ALL ABOUT DYING AND LIVING

The movie The Way was not my introduction to the Camino. In 2006 I read Walk in a Relaxed Manner, by Joyce Rupp, and found it oddly compelling. My response to the pilgrimage she described: foot sores, crowded accommodations, bad weather, strange food, stranger company, and hours of walking day after day, were anything but attractive to an introvert like me. But, when taken as a whole, what she described drew me like a magnet. Climbing Everest has never been a possibility for me (fear of heights), and my marathon dreams are a thing of the past, but this is something I could do. Perhaps I should get busy and do it before I can’t.

In the modern world (Western, North American and Canadian at least), the idea of pilgrimage is profoundly counter cultural. First, you walk for weeks, and cover a distance you could drive in a day, or fly in an hour and a half. We have a thing about getting where we're going. We say "getting there is half the fun", but it's definitely the smaller half. We jet halfway around the world to sit on a beach, race through high school to get to university, rush through child-rearing to get back to a career. We're a people in a hurry, scrambling to gather up as much life as possible before it runs out.

A pilgrimage, on the other hand, sets its own pace and, though it has a destination, the destination is not the point. We need to slow down, and that's part of what pilgrimage is about. Can anyone see more than a trillionth of what there is to see in a lifetime anyway? What can we possibly gain by dashing through life in pursuit of two trillionths?

Second, you set out for a destination that has no “practical” significance. Who really needs to go to the traditional burial place of Saint James, particularly when no one even knows for sure that this is the spot? And most of the Camino pilgrims are non religious. A pilgrimage, it seems, is about itself. It’s like so much in life; not what you do in it, but what it does in you. People say they are changed by the Camino and it’s intriguing to see how many people want to change.

Thirdly, a pilgrimage takes a significant chunk of time out of our “normal” life. It’s a bit like the notion of Sabbath I suppose, when each week you simply resign what you’re doing for a day, and let God run your little piece of the world without you.

It’s humbling to admit that the world doesn’t really need us. And it’s odd that we can pretend to ourselves that we’re so vitally necessary, when we know perfectly well that the day is coming when we’ll die and everything, and everyone, will carry on, just like they do when others die. A pilgrimage, then, is a bit like dying for a while. I suppose this is one of the reasons it’s hard to do, and, perhaps, why many of us should do it.

Fourthly, going on a pilgrimage is like choosing to live a life. Imagine God, a year before your birth, offering you the opportunity to be conceived. He will tell you nothing but the time and place of your beginning point. You might be male or female, rich or poor, healthy or sick. You might live a hundred years and become a great composer, or die within the first few weeks and never be born at all. All you can know for sure is that, if all goes well, you will have trials and triumphs, joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures. You will meet others on the journey, know acceptance and rejection, and share the experience. You will sin against others and need forgiveness, be sinned against and need to forgive. And, in the end, you will die, and your life will be what you and countless others have made it.

In other words, you are being offered a chance to go on pilgrimage. So, are we ready to embrace the challenge? If not, perhaps we should get ready, because our life-pilgrimages are well under way. Pilgrimage, it seems to me, is all about choosing life.

THE PILGRIM PRAYER

(Composed by Joyce Rupp and Tom Pfeffer, and recited as each day began.)

Guardian of my soul,
guide me on my way this day.
Keep me safe from harm.
Deepen my relationship with you,
your Earth, and all your family.
Strengthen your love within me
that I may be a presence of your peace
in our world.

Amen

Not a bad prayer at any time.

The Way

Watched an interesting movie last night called The Way. It stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, a father/son team. Until I saw them side by side, I had no idea they were related. And, when I mentioned to my lovely wife how much the guy playing Sheen’s son looked like Sheen, she clued me in. And she pointed out that Charlie Sheen (who’s not in this movie) is also Martin Sheen’s son. I had known Chuck and Marty were related (the common sir name I suppose) but I always thought Charlie was Martin’s little brother. O well, that’s what I get for marrying above my IQ, or what she gets for marrying below hers. I’m told everyone else in the world already knew these things about the Sheens and Estevezes. Being unique was nice while it lasted.

Turns out Martin Sheen was born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez. He changed it when he started acting because he didn’t want to be confused with all the other famous Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévezes. Confusing eh? Perhaps you can see why I don’t really pay close attention to these sorts of things. Yet somehow I do know that Judy Garland’s original name was Frances Gumm? William Wrigley Jr. made her change it because he didn’t want her confused with a new product he was launching in France that he was planning to call “France’s Gum”. I just made that up, but it sounds almost true, in a Hollywood sort of way. You know, based on an actual incident that happened, or might have happened. I wonder if Wrigley had an original name. I wonder if this is how urban legends get started.

Anyway, about the movie. Daniel Avery (Emilio Estevez), dies as he is beginning to walk the Camino Trail. His father, Thomas Avery (Martin Sheen), who is a very conservative ophthalmologist from California, flies to France to bring Daniel’s body home and spontaneously decides to complete his son’s journey. The story is about the people he picks up with along the way, the changes he and they undergo in the course of their respective pilgrimages, and the deep questions a pilgrimage raises about life and meaning and all that.

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, known in English as The Way of St James, is a network of pilgrimage routes that lead to the Cathedral of Santiago (Saint James’ traditional burial place) in north-western Spain. The most popular route is the Camino Francés which stretches 780 km, beginning in the north of France. During the Middle Ages, from the 9th to the 16th century, up to two million people a year (about 5,000 a day) walked the trails on pilgrimage.

Today there is a resurgence of interest in making this journey. Tens of thousands make the pilgrimage every year. I suppose it has to do with the malaise of modernity, the search for spiritual meaning, or the need to meet a big challenge before we die. And, come to think of it, these may have always been the reasons people did it.

Next post I’ll share why I’d like to do something like this. But what do you think? Why do people do this? Would you like to do it? Why or why not?

Clarence Jordan and The Cotton Patch Gospel

When I talk of treating Scripture less formally than we do, of allowing it to get down on the floor with us, or join us in the pub, I’m really talking about learning to “play” with it more. I hesitate to use the word “play”, however, because play is so often seen as a frivolous thing. In truth, play is a very serious matter. It’s how children develop the social, mental, emotional and physical skills they need for life. It’s how adults learn too; surgeons in cadaver class, and test pilots in flight simulators.

A great example of seriously playing with Scripture is The Cotton Patch Gospel by Clarence Jordan (pronounced Jerden for some reason).

Jordan was a Southern Baptist preacher and Bible scholar who, in the 1940s, began to “play” with the text. He translated the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of Mathew, and ultimately most of the New Testament, from the original Greek, into the contemporary idiom, culture, time and place of the American South. Jerusalem became Atlanta, Georgia; Bethlehem, Gainesville Georgia; the crucifixion, a lynching.

And, as he “played” with the Bible, the Bible “played” with him and his life. He and his wife, together with another family, developed a racially integrated community called Koinonia Farm, in the heart of Georgia. They survived the hostility of the surrounding community, the Ku Klux Klan, and the State Governor. They overcame terrorist attacks and a crippling boycott and, in the 1970s, became the birth place of Habitat for Humanity, a worldwide Christian ministry that partners with low income families to build simple, good quality, affordable homes.

There is a great musical play called The Cotton Patch Gospel inspired by the Clarence Jordan translation.

Clarence Jordan quotes:

“Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but a life lived in scorn of the consequences.”

“We think of belief as a way of thinking, when the original intent was to describe a way of acting.”

“If there is any balm in Gilead; if there is any healing in God's wings; if there is any hope — shall we go off and leave people without hope? We have too many enemies to leave them. The redemptive love of God must somehow break through. If it costs us our lives, if we must be hung on the cross to redeem our brothers and sisters in the flesh, so let it be. It will be well worth it. To move away would be to deny the redemptive process of God."

I remember a 1993 CBC interview with Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and former Governor of Georgia. He was in Winnipeg pounding nails with Habitat for Humanity.

This is the sort of thing that happens when people seriously and imaginatively “play” with the Bible, and let the Bible “play” with them.

When you come to Bible Study, don’t leave your mind or imagination at the door.

As I’ve been thinking about the early chapters of Genesis I’ve been reminded of a concern that’s often troubled me over the years; that we are too formal in our handling of Scripture. Formality has it’s place in any respectful relationship, of course, but familiarity is also important. Parents do well to expect their children to listen respectfully, and to respond with “please” and “thank you”. But they also need to get down of the floor and play. We stand in church for the reading of the Gospel, and this is all well and good, but sometimes the Scriptures might like to go fishing, or meet with us in the pub. In Deuteronomy 6:7 we read, “Impress these things on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” In other words, be at home with them wherever you are.

A great example of what I mean is the 1936 movie adaptation of Marc Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning play The Green Pastures. It’s an African American cast doing the Bible from Genesis to Jesus. And it’s wonderful.

I haven’t seen it on TV for many years, but you can buy it, and you can watch it on YouTube for free. The YouTube presentation is a bit clumsy because it’s done in ten segments, but it’s well worth the time and effort. Rex Ingram plays God, and he’s a beautiful mix of sweet and fearsome. And, in the end, we get some radical, and quite startling insights and speculations about God, suffering and salvation. Give it a look-see.

The Green Pastures

Note #1: You’ll need a good sound system or ear buds to enjoy this, but if you take the time and effort you will be glad you did.

Note #2: Some may find this movie patronizing and demeaning in its portrayal of African American characters. I don’t, but what do I know? If you do, I apologize in advance. No offence intended. I just think that, for it’s time at least, it’s a great movie. And, as a Bible epic, it’s a whole lot better than the Ten Commandments.

Re-reading Genesis: Is Science really the issue?

The problem of reading the early chapters of Genesis as literal history is usually framed as a conflict between Scripture and Science. But, as some literalists suggest, it would then just be a matter of waiting for Science to catch up with Scripture. Scientific theory is shifting sand. Evolution is ever evolving. When scientists are constantly reinterpreting their own material, some wonder why it should be assumed that the problem lies with our interpretation of Scripture? Perhaps they will solve the conflict from their end.

I love Science, but we must admit it’s a pretty flexible medium. In the past decade cosmologists have come to agree that 80% of the matter and energy in the universe is “dark matter” and “dark energy”, which is to say, unknown and, heretofore, unknowable. That’s a pretty big hole in our knowledge. And, in recent years, it has become conventional “wisdom” among serious cosmologists that there may be an infinite number of universes that are completely undetectable from our particular universe. There are also theoretically necessary, yet undetected particles in our universe. And lately there have been questions raised about the “absolute” limit of the speed of light.

It seems, what Science knows it doesn’t know, is increasing faster than what it knows it does know. So, I can understand people being reluctant to change their beliefs because of this week’s, or even this century’s scientific “facts”. Perhaps we’re on the verge of discovering that this particular universe really is about 6,000 years old, or that dinosaur bones actually are the debris left by a worldwide flood.

But Science isn’t the main challenge to a literal reading of Genesis 1-11. It’s the internal inconsistencies that make you wonder. And it’s not just the old classic poser “Where did Cain get his wife?” Consider the following:

• How could there be one brother (Abel) specialized in herding, and another (Cain) in tilling the ground, when there was only a handful of people in the world? Surely this kind of agricultural and economic specialization requires some time to develop and a relatively large community. (Genesis 4:2)
• When Cain is driven out of society by God, he expresses the fear that “... whoever finds me will kill me." (Genesis 4:14) Who are these people out there that he so fears.
• Cain not only goes out and finds a wife, but he begins to build a city. (Genesis 4:17) How could Cain be building a city at such an early point in human development?
• Cain’s great, great, great grandson was Lamech. We are told he fathered Jabal (the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock), and Jubal (the father of all who play the harp and flute). What does it mean to be the father of those who live in tents, or play the harp? If this is history, it’s a very strange kind of history indeed.
• How could the animal populations recover if every species were reduced to a single mating pair, or even three and a half pair as in the case of a few? (Genesis 7:2-5) What did the lions and tigers eat?
• The story of Abraham begins in chapter twelve and, but for fact that he’s 75 years old, it reads much more like history than the previous chapters. Abraham leaves his country, Haran, and goes to Shechem in the land of Canaan. From there he goes to Bethel, on toward the Negev, and down into Egypt where he has dealings with a Pharaoh and his officials. We can identify the places and peoples: Perizzites, Chaldeans, Sodomites (the literal folk of Sodom), Amorites, Jebusite, etc. The problem is, if you calculate the generations given (Genesis 10-11) you find that all this happened about 350 years after the entire world had been destroyed in a flood, reduced to one human family and a mating pair of just about everything else?

The fact is, quite apart from Science, the text itself suggests that it should not be read as a literal history of the creation, destruction, and re-creation of the earth.

Re-reading Genesis

Several weeks ago I received an email from a friend in which he forwarded some Bible questions he’d received. They concerned the early chapters of Genesis. Things like:

• If in fact humans have been on the planet for only 6,000 years, how did we develop so many variations of the human race in such a short period of time?
• How do we explain carbon dating of human remains at over 25,000 years when the Bible tells us that creation was in fact very recent?
• How old is the planet, and do we take the Bible literally on all of this information?

There are those who do back-flips trying to reconcile modern science with a literal reading of Genesis, and disregarding the science bits that don't fit. I believe this is unfortunate because it’s based on a category error in our reading of these passages. Allow me to illustrate.

Amadeus was one of my favourite movies when I first saw it in the mid 80s. It’s, the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his principle contemporary rival, Antonio Salieri. According to the movie, the relatively mediocre Salieri is obsessed with his desire to be a greater composer than Mozart, so he sets about to destroy the great musical genius and ultimately does so. It’s a powerful story, but eventually I learned that musicologists and historians unanimously agree that Salieri was actually a superb composer, more successful than Mozart in his day, and, though a rival of Mozart, had nothing whatever to do with his untimely death.

Discovering the liberties that the movie took with the historical material all but destroyed my appreciation of this cinematic masterpiece. But recently I watched Amadeus again for the first time since I originally saw it almost three decades ago. And, aware that the script was taking outrageous liberties with the historical material, I saw it all with new eyes and was far more deeply moved by it than I had originally been.

I had misunderstood the movie, assuming it to be a kind of docudrama about the lives of Mozart and Salieri when, in reality, it’s barely about them at all. It simply uses their historical rivalry to show us how even the greatest lives can be destroyed when human pride and envy come into conflict with the absolute sovereignty of God. This is a far more relevant truth than a literal rendering of their historic rivalry could possibly have taught me.

When we first discover the Bible, particularly the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we naturally assume it’s simply what it seems to be, a sort of docudrama about the history of mankind and the creation of the world. Then we discover that scientists (cosmologists, historians and anthropologists) almost unanimously agree that things didn’t happen quite that way, and we become conflicted. Should we discard Science or the Bible? Unfortunately many throw out the Bible, a few throw out Science, and most just limp along reconciling passages as they can. But my suggestion is that we do what I ended up doing with Amadeus; see the Bible, particularly the first eleven chapters of Genesis, with new eyes.

When our children were little they believed they were the central and most important people in our world. And that’s exactly the impression we were trying to give them because it was the truth they most needed to know. As they grew they discovered they were just four of billions of children in the world, but there was not a conflict in that because we were not teaching them who they were in the world, but who they were in our world. And everyone needs to be the most important person in somebody’s world.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are the beginning of God’s story about who we are in his world. We and the earth are at the centre. The sun and moon are lights God made for us. The first man (the prototype of all men) was made from the soil. He was a gardener and worked the soil. The first woman (the prototype of all women) was made from the man. She was the same stuff he was, the best thing God had done for him since he was created (2:23), and the mother of all children (3:20). They were parts of each other (partners) like parts of one body; companions in the work God gave them to do. Their lives found fulfilment and purpose in obedience to God. Because of all this they were beautiful and good, and the world was beautiful and good. There was lots of growing, developing and perfecting to do. And there were temptations, and things they were not to do. But this was very good.

It’s a great story if we can get beyond the idea that its purpose is to teach cosmology, history and anthropology. And it’s far more relevant to the lives of most people than the age of the universe or where earth is situated in the galaxy. Copernicus and Galileo show us how to be good scientists and astronomers, but Cane and Able show us how to be good children and siblings, or how not to be. Darwin can help us see that we are one of many species, but Noah can help us see that, when the chips are down, the future of all species may depend on us.

Cosmology and evolution teach us that the earth is not the centre of the universe, and human beings are not the most important beings on earth. But there is a crucial sense in which it is and we are. That's the truth we need to live by, and Genesis said it best, and said it first.