18%

In the September 17 issue of the Duluth newspaper, the News Tribune, there was an article about a recent survey conducted of Americans (Associated Press National Constitution Center). “Glum and mistrusting, a majority of Americans today are very confident in – nobody.” When asked about their trust in people running major institutions, 43% said they are extremely or very confident in the military. That tops the list. 39% expressed confidence in small or local business leaders; the scientific community came in at 30%, and next, at 18% organized religion.
That religion is in the top four should bring a modicum of comfort to those of us whose lives are deeply intertwined with organized religion. That the figure is 18% is a bit disheartening. There are many reasons for this, I am sure. Scandals surrounding Roman Catholic priests and other prominent clergy have been reported regularly in recent years. The face of organized religion is sometimes the face of a pastor of a small church who suddenly becomes famous because he plans a Quran burning (and I am pleased he changed his mind). A few Christians can be seen carrying signs that read: “God hates fags” or “Jesus hates sin.” Most of these actions are not the kind that promote confidence in organized religion.
When I read these numbers again, however, I wonder if there is another factor also involved. I notice that the scientific community rates higher than organized religion in evoking confidence. There is little question that scientific discoveries have enhanced our lives. We need to think only of the dramatic advancements in medical technologies to be grateful for the work of scientists. Perhaps one factor that erodes confidence in organized religion is the way some forms of faith have publically battled science. They have tried to substitute poetic bible passages for scientific literature and in the process give the impression that people of faith cannot contend in an intellectually sophisticated manner with the work of scientists. The most blatant example is the insistence of some in the Christian faith community on reading the first chapters of Genesis as science rather than as theological poetry. To do that is both to misread the Scriptures and to create a false battle against scientific work that helps us understand the processes by which life emerges and changes. If we read Genesis as significant theological poetry that grapples with existential questions about the meaning of life in relationship to God, then there is no tension between it and most scientific work on evolution.
This is not to give science a free pass on all its work. Science cannot answer some of our most basic questions, and some scientists reach too far in some of their statements. To claim that evolution proves there is no God is to go beyond science just as to claim that Genesis is science is to misunderstand the nature of Scripture. Furthermore it is important to remember that a scientific description of hormonal changes, blood vessel changes, heart rate changes is not the same as the human experience of being in love. Science worth its salt is open to data of all kinds, including the data of human experience which does not seem adequately captured by the biology of the brain. And some of the data of human experience is poetic, literary, religious. And again we are aware of scientists so narrowly focused on a particular study that they miss the moral implications of their work.
Perhaps if we in organized religion were willing to have some of these kinds of conversations, the confidence level generated might rise. I kind of hope so.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Don't Call Them Twinkies | The Current Music Blog | The Current from Minnesota Public Radio

The lead singer of one of my favorite bands this summer, The Hold Steady, singing about Minnesota Twins baseball. Heaven is whenever... (play on Hold Steady album title!)

Don't Call Them Twinkies | The Current Music Blog | The Current from Minnesota Public Radio

Brief Thoughts on a Short Story

One joy of the short story is that even when life is busy, a story might be read that captures something of the wonder, beauty, mystery of life, crystalizing it into a small gem. Last night before going to sleep, I read William Maxwell’s story “What He Was Like.” In a few pages Maxwell evokes the wonder and mystery of the inner life. The plot is simple enough, a man keeping a diary, his death, his daughter’s reading of his diary and wondering why she did not know so much about her father, her dismay at his interior life.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the diary as noted in the story: “If I had my life to live over again – but one doesn’t. One goes forward instead, dragging a cart piled with lost opportunities.” “To be able to do in your mind what it is probably not a good idea to do in actuality is a convenience not always sufficiently appreciated.”

Our lives are what we do, but also what we think, dream, imagine, appreciate. Maxwell’s story reminded me of that again.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Why I Continue to Read the Bible

Why I Continue To Read the Bible

Sometimes because I think I have to;
Sometimes because I think I should;
Mostly for those times when the words
are like a gentle rain for
the parched field of my soul,
the familiar voice of a friend
in a time of deep loneliness,
an axe
for the frozen sea inside (Kafka).
For times like the other day
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
(Psalm 131:2)

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Autumn Nostalgia

Today felt like autumn here in Duluth. It was rainy and temperatures struggled to get into the low 60s. Autumn often brings with it nostalgic feelings. School begins in the fall, and I love learning. I spent twenty-seven of my fifty-one years preparing for school in one form or another in the fall of the year.
I have been thinking about my childhood as I read Josh Wilker’s memoir Cardboard Gods. Wilker tells his story with the aid of baseball cards from his childhood collection (I collected baseball cards and tonight before their game the Twins introduced the top fifty Twins from their fifty years ). I have also been thinking about my childhood this week as I have been preparing to officiate at the funeral of a young woman (forty-six) who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did. Meeting with her family has brought back a number of memories.
In his book, Wilker writes the following: You can’t be a child forever. You have to slice that part of yourself away and put on a uniform of some sort, whether it’s official or unofficial, and punch that clock. Is there a way to do this and still hang on to a wider sense of the world?
Wilker poses a great question. Can we hang on to a wider sense of the world? Can we retain some of the sense of wonder that we have as children? Can we keep something of what seems an almost innate sense of compassion in children?
Perhaps one way we carry with us some of the positive qualities of childhood is to nurture a healthy nostalgia. By a healthy nostalgia I mean revisiting the past not to hold it up as an ideal now unachievable, but to cultivate some of the important feelings, attitudes and moral sentiments that may have been present. Such healthy nostalgia can come with a wistfulness and sense of loss, but those should not overshadow the cultivation of moral sentiments.
I think there may be something here. Didn’t Jesus encourage the cultivation of certain aspects of childhood?
Not long ago, I encountered another literary exploration of the past, one set in autumn. The sense of loss is palpable. Nevertheless it permitted me to think about my past in a different way - another aid to a healthy nostalgia.
Now I peek into windows and open doors and do not find that air of permission. It has fled the world. Girls walk by me carrying their invisible bouquets from fields still steeped in grace, and I look up in the manner of one who follows with his eyes the passage of a hearse, and remembers what pierces him. John Updike, “In Football Season”

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

On the Transmigration of Souls

I don’t claim to be the poster child for the connected world (the web 2.0 world). I have a couple of blogs. I have multiple e-mail accounts. I have a Facebook page – though today I read another article on the “graying of Facebook.” Seniors are the fastest growing group using this social media. I am not yet a “senior” and I am not so much graying as balding. However, I guess the “graying of Facebook” sounds better than the “balding of Facebook.” Anyway, though I have posted on this blog for three and a half years now, I am still discovering features of this blog site.
I just discovered that if you go to your profile page you can click on the underlined items in your profile, such as “favorite music,” and you get a list of every other blogger who also has this listed as a favorite. 532,000 people list Bob Dylan as among their favorite music. That’s a lot of people, but it is nothing compared to The Beatles – 3,090,000. So I thought I would see if at least some of my choices were rarer. Lucinda Williams counts 20,300 blogspot bloggers who list her in favorite music, smaller, but still quite a few. One of my favorite bands of summer 2010, The Hold Steady, clocks in at 5,100. Then I decided to see if anyone else listed “On the Transmigration of Souls” in the favorite music category. I guessed it would be smaller than even The Hold Steady.
“On the Transmigration of Souls” is a classical piece composed by American composer John Adams. It was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks and to honor those who reached out with a heroic and caring hand that day. It is a haunting and beautiful piece of music. In the booklet that accompanies the CD there is this description: “It superimposes pre-recorded street sounds and the reading of victim’s names by friends and family members, also pre-recorded, on live performances by a children’s chorus, an adult chorus, and a large orchestra.” I remember first listening to it while driving. If I wasn’t on a schedule, I would have pulled over just to hear it all without thinking about driving. I listened to it again that same evening, and then a few more times. I found this music profoundly moving, and I continue to be moved whenever I hear it. Not everyone has the same reaction. I remember wanting to play it for a small group of clergy colleagues, and they did not hear it in the same way I did. I admit to being disappointed, but I am sure I have disappointed others in not sharing their enthusiasm for something or other.
I realize that there may be some bloggers who list John Adams in their favorite music list. I simply have this one piece by name. So I clicked on “On the Transmigration of Souls” in my blogger profile. The list of bloggers who identify this as a favorite piece of music is small. “David Bard.”

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Anne Rice

I am not a fan of Anne Rice novels. It is not that I have read them and don’t like them. It is that in the scheme of things, with more books to read than I have time to, I have chosen not to read vampire literature. I know it is on a long-term come back, but this is one wave I am not going to ride. I didn’t ride it years ago, either – anyone remember Dark Shadows?
I guess that I am not an Anne Rice fan is o.k., because she is probably not my fan either. Last week, Anne posted a statement saying that she was quitting Christianity, giving up on it because it is “quarrelsome, hostile and disputatious.” My sense of what I viewed of an interview with her was that what she was giving up was “organized Christianity.” As a clergy person, I certainly am a part of organized Christianity, and so assume that Anne Rice would not be a fan.
You might expect me to rush in to defend organized Christianity. I think it is defensible, at least in part, yet it is only so when we admit the truth of Anne Rice’s statements. The history of Christianity is littered with and marred by incidents of Christianity being quarrelsome and disputatious. The problem, in my mind, is not that Christians disagree. The Bible is a complex document. Disagreement about its meaning is to be expected. We are trying to grapple with deep mysteries of life and the reality of God. Our intellectual categories can come up short. Christians will disagree – with one another and with non-Christians. Healthy disagreement can energize and sharpen our thinking. Disagreement is not the problem, hostility is. The smallness of some of the issues we become exercised about is.
Despite our shortcomings, there remains something valuable and important about organized Christianity. The teachings of Jesus, his intriguing presence and the stories told about him are still part of organized Christianity, and they would not have made it this far without some organization that sought to carry them forward. That the teachings and spirit of Jesus have been distorted by the same people who carry them forward is tragic, but those same teachings and that same spirit provide a corrective.
Hopefully we who name the name of Jesus will learn to be less hostile and quarrelsome. Hopefully we can assert our viewpoints with gentleness, humility and love. That would be more in keeping with the teachings and spirit of our founder.

With Faith and With Feathers,
David