Archive | April, 2023

Getting Us:  A Holy Season Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

7 Apr

Beautiful people do not just happen. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

 In love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions. Anaïs Nin

The truly terrible thing is that everybody has their reasons. Jean Renoir

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.  Gwendolyn Brooks

Leave people better than you found them. Marvin J. Ashton

The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one’s desires and fears.  Erich Fromm

If you understood everything I said, you’d be me. Miles Davis

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted. Marcel Duchamp

If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. Frederick Buechner

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein

I do not want the peace which passes understanding, I want the understanding which brings peace. Helen Keller

I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief. C.S. Lewis

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click ‘I agree’. Bill Maher

In this week of many expressions of faith across many cultures, one of the few television commercials that has piqued my interest is the one suggesting that “Jesus Gets Us;” that the one whom at least some of us reverently acknowledge was, on this day, unceremoniously nailed to a cross, really understands who and what we are, notwithstanding perhaps also being a murdered victim of some profound misconceptions about who HE was, what he represented, the challenge of what he expected of us and what many of his followers in real time also expected of him.

If any of you identify in whatever way as Christians and want to find out more about this movement, you are encouraged to check out https://hegetsus.com/en. In fairness, there are things here to warrant a look, especially the reminder that Jesus seemed to reach out to those who experienced rejection from the society into which he was born as well as those facing great pain or need, people longing for a more dignified existence which the dominant social conventions of that time (as in our own) largely denied them.

So at one level, good for them. Good for not trying to turn Jesus’ ministry into version II of the vengeance-prone deity which so many of his contemporary followers seem to prefer, a deity whose central concern during the earliest expressions of the Jewish faith seemed to be more about punitively keeping people in line – especially with regard to matters of sexuality and procreation – than in keeping people on the path to a higher compassion and a deeper understanding of faith which incorporated but was not confined to the utterances of religious leadership.

I want to get to the issue of what it means to “get us,” but as way of confessional background it has been clear to me, or at least as clear as anything can be with regard to the “mysteries of faith,” that the main concern of Jesus’ ministry was less with “sinners” per se and more with the hypocrisy and self-referential nature of religious authorities. Time after time, together with his band of misfit disciples, Jesus reminded others that the ones who had strayed the furthest from the faith were the ones who deigned to represent it, those who largely failed to heal or inspire, those who were more concerned with keeping Rome out of “their” business than with attending to God’s business.

The scriptures – which I would remind you we only know as translation and also know primarily (and rightly in my view) as an aid to liturgy more than as a stand-alone book of hard rules – put the notion of “getting us” in a particular light.  I don’t wish to force an interpretation on the reader, though I do agree with Bill Maher when he joked about the bible akin to “software license” which we merely scroll to the bottom to then give the most superfifical of assents.  But it is also clear to me that there are at least two kinds of “getting” embedded in Gospel narratives which were intended for diverse communities in part by rearranging and then communicating different pieces of the oral and written testimony about Jesus available at that time.

This testimony surely gives some credence to the notion of “getting” from healing the apparently unhealable and feeding multitudes to acknowledging the humanity of criminals as he hung from the cross. That Jesus had made a ministry out of “getting” those whom the religious leadership of the time had largely forsaken, those who should never be brushed aside by houses of faith but should instead constitute the core of ministry for all who imagine ourselves to be following in his sacred footsteps. 

But scripture equally chronicles a “getting” which is less about him “getting” us than the other side of the relationship. We must resist the temptation to brush aside from the bibilical narrative the degree to which few during the earthly sojourn of Jesus seemed to grasp what exactly was going on in that here-and-now and why it mattered.  From the wedding at Cana to the capture of Jesus by soldiers prior to his crucifixion, even the people closest to Jesus (his mother, Peter, etc.) apparently missed large portions of the point of the mystery and ministry which he embodied. 

I would humbly suggest that in this time when faith is becoming more aggressive and tribal than thoughtful or compassionate, we would do well to contemplate less on how Jesus “gets” us and more on whether we actually “get” Jesus, actually “get” who and what he prioritized, how he left people better than how he found them, where and how he dispensed both his compassion and his challenge, what he most fervently wished for those who flocked to hear his message but who surely were left to guess (and probably guessed erroneously) where this preacher and healer came from and what he had ultimately come to accomplish.

At the same time, we would do well to reflect on how this notion of “getting” has punctuated our contemporary discourse, suggesting relationships which seek to blend understanding of “where we’re coming from” with a degree of acceptance which largely assumes that change and growth are unlikely to occur and should hardly even be encouraged.  Such “getting” may well be key to the maintenance of domestic harmony, but I’m not convinced that it is entirely what Jesus had in mind. Of course, as Miles Davis suggested above, if we understood everything Jesus said, we would be Jesus. That was not happening then.  That is not happening now.

But what can happen is forging a closer synergy regarding the healing, caring, inspirational ministry which Jesus embodied and what he seemed to encourage in others – a ministry of our own defined by compassionate understanding and a stronger commitment  to change and growth.  We are complex beings to which the quotes above and thousands of others attest, and part of this complexity which has been uprooted through modern psychology and medicine has underscored the power of habit, our almost genetic stubbornness with regard to the sometimes unhelpful values and practices which tend to govern our lives – many of which we can ably rationalize or passionately defend but not sufficiently explain, even to ourselves.

Jesus surely “got” that some of those who sought his forgiveness would likely return to behaviors which prompted the search for forgiveness in the first place. But for others, the encounters were life-changing in the most complete sense of that term – a turning point for people whose aspirations had been buried under social convention, foreign occupation and religious authorities more concerned about their own piety than about the well-being of those who legitimately felt abandoned by them.  For these, the testimony of Jesus, the touch of his garment, the meals he shared, the removal of afflictions which had turned sons and daughters into social outcasts, these were both manifestations of his ministry and invitations to grow and change, invitations as well to take up ministry ourselves, to “leave people better than we found them” in whatever ways we are able.

Jesus “gets” us enough to offer us pathways to companionship through this sometimes challenging life, but also “gets” the habits of our hearts, habits from which stem many outcomes including compassion, courage and caring but also violence and indifference, discrimination and self-deception. This Jesus who we claim to “get” but mostly don’t, this Jesus who constantly chided those nearest to him who understood his person and ministry largely through the lens of their own assumptions and expectations, this Jesus urges all — especially in these holy times — to see with greater clarity that we might truly become “each other’s harvest.”

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Earth Year: A Call to Clarity of Hands and Hearts, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Apr
Florida, the Bahamas and Cuba as seen by the International Space Station.

From NASA

The holy men say we are entering a period of clarity. Rigoberta Menchu

The greatest privilege is to live well in flourishing lands. Hamza Yusuf

Virtue can only flourish among equals.  Mary Wollstonecraft

For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it. Rebecca Solnit

If beautiful lilies bloom in ugly waters, you too can blossom in ugly situations. Matshona Dhliwayo

Peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste or any other social markers of difference. Nelson Mandela

Around the globe, people from all walks of life are holding their breath in the hope that a flurry of activity at all levels of policy and human community will be sufficient to reverse what is commonly known at the UN as the “triple” planetary threats from climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution (especially plastics pollution).  

The UN has seen its own frenetic activity as leaderships tries to both make up for precious lost time while encouraging member states to take more political risks and step-up ambitions to find more robust and cooperative measures to address threats which clearly are not inclined to wait for us to make the change we need to make in order to secure a future for our children, especially those children residing in the most climate-vulnerable regions.

The UN has certainly created numerous spaces for member state deliberations on virtually all aspects and dimensions related to the “triple threat,” including implications for human health (mental, physical and nutritional), for international peace and security, and for more inclusive processes which not only heed the voices of women, youth and indigenous people but which actually seek to incorporate their learning and insights into policy decision making.    

Some of these processes, as many of you recognize, take the form of large, carbon-intensive events which create some consensus-driven movement but generally lacking in practical implementation of pledges which fully mirror their rhetorical origins.   Case in point is the fund for “loss and damage” agreed to at COP 27 in Egypt, an important step which has yet to generate the remedial funding which the most climate affected states had anticipated (and still anticipate).  Diplomats also agreed recently on elements of a treaty to impose structures of governance on ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ), a theoretically important framework to mitigate at least some of the “wild west” mentality which has encouraged massive ocean dumping and deep-sea mining and has also precipitated a decline in ocean species as waters warm and the remains of our collective overconsumption now reach the furthest ocean depths. The recently concluded UN Water Conference resulted in over 600 pledges (albeit voluntary) to strengthen “trans-boundary water cooperation, promote universal sanitation and explore security and other implications of severe access challenges regarding this most precious of resources.  The General Assembly for its part passed a unanimous resolution (sponsored by Vanuatu and others) seeking clarity from the International Court of Justice regarding the legal obligations of states whose production and consumption patterns, as noted during the week by UNEP director Inger Andersen, now serve to threaten the very existence of other states.   Even the Security Council got into the act recently as Mozambique chaired an Arria Formula discussion on protecting water-related infrastructure.  But despite what (to us at least) seems like an obvious linkage between a dangerously warming climate and prospects for armed conflict, several Council members past and present remain unconvinced that climate concerns should be folded into the Council’s peace and security mandate.

This bevy of activity (we didn’t even mention the biodiversity conference in Montreal or the Forum on Forests) is welcome but can also obscure the fact that most of these commitments are voluntary, are unenforceable or constitute some subtle form of “greenwashing” which leads people beyond UN confines to think that more is happening to forestall disaster than is actually the case. Having been around the UN for what seems like forever, we understand well that in large multi-lateral spaces facilitated by the UN, spaces filled with diplomats representing national positions and increasingly insisting on elusive consensus, progress is likely to be slow, perhaps too slow given crises weighing down human community like a bad case of COPD.  It certainly seems as such to the growing number of youth environmental activists who, despite their energies and practical commitments across the globe, still struggle for their place at the policy table to help ensure progress that is more than textual and rhetorical.  Indeed, as one youth activist noted during the days of the UN Water Conference, holding these large eco-events in expensive UN cities literally ensures that many of the people who wish to present testimony regarding the effects of and responses to climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss in their communities – testimony unmediated by diplomats and NGOs like me – will continue to experience great difficulty in doing so.

While some turn red at the suggestion that the UN isn’t doing enough on a range of environmental challenges, the troubling consensus of senior UN leadership (and many of the rest of us) reveals a serious disconnect between what is needed, what is being proposed in response, and the risks that member states – including some of the world’s largest polluters – are willing to take in order to preserve healthy options for succeeding generations.  And because states in the main are not doing enough despite some claims to the contrary in UN conference rooms, the rest of us are thereby encouraged to not do enough also.  Indeed, to our minds at least, the mass of discouragement experienced about the state of the world by many is another unfortunate consequence of rhetoric that is not matched by concrete policy support for the actions at community level, actions which ultimately have the most to do with whether or not the current “triple threat” becomes what Costa Rica referred to recently as a full-on “death sentence.”

Thankfully, there are many communities and individuals from all walks of life who have refused to have the potential for abundant living by their families and communities sidetracked by misleading policy utterances including those from senior officials which are insufficiently hopeful or mindful  of the vast and increasing web of environmentally healing measures proliferating worldwide.  From habitat restoration and community composting to organic agriculture, bee-keeping and tree planting on a massive scale in countries like Pakistan and across the Sahel, people of all ages and cultures are seeking a new clarity, refusing to be distracted by either doom and gloom or passive indifference.  They have not given up on prospects for a world which can genuinely flourish for many more people, a world which remains plausible despite the circulating metrics from competent researchers associated with insects decline, plastics inundation and sea level rise.  

The UN, for all its contributions and deliberations, is not really in the “flourishing business;” indeed it is at its best a place which provides a policy platform to support and enable work which needs to take place elsewhere. But we know how easy it is to get distracted by the glamour of UN conferences or discouraged by the sometimes-dismal reports emanating from UN sources which such conferences often do too little to address.  We must remind ourselves that what both glamour and doom have in common is that they are poor recruiters for hopeful, virtuous, collaborative activity at community level which can do much to rebalance our world of sometimes gross inequalities, a world which we have been told much too often has reached or even exceeded survival “tipping points.”   

In this momentous year for the earth and our presence within it, we must not allow ourselves to be deterred by the eminence and capacity of our large institutional frameworks and spokespersons nor allow ourselves to retreat into smaller circles of life in an attempt to protect what is closest to us from the “ugly” storms looming over an uncertain horizon. We cannot survive the storms by ourselves, but the truth is that neither can they be survived without us.  In this Earth Year, we all need to urgently recalibrate the sustainability of our own lives; but perhaps even more importantly we need to help ensure that millions more people now situated firmly on the sidelines of climate action are encouraged and supported to lend hands and hearts to prospects for planetary abundance, such that more and more of us and other life forms might “live well in flourishing lands” on a planet we are running out of time to truly love. 

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