On & Off the Road

Driving in to work this morning, I listened to some evangelist railing against the intelligentsia and scholarship.

Huh, I scratched my head.

Isn’t it amazing that of all people, Christian evangelists would object to scholarship and “the intelligentsia”. I know there are those out there that would say that it is totally believable, after all, if someone professes Christianity, they’ve already demonstrated a lack of intelligence.

I won’t argue one way or the other with the latter.

My beef is with that evangelist and his ilk.

The one thing that sets humanity above the animals is precisely it’s intellect (though, some may argue otherwise… namely that nothing sets us apart from the animals.)

We, as Christian, believe that God created us. In fact, we believe that “God created humanity in God’s own image…” The Psalmist is astounded that “For You have made [humanity] a little lower than the angels”… btw, other texts actually say “You have made [humanity] little lower than God.”

My point is this: for all the time humanity has been on this planet, our goal has been the pursuit of knowledge. If God did not wish us using our intellect, the intellect that God gave us in the first place, then why give it? Why not make us slaves to our instincts, rummaging in the fields and running down prey?

Actually, there is humor in this for me. Because the anti-intellectualism espoused by this evangelist really plays right in to the hands of those who WOULD reduce humans to the status of animals, depriving us of personal responsibility and forgiving all our actions, all our faults by merely blaming it on our culture or our environment.

Humanity is meant to rise above our environment. It’s the whole point of the Creation stories that humanity is meant to rule the environment, not be ruled by it.

Only by conscious decision not to cave in to the influences of environment can we hope to progress.

Nor do I deny that environment plays a role in our development; I merely believe that we can’t fall back on our environment as a sop for our own failings.

“Thou wast not, then, yesterday, nor wilt thou be tomorrow; but yesterday and today and tomorrow thou art; or, rather, neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow thou art; but simply, thou art, outside all time. For yesterday and today and tomorrow have no existence, except in time; but thou, although nothing exists without thee, nevertheless dost not exist in space or time, but all things exist in thee. For nothing contains thee, but thou containest all.” Proslogium, Ch. XIX, Anselm of Canterbury.

I have often come back to these words of Anselm over the past decade. Much of his writing really was of little interest to me, but this has stuck in my mind. It is true, Anselm’s philosophical proof for God’s existence has been easily refuted. These words, however, have been a jumping off point for much of my own philosophy and theology.

What Anselm is saying is quite easy, once you wrap yourself around the antiquated prose. To start, the following must be understood:

1. To be contained by something is to be limited by that thing.

1a. To exist in time is to be contained in time.

2. God is unlimitable.

3. The unlimitable God, therefore, cannot be contained by time.

In addition, Anselm takes for granted that while God is contained by nothing, all things are contained by God. Thus, time is contained by God.

So, to unwrap the opening paragraph, since God is not contained by time, but rather contains all, and thus time, God is outside of time (and thus space.) Therefore, God merely IS. It cannot be said of God that God Was or God Will be. God IS. All things that have ever happened in the past, all that will happen in the future, all these are now to God.

In this understanding then, when we speak of Jesus Christ’s Incarnation, that incarnation is simply God, the Son of God, stepping out of the eternal now of God into time and space. For a time, God exists in time and space.

And so, it is possible for humanity to participate with God in the eternal now because as we experience those element’s of Jesus life, death and resurrection through worship and prayer, we step out of time and space into the presence which is God. We encounter the eternal now of Jesus when we read of his life, and put ourself into the present of the story.

So, when I contemplate what the Christian cults call Eucharist, that Last Supper of which Jesus partook, when I too partake of Eucharist, I am not doing in memory of him, but rather participating in the now of his gift.

I’ve spent some time today browsing through other blogs. It’s been a humbling experience. In fact, I just finished reading one blog from the beginning of September up to today’s post, and am in utter awe of the young man who wrote it. I wish I had the talent he has for self-expression. Here was a young man, gay, Native American, with a true gift that I hope to be able to share for a long time to come.

Past week has been a harsh one for me. I’ve spent the past 7 months preparing for this week, as Excel gathered for it’s annual All Team Gathering. There were all the logistics of preparing for the event. And there was the reality the event would be one of those life-changing moments.

I’ve served Excel on it’s Executive Committee since September 1999. For the first three years, I chaired the body, and then for another year and a half served as Clerk. These past 6 months, I was a member-at-large. Now, I am no longer in service in this way. I was so looking forward to this time being over.

I wasn’t expecting the hole it’s left! I didn’t expect the let down. I have another one ahead… Board of Directors for MCC-O…. I’ll be stepping down in just two months.

I viewed my service to Excel as a ministry… we all do. I believe I gave a great deal to that Ministry, and I believe I did it well. There were things I could have done better. I’m sure others would argue that my service was average at best. They may think what they will.

As I approach these next two months, I realize that when that day arrives, and I step down life will take a new direction. I suspect that will leave as deep a sense of loss as this week’s. And, I’ll be free of the responsibilities that I’ve carried. Oh-so-minor compared to many people in this world… but these two bodies have been my life for these past 4 – 5 years!

Life after MCC-O-BOD…. what will it look like? I don’t know. I honestly wonder if I can truly have no role in life. I want to just step back and wait for that voice to speak to me again… to guide me into the next ministry.

Perhaps it already has. We have a Weekend Exercise to plan and put on in 2005. That’s going to take much of the first half of the year.

Then, I really am feeling a strong sense that I need to take the lead in taking an Excel weekend to Australia… and will shoot for 2006 for that.

It’s going to be an exciting time, if that really is what I decide to do.

That bible study the other night has been a fruitful source of contemplation for me these past few days.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn…”

It’s that “Seek my face” that has gotten my attention. It’s part of that Prayer Quest that we are called to join in. See, Moses asked to see God’s face, yet he was denied, and permitted only to see where God had gone before.. well, okay, specifically scripture says he was permitted only to see God’s backside.

I really believe that what we seek means that merely seeing God’s passing backside is insufficient. We need to truly be in God’s presence. That means we can only be satisfied by seeing the face of God.

I held back, not wanting to have to explain the answer that was bouncing off the padded walls of my mind. “Melding with the mind of God.” Frankly, I wasn’t sure what that meant anymore than the others would. It just shouted itself out to me the second I heard the question. I ended up offering that prayer was “a quest for God.”

That answer too, while I have a much better comprehension of it’s meaning, was vague and I’m glad I wasn’t asked to explore it more intensely. The scripture we read seemed to reinforce that.

But I kept coming back to “melding with the mind of God.”

I brought it up again yesterday in spiritual direction. Because, as I toyed with the phrase in my mind Wednesday and yesterday, I developed a distinction between MELDING and MERGING. I couldn’t explain it. But I had an inkling that there WAS a difference, and I was attempting to express that.

So, I did a simple dictionary search; I wasn’t too impressed with the outcome.

Some word paths I took in my quest, though, go like this.

When I tried to substitute Merge for Meld, I pictured a super-highway. Cars merge in from other highways, or from one lane to another. Later, those cars DIVERGE into other lanes, other highways. That sort of expresses my thoughts on prayer… but not really. When the car diverges from the super-highway onto another highway, nothing of the super-highway remains for that car. That’s not prayer.

Meld worked better… but I couldn’t really define that… I, being a bit of a Trekkie, kept thinking in terms of “the Vulcan Mind Meld”. ‘Cept, I’m not such a Trekkie that I can recite precisely what that is other than Vulcans could read other sentient minds. It’s hard to put this into the language of prayer for me.

You see, what I’m trying to express is that prayer is a process of coming into a deep and personal experience of the mind of God. While we can never KNOW the mind of God, there’s a sense in which we should be seeking to come to know, as much as possible, the Divine Presence.

So, I checked out Miriam Webster. The verb “meld” that I want gave me a lame definition of “blend of melt and weld”. Oh, now THAT’S helpful. But, it gave two synonyms…. MERGE and BLEND. Obviously I knew MERGE wouldn’t work. But BLEND hit’s the spot for me…”To combine or associate so that the separate constituents or the line of demarcation cannot be distinguished”.

Now you know what I mean… right? ;-}

Again, I don’t really believe that degree of mixing is possible between my mind (or anyone else’s) and God’s mind.

But I believe that’s the goal. To enter into the Divine Presence so thoroughly that my mind and that of God’s begins to lose it’s demarcation. Death for me brings the final opportunity to do that, and do it perfectly. We either do at death succeed in this melding or we are forever separated from God. And in the end, at that moment this final perfect melding is to occur, it’s nothing I do or have done that permits it but merely and utterly, the Will of God… the Mind of God which permits or refuses.

In the meantime, we search and seek to find the way that we can best meld with God. And each and every separation from that search, from that prayer, should leave us with some little bit of Divinity intact. When I break off prayer, I should do so acutely aware that some of the meld doesn’t break, that some addition to my being has occurred. I must leave prayer, changed.

Oddly enough, however, this does occur. And it’s a mini death process. First, I mean this in the sense that no degree of melding occurs unless the Divine Presence wills and invites it to occur. I can seek all I want, but I will not find unless willed/permitted to do so by the One Whom I Seek.

So, when we are not melding with the Mind of God in Prayer, our Prayer is a Quest for the Mind of God. I see, now, that these are two parts of the same process, the same act, known as prayer.

before proceeding.

First of all, on lost/forgotten logins mentioned in the previous post. Now, this makes me feel old. After 3 months unable to remember my login/password for this site, I tried out a combination, and it worked. What’s odd about that? It’s the same friggin’ login/password I use for 90% of my other locations. Just never tried it here. I dunno. Makes me feel so senile. old.

Secondly, I don’t know who I’m trying to fool by that previous post. I guess I want to feel like I could, if I wanted, fit into the world of the young gay men from Minneapolis I’ve been reading.

I can’t. I’m not old, but I’m certainly older than they; they live a life, that is different than the one I chose for myself. And the one I’m really happy with. They live in a world of “things to do” and “excitement”. I chose to live a nice, quiet life, in a nice, quiet relationship, in a nice, quiet house that I own, in a nice, quiet neighborhood, in a nice, quiet town, in a nice, quiet state, deep in the heartland of the USA.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Just don’t fault me from watching the younger folk living, what I imagine to be, a more exciting life in a more interesting city… even though it’s like watching life through a television screen… and yearning in some secret place, that I could live that life.

Sigh. For one who styles oneself “One Who Writes” I’ve fallen a little short. Perhaps I should have styled myself “One who fails to write”. Actually, I kind of forgot my login and password for a while. Comes from failing to write!

So what’s going on? I’ve been reading a lot of interesting blogs. Especially from a few guys up in Minneapolis. Sounds like life up there is fun! Guess if you like the cold, that is… ;}

Can’t believe how busy things are right now. Though I have to say, after reading Smitty’s blogs about hunting for a new place to live I should be thankful that’s nowhere near on my horizon! Taking care of the house I’m in is enough. My cats and dogs would hate to be put in so much turmoil.

In fact, I must say, after reading so many other peoples’ blogs that my life is really pretty boring… busy as it is! Oh, well, they’re all young and I’m not. I guess that’s one of the few perks of being young…. having an exciting life. Ah, to be young and gay again…. instead of old and gay. :-}