“Numinous”

By

Jeffrey McAndrew

                Father Nathan Simone was all alone in his office.  There was not a sound.  He sat quietly and pensively as he replayed the highlights of his recent sermon in his mind.   Alone with his inner-most thoughts, he wondered if what he was saying was really resonating with the flock or whether he was just playing a game.   The sermon was entitled:  “Knowing Jesus in Our Life.”  During his 23-minute talk, he saw a lot of nodding heads and affirming glances.  He saw those every Sunday, but were the people really on his side?   Were they perhaps playing roles because they were socially acceptable?  Did the pastor intimately know Jesus or was he just playing a part?  Was he this magic medium to the Lord or was he delusional?   These were the questions that Nathan allowed in his mind from time to time and he felt a little guilty allowing them in. 

                A lot of good and decent people attend the church services.  Mrs. Irma Gladstein appeared to be one of those kinds of people.  She had come up to him after the sermon talking about how she was so inspired by words “hope,”  “love” and “faith.”  Irma behaved like a gentle person and lived her life with a quiet confidence, hopeful that there was a good God out there looking out after her.  By the way, it was the older crowd that seemed to give the most compliments on the pastor’s sermons.   Nathan kept pondering the offering of more interesting titles for the sermons like:  “Balancing Our Human Needs” or “The Psychology of Belief” or “What TV teaches about God” or “Is It Wrong to Like Dr. Wayne Dyer?”   Perhaps those titles would lead him astray from the safe and politically correct path.  In his life, he had always chosen the safest path.   If he wasn’t careful, he could be let himself be badgered by the extreme right.    That appeared to be his Achilles Heel.

                The good pastor was certain he had to freshen up the church experience dramatically someway.   He was getting increasingly anxious about keeping everyone’s interest.  The church was losing about 5 members per month and the relatively small congregation of 350 couldn’t afford such a loss.  There were less and less children showing up for church. There is a point in the service where the children come up and share with the pastor.  On many Sundays, there were no children.   What was it that convinced some that church was such a bad experience for their families?   There were times when the pastor felt personally insulted by this, that some had lost faith in something bigger than themselves.  He was afraid for people rejecting church and in its place absorbing this vast and exponentially scary conflagration of nothingness, this existential confusion that he was most apprehensive about.   The pastor sometimes feared anyone going to hell, a place he believed in publicly, but he had his doubts privately.    The pastor’s thoughts were swirling around in his head.   He found it harder to concentrate lately.  Maybe he needed to add more of a sense of humor in his sermons, he contemplated.  Maybe there were other opinion leaders in the church who were gravitating away and subtly leading the flock away from the shepherd.   He felt like he had to keep his vulnerable and impressionable flock away from bad beliefs.  When he started his work as a minister in the 1990’s he didn’t think that such angst and confusion would be part of the job.   He secretly wished he could be rescued from this anxiety and gently led to a more innocent kind of insouciance.   Right now the church life was taking on a sort of protean manifestation, something always changing and something hard to grasp in its entire context. 

                On the pastor’s mind to a great degree also was the increasing pressure to move out of the awe inspiring architecture of the 115 year-old church which was recently placed on the city of Winston, Wisconsin’s List of Historical Places.  The masses of the congregation were clamoring for a new place which was handicapped accessible.  Some were perhaps in the mood for a fresh change.   There was another smaller group of church members who urged that improvements at the downtown site would be the best move.  The pastor felt this friction as something that could be detrimental to the long term unity of the members.  The restive thoughts weighed heavily on his conscience, tearing away at him like a cat playing with a worn out toy.   The numerous gray hairs on his head were perhaps a reminder of the stress of trying to please most of the people most of the time.  This was another Achilles Heel, trying to make everybody happy even when his logic told him he could not.

                On the top of the pastor’s desk was a copy of a book which investigated a cult whose members thought the world was going to end.  When the world did not end on a specified date the group did not disband.   (The pastor found this interesting while some of the members of his flock would not find it appealing.)   The group was miraculously able to stay together, apparently rationalizing elements of thought that presented a large degree of cognitive dissonance.   The pastor would wonder if there is any connection with religious thought and how people would hang on to these kinds of beliefs for dear life.    The book’s theory could explain why smokers kept on smoking even though they knew it caused lung cancer.    If the individual’s self-concept is threatened enough the person would rather rationalize rather than be rational.  The book was a present from a friend of his named Dr. Andrew Lippert.   He had seen the psychiatrist for counseling after his difficult divorce from his first wife(Leann) in the mid-1980’s.    LeAnn was very religious, far-right and acted like Sarah Palin many times.   She was openly religious but her mind was probably full of contradictions.   How intellectually honest is religion?   LeAnn would probably still not have a good answer to that one. 

                The old sturdy church was perfectly quiet except for some squeaking and scrubbing sounds emanating down the hallway near the prayer room.    Johnny Cranston was the maintenance guy who was just starting his Sunday afternoon cleaning regimen.   The pastor knew Johnny to have a fine and generous heart.  Johnny was a real person.  He was the father of five children and lived in the “rough” part of town.    He was one of Nathan’s unsung heroes because of what the pastor saw as his simple ways and caring nature.   Johnny played guitar and would sing every year at the church’s “Thanksgiving Dinner for the Homeless. “    Once when he had found out that a teen-aged girl from Winston had been abducted and done away with by a serial killer from Wichita, he was the first one to start a fundraiser to help the family of the girl.   He also wrote a controversial letter to the Wichita paper stating that we should have compassion for Dennis Pragerson’s family too.   Cranston, a simple man, was not afraid to speak his mind on the important issues, because he knew life was too short to be wishy-washy.   He wasn’t afraid of controversy if he was speaking from his heart.

                Johnny would tell the pastor how he should go more “hard line on the sermons.”    Johnny would urge the pastor to talk more daringly about love.  Also he would also attempt to cheer up Pastor Nathan once in awhile by reciting David Letterman’s Top-Ten List or telling a semi-clean joke. 

Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.

Proverbs 10-12

                Pastor Nathan respected Johnny’s positive nature and it gave him great faith in human kind.  It sometimes helped motivate him in his sermons.   He would end all sermons with  “Remember God loves you and so do I.”    He would quote Kahil Gibran quite often in his sermons but some of the church members thought it was a little excessive.  Sometimes the sermons would have quite an international flavor.   Pastor could feel the poignant pressure, the ubiquitous force to speak the will of God, but also felt the pressure to be safe and within the bounds of political correctness.   What a trapeze act, a fine line to walk sometimes!   As long as the sermons were about love what was the worry about?

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”  And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

The Bible

                One of the African American members of the Congregation gave the pastor a painting once entitled  “The Beauty of Truth.”   The multi-colored painting showed a group of people with multifarious cultural heritages singing with great energy.   It took Shonte Robinson a month to complete.   Pastor Nathan displayed this captivating picture behind his desk in his church office next to a poster which stated the ELCA mission of the Stephen Ministry.

                On top of his desk was a copy of a book “To Love and To Be Loved” by Sam Keen and a paper from an old college friend named Robert John Collins.  The paper investigated the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and how it contrasts with the ideas of Christianity.    There was a poster on the wall of Martin Luther King Junior showing the orator in the midst of compassionate oratory during the “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, with the caption that read, “What are you teaching your children?”    On a small book shelf near the east corner of the room was “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran.  This was one of his favorite books.   On the bottom of the shelf lay more heavy hitters like Camus, Socrates, Kafka and Des Cartes.   The middle rack contained books by one of his favorite nature writers Margaret Lathrop and by psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Lippert.   He loved when Lathrop would talk about  “the glorious beauty of God’s blessed world” and about her sacred walks through nearby  Hobbs Woods.    Lippert had written two books about autistic savants and had many followers at his webite called:  www.drlippert.com .   There were also a whole host of motivational books on the shelf as well, including books by Dr. Wayne Dyer, Leo Buscaglia, Brian Tracy and Denis Waitley.   The pastor credited the writings of Keen, Gibran, Waitley and Dyer for getting him through very tough parts of his life in his early 20’s when he was married to Leann who had some severe emotional problems.  A friend also stepped in and talked some sense into him and the marriage ended before the couple had children after 11 months.   Reading helped him sort his many, many thoughts out during this disturbing, disorienting and confusing period.   He also liked a recent book called “Tolstoy in the Purple Chair” about a woman who read a book every day for a year.  The book gave some great anecdotal evidence for the power of bibliotherapy. 

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves , like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide.  A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka

               

                On the east wall of the pastor’s office was a poster with a beautiful ocean sunset, with a poem of Mary Oliver’s superimposed over the scene:  

MYSTERIES, YES

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in alliance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

                Sometimes the weight of the world would seem to fall down upon Pastor Nathan.   He would counsel people addicted to alcohol, people with bad marriages, folks on the cusp of financial disaster, people who hurt the ones they love and people with a spiritual malaise of some kind.   He would call it a sense of spiritual ennui.   Such a variety of concerns, and such intense pressure to do the right thing…this would cause the pastor to stay awake at nights.  He wasn’t always sure he was doing the right thing or saying the right thing, but he tried to learn from his mistakes.    He would pray to himself for God to grant him the ability to always see beauty and truth and to show him the right way in life.

Beauty is not an image you would see nor a song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.  Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.  But you are eternity and you are the mirror.          

                It was Saturday and Pastor Nathan was wondering how he could make his sermons more modern.  He sometimes found himself even searching Youtube for sermons, and looking at what his favorite political heroes were saying.  He found the famous RFK speech following Martin Luther King Junior’s death very, very inspiring.    Hope is the belief that suffering may have a higher purpose and surely Robert F. Kennedy and  MLK were stronger in death than they were in life.   There were so many people suffering in his congregation that he sometimes he felt like Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye.”     With much clarity, courage and compassion, the pastor was like a shepherd helping to steer a suffering flock in the right direction.  He was there for the express purpose of keeping them from falling over the edge of the cliff.  Sometimes he felt thoroughly unequipped to deal with people suffering in bad marriages, to minister to those who have lost loved ones, to those who feel lost in general,  or to those who have been shocked by loved ones who after all these years say they don’t love them in return.   He would talk to people about how they might learn from the pain and how God may be speaking through difficult situations.  He was good at using his comforting voice to get people to feel more comfortable with their life challenges and issues.  

³ Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn, 
   for they will be comforted. 
⁵ Blessed are the meek, 
   for they will inherit the earth. 
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
   for they will be filled. 
⁷ Blessed are the merciful, 
   for they will be shown mercy. 
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart, 
   for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers, 
   for they will be called children of God. 
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, 
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3-12

                There must be some meaning to this suffering in the real world, thought the middle-aged pastor.   There is so much pain out there.  People need to understand their lives in a much greater context.  It was almost too much pressure for a 51 year-old minister to face.  A lot of courage needs to be conjured up and received from somewhere.  All these suffering people, with no apparent resolutions to their inner angst, family conflicts, and we are all left to wonder about.  It seemed like there were too many questions.   Where does this power of love come from?  The Bible told him it was Jesus and God, but in his darkest moments he was not sure what the answers were.   

                Pastor Nathan’s day was busy, and Thanksgiving was coming up soon.  His church was responsible for feeding nearly 500 economically disadvantaged members of the community on that day.  He had volunteer coordinators at church but he was the guy who had to ensure that everything was done right and on time.  Things would fall apart if he wasn’t checking in with the coordinators all of the time.    During Thanksgiving weekend he would also balance his family needs with the needs of his congregation.   He would be celebrating Saturday with his brother William and family at a small town called Tines in southern Wisconsin.   What made this meeting so interesting was that most of William’s family were agnostics or atheists.   So far there were no protracted arguments at holidays which would put people at odds.  Everyone had to be very careful not to offend.  William, a very sensitive man, one year younger than Nathan,  is a lawyer with his own small office on the town’s Main Street.  He handles many different kinds of cases and people in town respect him for his great objectivity, compassion and skill.  His religion (or lack of it) doesn’t come up as a topic of conversation very often.   The respect people have for him appears to be just too great to bring religion into the picture.    People tend to look the other way.

                The pastor had to prepare for a funeral on Monday.  A faithful member of the flock, Suzanne Mann, had passed away Friday at her home after a bitter battle with pancreatic cancer.  Suzanne was a member of the Winston Bird Club and a neighborhood bridge club.   Unlike her husband, she was a liberal democrat who watched a lot of MSNBC.  Her husband would vote Republican in close to 100-percent of elections.    Her husband Victor was a small business owner and avid hunter who was excited about concealed carry becoming law next week on November 2^nd.     He was almost a polar opposite of pastor and his liberal instincts.  The pastor once had a nightmare that Mr. Mann charged the podium and shot him calling him “liberal slime.”   Victor Mann made the pastor nervous, maybe for a good reason.   Pastor had also heard that Mr. Mann making inappropriate comments to some of his female employees and had been to court for two cases because of these issues.  He was never charged with anything, but most in the neighborhood knew he ran is mouth off with sexist comments too often.   Many also suspected Victor of spray painting anti-Muslim sayings on the wall of the public library shortly after 9-11.   No one was arrested.  The library director was given police protection for a couple of weeks after the incident mainly because of some of the harsh words left in a letter.   Six-foot, six inches tall, and barrel-chested, and sporting a 1940’s style crew cut, Victor was quite an intimidating physical presence.   He was also a devoted member of The Tea Party. 

                On the front of the church leaflet dedicated to Suzanne was the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.  The pastor liked this one and recommended it at most funerals.   According to Pastor Nathan, this prayer has a lot to say about seeing most any situation in a positive manner. 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

                Pastor felt compelled to keep an error-free service as he knew Victor would be upset if anything was missed or out of order.  It was times like these that made Pastor nervous about the details.  Nathan would rehearse the steps of this one a little more than most services.   There were so many hoops to go through to ensure that every step was followed perfectly.  He was growing tired of this punctiliousness, this meticulousness that was worshipped perhaps too much in religion.  Why does everything have to be so perfect?  Shouldn’t the general direction and the meaning of the service be more important than all details being 100-percent correct?     Pastor Nathan firmly believed that religion was on a higher rung than politics.  He was afraid of the vituperative nature of politics and was certain there was a kindness to religion that couldn’t be broken by modern society.    Lately the pastor had overdosed on MSNBC .   For some reason Martin Bashir was starting to make him angry lately.  He couldn’t explain why. 

                On the schedule today was a meeting with the cantankerous Willy Sunder.   Sunder enjoyed questioning the pastor on deep philosophical questions.  He was the town humanist who prided himself on getting the last word, more importantly for him, the last rhetorical question.   He would write these letters to the editor that fully explained his scientific and non-spiritual views.   Many people in town thought he was a “nutbag.”    There was a knock on the door.  Sunder was 20minutes early.   Pastor Nathan let go of his notepad and rose to greet the Sunder’s large warm hand.  

                “I was in the neighborhood and realized we were meeting today.  I hope you don’t mind that I’m a little early.” 

                 Willy continued, “Pastor, you look like you could use another cup of Folgers.”   Nathan replied, “I think so, it’s been a long week!”   

                Willy says, “I’m here to challenge you with all of my silly questions pastor!”    “I would expect  nothing less,” retorted Pastor Nathan.   “What’s on your mind?  How are Lilly and the kids?”    “Great!  Lilly’s a little bossy, but I love her with all my heart.”          

                Willy starts in. “I’ve come here to express doubts.  How can there be a supreme being who hears all of our thoughts?  How can there be a supernatural  being who knows all of my dreams, all of my intentions, all of my dark secrets, all the sins I’ve committed?”   “It still seems impossible.”  

                Pastor Nathan replied,  “I think  that faith requires an extra level of trust, trust that there is a caring and guiding force that can help us along the way, can aid us when we need extra support, something which adds meaning in difficult times.”

                “How could a God exist when he let my Uncle Charlie die?  He just started passing out and his friend Cal would find him on the bathroom floor.”  He went through some very frustrating time in the nursing home before he died.  He was totally helpless at the end.  It was tough to see.  He would order his best friends and relatives out of the room.  My father thought it was because he was paranoid, but I don’t think that wanted people to see him in that weakened state.  Why does God make the end of life painful for some more than others?   I just don’t get it.”

                 Pastor chimes in, “I don’t know, but only God knows the way and we just have to take the leap of faith and trust in him.  We are not alone because Christ’s love is with us all of the time.  All we have to do is relax and turn to Christ’s love and we’ll be fine.   People don’t realize how easy it is to turn to a life of love and peace.”   “For those who believe in Christ, he is a strong influence, for those who doubt, he is harder to find.  We must be looking for God in order to find God.  It is that simple.” 

                Sunder was a member of the Saturday morning Bible study, headed by lay minister Tim Reeble.  Tim found God when he recovered from alcohol and drug abuse.  He lost his wife and family and then started burglarizing liquor stores before being caught.   He was ordered into treatment at Wilde House  for 90 days and he said it changed his life when he experienced the loving touch of Jesus.  He said it was quite a revelation that he was living his life incorrectly for the first 15-thousand 439 days of his life.    Sunder admired Reeble’s quiet courage and fortitude.  Reeble was also a success story because only about 10-percent of the addicts admitted to Wilde House were able to succeed.  

                “Where’s God for the 90-percent of the people who go back and start drinking after being admitted to treatment?”   Willy continues, “Tim’s a success story for sure, but who is looking out for the rest of them?”  Pastor replies, “I don’t know, but I do know that God works at his own pace and in his own mysterious ways.  God will test us but will probably let us do most of the work.” 

                “I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris lately and it seems there is a logical reason for religion, but in some sense it is outdated.  It’s like this friendly anachronism.  People need to create their own forms of spirituality that will fit better with realities of the modern times.  It is difficult to take the leap of faith because I don’t want to assume anything about what I don’t understand.  What about your autistic son?   Do you think God brought him on Earth and made a lesson  for you?  Do think there is a reason for your son Will who has a mental age of one or two?  He is fifteen and still cannot toilet himself appropriately.  Is there a lesson from God from this or is it just random?   I don’t mean to be mean or inappropriate, but how does you spirituality help you or hinder you in the understanding of this?”     

                Willy continues,   “Look at quantum mechanics, how does that relate to the extinct language of the Bible?   We need radical new ways to be spiritual.   Science gives us new ways of thinking and looking at the world.  It seems to me that there need to be changes, radical changes in the way we worship.  There is a question whether or not we need religion at all.  Hitchens would argue that religion poisons everything,  that it is a subtly pernicious element and a lower form of thinking that is in the end harmful.  How do you counsel someone like me?  Am I too tough to handle?”

                Pastor Nathan takes a very  deep breath and looks at Willy.  He was wondering if it was ever fair to bring up his son Will who had to be placed in a group home at the age of 12.   Willy sits back in his chair in a semi-defensive posture, like a lawyer ready for the judge to read the results at trial.   “I think your questions are good and you are asking questions that challenge your faith.  Faith is not something that can be categorized or labeled.  It cannot be strictly defined.  It cannot be pigeon holed into a precise scientific certainty.  Much of what drives faith is the tension between certainty and uncertainty.  Taking the leap of faith is a way to dedicate oneself to something bigger than oneself.  Even though we are not sure what that is, it is our intuitive, creative side that needs to help us out here.   Using a scientific analogy,  physicists do not know how big the universe is and struggle with the concept of infinity.  Religion says there is a bigger answer that we cannot define and that it is OK to live with the questions.”

                Willy quips, “I respectfully disagree.  I think religion has all these rules that cut off curiosity.  They have ready-made answers for the ignorant, so that those who are not informed can bask in the false light of false answers.   That’s how I see it.”    Pastor Nathan responds, “A lot of atheists look at religion and see it as inane conformity adding up to nothing, an extinct form of thinking that leads to irrational and silly conclusions.  However, when looking at it from an individualistic point of view,  Jesus was radically positive when it came to standing up for morality.  What makes Jesus interesting is the tension caused by Jesus’s creative non-conformist stand.   They didn’t believe him and so they killed him, when in fact he was all about forgiveness and seeing the good in everyone.  The crucifixion is the ultimate in irony.  How interesting is it to you that someone may have died for your sins?”

                Willy jumps in, “I don’t see why someone has to go up on a cross and die a painful death just to make a point.  Christ could have expressed his passion in civil discourse and not rocking the boat so much.  It could be argued that Christ was delusional and would be classified as mentally ill in this day and age.  There are a couple people in almost every mental hospital in the United States who think they are Christ.  This megalomania is not healthy and if Christianity drives some to mental illness it is not a smart long-term direction to be going in.”  

                The pastor with a more concerned look continues, “Again, it is a poignantly personal journey we embark on when we decide to give it all the Jesus.  We shed the skin of our old selves and we become new again.  We become new men as C.S. Lewis once said.  We are brand new because we are profoundly touched by the love and profound care of Christ.  Much of the Bible speaks in analogies.  It is not literal and those who cannot understand it most of the time take it to literally and then turn around and demonize the entire book.   It’s all about your personal spiritual journey and what ‘float s your boat.’  If secularism is enough for you fine…but consider what you may or would be leaving out of your world view. “ 

                Willy possibly feigning looking more student-like,  “I understand you want to have me consider the entire picture, but I cannot get out of my mind that religion is hiding its head in the sand because it is afraid.  Science is not afraid of the questions.  Science is the poetry of reality.  It thrives on reality.   I know that religion helps people but is it reinforcing ignorance instead of truth?  I don’t buy this whole thing of there being a celestial parent in the sky who knows all of our thoughts.   There is no evidence to suggest that this is even close to being true.  Christianity is a failed mythology that serves no purpose other than to justify horrible wars, make people feel false importance and superior, and help warped and unscrupulous people make tons of cash. ”

                The pastor chimes in, “The author you like, Chris Hitchens,  is pretty impressed with himself.   I’m concerned that Hitch is not the best role model.   I’ve seen him io Youtube videos being very cruel to folks who are religious. He definitely rides his high horse.” 

                It was a 47-minute visit with Willy. Usually his sessions were longer, but for some reason Nathan had learned to tolerate them.  They were interesting because there were topics with Willy that would never come up in the church socials, coffee clutches, and Christian book club meetings.   His talks with Willy were almost a guilty pleasure and he once had a dream that God struck him dead from a lightning bolt after a one of his God/anti-God talks with Willy.   He felt guilty about thinking about atheism for too long.  The church could supply the answers and why step out into the woods to ask the questions all over again?   Talking with Willy made the pastor feel humble and out of his comfort zone.  Maybe more growth was possible outside of that zone.

                Pastor Nathan felt like his life was meaningful but the politics of the church was starting to drag him down.  There was such a pressure to build, build, build.   There were committees  on top of committees, schedules , and important people to meet because they were wealthy and contributors to the church.  In his private thoughts, Nathan felt bad that church was too much about money and not enough about people.  He thought about the history of the church over the past hundreds of years and how he had read about the religion’s efforts to stifle free inquiry.  There was something wrong about pouring over an ancient book and pretending that the words were holy and true after so many years.

      He had many private thoughts that people would be shocked about if they knew.   It was like Sigmund Freud’s Id that needed to be guarded constantly.   These private thoughts also told him sometimes that the universe could be a gigantic pile of nothingness, complete randomness without a creator.   He was afraid to think about the horrible nothingness without a supreme being, without these fables to protect him, without Mommy and Daddy in the sky.    How could it be?   How could Nathan hold two such opposite thoughts, juxtaposed in one brain?   Part of his mind thought faith is salvation and part of his mind was beginning to believe that science, reason and compassion was the true candle in the darkness.    

                What about miracles?  Willy didn’t believe in them, and neither did his brother William, a big Richard Dawkins fan.  Pastor Nathan was most fascinated with what writer Margaret Lathrop said about miracles, that just our existence is a miracle.  The fact that the natural world could be such a fascinating puzzle with everything  from atoms to black holes was what convinced Margaret that there was so much more.   She felt that the ebullience and magnificent beauty of the universe was the best evidence for miracles.   It was the concept of miracles but not in the way most theologians perceived it.  It was miracles minus the many rules of organized religion.   Nathan once read a book by Richard Dawkins but would never admit to the congregation members he did.   

                Pastor Nathan was also fascinated with some of the smartest authors and speakers.  He noticed on line that there was a list of the top public intellectuals.  They included some names that many people in his congregation would call libs.   Names like Paul Krugman,  Al Gore, Noah Chomsky, Peter Singer, Daniel Dennett,  Steven Pinker, Richard Posner, Naomi Klein, Camille Paglia and Christopher Hitchens came up on that list.   He felt a little humbled by these scholars, but felt troubled that many were atheists.   Dennett would call himself a freethinker.  Pastor thought “freethinker” may be going overboard politically, but was deeply troubled by the cognitive dissonance caused by thinking such thoughts.   Here he was in a free country, but feeling troubled by thinking these forbidden thoughts.  Something did not make sense.  Not enough about the world made sense.  He was 51 and still having thoughts like this.

                It was a week later now in the month of December of 2011.   Pastor was exiting his light green Prius and stepping into the parking lot.  He saw a note half frozen in the snow and ice near one of his snow tires.   It was handwritten and appeared to include some bullet points and signatures.   It was ominous from the start as it contained much of the writing in red.    The half-crumpled piece of notepaper contained bullet points :

·         Pastor has humanistic tendencies which are dangerous for the future of the church.  He listens to indie bands like “The National” and “Comsat Angels” on his Walkman.  He has freethinking tendencies.  He is ultimately dangerous.

·         Pastor had a failed marriage 20 years ago which does not model a positive lifestyle.

·         Pastor is overly empathetic with gay and lesbian issues and was seen protesting at several LGBT demonstrations.   This is totally unacceptable.  He MUST live within the politically correct rules of the church.

·         Pastor does not mention enough from scripture, seems to follow his own rules too much during sermons.  His touchy-feely love stuff doesn’t do anything for our more serious members.

·         Some sermons contain inappropriate material such as quotes from non-believers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.    One of his Bible studies centered on the universe and Carl Sagan.  All members of this church do not believe in evolution or this outer space stuff.  There is no concrete evidence that the Earth is more than 10-thousand years old.   Someone must have created us.  Evolution does not make sense.   How can non-life spring to life?   Pastor Nathan’s attitude is that of a doubter, not a positive person with hope and faith and that is quite sad and unfortunate.

Special committee needs to vote at secret meeting to replace the pastor.  No confidence vote must be two thirds of the committee of twelve(eight members).

The words tore through Nathan’s mind.  It was like that realization that you were on the verge of being fired from a job you have been so proud of for so many years.   He felt like his life might go into a tailspin.  He wondered who his true friends were in the church community and how many enemies that he has that he is not even aware of.   He always felt kind of like the Catcher in the Rye, helping guide people, and saving them before they fell off the cliff.  Now it felt like all the sheep had knives and doubted the cognitive dissonance necessary for church leadership.  Life is very complicated.

               

                Maybe he needed to talk to Dave White.  White is a certified clinical psychologist who specializes in depression, aging and marriage issues.   He had helped the pastor 14 years ago when his wife had a stroke that left her partially paralyzed.  She was not the same woman after the stroke.  When she was in pain she was mean and very unlikeable.  Her kindness seemed to evaporate and she was very needy for the last six months of her life, before she had the heart attack which killed her.  She had died right in her sleep next to Nathan.  He never had time to say goodbye and it was too sad for words.   While  Dr. White also owned a Christian bent that would be asking him to stay within the constriction of Christian rules he would also have a good-hearted  nature helping him at another crisis juncture of his life.  He pondered the possibilities of what could happen with this rogue wing of the church throwing complaints his way.  In their eyes, he probably could do no right.  He liked the Leroy Niemann sports pictures in his counseling office and his sepia colored blackbirds in the gold frame.  He had a Monet-like painting  of a field of azaleas  and a long walkway at a beautiful resort called The Bay Shore Inn.   Azaleas could be such beautiful flowers, a prized member of the of the genus Rhododendron.   He felt an immense sense of comfort there on the couch where he was free to use all of his intellect and to comment on the totality of life’s situations.   He could spew anything and not be afraid when Dave White was there.  He would accept everything he said in a very Rogerian manner, and then gently reflecting back to him words of perspective.  Pastor Nathan needed that soft and kind assurance now more than ever because life was closing in on him now and he was beginning to feel like the time 14 years ago when his wife Wendy had the stroke that made her so mean.   Hurting people sometimes hurt others. That’s just a fact of life.   Nathan had these re-occurring pangs of guilt, even after Wendy was gone that he had not taken care of her enough during the last six months, that he had not listened to her enough, had not gone far enough out of himself into her chaotic world.    Dave White would reassure him that he was honoring his marriage vows with Wendy by being the best husband that he could ever be. 

                Pastor Nathan remained fascinated in awe over faith’s numinous quality, that it had this ability to be compelling but at the same time induce a great amount of fear.  This fear of the unknown was not quantifiable, not clear.   He did feel in communion with something, with something holy, something big but not easily defined. 

The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.

Aldous Huxley

                Nathan also remembered how the late Carl Sagan would say in interviews that mankind must be able to separate the numinous from the religious.  (Maybe that was a subject he could peruse with Dave White.)  In his mind he knew that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify knowledge of whether God exists or does not.  This seemed like a more agnostic view of life.   With all the tragedy in life, how could there be a God?   As Leo Buscaglia once said, “God must have a sense of humor about the world, just look around you!”

                Cognitive dissonance continued to eat at Nathan like a bad smell in a crowd that everybody notices but says nothing about.   God had to exist, yet he cannot.  This is the paradox.   Religion all of the sudden seemed man-made and somewhat contrived and Nathan was left in the grips of the dissonance only to be welcomed by a very empty sense of existentialism.    He remembered his philosophy classes at Tilden College, and Professor Arthur C. Dent’s favorite writer….The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is widely regarded as the father of existentialism who believed, like Buscaglia, that every day be lived passionately and sincerely, in spite of many strange obstacles and absurd distractions.  It was the individual who is responsible for ascribing life its meaning and no one else.   Pastor Nathan would likely do some things that he did when situations got tough.   His predilection for J.S. Bach would most likely take over and he would starting reading Sam Keen in his easy chair.  There was something about the writings of Keen that would settle his mind.  He would avoid any books by Christopher Htichens because that would unsettle him.    It was the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and the Fugue in G Minor BWV 578, and of course the celebrated work of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desire.  There was Mozart’s scintillating French Horn Concerto for Horn.  He especially liked Radek Baborak and his interpretation and performance on Number 3.   Concerto Number 3 that started off with the numinous French Horn.  He particularly liked the version with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sir George Solti.   Listening to classical music would propel him into another world.  He would be able to get sacredly in touch with the profound, the peaceful and the numinous.   Pastor would be able to get away from the noise of the everyday world, the trivial car horns, telephone rings, the yelling in the street and the blare of TV commercials.  Oh, how our pastor hated TV commercials.   Nathan knew in his heart that he could get in touch with God and that he could act and think like a good person for the glory of the ultimate level of morality, but his mind said “no.”

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

1 Corinthians 10:31

                The spiritual part of the religious leader beckoned to him with irreducible complexity.   How could molecules begin forming and multiplying into DNA or RNA or any of the basic building blocks of life?   This seemed to be the central question.   How could non-life just spontaneously combine into some sort of life and molecules that replicate themselves.  Was God the first mover?  If there was a first mover, who created the first mover?    Does the universe play games with cause and effject so humans cannot understand?    Why did Einstein believe in God?  These thoughts could be very troubling but were indeed fascinating at the same time.   Was the tempestuous logic necessary to side with science necessary, or do we throw up our hands and say that God did it?   There appeared no way to amalgamate science and religion.  They seem to be like oil and water.   As the flock was threatening a mutiny on the ship, Pastor Nathan felt a strange sense of sorrow for the apparent ignorance and anger of the masses.  He felt he had the responsibility to give them hope and a sense of trust in the future in any way he could muster it.  This was not going to be an easy journey.  As a matter of fact, it would be painful perhaps beyond thresholds he has experienced before. 

                He felt an acute responsibility to give the flock direction, to be that grounding force of spirituality, that ever-solid rock and foundation for positive thinking.  Some in the flock had lost their way like Dave Navison, who left the church for the Church of Scientology.  He felt that he was making some headway a couple of years ago with Dave, until he decided to head off to California and join an L.  Ron Hubbard group in the Glendale area.  Eight months later, Dave was dead.   Pastor Nathan started to think how vulnerable people are when they are not reasoned into something.  They can be manipulated every which way.  Scientology apparently asserts that people have hidden abilities which have not yet been fully realized and is able to swoop in and grab people’s souls like they were a business commodity.  It is believed that increased spiritual awareness and physical benefits are accomplished through counseling sessions referred to as auditing.  What is auditing anyway?   It sounds so mechanical and not personal at all.   Through auditing, it is said that people can solve their problems and free themselves of what are called engrams.  Pastor Nathan thought about the crazy faith system’s utopian aim to "clear the planet", a world in which everyone has cleared themselves of their engrams.  There is nothing scientific, it seemed, about scientology which is apparently the ultimate irony.   He would always hate Scientology with a passion because of the terrible things, the irreversible things it did to his friend and church member Dave Navison who took a switch blade out to the desert and slit his own throat.  How truly tragic that a belief system could lead to suicide?   The worse problem is that Dave’s suicide also led to the suicide of his son Ryan.  Ryan was 16 and didn’t understand why his Dad(his idol) would take his own life.   Two weeks later, Ryan was dead…a true victim of suicide contagion, an extremely dangerous demon indeed.    He thought about how a belief system could lead to a contagion and how it could spread like wild fire.   He read in the encyclopedia about how 42-percent of successful suicides were caused by this evil contagion .    There was a pernicious and irrational thing going on that could not be completely articulated, but the cause was a belief system.   God may be the problem.   Poor Dave Navison.

                Fred Kramer, another member of the congregation, was almost the polar opposite of someone who could be falling for such spiritual garbage.  He played guitar once in awhile at church, but most interesting were his secular songs like “Nature is Here,”  “Our Love is Metaphysical,” “You Brought Song into My Life,” and “Warm Embrace.”   Fred’s songs assured Pastor Nathan that was a wealth of music outside the realm of the church that could be connected to, that there was spirituality all over the place literally.   In “MetaPhysical”  Fred would talk about “loving each other in the middle of our hearts.”  These were lyrics that only Fred could conjure up in his loving and compassionate way.   If there was anybody he could trust in the middle of this church controversy it was Fred, because Fred was wonderful and accepting.     Mike Tarnicle would be another person he could trust.  He grew up in New England and loved beer and clam chowder.   They would have coffee at Starbucks once in awhile to talk about the meaning of life and all of that great stuff.   Mike was also a guitar player who played with the great Wanda Houston in college and had a great and wonderful singer/ idol named Mavis Staples.   He once met Staples at a concert many years ago and she said it’s great when you sing because you “make the world a better place.”     He even wrote a song about that, a simple chording version on his guitar called “A Better Place.”   Mike Tarnicle was that common sense guy, with a rock solid foundation based on reality.   He would also be good to consult during this time of trouble and turbulence.  Mike and Pastor Nathan would also talk about their favorite business motivators like Harvey Mc Kay, Stephen Covey and Brian Tracy.   Mike was the manager of a cable company call center in Wisconsin for many years and was an expert at customer service and treated each person he met with great respect.   They would also talk about their favorite actors like Dustin Hoffman, Olivier, Angelica Huston, Sean Penn and Glenn Close.    They both shared a favorite comedian.  His name is Robin Williams.              

                Pastor thought about how Dr. Wayne Dyer had motivated him early on in life with books like: “Your Erroneous Zones” and “Pulling Your Own Strings.”    Now he was beginning to look like a tragic caricature of himself.   He appeared to be pandering to the masses without sharing any intellectual honesty.  Too much of the message was tuning out all negative thoughts and thinking only positive thoughts, which seemed to oversimplify life which was more nuanced.  Sometimes feeling depressed temporarily  is the most realistic and what Dyer is selling us is false hope.  Does he know this at some deep level or is there a level of self-delusion?  If so, how deep does the self-delusion go?  He was beginning to see Dyer more as a salesman than someone who wants to truly help people.  He saw a Youtube video of Deepak Chopra talking to Richard Dawkins and Dawkins expressing how Chopra had “hijacked quantum physics.”  Chopra, too,  was now looking like a scam artist instead of someone truly out to help people in need.          

                Maybe Willy Sunder was right.  It could be more moral to have doubts and intellectual honesty.   Was it better to be humble and to use the scientific method to understand the world or to wallow in group spirituality speak?    Suddenly he thought of religion as arrogant and somewhat bombastic, as a sorry attempt to explain anything meaningful.   Was religion just producing incantations for  a brainwashing purpose?  What was the difference between his local church and a cult?  Was religion putting ideations forward that are new and challenging or just replaying the old ideas over and over and over again?   He couldn’t understand why everyone was nodding their head but didn’t quite know the answer.  They pretended to know but maybe they didn’t really know at all.   Suddenly religion seemed too glittery, an amalgamation of smoke and mirrors meant to tantalize the masses, the opiate therein meant to honor tradition and only tradition, responsive to trepidation not truth, answering to shared lies instead of hidden fears.  It was everyone lying.   Why can’t we be positive without God? 

                Pastor Nathan had flashbacks of thoughts about when Carl Ottum(another very conservative member of the church) said he had no backbone.  He berated him for close to twenty minutes saying that he was too laidback to lead a church and that it was a joke that he got into any leadership position.  He said that “being a nice guy” was not enough, that he had to have a moral fiber, a backbone built on the word of Christ.  It was like this big secret and the only one not knowing was the pastor. 

               

Repentance

   In was a warm March, warmer than it had been in the last 100 years. The past two weeks, the temperature was hovering in the mid-70’s and the normal high was closer to 40.   It may, in fact, be some partial evidence for global warming, which most of the church didn’t want to believe.    Sunday March 4^th, 2012 was a meeting called “Repentance.”  There was to be a panel of church leaders asking questions to the pastor and then making a decision on whether or not he should be expelled from the church.   Someone had put a pernicious and partially misspelled poem in the pastor’s mailbox recently telling him to repent or he would go to hell.    The pastor was starting to get nervous about the meeting to which he was called by seven members of the church board.  These people were serious as a heart attack.     It was three months since he found that frightening letter in the parking lot and now the agenda items were there for all to see.  The members were concerned that the pastor has “humanistic tendencies which are dangerous for the future of the church.”  The bullet points listed for the meeting were:

·         He listens to indie bands like on his Walkman.  He has freethinking tendencies and sometimes does not have respect for church rules.  We believe that he may be ultimately dangerous.  Some of these bands may have demonic origins which church goers should shun.

·         Pastor had a failed marriage 20 years ago which does not model a positive lifestyle.

·         Pastor seemingly overly empathetic/sympatheic with gay and lesbian issues and was seen protesting at several LGBT demonstrations.   This is totally unacceptable. There is no evidence that he is gay, but this must be stopped immediately.  He MUST live within the politically correct rules of the church.

·         Pastor does not mention enough from scripture, seems to follow his own rules too much during sermons.  His touchy-feely love stuff doesn’t do anything for our more serious members.  Rumor has it that he may be trying more risky material based on Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson and some of the new age profiteers. 

·         Some sermons contain inappropriate material such as quotes from non-believers like Christopher Hitchens, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins.    One of his Bible studies centered on the universe and Carl Sagan.  All members of this church do not believe in evolution or this wacky outer space stuff.  There is no concrete evidence that the Earth is more than 10-thousand years old.   Someone must have created us.  Evolution does not make sense.   How can non-life spring to life?   Pastor Nathan’s attitude  is ultimately the attitude of  a doubter, not a positive person with hope and faith and that is quite sad and unfortunate.

·         Pastor was also overheard making derisive comments about Fox News in one of his meetings.  We feel that some of his sloppy political comments are not always conducive the atmosphere of a church environment.    He was also overheard making a derisive comment about  7 year-old Holly Everson, who was playing special music last month.     He said that “the poor girl was off-key.”    How despicable!

                The chairs were aligned perfectly in the conference room A.   Mr. Everson was sitting a long rectangular table up front beneath the large picture of Jesus Christ.  The room was antiseptic, recently cleaned as a matter of fact.     Eugene Everson opens up the conversation.

                “Do you know why you are here?”   states Everson.   In rather subtly lambastic undertones, Everson probes further,   “You are here so we can determine your long-term fitness for the job.  We have some concerns that you are not fit.  Especially troubling, and many would agree, is that you have these free-thinking tendencies that upset the flock so to speak.   As a pastor you are not always free to speak your mind and you must be very judicious and tactful in how you present yourself.  We have a concern that you are falling away from the expected professionalism needed in this office.  This is a very tough job, and sometimes we’re concerned that you are not the best fit for the job.  Do you understand?”

                Pastor Nathan carries only one thing with him and that is a copy of “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran.  

I have my books                  
And my poetry to protect me; 
I am shielded in my armor.

Simon and Garfunkel

                The pastor looked at the members at the table.  There was Dave Denning (the word carver),  Thomas Steinbrenner(the lawyer),  Charles Biehl(the reformed alcoholic and member of the Stephen Ministry), Phil Connelly(the car dealer on Monteith Street),  Bernice Benke(the local politician), and the Gladys Smith(the librarian) and Chris Bielke( the music director).   

                Nathan states to the committee, “It is absolutely imperative, as you and I understand, that I act out of love instead of vengeance or hate when executing the duties of this office.  A good book by Kahlil Gibran has a lot to say about the power of love across many contexts, including the one we exist in now.  Pastor reads aloud from “The Prophet.”  

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred bread for God’s sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in

that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

                 “During your interrogation of me today, all I ask is that you treat me as Christ would.  That’s all I’m asking,” states Nathan.

                  The car dealer’s eyes light up before he speaks, “There you go with the weird shit again.  This is the example of the problem we have with you sometimes.   You veer into such strange directions.  I sometimes think you need some psychological help.  We just think that some of the church members are comfortable to a certain degree but not comfortable with these strange new directions you sometimes take us in. This Kale Gibbons guy you quote all the time, why him and not the word of God from our Bible? ”

                Pastor Nathan, “I’m far from having a prosecutorial complex, but it does appear that I face some agendas here.   What is wrong with quoting Kahlil Gibran once in awhile?

                Mrs. Benke chimes in, “Because he is a Muslim or something like that, and we don’t that kind of thinking around here, that’s for sure.  I get enough of that crap from the communist guy who works at Decker’s Grocery Mart.   For the love of God!” 

                The preacher retorts, “It’s precisely for that reason that I preach to you guys each Sunday, so that I may most accurately reflect the word and the world of God.   This may bother some of you, but Sigmund Freud once said something about the purpose of life being ‘to love and to work.’    If you don’t mind  I would like to read a passage from ‘The Prophet’ that underlines the importance of being in love with what you work and what you love.”

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear the cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if our beloved where to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if

your beloved where to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.

And it is to know that all of the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

                 Pastor retorts, “It is for this purpose that I talk every Sunday to the people.  I wish to bring peace and comfort to the masses, to transform their thinking into the thinking like Christ did.  I want to teach peace, and not the divisive kind of talk that I’m hearing now, frankly.   I think that people should be respectful that I have a genuine desire to help those in need and that I do the best to encourage  people in their lives and not to pick on the little stuff. “  

                “Well you talk a good talk, just like that Obama creep.   All talk.  What matters is your performance here, and it is sadly lacking in my opinion,” chimed in Mr. Everson.    “We will have a vote and we will see you next Wednesday night, OK?”      “OK.” Stated Nathan.

                As Nathan left the room, not one person made eye contact.   He left out the side door and closed the door very carefully behind him.   He climbed into his Toyota Prius and heard the slamming of doors in the distance.   The radio station was on Wisconsin Public Radio and some person was talking about how plywood was made.   Being thoroughly bored by that right away,  Nathan turned the radio off and preferred to be surrounded by the silence of his own thoughts and peace with God.     He glanced over to the passenger seat and saw that his GPS was on the floor.  He decided to leave it there because it always seems to come off the inside of the windshield and the suction cup didn’t work very well at all.   Just to the edge of the seat there was a pink post-it note.   He did not use pink post-it notes and found this rather odd.   It was written in blue pen…

Meet me at Starbucks I have some questions.   C.H.

                Wow is that strange, thought Nathan.   He had remembered how he and his friend Tim had had some interesting discussions at Starbucks about abiding in Jesus’s love and what Christ said about patience.   He had forgotten about those discussions as they were five years ago already, but remembered a general sense of satisfaction about helping Tim at a critical time of his life, as he was battling addiction issues.    Maybe this C.H. was a friend of Tim’s or something or a husband of a church member he was failing to remember.  It was odd that someone would leave a note in his car like this.  He thought he had locked his Prius before coming to the meeting.    Starbucks was next to Highway 41 which was close to the road home, so he rationalized that he needed a cup of coffee after the stress of the day.     

                As he entered the Starbucks, he noticed a fairly crowded scene and Yusuf Islam music playing over the speakers.  The song was  “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, the song recorded by Nina Simone and Elvis Costello and many others.   There were students with laptops, a man with a goatee in his mid-50’s looking very professorial, and a couple of rough looking young people looking like they were fresh from an Occupy Wall Street protest.  One of the young people had a sword on his forearm and the other had a ring through his lip donning a sweatshirt with a skull on it.   They appeared to be angry about some political issue.   For the most part the scene was peaceful and the smell of caramel coffee and of grounding beans provided an excellent olfactory experience.    As his eyes turned to the right side of the room, there was only one chair left.   A thin Afro-American woman sat on one side and had a lap top on the table.     His eyes met hers and they were such warm eyes.   One table down was a man in his thirties with sunglasses and a white sports coat and no tie.  “Anyone sitting here?”    “No.” said the proper looking man, who reached for his coffee.  He greeted him by saying “Namaste.”    “Namaste,”  replied our main character.     
“My name is Christopher.”     Chills crept up Nathan’s spine as a fire would climb up a dry pine tree.   “You’re CH?”   “Yes, I am,” gracefully came from his lips.   His welcoming eyes looked right at him, stating,  “We are the way, the hope and the life.   You had a tough meeting back there.  There are some folks who don’t understand you and believe that you are trying to trick them.  I know that to be far from the truth.”     Nathan was starting to get scared.  Why would a man he doesn’t even know be following him?    “Were you tailing me from the meeting?   You left that note to screw with me didn’t you?  I don’t need this today!”  Nathan is now raising his voice and the guy with the tattoo is looking in his direction with some anger.     “Calm down.  I’m not here to hurt you but to empathize with you and to assure you that I’m always with you, more so in times of trouble.”   The mysterious person went on describing Nathan’s own life to him from childhood and in less than two minutes he was driven to tears.  A Starbucks employee came by and said, “Is this man bothering you sir?”  He shook his head no.

Another deep chill came down Nathan’s spine as he noticed CH to be the ghost of Christopher Hitchens.  Nobody seemed to notice at Starbucks surprisingly.   "Why would you look like Christopher Hitchens?"    "There are a number of reasons of why I would portray myself to you in this fashion."    "But you could have been a gray and bearded guy or somebody looking like Charles Colson.  Why this image??"     Compassion, equality, the magic of music and peace and love for starters.  I also wanted to challenge your traditional conceptions of God, to open up your mind a little.  I could have come as Pat Robertson, Barack Obama, Richard Dawkins, Mother Theresa or Carl Sagan. Would that have been as good?    I think NOT.   Don’t worry, to the rest of the people in here I appear to be a college professor in my late 50’s.  No worries Nathan."  

                The voice was certainly that of a young Chris Hitchens in all its urgency and possibly it’s Trotsky-like exuberance and liberalism.    “I’m using Chris’s body to help you have a revelation that spirituality is infinitely abstract.  Even though Christopher was an atheist, I had great love for him and he has made it into my heaven.   What others thought of him is not an issue.  What I think of him is the only issue.”   

                “Much like Chris faced, you face a great spiritual crisis.   You have people in your church who believe you are doing the wrong thing.  The key is to try to find a way to win them on your side.  The true miracle that could be done here is to win them all to your side.  This is why Chris loved to debate the God question, because he had such a great love for mankind that he was out to convince souls one at a time to use reason to solve human problems.  He actually was on the right track.  You may not understand this huge irony, but I loved Christopher dearly even though he didn’t believe. “ said the force inside Mr. HItchen’s body. 

                “I am totally blown away by all of this.  So God is a neo-atheist??”   Nathan cannot believe he is asking this.    The ghost replies,  “It’s not quite that simple young man.  I believe there are many ways to judge a man’s soul and it’s not for man to judge man but for God to judge man.  You must start a new conversation Nathan about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure and what is true.   Why is that important?  Because that is the only conversation worth having.  Hopefully truth, love and wisdom will come your way through this process.” 

                “What do you think of the evolution/creation debate?  There are some hard-core websites like ‘Answers in Genesis’ who are trying to make people disagree with Darwinism.   Such people also are concerned about something called Social Darwinism.   Mr. Hitchens responds, “Ah, Social Darwinism.  Very interesting twist of meaning.”    God pulled out a piece of paper from his coat pocket.  It was a copy of a description of this mysterious term.

Social Darwinism is generally understood to use the concepts of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves.  Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism; but the ideology has also motivated ideas of eugenics,scientific racism, imperialism, fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.

Opponents of evolution theory have often maintained that social Darwinism is a logical entailment of a belief in evolutionary theory, while biologists and historians maintain that it is rather a perversion of Darwin's ideas. While most scholars recognize the historical link between Darwin's theory and forms of social Darwinism, they also maintain that social Darwinism is not a necessary consequence of the principles of biological evolution and that using biological evolution as a justification for policies of inequality amounts to committing the naturalistic fallacy.

The name Social Darwinism is a modern name given to the various theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, which, it is alleged, sought to apply biological concepts to sociology and politics. The term social Darwinism gained widespread currency when used to oppose these earlier concepts. Today, because of the negative connotations of the theory of social Darwinism, especially after the atrocities of the Second World War (including the Holocaust) few people would describe themselves as Social Darwinists and the term is generally seen as pejorative.

                “This is how the people on the far-right distort Charles Darwin.   Darwin was an honest and great man.  The term Social Darwinism is a way to put Darwin’s name in a more negative light.  Evolution is true, but I provided the spark.  Do you think that DNA and RNA could just appear without any help?   The universe is far more complex than your limited-dimension understanding.  People like Einstein and Stephen Hawking have gotten closer to my miracle that I’ve created but just inches further on a great highway of understanding.  There are many more treasures that I have left for human beings to unlock on the long and winding road of questions.   Science has just begun to unlock the mysteries” 

                “Why have you come Christopher?  Are you God?”     The man in the dark blue shirt and white jacket just stared into his eyes again and the pastor was transfixed with the compassion in his eyes and  his  seemingly physical manifestation and demonstration of Namaste.  “I have some questions for you.  I want to ask you about the world, how it was made, who created the big-bang,  why was I born now, why did you create human beings?”    There were so many questions, pastor was feeling manic trying to get them all out in a coherent manner.    “Was Jesus a real person?”   The mysterious man replied,    “Yes, he was very human.   I was so saddened when he asked why I had forsaken him.  At that point, my love for him and the human race could not have been greater.  The crucifixion was the saddest day for me because I know how much Jesus loves me.  The people clearly did not have any idea what they were doing when they killed my boy.  They had no fricking idea.   I’m getting ready to send another person out to the world and she is a girl.  Maybe human kind will get the message this time.“   

                “You’re going to send a woman to die?”  replied a stunned Nathan.    “Not necessarily.  We’ll see how it plays out.  She may end up at a mental hospital.   There are a lot of ways it could play out.   I plan for my daughter to be autistic and capable of savant skills that are truly out of this world.  We’ll let the world judge whether it is a miracle or if it is just brain chemistry.    My daughter Sandra will help human beings understand as she will write a new version of the Bible.   She will be persecuted and I will be with her through her pain.   She will help people stretch the definition of spirituality beyond conventional thinking, far beyond conventional thinking.  This will be a test of how compassionate the masses can be to someone who is far different than themselves.  Acceptance of Sandra is somewhat analogous to acceptance of the truth of me.  Does that help you understand to a somewhat greater degree ?  I want you to understand the methods of my madness so that you can tell others to not be afraid.  Let your heart not be troubled, for I am near, closer than you think..”    

                 

                “This is so hard to take in,” said a stunned Nathan.  “In all of my training for the ministry,  in all of my Bible study classes, in all of my sermons, I’ve never heard of something as abstract as this.  This takes everything to a new level.  This is truly original and creative.   So, how did you create DNA?  It cannot just form by itself.”     “Good question Nathan,” responded God.    The white jacketed prophet continues, “Life was formed through spans of time which are impossible for human beings to conceive.  Humans tend to look at things far too concretely.”   “What about Michael Behe’s concept of ‘irreducible complexity?’”    

                “Great question Nathan.  You’re starting to think at a deeper level.  I’m familiar with the debate regarding bacterial flagellum and complexity of the eye.   I know about Michael Behe and his debates with scientists, including Lawrence Krauss.  The irreducible complexity of essential cellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community,    I agree that Behe is assuming a lot and the true humble and good way to achieve knowledge for human beings is science and not making up stuff.  What humans don’t realize is that there is a great way to blend science and spirituality, and that the two are far from being mutually exclusive.   Even modern-day atheists have a point.  Their skepticism is actually a compliment to me because they are digging deeper for the answers.  If you look up atheism in the dictionary you get something similar the following:  ‘Atheists tend to be skeptical of supernatural claims, citing a lack of empirical evidence for deities. Rationales for not believing in any deity include the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from non-belief. Other arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to the social to the historical. Although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere. Many atheists hold that atheism is a more parsimonious worldview than theism, and therefore the burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of God, but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism.’   When you look at that view in total, it is very humble.  Atheists don’t assume more than they actually know.  They just have a problem taking the leap of faith, which I am highly empathetic towards.  An atheist who is a good person in many ways is better than the unethical person who uses religion to manipulate the masses.  Jesus never intended to manipulate the masses in this way.  Karl Marx said religion is the ‘opiate of the masses.’  I think that religion/spirituality should be a strong wake up call, just the opposite.  If you think what Christ stood for, he was radically bold and faced much criticism.  A lot of people overreact on the secular side as well, laughing at the religious for even thinking that there could be something more.  Mother Theresa, for her cognitive level, was able to do so many good things and people criticized her including some unfair shots from Mr. Hitchens when he was alive.”

                The man with the tattoo on his arm is beginning to stare at the two, and then makes a joke about the old professor  guy that looks like he is “about to keel over.”    Hitchens ignores the comments and is concentrating on Nathan.   “As long as you care with your whole heart and you care about each and every human being, then you are in step with my plan.  I’ve given humans freedom of choice just to make it a little bit more interesting.  God is much more abstract than any living person can conceptualize.   Just by being human, you are my miracle.  You have to believe that in your heart.  I know there is a lot in Luke 21 about the end of the world and everything, but man has the power to make it a better world.   Armegeddon does not have to happen.  I repeat, Armegeddon  does not have to happen.   That is perhaps the biggest falsehood of my teaching.  The allusions of Armegeddon are a reference to what could happen if humans are not able to get their acts act together.”   Hitch stared out the window then gazed deeply into Nathan’s eyes.  It was almost like he was trying to hypnotize him.  Nathan had never seen something so strange before.  Hitch starts talking, “The eyes are the window to the soul and the truth of me are beautiful and infinitely colorful chasms of light.  You have hopeful and faithful eyes Nathan.  That’s one reason why I’m here with you today.”   Nathan was almost numb now because there was so much coming at him.  It was a like a sensory overload, or maybe you could call it an extra-sensory overload. 

                Nathan was now convinced that he was witnessing something very special.  He asked the spirit, “There are so many questions I want to ask you.  I still have deep concern over the aggressive and vindictive part of man.  The ghost replied,  “Human beings have so much to learn about compassion and how to live together.  Humans are much too centered on war and revenge.  All of that has to be weeded out or the human race will not survive.  Look at Carl Sagan’s video on Youtube about ‘The Pale Blue Dot.”  His thoughts are very much in line with mine on this.   Our obsession with nationalism and our wars are nothing compared to the beauty of it all. The Earth is truly a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.   The Earth is where you must make your stand.  I will give you great words and articulation to help you in your battle for good.  Please trust me Nathan that I can help you.  I will increase your verbal intelligence five-fold and you will go to the pulpit with your new creative insights.  I will tell you now that your new-found power of intellect may scare you.   It will be a brave act and some in your congregation will think you’re crazy and may even want to kill you for the immense good that emanates from your wellbeing.   You can do it Nathan, you can do it.”  

                Suddenly this intellectual visage was gone and in the place of the strong intellectual spirit was the face of an old man perhaps in his 80’s.  Brief case at his side, he looked like a retired college professor who is lost.  Nathan got out of his seat and went out the door of Starbucks.  He glanced back just once and then saw someone who looked exactly like Mother Theresa, giving him a Namaste sign and wishing him good luck.  Nathan thought to himself, “Wow, this the first ghost I’ve ever seen.  I must be hallucinating.  What can all of this mean? “    Nathan’s hands were shaking as he grabbed the handle of his car door.  He glanced back again and the man with the tattoo was staring at him and shaking his head.   Nathan suddenly felt a tinge of fear and jumped into his car and drove off.  It wasn’t for five or ten minutes that he realized he never paid for his coffee.  He was probably lucky that the man with the large tattoo didn’t beat him up.  

The Next Sermon

                The congregation packed the church.   People were talking.      There was a woman in the corner talking about Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees passing away of cancer and whether the Lord wanted to have him home early.  To Nathan colon cancer was not a friendly way of exiting the world.  I wonder what CH would think about this?    Nathan felt this compulsion to be more precise with his sermons, to use the words that would most precisely describe his thoughts and to express God’s word through much more precise articulation.   It was almost an obsession to use exactly the right words to communicate to the flock, he thought.    

                The Lord says he loves all of his children.  You are all his children.   Bernice you are 92 and you are his child.   Raymond you are a young 17 and you are also a child to God.  He deeply cares about you more than you would ever know.   I have had a period of deep consternation, reflection and revelation over this past week.   My epiphany of sorts has to do with listening even closer to the congregation and ensuring that minor things do not divide us.  As you know, there are some people in this church who believe that I have shortcomings which are getting away from the true teachings of God.   Perhaps the compatibility is not perfect and that there would be a more perfect minister, or perhaps the Lord God could choose a more imperfect one like myself to give you his word.  There is a lot of responsibility inherent in leading with the spirit, making the truth of God known and showing his true compassion to the world.  That’s almost too much responsibility isn’t it?   I plan to make some changes around here.   I feel I’ve alienated some members of the church, especially those who cling to right-wing politics.  My goal is to win you over to make you feel more comfortable with me that God doesn’t care about where you are on the political spectrum and who you vote for.  He is much deeper than siding with a person based on if they vote for Walker or Barrett, for Obama/Biden or for Romney/Ryan.   As a matter of fact, God is upset about the political divide in this country and is quite sad that people are divided over relatively superficial things.   God is infinitely kind and does not worry over such matters.  He is strictly concerned with matters of the human heart and its potential goodness and he gives us a plethora of choices so that we can have a sense of free will during our short lifetimes.  That is God’s infinitely benevolent gift to us.   He is serious about his gifts that he gives and he like us knows that earthly gifts do not last long and it is love that lasts forever.   As it is said in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love. “  This is what it’s all about folks!

                I’m here to say that I’ve had a special and personal talk with God and he says to not have your heart be troubled, that there are beautiful wonders that wait for those who love him.  It is true and I’ve have seen it with mine own eyes.  In Luke 21 it says that ‘for I will give you the right words and such wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to defeat you.  God wants creative cooperation instead of constant conflict.  God told me that we argue too much over the little things and we don’t concentrate on the big things.  We are not having the important conversations with our wives, our sons, our daughters, our nephews, nieces, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.  I want you do think in terms of communicating as much love and meaning in each and every conversation you have.   God also told me that we have a secret love within us that if uncovered, leads to an infinite treasure of connection and understanding with your fellow human beings.   We all have the key.  We just need to figure out how to open the treasures.  God hopes that we look in the right places for opening up this love.   When the atheist scientist Carl Sagan was very sick with cancer, in his final day, he talked at the hospital with one of his best friends, Stephen J. Gould, and the topic was not science or truth.  It was about love.  It is all about caring for our brothers and sisters and taking care of the ones we love.  If you are married, hold the one you love tonight and tell him or her that you are there for them and that they must trust that your love is real and your love is strong and your love comes from an infinite reservoir, and that is agape, the love of God, the ultimate love of them all.   I want you all to be in the joyful effort of passion that is that wide-eyed amazement that a child of six may have.  Build your own spiritual cathedrals.  Know that there is great joy to be had in this life.  Look at the night sky and the wonderful sky and the stars and see the infinity of God.   I know a landscape artist named Dewitt Jones.  Dewitt sees the glass half-full.  He is in the business of seeing and building extraordinary visions.  Don’t settle for less than the extraordinary visions.  Finding creativity in our lives can help sustain us and to motivate us.  Creativity exists in each and every one of us.   As Dewitt says in his public speaking engagements, it’s that moment when we look at what we see every day and look at opportunity not redundancy.   It’s that moment when we look at something ordinary and see the extraordinary.   Creativity helps us fall in love with the world, it helps us to see the love of God in all of its glory.    When I was very young, my mother told me not to look directly at the sun.  Think of the love of God like that.   It’s so powerful that to take it all in at once would be overwhelming.   If we let God into our lives, and let him be in control once in awhile we are able to capture that innocence again that we had when we were six years old, when we were fixated by a sunset, when we gazed at the miracle of a blade of grass, when we looked intensely at our mother’s or father’s loving eyes.  Have courage to have passion and vision.  We need to have the courage to dramatically change the ordinary to the extraordinary. 

                I’m also here today to say that there is no hell.  Human beings make their own hell sometimes, but hell fire and brimstone fantasies are false.  Turn to love and know that love is good.    Robert Ingersoll once said that the myth of hell represents "all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable."  To focus on putting others into hell is not what Jesus wants us to do.  God has spoken to me.   Believe me that your good behavior will be rewarded and living the moral and ethical life has infinite meaning.   Love is truly the answer and once you turn to God, you never have to be alone.  The Bible says, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”  

                I have seen God and he came to me in human form.   I will not give too much more information but he told me that our obsession with nationalism and our wars are nothing compared to the beauty of it all.   He told me that the Earth is truly a very small but infinitely important stage in a vast cosmic arena.   The Earth is where we must make our stand.  He is giving me great words and articulation to help me in the battle for the good.  He said it would be a brave act and some in the congregation will think I’m crazy and may even want to kill me.  I will tell you that my finite life is worth close to nothing compared to the great infinity of love and understanding represented by our great Lord and Jesus Christ.  Yet, the magical contradiction or paradox is that Jesus sees infinite love potential in ALL of us.  Amen. 

There were many confused looks in the congregation.   Bernice is making the sign of the cross in the front row and saying, “Praise Jesus.  I have seen the Lord!”     The people who were the most angry seemed to be the people with extreme right-wing politics, giving very sour and disapproving looks.   One could be heard muttering, “We’re gonna fire that faggot’s ass!”     He had done it.  He had shared it all, and now only the grace of God could save him.   He felt like a crazy man.

All night long in his study at home, surrounded by all of those scholarly books, he looked up the definitions of agnostic and atheist in Wikipedia, reading them and re-reading them as he would a Bible text.  He also picked up a book of essays by the late Christopher Hitchens and was fascinated by one  that focused in on the great minds who were educated at Cambridge, Oxford and Trinity College.   He was fascinated by debates that went on in the 18^th century about the divide between science and literature and Nathan was wondering if there were parallels with his obsession with the divide between science and religion.  Bibliotherapy is what the pastor needed right now, more than ever.  During tense times he would read and that would be that elixir that made focusing in on the important issues somewhat easier.   It also seemed to make it more manageable to cogently understand the complexity of life’s challenges and problems. 

It was now four days later and our good pastor was in the Target store in his hometown.   Shopping would sometimes take Nathan’s mind off of the most disturbing questions in his life.  Looking at items in a store could be very relaxing  (with the soft music playing in the background, probably some consumer-tested sound that would relax customers and got them in a spending mood.)  As he usually did, he came out with something even though browsing was a definite possibility coming into the store.  A spring shirt and a new CD from Joan Armatrading.    At least the purchase didn’t exceed 40 dollars.    As he was exiting the store he caught a man’s eyes near the exit door on the right, near the coffee shop.  They were the most compassionate and loving eyes he has ever seen.  The strange thing about the man was that he had a pile of leaves in the empty chair next to him and he seemed to be playing with them in strange repetitive fashion, almost like a four year-old would pick them up and drop them on the seat, all the time with concentration on the leaves.  The man looked up again.   Pastor Nathan thought,  “Oh no, it’s Leo Buscaglia.  Here we go again!”  

                Buscaglia spoke in mostly short sentences but would also unleash very long sentences that were hard to comprehend sometimes.      “I command you to go forth and produce a miracle.  Make these people truly believe in you and you have won.”   The Leo ghost handed Nathan a slip of paper with several  general goals about life.   He said, here, go forth and teach this:

1.       Embrace life whole:  The Sacred or Divine, the Precious and Profound, are made evident, not only in the extraordinary events of our lives, but in the simple and the everyday;  The best way to live is to strive to embrace life fully - engaging our spirits with all of the highs and lows life naturally brings.

2.       Potential for goodness:  There is goodness in each of us. It can be helped to grow in communities of mutual love, acceptance, and support.

3.       There is no complete answer:  The universe is too grand to be encompassed in any one perspective or truth. Freedom of belief and diversity of perspective are thus to be treasured and encouraged.

4.       Seek relationship:  Relationship between us and with other beings is our primary teacher of how to be fully human. Through the support and the challenges of communication and interchange, we grow toward our potential.

5.       That which is sacred everywhere:  The sacred in life is everywhere, including within each of us. It emerges in relationship and is most evident in our love. In striving to bring forth the sacred wherever it may be found, we serve all beings.

6.       Wisdom is everywhere:  Wisdom has been uncovered by many people in many different times and traditions. The wise person searches broadly and is open to many influences.

7.       We are one:  We are interconnected and interdependent beings - part of a greater unity of which we are usually unaware. We must seek an appreciation of our deep interdependence and relatedness.

8.       Justice:  We are obligated by our unity and our love to work for a more just world where each person has an opportunity to fulfill their potential.