We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog-cast for some Alan Watts, Richard Rohr & Sacred Worth

This one isn't about the synchronicity. I have three different posts I'm working on, some won't be shared, and I'm trying to figure out how to share them and protect people at the same time. While I don't say names here, somebody might read it and know what I'm talking about. Today, I have three things swirling in my head and I need to get them out. 

A few months ago I ran across this quote on Instagram from Alan Watts, 

"Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown." Alan Watts

Something told me to save this quote. Perhaps it was an omen from the Universe that it would come in handy for such a time as this.

Holding on too tightly to our doctrines and dogmas can stagnate our growth, spiritually, and really emotionally and physically. 

In 2019 my denomination gathered for a special general conference to discuss whether or not we should fully include members of the LGBTQia community into the full ministry of our churches.

Here's the full verbiage:

We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.

So, in one sentence it says, ALL have sacred worth, but in the next... except for "practicing" homosexuals. This insinuates that sexuality is a choice. I've known my fair share of people in the community and while I'm not a scientist, I think it's safe to say it's not a choice. 

Those few days of debate in St. Louis were awful. I tuned into Twitter and poured over every publication that came out of it. I had what I considered "affectedness" disorder. I worked myself into a tizzy over things I could not control. I became an anxious presence; I cried for my sisters and brothers who were once again told they didn't belong. My way of coping was at my go-to bar at noon during those days. I was carrying the weight of the nations on my shoulders. The burden of the pain weighed heavy on me. Instead of doing what I could do in my context, I complained and spread general negativity and anxiousness. 

The "book" says it like this,"...we made our own misery. God didn't do it." Amid my disease I believed I was obligated to take on this misery and I must be affected. Some might argue, but if you didn't do all those things, nobody would know you care. I can care and advocate without making myself and everyone around me miserable. The book continues, "avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate God's omnipotence."

Now that my brain is no longer imprisoned in a fog I can see that I can make a bigger difference by doing what I can do in my context. I can follow the rule of love and that's what I chose to do this time. I am in groups with people who also suffer from "affectedness," who called out other members of the group for not being affected. This time...I removed myself from the conversation and focused on what I can do right now, in my place in the world, to share love. 

The disease of affectedness is intellectual suicide. I could not see past my faith's rule book to see the greater movement of God in the world. My eyes were closed to what was possible and therefore my actions unfaithful. We have a tendency to let the power of the institution blind us from the possibilities God provides us. We leave our spirituality up to entities that "know better." We doubt our spiritual intuition and are afraid to step into a place of unknowing because it's frightening. 

Father Richard Rohr, in what I consider one of his most powerful meditations, says this, 

Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.

Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit!

We are taught to mistrust our souls - wow! That is a powerful statement. And if we mistrust our souls, then we invariably mistrust God. And why? Because what Watts says, faith in trusting is something we cannot see. It's trusting in the unknown. 

These past two weeks I'd like to think I have trusted in God. I didn't let my past experience fog my thinking. I didn't let my own prejudices and fears stop me from doing my work, the work that probably impacts people more than it does when I'm sitting at a bar fretting over things I cannot control. I think a lot of this comes from my own trust that God is going to provide as I step out into the unknown; into the new job I start in a few weeks. 

The unknown, trusting in God, is very frightening, but if we don't navigate through it, what happens? We remain stuck, anchored to fears of the past and fixed to the uncertainty of the future, which in turn creates misery. 

Misery keeps us stunted, never allowing us to move forward into the present.