared at the family compound not long after Anthony passed away. Dylan, Anthony’s son, said of the elephants, “They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey. The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush.”

Elephant herd traveling to Anthony family’s compound after Lawrence Anthony died (photo credit: Anthony Family)

In a short post, I cannot do justice to the full story of Anthony’s life and his work with the elephants.   In addition to his work with the elephants, for example, he also helped rescue and protect animals in the Baghdad zoo in 2003 at great personal risk. There is one storyline from The Elephant Whisperer book, however, that stands out.

The first herd of elephants he accepted from another reserve was led by its matriarch Nana. She was enraged and determined to leave Thula Thula and take her herd with her as she had been repeatedly doing at the previous reserve. At one point, Nan and her herd actually did break out after destroying the generator that electrified the enclosure fence with 8,000 volts. Anthony was able to round the herd up and return the elephants to safety in Thula Thula just before locals and wildlife authorities arrived with rifles to kill them.

Anthony saw that, despite the experience, Nana was ready to escape again no matter what the consequences. This was when Anthony did another remarkable thing. As his book describes it:

“Then, in a flash, came the answer. I would live with the herd. To save their lives, I would stay with them, feed them, talk to them. But, most importantly, be with them day and night. We all had to get to know each other.”

It didn’t always go easily. There are frightening encounters. At one point, in the dark of an early morning when the herd seemed ready to break out, Anthony stood between Nana and the fence, placing himself in grave danger to appeal to Nana to not leave when it was entirely in her power to do so. He was ready to sacrifice his life to make the attempt to save her and the herd. He implored Nana not to go, saying: “You will all die if you go. Stay here. I will be here with you and it’s a good place.”

Anthony described what happened then:

“Then something happened between Nana and me, some tiny spark of recognition, flaring for the briefest of moments. Then it was gone. Nana turned and melted into the bush. The rest of the herd followed.”

Things got better. Other places began to send their rogue elephants to Anthony as well.

At the end of Anthony’s life, those elephants and their families returned to the compound without the benefit of reading an obituary or receiving an email. They somehow knew. They mourned him as they are known to mourn their own.

There is much to ponder about this story.

It reminds us of what Christians and people of many other faiths know – this world is not simply a world of material things interacting on a material level. There is a spiritual dimension to this world.

Even more fundamentally, this story reminds us that humans are not unique in our capacity to love, suffer, and share in some way the spiritual dimension of the world.

We spend far too much time looking for ways to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the life of God’s earth. We live in a universe that is somehow sustained by God and that sings to God and that has its own direct relationship with God. It is, in short, a universe that is loved by God. Let us glory in being part of that universe.

We should be grateful, too, for Lawrence Anthony’s example of the special role we are called to play in the world with our unique capacities.

For far too long, Christians have used the idea of “dominion” to justify a cruel and violent rule over God’s earth. What we have not realized is that the self-centered dominion seen in human history is not God’s idea of the role.  The dominion we should model ourselves after is the dominion God has over us. This is seen in its purest essence in Jesus.

Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11 NIV).

Jesus exemplifies what God meant by dominion. Before humans disgraced what dominion meant, it meant a loving authority and concern for one’s charges to the point of self-sacrifice. Like that of a loving parent. Like that of a loving shepherd.

So remember the elephants. Remember that elephants mourn. Remember that the daunting yet rewarding work of caring for God’s earth is part of the abundant life that God offers us.

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