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)

How Charles Ives Saved My Soul

Thank God for Charles Ives! Without him I couldn’t have gotten through seminary. To be more precise, without his The Unanswered Question, I might have lost my sanity altogether. I discovered this short piece of music as I was plowing through the writings of the Early Church Fathers. (Yes, they were only Fathers in those days.) Mystics and theologians battled – literally - with one another over words and even over the spelling of those words. They argued with a vitriol I had not heard since I stopped listening to radio preachers years before.

One evening in Bound Brook, NJ, as I poured over these ancient texts, unable to fathom the light within them that had animated and agitated so many, the local public radio station broadcast Ives’ piece into my study: The Unanswered Question. Fittingly, it is subtitled “A Contemplation of Something Serious.” The music struck a chord with me, if you’ll pardon the expression. It is hauntingly plaintive and inconclusive, and it has stayed with me ever since. It is a deeply humane composition.

Ives wrote The Unanswered Question in 1906 along with its companion, Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summer Time (subtitled “A Contemplation of Nothing Serious”). Within its simple structure there are three distinct kinds of music layered upon one another: a string chorale, an unchanging trumpet phrase and a chattering woodwind response. Ives wrote,

“The strings play pianississimo (very softly) throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent the ‘Silence of the Druids — Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.’ The trumpet intones ‘The Perennial Question of Existence,’ and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for ‘The Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes and other human beings becomes gradually more active, faster and louder.... ‘The Fighting Answerers,’ as the time goes on and after a ‘secret conference,’ seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock ‘The Question’ — the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, ‘The Question’ is asked for the last time, and ‘The Silences’ are heard beyond in ‘Undisturbed Solitude'."

The contrast between the words on the page and the music in my ears was startling. The apodictic certainty of the theologians paled before the “Perennial Question” put by the trumpet’s voice. I experienced great empathy with the Questioner, and a deep yearning for The Silences, but I felt the theologians were the “Fighting Answerers” whose many words lead nowhere. In that moment I gave up forever the search for all-explaining dogmatic formulations. I turned whole-heartedly toward ambiguity and embraced it. Henceforth The Question, not the Answerers, would be my guide.

Left to my own devices, I would choose to dwell within the Silence of the Druids. This is the “tacit dimension” about which the Hungarian physicist Michael Polanyi wrote so perceptively. It is the “imaginal world” of the 12^th Century mystic, Ibn Arabi; it yields real knowledge though it can be accessed only through the creative imagination. It is the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Logos of St. John and the Wheel of American Indian spirituality. “We know much more than we can tell,” wrote Polanyi. And we love much more than we can know.

In later years, I came to understand that theologians also are “Questioners” first, whose “certainties” grow out of their struggles with all that is unresolved in their own hearts and in our world. I accept their words as their hypotheses, their attempts to cross the chasm.

Charles Ives was a church-going New England organist, and a Transcendentalist, but he was more. He was willing to let words fail and answers dissipate. "Vagueness,” he said, “is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth." Today, when too many are too certain about too much, a little vagueness would be salutary, and the Silences most welcomed

Wales forever, Amen!

When the train doors opened, a veritable sea of excited sports fans flooded toward Cardiff Arms Park. Like small figurines in a swift current, we were swept with them through narrow lanes of vendors hawking fish and chips, beer and leek soup. Leek soup? Yes, the aroma of leek soup wafted over us in the damp March air, as pervasive and enticing as the smell of sizzling bratwursts at a Vikings opener. The Welsh National Union rugby team soon would take the field against their vaunted English rivals. Two of the greatest players of all time, Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett, would lead the charge. Spirits were unbelievably high. Little did I know I was about to witness one of the finest games in what later came to be called the “second golden era” of Welsh Rugby.

The rivalry between the Welsh and the English is especially deep-seated and arouses the most intense emotion. It is rooted in the long and unfortunate history between these two nations. Just before the match, I later learned, Bennett rallied the team with words that became iconic throughout the country:  "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English — and that's who you are playing this afternoon."

Rugby occupies an exalted place in the Welsh consciousness. It is said that one Sunday morning worshippers entering their chapel were confronted by a huge sign on the communion table.  Cymru am byth! (Wales forever!) The minister was perturbed and had the Deacons remove it because it lacked religious significance. But when he returned that evening he found an even bigger sign that now read, Cymru yn oes oesoedd. Amen! (Wales forever and ever, Amen!)

Indeed, in Wales rugby approaches the status of a national religion. A Welshman in Hong Kong, Gareth Thomas, declared that Twickenham (England), Stade Français (France) and other national stadia “are great fortresses of the game, but its cathedral is in Cardiff.” He observed that anyone who has experienced the unique atmosphere in the Welsh capital on the day of an international  “cannot but subscribe to this notion.” Comedian Max Boyce said that the roof over the new Millennium Stadium is pulled back when Wales attacks, “so God can see us play”. It was even suggested that a church be built on the spot where Edwards once scored a “try” over Scotland in the mud.

The two other great passions of Wales are poetry and choral singing. Although the “Chairing of the Bard” is perhaps the grandest annual ritual in the country, it is for their music that the Welsh are justly famous. Every Sunday afternoon in chapels across the land they gather to practice their four-part singing of sacred songs. Cymanfa Ganus (Singing Festivals) are held in towns throughout the year, and annually at their great cultural event, the National Eisteddfod. Throughout the world, wherever two or three (of Welsh descent) are gathered, there are Cymanfa Ganus.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one other favorite pastime: the pub! Many a Welshman - and woman too - repair often to the pub for a good time and good conversation. In Pontardawe even the local A.A. meets in the pub. (“Recovery means drinking less,” I was told.) The Welsh insist on distinguishing between “chapel” and “pub” folks - you are one or the other - but many households have a foot in both. The proof of this soon will become obvious.

We entered the stadium and found our way to our places. Cardiff Arms Park was built to hold 53,000 people, more or less. The announcer told us the crowd that day numbered in excess of 60,000. Among the throng of people were many of the rich and famous. The announcer even welcomed Frank Sinatra. There were no seats or bleachers to be seen. Sinatra et al. may have had seats but the rest of us stood through the game. (That’s why they are called stands!) Forget any sense of personal space. We were a single collective mass who raised a deafening roar when the Welsh players ran onto the pitch.

Though we were packed elbow-to-elbow and front-to-back, somehow vendors made their way to and fro, up and down among us. Beer was abundantly available, and abundantly consumed.  As my fellow stand-mates began to drink, they also began to sing.

They sang in four parts, and they sang the great hymns of their great tradition. The more they drank, the more they sang. They sang and drank and cheered and sang some more.

How gloriously they sang! They sang the sweetest of lullabies, Ar Hyd y Nos, with an unimaginable tenderness, and they sang their stirring national anthem, Hen Wlad fy Nhadau with patriotic fervor. Imagine 60,000 Welshmen, with no apparent concern about designated drivers, singing in practiced harmonies: Cwm Rhondda. Aberystwyth. Bryn Calfaria. Llangloffen. Ton-y-Botel. Hyfrydol, Calon Lân. (Now I understood Vernon Davies' comment about his son’s decision to play for England: “I knew he would never play for Wales," he said. "He’s tone deaf.”) Raucous cheers punctuated their singling when Wales scored or made a play, and indignant boos when England did the same. 

The Welsh triumphed over the English, 14-9, in that well-contested match. I had gotten to see Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett at their peak, even as they were nearing the ends of their storied careers. In high spirits when the match was over, my friend and I sang our way out of the stadium with the boisterous crowd, down the narrow streets and back onto the train.

I always will remember that day - not as much for the match as for the music. Not as much for Gareth Edwards or Phil Bennett (or even Frank Sinatra) as for the thousands of anonymous Welsh men and women under that gray March sky who sang of their homeland in the language of their ancestors. I have been to many cathedrals in the UK and elsewhere, but never have I been so stirred. Leek soup and Welsh hymns were not what I expected when I left Pontardawe that morning.

Esther's Sea

Esther loved the sea. In her apartment were her father’s photographs of the sea. Rocks and clefts along the Atlantic coast, with names like Purgatory and Camel Rock, shaped her childhood consciousness. She once wrote:

“How I pity those who have never had the opportunity to fall in love with the sea. Even at its most peaceful moments there is movement and rhythm and a tremendous tranquility that can put at ease even the most disturbed frame of mind. But when it is at its wildest, whipped by winds of hurricane force, with waves and spray flying high above the cliffs and rocks, then the sea is its most thrilling self.”

Esther’s sea and Esther's life mirrored one another: tumultuous and powerful one moment, serene and gentle the next. As she was an enthusiast of the sea, so was she an enthusiast for life - from family and gardening to the reconciliation of peoples distanced by conflict. To be alive for her meant to engage life passionately, and to embrace it immodestly, whatever her circumstance. Even when she battled the ravages of cancer she did not give in to negativism. She had an untethered optimism and an abiding faith in life's possibilities.

The sea is a wise teacher. Esther was its discerning student. She came to know intuitively what the sea was eager to teach: that the web of life is seamless and complete and that divine reality encompasses all in a loving embrace.

(Photo from Widescreen Wallpapers)

The Tomb and Womb of Life

Bonnie and Duke were with us that day. We arrived in Shepherdstown around 4:30 p.m. After stopping at the only stop-light in town, we drove past the college, the abandoned train station and the shanties huddled under hickory. We continued over a pocketed, dirt road until we could drive no further. With supplies in our arms, we walked the last half-mile through brush and bracken to a deserted mansion. The moist black earth hushed our eager tread. Squirrels heralded our arrival as they called their greetings from the limbs. Sparrows took note of us, but continued their more important work overhead.

According to townsfolk, this house had been built by a local man in the early 1900's for his young and lovely European bride. But soon after it was completed, the house and its lady within - its soul, its raison d’être - were consumed by a raging fire. Only the shell remains - a home now for all manner of other-than-human life. They say the man despaired and never returned. It is clear that he never reclaimed the home which housed his dream.

Our Lady of Nature has dreams of her own. She has begun the slow, healing work of destruction. Scavengers have stripped the interior of its paneling, exposing red clay block walls. Trees have sent roots into beams and stone walls; saplings spring from the remaining sections of the roof. Rains are attacking the foundations. Pipes, cables and even nails, corroding under the coordinated assaults of wind and water, are returning to the dust from which they came. Vines have scaled the walls, exploiting every crevice.

Wildflowers now grow in fireplaces high above the foundations. Blooming roses poke their heads above the ferns. They are all that remain of once-formal gardens overlooking the Potomac.

We approached deferentially. Soon the smells of burning wood and cooking hamburgers mingled with the honeysuckle and nearby river odors. We ate our bread and drank our wine in silence: the bittersweet Eucharist of friends too soon to part. We laughed at the follies of our childhood and grew pensive before the hopes those children entrusted to us.

We tried to see the future; the house loomed before us. Its enigmatic presence commanded our attention even as it commanded the landscape. Without its soul, it became the soul of the larger wilderness. Embracing earth and sky as one, it welcomed all into its sun-warmed cavities - to rest and peace, to the tomb and womb of life.

 All too quickly the sun, that benevolent tyrant of our lives, hastened westward. Shadows climbed the walls to join the coming darkness of the skies. We turned away from this strange presence and retraced our steps to the car. Along the way we stopped to examine other half- hidden buildings. They also were beginning the long transformation.

We loaded the car and drove the last seven miles through the gentle West Virginia countryside -- back to the towns, our homes and the on-going busyness of our species.