Render Unto Caesar

In his book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman interprets the life of Jesus as a story about how to survive and thrive as an oppressed person.  I'm taking a course specifically focused on Thurman, taught by the remarkable Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake.  Last week he said something that has had me thinking a lot about my own ministry and work in the world.

Dorsey was talking about the idea that it is easy to deceive ourselves, to stray from the path of our heart and soul with the compromises of success.
We rationalize:

I will just take this job (this raise, this promotion) but only to

gain the power or money I need to do the good work I plan to do.  

We compromise and slowly drift away until we no longer remember who what our values were.  This is one of the things Thurman is talking about in this book.

The Buddha Doesn't Need Your Incense

In discussing the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh was asked if Buddhists worship the Buddha.  His answer, which addresses one of my big questions here in seminary, is basically this:  We do not worship the Buddha, but we honor him as a model of the perfection we strive to achieve.  We leave offerings and burn incense to the Buddha, not for his sake but because the ritual act allows us to be more mindfully present about our spiritual selves and the path we are on.  We engage the entity known as the Buddha to help us understand how to walk on our own path.  The Buddha is not reliant on our attentions.  In fact, the Buddha is essential and unchanging, so our attention or inattention have no impact on him whatsoever.

In essence, "The buddha doesn't need your incense."

Desire for a Monastic Experience

After returning to the West Coast this last January, I expected to see my friends a lot more.  When I was in New York, I missed them all a great deal.  I knew as I started seminary, I would be a little caught up in the cultural and lifestyle changes that come with a new community and new challenge, but I figured that would fade after awhile.  It hasn't.

Public Theology

Earlier in the month, I took a week long intensive course with Dr. Hubert Locke called Speaking Truth to Power.  The class was about public theology, which Dr. Locke defined as what happens when a religious leader speaks, not to their congregation, but to the greater public about political issues of the day. Rooted in their spiritual knowledge and authority, historically this happened in Op-Ed pieces or letters to the editor. Classic examples of public theologians are folks like Reinhold Niebuhr or Martin Luther King, Jr.  The public theologian is alive and well today, though there has been a shift away from the slowly declining print media.  Now you are more like to find her blogging.

Summer Reading

I am spending my summer reading books on Buddhism and Islam in hopes that I can gain a general introduction to these two religious traditions. The books on Buddhism include three by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, a famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk who practices Zen Buddhism.  He is a talented and prolific writer who is well known for speaking clearly about Buddhism to a western audience and finding ways to show the ties between Buddhism and Christianity.  I am reading "The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings", "Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers" and "Living Buddha, Living Christ".

Living in the Now

Today is June 4th and I am putting on socks because my feet are cold.  It's summer in Berkeley and while the sun is shining and the birds are singing, there have been strong winds today and the temp has dropped to the high 50's this evening.

This might not seem like a big deal to you, but after living in New York for the first time last year, the idea of being cold enough to put on extra clothes in June is almost ludicrous.  Not twelve months ago I remember being hotter than I have ever been, surviving the humidity of a New York summer living pressed up against my air conditioning unit. This fat girl from California was simply not built for humidity and New York City let me know it.

Potential Energy and The Spark of Life

Fire is an important element of this holiday.

Happy Beltane!!

I had the opportunity this Beltane to be part of a class centering moment.  This week's focus in our Christian Worship class is on the liturgical year and, as the calendar would have it, it landed exactly on May 1st.  So as I gathered with my fellow students (all of whom are Christian), we talked about how to center the class and bring in this discussion about my pagan holiday.


We eventually settled on a very simple lay out.  We started with a Christian song we sang in a round, followed by a scripture reading, and lastly I spoke and then guided the class in a pagan song.  One of my fellow group members liked the idea of creating a trajectory from God to Goddess, but I struggled with that, both because of the dualism and the fact that I didn't really want to talk about the Goddess.  We talk enough about the Goddess at PSR.  I wanted to talk about the Spark of Life.

The Pagan Eucharist??

Would it surprise you to know that many pagan traditions have an aspect to our rituals that is very much like the Eucharist?  For the pagans out there, have you ever considered how similar Cakes and Ale is both symbolically and physically to the tradition of Christian Communion?  In yet another installment of my current seminary inspired series, "Hey!  We do that!  Wait, you do that too??", I figured it was time to talk about the Eucharist.

Marcia McFee's Four Patterns of Worship Energy

Pulling from the world of kinesiology, Marcia McFee has developed a system for talking about the different kinds of energy that we experience in worship services.  Broken down into four categories - Thrust, Shape, Swing, and Hang - we can get a feeling for how different services are structured and why different kinds of religious experiences feel right to one person but wrong to another.

Ministry as Vocation Conference

This last October I was invited to join the Admissions staff at the Pacific School of Religion to spend a weekend staying on campus, learning about their programs, and sitting in a sacred space of discernment.  The admissions office was so interested in having me come find out if PSR was a good fit for me that they gave me free room and board for the weekend and even helped pay part of my airfare from New York.