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-----Original Message----- From: clarencekerley [mailto:Bill@bkspeaks.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 8:06 AM To: ordinarylife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [ordinarylife] Hurry Up and Wait! ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life ====================================== Summary of December 30, 2001 ====================================== Dear Folks ? On the last Sunday of 2001, we talked about the matter of time. How fast it passes! What are we to do with it? We are to wait. This class was about what we are waiting for and how we are to wait. The answers are both maddening and embarrassing. There is also an excursion here about how to read the Bible and how Fundamentalism came to be. I hope you find this inspirational and valuable as you reflect on the year just passed and prepare for what is to come. Some famous author once wrote (and I can't find his name now): "No one ever greeted the first of the year with indifference. I believe that is true. It is a time of new beginnings and of hope. I wish that for you. What follows is the full text from which I spoke on Sunday. Much love, Bill Kerley ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hurry Up and Wait ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Living life is an art. Our lives and our living are pieces of art to create. Isn't that a great concept? Learning this art is important because we don't have much time to live, do we? This stuff we call "time" goes so fast, so very fast. I'm fascinated with time, utterly fascinated. I have surrounded myself with countless devices for measuring the passing of time. For years and years I kept a Day-Timer. I experimented with various sizes and styles. I think I was hoping that if I found the perfect system, I'd be able to accomplish all that I wanted to. Wrong! I've never been able to do that. But, keeping a DayTimer did enable me to see what I do with time and why and what I allow time to do with me and why. I can experience how rapidly it passes and how slowly it drags out. Now for years I've gone paperless and have been using a Palm device. It serves the same function as a DayTimer - just easier to carry. If I go back and look at pages from my DayTimer from several years ago it sometimes seems like I was another person. When I began doing sitting meditation I could experience time as if it were molasses or as a flash of lightening. Sometimes it seems I have been sitting forever and I will open my eyes to see that only a few minutes have passed. At other times, an hour passes in five minutes. Time is so central to us. Think of all the books we read, the instructions we follow, the activities we do just to help us structure time. Early on in life someone gives us a watch and says to us, "Don't be late again." They make an assumption. They assume that we know how to tell time. "What did you do?" "What are you doing?" "What are you going to do?" These are all time questions. When you look at life spiritually, which really is your only option, there is a meaningful answer to all the questions we raise about time. But we find the answer both maddening and embarrassing. Maddening because it turns out that what we are to do with our time is to wait. The word "wait" is one of the most characteristic words in the Bible. "Wait on the Lord." "They that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth." "My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." According to my count the word "wait" is found in the Bible exactly 100 times. If I were to read them all, you would wait a long time. Who wants to spend time like that? What's so maddening about waiting is that we don't know how. We don't like encountering or being confronted with stuff we don't know how to do. In my own life one of the frustrating and disappointing things I've noticed is how I've backslidden in the area of patience. Sometimes we structure time by getting involved in a process we call "business as usual." When we do that, the right now - the present moment - is stripped of any urgency or importance it might have. These gatherings we've been calling Ordinary Life aren't about business as usual. Those of you here who have trouble with the church have this complaint. The church has often pretended it didn't live in the twentieth century. So the church has sometimes ignored the vast changes taking place out there in the world. Being the last to speak about major issues ? integrity, being good stewards of the earth's resources, learning to live interdependently, sexist language, outdated world view ? you name it. Religious organizations, churches and synagogues, constitute the second largest land-holder and purchaser of goods and services in this country. What a power we could be! And yet, historically, the church has had to be hit over the head before it opens its eyes to what is happening in the world, content to let the world be damned unless it enters our ecclesiastical ghetto. No urgency, no living on tiptoe, not breathless as to the Kingdom of God being here and now. Just business as usual. I said a moment ago that looking at the world spiritually is our only option. That isn't true. You can look at the world religiously. I'm going to overstate this case. Religion is about fear. Spirituality is what's on the other side of fear. As someone once said: "Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there." When I was growing up in a Southern Baptist Church in Columbia, Tennessee, a lot of my religious instruction was fear-based. There are some words and phrases that I wish I'd never heard, not because they are not good words, but because they got so contaminated. Among these are words like "sin," "commitment," "dedication." We hear phrases growing up that shape us. I said in one of our recent times together that there is nothing wrong with you. You're just fine. In response to that someone who gets the e-mail summaries of this class sent me this: "Unless you were raised by wolves, the chances are extremely good that as you were growing up you heard at least a few of the following: Don't do that. Stop that. Put that down. I told you not to do that. Why don't you ever listen? Wipe that look off your face. I'll give you something to cry about. Don't touch that. You shouldn't feel that way. You should have known better. Will you ever learn? You should be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you. I can't believe you did that. Don't ever let me see you do that again. See, that serves you right. Because I told you so. Are you ever going to get it? What were the last words out of my mouth? What were you thinking of? You ruin everything. You have no sense. You're nuts. The nurses must have dropped you on your head. Just once, do something right. I've sacrificed everything for you and what thanks do I get? I had great hopes for you. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. Give an inch and you take a mile. Anybody would know that. Don't talk back to me. You'll do as you are told. That's not funny. Who do you think you are? Why did you do it that way? You were born bad. You drive me crazy. You do that just to hurt me. I could skin you alive. What will the neighbors say? You do that to torture me. You're so mean. I could beat the daylights out of you. Don't you dare look at me like that. You're just a little brat. It's all your fault. You make me sick. You're trying to kill me. Now, what's the matter with you, crybaby? Go to your room. You deserve it. Eat it because children are starving. Don't stick your lip out. If you cry, I'll slap you. Don't you ever think about anyone else? Get out of my sight. Do as I say not as I do. "Hearing lines like these, somewhere along the way you concluded that there was something wrong with you. "What else could you conclude? "If there were nothing wrong with you, people wouldn't say things like that to you or treat you that way!" We heard those lines because those who spoke them had heard them. It is with our awareness that we are to break the chain of saying such lines - our awareness and compassion. In order to do this, we must take some words and phrases and retranslate them. That's is part of our agenda in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, back to waiting. There is a little story in the Bible that is very instructive. It is found in Luke 12:42-46. "And the Lord replied, 'I'm talking to any faithful, sensible man whose master gives him the responsibility of feeding the other servants. If his master returns and finds that he has done a good job, there will be a reward ? his master will put him in charge of all he owns. But if the man begins to think, 'My Lord won't be back for a long time,' and begins to whip the men and women he is supposed to protect, and to spend his time at drinking parties and in drunkenness ? well, his master will return without notice and remove him from his position of trust and assign him to the place of the unfaithful." The master goes away and entrusts his estate to a servant who doesn't do what he is supposed to do. Jesus was talking about the religious institution and religious leaders of his day. If he were here, he might be saying it to us. Well, we haven't gone to beating people and getting drunk a lot but men and women have been beaten by the massive indifference of the church to the problems of race and poverty and peace and religious institutions have gotten drunk on buildings and power and prestige. The reaction of some people to this behavior is a kind of disenchantment with the church, or disgust with the church, or indifference to the church. I was astounded at the statistic when I heard it. Sixty percent of persons now alive in this country have never been to church. I graduated from high school on the eve of the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate public schools. 1955. When I was just a little boy, I knew about the injustice in the racial system in the South where I lived. I was frustrated and angry with the church about it's blindness, about its participation in this system. I wanted nothing to do with business as usual. So, I became part of a movement to "abolish the old. Down with bureaucracy. Spirituality is about change. The moment is now. Stale water is turned into heady wine. The new age is here. The future is now. We shall overcome. There is no time for business as usual. Let's grab the future in our bare hands and bring it here." So we marched and we sat and we debated and wrote and then you know what we did? We waited. We realized we weren't so powerful. Now I can look back and see that though "business as usual" for a religious organization can get it away from its fundamental purpose and create a cultural ghetto; dragging change in can be equally idolatrous. Creating life isn't up to us, we aren't that powerful. How maddening it is to discover that we don't know how to wait. What's more, we are embarrassed about what it is we are waiting for. So embarrassed, I've never even talked about it in here. We are to wait. But what good does it do to watch and wait if we don't know what we are looking for and waiting for? What are we waiting for, anyway? You're waiting for me to say. We're waiting - for the second coming. Isn't that what you were talking about at work this past week? No? When I was working on this for today, I had this fantasy during the week of someone inviting a visitor to this class and saying to that person something like: "I'd like for you to come to my Sunday School Class." "Well, Sunday School isn't for me." "But this isn't your usual Sunday School class. It's not a Bible study, no outdated religious language." And so far today I've read from the Bible and am talking about the "second coming." Let me say a word or two about the Bible. Conflict about the Bible is the single most divisive issue among Christians - especially in this country. The conflict, as Marcus Borg points out, is about two very different ways of interpreting or reading the Bible. One way is a "literal-factual" way and the other is a "historical-metaphorical" way. The "literal-factual" way is the way most fundamentalists approach the Bible. As you might guess, I'm in the "historical-metaphorical" camp. This would be very important to how I would describe my religious posture. Not only am I non-literalistic but also non-exclusivistic. I am living out my relationship to God within the Christian tradition but I want to honor the validity of all the enduring religious traditions. There is no way to know what is "the truth" about this because there is no way we can step outside our own personal and cultural history and context. You'll have to test for yourself whether what I am saying about this makes sense to you or not. The conflict about the Bible can be seen showing up in three arenas. First, is the view over the creation of the earth - creationism versus evolution. The second is the raging debate dividing the church today over homosexuality. The third has to do with one's view of Jesus. The renewed quest for the historical Jesus has been met with much negativity among fundamentalist and conservative Christians. To see Jesus as a man strikes at the very heart of their faith. Fundamentalism - regardless of which religion you find it in - is a very modern phenomenon. It is a reaction against modern culture and appeared, in the United States, only early in the twentieth century. It stresses the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible in every aspect. And it has done so militantly. Someone has said that a Fundamentalist is an evangelical Christian who is angry about something. Martin Luther and John Calvin - leaders of the Protestant Reformation certainly had high regard for the Bible but never took a view that it was infallible in the way current fundamentalists do. You also have to keep in mind that ordinary people simply did not read the Bible until about 500 years ago. Only if you were educated and knew Latin, Greek or Hebrew and had access to handwritten manuscripts could you do so. Two events changed this. One was the invention of the printing press and the other was the translation of the Scriptures into a common language. Making the Bible available to everybody has been a mixed blessing. A positive one is that it made real what the Protestant Reformation was all about - the priesthood of believers or, as Marcus Borg calls it, the democratization of Christianity. No longer are the riches of the Bible known only to a few. When William Tyndale translated the Bible into English, his reward was that he was burned at the stake. He wanted to enable "a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than a priest." But, the negative side is that it has made possible individual interpretations of the Bible that has led to more divisions among Christians than any other single thing. Think of it: prior to the invention of the printing press no one had seen such a thing as a Bible. It didn't exist as a single bound book. It was a collection of various manuscripts usually referred to as "the Scriptures." What we call the Gospels were first referred to as "memoirs" of the Apostles. But once all the books were selected (which is another story!) and bound into one volume, it was easy to think of the Bible as a single book - not the library that it is - and that this book had a single author, God. Fundamentalism brings with it not only changes in how we view the Bible but in how we view so much else. Like time. Sherry pointed out to me an article in the New York Times yesterday (12/29/01) on billable hours. If one takes a billable hours approach to life, every hour is just like every other. There is not much room for quality, worth, satisfaction in a job well done, or for ritual. Take our personal relationships. I ran across a phrase in "Spirituality and Health" that caught me up short: Intimacy: In-time-I- see. We are taught to keep time by billable hours, to focus on "quality time," "watch the clock," etc. Yet, at the heart of a useful spiritual practice is how we relate to time. I stress to you the importance of a practice. I don't care what it is. But something that consciously grounds you, that gives you a perspective on your life and the events through which you navigate. One of the most important spiritual practices can be summed up by the words "watching and waiting." But what are we watching and waiting for? The Christian answer is "the second coming." Bear with me. The watching and the waiting in spiritual practice is supposed to give an invigorating sense of existential urgency to the way we live our lives. You know how we can allow drab routine to eat large hunks out of our lives. And it is kind of hard to get that sense of urgency if it turns out that what we're waiting for is something as seemingly far-removed as the second coming. I asked a Jewish rabbi (a redundancy) once on the television show I did years ago if the Jews were still expecting the messiah. He said: "About as much as you Christians are looking for the second coming." Which is to say, not much. Not really. Those of us who worship across the street say the Apostles' Creed and it has the lines about Jesus coming back to judge the quick and the dead. But let's face it. Let's be honest. In our day-to-day lives none of us is craning our necks and straining our eyes waiting for some cosmic catastrophe that might occur in five seconds or five million years. The second coming just doesn't have any realistic relationship to the way we live our lives. So the notion of the "second coming" just drops out of sight. And why shouldn't it? I grew up being taught that I'd better be careful because "Jesus is coming back like a thief in the night." When I was just a child, I can remember Billy Graham assuring us that we were living in "the last days." I'm both embarrassed and angry about the way this notion of the second coming has been used to manipulate and scare people into goodness. I'm not the only person in this room who has heard, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want to be caught doing when Jesus comes." And yet, I can say to you, that learning to wait for the second coming, is a large part of the art of living. My goal in the rest of this presentation is to try to make that clear. The second coming is not some date off out there in the future. To wait literally for Jesus to appear in the sky is as misinformed as it would be to go on some archaeological search for the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. Those things don't literally exist. Never did. What Jesus talked to people about was the urgency of the time in which they lived. That's what that story of his I read to you is about. It is about an expected coming and a delay. Jesus spoke this parable to the religious leaders of the day and was trying to arouse them to the fact that their day of destiny as the people of God was upon them - right now. They were being visited with the truth - right now. They were to know what hour it is and be ready. They were to recognize the ultimate choices of life and death when those choices were present and they were present right now. That's what the early church was focusing on when it talked about the second coming. They were giving life the urgency that life calls for; they were recognizing the nearness of the ultimate; the constant possibility of experiencing the presence of God. They did that in the symbol of Christ coming back. Spiritual language is full of symbols like that, symbols that convey a truth that is greater than literal truth. Symbols are what make truth vivid. For example, one abiding truth, one of our continuing experiences is the tendency we have to deny our humanity and attempt to be God to ourselves. This is what sin is. This sin is such a central issue in the living of our lives that you can never really say all there is to say about it. What is needed is a story to convey it. Everything you always wanted to know about sin but were afraid to ask is therefore contained in a story about a man and a woman named Adam and Eve. That's the way it is with the second coming. If you get hung up on or embarrassed by taking the symbol of the second coming literally, you'll miss its real meaning and impact Here it is: There is nothing out there we need to draw into our lives, there is nothing out there we need to keep out of our lives that will make us happy or bring us fulfillment. Or, that will keep us from experiencing the harm, difficulties, problems, and failures that are a part of being human. To get involved in either one of those activities is to miss the experience of hope and judgment right here, right now. If we turn our backs on this sometimes hard, brutal, grim world as it is, we turn our backs on the only source for knowing God we ever have had or every will have. If we turn our backs on the present by concentrating on getting stuff into or keeping stuff out of our lives, we'll miss God in the now. The heart of spiritual truth is about the reality that God is right here, right now. Now, I'll grant this is sometimes hard to see. Finding God in the world is sometimes like trying to see the picture in those magic eye things. You have to develop another way of seeing. Nothing is easier than to miss the God who is always present among us and between us. The God who is present in the headlines of today's paper and in the requests of those who call for us to help. I want what happens in here to be about God in the world now and the urgency of finding God in the world now. That's what the second coming is about. The second coming is a powerful symbol that conveys a truth too important to forget. I'm not asking you to believe that Jesus is going to come knocking on your door tonight or that he is going to come back and walk the streets as a human being as he did before. To get you to look for the second coming is just a dramatic way to get us to stop and think. And that's just what happened in this room a few minutes ago when I first used the phrase "second coming." It got your attention. Supposing our everyday lives were suddenly crossed by his? What would he think of us or we of him? Second coming. That's picture language. Dramatic language. It isn't describing in advance a literal event that you could pick up on a radar screen. You know, I hope, that the story of Adam and Eve is not describing an incident that happened only once in the past. The story of Adam and Eve and Cain and Able ? and all the rest ? describes something that continues to happen to all of us all the time. That's the way it is with the second coming. It is not just a single event that might or might not happen in our lifetime. If it were a literal event, it would have meaning only for those in whose lifetime it took place. The symbol of the second coming, if understood properly, helps us recognize and live with the reality that is meeting us all the time and continues to meet us all the time. It is not just something that is confined to the end. The phrase "second coming" is nowhere in the Bible. A more accurate translation of it would be "presence." What it means is that we all the time live on the edge of time. We forget this. Our actions, whether good or not, have an ultimate significance. Our actions, whether good or not, have effects of infinite range and scope. We are always standing under incalculable responsibility. We are to be faithful in little things because there are no little things. We are to be faithful in God's absence because God is never absent. To be concerned with the end in this way is to deal with the right here, right now. Everywhere, all the time, what we call Christ is present. No way of getting away from it. Go wherever you want. Wait till doomsday if you wish. There is still that standard of love and justice all around us ? in the person who sitting next to you right now, in the headlines of today's paper, in the obscure stories on the back pages, in the requests to meet the needs of the down-and-out that we feed lunches to across the street, or, in the so-called sophistication of the up-and-in worshipping in the cathedral across the street. It is this presence we are to watch for. It is this presence we are to wait for. How do we do that? How are we to structure our time so that we can be sensitive to that Holy Presence right here, right now? We are to wait. I mentioned earlier that the word "wait" is used a hundred times in the Bible. Of course, the word "wait" is a translation from Hebrew and Greek into English. As with all languages, you can't translate from one into the other without losing something. One meaning of the word "wait" in the Bible draws the picture of being stretched taut, of being pulled. Much as you might twist the strands of fiber to make a rope. This is the tension of enduring. So there is a line in the Psalms that goes, "My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning." You can almost see the passionate expectancy of the watchman eagerly looking out into the night watching for every little noise, being alert, watching for the dawn. That's waiting. It is expecting something that hasn't happened to happen and it is to be looking out for it. We are not pushed by the past or pulled by the future. We are not what we have been nor what we will be. At each moment we are free to change the significance of the past for the present and free to choose a new mode of expressing ourselves in the future. Each moment demands that we make ourselves over by another free choice. And that moment is now. I don't know a better definition of spiritual well-being than this. Spiritual well-being is the absence of "elsewhereness." It is "presenteesism" in contrast to "absenteeism." Years ago, I was planning an event with my son and I asked him when he wanted to do it. He said, "I want to do it in the middle of right now." That's the only time we've got. There is another word for "wait" in the Bible. It is a kind of quiet, meditative, passive waiting. It is the kind of waiting we do when we are without any conscious awareness of God's nearness. It is in the line, "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." We shortchange this kind of waiting with our impatience and our franticness. Yet, this kind of waiting is a crucial part of every spiritual tradition. It's the forty years in the wilderness and the fifty years in exile in the Old Testament. It was the generations before Jesus came, the 40 days in the desert. It is in waiting like this that the very reality of faith is unfolded because faith implies a certain not having, a certain not knowing, a certain being without. It is in waiting like this that faith is faith and not superstition. It is in this kind of waiting where being religious is so dangerous and being spiritual is so essential. Somehow, which is what I hope our times in here are ultimately all about, we must learn to play this waiting game by holding both kinds of waiting together. The passionate expectancy in one hand, the mystery of it all in the other. This is how we are to structure our time. If you have ever had to do any significant waiting, you know that it's good to have a place to be while you wait. That's what this gathering we call Ordinary Life is about. Someone asked once, how do you join this class? You can't join. If you are here, you are a member. And if you are a member, your business is about the management of this estate with which you have been entrusted. There is a very instructive line in the middle of that story of Jesus. "Happy is the servant if the master finds that person faithfully discharging these duties when he comes again." It's the "happy" that is in this prayer I offer for and about you. May you be filled with loving kindness and compassion. May you be happy. May you be peaceful and at ease. May you be well. May no harm come to you. May no difficulties come to you. May no problems come to you. May you always meet with success. May you also be given the patience (ability to wait), the courage, the understanding, and the determination to meet and overcome the inevitable difficulties, problems, and failures that are a part of this life. No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember this: You are carrying precious cargo. Watch your step. ====================================== Ordinary Life is a gathering that provides an opportunity to develop an enlightened heart and an awakened mind to the reality of the present moment. The gathering meets on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am in Fondren Hall at St. Paul's UMC - 5501 South Main, Houston, Texas and is taught by Dr. Bill Kerley. If you would like more information - Contact Bill Kerley - E-Mail - Bill@bkspeaks.com Web - www.bkspeaks.com Voice - 713-663-7771 Fax - 713-663-6418 Mail - 6300 West Loop South, Suite 480 Bellaire, TX 77401 ============================== You can access the archives of these newsletters by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ordinarylife You can add someone you know would be interested in receiving these on- line newsletters by sending that information to - Bill@bkspeaks.com I'll make sure they are added immediately! Or, they can subscribe themselves by sending an e-mail directly to Ordinarylife-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can unsubscribe to this newsletter by sending an e-mail to ordinarylife-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ================================ The material in this on-line newsletter is copyrighted. 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