Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

My theology guides me to seek experience to understand events. I began with searching the books between the bookends of Jesus’ life, the actual history of what Jesus said and did. I now turn to my search for the experiences of the church expressed in the bookends of Christmas and Easter. I move from what Jesus said to what was said about Jesus, from proclaimer to proclaimed.

When I was young I used to hear the story that the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, at just the time when the Bolsheviks overthrew the rather moderate Mensheviks, were holding a great national conference on vestments. This story was told, not to deny the importance of proper vestments in worship, but to illustrate the inability of Christians, and, indeed, people in general, to make sound judgments of relative importance. As a youth I was shocked, and I naively assumed that we American Protestants would never make mistakes of this kind.

Let Jesus speak. Alas, the words of Jesus have waxed and waned in the 2000 years since he uttered them. Dr. Alfred North Whitehead spoke of Jesus as the “brief Galilean flicker.” In the church today we celebrate the bookends of Jesus’ life, his birth and death. Few pay much attention in that period of the church year called Kingdomtide, yet we all anticipate and lavishly celebrate Christmas and Easter. For me, however, the Kingdom is central, for there I find the voice of Jesus. In the bookends I hear the voice of his followers, the church. I value what Jesus said more than what the church said about Jesus.

I now move to how theology has informed my faith, focusing specifically upon areas which have been central to the Christian faith: Scripture, Jesus, Christ, Evil, Salvation, Forgiveness, Prayer, Death and Judgment. I begin with the Bible.

Not since Earth Day 1970 has there been one that bore more promise. 1970 was the year when the American public recognized that the human treatment of the rest of the world was a matter of profound importance. In the following years Congress past significant legislation and Nixon signed it into law. No doubt there were many corporations unhappy about these developments, but their objections were swept aside. In a few years the opponents were better organized. Environmentalists have largely succeeded in protecting the legislation of the Nixon era from serious weakening, but no further advance has been possible. Other nations soon surpassed us, and the United States became the major obstacle to global progress.

Adrienne and I were driving home from an early September visit with our daughter in Seattle. Two mountain passes separate Seattle and Wenatchee and we had crossed Snoqualmie Pass and were approaching the ascent to Blewett Pass. It was early evening and darkness was setting in. The brightness of the headlights of several cars coming  toward us limited my vision. As the last car went by I noticed movement ahead, some vague figures on the highway. I quickly pumped the brakes, slowing from the speed limit I had been traveling. There loomed in front of us a herd of elk crossing the road. I cried out, “Oh, God,” clenched the steering wheel and jammed the brakes even more forcefully. The tires squealed as we were thrust forward in our seat belts. I could not stop in time. The huge animals were as shocked as we, suddenly startled and blinded by our oncoming headlights.

It is ironic that just as the neo-conservatives have visibly asserted American global rule, and also made us aware that from the beginning American foreign policy has been imperialist in nature, our global reach is receding. Our ability to shape human history is dramatically declining. Since process theologians can never support imperialism, the end of empire is good news.

We all want power. We should not be ashamed of that. Jesus was very powerful, and so were Socrates and Buddha. The question is, what kind of power? Do we want the power to control and limit others, even to injure or kill them? That is not the power embodied in Jesus, Socrates, or Buddha. Their power was the power to inspire, to persuade, to enable, to empower, to liberate to wider horizons, to open minds to the truth, in short, to lead into authentic life. That power is divine. It is the power God exercises in each of us all the time. It is the kind of power God gives us. It is the kind of power of which no one can have too much."

I learned about a significant part of my past in a counseling office. Dr. Paul King was my first psychotherapist at the Michigan State University Student Counseling Center. I was learning to counsel by experiencing counseling from the other side of the desk. During this time period we were talking about my fears and my guilt. Frequently as I spoke I would feel a strong tightening feeling surging upward into my neck then my head would shake rapidly back and forth uncontrollably. This was truly puzzling and disturbing. On one such occasion a flood of memories rushed into my awareness. I re-lived myself as an eight year old boy sitting on the basement steps, horrified, and clinging to my mother. I experienced moments of my past which had been repressed for years, too overwhelming and intense for me to bear.

by Pat Patterson

I have a deep sense of sorrow and depression.  Our country is, I believe, in a period of profound criminality and loss.  It is an era marked by war, murder, and the unleashing of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; increasing control and exploitation by corporations in the global economy resulting in bourgeoning poverty; denial of devastating assaults on the environment; and erosion of constitutional, civil, and human rights.  The escalation of destruction on every side gives me a sense of despair, and I wonder if redemption is possible.

We drove through the gate into the school yard on that cold New Year’s Day of 1944. All our possessions were loaded into a pickup truck and our 1934 Chevrolet sedan. On our left was a small white building with windows across the side and wooden steps leading to a doorway. On the right was a tiny white frame house with a pile of coal near the door. Farther ahead were two out houses and a fenced corral. Two small trees graced the property. The school yard was surrounded by open fields, this time of year brown with skiffs of white from the most recent snow. Open space greeted our eyes in all directions leading to the majestic Sawtooth mountains in the distance. Our forty mile trip had brought us to Roseworth.

It was a day in May, 1960 and we were now living in Pullman, Washington. I was in my first year as a faculty member of WSU and approaching my twenty-seventh birthday. As a staff counselor my office was in a remodeled barn, which explains why the offices were on the third floor and the restrooms inconveniently located on the second floor. It was a normal morning of counseling and I had quickly walked downstairs to “prepare for my next appointment,” our euphemism for saying, “I am going to the restroom.”