healthyreligion.com

Steven Kalas wrote this piece on the subject of healthy vs. unhealthy religion in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

As I led Shabbat services yesterday morning, I had with me Marge Piercy’s book of Jewish-related poetry, The Art of Blessing the Day. One of the poems within, “The Fundamental Truth,” caught my eye. It presents a harsh critique of fundamentalists of all religions. I read it and had a multi-layered reaction. Part of me angrily thought, “Right on!” Another part of me experienced a pang of doubt as I noticed myself feeling this intense bitterness and resentment towards fundamentalists. I was asking myself the question, “Does my emotional reaction lead me towards expressing my highest values? How do I deal with people or movements that I strongly disagree with in a way that reflects my highest ethics?” I happened to find a sermon that responded to Piercy’s poem on line. Rev. Kathleen McTigue, a Unitarian minister, tackles this question for herself in an April 2000 talk she gave at her church. I’ll be thinking about her ideas for a while. I’ve copied Rev. McTigue’s sermon here:

The True Believer

Rev. Kathleen McTigue
Sunday, April 16, 2000

The polarization that characterizes so much of American life is risky business in [any setting], but especially so in a monastic community. The person you’re quick to label and dismiss as a racist, a homophobe, a queer, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a bigoted conservative or bleeding-heart liberal is also a person you’re committed to live, work, pray, and dine with for the rest of your life. Anyone who knows a monastery well knows that it is no exaggeration to say that you find Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh living next door to each other. Mother Angelica and Mary Gordon. Barney Frank and Jesse Helms. Not only living together in close quarters, but working, eating, praying and enjoying…recreation together, every day, often for fifty years or more…. How do they do it?…They …have the wisdom of St. Benedict, who [taught]…that there are two types of zeal; one which is bitter and divisive, separating monks from God and from each other, and another which can lead them together into [more abundant] life. [Benedict defined] this ‘good zeal’ as acts of love…[and taught] that this means ’supporting with the greatest patience one another [through all] weaknesses of body or behavior.’

From Kathleen Norris
Amazing Grace

When I was on sabbatical last year, part of my discipline of spiritual exploration was a series of retreats in different settings. One of these, a four-day retreat, was at a Benedictine Abbey in Bethlehem, CT. I discovered on my arrival that a part of the rhythm of monastic life offered to retreatants, no matter what their faith or their reasons for retreat, was the assignment of a member of the community as a kind of guide or liaison. The person I was assigned was a nun in her seventies, about four and a half feet tall, with the unlikely and deeply incongruous name of Mother Placid. She spoke rapid-fire and nearly nonstop with a strong New York accent, although she had Read the rest of this entry »

I’m about 10 chapters into Neale Donald Walsch’s Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge. It’s written in the same format has his “Conversations With God” books, which I haven’t read. Walsch critiques what he calls “Yesterday’s God” - a God that humanity has created as a “Super Being” - a larger than life version of a human being. Yesterday’s God doesn’t lead us to the kinds of human behavior patterns that will make our world peaceful and sustainable for human life. This is the major flaw of organized religions - and Walsch especially critiques the three major Abrahamic ones. Walsch’s other problem with Yesterday’s God is that, he says, this God isn’t really the true God. Tomorrow’s God is Life itself, including not just what biologists would call living (versus inanimate) things, but all of existence, which is pulsing with movement and living energy, and varying levels of consciousness. We are a part of this God, and in Walsch’s pantheistic theology, there is nothing that is not a part of God. Tomorrow’s God openly invites us to substitute the word “Life” for the word “God” - one of the ideas in the book I find the most thought provoking and, for the moment, appealing.

To get things started, I’ll post some excerpts from a sermon I gave in October, 2004 at Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, and it is common for rabbis to give their most significant talk of the year to their congregants on that day. In this particular sermon, I was doing some personal sharing about how I have explored and wrestled with Judaism over the years. Here are the excerpts:

I became a rabbi because I couldn’t stop wrestling with Judaism. Not because I found uninterrupted joy in Judaism, not because it always felt like home, and not because I was drawn like a moth to its spiritual flame. For me, it was the path of Jacob - of Ya’akov - our Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, my name is Maurice Harris, and my “day job” is that I serve as one of two rabbis at a progressive synagogue in Eugene, Oregon. For quite a long time I have been thinking, and to some extent, writing and speaking, about the notion of healthy religion. My plan for this web site and blog is to flesh out some of my ideas on this subject. At this point, I don’t have a concrete idea of exactly what I want to do with this blog. I hope that that will become clearer in the future. One thing I will say: because I’m Jewish and a rabbi to boot, a lot of my writing about what I think makes an approach to religion healthy or unhealthy is specifically discussing this question regarding Judaism. My intent in sharing or linking to any of those writings here is for readers - should there be any - to apply the principles and values I discuss to religions in general.

I don’t presume to hold the key to knowing for certain what makes an approach to religion more or less healthy - I want to make that clear.  For now, this blog is a place for me to jot down some of the things I’m exploring.  I’m also new at blogging, so I expect a very choppy and uneven start.