Life Is a Miracle
by Rev. Rodney R. Romney,
Idaho Falls Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, October 9, 2005
Life is a miracle. I know that statement goes against the reality for many in this world today, whose routine of life is often back-breaking as well as heartbreaking. But the fact of life--the fact that we are here in these bodies as living, breathing organisms, with the capacity to reflect, think, love, and act as we wish, with a spirit that surpasses all limitations of thought or action-all that and much more, points to fact that with every passing day we are involved in an incredible miracle called life.
Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer and one of my favorite writers, has written a little book by the title, "Life Is a Miracle." While his work is an essay against modern superstition or the easy answers that scientific knowledge may offer, it stirred in me the truth that we are not alone in this enterprise of life, and that one life inescapably affects other lives. Berry says, "To treat life as anything less than a miracle is to give up on it." But even when we acknowledge the miracle and work to understand it, we are still left with the fact that much of life lies in its mystery, a mystery we may never fully explain or understand.
We are alive, says Berry, existing within a mystery, which is also a miracle. Although we sometimes act automatically, we are more than machines. We have more than we can accept. We know more than we can say. We live beyond our words, our thoughts, and even beyond our fondest hopes and dreams. We are literally more than just ourselves, and we are more than we can even explain. We are each a miracle.
Go back for a moment in your mind to the place where consciousness began for you, where you began to think about you and your relationship to the world. What are some of your earliest memories? What do they mean to you as you reflect on them now? The most important fact you will ever discover is that somewhere along the way someone loved you. It may have been your parents. But though they loved you as much as they were capable, it was not enough. You needed the love of others to help you grow and mature into a person. Without love you probably would not have survived, or if you had, you might be some kind of monster whose major aim in life would be to hurt others as you have been hurt. Love is the most important gift we ever receive. Without it, we cannot fully live. And love is the greatest miracle of all.
One of the most important discoveries we ever make is that Something beyond our human lives also cares for us. A strong, invisible force in this universe loves us and always seeks to draw us into a place where we will be able to love ourselves and others. Some call this force God, from which has emerged a vast array of religious beliefs and systems. Some religions teach about a God who only loves us when we are obedient to certain rules or a member of a certain faith, a God whose love is conditioned by how we behave and who will punish us if we break the rules. Other religions teach about a God who loves us, not because of what we do, but simply because we are. This God loves us unconditionally. We do nothing to earn that love. It is always there.
Forrest Church's book, "Bringing God Home," is a treatise on this subject. As he points out, we may have little control over what happens to us, but we can choose how to respond. He also says that to be fully at home in ourselves, to uplift and redeem all lesser affections, we must clear a place within our hearts for love. Organized religion can help us in learning to love, but sometimes it fails at that level by its own judgmental and censorious nature. Yet personal spirituality, which can exist completely independent from organized religion, can help us make room in our hearts for the mystery of love, thus finding room in our hearts to love others.
Our world is full of injustice and undeserved tragedy. We may never fully understand why this is so, but one thing we can do is forgive. Madeleine l'Engle said that through forgiveness reparation is made, relations are restored, and love is returned. When we are able to forgive, even those who have hurt us the most, we break the vicious cycle of hate and mistrust.
My argument with mainline Christianity is that it often refuses love as the supreme law of life and is preoccupied with worshiping a judgmental God. It also refuses to accept Jesus as a man and insists on viewing him as the Divine Holy Son of God. God allowed him to be put to death, so that divine power and righteousness could be demonstrated in raising him from the grave. Those believing in the sacrificial life, death and atonement of Jesus, who accept Jesus as the Only Begotten Son of God, will then be granted the miracle of eternal life. This is called the ransom theory or fall/redemption theology, and it literally portrays God as a violent, abusive parent, who is willing to sacrifice a child in order to demonstrate his own power.
What if it really happened like this. Jesus was a devoutly spiritual man of the Jewish tradition, as fully human as you or I, whose teachings were centered primarily on One God, rather than on the many gods that were believed to exist at that time. From that One God he saw Love as the one and only law to be obeyed. So he said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, and you shall love this God with all your heart, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. This fulfills the law." He was trying to lead Judaism away from a belief in many gods to a belief in one God, a God who loves us and wants us to love each other.
The main reason that Jesus is important to me is because of his mandate that we are to love everyone, even our enemies. As he was dying on the cross, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who had placed him there, because "they know not what they are doing." His message was not one of condemnation, as some of his followers of today would espouse, it was a message of unconditional love and total forgiveness for everyone. What if that simple law of love is the essence of all religion and the only commandment that humans must obey? If we believe that, the world will be a different and far better place than it is now, and the crucifixions that go on daily would be lessened.
But it isn't practical, you might say. Some people are bad and need to be punished. Some countries have evil leaders who need to be wiped out, even if it means killing innocent people at the same time. So wars are fought, leaders rise and fall, and thousands die. And what does it achieve? Nothing. Absolutely nothing except more wars, more killings, all stemming from the egotistical needs of power-hungry leaders, who want to make a name for themselves. The cost of any war is horrendous, and the tragic irony is that the profits of war increase for a few while poverty increases for many others.
Our world today is fractured and divided. We are reeling from the hurricane disasters in the Gulf Coast and the realization of the terrible poverty and inequity that exists there. We are involved in a war that was poorly conceived and from which no real winners can emerge. We have a president who has stated that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq so that peace could come to the Middle East. But the God Jesus presented was a God of love and peace, not a God who sent people to fight and kill each other. Vengeance under the guise of justice has gotten us nowhere, except to kill thousands of people, many of them children, and to bring deep division in our own country.
The prophet Isaiah envisioned a peaceable kingdom where the lion would lie down with the lamb, where the harmony of nature would be restored, and wars would become a thing of the past. A little radical, we might argue, but miracles are always radical. Killing each other has never worked. Maybe we should try honoring the miracle of life that binds all life together.
The other day I was driving down Memorial Drive which runs parallel to the Snake River, when a mother duck and her little ones began to cross that busy street. They were making their way from the green-belt along the river to the yard of a house that fronts the street. I stopped so I wouldn't hit them. I wanted to cry out to the ducks, "Go back, there's nothing in that yard you want. Go back before you all get killed." Then I became aware that other cars had also stopped. The crossing of the ducks may have been unnecessary and foolish, but some common impulse of compassion in the hearts of all those drivers on that particular day refused to slaughter that mother and her babies.
Yes, it may have been a moment of foolishness, but it was also one of exquisite tenderness. Why must we slaughter and kill animals, as well as each other, when we all share the common desire to live? Why can we not honor the miracle of life that we all share? Why do we think we have the right to take life away from anyone, human or non-human? What a different world this would be if we would stop our senseless killing.
I come from a family of hunters and fishermen. When I was younger I was taught to hunt and fish, the subtle message being that's how you become a man. But on the day I shot my first deer, at the age of 13, and watched the light of life fade from the eyes of that beautiful creature at my feet, I threw down my gun and vowed I would never hunt again. I never have and never will. I cannot expect others to feel as I do on this matter, but killing for the sheer pleasure of killing, taking life from another creature just for the pleasure of it, is not something I can do. What right do I have to rob another creature, human or animal, of the wondrous miracle of life that I freely enjoy and which was given as a legacy to all of us?
There is a dark side to religion, because it often sanctions killing and war as a means for achieving righteousness. As I have already stated, I don't believe in war, and also I don't believe in capital punishment. I think life is too precious to be destroyed for any reason. I have a different feeling about abortion, mainly because I do not believe that an organism called a fetus is really a life, until it leaves the body of its mother. In the book of Genesis there is a verse that says that Adam did not become a living soul until God had breathed into him the breath of life. It is an allegory reflecting a truth. When we take our first breath, independent of our mother's body, we become a living soul. From that moment on, life is a precious miracle that continues to grow and unfold.
Parenthetically, I want to say that I support Oregon's right-to-die law. When I know that my life is no longer meaningful or tenable because of some fatal illness or disability, then I want the right to say, "Enough. I am ready to go on," and, if need be, to ask for a doctor's assistance in making that happen.
Our faith communities and churches in this country are also fractured and divided. One of the principle tenets of my denomination, American Baptist, is freedom of the individual conscience and the freedom of each church to order its own life. Yet because some Baptist churches have declared themselves welcoming and affirming of all people, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folks, the American Baptist churches of the Pacific Southwest, a sizeable group, voted recently to withdraw from the denomination. They apparently cling to the old belief that sexual preference is not genetic, as science affirms, but something that one chooses. This has also happened in other denominations, with churches dividing and losing members over differing views on sexual orientation.
We are a welcoming and affirming congregation here in Idaho Falls, perhaps the only one, and that is precisely why Beverly and I are here. We refuse to belong to a church that excludes anyone. The inherent worth and dignity of every person is one of the most important principles we share. Together we are on quest for the miracle of true life, a life that affirms all people, a legacy we will hand to our children, and which in a deeper sense is eternal.
You may be wondering if I believe that we have lived before or will live again after we die? I think that is a very real possibility. I cannot present any solid evidence to back it up, but I somehow believe that life is eternal, not limited to a single lifetime on this earth. The most important thing we do while we are here is to honor the life experience we share with one another, and to do all we can to make that experience rich and fulfilling for everyone and everything whose lives touch ours. We can share each day in the miracle of lives filled with love and gratitude.
I just read an interesting book entitled, "The Hidden Messages in Water" by Masaru Emoto. In it he speaks of the mystical connection between water and spirit. He concludes his book with three points, with which I would like to conclude this message. (1) Our lives are made possible by the movement of an unseen energy, to which we need to pay attention. (2) You--yes, you--have the ability to change the world for better or worse. If we cover the world in love and gratitude, we will create a glorious morphic field that will change the world. (3) Everything in the world is linked. We are all part of another, because we are all related and essentially one.
Life is a miracle, a beautiful, steadfast, never-ending miracle. We are key players in that miracle. We are carving out a new history where love and gratitude will create a new world of understanding and peace. Don't give up. Don't turn back. We're on our way.
[Rod Romney is a retired American Baptist minister and former pastor of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA and Seattle First Baptist Church, Seattle, WA. He and his wife, Beverly, now attend the Idaho Falls UU Fellowship. Rod writes a weekly column for the Idaho Falls newspaper, leads retreats, and does a wide variety of speaking engagements.]
Idaho Falls Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, October 9, 2005
Life is a miracle. I know that statement goes against the reality for many in this world today, whose routine of life is often back-breaking as well as heartbreaking. But the fact of life--the fact that we are here in these bodies as living, breathing organisms, with the capacity to reflect, think, love, and act as we wish, with a spirit that surpasses all limitations of thought or action-all that and much more, points to fact that with every passing day we are involved in an incredible miracle called life.
Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer and one of my favorite writers, has written a little book by the title, "Life Is a Miracle." While his work is an essay against modern superstition or the easy answers that scientific knowledge may offer, it stirred in me the truth that we are not alone in this enterprise of life, and that one life inescapably affects other lives. Berry says, "To treat life as anything less than a miracle is to give up on it." But even when we acknowledge the miracle and work to understand it, we are still left with the fact that much of life lies in its mystery, a mystery we may never fully explain or understand.
We are alive, says Berry, existing within a mystery, which is also a miracle. Although we sometimes act automatically, we are more than machines. We have more than we can accept. We know more than we can say. We live beyond our words, our thoughts, and even beyond our fondest hopes and dreams. We are literally more than just ourselves, and we are more than we can even explain. We are each a miracle.
Go back for a moment in your mind to the place where consciousness began for you, where you began to think about you and your relationship to the world. What are some of your earliest memories? What do they mean to you as you reflect on them now? The most important fact you will ever discover is that somewhere along the way someone loved you. It may have been your parents. But though they loved you as much as they were capable, it was not enough. You needed the love of others to help you grow and mature into a person. Without love you probably would not have survived, or if you had, you might be some kind of monster whose major aim in life would be to hurt others as you have been hurt. Love is the most important gift we ever receive. Without it, we cannot fully live. And love is the greatest miracle of all.
One of the most important discoveries we ever make is that Something beyond our human lives also cares for us. A strong, invisible force in this universe loves us and always seeks to draw us into a place where we will be able to love ourselves and others. Some call this force God, from which has emerged a vast array of religious beliefs and systems. Some religions teach about a God who only loves us when we are obedient to certain rules or a member of a certain faith, a God whose love is conditioned by how we behave and who will punish us if we break the rules. Other religions teach about a God who loves us, not because of what we do, but simply because we are. This God loves us unconditionally. We do nothing to earn that love. It is always there.
Forrest Church's book, "Bringing God Home," is a treatise on this subject. As he points out, we may have little control over what happens to us, but we can choose how to respond. He also says that to be fully at home in ourselves, to uplift and redeem all lesser affections, we must clear a place within our hearts for love. Organized religion can help us in learning to love, but sometimes it fails at that level by its own judgmental and censorious nature. Yet personal spirituality, which can exist completely independent from organized religion, can help us make room in our hearts for the mystery of love, thus finding room in our hearts to love others.
Our world is full of injustice and undeserved tragedy. We may never fully understand why this is so, but one thing we can do is forgive. Madeleine l'Engle said that through forgiveness reparation is made, relations are restored, and love is returned. When we are able to forgive, even those who have hurt us the most, we break the vicious cycle of hate and mistrust.
My argument with mainline Christianity is that it often refuses love as the supreme law of life and is preoccupied with worshiping a judgmental God. It also refuses to accept Jesus as a man and insists on viewing him as the Divine Holy Son of God. God allowed him to be put to death, so that divine power and righteousness could be demonstrated in raising him from the grave. Those believing in the sacrificial life, death and atonement of Jesus, who accept Jesus as the Only Begotten Son of God, will then be granted the miracle of eternal life. This is called the ransom theory or fall/redemption theology, and it literally portrays God as a violent, abusive parent, who is willing to sacrifice a child in order to demonstrate his own power.
What if it really happened like this. Jesus was a devoutly spiritual man of the Jewish tradition, as fully human as you or I, whose teachings were centered primarily on One God, rather than on the many gods that were believed to exist at that time. From that One God he saw Love as the one and only law to be obeyed. So he said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, and you shall love this God with all your heart, mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. This fulfills the law." He was trying to lead Judaism away from a belief in many gods to a belief in one God, a God who loves us and wants us to love each other.
The main reason that Jesus is important to me is because of his mandate that we are to love everyone, even our enemies. As he was dying on the cross, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who had placed him there, because "they know not what they are doing." His message was not one of condemnation, as some of his followers of today would espouse, it was a message of unconditional love and total forgiveness for everyone. What if that simple law of love is the essence of all religion and the only commandment that humans must obey? If we believe that, the world will be a different and far better place than it is now, and the crucifixions that go on daily would be lessened.
But it isn't practical, you might say. Some people are bad and need to be punished. Some countries have evil leaders who need to be wiped out, even if it means killing innocent people at the same time. So wars are fought, leaders rise and fall, and thousands die. And what does it achieve? Nothing. Absolutely nothing except more wars, more killings, all stemming from the egotistical needs of power-hungry leaders, who want to make a name for themselves. The cost of any war is horrendous, and the tragic irony is that the profits of war increase for a few while poverty increases for many others.
Our world today is fractured and divided. We are reeling from the hurricane disasters in the Gulf Coast and the realization of the terrible poverty and inequity that exists there. We are involved in a war that was poorly conceived and from which no real winners can emerge. We have a president who has stated that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq so that peace could come to the Middle East. But the God Jesus presented was a God of love and peace, not a God who sent people to fight and kill each other. Vengeance under the guise of justice has gotten us nowhere, except to kill thousands of people, many of them children, and to bring deep division in our own country.
The prophet Isaiah envisioned a peaceable kingdom where the lion would lie down with the lamb, where the harmony of nature would be restored, and wars would become a thing of the past. A little radical, we might argue, but miracles are always radical. Killing each other has never worked. Maybe we should try honoring the miracle of life that binds all life together.
The other day I was driving down Memorial Drive which runs parallel to the Snake River, when a mother duck and her little ones began to cross that busy street. They were making their way from the green-belt along the river to the yard of a house that fronts the street. I stopped so I wouldn't hit them. I wanted to cry out to the ducks, "Go back, there's nothing in that yard you want. Go back before you all get killed." Then I became aware that other cars had also stopped. The crossing of the ducks may have been unnecessary and foolish, but some common impulse of compassion in the hearts of all those drivers on that particular day refused to slaughter that mother and her babies.
Yes, it may have been a moment of foolishness, but it was also one of exquisite tenderness. Why must we slaughter and kill animals, as well as each other, when we all share the common desire to live? Why can we not honor the miracle of life that we all share? Why do we think we have the right to take life away from anyone, human or non-human? What a different world this would be if we would stop our senseless killing.
I come from a family of hunters and fishermen. When I was younger I was taught to hunt and fish, the subtle message being that's how you become a man. But on the day I shot my first deer, at the age of 13, and watched the light of life fade from the eyes of that beautiful creature at my feet, I threw down my gun and vowed I would never hunt again. I never have and never will. I cannot expect others to feel as I do on this matter, but killing for the sheer pleasure of killing, taking life from another creature just for the pleasure of it, is not something I can do. What right do I have to rob another creature, human or animal, of the wondrous miracle of life that I freely enjoy and which was given as a legacy to all of us?
There is a dark side to religion, because it often sanctions killing and war as a means for achieving righteousness. As I have already stated, I don't believe in war, and also I don't believe in capital punishment. I think life is too precious to be destroyed for any reason. I have a different feeling about abortion, mainly because I do not believe that an organism called a fetus is really a life, until it leaves the body of its mother. In the book of Genesis there is a verse that says that Adam did not become a living soul until God had breathed into him the breath of life. It is an allegory reflecting a truth. When we take our first breath, independent of our mother's body, we become a living soul. From that moment on, life is a precious miracle that continues to grow and unfold.
Parenthetically, I want to say that I support Oregon's right-to-die law. When I know that my life is no longer meaningful or tenable because of some fatal illness or disability, then I want the right to say, "Enough. I am ready to go on," and, if need be, to ask for a doctor's assistance in making that happen.
Our faith communities and churches in this country are also fractured and divided. One of the principle tenets of my denomination, American Baptist, is freedom of the individual conscience and the freedom of each church to order its own life. Yet because some Baptist churches have declared themselves welcoming and affirming of all people, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folks, the American Baptist churches of the Pacific Southwest, a sizeable group, voted recently to withdraw from the denomination. They apparently cling to the old belief that sexual preference is not genetic, as science affirms, but something that one chooses. This has also happened in other denominations, with churches dividing and losing members over differing views on sexual orientation.
We are a welcoming and affirming congregation here in Idaho Falls, perhaps the only one, and that is precisely why Beverly and I are here. We refuse to belong to a church that excludes anyone. The inherent worth and dignity of every person is one of the most important principles we share. Together we are on quest for the miracle of true life, a life that affirms all people, a legacy we will hand to our children, and which in a deeper sense is eternal.
You may be wondering if I believe that we have lived before or will live again after we die? I think that is a very real possibility. I cannot present any solid evidence to back it up, but I somehow believe that life is eternal, not limited to a single lifetime on this earth. The most important thing we do while we are here is to honor the life experience we share with one another, and to do all we can to make that experience rich and fulfilling for everyone and everything whose lives touch ours. We can share each day in the miracle of lives filled with love and gratitude.
I just read an interesting book entitled, "The Hidden Messages in Water" by Masaru Emoto. In it he speaks of the mystical connection between water and spirit. He concludes his book with three points, with which I would like to conclude this message. (1) Our lives are made possible by the movement of an unseen energy, to which we need to pay attention. (2) You--yes, you--have the ability to change the world for better or worse. If we cover the world in love and gratitude, we will create a glorious morphic field that will change the world. (3) Everything in the world is linked. We are all part of another, because we are all related and essentially one.
Life is a miracle, a beautiful, steadfast, never-ending miracle. We are key players in that miracle. We are carving out a new history where love and gratitude will create a new world of understanding and peace. Don't give up. Don't turn back. We're on our way.
[Rod Romney is a retired American Baptist minister and former pastor of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA and Seattle First Baptist Church, Seattle, WA. He and his wife, Beverly, now attend the Idaho Falls UU Fellowship. Rod writes a weekly column for the Idaho Falls newspaper, leads retreats, and does a wide variety of speaking engagements.]
posted by Rev. Rick Mitchell, PhD at 9:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home