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Re-entry into the World
Earlham School of Religion was founded upon a leading to
create an intentional and intensive, spiritual and academic
community that would act as a seedbed, a seminary and a laboratory
for the nurture and equipping of leaders for the Religious
Society of Friends and for the Church in its myriad forms.
The leading was both Christian and Friendly. Among the goals
was, in the context of intentional and intensive spiritual
community, to come to clarity about and to firmly embrace
those most vital elements of the Kingdom of God as reflected
in the Gospel lived and taught by Jesus whom we proclaim as
Christ, and in the core beliefs, traditions and practices
of Friends. If you will, ESR was founded to be the Kingdom
of God somehow actualized right here. The community's guiding
reality was: The Will of God can be known and obeyed. It was
founded to be something of a Friends' utopia; a pioneering
experiment something in the Friend's pioneering tradition
after the manner of Pennsylvania.
Through the decades ESR has been at once characteristically
Christian and characteristically Quaker. Most of the theological
and philosophical foundations, not only for ESR, but for Yokefellows,
were honed by Elton Trueblood and distilled in his collection
of sermons entitled, THE YOKE OF CHRIST.
We all have been immersed at some level in this experiment.
That means that we have been participating in this particular
colony of the Kingdom, with all its strengths and weaknesses,
successes and failures, inclusiveness and exclusiveness. Something
of the stream from the throne of God has run through here.
If you will, we have been baptized in the possibilities of
the Kingdom with the cleansing of spirit and mind which accompany
this sort of immersion. We have been changed, hopefully for
the better, by this experience.
To change metaphors, we have been to the mountain top; we
have seen the Promised Land; we have been as close to the
Kingdom as we can get, until we've been called to the top
of a higher mountain or into the Kingdom, itself.
No one in this life can remain on the mountain top all the
time. Like Moses and like Jesus, there comes a time for each
of us come down from the mountain top to re-enter the stream
of daily life. It's a stream which is as different from the
Kingdom as night is from day. It's a polluted and toxic stream.
It's safe to say that you, as did I, will have re-entry
problems. The particulars of my re-entry problems are not
especially important, other than to me. Let it suffice to
say that most of my problems arose from leaving a situation
here at ESR that gave me some understanding and some hope
for how things can be. ESR gave me an opportunity to taste
a small sample of the Kingdom of God. With that understanding,
with that hope, with that taste of the Kingdom came the seemingly
perpetual question wherever I went to pastor, "why not here,
why not now?"
There are numerous, difficult realities to be faced when
one leaves the ESR community. Among those realities is a fundamental
one that does not often get mentioned. Simply put, education
alienates; what you have experienced and learned here has
made you different than you were before you arrived here and
has put distance between you and who you were, the people
you have shared your life with in the past, and the things
that you have done elsewhere. Time will tell whether the difference
is for the better or for the worst. In any case, there is
no going back to the way you were. Everything about you, everything
(how you think, how and what you value, how you relate to
God and others) will be different. In response to that difference,
people, including yourself, will either embrace you or shun
you.
You are now in a situation phenomenologically similar to
that of the Incarnation. Now you are faced with bridging the
gaps between realities. Jesus faced bridging the gap between
the divine and the human realities. "Now you are the body
of Christ …" (1 Cor 12:27 27) that means you and me, with
Jesus Christ, face bridging the gap between divine and human
realities. You also face bridging the gap between yourself
and others who haven't experienced what you've experienced
or know what you know. Hardest of all, you face bridging the
gap within yourself between who you have been, who you are
and who you will be.
Another of the difficult realities to be faced when leaving
here lies in the problem of incongruence between the Kingdom
and the World.
ESR at least wanted to give more than lip-service to Christ,
to self-transcending love, honesty, personal responsibility,
peace, justice, compassion, mercy, simplicity, spiritual discipline,
creativity, vision, and openness of heart and mind to the
leadings of the Holy Spirit. Here, efforts in those directions
were mostly positively re-enforced. Here, we, in our all too
human way, wanted and worked to give some authenticity to
our prayer … Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth
as it is in heaven.There isn't much of any of those things
in daily life in the world. In the world, there definitely
isn't much in the way of positive re-enforcement for efforts
in those directions. Sadly, there also isn't much of any of
those things in the various expressions of the church, whether
as denomination, congregation or meeting, where one would
most expect them. It is a rare blessing to be among people
who allow you to actually say what you think or who will let
you be as vulnerable as your spiritual and mental health requires
without reacting in fear or actual abuse.
Mostly there is pervasive idolatry, superstition, and narcissism,
with their related social and character disorders as well
as with their related systems dysfunctions. All of which are
symptoms of original sin, the fundamental alienation of humanity
from Divinity. Altogether too often, the meeting or congregation
is caught up in a blanket of dishonesty and denial in efforts
to avoid facing its dysfunctions and its sins. Altogether
too often, the meeting, the congregation is a magnet for those
whom M. Scott Peck called, "The People of the Lie."
Such people, "In addition to the abrogation of responsibility
that characterizes all personality disorder, [can be] (this
one would) specifically be distinguished by: (a) consistent
destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite
subtle. (b) Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance
to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury. (c) Pronounced
concern with a public image and self-image of respectability,
contributing to a stability of life-style but also to pretentiousness
and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives. (d) Intellectual
deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic
like disturbance of thinking at times of stress."
As the Church, Body of Christ, in our various forms, we've
mostly resigned ourselves to the expediencies of living in
exile [See Jeremiah 29:4-23 … the letter to the exiles] but
without eschatological hope and without eschatological vision.
We too often merely go through the motions of religion. "Maranatha",
"our Lord come!!!!" is neither our salutation, our benediction,
our daily prayer, nor our daily lives as it was among the
earliest of those who met the Risen Jesus, the Christ.
Re-entry entails multiple grief processes, complications
and major, usually traumatic, re-adjustments. The question
needs to be asked, "Why bother to re-enter?" The answers lie
in the vast meanings of the Incarnation. Too often we are
way too narrow in our approaches to understanding the Incarnation
and as a result, not only miss, but sometimes actually impede,
much of what God continues to do. The Incarnation is not "out
there" or "back there" somewhere. Amongst Friends' contributions
to the Christian understanding of God and Jesus, the Christ,
is the profound insight that the Incarnation is "right here"
and "right now". "Now you are the body of Christ …" (1 Cor
12:27); that among other things means that you and I, with
Jesus Christ, are called to bridging the gap between divine
and human realities today. We need to understand that the
Incarnation is a practical act of profound self-transcending
love (middle English named this "charity"); not some abstract
doctrinal or theological exercise. To paraphrase a person
named Gary Craig: "entering into someone else's life is always
an of act of self-transcending love, as long as it's not done
with an ulterior motive; that is, done in hopes of some kind
of return (no matter how great or small) on the investment
of time, energy, resources or attention. " The Incarnation
is the Creator taking the initiative to enter into the life
of creation … to somehow be at one with all creation … to
embrace the condition of creation … to speak pointedly and
concretely to the condition of creation, of every human being,
and of you and me. The Incarnation is the Creator relating
to humanity holistically, body, mind, and spirit. The Incarnation
is the Divine immersion in the human condition.
The Incarnation breaks all the rules regarding the dichotomy
of the Divine and the human. It infuses Deity with outrageous
humility and incomprehensible charity (i.e., Self-transcending
love). The Incarnation is both God's call and model for us
to live an ethic of humility and self-transcending love (charity)
that reaches beyond the typical bounds of our must/must not,
right/wrong, clean/unclean, pure/impure as well as our conservative/liberal
perspectives. We are the Body of Christ and each one of us
a limb, an organ, or some other feature of it. There is no
excuse for failure to function where we are in the body [see
I Corinthians 12:20 ff]. (Click Here to Continue to the next
page)
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