Green Eggs & Ham?

 "I do not like green eggs and ham, Sam-I-Am!" 

     This fall I began offering a program called "Beans in a Cup". Developed by a former chaplain (The Rev. Dr. Timothy Moore), it is an interactive program centered around religious diversity, both nationally and on campus, as well as students' experience with religion.  It is heavily data-informed, from multiple national and local polls/surveys. Questions range from "How many Americans pray regularly?" to "What's the percentage of students who claim [religion x] as their tradition?" Attendees then "vote" their answer by putting a bean in one of eleven cups ranging from 0% to 100%. Conversation commences with the prompt: "Why do you think that?" Often the answer to that question has to do with limited experience of "the other" (such as "My high school was very mono-cultural").
      In addition to the "percentage" questions, there are also a number of True/False questions. These tend to be less "tricky" (since many of the students reflect the answers). But one question I really love discussing is:  "In general, exploring your faith while, also, exploring and interacting with other faiths makes you less faithful to your own tradition."   The answer (I hope you know) is "False". Again, I always ask "Why do you think that?" when the answer is confirmed. The responses usually center around two main ideas. First, putting one's own tradition in conversation with another often reveals common themes, which can strengthen one's security in their own thinking. And, second, putting one's own tradition in conversation with another can evoke the realization that "Gee, I never thought about it that way!"
       Part of the reason I love asking that particular question is that I have heard, from more than one sector of the religious world (and truth be told, most often from parents), that if students are exposed to another tradition, they might flee "home" and convert. Clearly the data (i.e., the self-reported experience of university students) indicates otherwise! Asking the question, and the resultant discussion, also gives me the opportunity to encourage exploration!

Would you? Could you? In a car?
Eat them! Eat them! Here they are. 

        Today, I am also going to encourage exploration! This evening we begin our first Religious Awareness Week at DU. A dream of mine for some time, we're finally able to offer a wide variety of opportunities for folks to explore something new, religiously. You can worship with Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Bakhti and Muslim friends. You can hear varying perspectives on how different faith traditions have undergone, or are undergoing "reformation". You can recount what kind of personal "reformations" you've experience, religious or otherwise. You can even post your "thesis" for reform on a red door (and see what others think!). A full schedule of events can be found here; you're bound to find something you may like!

Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!
And I would eat them in a boat. And I would eat them with a goat...
and I will eat them in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree. They are so good, so good, you see!
So I will eat them in a box. And I will eat them with a fox.
And I will eat them in a house. And I will eat them with a mouse.
And I will eat them here and there. Say! I will eat them ANYWHERE!
I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you! Thank you, Sam-I-am!*

Namasté

Gary

*From Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss (1960). Text retrieved from http://www.thebestclass.org/uploads/5/6/2/4/56249715/green_eggs_and_ha1.pdf

A True Reality Show

     Sometime in the last week or so a Facebook post hit my "News Feed" that I wish I could relocate! The gist was that the individual had received a box (part of a monthly subscription service, I guess) containing a bunch of random objects . . . as well as a suggestion that the objects be used to create another "thing."  Imagine, for example, receiving a paper clip, a scrunchie, a pencil, a plastic spoon, a foot of braided cord, and a golf ball. The instructions:  "Replicate C3PO".  It reminded me of the reality cooking show -- "Chopped" -- where the guest chefs are given a number of ingredients and told to use them all in the creation of a three-course meal. The winner is the one who can imaginatively put together kit-lats, kale, kumquats, (k)lams, and kool-ade.
      One of the points, it seems to me, of both these exercises is that the "assembler" -- whether craft-er or cook-er -- has to suspend a bit of prejudicial logic and engage in a lot of creativity.  "Who would EVER pair a paper clip and a golf ball?" "Who would cook clams and kit-lats . . . together?"  Yet the assumption in both cases is that it is possible.  And, sometimes, the outcome is quite amazing (well, at least in some of the menus). Who knew? E pluribus unum!
      As I ruminated on the "craft-of-the-month" and "Chopped", I saw them both as metaphors for our common life. Another, more immediate metaphor -- the human body -- has been used for centuries in this regard. Aristotle, for example, writing of the 'body politic" notes that all parts are critically important:  "since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand."* In the context of the expansion of early Christianity beyond its Jewish roots, the apostle Paul made great use of the metaphor in a letter to the church at Corinth (I Corinthians 12.14-20):

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.  If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many members, yet one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

It is fairly easy to relate these teachings to our current national sets of debates. We have competing visions of how a "whole" should look, and have had them since . . . well, at least, Aristotle and Paul's time.
       It is easy to look to the larger stage. But I found myself also looking at my daily life. I encounter, over and over again, situations and people NOT of my choosing. My knee-jerk reaction is to discount those that do not conform to my predilections or preconceived notions of "appropriate" or "acceptable". But, if I expand my idea of what might be my "body", I open myself up to some potential growth.  Encounters of any kind, according to process philosophers, inevitably change us. The challenge is to point that change in a positive, fruitful, rich, direction. The challenge is not a box of ingredients that arrives once a month, or on stage in front of the cameras. It is with us all the time . . . a true reality show.

Namasté

Gary

* Politics, Book I, Pt. 2

Annoyance => Curiosity

      October 5th was . . . wait for it . . . Rocky Mountain Oyster Day*! (Well, you may NOT be waiting for it! I'm still not sure if I'll be observing it next year . . .). I had no idea that that was the case until I read about it in the article linked above. And, it seems, there was a good reason. The day didn't become designated as such until THIS YEAR!
      The establishment of a day devoted to this Colorado delicacy was the labor-of-love (?) of Denver Post contributor Allyson Reedy. As a food-writer, she says she got annoyed by all of the "national food days" she was constantly being asked to cover. But, as she told interviewer Ryan Warner in a Colorado Matters segment, that annoyance turned into curiosity -- curiosity about how "national food days" were established. I will leave it to the "curious" reader/listener to learn that process! What really interested me in Ms. Reedy's interview was her transition from annoyance to curiosity.
      My immediate thought was that most of us experience some different sort of transition when faced with an annoying situation/person:  from annoyance to anger; from annoyance to belittlement; from annoyance to avoidance. For some reason, however, Ms. Reedy chose to "lean in to" her annoyance, and transform it. (Note: Ms. Reedy confesses in her interview that, prior to this year's Rocky Mountain Oyster Day, she had never HAD one of the "oysters". So her efforts were NOT based on her appreciation for the delicacy.) Her annoyance => curiosity led her to learn a lot about many things. It was not the same outcome as a dead-end annoyance =>avoidance.
       As often happens for me, listening to the podcast coincided with another encounter, this one with a text attributed to the fourth-century Syrian Christian St. Ephraem: "[Y]our word, Lord, has many shades of meaning just as those who study it have many different points of view."** As I considered Ephraem's words, I mused that the variety of interpretations of ANY word can be both a good thing and a bad thing.  On the negative side, multiple interpretations "mess with the truth" -- at least the "truth" as we understand it. Annoyance here begets, I suspect, belittlement and/or avoidance. I think of the old phrase "America: Love it or Leave it!" -- it all depends on how one understands "America".
       On the plus side, however, multiple interpretations can broaden our understanding. Anyone who has engaged in translating one language to another recognizes that most words in one language resist easy equivalency in another. Translators must make a choice (at least if they want their translation to flow), recognizing that that choice is probably inadequate. Readers may not like the choice and, as above, can (a) belittle, or (b) avoid. Or they can do a bit more digging (c) to find out more of the nuances of the translation; and/or (d) to understand more about the author's stance. Either of the possibilities "c" or "d" can lead to growth of understanding and, perhaps appreciation. Possibilities "a" or "b" will most likely lead to animosity.
        May we learn to translate annoyance into curiosity. (Gentle reader, you may solve the question of Rocky Mountain Oysters in the privacy of your own heart.)

Namasté

Gary

* Yes, for those foodies in the know, it was also National Apple Betty Day -- but that doesn't make for such a good opening line!
** From The Tao of Jesus: A Book of Days for the Natural Year, edited by John Beverley Butcher (Harper Collins, 1984), 334.

Bless who? What?

     Many years ago, when I was in seminary (training to become an Episcopal priest), one of my professors bemoaned some of our culture's practices of "blessing". Certainly clergy are called upon (or empowered) to invoke God's blessing at various significant moments (such as at baptisms or weddings). But, in his opinion, that practice had gone a bit too far. Examples he raised were the "blessing of the fleet", or the "blessing of the hounds" (before a fox hunt) -- "We're blessing dogs to kill a fox?". The particular blessing that occasioned his harangue was that of a grave at a funeral. His comment: "Now they've got us blessing holes in the ground! We're blessing an absence of dirt!"
      Ever since then, I've wondered about the process/practice of blessing -- who is blessing who/what and why? For example, many of us, regardless of religious leanings, might say "Bless you!" when someone sneezes. Why? While the "HowStuffWorks" website provides a good historical background for this practice, the reason I'd always heard was that the respondent was wishing the sneezer well for "sneezing the devil/demon out". But an even more puzzling distinction, at least to me, is the distinction between blessing God for something (many Jewish prayers begin with a blessing of God) as opposed to asking God to bless something (such as the implied request in "God Bless America").
      This "pondering" on my part was occasioned anew recently when I heard that the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops* had its annual gathering in Alaska. While they gathered for a variety of reasons, one chief focus of their time together was to talk about environmental and racial justice. I, for one, am very glad that they were focusing on those issues! And part of what a portion of them did, while there, in line with that focus was to "bless" the land/water.
      Again, I'm very much in favor of their drawing attention to issues of environmental justice, especially in Alaska! (As an angler and environmentalist, I'm concerned about the potential development of the Pebble Mine near Bristol Bay, and the impact that mine will have on an amazing salmon fishery.) But I found something a little odd with a bunch of folks "blessing" land/water that, in the words of Genesis, God had already decided was "good" (1.9-10). Yes, symbolic action is important (just consider how the symbolic action of "taking a knee" has taken over the national attention). And I can see that bishops blessing the land/water is a counterpart to other peoples' pollution and degradation of the land/water.
       But I can't help but think that we have the "blessing" thing backwards, especially when it comes to the earth (and I don't just mean Episcopalians or any other people of faith). At least the Abrahamic traditions assert that the earth was blessed by God in creation, and humans are the beneficiaries and stewards of that blessed earth. We continue to be blessed by the earth despite our misuse of it. Perhaps what we really need to do is develop a ceremony of (1) receiving that blessing, (2) repentance of our misappropriation of that blessing, and (3) commitment to honor that blessing. We are blessed by, not those who bless, the land and water.

Namasté

Gary

* Bishops, in the Episcopal Church, are the chief clergy members in a diocese -- a geographical area. The "House of Bishops" is the aggregate of those bishops in the United States.