Transmission

hey ya’ll,

I’m looking for one more Bible selection to go with the four readings below (from the Hebrew Bible a plus). these will be part of our Wed nite rite, whose working title is: How do we know God loves us?

i’m also looking for some tunes to put on a soundtrack while people are exploring the stations. with lyrics or without.

thanks!

• Matthew 22:34-40
• Anne Carson, “My Religion”
• Hafiz, “The Sun Never Says”
• Peter Rollins, from How (Not) to Speak of God

Matthew 22:34-40

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Anne Carson, “My Religion”

My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.

When we see
how simple it would have been
we will thrash ourselves.

I had a vision
of all the people in the world
who are searching for God

massed in a room
on one side
of a partition

that looks
from the other side
(God’s side)

transparent
but we are blind.
Our gestures are blind.

Our blind gestures continue
for some time until finally
from somewhere

on the other side of the partition there we are
looking back at them.
It is far too late.

We see how brokenly
how warily
how ill

our blind gestures
parodied
what God really wanted

(some simple thing).
The thought of it
(this simple thing)

is like a creature
let loose in a room
and battering

to get out.
It batters my soul
with its rifle butt.

Hafiz, “The Sun Never Says”

Even
After
All this time

The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Peter Rollins, from How (Not) to Speak of God

Rather than desire being fulfilled in the presence of God, religious desire is born there. In short, a true spiritual seeking can be understood as the ultimate sign that one already has that which one seeks, or rather, that one is already grasped by that that which one seeks to grasp. Consequently, a genuine seeking after God is evidence of having found. Of course, much desire that appears to seek after God is nothing of the sort. For instance, to seek God for eternal life is to seek eternal life, while to seek God for a meaningful existence is to seek a meaningful existence. A true seeking after God results from an experience of God which one falls in love with for no reason other than finding God irresistibly lovable. In this way the lovers of God are the ones who are most passionately in search of God.

1. Matthew 22:34-40 (NIV) BibleGateway.com
2. “My Religion,” from Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God (New York: New Directions Books, 1992)
3. “The Sun Never Says,” from Hafiz, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift (New York: Penguin Compass, 1999)
4. Peter Rollins, How (Not) To Speak of God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006), 50.

Posted by: Bowie | Tags: musings, poetry, ritual