Last week I gave the guest sermon at Pocatello Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (PUUF) entitled God, Who? about our relationship to God, the word, the concept, the presence, and conceptualizing God as a process unfolding, rather than as a personage – more of a Tao than an identity. There is ample biblical evidence for such a concept of God, especially the famous Exodus 3 “I AM” passage. You can download a PDF copy of the sermon to read it: 20130317GodWhoSermonPUUF I hope you enjoy it.
Farewell Prayer
(Written to say farewell at a fetal demise, 2013)
Source Of All we cry
We come before you now
To say farewell to beloved hope
We remember the thought of soft winds
That would touch the trees
Like our hushed tones
That whisper to the stars
Please take these beloved souls home;
Even as they dwell in our hearts
For some things make no sense
And we ask your gentle touch
As we say farewell.
Bless these young ones
Gone from us far too soon
Take them to the earth
Back to our source of all
With love and deep sorrow
We pray dear farewell
Amen
By John Cooper
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 3.0) – You are free to share, remix and adapt this work for any non-commercial purpose so long as it is attributed to the author. For more information contact John at www.gnosticity.com
I do not remember the start
What was it like? Unity? Knowing?
I have stood at the edge of darkness
Screaming into the space between the skies
Burning with hungry questions
Are YOU there?
Why did you leave us so alone?
So separate…
What I see in a mirror, not always pleasing
Sometimes, it even disturbs me.
It can be hard to see your reflection there.
Then, I hear the others
Really hear them
Really see them
When I can listen
When my own shadow
Is not covering my ears
Blinding my eyes.
Is that YOU talking there?
So passionate
So many different eyes, ears
So many ways to see the world
Incredible voices, songs, dance
Such difference, such dissonance
Like a chord waiting to be resolved
Just hanging there, everyday thread
Ringing, together, their small voices
Sounding out greater than their part.
The shards are everywhere,
Every voice, each gaze, every heart.
And I wonder why we all don’t see it
We fight.
Like YOU are hiding from yourself
In all that noise. What kind of game is this?
We disagree, strike out, bob, weave
Hedge, avoid, la-la-la I cannot hear YOU…
How is it that in our disagreement
We fail to hear the music
The cacophonous sound singing
HERE I AM! YOU WANTED ME!
CAN YOU NOT HEAR ME?
CAN YOU NOT SEE ME?
Right or wrong, up or down, side or side
Each religious text, every single sacred word
Each disagreeing vision, all that noise
Every noisy voice, cluster of movement
Cries out to be believed
To be cherished, loved
Like every dissonant heart.
By John Cooper
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 3.0) – You are free to share, remix and adapt this work for any non-commercial purpose so long as it is attributed to the author. For more information contact John at www.gnosticity.com
Dedicated to the Fall 2012 St. Mark’s CPE Cohort – beloved peers and supervisors you have given me more than I could ever hope to return. This is for you.
There is a grace in these halls.
Closest eyes see it takes the heart,
Filling in those softer moments.
Seen in the faces of once friends, their heart-songs, singing, thrumming, strumming
Voices of soul, peering through their eyes, into faces of light and shadow
Of sorrow, Of joy, Of creation – At the beginning and the end
Before, after and during, whispering in the spaces between
Touched by that song brings transformation, new ways of seeing, of being, of moving
To the heart, the soul in its quiet center, for once, not the noise of separation
Just felt, held, loved and wished upon, help me, help us to be whole
Carry us upon winds that will shape us, slowly like rocks jutting up into the sky
Into the shapes that time and wear mean us to be.
There is a grace in these halls, It walks among us, between us
In our hearts, souls and minds, we find it between one-another
In the moments of letting go, of embracing the terrible fears
And in the moments of uncovering, the truly awesome joys
Found in the hearts of suffering, burning to be made whole
Trying to make sense of what is, in the sense and sight of company
Presence without fear or condemnation, hearts beating into the darkness
Crying out we may be alone; But we can be one.
There is a grace in these halls, It is brought by something greater
Carried by weakness and vulnerability, paradoxical strength of wonder
The wounded walkers bear it best they can.
Remember them for theirs is but a shifting moment
Full of courage, wonder and hope, then gone, though never lost.
There is a grace in these halls.
By John Cooper
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 3.0) – You are free to share, remix and adapt this work for any non-commercial purpose so long as it is attributed to the author. For more information contact John at www.gnosticity.com
So I am back on this blog, posting again, and a bit recharged. I have just completed my first unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education). Its an amazing experience that cannot really be articulated in words. Like trying to describe what “warm” is like.
I’ve started writing poetry again. Seems like its a way of letting out the soul. I’ll be posting some here. The next piece will be dedicated to the Fall 2012 CPE cohort at St. Mark’s. I hope whoever is out there enjoys it.
I am also a couple of sermons, some videos and other documents behind. So in the next few weeks, look forward to that.
She moves in the shadows, whispering quiet tones in hushed voices
Our loud, clanging ways wash over her, hiding
In the quiet spaces between
Discovery
Try to expect her, I dare you
She comes with a laugh
You hope
When not overheard but listened
Only the brave, the bold
Make their way through
Take the space between
Hold the middle ground
Easy to stand, harder to fall, to let go
Each fallen wounds remembers in stillness
The softness of her voice, the cry
Heart, outrage, and need
We hold the grief-stricken
And she drifts go deeper down
Farther away, feeling close
She holds it up and shines down
Shining hope and mourning star
What can we do but reach for it?
Farther and ever beyond restoration
Except in those small ways
Quiet whispers
Should they be?
Enough
To sustain
Glad God I hear her
So very rare
Golden tones on hushed wind
We hold one another
Just glad to have found
Something
One drop
Each moment
Again
Wisdom
By John Cooper
Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 3.0) – You are free to share, remix and adapt this work for any non-commercial purpose so long as it is attributed to the author. For more information contact John at www.gnosticity.com
I think all too often our attention is focused on “doing” with each other when the greatest gift we can give is “being.” I know that the more I study ministry, the more I explore myself, the more this lesson comes to the center of my room.
When we talk and share with one-another, we focus on the challenges, the systems, the issues, the concepts, ideas. It seems natural. We forget each other. Our sentiments, our perceptions, our inner worlds, our hidden selves. More than any idea, concept or philosophy, our inner landscapes need exploration. Our hidden selves need a gentle invitation to emerge forth. No conversation about problems and solutions will bring them forth. Gentle questions about what is important, what we value, where we find meaning, what we love. Suspending judgment and inviting a holy curiosity into our relationships with one-another, a desire to explore and understand who we are and what has meaning to us, to listen deeply enough that we invite discovery of new ground.
That is “being” with one-another.
http://www.pnwumc.org/gc2012/what-does-a-statement-of-gospel-obedience-mean-for-the-church/
Read it. I have a fellow seminarian who’s Methodist jurisdiction has been bold enough to stand up for their LGBTQ members by declaring that paragraph 161F in their Book of Discipline is immoral and unjust.
This is a bold, brave and courageous move. I am deeply inspired and impressed with these people. To me, this is prophetic work, the work of speaking truth to power. They have the support of my heart, soul and prayers.
I have been doing a class on Practical Theology and struggling a bit, so am going to come back to this blog to explore some thoughts, ideas and invite reflection in comment. If you read this, and you have thoughts, please, comment.
Classical “Theology” is a “discourse on God” so sometimes generates a reaction among Unitarian Universalists; so let me ask this before embarking on a many varied exploration of theological ideas. Could you please define “God” in a way that works to establish general agreement among people of pluralistic faiths, so that we can narrow the field?
Yeah, I cannot do it either. There are those, such as Jose Ignacio Cabezon, who argue that “Theology” even with its root in “theo” or “God” is appropriate for Budhism, “”I take theology not to be restricted to discourse on God … I take ‘theology’ not to be restricted to its etymological meaning. In that latter sense, Buddhism is of course atheological, rejecting as it does the notion of God.” (Jose Ignacio Cabezon, ‘Buddhist Theology in the Academy’ in Roger Jackson and John J. Makransky’s Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 25–52.) Of course, we assume that the definition of “God” involves some form of directed intelligence; some idea that is embodied, as “I” which makes it separate from “Us” though even in biblical sources, we can argue that the phrase “I AM” as the name of God is certainly an experience which we all share; and taken metaphorically, perhaps “God” is more than a consciousness, a direction, maybe we can see “God” as potentially “Is” or all things that are.
That’s my working definition of “God” these days. All things that are. All concepts of things, all suffering, all love, all of creation, both the random elements that respond to gravitational forces and the metaphorical ideals that wander our minds and call us to our higher selves. This definition is by essence plural, it must include “non-God” as well as “God” because without the God of my relation, my mind, my heart and my identity, am I even here to debate God’s existence?
Nope, not the way I see it. This God has many voices, many identities, and shifts and changes with the times. S/He speaks out in the moments of public policy joy, like when Anderson-F’n-Cooper came out and when our senators show what real courage looks like, and S/He laments at moments of sorrow, like the horrible loss of the western fires here in the United States, and the many wars, death and hunger that plague our planet.
If that is MY OWN definition of “God” – a living embodiment of all that is – then tell me, in terms of “being-in-discourse” with God, when we attempt to make meaning of existence, when we attempt to understand our world, to explore its purpose, its identity, when that is our calling to Theology, to interpret the will of this “God” of mine.
So, you tell me; where would I bound that discipline of “theology?” If my God walks in all things, speaks through all trends, the economic, the physical, the emotional – then who am I to deny the use of the term “theology” because classically, it applied to just one instance, one vision of this “God” with whom I would speak?
Hmmmm.