Calling, in the religious sense of the word

"As a minister I am quite unnecessary to anyone else's salvation. Surely it is one of the universe's little jokes that I must be a minister in order to make them see this."

- Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar

 Although my personal version of this sentiment probably wouldn't use the word salvation, preferring perhaps a word more similar to enlightenment in the Buddhist sense of the term or self-actualization in Maslow's language, but it would be a mere quibble. Salvation, in the Christian sense, already means the same thing as these other terms. Mythologists might disagree, might try to make an argument about literal salvation as it relates to an afterlife or the development of some specially privileged relationship with God. But I think that Jesus would be quite happy to equate the salvation that he spoke of with these other terms, being quite content that each term (and the many others that remain unmentioned) is a bona fide attempt to attach a word, a human concept, to an aspiration of all humanity that is divine. (This language usage accepts that human=animal and divine=highest_form_of_sentience paradigm that is standard in English language and thought, a construct with which I will surely take issue in some future post.)

... ahhh, my mind and sentences have wandered afar from their original intent, but these caveats are, perhaps, valuable enough not to be victims of the 'select_all_delete' action, so... lets start again

"As a minister I am quite unnecessary to anyone else's salvation. Surely it is one of the universe's little jokes that I must be a minister in order to make them see this."

- Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar

I don't think that I've ever read a passage prior to this that so accurately summed up the nature and internal tension in my own calling. I feel called to witness to the world that we hold the intellectual, moral, emotional, and technological keys required to create a human paradise here and now in this world... the same basic calling that I hear when I read Jesus, or Mohamed, or Buddha, or Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. ... but I am not necessary, the world just needs someone to light the path. personally, I'd prefer if it was someone else.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The American Experiment in Representative Democracy Comes to a Tragic End

Any illusion that the United States of America is still a functioning democracy (representative or otherwise) was shattered today by the Supreme Court's unprecedented extension of the legal fiction of corporate personhood. The legal fiction of corporate personhood began in order to enable people to sue corporations (early corporations were used to avoid or limit owner liability - among other things). The extension of this fiction to entitlement to first amendment rights only shows how disconnected American jurisprudence has become from concern with anything resembling popular justice. The Supreme Court's decision has essentially rendered all previous campaign finance reform completely obsolete. Furthermore, it has made it nearly impossible to design meaningful future campaign finance reform (i.e. it would now likely require a Constitutional Amendment). At this point, even across-the-board single term limits would not be effective enough to staunch the huge power that has been...
Read more

Tying Rocks to Clouds

by way of recommending this book, here are my answers to some of the author's questions... if you want to read answers from the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Steven Levine and others... get the book! On what main beliefs do you base your life? The unity of truth, a progressivist understanding of life, and the value of compassion, humor, and joy. Do you believe in a God or Ultimate Reality? What is it like? I have had many diverse relationships with the word and concept of God. I am at a point now where I am quite comfortable with much God language, however, I am still quite skeptical of any God language that seems to be a projection of human qualities onto God. I think our biggest mistake in thinking about God is that we forget the unknowability and begin to imagine God as one of us, as a person, or a being, or finite, or conceptualizable. Our second most powerful error when dealing with divinity is our confusion between metaphorical and literal truth. Before science...
Read more

The seven principles in UU'ism - ranked

Did a little internet research today I thought I'd share. I searched for the full text string of each of the seven UU principles and recorded the number of hits. I think it is an interesting rough estimate of what priority each principle has at this point in history (although a better study would break down the evaluation by posting date, so that the time element contributes to the analysis instead of weakening it). At any rate, here's what I found: [# of Hits - UU Principle] 34.2k -The inherent worth and dignity of every person 22k - A free and responsible search for truth and meaning 21.9k - Justice, equity and compassion in human relations 18k - Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part 17k - The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all 11.6k - Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations 10.7k - The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congrega...
Read more