Walking Luke Skywalker Home

Much has been made of the newest installment in the Star Wars movie franchise in which we renew our acquaintance with Luke, Han Solo, and Leia, now General, Organa.  For what it's worth, I think Episode VII is rollicking good fun, and I've enjoyed it both times I've seen it in the theater.

Here's what makes it worth writing about, though. According to some internet reports I've read, George Lucas is unhappy with the decision to go back and essentially re-tell the original "A New Hope" story.  He has said that it was his intention to keep creating new dramas, to introduce new characters, new planets, new situations to the galactic stage.  One can certainly understand that impulse -- for the sake of keeping the story fresh, or to attract new viewers, it might seem necessary or desirable to be endlessly creative.  But that was never the point of Star Wars, at least back in 1977, when I first saw it.  The joy of the first Star Wars film was its ability to tell a timeless story, the essential story, the story of the lost-and-found hero who discovers that he has the power to change -- indeed, to save -- the world.

The next two episodes in the series expanded on that theme, showing how the main characters confronted their truths, known and unknown, and created adult lives in the galaxy they were given to live with.  But the series lost its way, in my opinion, with the series of "prequels."  The story became convoluted, the characters (and in some cases the actors) were less compelling and believable.  Lucas had relinquished the focus on the hero tale, and instead was filling in backstory.  The narrative of the Fall of Anakin was, perhaps, a necessary component of the larger epic of redemption.  Sadly, it was crowded with political machinations and large armies of unidentifiable metal-and-plastic foot soldiers.

To their credit, J. J. Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, and company have returned to the essential story, updating the special effects and including a black man and a female in leading roles.  They have brought their heroes "home" to their essential task of discovering their identities, connecting with a larger truth, and marshaling their energies for good.  Whatever anyone thinks the Force, or the Rebellion, or the First Order stand for in the present age, they are fundamentally about the conflict between good and evil, the craving for and abuse of power, and the spiritual awakening that begins the process of personal and societal growth.

George Lucas may have had some other story in mind that he wanted to tell, but Abrams, et al, have chosen the better path -- to return to The Story, and to bring the earlier hero, Luke, home to the ones who most love him and need him when the days turn dark.  I look forward to the next installments.

The Second Letter to Corinth

My summer travel schedule has put me a bit behind the Westar Institute's 30 Days with Paul reading plan.  I will continue on with Philemon, Philippians, and Romans at my own pace, but first I want to reflect a bit on Paul's Second Letter to his community in Corinth.

Reading 1 Corinthians I was struck by the dualism, and underlying sense of separateness and conflict that engaged Paul so relentlessly.  There were bits of light along the way, but at that point they did not cohere into anything solid.  With 2 Corinthians, that begins to change.

In this letter, Paul still feels separate from the community, and threatened by the appearance of other preachers who apparently want the Corinthian Christians to live by Jewish law in order to be "properly" Christian.  That, however, was not Paul's message, and he pleads with his readers to remember the truth of what he taught them.

The down side?  He nearly drowns those nuggets of truth in a long tirade of self-justification.  To his credit, he justifies his teaching on the basis of his attempt to embody the humility of the crucified Christ in his own experience of hardship and humiliation.  He's on the right track here, I would say, but he's still only beginning to see the truth of Christ's life and message.  He tells his readers that it was 14 years earlier that "someone" was lifted up and given a heavenly vision.  Scholars consider this "someone" to be Paul himself.  And while 14 years may sound like a long time to ponder and digest and make sense of the kind of life-changing revelation Paul received, in the history of the development of new religious movements, it is barely a blink of the Divine eye.  Paul is trying desperately to teach something he barely understands, at least at an intellectual level, to communities that do not have a shared religious vocabulary or worldview.  No wonder he sounds so frustrated!

There is, however, a glimmer of the message Paul tries so desperately to convey to his Corinthian converts.  I find it in these verses:

3:17 -- "...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."  In the face of those who would impose the Hebrew Law upon non-Jewish Christians, Paul intuits that there is a freedom to be found in embracing Christ as the embodiment of God.

5:15 -- "...he [Christ] died for all..."  The death of Christ works effectively to bring all persons into a new form of life, if they know this to be true.  No one is left out of the saving work of Christ.

5:19 -- "in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself..."  Again, no part of creation was left out of God's reconciling, I would say unifying, work.

What Paul has not seen yet, or has seen but not yet understood, is that the freedom and the reconciliation are two sides of God's love.  Paul still wants to fence "the community of the saved" with laws and expectations.  He sees other teachers as threats to his own ministry, and to God.  He doesn't yet see that there is no threat to God, and that, in the words of the Lindisfarne Community, all truth is God's truth.  God's love is more than large enough to reconcile all of creation to himself.

At the same time that I was reading this letter, I was coming across statements from other world religions about the essential unity of all persons in Divine Love.  Religions such as Daoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism had been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before Paul's breakthrough revelation.  I see him as groping toward something that requires long years of thought, prayer and struggle to understand and articulate, something that is at the heart of the religious vision: that God's love is neither exclusive nor earned, but given freely to all of God's creatures.  To live in that love, one needs simply to acknowledge and open the gift.  But those who do and those who have not yet are still united by the love God has for them, not separated by the judgments we make about each other.

Christians who root themselves deeply in Pauline writing need to be careful not to stay at a beginner's level of religious understanding.  Paul's fear and self-justification run the risk of creating fearful, self-justifying Christians, even now.  I will be digging into the next few letters, especially Romans, seeking signs of a more nuanced, mature understanding of the Christian revelation.

5 Days with (St) Paul, so far...

The Westar Institute has initiated a 30-day reading plan designed to cover all of the undisputed letters of Paul in the New Testament.  I found out about on the first day, and have been trying to catch up ever since.  Sunday afternoon seemed like a good opportunity to read not only the first few days' worth of Pauline entries, but to see what the Westar blog, along with my dear friend Jack, have been saying in response to the readings.

First, I should say that I have typically focused on the Gospels, particularly as a preacher, and haven't paid close attention to Paul since the one course I had on the Epistles in seminary.  (Anyone out there remember 'Romans to Revelation' at Garrett Evangelical?)  So I took this on as a personal challenge to actually read through these letters in a somewhat systematic fashion.  (As an aside, I'll be travelling mid-month, and will most likely be doing well if I keep up with the readings.  I don't expect to be able to comment on them often.)

Thus far we have read 1 Thessalonians and Galatians, and tomorrow we move on to 1 Corinthians.  That's helpful right there, since we're reading the letters in the order in which current scholarship suggests they were actually written. That allows me to imagine that Paul's thought is developing in response to his own experience of life in faith, as well as in response to the questions he is being asked, or the news he is receiving from the various communities to which the letters are addressed.

What surprises me so far is the degree to which Paul is #1, anxious, and #2, concerned to explain himself more than actually reiterate what he considers to be the Gospel message. While he frequently counsels others to live quiet, restrained lives, his own urgency and anxiety fairly jumps off the page.  A friend who is also following the 30-day plan observed, "He has no idea of what a non-anxious presence might be."    Honestly, I'd rather hear him calmly pointing to Jesus as the model for our lives than to hear him frantically pointing to himself as the model, which is what he mostly does.

Then there's the whole section in Galatians that addresses the dichotomy of "flesh" and "Spirit."  I wish he weren't so polarized in his description here.  Richard Rohr presents Paul as a non-dual thinker, although I suspect Paul comes to a non-dual awareness later in his development.  The best I can do with the "flesh" and "Spirit" section is to posit that Paul saw "flesh" as the working metaphor for limited, self-driven, egoistic awareness, a way of being that could not be open to others, or to God's presence in love, and "Spirit" as the softer, kinder, wider, way of being that allows grace and compassion to lead.  

I'm sure there are other voices that will help me come to a fresh understanding of Paul as this month goes along.  Comments on the 30-day challenge are welcome!

An Advent Meditation on Justice

 What follows is an Advent meditation which was shared today with my brothers and sisters in the Lindisfarne Community.  May it be a blessing to others.

Brothers and Sisters,

Many of us are deeply troubled by the violence in our streets.  Race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, even religion, all the things we thought back in the 60s and 70s that we'd confronted and named and faced down seem to be roaring back with a vengeance to divide God's beloved children into warring camps. And yet, the very word, religion, comes from a root that means to bind back together what has been separated.

The Indestructible Core

Has anyone else ever received the spiritual blow to your head, or heart, or ego, the one that turns everything upside down?  It's happened to me a couple of times, and I sometimes call it the "cosmic 2 x 4," it can hit that hard.

This one was completely unexpected.  A few weeks ago. the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert posted a quick exchange from a recent interview onto her Facebook page.  At a public event, an attendee walked to the microphone and asked, "What do you know more than anything?" 

Synchronicity

Greetings, Dear Ones,

It's been a lovely few weeks learning to love what is, integrating the enneagram insights I spoke of in my last blog post.  What I am beginning to notice (you may know this better than I) is how eager the Spirit is to provide what one needs once the need has become conscious.  Let me explain.

Looking at Type One, the Perfectionist, I have had to admit how desperately I punish myself for sins and imperfections, real and imagined.  And at the same time, how desperately I defend myself against criticism, constructive or gratuitous.  It's a bit like having an internal older brother -- I'll beat myself up with abandon, but don't let anyone else take a swing at me, even if I deserve it!!

So, of course, the first thing I do is troll around looking for clues to how to avoid all this pain.  There are some, most of which are terribly obvious and no less useful for being plain as the nose on one's face.  Detach from your inner critic, take breaks from your work, appreciate other people's gifts and contributions (no, you don't have to do it all).  I'm chagrined to acknowledge how few of these I actually recall from having read the list several times in the last week!  But there is one that has really stuck with me -- one that the Spirit seems to want me to pay attention to.