Paying Attention to Dreams

For years I was very dismissive of the meaning of dreams.  They seemed so chaotic and random to me that, I argued, any attempt to interpret them was surely just an act of the worst eisegesis.  Yet friends, family, and intellectual influences from all walks of life have cautioned me against such casual dismissal.  The primary person speaking this truth to me was my ex-wife Courtney.  She loved talking about dreams and trying to think together about what they could mean.  Sadly, I was often far too arrogant and dismissive to take her speculations seriously, but now others in my life keep telling me to pay attention to my dreams and I'm starting to suspect they might be right.  Friends like my former professor at Greenville Rick McPeak, my little sister Rachel, the psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson that I have been listening to recently, my mother, and even the old-time Methodists that I study for my doctoral work:  they are all saying, "Take these things seriously!  We don't know where they come from!  In fact, they might even come somehow from 'God.'" Not all these influences would state it quite that way, but the message is the same: reflect on dreams.  So that's what I intend to do in this post.

I had a nightmare three nights ago that hasn't left me and it still haunts me.  Those who know a little about my life this year will perhaps not at all be surprised by the nature of the dream.  It was actually very simple and very short, but also quite compelling and realistic.  I was trying to bridge a deep, endless black abyss between myself and my ex-wife, Courtney.  I wanted so desperately to reach her, but I had no way of crossing the divide.  I tried to start building a bridge to get to her, but I didn't have the skills to make a bridge out of sticks and trees and rocks.  Yet I did the best that I could do.  After I had built the bridge out over the canyon/abyss by about ten feet (which was still a small fraction of how far I had to go), it all collapsed while I was on it.  As I tumbled into the abyss which seemed to be endless, I simply yelled up, "I'm sorry, Courtney.  I tried and I failed."  I woke up horrified by the feeling of endless descent into nothingness.

So what does this dream mean?  On one level it seems rather obvious, right?  My unconscious mind is trying to somehow cope with the tragedy of my divorce.  Now in the dream I seem to be more of a "victim of circumstance" than I actually believe is true because, when I am honest, I realize that frequently within my marriage, I was the lazy one who did nothing and, especially near the end, Courtney was the one trying to build a bridge to me.  Perhaps most accurately I could say that we both made efforts and both of us did rather pitiful jobs at it too, yet our efforts were sincere.

But is the dream also about more than just my marriage?  Could this also be a dream about my deep anxieties regarding death?  After all "the abyss" is the other major character in this little narrative.  The endless blackness and the fear that it evokes within me has been a constant companion my entire life. Into the abyss I have always yelled, "Are you down there God or is it just death all the way down?  Can I trust myself to fall into your hands or am I just imagining you are down there for my own comfort and peace of mind?"  I can hear Freud's voice making me feel shame for my pitiful and weak desire to believe in a God (likely because I have unresolved parental issues).  I can hear Marx calling religion the opiate of the masses.  I can hear Ayn Rand saying that life is chaotic and you simply have to will yourself to power.  Nietzsche seems to sing a similar tune sometimes.  And then the Buddhists seem to keep insisting, "Don't worry; it's all in your mind anyway," which is a message I sometimes find to be good news and other times find horrifying. And, all the while, Ivan Karamazov keeps persistently reminding me of the almost infinite capacity that humans have for evil.  Thank God for Alyosha... and for Dorothy Day and Jane Addams and John Woolman and Dr. King and B. T. Roberts and my maternal grandfather.  Without people like that, I would be lost in the abyss for good.

Sometimes I also wonder if perhaps I am the abyss or that the abyss is within me.  Am I confronting my own sinful, evil nature when looking into the blackness?  I remember going camping by myself once in Kentucky and a mighty thunderstorm came up (I later learned a tornado had touched down nearby).  The fury of the wind and lightning and rain petrified me.  When lightning hit a nearby tree, I wanted to pack up my tent and run away to safety, though something in that moment whispered to me, "Stay.  Face the fear."  I realized why Martin Luther was converted in a thunderstorm; everything within me wanted to cry out to my own St. Anne.  So I did stay the night, but pitifully and within the safety of my dad's old '92 Honda Accord.

I know on an intellectual level that I am in a very dark and difficult chapter of life.  I can conjecture what people must be saying about me.  I am cognitively aware that my friends and former friends must be saying, "Poor Greg!  Look at his life!  I cannot image losing what he has lost."  But then a part of me -- at least during my strongest moments -- just doesn't give a damn any longer what people think about me.  Am I a lost cause?  Maybe.  I don't know.  Am I part of a story that is a comedy or a tragedy?  Only time will tell.  Am I Cain or Abel?  Am I a good son who offers an honorable sacrifice before God and then gets killed for it?  Or am I the evil brother who envies how the Other's sacrifice is honored by God and who then turns into darkness and evil and becomes consumed by the Shakespearean green-eyed monster?  These are all questions that are as mysterious to me as the abyss in my dream.  I fear them, yet I cannot seem to be able to avert my eyes.

In any case, I know this: I lament the ending of my marriage and I would not wish this experience on my worst enemy (by the way, I don't think I have a worst enemy unless I maybe count myself). In the meantime, I will try to keep sacrificing and surrendering more deeply to the One who is in control and has the answers. I will myself to believe in that One.

What Ta-Nehisi Coates and White Supremacists Have in Common

NOTE:  I'm not sure I still agree with my own post here.  - Greg, 9/14/17

Earlier this year I penned some reflections on the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates entitled Between the World and Me.  With issues of race constantly providing the subtext behind headlines throughout the past several years, my choice to carefully consider the arguments and thoughts of the eloquent and now famous Mr. Coates was my own pitiful yet deliberate attempt to better understand what life in these United States must be like inside a black body.

Yet much of what I uncovered deeply troubled me as a Christian committed to the narrative of God's redemptive work in the world as revealed through the person of Jesus Christ.  Though Coates' book provides a much needed glimpse into the nature of life within black skin, it offers a profoundly anti-Christian solution to the problem of race in America:  violent resistance and endless struggle.  Critiquing the pacifist Christian thought of Martin Luther King Jr., Coates believes that blacks will never gain equality with whites by playing nice.  Sit-ins and acts of nonviolent resistance may make a certain amount of progress, but for complete equality violent overthrow of the systemic status quo can be the only solution.  

Ta-Nehisi Coates has become one of the
leading voices among black civil rights activists

Though the author does not state his aims quite as starkly as this, his solution to the inequality between races in America reveals itself in his mockery of Dr. King.  The arc of the universe, Coates retorts, doesn't bend toward justice! No, the universe that we encounter is purely "physical, and its moral arc [is] bent toward chaos then concluded in a box" (28). In contrast to Dr. King, Ta-Nehisi praises the violence and militant rhetoric of Malcolm X, writing, "If he hated, he hated because it was human for the enslaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds.  He would not turn the other cheek for you.  He would not be a better man for you.  He would not be your morality" (36).  This is the activism of a man committed to a materialist understanding of the cosmos: There is no "God" and he will not "make right" all of the wrongs of our world.  If there is to be justice, it must be seized, not prayed for.  The oppressed cannot overcome violent oppressors while maintaining some semblance of a moral high ground since morality itself is a fiction created by the oppressors to maintain their power.

In short, Coates advises his son to abandon all hope of reconciliation.  The world has only ever known the law of the jungle:  either eat or be eaten.  In his most honest reflection on his nihilistic beliefs, the concerned father writes, "Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about this world is meant to be... These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope" (71).  Coates believes solely in struggle and the eternal recurrence of the same. Black power vs. white power -- these two can no more be reconciled than can a lion and a lamb.

Interestingly, this is precisely the worldview and ethical reasoning embraced by white supremacists. Since the election of Donald Trump, the hate-mongerers seem to be emerging from their caves.  The so-called "Alt-Right," a euphemism for white supremacists, are no longer consigned to obscure corners of the internet; rather, now they are giving interviews on NPR and other national news outlets.  Indeed, the new chief strategist and Senior Counselor to President-elect Donald Trump, Stave Bannon, has acted as one of the spearheads of this movement for years, according to many watchdog groups.

Jared Taylor in 2008

Perhaps the most vocal and prominent white supremacist today, Jared Taylor, openly posits that peaceful co-existence (let alone reconciliation!) between peoples of different races has proven itself throughout human history to be an impossibility.  Political power, according to Taylor, is a zero-sum game.  That is, if blacks or latinos or any other non-white group gain a certain amount of political power, they attain it only by forcibly removing it from whites.  Taylor's solution, therefore, is to create a completely white nation that excludes all other peoples from entry.  His message is simple: "Unless whites are prepared to exclude people [of color], then they will be shoved aside. ...I will fight [for segregation] until my last breath" (Quote is from an interview with Jorge Ramos in his documentary Hate Rising, which can be viewed here).

For Taylor, as with Ta-Nehisi Coates, beings exist by nature human in a state of struggle, competition, and violence.  If power and influence is to be gained or maintained, then it must come at the expense of "the other."  Put simply, Coates and Taylor agree on this: racial reconciliation is a pipe dream, a utopian fantasy that will never and can never be achieved.  The strong eat the weak.  And it is always, obviously, better to be among the strong.  

Christians stand opposed to both Coates' violence and Taylor's violence.  We who follow the Crucified God, who place our trust in the One who is making all things right, and who believe that one day the kingdom of God will descend upon this earth, bringing about the miracle of reconciliation between black and white, lion and lamb -- we of all people must devote our lives, our reputations, and our resources solely to the cause of reconciliation.  Though undoubtedly Christians are taught to stand in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, meaning that the cause of Ta-Nehisi Coates may be embraced at least in part (and Taylor's completely rejected), the identity politics and inherent violence of both must be rejected.  Christians live according to a new pattern, a pattern that foreshadows the shalom of God's perfect reign which was revealed momentarily in the person of Christ and will be revealed eternally in us all at the eschaton.

The real division emerging within our society today is not between the conservatives and liberals, the urban and the rural, the educated and uneducated, the white-collar and blue-collar worker, or the religious and the secular; rather the real division is between those who promote reconciliation and those who, committed to their own identity politics, accept (even promote!) division and animosity as a permanent, immutable state of affairs.  Those who claim to follow in the way of Jesus know where they must stand.

Inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr.

I've recently picked up a book by Philip Yancey that my father bought for me a couple months ago for my birthday. It's called "Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church." I have to admit that I feared Yancey would be too "evangelical" for my liking, but I have been pleasantly surprised at what I've found. Here is a man who is genuine, who has been hurt deeply by dysfunctional religion in ways I've never come close to, and who is earnestly willing to follow the truth wherever it may lead.

For those of you who know me, you might be aware that I'm going through some tough times. I'm struggling with my daily walk with the Lord and feel under attack each day. Ministry has been grueling; the inner city has been overwhelming; my spiritual disciplines have been eroding. But today as I read in Yancey's book about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. (one of the thirteen), I was moved to tears. In fact, if I hadn't been sitting in a public place, I would have been weeping. So today for my blog entry, I just offer an except from Soul Survivor:

"[One night after being released from the Montgomery City Jail at the age of 26] King, shaken by his first jail experience, sat up in his kitchen wondering if he could take it any more. Should he resign? It was around midnight. He felt agitated, and full of fear. A few minutes before the phone had rung. "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house."

King sat staring at an untouched cup of coffee and tried to think of a way out, a way to quietly surrender leadership and resume the serene life of scholarship he had planned. In the next room lay his wife Coretta, already asleep, along with their newborn daughter Yolanda. Here is how King remembers it in a sermon he preached:

'And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep... And I got to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. I was weak...

And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it... I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage."

.... And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world." ... I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.'

Three nights later, as promised, a bomb exploded on the front porch of King's home, filling the house with smoke and broken glass but injuring no one. King took it calmly: 'My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it'" (20-21).

I don't dare compare myself to the great Martin Luther King Jr. He was a prophet of the first order. But as I read his story... that he was only in his twenties (as I still am for another 10 months), about his fears for his little girl and wife, his weakness and loss of courage, and his desire to retreat to a "serene life of scholarship" (all of which I can relate to perfectly), I was deeply impacted by the simple message given to him by God: "I am with you."

That's really all anyone ever needs. We don't need a home or clothing or a car to drive. We don't need food or water or air. But we do need God with us. Today I realize that that is the one thing I need. And I have it.

Dorothy

Dorothy, when I first met you, you scared me. You were so rough, so ghetto, so very, very black. Your heavy African-American dialect was almost a foreign language to me. And the anger behind your eyes betrayed a deep hurt; a past I feared to even peek into (only much later did I learn about the father who would beat your senseless with an extension cord). When you got in my face and yelled at me after being in the inner city for only a week, I thought, "Well, Greg, you're not in Kansas anymore." You awakened me to a world of darkness and hatred and bitter animosity. I must say that your words were hurtful. The gruff, calloused tone you used with me made me feel belittled and childish and I wanted to retreat to suburbia where people are decent to each other. Sometimes you were downright out of control like when you stood up in church on a Sunday morning and berated your pastors for not visiting you often enough. We stood there -- shocked like deer in the headlights -- and took it. And licked our wounds later when the sanctuary emptied.

But then something or rather Someone did something to you. I don't know how. I confess I nearly stopped praying for you altogether. I had signed you off to darkness and thought God's grace too weak to permeate your thick hide.

I remember when you smiled at me for the first time -- those ivory teeth shining through your beautiful black face. Soon you began to joke with me and I learned to joke back. And when I dished it in return, you would rear your head back and roar with laughter. Somehow deep down a Healer was at work in you. I knew it wasn't me. But the walls were coming down.

Today, Dorothy, you're a new woman. Sure, you're still pretty rough around the edges and you still need to learn to keep your big mouth shut sometimes. But, darn it, you're fun to be around. Now when you gripe about how rotten your day has been I can see a twinkle in your eye and a smirk on your face. You've met Jesus and He's changed you. Now when you speak your rapid fire ghetto talk at me I can understand you better and I hear it loud and clear when you declare, "I love you, pastor." The first time you said it, it brought me to my knees in gratitude to God.

And then you called me last week. You were gushing. You sounded as giddy as a school girl on the first day of summer break. "Pastar, I just caint bu-lieve how GOOD God is to me! My grandbaby's gettin baptized and my whole family's gonna be there. We aint been togetha for twenty years! God's so GOOD. My grandbaby --she's sayin shes gonna start readin the bible and praying and going ta church and e'rythin. My own mama wanna come down from Chicaga's southside, but I tell her she caint do it since shes 72. Pastar, I aint never been so happy! God's done saved my whole family! I haven't been so thankful since before my son got shot in '87. I luv dis church and all the lovin people in it. And I love Jesus... He's so GOOD, so GOOD!"

Dorothy, pardon my saying so, but if God can save you, he can save anyone. And He's "done saved you." You keep telling me (with the force of a hurricane) every week that you want to become a full member of this church. Well, I'm going to make you one! Your not the alcoholic, swearing, demon-possessed, crack-mama you used to me. In fact, I think the technical term for what you're becoming is a "saint." And watching God do this in your life brings me to my knees and makes me weep with joy.

So tomorrow I'll baptize that granddaughter of yours and we'll sing and eat and celebrate the goodness of God! If this isn't the kingdom come down, I don't know what is.

Is God in the Earthquake?

Pat Robertson has done it again. He insists on seeing God as the author of evil. In the aftermath of the horrific and tragic earthquake that struck Haiti this week, he announced that it was their deserved punishment for "making a pact with the devil." Rev. Robertson, pardon my saying so, but your "god" is my devil. I serve a loving God who is not willing that any should perish. I serve a God who is working for the good, who does not require evil and violence as a means to his own end, who wraps children in his loving arms rather than crushes them under brick and mortar.

Jim Wallis has said it well this week: "My God does not cause evil. God is not a vengeful and retributive being, waiting to strike us down; instead, God is in the very midst of this tragedy, suffering with those who are suffering. When evil strikes, it’s easy to ask, where is God? The answer is simple: God is suffering with those who are suffering."

So many Christians are utterly confused on this point. They assume that everything that happens is part of the will of God. "There are no accidents," they faithfully proclaim. "We may not understand, but we do know that God's will is never thwarted." These well meaning people look in the face of tragedy and shrug, "It must have been what God wanted."

But look into the faces of the dead children lining the streets in Port-au-Prince and tell me that God did this. The New York Times reported: "The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school. People with faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds roamed the streets. Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot." And you are going to tell me that the God revealed in the suffering love of the cross is behind this?!? If you are right -- if, in fact, God did cause this to happen -- then I will rise up against that God and with everything in me revolt against him. I will join together with others and initiate a revolution to overthrow such a tyrant.

David Bentley Hart stated it better than I ever could in his reflection on the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia:

"Only a moral cretin at [the moment of a child's death] would have attempted to soothe [his parent's] anguish by assuring him that his child had died as a result of God's eternal, inscrutable, and righteous counsels, and that in fact his death had mysteriously served God's purposes in history, and that all of this was completely necessary for God to accomplish his ultimate design in having created the world... Ours is a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces -- whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance -- that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred... [In the eschaton] God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history as false and damnable... rather than showing how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes -- and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, 'Behold, I make all things new'" (The Doors of the Sea 99-101, 104).

Saving Words

The Lord has rearranged my life this week. I hit bottom and was in the pit. I couldn't look up anymore and felt overwhelmed. But, thank God, I saw a little Episcopalian chapel, walked in, and prayed the evening prayers with the two priests who were there. As we prayed, I was struck by two verses which have now come to control me:

Psalm 27:13-14 Yet I am confident that I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.

I have no profound theological insight for my blog at this point. I have nothing to offer at all. Except I wish to give witness to the fact that ancient words still speak and that God knows what we need to hear and when we need to hear it. I'm thankful for these simple words which I cling to like a life raft in the middle of the stormy sea.

The Death of the Cicadas

A rare species of cicada has recently invaded our little part of the bluegrass. The noise that these swarms create can be deafening. Lydah and I have had a fun time marveling at their beauty although she didn't particularly care for it when one landed on her bare foot. This particular species has red eyes and a black body and, if what I've been told is correct, they only appear every seventeen years.

Today we returned home after two days in Indiana to find that all of the cicadas are now dead. Their brief lives had served its purpose and now the once mighty roar of the swarm has fallen silent. Lydah saw one of the dead cicadas on the ground today and asked me to pick it up and throw it into the air so that it would fly away (one of the games we had played in the preceding weeks). I tried to explain to her that they were dead and would no longer fly, but she didn't understand. So I picked up the dead cicada whose red eyes had faded to brown and threw him into the air. Lydah watched in disappointment as it thudded to the ground and, giving up on this form of entertainment, was quickly distracted by a nearby bird.

Are we humans like these cicadas? Do we appear briefly on this earth, make some noise, procreate, and then die off almost as quickly as we came? Are we just a blip on the timeline of the universe just as this species of cicada passed through birth, life, and death within a few weeks and then disappeared? Surely, if this is the human story -- if we are cicadas and nothing more -- then all hope is lost, all efforts to improve humanity are in vein, all striving after God and goodness and love is entirely meaningless. Please pardon the sacrilege here, but if this is the human story then can we really call the holocaust or the current crisis in Darfur a tragedy? Are these not simply brute facts and somber reminders of the fate of us all?

Some will argue that meaning can be found even if our lives are like those of the cicada. I cannot find it. Dust that breathes a few breaths and then returns to dust is hopeless, pointless, and worthless.

This is why the resurrection of Christ is the linchpin of the entire Christian faith. It reminds us that this dust which presently constitutes our bodies will one day be reconstituted into an incorruptible form. What God did for Jesus, He will do for us all. Our story is not the cicada story and Christians around the world rejoice in this fact as they declare the mystery of their faith:

"Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again."