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#2323 -
This issue features three columns by Bob
Lively that have appeared in The Statesman.
"Bob Lively is the chaplain at Austin
Recovery (
and working families. He teaches on Sunday evenings at St.
Matthew's Episcopal Church."
His articles and sermons direct people
to surrender to God, express love, look within, and get out of
their own way. He encourages diversity and points out where the
politicization of Christianity is anti-diversity.
Bob Lively has written books and has
audio tapes online. A Google search of his name will reveal more.
--Jerry
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/auto/epaper/editions/saturday/life_entertainment_3436e14e31a962c80065.html
Bob Lively: Being
a Christian means denial of self
Having God on your side doesn't mean he is taking
sides.
I've heard it said that evangelism is selling a dream.
However, from where I sit watching the passing parade, we
Christians appear to be more divided than the tip of a
snake's tongue as to exactly what it is we are peddling. The humble and loving Jesus I read about in the New
Testament invites any who would follow him to deny the
self -- to put aside the ego's agenda before taking the
first step in what the church calls discipleship.
Consequently, following Jesus requires that we die to the
self we created out of necessity in childhood, and have
both promoted and defended vigorously for the whole of
our lives. Believe me, dying to our beloved egos is no
small challenge. In fact, before we can do this, we must
first decide to place our trust wholly in the mystery
that is God, instead of relying entirely upon our wits in
our pursuit of power, approbation, status and the symbols
of success. The Apostle Paul calls "new creations" those
who have effectively died to the selves they once cobbled
together. The fact is that these souls have been so
humbled by the power of grace that it would not likely
dawn on them to mention to anyone that they had been born
again. That's because a big part of what it means to
experience any authentic spiritual transformation is to
give up the need to draw attention to one's self. These enlightened folks are so invested in getting out
of their own way that they have no interest in being
heard from, much less admired. They appear content to let
the spirit that is love speak through them and because of
this, their foremost expression is peace. Simply put,
their lives have become the antithesis of the fear that
drives the rest of us to garner some recognition and
perhaps even a little praise. St. Francis once said, "Our walking anywhere to
preach is in vain unless our walking is our
preaching." Every transformed man or woman I've ever
encountered has dared to walk the talk with such
integrity that his or her life has become a sermon
proclaimed without words. However, many Christians have made it their goal to
win as much political power as possible as they seek to
impose their judgmental world view upon every level of
municipal, state and federal government. These people say
they are dedicated to following Jesus but, ironically,
Christ resisted every attempt to politicize his message. Because these folks don't seem much interested in
introspection and the humility that comes from being in
awe of one's own dire need for grace, they have yet to
discover that love, and not coercion, is the solution to
every human problem. They remain so convinced that God is
on their side that it seldom dawns on them that being
right, or winning an argument, is not what it means to be
spiritual. And yet those who have dared to become a "new
creation" know that expressing love is always
consistent with God's will. This appears to be the age of born-again Christianity
where many (but certainly not all) evangelicals have
turned their innate fear of cultural diversity into a
strident political theology that advances a worldview
that excludes, or worse, condemns those whom they view as
different from themselves. But how can God not love diversity when it is God who
made us all so different? All good spirituality,
regardless of the religious tradition out of which it is
expressed, not only accepts diversity but celebrates it
as evidence of God's goodness. Yet every fear-based religion ever invented remains
what it has been ever since our spiritual ancestors were
evicted from the garden -- the best means possible to
avoid walking with God. |
:
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/life_entertainment_34f4756b21f012b10085.html
Bob Lively: Faith To obtain peace,
we must first look within
Some declare they want peace, yet in the
next breath condemn those
who would make war. Such an expression is
evidence of the ego's
startling ineptness when it comes to
grasping matters of the spirit.
For if the ego desires anything, even peace,
it knows no serenity
because by definition, desire is yearning,
and this is serenity's
antithesis. The act of condemnation eclipses
the essence of the Holy
Spirit, a power sufficiently gracious to
accept every soul and
cherish those who would oppose its purposes
by prosecuting conflict.
"Disarmament begins within," the
Dalai Lama proclaims.
"What lies before us and what lies
behind us are small matters
compared to what lies within us," Henry
David Thoreau said. "And when
we bring what is within us to the world,
miracles happen."
I say that what we might bring to this world
would be far less than a
miracle if we are not willing to be
transformed, or in the words of
necessarily cobble together to survive is
every bit as
self-interested as a 2-year-old clutching a
new chocolate bar; and
until we know another way, we will want only
our way and we will
strive for triumph and recognition even if
we leave others lying
wounded.
Winning is not only the ego's agenda, but
also its god. It becomes,
in the words of theologian Paul Tillich,
"its ultimate concern" or
that which it secretly worships. The ego
inquires as to the
requirements of inner peace as though this
great blessing is
something to achieve in the way one might
earn an advanced degree.
However, serenity can never be earned; it is
received as a gift
possessing the power to transform the human
soul from reflexively
self-defended to meek and willingly
vulnerable. In fact, the meeker
the soul becomes, the more profound the
peace it expresses.
So we must pray for three blessings: (1) the
willingness to trust God
far more than we trust in our own clever
strategies; (2) the strength
to surrender several times daily our
habituated need to win, or to be
perceived as right, and/or to be in control
over what is not ours to
control; and (3) the wisdom to know that
expressing love, no matter
the circumstances, is always right and
supersedes every other
possible response.
Earnest prayer ushers in the humility that
serves as the requisite
for all true transformation, and any time a
once-hardened soul is
made malleable by power of grace, the Holy
Spirit is free to work.
The result is an inner peace whose purpose
is to express nothing
other than itself.
The ego might attempt to mimic
reconciliation, but all real
peacemaking is the consequence of
transformation. Until the soul
experiences this turnabout, it will express
nothing more than the
silliness of a religion made superficial by
its need to impress the
world, all in the name of God.
Love is all that is eternal, but don't
expect the ego to understand
this. Its compulsion to win is far too great
for it to pause long
enough to pray, much less to hear the spirit
whisper the
not-so-wonderful news that the ego must die
before the spirit can
take root. Jesus was not all that concerned
with religion, but he was
passionate about the condition of one's
soul, and this is why he
said, "There is nothing outside a
person that by going in can defile,
but the things that come out are what
defile."
Until serenity consumes us, we will make war
and not know why; but
once our souls belong to the spirit, we will
not only make peace, we
will actually become its expression. And
then we will know what it
means to be truly alive.
Three years ago, my brother drove our father to the hospital
to undergo surgery. Unbeknown to us at the time, but likely not
to him, he would leave this life eight weeks later and we -- his
sons and wife -- would grieve with a depth of pain we had never
before experienced.
Our father was so cherished and of such great importance to us
that we could not begin to imagine what our lives would be like
without him and his ebullient spirit, his infectious sense of
humor, his wisdom, his exemplary integrity, his unbridled
curiosity and his rarest of gifts, the ability to express love in
everything he did.
Sometime after his death, my mother told me that the night
before his surgery, he reclined in his chair and became
uncharacteristically silent. She watched as he folded his strong
farm-boy hands as if he were about to pray. He'd never prayed out
loud before, except when he was offering words of gratitude for a
meal she had prepared. Though her eyes had long been blinded by
disease, she knew how to read him like a book and wisely intuited
that the moment they were about to share required of her a
silent, loving empathy.
No doubt, she could not bear to admit that this precious
moment would be the last intimate conversation they would share
together in the sanctity of their home. After all, they'd been
sharing heart-to-heart and soul-to-soul almost since the day she
walked into his principal's office in Groveton in search of a
teaching position.
He hired her on the spot, because, as he liked to tell us, she
was every bit as beautiful as she was brilliant. Four months
later they were married, a union that brought into this world
four grateful, if a bit mischievous sons. And from the beginning,
our mother and father would teach us that the expression of an
authentic, no-nonsense love is not only this life's highest
privilege but also the foremost reason why we are on this planet.
After he folded his hands on that night three years ago, my
mother heard him sigh. A flood of tears flowed shamelessly down
his cheeks as more emotion than he knew what to do with filled
his throat. I imagine him retrieving the handkerchief that he was
never without. No doubt he wiped his eyes and blew his nose hard,
so as to purchase sufficient time to make his voice ready to
speak what he knew needed to be said. And then he spoke with
clarity what he absolutely knew he had to say while there was
still time.
As my grief-stricken mother likely leaned toward him to make
certain she heard, he summarized his eight-plus decades in a
simple declaration. "I have joy," he said. There can be
no doubt that he knew his life was all but done and his
face-to-face encounter with God was imminent, and yet he was
neither sad nor afraid. Instead he described the spiritual gift
that attends a life well lived in these three unforgettable
words: "I have joy!"
In 83 years of life he traveled from being a dirt-poor
sharecropper's son to a living legend in his profession. The
success he enjoyed brought him both an enormous sense of
satisfaction and no small amount of financial gain. Nevertheless,
it was his uncommon willingness to offer and to receive love that
blessed as he blessed us.
Scripture teaches that joy comes in the morning, but three
years ago this week, in a house in North Dallas, it also came in
the night to a man who knew as well as it can be known what it
means to make of one's life a consistent and beautiful expression
of love.