Tears are the highest form of prayer…thoughts for September 11, 2011

                                     There’s a feeling inside
                                     That stirs our madness
                                     To have chosen life
                                     In the fields of sadness

(Trail of Tears, Anonymous, Cherokee)

The calamity of September 11 is still too big for our minds to encompass, and too deep for our hearts to fathom. It is remarkable not because of the number of lives lost or the cunning of the attackers. Tragically, far larger numbers have perished in other settings, and humankind has never lacked for ingenuity in the methods of destruction. “9-11” irrevocably altered our perceptions of humankind, good and evil, religion, and life itself. Particularly at the World Trade Center in New York City on that fateful day, the vertical dimension of human hope intersected with the horizontal plain of human reality.

Those twin towers had burrowed deeply into the earth even as they reached imposingly into the sky. They rose up from the ground of our past. They pointed to a vision for our future. They embodied an audacious modernity—technologically, economically, aesthetically, and spirituality. They pointed to an organizing principle for a whole civilization—not conquest, beauty or mystery, but trade.

But buried beneath them lay another important part of our history. On September 11, 1609 Henry Hudson “discovered” Manhattan Island for an expansive European civilization. Hudson’s arrival was the beginning of a succession of immigrations that changed the island forever. The children of the children of these immigrants dug deeply into this earth, and raised shimmering towers into the sky.

More than 550 generations across twelve millennia have inhabited the same land on which the World Trade Center stood. For those “First Nations” people, the arrival of European explorers would prove more disastrous than this more recent tragedy. In the fifty years that followed Hudson’s arrival, the population of the Metoac people alone fell from 10,000 to less than 500 due to the combined effects of warfare and epidemics. “Native peoples of the Americas have lived on intimate terms with the shadow of terrorism,” wrote Tia Oros (Zuni) in The Burning Sky. Terrorism “has fed on us with a ravenous appetite for our peoples and our lands for centuries…”

If the vertical dimension is embedded deeply in the soil of our history, it also rises into the stratosphere of our expectations. The WTC embodied the vision of a world that is radically interdependent and interconnected, and a world at peace. It was the progressive and secular dream of advancing prosperity and increasing affluence worldwide. Expanding trade, driven by accelerating flows of information, capital, technology and other resources, would create new norms. New institutions, uninhibited by the values of long-established cultures, would improve the quality of life and increase opportunities for everyone.

This dream of global trade and increasing affluence was present in an embryonic form even in Hudson’s 1609 trade mission financed by Dutch merchants. It has been an engine of incredible material improvement worldwide. It is transforming every corner of the world and raising expectations of people everywhere. But sadly, not everyone has benefited. Many are left on the sidelines. The pursuit of this dream has been accompanied by genocide, slavery, exploitation and the impairment of the biosphere itself.

There are spiritual lessons to be learned on this 10th anniversary of the attacks. The attacks may have germinated in perpetually festering grievances, but they were carried to fruition in the name of God and carried the apparent sanction of a segment of organized religion. With Henrietta Mann, a Montana professor, Cheyenne elder and herself a descendent of a brutalized people, we struggle to understand "how anyone could be so diabolical to strategize and plan for such wholesale destruction.” The world’s religious communities must engage in the deepest soul searching. We cannot simply disclaim terrorism and violence as “distortions” or “abuses” of otherwise genuinely religious impulses. We must identify the pathology of violence for what it is, and purge those things in our respective traditions that contribute to the world’s stockpile of hatred. The greatest tragedy for us will be if we become more vengeful, mean-spirited and small-minded, if we lose touch with our compassionate souls.

“The terrorists themselves had lost hold of the greater spirituality within life long before they killed themselves and many others,” wrote Rebecca Adamson (Cherokee), the founder of First Nations Development Institute. “From this time forward we must cultivate a more profound understanding of the sacred." This will be humankind’s greatest counterweight to evil deeds and endless violence.

To the indigenous peoples who were displaced, the very ground on which the WTC was built has been hallowed anew by the more recent tragedy. “All earth is sacred, but perhaps among the most sacred ground in the United States is the site of the former World Trade Center,” said Ms. Mann. Encouraged by tribes across the continent, she and Arvol Looking Horse, Pipe Carrier for the Lakota Nation, were the first to perform rituals and prayers at the site of the devastation. Mann prayed for the healing of the earth, and for the people working in the pit. “I prayed for the great-grandchildren of our great-grandchildren, that they will never experience a tragedy of this kind…I cried during the ceremony. Tears are the highest form of prayer.”

The Apostle Paul once wrote, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in these words, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Romans 13:8-10) From a First Nations perspective, love begins in the simple acknowledgment that “We are all related.”

Love repents when repentance is called for. Love seeks reconciliation rather than retaliation. Love seeks the higher path of justice for all parties in conflict. If a resort to arms cannot be avoided, love proceeds with reluctance and anguish, always trying to find a peaceful alternative.

In the Cherokee poem, Trail of Tears, it is said that “a broken heart beats like a funeral drum.” Today let us hear the world’s broken heart. Let us respond to our own pain and grief, and to the fear and sorrow in the world, by affirming our sacred connections to all.

Encountering Jesus in a Pluralistic Age

 I recently received a package in the mail. It contained a stark, gloomy painting of three men hanging on three gruesome crosses on a bleak and lifeless hill. I myself had painted it when I was a child; it was being returned to me by a friend who inherited it from her father, my childhood pastor.

The man on the middle cross was the Christ I grew up with. Intellectually I may have understood that Love was present at Golgotha, but the painting captures better than any words the tone of my childhood faith: my sin was the direct cause of the horrendous torture and death of the most perfect person to walk on this earth. My ‘chestnuts’ were pulled from the fire only at the last minute with His resurrection, but I still was liable until I repented, “believed”, and gave my life to Him.

For Christians, of course, there is truth in this familiar narrative. But it truly was a religion about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus. “Believing in Him” had less to do with his Sermon on the Mount than with his death on the cross. (No one saw a connection between the two.) We made little effort to understand how Jesus lived, how he saw the world, or how he came of age. We never asked ourselves from whence had come his extraordinary consciousness, what role the Shema of Judaism played in his spiritual formation, or from what wells he had drawn his Wisdom. Did his words really mean what our elders told us they meant? I needed to ask these questions.

When I first became seriously involved in interfaith work, I admit that I felt some trepidation. My faith had been forged in settings where the Christian Bible (usually the King James Version) was considered the inspired and literal Word of God. Christ was the answer to every question; Jesus was the only begotten Son of God and the Savior of the world. “Believing in Him” was the key to Eternal Life. There was no other way - not Jewish, not Buddhist, not Native American, not even most other Christian denominations. Even science was suspect.

If this is one’s worldview, then the most compassionate stance toward others is evangelical – to help them to see how their faith is incomplete until it is fulfilled in Christian belief and practice.

As I sat down with my Islamic or Hindu colleagues, I feared two things. Either I would come across as dogmatic and arrogant, or I would lose my faith altogether. It took many respectful encounters with loving practitioners from other traditions before I became comfortable in these settings. It took many years before I realized the profound paradox at the heart of genuine interreligious encounter: the more deeply I enter into the dialogue of mind and heart with others, the more real my own faith becomes. The more I appreciate the truth of other traditions, the more I cherish my own. The more I put myself in a position to learn from other faiths, the more expansive my own faith becomes, and the more spacious is my spiritual home.

This class is for people like me. It is for those who are eager, as one theologian famously said, “to meet Jesus again for the first time”. It is for those who are willing to put aside old wine skins to taste new wine, who are adventurous enough to step out from the comfort of received tradition and step into an intense global conversation. It is for those who can live courageously without final answers, and engage in a conversation with no end in sight.

This class is primarily for Christians. Adherents from other traditions (or no tradition) are welcomed - and, indeed, their participation would improve the quality of our dialogue - but this course is not designed for them. I want contemporary Christians to become more aware of the rich and varied reflections from others about the central figure of our faith. They can help us to see that, in a spiritual sense, Jesus is larger than we dare imagine. He is more complex than we can comprehend. He is too big for any religion to contain, including ours.

The Jesus we will see through the eyes of others may seem like a stranger to us. Or he may seem strangely familiar. In either case, the comfortable “me and Jesus” attitude so common in our churches will be severely challenged. Yet as our appreciation grows for the essential mystery to which he points, a deeper, wider and living relationship with him also becomes possible.

Thus far I have only hinted at one troubling aspect of traditional Christian thinking: Christian “Triumphalism”.   Now I wish to address it directly. In a narrow sense, Triumphalism is the belief that Judaism is fulfilled in Christianity, the so-called “Old Testament” in the New, the Old Covenant in a new one given in Christ Jesus.

More broadly, Triumphalism is the belief that while the classical philosophers and religions offered access to a partial truth, in actuality they were merely God’s way to prepare the world for the fullness of the revelation to come in Jesus. Not only Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, or even John the Baptist, but also Plato, Aristotle and others (or Lao Tzu, Confucius or even the Buddha himself) were necessary but subordinate forerunners of the Christian Gospel.

This is not my view. In fact, the opposite premise will govern this course. I believe that all religions are incomplete, including our own, and that we all must learn from each other. Our understanding of Jesus – the man, the teacher, the healer, the rabbi, the guru, the embodiment of Wisdom or the Incarnation of the Holy One – will become more vital precisely to the degree that we abandon this Triumphalist tendency and quiet our compulsion for orthodox (“right”) interpretations.

A second danger encountered in the early stages of interfaith dialogue is the naive belief that “all religions are really the same.” This often is meant as a generous and non-judgmental embrace of others, but there can be a pernicious if unnoticed side effect. Some Christian theologians go so far as to say that truly spiritual people in other faith traditions really are Christians but they don’t know it. Their Christian faith is hidden even to themselves. This reduces the potential for conflict with them, but it also devalues them and disrespects the genuine differences between religions. It fails to take seriously the core affirmations and worldviews that other traditions embody. In its own way it represents a subtle and patronizing form of Triumphalism.

I want to be clear about this: all religions are not the same. In this class we will consider what Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, as well as various Christians, say about Jesus. But even if they honor him with their highest praise, I will not therefore assert that they are Crypto-Christian. It will be more respectful to allow each to speak with his or her own voice. It will be more productive to allow Buddhists to be Buddhists, Hindus to be Hindus, Jews to be Jews, Muslims to be Muslims, Christians to be Christians and agnostics to be agnostics.

I want to thank you for taking the time to participate with me in this exploration, for investing yourself in this journey of discovery, for doing the hard work of seeking Jesus for yourself. I look forward to our conversations.

By Budd Friend-Jones

September, 2012

Picture: Christ et Buddha, by Paul Ranson, 1889

A Better Way

“And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” - John 2b-5


I look at my disciples tonight and I wonder.
Will they ever understand?
James and John continue to jockey for position.
Judas is playing games; for the right price
he will throw me under the bus.
Even Peter wants to be sure he is not left behind.
I think they want to form a corporation.

I told them many times that this is not the way.
Day after day I tried to teach them
that our Father’s realm is different.
I took them into small towns and rural areas,
urban tenements and posh suburban neighborhoods.
I took them into palaces and hovels where
we befriended the righteous and the criminal alike.
I wanted them to see how people wasted their lives chasing
after shadows. It is not to be like this for them.
I wanted them to know that in order to be first in our Father’s realm
they must choose to be last in this one. To be great
they must choose to serve others. To be wise
they must see with the eyes of a little child. To be rich
they must share everything they own.
I want them to know that the entire world is theirs,
but they cannot embrace it when their arms are so full of things.
Our Father’s grace is everywhere, but they will not see it
as long as they think life is a zero-sum game.

Tonight at the Passover feast I will show them.

I will put on an apron. With a basin of soapy water I will kneel
before each one. I will look up into their faces,
into their eyes. With the infinite love I feel for each one
I will untie their sandals. I will scrub their feet
until the muck and mire of this night
is washed away, until their feet are as clean as a baby’s.
On this night, our last together, I will fold each foot
in the softest towel and massage it until dry.
Then, perhaps, they will understand.

I did not come to be served
but to serve. I did not come to receive,
but to give. I did not come to be loved,
but to love. I did not come to stand above them,
but to stand with them. I am not their master,
but their brother. I am not their judge
but only one who wants to show them a better way.

(Photo by Billy Hathorn, 5/24/10, LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas)