This interview with Barbara Brown Taylor on her book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, posted on a friend's blog, reminded me there had been a story on NPR that I couldn't find because I couldn't remember who it was about when I went back.

Rather than seeing mindfulness as a kind of talent, like artistic flair or musicality, he believes that everyone willing to make the requisite effort can attain it.

-- Winifred Gallagher, Working on God

This quote caught my attention while reading The Word of the Day from Dictionary.com. I clicked on the link to Amazon.com and read the following review. I see some parallels to the thoughts I am having. I also envy her search in that I have thought about making a disciplined study of my own faith; not so much to seek out various religions but to see what resonates within me and where I could find a spiritual advisor. I especially like the last lines of the review. I can not get away from Christianity but feel that the third century codification missed the mark. I would like to learn more about my reaction that it had more to do with Constantine's earthly kingdom than God's Kingdom.

A self-described "neoagnostic," Gallagher takes her readers with her as she "works on God," her phrase for trying to find where religion fits in her life. On one hand, she finds the traditional Roman Catholicism in which she was reared too embarrassing for an intellectual to profess. On the other hand, she feels she needs some kind of spirituality to find meaning in life. Her approach is an eclectic one. Sampling Zen Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, she tries to construct a religion tailored to her individual needs. Ultimately, she discovers her life is so saturated by Christian language and images that she must use them as her starting point. However, she refuses to accept the doctrine of Christ's atonement. Pointing out that many of Christianity's central tenets, Christ's divinity, Christ's participation in the Trinity, were not codified until the 3rd century, Gallagher feels justified in taking for herself the title "Early Christian," as someone who can say only, "Jesus is special, but I'm not sure just how special." Gallagher's honesty and integrity will resonate with those who can acknowledge a "resurrection experience" but who can't quite profess the Resurrection.

Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc

Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of struggle against repression and brutality. In The Voice of Hope, she emerges as a human being--a mother of two sons as well as an inspirational human rights advocate and all-around moral compass. Once a soft-spoken scholar living in England, this daughter of a Burmese military hero catapulted to prominence as the spokesperson for her country's beleaguered democracy movement. Even when imprisoned by Burma's ruling junta, she continued to work for freedom and human rights, eventually winning the Nobel Peace Prize and attracting the world's attention to the plight of Burmese dissidents. The Voice of Hope chronicles nine months' worth of her conversations with British-born Alan Clements, a Burma expert and former Buddhist monk. The two discuss love, truth, power, compassion, and freedom from fear as well as Aung San Suu Kyi's own brand of activist Buddhism. In the process, a portrait emerges of a profoundly religious as well as political leader, a woman who used years of house arrest to develop her meditative practice, mindfulness, and spiritual strength.

From review on Amazon.com

Donna Freitas, a professor of religion at St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., wonders if she is the only Christian on the planet who admires Madonna's pose in this NPR piece that I found quite interesting. The standard "Christian" reaction to so many things is quite shallow.

Does Age Quash Our Spirit of Adventure? - It thought this NPR piece was interesting. I do feel different than when I was young and I don't think that is a negative thing.

If you want to practice with intense energies, a good way to start is with your own feelings and moods, and to start small. Stephen Levine once wrote that working with heavy emotional issues can be like getting into the ring with a 500-pound wrestler—if you haven't trained for it, the wrestler will throw you in the first clench. One of the best ways to train for working with energy is to practice during private moments of meltdown.

One of my favorite times for this kind of practice is the onset of road rage. Like many otherwise reasonable people, I have an inner road warrior who emerges only when I'm alone behind the wheel. He's mouthy, cynical, easily offended—a cross between a New York City cabbie and one of those eccentric hit men from a Quentin Tarantino film. There's a lot of energy in this persona, however. So when I notice myself having snarly private dialogues with a driver who has cut me off at an exit, I try to use the occasion for exploring the energy inside my anger.

It was refreshing to find honesty about Road Rage after getting quite a ways into this article by Sally Kempton Feel Your Way Our intense emotions—even negative ones, like fear, anger, sadness, and grief—can be a path to spiritual growth. I remember finding value in another article of hers from Yoga Journal but it is not one that I have posted. Her personal experience seemed honest and not contrived. I liked the article.

I saw this piece on NPR about Composer Tan Dun, who grew up in Mao's China and saw his parents taken away during the cultural revolution for re-education. I enjoy traditional Chinese music and so the influence of western music on him is quite interesting. Tan Dun won an Oscar and a Grammy for his score for the 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I did not go to see "The Passion of the Christ" and still have no desire to view it. In today's LA Times, their film critic Tim Rutten, has a rant on why the media has not reopened the discussion of the movie given the recent anti-Semitic tirade by Mel Gibson when he was stopped for suspected drunk driving. This quote summarizes why I am glad I made that decision:

When it was released..., there were some who argued that, apart from its lurid sadomasochistic aura -- critic Leon Wieseltier called it "a sacred snuff film" - Gibson's narrative was studded with the kinds of anti-Semitic caricatures once associated with medieval passion plays.

I do not enjoy going to see films based on murder and violence because I do not want those images in my memory. I do not need to watch this movie to know "Christ died for me." That is not where my faith journey is taking me.

'Why did Jesus die? - Spong, 2006

Again I find what John Shelby Spong says very helpful. From his daily Newsletter:

[A person] from the Internet writes:
"In your answer of May 10, 2006, you wrote, 'I see Christianity at its heart as deeply humanistic. The core doctrines of the Christian faith suggest that God is revealed through a human life...so I see secular humanism as the residual remains of Christianity once the supernatural elements have been removed.' In the next paragraph, you say you do not think 'the supernatural understanding of God is essential to Christianity.'

In your answer of May 3, 2006, you reject 'the interpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice required by God to overcome the sins of the world' as making God 'barbaric' and 'Jesus the victim of a sadistic deity.' This 'deeply violates the essential note of the Gospel, which is that God is love calling us to love' and is not 'found in the pious but destructive phrase, "Jesus died for my sins."'

My question is: If Jesus did not die on the cross to atone for humanity's sins, why did he have to die to bring us the message that 'God is love, calling us to love'? "

Dear Don,

First, let me say that you have rightly summarized my thinking, for which I am grateful. Second, this understanding does challenge the traditional understanding of the cross as the place where the price of our redemption was paid and leaves many people with a gaping vacuum at the center of their understanding of Christianity. You have articulated that well.
I believe what you need to do is to free yourself of the theistic God who lives above the sky and who guides human history to accomplish the divine will. That mentality forces us to find purpose in everything. Locked into this view of God, the early Christians sought to find purpose in the cross. That is how we got substitutionary theories of the atonement and began to view the cross through the lens of the sacrificial Day of Atonement that the Jews called Yom Kippur. In the liturgy of Yom Kippur a perfect Lamb of God was slain. Its blood spread on the mercy seat of the Holy of Holies that was thought of as God's place of occupation. Therefore, to come to God, people had to come through the blood of the lamb. Then a second animal was brought out and the priest began to confess the sins of the people. As the priest confessed, the sins of the people were thought to leave the people and land on the back and head of this animal. Then burdened with the sins of the people, this animal was driven into the wilderness. The sin bearer (called 'the scape goat') thus carried the sins of the people away. Both the sacrificial lamb and the sin-bearing goat became symbols by which Jesus was understood. In our liturgies today, we still say "O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

If that understanding is removed from the cross, as I believe it must be, then questions like 'What is the meaning of the cross?' and 'Why did Jesus die?' become perennial questions. Take purpose out of them and what is left is a picture of a free man - whole, complete, with his life being taken cruelly from him. In the portrait painted in the gospels of the cross, the dying Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness to the soldiers who drive the nails. He speaks a word of encouragement to the thief who is portrayed as penitent. He speaks a word of comfort to his mother in her bereavement. Whether these are historical memories or not is not important to me and I do not think any of them literally happened. They are, however, expressions of the corporate memory of Jesus. Here was a life being put to death unjustly but instead of clinging to his fleeting existence, he is still giving life away. That is a picture of a new level of human consciousness. The cross reveals for me the infinite love of God calling the world and me to a new humanity, calling us beyond survival toward the deepest secrets of transcendence. That is what the cross means to me and it moves me deeply.

I hope this helps you.

-- John Shelby Spong