The God That I Know

Often in the past year, friends and acquaintances have asked me about my faith and religion due to how they perceive I am handling my diagnosis of cancer.  Many don’t like the answer.  For example, when I go to the hospital and they ask “religion” I say multi-denominational and usually they look at me for a moment and mark the “none” box on their form because they don’t know what to do.  It makes me laugh inwardly as I know the other alternative – marking all the boxes - would probably cause pastoral care chaos.  So I guess it is just as well.

So here’s the scoop.

I was raised Catholic during the time of change in the Catholic Church after Vatican II.  The nuns and priests that taught and ran my grade school were very traditional and conservative and the nuns that ran and taught in my high school were about as liberal as you could find at that time.

Although this made for a somewhat religiously schizophrenic young woman, it was also the foundation upon which I built a rock solid faith that has lasted me through the years and has been the source of peace and joy in the midst of some very trying times.  What it allowed me to do - actually encouraged me to do - was to question my faith and be sure that it was built on rock and not on sand.  However, it also put me in direct conflict with the church within which I was raised.

I also had the opportunity to study theology under both the Holy Cross priests and brothers as well as under the Jesuits.  At that time, they were some of the most progressive in the church.  As a result, I had the privilege of teaching young high school women about their faith.  And... I was able to do so by asking them to question the rhetoric, shake up what they had just taken on face value and make sure that it was strong enough to hold them for life.  For most of these girls, it was the last "religious education" they would receive and I felt a real responsibility to make sure they were strong in faith when they graduated.  For the most part, I think we succeeded.  As I have come across the path of many of my former students through the years, they share with me that their faith in God is still strong.  Some continue to express it in the Catholic church and others do not.  But, as we agreed all those years ago, your faith is in God not in a church.  If the church helps you deepen your relationship to God, stay, if not go.  It is just that simple.  Obviously, I would not be able to teach in a Catholic High School today.  In fact, you now have to sign a document that would disallow encouraging students to question any tenet of the church.  And we call others "fundamentalists".  Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to the God that I know.

1)  It's about the living, not about the dying.  I believe that what was important about Jesus was his life, not his death.  If he hadn't lived the life he did then who would have cared about the death he endured.  But that fact seems lost in many churches.  How can I say that?  The time in the liturgical calendar that talks about and relates the life of Jesus is called "ordinary time" while the death of Jesus is called the "passion".  In fact, it was the passionate life that Jesus led that was so countercultural that it led to his death.  What we are supposed to believe is that the Father sent his son to "die on the cross".  I believe that he sends his sons and his daughters to live passionately following the lead and model of Jesus and that part of life is death.  Because of this, even if Jesus had died of old age he would have saved us because he showed us how to live and THAT is the point.

2)  The hardships of life are not tests that are sent by God.  They are simply part of life.  Jesus told us this in Luke,  "What father among you would give his son a snake if he asks for a fish, or hand him a scorpion if he asks for an egg?  If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give to those who ask him.".  Life is tough sometimes because that is the nature of life.  When I was diagnosed with cancer, well meaning folks would say, "God won't give you anything that you can't handle".  The thing that got me through cancer was my belief that rather than giving me cancer as some sort of masochistic divine test, cancer became an opportunity for me to look to the God within for the strength and courage I needed to endure whatever came.  How could I believe in a loving God who would do such a thing to me.  Life doesn't happen to me, it happens for me.  My God was right there by my side as I went through each treatment and he cried when I did.  I believe that when Jesus "let out a scream" on the cross, the Father did as well, not because we had killed his son but because we had done this to one of our own.  It is the same Father that cried out in the death of millions of Jews, thousands of Cambodians, hundreds of thousands of slaves and almost three thousand Americans in two tall buildings in New York.  All the time crying out , "How can you do that to one of your own?"

3)  We all have spiritual experiences.  Scientists have found that when a person has a spiritual experience it is experienced in a particular part of the brain – whether you are Catholic, Buddist, Muslim or whatever – the circuits that fire are the exact same ones in every person.  Then this spiritual experience is then filtered through your life experience.  So if you were born into a Lutheran family, that spiritual experience would look and feel Lutheran.  If you were born into a Muslim family, your experience would look and feel Muslim.  It has nothing to do with, the “one true religion” but everything to do with where you were born.  In other words, if I were to have been born in Iraq, the likelihood that my spiritual experience would be translated in my life as Muslim faith is about 100%.  It would be highly unlikely that I would spontaneously convert those experiences into a Christian tradition because that is not my experience.  As I write this, it seems so logical.  But many millennia of wars have been fought over this exact thing.  We all have the same God called by different names.  And…if you take the time to read the spiritual texts of the various religions – not read what someone says about the texts - but really read the Koran, or the Talmud or the New Testament, you would know for sure that our biggest problems do not come from differences in religion but in how small minded people read some of those texts.  It wasn’t the Catholic saints who were responsible for the Crusades and it wasn’t good Muslims who were responsible for the Trade Center.  To believe differently makes no logical sense.

I’ve not shared any of this to be controversial.  Rather, my belief is that the more we courageously share we believe, not with hate but with love, the more likely we will be to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem in our world.  

My Gratitude to the People of Japan

Over the past several weeks we have all seen the devastation that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami has wrought on the country of Japan.  As much as I would like to send financial help, I can’t.  Certainly I can lift these people up in prayer but there must be more.  I believe that that “more” is to learn the lessons that the Japanese people are so eloquently teaching by their actions.

According to the news reports, the majority of the country of Japan is Buddhist but I have never seen a group of people who so literally are living the New Testament dictum to “love one another as I have loved you”.  For example, since the beginning of this crisis, you have not seen the looting that you would have seen – have seen – in other countries when a catastrophe like this hits.  Instead they believe, and live, the truth that we are all one and that what we do to one we do to all.  Instead of the stealing from one another that you often see, in Japan people are doing all they can to serve one another out of their utter poverty.  I saw the story of a man who had lost his home and family but went to work in his noodle shop to serve other survivors for free so they wouldn’t starve. 

I have been amazed and impressed with CEO’s and Japanese politicians bowing low to their people in apology for perceived wrongs and shortcomings in the infrastructure of their country.  Even though I can’t imagine anyone could have prepared for the double crisis that their country had endured, instead of blaming others, passing the buck, they took responsibility and said “I’m sorry”.  When was the last time we saw that in our country.

I am amazed and humbled by the incredible strength in their conviction that they will rebuild and that, eventually, although life will have changed, they will come back better and stronger.

Since I firmly believe that life happens for us, not to us, I have to ask, “What am I to learn from this”.  Certainly in Avon, Ohio it has nothing to do with earthquake preparedness or worry about nuclear meltdowns.  Rather, the example of these people challenges me to make sure I am living in such a way that it is obvious that I not only have a spiritual life but that I try to live it.

They call me by their actions to not transfer responsibility for my life to others – the government, my neighbors, anyone else but myself.  If I’m miserable, then I allow myself to be that way.

I hope that I can be strong enough to rebuild my life in the midst of crisis, whatever that might be, to be better than I was before. 

And as I work on all that, I hope that we all might reflect on the debt of gratitude we owe to a people who have suffered so much.  Thank you people of Japan.