Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Blessed Are the Nones by Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, A Review

There has been a lot of attention paid to people who describe themselves as "nones."

Usually, that's an indication of no religious affiliation.

In the case of Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, BLESSED ARE THE NONES is a religious memoir, detailing her life with her husband Josh, who a few years ago quit believing in the traditional God of the evangelical religion he and Stina had belonged to before their marriage. [The couple met in Bible college and she describes them as being on fire for God].

Stina and Josh's dilemma is made the more challenging because they are parents of two young children. In the beginning, Stina has a revelation that she is now spiritually single. Going to church, attending any church-related events, even deciding upon a home church are decisions that she navigates alone.

She describes her situation as one in which "the older I get, the more Moscow [a city that has only six minutes of sunlight a day during December] seems like a metaphor for the spiritual life... For whatever reason, faith can become more distant as we travel through life, encountering disappointment and twisty turns."

But at least the spiritually nomadic aren't alone. 

"Denominational wandering is not unusual for modern Christians, nor do I think it's necessarily a bad thing. For millennials, the schisms over finer theological points, such as child versus adult baptism, or what happens at Communion, matter less than the authenticity of the congregation and its activity on issues of social importance... Fewer and fewer of us are centered in just one denomination. We are spiritual explorers, and when the church shows its ugly underbelly, many of my generation are looking for God outside institutional religion's walls."

As it turns out, Stina and her family live down the street from a small group of nuns operating a Visitation [Sisters of Holy Mary] Monastery, which includes a program for laypeople called Visitation Companions.

Stina Kielsmeier-Cook/Katzie & Ben Photography
It doesn't take long for Stina to become enamored with these [Catholic] nuns. "They are organized and persistent, having endured decades of common life in-community pre-and-post Vatican II. They are neither passive nor timid, remaining faithful to their vows. They are the hearty ones, who have stayed in the church amid decline, who have seen their traditions devalued and mocked, who devote their lives to singing the Psalms and embracing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience."

Stina is very honest in describing both her journey in becoming a Visitation Companion and the struggle of living in an interfaith relationship.

"The thing about blazing a new trail in your interfaith home is that it costs something. The path is arduous, and no one has cleared the downed trees. There are no obvious faith practices to mutually draw from; instead, you must decide on family rhythms as you go."

It doesn't help that Stina and her family live within a "solution-oriented culture," that often seems to value the final result over respect for the process. And that faith is a gift that continually evolves.

"I once believed that a steady, certain faith in God and the Nicene Creed and the Bible was an absolute requirement for being a Christian. But in my own faith journey, the temperature keeps fluctuating and I can't seem to control the weather."

She continues: "The evangelical tradition in which our faith was formed always hammered down the importance of right belief. All it took to be a Christian was believing that Jesus was the Son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins, and that we must accept him into our hearts to achieve eternal life. Having all the right answers seemed so simple.

"Is it any surprise that many former evangelicals, who took this emphasis of right belief so seriously, eventually walk away when their doubts begin to feel overwhelming?

"Being part of any religion is less about how we feel or what we believe at any given instant, which changes moment by moment, and more about our commitment to wrestle with our faith."

Stina spends considerable time examining the Visitation Sisters' way of life, partly because she begins to pray with them and enter into the process of becoming a Visitation Companion, a layperson affiliated with the Visitation Sisters, without taking vows.

Speaking of which, Stina notes, "Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister [founder of Nuns on the Bus] has written extensively about the vows of religious life, criticizing their outdated framework. She wrote: 'What the world needs now, respects now, understands now is not poverty, chastity and obedience. It is generous justice, reckless love and limitless listening."

Throughout BLESSED ARE THE NONES, Stina reaffirms her deep love for Josh and their family. She grieves over Josh's disengagement from the Christian faith, but she does not seek to impose her views on him.

"As Josh stops to identify fungi growing on a downed log near our path, I remember [Deitrich] Bonhoeffer's warning to love people more than my visions for life - whether that vision is for Christian community or the perfect religious upbringing for my kids. It's a struggle. I wonder if the work of love begins when our ideals shatter, when we're forced to sort through the broken pieces together."

In the middle of all of this, Stina realizes that she is not really 'spiritually single,' but very much immersed in community. Whether it is the connection to the Visitation Monastery or a monthly get-together with mutual friends of hers and Josh's.

And her definition of the love she shares with her husband has deepened. "Loving each  other doesn't mean giving up our distinct beliefs or practices. Loving each other means we each seek to understand and honor what the other holds sacred.

"In another way, it's how I practice the [wedding] vows we made to mutually obey one another. Kathleen Norris writes that, at its root, 'The word obey means 'hear.' And listening in that sense as mutual obedience, is fundamental to marriage... Such intimacy is a great gift because it also contains the challenge of doing what is necessary, every single day, to maintain the relationship.'"

I found BLESSED ARE THE NONES to be a refreshing piece of hard-won wisdom in the middle of a spiritually confusing time in our world's history. Personally, I can relate to what Stina is writing about, especially in regards to her husband's loss of interest in evangelicalism and Christianity. I grew up Roman Catholic, attending Mass for 30 years. Then, in my mid-30's I became 'born again,' and was a member of an evangelical church for another 30 years. Now I go to a Methodist church with a progressive focus, but I'm not a member. It's been quite a journey, but Stina Kielsmeier-Cook's book gives me hope. 

It should give you hope too!

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

For Small Creatures Such as We by Sasha Sagan. A Review

Sasha Sagan/Brian C. Seitz
Sasha Sagan is the daughter of famous parents, who happen to be Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

Both her parents were prolific writers and co-wrote many books together. If there is such a thing as DNA-enhanced creativity, I'm sure Sasha's got it.

FOR CREATURES SUCH AS WE is her first book. But she's written articles for a variety of publications and is also a filmmaker and speaker.

In the first pages of her book, Sasha quotes her Mother to set up the theme: "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."

Sasha fairly early on makes it clear that she is an atheist, albeit a friendly and empathetic one.

She is well able to make a point, sometimes quite bluntly, but avoids coming across as mean-spirited. Because she genuinely isn't.

She says of religion, "the only sin would be to pretend [to believe]." Later on, she notes that "religion isn't believing, it's behaving."

Which, I have to admit, when you take organized religion as a whole, especially in this day and age, is setting the bar quite high.

For the most part, Sasha's book explores different rituals, including birth, weddings holidays and dying.

She openly embraces doubt, uncertainty and transition as the foundation upon which life is built. And she sees rituals as ways that humans have tried to cope with these realities.

In a nutshell, that is the gist of Sasha's book.

But it would be a disservice to imply that her writing, although rooted in science, is devoid of emotion. The best way to offer evidence of this is to offer samples of what she has to say.

"Why does the provability of something rob us of the thrill of it?"

"Uncertainty is real. It need not be glossed over or hurried."

"As with love, it's our vulnerability that opens us up to something deeper. Our willingness to be wrong..."

A fourth of the way through FOR SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE, Sasha observes that xenophobia, authoritarianism, and violence are what's wrong with the human race. She says that cruelty towards each other is the original sin.

She makes a clever distinction between science and religion. She observes that scientists try to disprove each other's theories by building on them, ultimately strengthening our knowledge base; but religion's purpose is to uphold tradition and quite often squash spiritual and intellectual growth. 

Here's more of her observations:

"There is something about facing fear that defines growing up."

"It's hard to hold both the mythology of America, its aspirations and promises, and its crimes, in my head at the same time."

She refers to some of her father's work and remarks that we are breathing some of the same air particles as hundreds of generations of those before us. 

Her sense of time and eternity is influenced by the fact that some of the stars we see in the evening sky have already burned out, yet we continue to see them.

Turning to the topic of the importance of having a critical eye, she quotes James Baldwin, "I love America more than any other country in this world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

In a nod to Baldwin, she goes on to say that "Barbeques and fireworks are all well and good for celebrating national independence. But I propose the real ritual should be teaching ourselves and our children to question our own preconceptions."

One might be tempted to look at Sasha as a very privileged person. Growing up with famous parents, who were financially well off. With a nanny in Ithica, New York. Having ample opportunities to travel and learn. But her insights are not potshots.

When she was fourteen, Sasha lost her father to cancer. One of the last things Carl Sagan said to his daughter, on his deathbed, being an absolute realist, was "I'm sorry."

Sasha speaks of the human condition, "Every loss you withstand in your life reopens all the others. Every goodbye is every goodbye."

"Being alive is a profoundly beautiful thing," she sums up. "For which each of us should feel deeply grateful."

I enjoyed reading Sasha's book, not because I'm an advocate of atheism, but because she offers an honest assessment of her own point of view. 

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Why Is Grace So Hard to Accept?

What if Paul meant what he wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9 [God saved you by God's grace when you believed And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done..."] NLT.

Or, as another version [NIV] puts it: "For it is by grace that you have been saved - and this is not from yourselves - it is a gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

For many of us, Christians or otherwise, it's such a difficult thing to accept!

Oftentimes we live and act from a place of deep denial of this wonderful, amazing reality. The presence of God is free. There is nothing we can do to deserve it.

The challenge is: Modern-day folk living in Western culture seem to apply the tenants of Capitalism to Christianity. That is, they see God as the keeper of a supernatural bank account, and we have to do stuff to earn credit. 

Grace becomes the equivalent of spiritual interest that accumulates with every soul that we "save," or good deed done.

With this worldview, the dividend tends to be guilt.

With this worldview, we have to continually prove ourselves. Which keeps us firmly rooted in judgment - because everyone who doesn't hold the same type of bank account as ours is inferior and probably going to hell.

Maybe when Jesus had his famous conversation with Nicodemus about being born again, this is precisely what he was talking about. [See John 3:1-10 for details].

Nicodemus opens the conversation by making a statement. "No one could perform the signs you are doing if God was not with him."

Notice Nicodemus isn't asking God how to get into heaven. He's talking about the ability to see, or sense, or experience the kingdom of God.

Jesus tells him in order to see the Kingdom, a person needs to be "born again."

(White) evangelicals in Western culture tend to use this verse to prove that we need to be baptized, or saved.

Artwork credit: Sojourners Magazine
But Jesus isn't talking to Nicodemus about taking action. He's referring to the Holy Spirit. This totally confuses Nicodemus, who says, "How can someone be born when they are old? They cannot enter their mother's womb a second time."

At this point, Jesus has a little fun with Nicodemus and replies, "you have to be born of water and the Holy Spirit."

It's possible that Jesus is taking a good look at Nicodemus, who knew the letter of the law and the writings of the prophets. Jesus sees the irony of a scripture scholar getting stuck in literal terminology.

Jesus is trying to lift Nicodemus out of scriptural quicksand and plop him down smack in the middle of the Kingdom of God. 

In modern lingo, Jesus might have said, "I'm trying to get you to open your spiritual eyes and your spiritual mind and all of your spiritual senses. You don't have to understand the process, Nicodemus. Relax and trust me."

But instead of trusting, many of us (myself included) tend to codify faith and God and it just doesn't work.

Because that's not how spiritual growth happens. 

Much of the Kingdom of God turns out to be counter-intuitive, illogical to the human mind and doesn't make sense. But God has freed us up to receive it and live in it without having to figure it out! 

Oh, that really is Good News!


Afterthought: I wonder how much of a connection there is with our inability to accept grace and the current state of affairs in our world - the uncivil, temper-driven communication that has become the norm?

Could a lack of grace we show each other be a reflection of our spiritual state?

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Sacred Instructions by Sherii Mitchell, A Review

“It is no coincidence that we find ourselves here, at this place and time. We have all agreed to be here. "[T]he question is not why are we here, but how we show up most powerfully to meet the times that we are part of. The work that we are required to do is to reconcile the external world that we have created with the inner wisdom that we have acquired.” 

This is the underlying premise to Sherii Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions

Mitchell begins by explaining how we got to this place, using her tradition of having been raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation. She attributes a quote to Hiawatha: “We have all been fed a great lie, the lie of war. It makes us see danger where none exists; it causes us to distrust our friends, and to label the unknown as our enemy. This great lie causes us to shun the sources of our survival and to embrace the causes of our death.” 

Rather than viewing conflict as inevitably leading to violence, Mitchell encourages us: “System-wide transformation must be preceded by personal transformation. Personal transformation is assisted by a willingness to view conflict as an opportunity for healing and growth. When conflict comes up we must be willing to choose new ways to respond to it, in order to break the cycles that we’ve established around it.” 

Much like Moses leading the nation of Israel through the wilderness for forty years, Mitchell says conflict will re-emerge again and again until “all the layers attached to it are healed.” 

One of the essential elements of conflict resolution, says Mitchell is good communication. “Learning to communicate effectively and compassionately minimizes misunderstanding and increases empathy… the main goals are kindness, necessity and respect.” She describes the use of talking circles and decision by consensus, traditional tools used by Native peoples. 

Part of this process, using Native tradition, is to seek balance. “When our rights are not balanced with a solid sense of responsibility, we lean toward dependency and begin blaming others for the problems that we face… We point fingers, accuse, and condemn all those who are refusing to do what we ourselves have failed to do. When our demands aren’t met, we become increasingly angry and lash out in response to that anger.” Cautions Mitchell, “When we demand something for ourselves that we are not willing to ensure for others, our demand loses all of its power.”

Most importantly, Mitchell reminds us, “If we truly hope to create change, we must stop forgetting that we have the power to make change happen.” For Mitchell, from a Native perspective, this is in direct opposition to colonization, which she defines as “the act of appropriating or forcibly overtaking a place and exerting control over it. 

"When we talk about colonization in the modern day, we are addressing the lingering systems of control and the insidious patterns of thinking that colonization brings… One of the names used to describe colonizing practices today is ‘progress.’

What others describe as systemic dysfunction, Mitchell attributes to colonization. “Colonization is like an infection,” she writes. “It moves in and infiltrates the entire system until the whole body is contaminated… Colonization is deeply unsettling. It disrupts the cultural identity and sense of belonging of those being colonized. It then attempts to separate them from their core values and beliefs, to break them to the will of the colonizer. It then forcibly imposes its own values and ideologies onto those being colonized.” 

A few sentences later, Mitchell offers an antidote. “The most effective way of overcoming the impacts of colonization is to embrace the wisdom of our own cultural traditions and familiarize ourselves with the cultural values that guide those traditions.” 

Sherii Mitchell/Photo by Michael Sacca

Like Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass, Mitchell proposes a reconnecting with nature. 

“Reconnecting with the Earth is fundamental to decolonizing our relationship with life. Colonization undermines our capacity for self-determination and self-sufficiency. It does this by taking us away from the gifts provided by the Earth and making us dependent on the trapping of the colonial economy,” which is based on extraction and profit from nature. Seeing the earth and its resources as being a means of business and not life. 

Mitchell describes colonization as being an unnatural outgrowth of a paternalistic society that severely diminishes the importance of the feminine. “The patriarchy took over the roles of the women and handed them to the men, while also denying the men the benefit of the women’s wisdom. Without the participation or guidance of the women, our societies became increasingly more imbalanced.” Notes Mitchell, “[O]ur natural state of well-being requires balance between the feminine and masculine elements of our being. The heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart informs the brain how to take action that manifests in our physical body, just like heart-based wisdom on the divine feminine is meant to inform the divine masculine how to act out in the world. This is the balance that we all need.” 

She continues, “The patriarchy shifted men away from their role of protecting life, and turned them toward the protection of material items. They taught them to value these material items more than they valued life. The patriarchy also distorted the role of the feminine by leading her away from the true power that she holds within her heart and spirit and convincing her that the only power that she could attain was the power held within the patriarchal structure. The only way to change this reality is to change our perceptions. We have to look at the underpinnings of the patriarchy and withdraw our consent from its systems… This involves shifting our cultural values away from those defined by the patriarchy and moving them back toward more spiritually and emotionally balanced ways of being.” 

Mitchell makes a case for a communal focus versus one based solely on individualism. 

“Communal living is based on group philosophy. The central goal is to provide for the needs of the entire group, rather than the desires of individuals. Communal living allows for human connections to solidify and a sense of belonging to take root… Communal living is also both cost and resource-effective. There is a lot less waste in communal living.” 

Contrasting this with an individualistic way of life, Mitchell observes: “In the modern marketplace, competition reigns supreme. Businesses constantly work to undercut their competition, often in cruel and cutthroat ways. Those who win at this game seem to have very little sympathy or empathy for those less fortunate. “In times long past, the skills of all members of society were allotted some value. Though that value may not have been applied evenly, they still provided individuals with some opportunity to barter their skills to meet their basic needs. Today, the disparity between the haves and have-nots is stark, leaving many within our society unable to sustain themselves with any type of dignity. “When competition is connected to the ability to survive, the cost to those who can’t is death.” 

Mitchell speaks to the social media-driven frenzy to be viewed as correct, untethered to facts.

“Possessing accurate information, speaking with honesty, and acting with integrity are less valued than a powerfully stated opposing view. It doesn’t matter if your opposing view is based in fact, so long as you state it emphatically. Because there is very little consideration given to the accuracy of what is being said, people are easily misled and quick to anger when challenged… Rather than having the humility necessary to learn the truth, people arrogantly and often angrily attack those who challenge them. The goal is to be viewed as right; actually being right is secondary. This position is very self-serving and dangerous.” 

Much of this arrogance, notes Mitchell, may stem from a colonial educational system "which promoted the notion that the establishment knew more than we did... We have to teach our children to become fully integrated beings who can function in harmony with one another and the world around them."

“Our people have a great deal to share with the world,” writes Mitchell. “We have a long history of connection with one another, having lived together in the same place for more than thirteen thousand years. This has taught us how to relate to one another. We also have a long relationship with our homelands, our waters, and the beings of the natural world that share this home with us. We have an unbroken tie to the life that we spring from and to the ground that we will return to one day. It is all of these things that are encompassed in the values that we live by and the way of life that it offers. We have faced genocide, termination, removal, separation from our young, ecological attacks, and countless other atrocities, but we are still here. We believe that we are still here because we have followed and honored our way of life.”

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Pinocchio: Art Credit, Disney If ever there were a time for a national "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" award, it's now. And certai...