Love is the Only Response: Deliver Us To and Not From the Suffering in the World

Working alongside Janine (a student minister working with the congregations I serve), discussing her time studying at Luther King House, has got me reflecting on my time as a student minister there. Particularly the challenges of being a Unitarian studying alongside fellow students from traditional Christian denominations. I know myself it took time to adjust and to find myself and my own understanding of my faith within this context. This is not easy, and it is not the only environment that you have find yourself during this challenging time; it is not easy, but it is vital to ministry formation dare I say. I think one the most challenging aspect of time in college is the assumed starting points in theological discussion and understanding.

I have been thinking a lot about ministry these last few weeks.

I recently attended Rev Penny Johnson’s funeral. It was a beautiful service, prepared by Penny herself. Her husband Ken and minister Rev Jeff Gould of course adapted and added to it, especially in some elements of the personal tribute to Penny’s life and ministry. Penny exemplified ministry, Unitarian ministry through her love and service. I have some wonderful personal memories of Penny. She was especially helpful to me in my formative years in the job.

I found myself chatting with Geoff Levermore, before the service. He always asks very probing questions, too probing at times I would say. One question he asked was where I would place myself on the Unitarian spectrum. I asked him what he meant by that? He explained asking if I found myself tending towards Liberal Christianity, something more human centred or a more earth centred, more naturalist spirituality. I said I don’t really think about ministry that way. I could see he didn’t feel satisfied with my answer and so I said that I identify as a Universalist really. He said a Deist and I said no I identify more as a Panentheist, or at least if I have to put a label on my beliefs. It seems he had not heard of Panentheism. The truth is though that I am not too precious about such things, as I know my primary role is to serve. Rev Penny Johnson being a wonderful example of this. She saw her role and certainly the worship she created as being related to the world in which she lived and helping others to live in this world. She never wore a clerical collar and did not see herself as separate from those she served. She saw her role as being with people in their struggle, a perspective I share with her.

That said if I have to put a label on it I say I am a Universalist. As a Universalist I believe there is truth in so many traditions. I am yet to find the whole truth in any.My place is not in the spectrum, it kind of is the spectrum. I also believe in a God of love that is present in all life and yet is greater than all life. This is panentheistic, or at least how I see it. This brings with it a great responsibility, for my faith to be real it has to be lived out in this world. This can be challenging at times. As a friend once said in response to my Universalism, “The thing I worry about is how much input a God of love is having, in that so many are hurt, killed.” This point seems particularly pertinent at this time, especially as we witness the horrors taking place in Israel and Palestine. So many innocent lives brutally killed. It is heartbreaking to witness such horror and barbarity and how this is spreading to other parts of world. The sorry spectacle of our inhumanity to one another. Not that this is a new story it has been going on throughout human history. Now some say this is evidence of the evils of religion. Some of us may have sympathy with this view. That said if I look at most of the evils of the second half of the 20th century and many today they were and are inflicted by secular states too. Think of China and North Korea today, or Cambodia and the Soviet Union in the past. To me most of such violence and dare I say evil is due to failing to recognise the sacredness of one another. Of failing to see the other as neighbour, the secular and the religious as just as culpable of this. When will we see the other in ourselves and ourselves in the other?

So, it is a pertinent question to ask about a God of love. If we look at the world, at the suffering within the world, it is reasonable to ask in what sense a God of love could be involved in all of this? Of course the response of many is that none at all, for there is no God. Or others will say that God is not all loving. Others may say well it’s all a mystery and we cannot understand how God’s love operates. Then still others will suggest that we look at the helpers and that this love manifests in their actions. Do any of this answers seem adequate to you? It is certainly something to ponder.

Now suffering and a God of Love is a question that has troubled theologians, philosophers and plain ordinary people for centuries. The question has been asked and continues to be asked as to what causes suffering and can it be overcome? Now in some quarters it has been suggested that the root cause of suffering is “evil”. Which has led to the question that if evil exists then how can God be all powerful, ever present and all loving? In theological circles this has become known as “The Theodicy Dilemma”

“The Theodicy Dilemma” may be summed up by the following question about God asked by the eighteenth century philosopher David Hume:

“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil.”

This question encapsulates the whole Theodicy debate.

In the twentieth century Czeslaw Milosz wrote the following poem “Theodicy”

“Theodicy” by Czeslaw Milosz

No, it won’t do, my sweet theologians.
Desire will not save the morality of God.
If he created beings able to choose between good and evil,
And they chose, and the world lies in iniquity,
Nevertheless, there is pain, and the undeserved torture of creatures,
Which would find its explanation only by assuming
The existence of an archetypal Paradise
And a pre-human downfall so grave
That the world of matter received its shape from diabolic power.

Even more hard hitting, I would suggest, than Hume’s questions. This from Milosz a Nobel Prize winning Poet who was a Polish Catholic, who spent much of his life wrestling with his own faith.

I remember exploring “Theodicy”, in depth, while training for the ministry. Something I have been thinking of again as I have been sharing with Janine. I probably spent more time on the piece I wrote on the subject than any other, which showed in my final marks. I struggled and I wrestled, as so many have no doubt done. Looking back I can see how important it was for me to do so. By the way I have been struggling with it again these last few weeks. The struggle has been so important as I have learnt, in my time as a minister, that a large part of the work is to be with others in their suffering, often senseless suffering by the way. It is of course suffering that brought me into ministry in the first place.

Whilst training I remember wrestling for hours, in the library and walking in the park, with the theodicy question, I continue to do so by the way. I found my own unsettled faith in it and as a result a greater purpose has emerged. If I have learned anything from suffering, it is that I cannot take away the suffering of anyone else, but I can be with them in it. I have learned that in so doing the God of my limited understanding comes into being once more.

My understanding did not fit neatly within any of the traditional orthodox Christian views I explored during my training. I did not see it as a consequence or our fallen nature, an absence of good which causes us to choose evil, following Augustine or Calvin, or that suffering was a part of some kind of Divine plan. I had some sympathy with the views of Aquinas that somehow we lose our way. I find the idea that suffering has to take place in order for life to discover what is good very troubling. I cannot see how someone finding good at the expense of the suffering of others a good thing. I am with Dorothy Soelle and her view that “No Heaven can Rectify an Auschwitz”. The ends can never justify the means, if the means bring such suffering to so many. If God is present, then God is there in the suffering and our response to the suffering, something Eli Weisel explored in his seminal work “The Night”. The God of my understanding comes alive in my response to suffering.

So yes, I believe in a God of love, but not one who controls life. God in life but not controlling life. The God I believe has to come alive through our being. It may not be an adequate answer, but it is one I experience through my fragile human being. I respond to the idea of a God of Love, as my experiences and observations of life suggest this. I also experience this love coming to life as I am with those who suffer and do all I can to be with them in their pain, but I cannot prove that beyond doubt.

My growing sense of Universalism and Panentheism helps me to live faithfully, in love, in a world in which there is so much beauty but also heartbreaking suffering, some natural but an awful lot caused by our inhumanity. I accept that no matter how lovingly I and others live, that horrific, dare I say evil, things will happen both personally and universally. So where is the God of love? Well it comes alive in the response to this suffering. It is the God of love, that allows one to come through even the most horrific situations, with a response grown from a sacred reverence for life itself. This is the God of Love that I worship, that is beyond my understanding.

I have come to believe that it is our holy duty to respond to the suffering of others, to stand in solidarity with them and act in holy compassion and never to declare the other as somehow less than human.

In my prayers I ask this Universal Love to help me feel a deep connection to all life and to bring some healing to the world in which I live and the world beyond my being.

It is, I believe, our holy duty to begin to bring healing to our world, to wipe the tears that flow from our humanity and to repair the tears in the fabric of the world, to bring compassion and love to those in fear, to bind up the broken and bring wholeness to those who feel separated from the love in life. This is the call of love from the God of my limited understanding.

It is a call that asks my senses to be opened to the world and instead of being delivered from evil, it is call from an ever-loving God to be delivered to the suffering in this world.

I’m sorry if it does not answer why a God of love would allow suffering. I am sorry if that is not good enough. I am sorry. I cannot sincerely offer any more. I cannot give an opiate that relieves us of pain. I can only offer a loving response to that pain.

All I can offer is a loving purpose that comes to life in this beautiful and at times suffering world.

Before offering a closing blessing I am going to share with a wonderful poem the recently deceased great poets Louise Gluck “Celestial Music”, it seems pertinent to me at this time. I first came across in Mark Bellitini’s wonderful book on grief “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours of Grief”

"Celestial Music" Louise Gluck

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth, she's unusually competent.
Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

 
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.
But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,
brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road.

 
My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains
my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow
so as not to see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness–
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person–

 
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height–
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth–

 
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering–
it's this stillness that we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

Louise Gluck, Poems 1962-2012, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

"We are not a glum lot", but are we really grateful

A grandmother was walking with her 5 year old grandson on the beach, when suddenly a rogue wave came and grabbed him and carried him out to sea. She looked up to the sky, held out her fist and cried "God, this is unacceptable, unbearable. You cannot take an innocent child" and just as the words came out of her mouth, another rogue wave came and deposited the child smiling back at her feet. She then picked up the child in her arms, looked up to sky and said, "This child had a hat!"

We really are a funny lot. We focus and complain about the things we don't have or the things that we once had and have now lost. So much so that we fail to see the very fruits that we are surrounded by. We are an ungrateful lot. We can be a real glum lot.

Most of us are ungrateful; most of us practice being ungrateful. It's almost become a religious ritual in itself. We moan and complain about our imperfect jobs, our imperfect bodies, our imperfect family, our imperfect relationships, our imperfect religious communities, our imperfect football teams, our imperfect life, our imperfect world, even our imperfect God who doesn't give us exactly what we want when we want it.

This joylessness can become habitual and all consuming and pretty soon life can look pretty bleak and empty. Is it any wonder that depression, mental illness and addiction are on the increase? If this is the view that we have of the world in which we live. We can be a glum lot. The problem with living an ungrateful life is that it eats away at everything that has any meaning. Until in the end life has no meaning.

Can you ever imagine wanting to spend time with or be near a person who has no sense of gratitude for life as a gift, a precious gift; the kind of person who only sees life purely as his or her personal entitlement that must be grabbed at and clung to.

The classic example of this is the Dickens character Ebeneezer Scrooge. The miserly, clench buttocked, tight-fisted, cold-hearted, humourless man, who had no sense of gratitude. He was a man that no one wanted to be around. He was not born that way and had not always lived that way, but had over the years sunk further into self protection.

I've been there I was one of life's great moaners. As they say round Manchester way I was a 'proper mard arse'. And as I know only too well “nobody likes a winer”. I certainly didn't like me and I tried really hard to make others not like me too. That is when I wasn't trying to get them to feel sorry for me. Today I am grateful for the life I have and the life I'm living. My religion if you like has become one of gratitude, radical gratitude.

The American Unitarian Universalist minister Galen Guengerich (what a great name) proposes that gratitude ought to be the central pillar of my Unitarian faith.

He states

"Unless our faith is mere intellectual affectation … the

defining element of our faith must be a daily practice of some kind. What

kind of practice? For Jews, the defining discipline is obedience: To be a

faithful Jew is to obey the commands of God. For Christians, the defining

discipline is love: To be a faithful Christian is to love God and to love your

neighbour as yourself. For Muslims, the defining discipline is submission: To

be a faithful Muslim is to submit to the will of Allah.

And what of us? What should be our defining religious discipline? While

obedience, love, and even submission each play a vital role in the life of faith,

my current conviction is that our defining discipline should be gratitude.

Gratitude! Gratitude as the Unitarian core spiritual practice!

Why gratitude? Two dimensions of gratitude make it fitting as our defining

religious practice. One has to do with a discipline of gratitude, and the other

has to do with an ethic of gratitude. The discipline of gratitude reminds us

how utterly dependent we are on the people and world around us for

everything that matters. From this, flows an ethic of gratitude that obligates

us to create a future that justifies an increasing sense of gratitude from the

human family as a whole. The ethic of gratitude demands that we nurture the

world that nurtures us in return."

I think that he makes a good point. This discipline and ethic of gratitude offers an alternative to the rugged individualism of our post modern age. For an awful lot of folk, so called, spirituality has become all about feeling good about me right now and not about connection and interconnectedness. This self-centred spirituality only feeds our loneliness and disconnection. So not only is it deeply ego-centric it simply does not work. By living this way and trying to grab and cling to what see as 'ours' the whole of life becomes devoid of meaning unless we personally possess it. Therefore if we lose even a little bit of whatever it is that gives our life meaning and value our whole focus will be purely on that little bit that we have lost and not the fruits we are surrounded by.

...just like the old lady, the child and the hat...

Maybe Galen is right; maybe the purpose of the religious way of life is to activate that sense of gratitude within us. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart stated that “if the only prayer you said the whole of your life was "thank you", that would suffice.”

"Thank you" is the greatest prayer of them all. I have a friend who recites that prayer with every breath when he goes swimming. This man has known the pain that life can bring; he's also been responsible for creating plenty of it himself. He has changed though and as a result is grateful for the fact that he can draw breath. He says thank you for every single breath.

...that takes my breath away...

So how do we Foster gratitude? People like Galen advocate spiritual practices and I'm sure that they help. In my nightly prayers, for part of the time, I focus on the gifts that I have experienced that day. I also take time to look at the beauty that I'm surrounded by, whether it's the bustling crowds in town or the beauty of nature. Beauty in ordinary everyday life comes in many guises. For me there is nothing more magical than the smile on a child's face or their infectious laughter. I adore it when I can see the world through the eyes of a child, I love that sense of awe and wonder.

That said I'm not convinced that this is enough. Religious faith, for me, is all about action and this action is frequently ignited by life's trials. These events can often be painful and almost utterly destructive. In my experience radical gratitude emerges from what has been called the "dark night of the soul". I only began to experience gratitude for the fact I could draw breath, when I came out of my own self created hole. I could not focus on what was beautiful and could only see what I had lost.

The Holocaust survivor Eli Weisel believed that "gratitude emerges from the kingdom of the night". Gratitude is not the result of good fortune, happiness or great success. It is instead a response to life itself. Maybe gratitude reaches us when we appear to be utterly unreachable.

Psalm 139 boldly claims that we can never exile ourselves from the range and reach of love.

"Thou are acquainted with all my ways... Where can I flee from your presence? If I make my bed in hell, thou art there... even the night shall provide light. The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."

The power of goodness is so enormous that it can soften even the hardest of hearts, as it did for Mr Scrooge.

Gratitude is not about the things we do or do not receive; it is about being in relationship. It is about being in relationship with ourselves, the life we have, the people we share it with, the planet we inhabit and the universe we are a small but vital part of. It is also about being in relationship with whatever we understand is at the core of this. For me this is God, others understand this differently or give it another name. What we name it is almost irrelevant. What is really important is how we respond to this mystery that is life. All of us can pray for a grateful heart, for the gift that is life itself and for the opportunities that life offers to us. And if we fall short what does it matter.

The truth is that no matter how far we wander, or how often we stumble, love can find and bless us, if we are open enough to receive it.

Today I am practising gratitude by giving myself wholeheartedly to life.

We are all capable of that...