Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

I never in my wildest dreams imagined myself a writer. This dream appeared late and unexpected. It could only have come as a result of a combination of other experiences, prominent among them were days in my counseling office, evenings teaching adults in the church, and hours studying process theology.

I had learned well how to speak simply and briefly to my clients. I knew how to listen carefully and respond succinctly. I knew the language adults used when speaking of their greatest concerns. They spoke simply, directly and emotionally. In teaching I knew how to set the stage and give others permission to discuss freely. Again, as in counseling, I heard their needs and concerns. I would summarize and clarify. In reading, I realized the need for descriptions of process theology spoken in the language I was using and hearing. There was a gap. Most of the books and articles I read were written by scholars and addressed to the academic learned.

Then came the criss-cross of letters. I wrote to John Cobb regarding my interest in writing a book which would speak of theology to a general audience. Before receiving any response, a letter arrived from John asking if Adrienne and I would be interested in a group whose mission would be to create materials addressing process theology to the local church. Rev. Bill Stegall, a United Methodist superintendent in Reno, Nevada, had shared this need for theology in the church. I was delighted! I wondered about the mystery of the converging letters. It seemed to confirm the web of God. That fall I flew to Claremont and participated in the formation of Process and Faith, a new program of the Center for Process Studies.

My ideas for a book were discussed at a number of meetings of Process and Faith [PF], the members graciously offering feedback on the chapters I had written. For me it was both daunting and exciting. Prominent voices in process theology were guiding me! What a gift!

Until recently all of my writing was done in the evenings, weekends, any time that I could steal the time from my counseling practice and teaching in the church. They were both hours of tiredness and times of true bliss. A new part of me, among all the earlier ones, was being birthed.

At one of our PF meetings, Rabbi Harold Kuchner was invited to join us. He had just given a major lecture in Claremont on his best selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. During our session he asked what was to become a pivotal issue for me: “What questions are the people out there asking, for which you are gathered here to provide answers?” This query changed the title and the direction of my forming book. I had naively thought that hordes of people out there were asking, “What is Process Theology?” Hardly! Most had never heard of this particular theology.

I was struggling with how to organize the book when at a meeting in our home, Lynn Brown said, “Why not ‘Where in the World is God?’” That was it. My search was over. This one question offered both a title and outline. I was grateful to Lynn. I felt great relief. The book by that title was published by Upper Room in 1987 when I was 54 years old.

That publication came after a significant disappointment. John had suggested Westminster Press earlier, as they had published a number of process oriented books in the past. He wrote a supportive letter to the press and after significant negotiation they sent a letter saying they wanted to publish the book. I was lifted to Cloud 9! I told friends, we celebrated. I looked forward to seeing it in print. Less than a week later my manuscript and a letter arrived at my office. They had decided not to publish the book. I felt as low as I had earlier been high. I was disoriented and depressed. In a stupor I simply went out and mowed the lawn.

John suggested a new publisher, Upper Room, and again forwarded an introductory letter. I was cautious but hopeful. They said, Yes! I did have to make concessions. The editor said that their audience would not find one chapter appealing. It was titled: “The Horse and the Rock.” I had developed a light-hearted vignette based on the newspaper cartoon series, “Red Eye.” The mangy looking horse often talked to the round rock lying on the ground in the midst of a prairie. The rock always responded. I saw this as an opportunity to speak of God’s intimate presence in all entities of the universe. But I let it go. Having the book published was more important than having this chapter within it. I must admit that I still have that chapter in my files, because I like it.

I organized the book around the question in the title: Where in the World is God? The major divisions were: Raising the Question, Forming an Answer, and Trying Out the Answer. All chapters were personal illustrations involving me or a composite of friends and clients I knew. I offered an image of God and God’s relationship to the world as “Caring Friend” and the center of creativity as “Council Meeting” and those parts present at the meeting as “Council Members.” I even mistakenly said there were five components which make up meetings rather than four! Oh well, we do grow!

Twenty years later I am still pleased by a number of the chapter titles: God Must Be Somewhere Doing Something; Loss: Mom’s Getting Senile; Choosing: Now, What Will I Order for Lunch Today?; Changing: I Can’t Honestly Sing This Hymn!; and Trapped: I’m a Smoker and I Hate It. I especially liked the chapter on reading a menu for it so clearly described me. Delightfully, the menu chapter was later used as a basis for a video by a Doctor of Ministry candidate. I have already shared God’s Role in a Motorcycle Accident. Each chapter was an effort to make theology relevant by presenting real life situations.

One of my favorite chapters was an actual letter which I wrote to Adrienne’s aunt. Vera,  in the process of dying, had written to Adrienne’s mother, Aneyth, expressing serious questions about God. The letter follows: “Dying: What Do I Write to Aunt Vera?”

Monday, January 31

Dear Vera,

Aneyth called yesterday to tell us of your days together and the difficult decisions you faced about whether or not to have the radiation therapy with the hospitalization. I am sure it was hard to know what was best for you, and we all wish you well in carrying out your decision.

We surely feel for you with the losses you have been facing. Life must have little taste left in it—little to look forward to when talking is so tiring, energy is so limited, and food offers little pleasure. We send our blessings in the midst of all that loss.

I do want to share with you some thoughts I have about the meaning of all this, hoping that you will find it of some comfort and hope to you.

As I see you, you have lived with a sense of joy, pleasure, and humor—with gusto. I recall your diamond-laden fingers on your eightieth birthday celebration. To the way you have chosen to live, I say bravo! You have provided each of us with a model which is worthy of emulating.

What I want to share is the hope that I see even now in the midst of your losses. First, I know God to be a fellow adventurer, going with us wherever we go. God has been a part of and surely enjoyed the gusto with which you have met life.

God is equally present in any losses. In fact, I think that God feels each feeling, experiences each event in precisely and exactly the same way that we do—joy when we rejoice, agony when we agonize.

There is no depth of feeling, no thought which God does not have right along with us. God not only understands us but truly feels with us whatever we face and endure. The word we hear from scripture, “Lo, I am with you always…” is true. We haven’t always known about a suffering God, a celebrating God, a hurting God, an agonizing God, but so God is.

Second, I see God as one who is always calling us forward into the next event, calling us to some new experience, new growth, new wholeness. It is only because God feels precisely what we feel, knows us intimately from within, that God can offer us just that right call or possibility which fits the need of our next moment. God always uses persuasion, influence, luring, calling—never force or coercion or power. This is part and  parcel of God’s graceful love to us.

So, I will share the confidence that in your present experiences God is present feeling with you and luring you on to the next step to be taken.

Third, I want to share that no event or experience in our lives is ever lost. Each is saved and taken up to enrich God’s life. Whether the event was twenty minutes ago or fifty years ago, that event is clear and vivid in God’s expansive vision. This means that your moments and mine have eternal value, they are saved forever. Each moment of our lives as it concludes finds a home with God and is woven into the beautiful complex fabric which is God’s life.

Fourth, I want to say that, thereby, our total lives are not lost either. Because each event is saved, so is the total stream of events which compose our lives. Our person, our personality, our self is too precious to be lost, so we are saved. Even death cannot cause the loss.

I have come to call the event of death the next adventure. Not the end, not a loss or waste of all that has grown and developed, but a moving into a new relation with God which has already been occurring here.

I see the next adventure as one where we are transformed gradually so that we can be related and connected with everything with God as the great web, or the glue, or the symphony that ties all the notes together.

I think we will continue to grow in love, caring, and giving as we are beautifully related to all persons who have ever lived as well as all that has occurred in nature. That we would see loved ones again in the next adventure is accurate, but too narrow—not rich and full enough. I affirm Paul the apostle when he says that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

I see each of us being changed and transformed into the fully blossomed flower which we can be, obtaining much of our beauty from the vast array of other flowers in the garden.

Life beyond this life is adventure, more exciting and fulfilling than we have known here.

These are hopes and images that I affirm, and I offer them to you. I hope that they enrich those to which you already hold.

You have a great spirit! You have embraced and squeezed life heartily, for which I applaud you. I am sure that God has laughed with you and has cried with you and is ever with you.

With our caring love and with the Grace and Peace of God.

Bob and Adrienne

My next writing focused upon listening, a theology of listening. Obviously this grew from my many moments listening to a person in my office and many evenings listening to persons in groups at the church. I felt that listening was different when you held the belief that God was present with the speaker. One can listen for the intimations, whispers, and lures of God interwoven with the words being spoken.

I designed a book which followed two persons, Don and Sue, as they worked through a problem between them in their marriage and shared their thoughts and feelings with an individual or group in the process. I had the insight later that these two persons were based on our dear friends, Ernie and Judy Robison of Chelan.

The book begins with a profound and universal need: A Longing to be Heard. The following sections were based on the varied forms of listening. Blossoming from Bud to Flower emphasizes how a small feeling or thought can become expanded and deepened through empathic listening; Walking in Another’s Garden affirms the importance of letting the speaker take you by the hand and show you their world; Seeing in a New Light offers the possibility that through being heard one can create a new understanding of  a past event; Hearing the Becomings illustrates the way that the whispers of God may be heard; and Imagining a Listening Church offers vignettes of persons being heard when in deep need or when simply greeting one another in the parlor after worship.

Since The Gift of Listening was published by Chalice Press in 1993 I have had more comments about Walking in Another’s Garden than any other theme. I like it too. I have framed for my own illumination my prelude to the book:

To listen to another person is to offer a gift.

To listen with caring to another person is to offer a gift of awareness.

To listen with acceptance to all facets of another person is to offer a gift of healing.

To listen with patience for new ways to see the past events of another person is to offer a
     gift of freedom.

To listen with reverence for new becomings emerging within another person is to offer a
     gift of grace.

In my reading I became aware that process thinkers had looked at a number of subjects through the fresh vision of process theology. As I talked with clients about forgiveness and read books on this subject it became clear to me that it would be seen differently if viewed through the lens of this theology. I read twenty-two books by a variety of authors to gain a sense of the differing understandings. I was disappointed that some authors chose illustrations which fit their theory of forgiveness, omitting other situations which may not have fit so well. I was determined to apply my theology to forgiveness and to do so with the most difficult situations available. I would put my theology to the test. Would it be helpful in the toughest of situations?

These situations were formed into Eight Paths to Forgiveness. I sought to stress two important affirmations which are basic to process theology before exploring these situations. The first is that there are no guarantees in life, save one, that God is always  present with us offering us grace. So often the anger, hurt and unfairness which cries out for forgiveness begins with some guarantee being violated. Reality, as posited by this theology, is that we live in companionship with God in uncertainty, the unknown, and ambiguity. Beyond God, nothing is certain!

The second affirmation follows from the first, that we are never, never separated from God. The center of creativity is always and ever a place where world, body, and past meet the potentials of God. So often the plea for forgiveness is based on the assumption that because of something we have done or not done God has separated from us or we have separated from God. Neither is possible. We may not be aware of God, we may wish to leave God, but God’s presence does not depend on our awareness of God.

Following the introductory words about theology, I composed the fracturing events calling for forgiveness. The battered spouse whose husband and priest want her to return to the marriage, the young woman who is prompted by a television program to remember sexual abuse by her stepfather, the women in Bosnia who were imprisoned and repeatedly raped by soldiers, the parents whose two young sons drowned on a make-shift raft in the Icicle River, the man who could not forgive himself as the driver in an accident which killed another person, the workers in a small town who were left in despair when their only industry moved to another state. All the events had occurred. They were real.

A theme running through these situations is the terrible feeling that the one who offended “got away with it.” The struggle centered on what to do if the perpetrator refused to admit blame, would not talk, had moved to an unknown address, or had died. Would there be no “comeuppance” for that person? Would this offender get away with no consequences? I addressed this issue in the final chapter by imagining the heavenly community of God in which the one who caused the harm would ultimately feel exactly the feelings of those he or she had harmed.

Knowing that forgiveness is frequently a critical issue within the lives of persons in the church, I have used this book in several classes. Persons often feel with and identify with those portrayed victims.
 
At a PF Council meeting in Claremont it was decided that we needed a workbook for adults and mature youth to promote their understanding of process theology. Late in the discussion John Cobb turned to Adrienne and me and said, “I think the Brizees should do this project. They can develop an outline of the workbook as they fly home and send it to us in a few days.” I replied, “We are driving home.” John said, “All the same.” As a familiar advertisement for wealth management proclaims, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.” I have laughed to myself many times as I thought, “So with J. B. Cobb.”

So began our venture which culminated in 2005 as Dancing with the Divine: An Interactive Journey into God, published by our own P&F Press, Claremont, California. It was truly a community venture with many participating in shaping the final work. Julie Gotthold, Adrienne and I were the primary authors, a group of eight at our church served as a pilot study to try out our ideas, and the PF council at Claremont offered significant changes in our original design. We struggled with a subtitle for the workbook. Jeanyne Slettom and Rick Marshall provided the words which ultimately prevailed. It was an inspiring but difficult journey, so translate “community venture” as a rough row to hoe.

Of course if you have the Brizees involved, you know the result would deal with the personal. We collected a number of significant life events as the places where we would offer proposals about God. We selected: birth stories, awareness of God, family authority, family evening meal, suffering due to illness or death, first experience of death, pets you have loved, bodily changes leading to puberty, expressing your sexuality, regret and guilt, wider historical events, wondering about the future and where are we going?
 
In each of these events we would ask the group of learners to [a] listen to a situation, [b] think of your own personal experience with that type of situation, [c] hear a proposal about God in reference to that situation, [d] ask if they had been aware of this view of God in that situation what implications that would have had for them, and [e] offer the person the option of making an alternate proposal about God. Space would be allowed for writing responses to each of these steps. Allow me to illustrate Module 13: “Birth Stories.”

[A] Situation: We often know our birth story. Usually parents and relatives tell us about the circumstances and meaning surrounding out birth. They may tell it and tell it, repeating often the happenings which they think define who we were then and may be even today. We might have been the accident, the after thought, the runt, the kicker, the long awaited little girl, the easy baby, the fussy one with colic who never stopped crying, the one who came flying out fast and hasn’t stopped flying since, just exactly who they wanted, the joy of their lives, or Dad’s tomboy.

Some birth stories can be painful and damaging to us, such as being the cause of arguments between parents about a proper name, the one who caused mother to swear off sex, the one too many for the family to afford. At the other end of the spectrum is not hearing anyone speak of our birth and our resulting feeling of being ignored and unimportant. Whether endearing, comical or damaging they may have set the tone for how we saw ourselves and begun to influence and shape our identity.

[B] Your Story: Recall if you were told a birth story. If so describe that story:

[C] Proposal: God was caring, cherishing, and offering possibilities to the potential “you” long before you were a human person with a name or an identity. God was intimately present as loving companion to the sperm and ovum, the resulting embryo, the developing fetus in the uterus, and the newborn gasping a first breath.

[D] Implications: Would this proposal about God’s early and enduring closeness invite you to revise your birth story? If so, how would you tell the story now?

[E] Alternate Proposal: Is this proposal about God one which you can accept or would you need to revise it? If you need to revise it, how would your proposal look?

The PF council thought that while these personal situations were instructive and valuable, there should be other modules which give examples of process theology in more cognitive and thinking categories. So, we went back to work. The results were eleven modules which offered a theological reading then invited responses. The journal is now composed of twenty-five modules and suggestions are present about which might be most helpful to a Sunday class, a weekly personal sharing group or retreat settings. As usual process theology offers the freedom to choose what is desired.

Over the past fourteen years I have spent most of my writing time on our Lay School of Theology. Our original class is probably the most revised piece of literature in all of  the Christian corpus! Julie, Adrienne and I most recently revised and edited this class which began as The Foundational Experience and now after a number of transformations bears the name of A Personal Journey: God in Your Life Story. It was a real task during our first year as a resource council to develop the instruments and techniques to help persons tell their story, construct ways to consider their image of God, find practical illustrations of scripture, tradition, reason and experience in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, and create a variety of realistic situations in which a vision of God could be applied. Each of these areas has survived a fine tooth comb. I know each of them by heart!

It was this class which after three years working with a publisher was rejected. We hoped that P&F Press would publish it, but we were encouraged to submit it to the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship, which we did. They as well chose not to publish it. The class material now lives in our file cabinet in dormancy awaiting some possible resurrection. I remain hopeful.

I am hopeful as well that our original Five Theologies will find a new home. We have long known that they need revision and I have partially completed a transformation into Ten Theologies. We have some good ideas which would vastly improve our original design. Perhaps they will be needed to enrich our developing membership material for our local church.

With some writing lying dormant and other projects completed, I continue to write. I suppose one would say it is now in my blood. Adrienne and I write an article for each issue of the quarterly Creative Transformation, published by Process and Faith. I engage in composing letters to the editor and op-eds for our local newspaper and frequent letters to our congressional representatives from Visioning America. I will share more fully in a later chapter about our writing efforts in that organization.

A number of possibilities reside in the top right hand corner of our two file cabinets. These are the ideas which I would like to pursue as time allows. I want to create a ritual for Holy Communion which is based upon the Kingdom of God rather than on the Passion narrative. I have already shared my stealth during a memorial service in our nearby Catholic church in which I gently removed Jesus from the cross and replaced them both with Jesus seated at a table with a diversity of persons laughing, eating and drinking.

I am presently facilitating a class in which we are creating our personal affirmations of faith. I want to continue this challenge of forming and writing who I am and what is beloved for me.

I have designed a six step memorial service for healing. I want to refine and enrich this document. I want to explore the authentic words of Jesus which form our understanding of the Kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God, the Realm of God. Beginning with the ninety-one statements of Jesus which the Jesus Seminar considers to be authentic, I would like to define more clearly what it is like to live within that sphere of God called by many names. Then, I would enjoy drawing out all the implications of living there in daily life. Personally, I have a strong need to conform my life to the Kingdom.

Never, ever had I thought that I would be a writer. Yet, here I am loving words, enjoying turning a phrase and polishing chapters. I must credit theology for offering me both a content to write about and a process for enabling my writing. I discovered in my own experience a vision which was of ultimate value to me and I felt buoyed by the encouragement and support of the process community.