★★★★★

Victoria is the minister at the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, MN, just a few miles from where I live. I’ve only met her briefly, but we’ve communicated a bit by email, and I’ve come to appreciate her sincerity and genuineness.

This little booklet presents various reflections on life and purpose. It works great as a month-long collection of morning meditations. It’s not meant to describe UU teachings, but it gives a flavor for the sacred, while managing to avoid any particular religious paradigm—no foundation upon any single religious teacher such as Jesus.

Victoria gave me permission to simply quote an essay from her booklet. This is the one I chose, titled In Between, a particularly poignant selection for me as I just became a first-time grandpa on Sunday … and quickly picked up the phone to share my joy with my elderly mother. 

**  **  **

One afternoon some time ago I brought my little baby out to visit a very, very old neighbor who was dying that year, quietly and gracefully, in her gracious home. We were having a little birthday party for her, with sherry and cake and a few old friends gathered round her bed. To free a hand to cut the cake, I put my baby down right on the bed, right up on the pillow—and there was a sudden hush in the room, for we were caught off guard, beholding.

It was a startling sight. There in the late afternoon light were two people side by side, two human merely beings. Neither one could walk, neither one could speak, not in language you could understand, both utterly dependent on the rest of us bustling around, masquerading as immortals. There they were: a plump one, apple-cheeked, a cherry tomato of a babe, smiling; and a silver-thin one, hollow-eyed, translucent, shining, smiling. We revelers were hushed because we clearly saw that these were dancers on the very edge of things. These two were closer to the threshold, the edge of the great mystery, than any of us had been for a long time or would be for a while. living, breathing, smiling they were, but each with one foot and who knows how much consciousness firmly planted on the other side, whatever that is, wherever that is, the starry darkness from whence we come and whither we will go, in time. Fresh from birth, nigh unto death, bright-eyed, they were bookends there, mirrors of each other. Radiant.

Cake in hand, and napkins, knife, glasses, a crystal carafe a century old, we paused there on the thresholds of our own momentary lives. Then, “What shall we sing?” said someone, to the silence, to the sunlight on the covers, to the stars. It was the only question, then, as now, years later. What on earth shall we sing?

★★★★

If I recall correctly, I requested this book from the author, rather than it just being sent to me for review. It struck me as interesting that a Roman Catholic of 45 years, who served as Deacon within the Archdiocese of Hartford, would leave it all behind to become a minister of a Protestant church … while still affirming the validity of the Catholic Church!  LaRochelle not only crossed the street to see what the neighbors were like, he took up residence there.

Why step down from the one true church? What is the difference between Catholic and Protestant, anyway? And how does it feel to be excommunicated from one’s lifetime heritage … for that is Roman Catholic canon law for LaRochelle’s situation.

He left in part because he could not uphold certain doctrines, such as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. He also felt uncomfortable with conservative church stances against such things as abortion and gay marriage, and even more innocuous issues like birth control and annulment. (Odd that over 90% of Roman Catholic couples practice some form on contraception in opposition to official church teachings.) He notes differences in religious philosophy, such as the Catholic reliance upon papal decisions versus the Protestant insistence that our only needed answers come from the Bible.

The book was a little dry in places, but it still held my attention well. The most powerful passages are the personal ones, telling LaRochelle’s own maverick story. The most interesting were the insights into Catholic doctrine, and how it has shifted in emphasis over the last half-century. The most meaningful are surely those that extol the positive contributions of both Protestant and Catholic traditions to the universal church. By “universal church,” LaRochelle means Christians; while he briefly encourages opening our understanding to other religions as well, that is not the focus of the book.

LaRochelle speaks of being “profoundly grateful for the gifts I have received from both my Catholic and Protestant heritages,” but he notes that crossing the street isn’t easy. Those on the Religious Right tend to label more progressive believers as possessing something less than the truth faith. Conversely, it is extremely difficult for the progressive side to be at ease with a fundamentalist position. Yet LaRochelle points us to the words of Jesus who, in a moment of prayer not long before he was killed, pleaded that those who would be his followers might “all be one.”

While I manage to avoid politics on my blog, I have been a little less successful on social media. This past election was scary and embarrassing. I have never felt our country so divided in my lifetime, and I have especially never felt Christians so divided.

Enter Merritt’s new book, with its subtitle of Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. Merritt is an evangelical Southern Baptist, but the identification means little. A new wave of Christians are growing up in the church, and making a positive course correction by moving beyond partisan politics, following Jesus without fighting the culture wars.

For many, having churched in an us-versus-them atmosphere, this new wave will be uncomfortable. Merritt tells how, having been raised in a conservative family with ties to the “so-called Religious Right,” he thought faithful followship of Jesus meant defeating liberals.* Like Forward contributor Kirsten Powers, I, too, have been asked, “How can you be a Democrat and a Christian?” Oddly, I sometimes wonder the opposite: How can you be a Republican and a Christian? So, Merritt set me straight as much as he did the GOP.

The new wave of young Christians have so had it with partisan politics that they are voting not for Christian principles but against culture wars. A poll conducted by Relevant magazine during the election year—a publication influential among young Christians—asked “Who would Jesus vote for?” The majority of respondents were self-described conservatives, and yet their top response was Barack Obama. Horrors!

Today, we know who won. Obama and the conservatives. Eh??

Take the issue of homosexuality. Merritt waffles all over the place, like he can’t make up his mind what his stance should be. To a lesser extent, he does the same with a short discussion on abortion. Even I was frustrated as I read! Get off the fence, man! Only later does Merritt explain that he purposefully avoids contentious issues as a distraction to the hands-on teachings of Jesus. Jesus didn’t ask Peter to picket the wolves, but to feed the sheep, right?

Chastised, I realized that I had forgotten the spirit of my own recent book. Merritt has hit the nail on the head, and accomplished it with a book that you won’t be able to put down.

* Liberals = “a cantankerous minority of secular humanists attempting to chase Jesus out of God-blessed America.”

★★★★

It took me a little longer than usual to get into the book, which keeps it below a five-star review, but it was worth the persistence. My problem was that Rohr writes with a sort of matter-of-fact authority that left me wondering if I missed the proof text somewhere along the way. Perhaps I did; Rohr has published around two dozen books since his first in 1976, and this is the first I’ve read.

Rohr’s target is those who sense God is closer than they’ve been told. If you find yourself “in recovery from religion,” you’re in Rohr’s crosshairs. He wants to introduce you to a deeper meaning to life, deeper even than the surface Christian tradition that has been your paradigm to date. While Rohr’s heritage is clearly Judeo-Christian, and many of his quotes come from the Bible, he aims at uncovering the perennial truths that all religions share.

Resurrection is key, both of our Lord and of ourselves. Resurrection is necessary for new life, life in unity with God. As “children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36), our relationship with God changes … we “breath God in and out—much more than we ‘know’ God, understand God, or even talk to God.” There is an intimacy with God at this level that we never reach within our selfish, base existence, the “False Self.”

A deep read, if you’re ready to take the leap.

The text used to introduce the topic in class was titled Of Pandas and People, approved by a well-known religious think tank in Seattle, The Discovery Institute. In a widely published court battle, the ruling in Dover came down that Intelligent Design is a form of Creationism, and its teaching violates the First Amendment. Bye, bye, Pandas.

★★★★★

Let’s start with the basics. A psalter doesn’t psing psongs door-to-door, nor does it dispense psalt and pepper. A psalter is a devotional book of psalms.

★★★★

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.–Genesis 1:1

Magical words, to be sure, but perhaps we are just now uncovering how magical! Bet you never thought a research book could be written about the first verse of the Bible!

This is a deep look into the possible origins of the Hebrew alphabet, presenting its construction of letters as based on universal hand gestures, with meaning inherent in each and every letter. The Torah (the first five books of the Bible), Tenen surmises, was first written as a series of figures with no intent for them to form spoken words. The “letters” are a choreograph of manual/somatic gestures, which constituted a language in its own right. Each letter becomes intimate, in the shape of the idealized human hand seen in 2-D projection. This language, says Tenen, possibly predates the evolution of our species, as a communicative practice of higher primates! Performed properly, the hand-dance has spiritual and experiential significance, leading the performer to a personal experience of the Transcendent.

Tradition says that the Torah is a template for Creation, so let’s read the first verse of the Bible again, dancing letter-by-letter, rather than word-by-word (Tenen’s interpretation):

The primary distinction, expressed by the topological relationship between inside and outside | initiates | everything | by the expression of | a singularity | and all of its internal and external symmetries. | The primary distinction between inside and outside | reaches out into everything; | everything abstracts back to a point, | framing and/or connecting | a single choice | to the bulk–the plenum of all choices | All of the internal and external reflections (symmetries) | connecting/framing | the expression of the expansion of a single choice among all choices | and | all the internal and external reflections | connecting/framing | everything | from the initiating (principle) | endlessly.

Hmmm. As an explanation of how God created the heaven and the earth, it’s a bit disjointed, but of course the translation may not yet be perfected. But, really, now: could the ancients who wrote the Bible have possibly been this astute? Tenen finds unexpected evidence of ancient wisdom hidden in the alphabet through a myriad of mathematical models, and founded the Meru Foundation in 1983 to further explore these patterns.

What makes the book fascinating is that Tenen does not merely present his findings; he leads us on a visually pleasing journey of discovery, blind alleys and all. His story of learning how to wear the Hebrew arm tefillin, and the insight it brought, made me smile. This book is a mathematician’s playground, roaming through simple pattern matching to base-3 numbering through various topological equivalents. The Torus plays a key role. Along the way, we examine color-coded rubics cubes with Cartesian coordinates (its 3x3x3 structure accounts for the 27 letters of the Hebrew alphabet), a pictorial golden rule, and an inverted T diagram of the relation between Yahweh and Elohim. I hold a B.S. in mathematics, though I’m very rusty, so I’m glad Tenen chose to present everything in diagrams rather than stale formulas—beautiful, color diagrams, mind you—and it awakened within me that old fire to communicate through the most common of languages: mathematics. Topology enthusiasts: you’ve just found heaven.

Tenen is well aware that his hypothesis contradicts common scholarly opinion, in the development of both language and the Torah. For example, it precludes the Documentary Hypothesis, because it assumes construction of the Torah as a single unit. The Documentary Hypothesis states that the Torah contains the writings of at least four different authors or communities, carefully spliced together by a later redactor. One way scholars tell one Torah author from another is by how the writer refers to God: one calls God “Elohim,” another “Yahweh.” Tenen notes this distinction, and explains that the one creator of the Torah did this not by accident; his purpose being to conflate and highlight the two forms of God, as YH-VH (“Lord”) and Elokim (“God,” the eternal). The One and the Many. Singularity and Wholeness.

I should pause at this point to explain that The Mura Foundation is an ongoing project. This book presents a mostly unexamined hypothesis, when extended beyond its analysis of the alphabet and the first verse of the Bible. Extrapolating from the first verse to a belief that the entire Torah contains the same magic seems to me, as yet, unfounded. How and when, for example, did we begin to read the Torah in its more shallow word-by-word interpretation, leading to the stories our children learn in Sunday School? This story-telling overlay is no accident, Tenen explains; it is a means of clothing the Torah’s more intellectual/meditative message to hold the attention and gain the loyalty of a nation, so that its inner significance would be revered and preserved. How this happened, however, is not well explained. Perhaps rabbinic tradition provides the explanation, in the story of how Ezra restored the “original” form of the letters? By the time of Ezra, all the events recorded in the Torah had long since taken place, so dividing the string of the letters up into words and supplying the vowelization required for pronunciation was then possible. From then on, the fact that the “real” Torah consisted of the undivided string of letters was no longer obvious from looking at the text. Never-the-less, caution is required, for if you change the text by even “a jot or a tittle,” that is, if you add or remove even the crown on a single letter, or any other mark, the consequence would be disastrous! The hand dance would fall apart.

So do I think Tenen is on his way to discovering a key to the scriptures, through his theory of how the alphabet developed? I’m naturally skeptical. I’ve reviewed similar books before, by authors looking for a hidden code in the Bible: The Bible Code and From Adam To Noah. The first flopped horribly, while the second was much more interesting but still, in my opinion, overstated its thesis. The first was fun with word puzzles, the second fun with numbers. Tenen’s approach transcends the two, though it’s still quite fantastic.

★★★★

SPOILER ALERT

It’s amazing how big a splash this self-published book made. I read the story several years back, but picked it up again for a book discussion group I belong to.

I don’t seem to be quite as enamored of it as some, but it IS a good story! The gist is of a father whose young daughter is murdered, and who ventures alone a year later to the place of her abduction. He is called there by a mysterious letter from “Papa;” Papa is the name his wife always used for God.

He arrives full of skepticism, and is met by three lovable figures: a big black woman (the Father), a plain looking Jewish man (Jesus), and a wispy, mysterious lady (the Holy Spirit). He talks with them, shares their food, does a bit of gardening with the Spirit, and in general works through his fury toward God for the loss of his daughter.

Together, over the weekend, they tackle the issue of good and evil and a few other stumbling blocks people may share toward God. He sees his dead daughter again, playing happily by a waterfall, and though she can’t see him through the void, she feels his presence and blows him a kiss. Finally grasping the love of God for him and for his daughter, he begins his journey back home. On the way, he suffers an auto accident and wakes up in the hospital, where he learns he was not gone two days after all, but had his accident on the day he left home.

So, it’s an escape into theodicy, plus a bit of unorthodox Trinity teaching, with a little postmodernism thrown in for spice (there’s a not-so-unexpected surprise in the end). If you think I’ve spoiled the book for you, I really haven’t—its value is not in the plot, but in the lively discussions on nearly every page about God.

While some reviewers feel the book is a bit sacrilegious in its bizarre portrayal of God, I found the character personalities helpful. It’s more feel-good than thought-provoking, though, as its theology is clearly supplemented by the author’s imagination. But then, whose theology isn’t?

By the final quarter of the book, however, the tone turns more somber. Perhaps Constantine managed to twist the cross into a swastika, but we’ve never managed to untwist it. The horrors of war are only one example of how Jesus’ ministry has undergone a stark reversal. Is the Age of the Lord’s Favor merely a pipe dream?

★★★★

I smiled at D’Sousa’s portrayal of liberal Christians (readers know me as one): “Instead of being the church’s missionaries to the world, they have become the world’s missionaries to the church. They devote their moral energies to trying to make the church more democratic, to assure equal rights for women, to legitimize homosexual marriage, and so on … Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much intellectual and moral ground they concede to the adversaries of Christianity.” Guilty as charged.

So D’Sousa is unafraid to voice his opinion, but they are admittedly studied opinions, fun to contemplate, and worth the effort. His purpose, of course, is to highlight what is great about Christianity. This he does by appealing to our Christian roots in America, debunking atheist arguments about the evils of Christianity through the ages and instead listing Christianity’s accomplishments, and appealing to our common sense of values and morals as God-given. In discussing Christianity’s failings (such as witch hunts and holy wars) D’Sousa points out that atheist regimes have destroyed far more lives than Christian regimes (he convincingly paints Hitler as an atheist).

D’Sousa’s writing is engaging and intelligent, but he occasionally seems to miss the point. His portrayal of how atheists think is off the mark. He claims the Anthropic Principle for his side, to argue for design, favoring, without making a distinction, the “strong” variant—that the creation must have been fine tuned (presumably by a designer) to meet the needs of intelligent life. He ignores the AP’s weaker and more original stance—that of course the universe contains the natural laws and perfect timing for life to evolve, because if perchance it did not, no one would know it. The weak Anthropic Principle hints that there may be other unfriendly universes where no life could evolve, an idea which D’Sousa dismisses with a wave of his hand, stating that such speculation would hardly survive Occam’s Razor.

Of critical importance in D’Sousa’s Christianity is miracles. (What happened to Occam’s Razor?) He rightly notes that Christianity is founded upon a miracle: the resurrection of Jesus. He quotes Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:14 to say that without Christ’s resurrection, “our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (D’Sousa ignores the fact that Paul saw the risen Jesus not as a physical resurrection, but as a light from heaven, and presumes other Jesus sightings were the same). From a required belief in bodily resurrection, D’Sousa extrapolates to define a Christian as one who believes literally in all of the nature miracles reported in the New Testament. Don’t believe a man could really walk on water? Then you’re not a Christian. I’m not complaining—I’m quite used to this attitude—I’m just pointing out where D’Sousa draws the line between believer and nonbeliever. D’Sousa’s line requires a belief in nature miracles.

There is no condemnation of competing religions in this book, and only a small argument at the very end of the book for the historicity of the Christ story, by arguing that the resurrection really happened. This book is not really going to convince you that the Bible is true; more effort goes into finding room for a creator god in our philosophy (the big bang discovery really helped!), and accepting that religion is good for us. But perhaps this is the appropriate direction for 21st-century apologetics? We recognize the accomplishments of science, and that by making our life better, science “works”—yet we also recognize science’s shortcomings and the viability of a creator. Evolution, while certainly true, cannot account for the origin of life, consciousness, human rationality or morality (here, D’Souza’s arguments for a soul seem to compete with his assumption that only humans have souls). So why dump on Christianity as a solution? As D’Souza points out, Christianity “works” too, bringing meaning and comfort to lives, speaking to human longings and needs.

While many of the topics D’Souza introduces are unoriginal, his arguments are well-prepared and often fresh. In rereading my review, I may have come down a little harder than intended; the fact is I very much enjoyed the book.

★★★★★

My one complaint with the book is that it’s a bit slow getting started. The intro, which serves mostly to present credentials, was wordy. What you need to know is that Audlin presents his own translation of John’s Gospel, with liberal commentary, and in so doing makes an effort to restore it as close as possible to its original format and flavor. Late glosses and interpolations are removed, sections are repositioned where they appear to be out of order, words or phrases are restored where they appear missing, and certain current-day conventions and phraseology that distort the message have been swept away. One drawback to this reordering, of course, is that it makes for an awkward reference digest; while detailed by chapter-and-verse, the text is all out of order.

Audlin shares with me a belief that there was an early composition of John’s Gospel, decades before its final form. He finds the most likely scenario of how this “early” John’s Gospel came to be as such: Lazarus, the man whom Jesus restores to life, is the Beloved Disciple and the main voice behind the Gospel. The Gospel is a corroboration between Lazarus and John Mark, the author of all five of the Johannine documents. Lazarus dictated the story of Jesus to John Mark, but the final project was derailed, probably by the war. [Correction provided by the author: The amanuensis was not John Mark, but John the Presbyter.] It was later collected and organized by a redactor, and subjected to further changes by other anonymous contributors. It is the original form that Audlin hopes to present in his translation … not merely the words they left behind, but the intended composition.

Adding to the complexity of this task is Audlin’s contention that certain original themes were downplayed during the redaction process, sometimes by even removing text that John Mark had written. For example, Audlin concludes that the marriage in Cana was of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but anything suggesting that Jesus was the bridegroom in the story was extracted by the redactor.

Audlin puts a great deal of trust in the Beloved Disciple, as the eyewitness, in presenting historical truth. This lets Audlin interpret much of the text (that which he attributes to the Beloved Disciple) with brutal precision. When John’s Gospel tells how the almighty Roman Empire bowed in obeisance to a lowly Jewish rabbi (Jesus, at the arrest site), it really happened as written! This refreshing trust is not naivete on Audlin’s part, since he hardly reads the Bible as inspired. He certainly has no such trust in the writer of Matthew’s Gospel!

Many of Audlin’s conclusions are based on Aramaic idioms and the Peshitta (the Syriac, an eastern Aramaic New Testament of disputed authorship and origin, which contained most of the canon of today’s Bible), and I must confess, of this analysis I can contribute nothing. I am thus unable to evaluate the strength or weaknesses of Audlin’s linguistic arguments, and they do form much of the foundation of his scholarship.

One of the idiosyncrasies of Audlin’s thesis (again, drawing heavily on the Peshitta) is the collapse of many Bible characters into one big happy family (well, maybe not so happy). Among these family ties we can count Jesus, Mary Magdalene (his wife), Martha, Simon the Leper,  Joseph of Arimathea, the Beloved Disciple, Peter, John Mark, John the Baptist, John the Presbyter, Lazarus, Thomas, the Samaritan woman at the well, Barabbas, Judas, and surely a few more I didn’t catch. Some of these names collapse further into a single person; Lazarus, for example, is also Barabbas and the Beloved Disciple.

So, yes, Audlin’s work is surprising, edgy, opinionated, and yet deeply researched. Small wonder that he grows a bit compulsive in detailing his credentials! This project was clearly a labor of love and his appreciation shines for the original beauty of the Gospel, even as his distaste for the clumsy insertions and distractions of the redactor also shows through. He and I share both feelings, and in fact, we share many other unconventional conclusions, and listing a few will give a feel for the flavor of the writing:

1. The Gospel is not at all chronological, and really indicates closer to a one-year ministry for Jesus rather than three years, though Audlin and I disagree on the reason for the jumbled format.

2. We agree that conservative Christianity has mangled the meaning of “eternal life” in this Gospel; Audlin has opted to simply revert to John’s original word, aeon. Jesus promises “aeonic life.” That’s probably best, and in one of many essays at the end of the book, Audlin carefully attempts to put the original flavor back in Jesus’ promise.

3. We agree that the text probably says Jesus did not walk on water (though other Gospels do).

4. We agree that Jesus, himself, did not consider himself any more “one with God” than the rest of humanity.

On the other hand, we disagree pretty strongly on other topics! I encourage both an open mind and a discerning eye, and plenty of time to wrangle with the ideas.