THEOLOGY
I was raised as a Unitarian Universalist. I grew up in a humble church in Lincroft, New Jersey. For all of my life, I have nurtured a faith that burns gently...like a candle within my heart.
The Lincroft church had a habit of thinking deeply. I began that habit when I was young. I tend to think deeply about the world. I think deeply about relationship. I think deeply about the quality of our lives.
That is a lot of thinking. Very few people, however, actually think their way to church. Most of us feel our way to church. Deep feelings guide us there—feelings like joy and love, feelings like heartbreak and compassion, feelings about the needs of our families and so on. Thoughts and feelings are two sides of the same coin. The challenge is in bringing them together. As Cornel West explains,
Socrates argued, but Jesus wept. The question is: How do you bring together the rich spirituality of Socratic questioning with the rich tradition of loving, giving, sacrificing and serving others? I could just turn on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and sit down. [Laughter.] I could.
West raises an excellent question. How will we bring together the rich spirituality of Socratic questioning with the rich tradition of loving, giving, sacrificing and serving others? This is a question that a church can work through together.
So, what is my theology? How do I imagine the meaning of God? How do I attempt to understand the holy?
Theology, as I experience it, is the body of thought and the habits of thinking that allow the best in us to become possible. Although I am not able to reverently witness the holy experience of every birth and every death, of every daybreak and every sunset, of every threshold in the growth of the soul, I understand that the holy experience is ever and always present. Sacred beauty is always with me but I am not always with it. I live in a world—we live in a world—that moves quickly. It is possible for me to believe that I don't have the time that I need for reverence. I believe that I don't have the time when I misunderstand the holy, when I somewhat falsely believe that reverence for the world is distinct from actually living in it. When I am careful enough (and when I am mindful enough), I am able to live deliberately. But how can I be that careful? How will I know when I am being sufficiently mindful? I try my best to understand what it means to be human and alive.
As often as I can, I make my way to the sea or to the mountains. I carve out some alone time to sit and think, to breathe and to be. Time slows down—when we allow it to slow down—and when it does, I take a breath. I listen. I try to find the stillness within myself and all around me. I slow down. I breathe. I listen. I center. I utilize the gifts of spiritual practice.
There are many values and practices that are important to my spiritual well-being—yoga, meditation, practicing guitar, healthy eating, laughter, honesty, integrity. I honor these in an attempt to see the beauty of the world with my own eyes. When I am secure within myself and when I am confident of my path, other paths that had seemed distant, draw near to me. I long to know more about them.
I long to know more about Buddhism. It is an important part of my theology. The Avatamsaka Sutra (The Flower Ornament Scripture) begins,
THUS HAVE I HEARD. At one time the Buddha was in the land of Magadha, in a state of purity, at the site of enlightenment, having just realized true awareness. The ground was solid and firm, made of diamond, adorned wih exquisite jewel discs and myriad precious flowers, with pure clear crystals. [] The finest jewels appeared spontaneously, raining inexhaustible quantities of gems and beautiful flowers all over the earth. There were rows of jewel trees, their branches and foliage lustrous and luxuriant. By the Buddha’s spiritual power, he caused all the adornments of this enlightenment site to be reflected therein.
There is something that is deeply familiar about this passage, even though it is quite new to me.
I long to know more about Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita and its language are moving. It begins,
Dhrtarastra said: O Sanjaya, what did my sons desirous of battle and the sons of Pandu do after assembling at the holy land of righteousness Kuruksetra?
There is something familiar about this passage as well, even though it is also new.
I long to know more about Abrahamic faiths, more about Judaism and more about Islam. I long to know far more about Christianity and the roots of Unitarian Universalism. I have a theology of spiritual exploration. There is so very much to learn.
I am most deeply guided, however, by Henry David Thoreau. I am compelled by his openness to truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be. I cleave his witness of nature and how it guided his reflection...how it informed his theology. In Walden (1854), he wrote,
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
I am compelled by an openness to truth. I am driven by a fervent hope for peace, even against the weight of injustice. It is the balance between these two things (and, perhaps, the tension between these two things) that makes the best within me possible.