Became Sin

Jesus didn’t become adultery for us
Jesus didn’t become an axe murderer
Nor a pedophile, nor even a thief.

Jesus became the object of scorn,
The innocent oppressed.
He became the sin of the black man killed by the police.
He became the sin of the single mother on welfare.
He became the sin of the child beaten to half-death.
He became the sin of the homeless
  The sin of the Muslim
  The sin of the poor.

Which is no sin at all
Except in the mind of the oppressor.

Abuse

The idea that we are born in sin
And so must be punished
Is the theology of the abused child
Convinced that they deserve their regular beatings.

Jesus never claims a human is born in sin.
Rather, he strives to convince us
And all those around us
That we are going to be the focus
Of God’s unbelievable miracle. 

Incarnation

God loved, but he did not really understand love.

The powerful, even the Greatest Power,
Can never grasp the weakness of the weak
Until they become weak.

Until the Lord of Heaven and Earth
Creator of Worlds and Words
Whose every Command was carried out
Became a single, helpless infant
He never truly understood weakness.

Before that moment, he felt that command would rule.
Until he was in a place where command was meaningless.

He could command his body
He could create with his mind
He could form atoms and call up mountains
But he could not control his arm without practice.

It would take months before he could walk.
Years before a single word was clear enough to be understood without interpreted.

It was not until the weakness of a body
Limited the Supreme of Supremes

That the kingdom truly belonged to the poor.

At that moment, Love wasn’t just an idea
It was reality.

Rumi on Valentines Day

Rumi is the true poet of love, bringing the spiritual language of the ancients and the passionate desires of erotic poetry into one being.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,

or what "God’s fragrance" means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image

about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,

slowly loosen knot by knot the strings

of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,

don’t try to explain the miracle.

Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

***

Intellectuals plan their repose;

lovers are ashamed to rest.

The lover is always alone.

even surrounded by people;

like water and oil, he remains apart.

We must remember that Islam is not primarily violence and power and law.  For millions of people, Islam is love and Rumi is their spokesperson.

This is a simple truth—whatever you love, you are.

***

When the rose is gone and the garden faded

you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.

The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.

The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.

If love withholds its strengthening care,

the lover is left like a bird without care,

the lover is left like a bird without wings.

How will I be awake and aware

if the light of the Beloved is absent?

Love wills that this Word be brought forth.

***

Love is the bridge between you and everything

Rumi is both Muhammad and Jesus, both strict monotheism and an ethic of compassion.

O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,

You who know how to pour the wine

into the chalice of the body,

You who give culture to a thousand cultures,

You who are faceless but have a thousand faces

Rumi is what fundamentalism—whether of Islam or those opposed to Islam—cannot understand.  The narrow-minded cannot understand the poet.  But without poetry, the law-giver, the scientist cannot seek truth.

Those who don't feel this Love

pulling them like a river,

those who don't drink dawn

like a cup of spring water

or take in sunset like supper,

those who don't want to change,

let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology,

that old trickery and hypocrisy.

I you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on.

***

In this earth
In this soil
In this pure field
Let’s not plant any seed
Other than seeds
Of compassion and love.

***

A lifetime without Love is of no account

Reflections on Ethics among the Marginalized

The following are quotes found in the first chapter of Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins by Miguel A. de la Tora

"For those doing ethics, the issue is not to determined some abstract understanding of what is ethical, but rather, in the face of dehumanizing oppressive structures, to determine how people of faith adapt their actions to serve the least among us.  Ethics becomes the process by which the marginalized enter a more human condition...."

"It is not what is said that bears witness to the good news of the resurrection, but rather what is done to those still trapped in the forces of death."

"Those who would eliminate injustice are therefore always placed at the moral disadvantage of imperiling its peace.  Privileged groups will place them under that moral disadvantage even if the efforts toward justice are made in the most pacific terms.  They will claim that it is dangerous to disturb a precarious equilibrium and will feign to fear anarchy as the consequence of the effort."
-Reinhold Neibuhr

"What is logical to the oppressor isn't logical to the oppressed. And what is reason to the oppressor isn't reason to the oppressed." -Malcolm X

She uses an analogy of society as a mental asylum, whose misguided doctors determine the exit of oppression, but they do not realize that the system itself imposes a "mad" system of behavior which would deny them freedom.

"Like patients in an asylum, the marginalized suffer from their own 'madness'-- their refusal to conform to the ethical standards of 'civilized' dominant culture.  In the minds of those with power and privilege their marginalization is self-imposed, a refusal on the part of the disenfranchised to assimilate to what is perceived as the common good.  When they behave, when they submit to the law and order of the dominant culture they are 'free'.  Those who reject the dominant view are eyed with suspicion."

"The marginalized do not lack the academic rigor to do ethical reflection, nor do they simply bypass ethical reflection altogether. Rather, their approach to the oppressive situation produces a different way of doing ethics."

***

Allow me to give few examples.  Today a friend of mine on Facebook accused the majority of people on welfare to be "in sin" because they are single mothers.  However, there is no clear evidence that sex before marriage is a sin, per say.  Marriage is not even a requirement in the Bible for a sexual couple.  Adultery, breaking one's commitment to one's spouse, is a big issue, but that doesn't have to include marriage.  However, marriage and the ability to divorce is a privileged game, costing from 65 to 200 dollars or more for the opportunity to have it legally done.  The poor bypass such ceremonies because it usually doesn't have as much meaning to them.  They will be faithful to their partner, and that is a solid agreement, but that isn't the same as marriage.

When two people who are both on disability want to get married, they will almost always do it "off the books", not in a legal manner, because they will be economically punished if they legally marry.  The system treats them to see legal marriage as something to avoid, even if they wish dearly to make the commitment.  They live according to a different ethical standard than the middle class. Still, the middle class will condemn them for acting practically.

Another example.  For many churches, getting drunk and even possibly drinking alcohol is a sin.  Yet the Bible says that one who rules shouldn't get drunk, but those who are poor should so they don't have to remember their suffering (Proverbs 30:1-7).  Here there is clearly two levels of ethics-- one for those who have to make just decisions for many and another for those who have not been able to care for themselves.

Smoking, drug use, sleeping in abandoned houses or parks, drinking outdoors and many other crimes are punished when found, but often the poor have no choice but to participate in these activities.  Why?  Because their life context is different from those who pass the laws.  What seems simple and basic ethics to the housed and privileged are often impossible for the marginalized.

Dom Helder Camara

Bishop of Rio de Janiro, he believed that the power of the church should be used for the poor, and worked toward this end in Vatican II.  He led the Pact of the Catacombs, a group of priests devoted to the poor.  He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the government of Brazil stood in his way.

His greatest work, however, were his poems in which he expressed his deeper life before God.  He wrote seven thousand poems in his life, and the far majority of them have not been published.  Here is a handful.

Become an expert
in the art
of discovering the good
in every person.
No one
is entirely bad.
Become an expert
in the art
of finding the truthful core
in views of every kind.
The human mind
abhors total error.

There are those

whose being 

is possession.

There are those

whose essence

is giving.

If you disagree with me,
if you have something to give me,
if you are sincere
and seek the truth
as best you may,
honestly, with modest care,
your thought is growth
to mine, correction,
you deepen my vision.

Hope without risk

is not hope

which is believing

in risky loving,

trusting others

in the dark

the blind leap

letting God take over.

When on judgement day
the angels call the artists in
they will be so proud
of their share
in God the Father's power
of creation,
that the Son
will find it hard
to judge them strictly
because poets especially
remind him of his Father.

Lord,

isn't your creation wasteful?

Fruits never equal

the seedlings abundance.

Springs scatter water.

The sun gives out

enormous light.

May your bounty teach me

greatness of heart.

May your magnificence 

stop me being mean. 

Seeing you a prodigal

and open-handed giver,

let me unstintingly,

like a king's son,

like God's own.

Hear, O Lord

my special prayer

for my people,

the voiceless ones.

There are thousands 

and thousands

of human creatures

in the poor countries

and in the slums

of the rich countries

with no right

to raise their voices

no possibility 

of claiming

of protesting

however just

are the rights

they have to uphold.

-All poems taken from the volume Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings, most are from the original volume The Desert is Fertile.

Jesus Godzilla

If your Jesus is untouched by lust or anger or fear, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus cannot bear to be insulted or wrongly thought of, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus dwells in a spiritual dimension and despises the physical, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus is the controlling entity over all the world, and all events in it, good or bad, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus is too powerful or holy to be imitated, then your Jesus is too big.

If you cannot walk on water or heal the sick or love your enemy, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus is the same god who commanded nations and their children to be burned, then your Jesus is too big.

If your Jesus can support war and hated and prejudice, then your Jesus is too big.