Christianity/Peace/Spirituality

Starbucks Log: The Green Ray

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

…in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. (an ancient Hebrew poet)

The light this morning was mysterious. Luminous and mesmerizing. This particular Starbucks window faces west so the sunrise is only implied. But this morning’s cast of a million shades of mauve kept me transfixed. And then it passed.

I’ve always wanted to see the green-ray. The green-ray is the very elusive flash of green light that some people say can be spotted at the very instant the sun dips below the horizon. It can last as long as a few seconds, a burst and fade, but it is usually only the length of a flash of lightening. It appears as a vertical beam, like a search light or lighthouse, or like a "magnificent emerald" a quarter the size of the sun.

The likely hood of seeing it is, well, slight. The chances increase while watching a sunset from an ocean beach. But like everything else, the "atmospheric" conditions need to be right.

I’ve never seen it, but I’ll keep trying. There’s something about seeing a rare beautiful thing. It adds to the stock of permanence and meaning. Which is also a part of all this mesmerizing movement and change. A grand paradox.

In the meantime I’m content with a mauve morning.

Cape Breton sunset – PEI is some place over the horizon
sunrays

We are tough, tenacious, tender and translucent soul-bodies who contain within ourselves a million subtleties of colour and shadow. We add to each other when we show our colours and shadows. We add, and we move on.

A Starbucks lady just gave me a caramel latte sample. We add, and we move on.

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Beauty/Christianity/Peace/Spirituality

Desacralization

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Evil intent, slander, false witness,…these are what defile a person; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile." (Matthew 15)

What do I try to sacralize that should be left as (simply) human, secular?

hiking at dusk in cornwall
hiking at dusk

In my zeal to divinize the mundane world, do I keep the old dualisms alive?

Why not simply sink into the world and wash my hands in its warm black soil?

ephphatha bench
snowbench

Is it important to distinguish sacred from profane? Or are these false categories? …categories that remain alive only as long as I am not fully on (one) side, rather split in two by both.

Healy Ford Rabbit
rabbit

Why not be earthed and alive in the buzzing and blooming of this wondrous world? Why not burst into flame?

I can, and do, come closer to God through attentively eating dandelions and drinking spring water, or smoking a cigar and drinking red wine than through pious praying.

Jesus desacralized the world. And in doing so, exposed our dis-ease as the result of a disordered, shrivelled, acquisitive desire.

on a waskesau trail
Hikingwaskesau

A spiritual life after all, is simply a secular life fully lived.

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Christianity/Peace/Religion/Violence

Cursing Fig Tree’s and Pitching Mountains

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Consider this a possible continuation of yesterdays post. (For the most part, I’m indebted to James Alison for the following.)

When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it. (Mark 11)

I heard a sermon several months ago where the pastor made the point that Jesus was not knocking temple sacrifice, or the Temple per se, just the exploitation of people buying the animals to be sacrificed.

But think about this. In Mark’s account of the days surrounding the Jerusalem entrance, Jesus comes to the city, enters the Temple, and just looks around and leaves. The next day on his way back to Jerusalem from Bethany, he curses the barren fig tree, then proceeds to the Temple, clears it out, and leaves the city again. The next morning on the way back again Peter points out to Jesus that the "cursed" tree has withered and Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you."

Winter birch with nest in Chickakoo Lake Park
barrentree

I was always confused by the succession of these apparently disparate events and the strange fig-tree subplot. I mean, really, Jesus, first casing the Temple, then, on his way back the next day, wanting figs out of season, he curses the poor tree. Then (perhaps surly and obviously hungry) he rousts the "robbers" from the temple. And then the following day the withered fig tree comes in handy for a teaching on prayer…yes, on faith and prayer, but illustrated by pitching a mountain into the sea?

But now, try reading this succession of events with a non-sacrificial frame of reference. That is, where the Temple is viewed as I believe Jesus viewed it, with indifference at best but more likely as an obstacle to the Kingdom; not just because of it’s notorious ways of exclusion and faction-making inherent in the sacrificial system, but because the true Temple is now here.

Well, when read like this the whole thing comes together. The just-looking-around-indifference to the Temple, then the fig tree (think Temple metaphor) cursing, "may no one eat fruit from you again", then the cleansing as the inclusion of "all nations" and ability to pray "whenever". And the prayer teaching on hurling the mountain into the sea? Well, what makes more sense when the "mountain" in question is the "mount" that the Temple was built on? There’s a good chance that that "mountain" was in view of the fig tree.

As James Alison said, "From now on the Temple is wherever ordinary human beings are engaged together in prayer, in treating each other in a way which builds up, and wherever they are together undoing the world of violent sacrifice."

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Christianity/Peace/Religion

Temple Fascination and Relocation

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

(I was prompted to write this after Len’s comment a few posts ago about our too often exclusivist Christianity.)

Did you know that the rivalrous fascination surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem spawns a "news item" somewhere in the world almost every day? In fact there is a Temple Mount News site which is a kind of clearing house dedicated to all Temple News all the time.

It’s not my experience to know the depth of attachment that a Jew or Moslem may have for this ancient site. For my part whoever wants the Dome of Rock/Temple Mount can have it. I’m unconcerned. (Except of course over the violence that this "holy" site continues to foment.) No, what concerns me is Christian fascination with the Temple.

Let’s see…the Wailing Wall, Dome of Rock, Temple Mount…Oy Vey!
Wallanddome

This is particularly the case with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who because of dispensationalist or "end times" theology, believe that the Jewish people will build the Third Temple shortly before, or perhaps after, "true" Christians have been raptured, and just before the introduction of a popularly accepted messiah-figure, who of course is really the anti-Christ…and so on. (Oh, and then there’s the Millennial Temple prophesied by Ezekiel that will also be built.) So in the battle of who gets Temple real-estate Christians cheer for the Jews.

Jesus would have been part of no group–cheering, jeering or otherwise. So detached, so entirely free from temple-fascination was he, "that he was able to act out the prophetic gesture of the cleansing of the Temple thus making present an understanding of Jeremiah 7 and, more importantly of Zechariah 14, where there are no longer any traders in the house of the Lord "on that day" (James Alison).

Now of course Zechariah was still caught up in the cult of (temple) sacrifice but the trajectory of his prophecy is clear. "On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem…"

The "on-that-day" had come. Jesus’ clearing out the traders would have helped signal that. But the full revelation of his coming was only beginning to be sensed. Jesus’ opening of the Temple to "all nations" essentially nullified everything about the Temple. No more who’s in and who’s out. No more sacred and profane (literally, "outside the temple"). And no concern about whether the Temple stood or fell.

And if we didn’t catch the hints and implications about all this in the other Gospels, John makes it explicit. The Temple’s new location is Jesus’ body. The Jesus who desires mercy and not sacrifice, who has no party, belongs to no faction, just makes room for all, even we who exclude him by excluding others.

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