What We Do Not Transform, We Transmit

As I have said before, transformation is only possible when we are willing to shine a light in the shadowy places of our world, our communities and our own psyches. It is in these places that we will find unexamined and sometimes unnamed fears, desires, prejudices, disappointments, and losses, both great and small.

These darker places can be rich and fertile ground for transformation. In fact, we might think of them as points of opportunity for us to both co-create and transform the world we inhabit.

But, in order to be of any use to us or others, these places of darkness must first be seen. Otherwise, our individual and collective shadow sides will be passed along from person to person, generation to generation, forever.

Certainly, we see such patterns within families. A hidden or unspoken shame or secret has a ripple effect that reaches out from person to person and parent to child in waves that seem never to end--unless they are recognized and somehow transformed.

This phenomenon occurs not just in families but also in congregations, communities, countries and civilizations: what we do not transform, we transmit.

The work of religious transformation, then, begins with identifying those things that dwell in darkness, seeing them clearly, and working to transform them. Otherwise, religious communities simply transmit the same fears, prejudices and disappointments that they inherited from previous generations and from the larger culture from which they sprang.

For this reason, if no other, it is vitally important that transformation be at the center of our actions and aspirations. Transformation of self, community and world cannot happen in isolation and it cannot happen by accident.

If religion is that which binds us together, then we have a choice: we can either be bound together by those things that remain in darkness, or we can be bound together in our efforts to transform those shadowy things as we work toward reconciliation, healing and wholeness.

There’s a very old story that, when God created the world, he left one corner unfinished and in darkness. It is in this corner that evil spirits, ill winds, and all manner of catastrophes dwell. Our task is to deal with this unfinished corner of creation, to transform it and to bring it to completion.

The Role of Reluctance in Transformation

It’s one thing to talk about transformation, and it’s another to actually transform. For those of us who have lives that are fairly comfortable—and even for many of us whose lives are terribly uncomfortable—it is challenging to do something different and risky, even when we know that it is the right thing to do both for us and for our world.

In some ways, our reluctance to change is hard-wired. Unless we’re being chased by something, we’re likely to stay camped out exactly where we are, doing the same things that have fed and sheltered our families and loved ones quite well up to this point.

In addition, our cultural institutions—especially including our religious institutions—are organized in such a way that meaningful transformation is unlikely to take place at all, or only at a very slow pace.

This reluctance on both the personal and institutional levels is where we have to start because that’s where we are. It is useful to notice this reluctance and consider whether it is worthwhile to overcome it or not, to consider whether or not we are willing to pay the cost of discomfort in order to co-create something better than the status quo.

I’ve been feeling a great deal of reluctance in recent weeks as I prepare for some major changes in my life. After having lived in the same community for my entire adult life—30 years—and after having worked the

same comfortable and secure job for 20 years, I will be uprooting myself and my family to begin a new ministry somewhere as yet to be determined.

These changes are both terrifying and full of great promise. I have worked like crazy for the last three or four years to get to this place. And now that I’m here I’m feeling that familiar reluctance about as strongly as I ever have. And it is exactly in this place that much of the challenge of transformation lies.

As a minister, I will ask people to work to transform their own lives, their religious communities and their world. If I am to have any hope of succeeding, I must begin with my own life. And I must begin with this particular moment of reluctance—because this is where transformation occurs.

Moment by moment, each of us has the opportunity to try to keep things just as they are (which is, in the end a futile endeavor) or to work to become an agent of transformation (which is almost always risky and uncomfortable).

Of course, things aren’t as either/or as I am depicting them. There are moments of comfortable perching even in the wildest flights of transformation. And there are certain risks that must be taken just to remain in the nest.

However, I have chosen to fly. I invite you to do likewise. Just beyond our reluctance to change is something greater than we can now imagine.

Shining a Light

According to the Gospel of Thomas (a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus), “If you bring forth

what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you,

what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

This is a challenging piece of scripture, and it cuts both ways. It suggests that transformation is possible only when we bring forth those aspects of ourselves (and, by extension, our culture and society) that usually remain hidden. It also suggests that destruction is the inevitable result of our failure to attend to this task.

The first step in bringing forth what is within us is to shine a light to see what’s in there. Those things that are hidden may be positive in nature—hidden talents, inner beauty, and any of a number of manifestations of the divine. Or those hidden things may be negative—false assumptions, bigoted beliefs, dangerous fears and blind hatreds.

Part of the work we do as a religious community is to find ways to illuminate those things that dwell

in shadow, both one the personal level and in our larger society. We do this sacred work together because there is always more hidden than can be held by one person alone. And we do this work together because many of those hidden things are, in fact, not unique to us, but are universal issues and concerns.

This work of illumination is often difficult. Not only does it reveal things we’d rather not acknowledge, but it also brings to light our own responsibility for changing things that need to be changed. In other words, this work reveals that things are messed up (hardly surprising, but still difficult) and that we have the power to do something about them (which can be both heartening and frightening).

Anytime we delve below the surface, we find discomforting truths. And we find unimagined resources. Marianne Williamson suggests that “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Bringing forth what is within us is challenging on multiple levels, then. However, if we are willing to engage in this work together, however challenging it might be, we are opening ourselves up to the possibility of transformation.

Make no mistake: this is holy work. Hard work, to be sure, but work that just might save us.

Going Deeper Together

As others before me have pointed out, the difference between the sacred and the profane is that the sacred always takes one deeper. Anything is profane at its surface and sacred at its depths.

Transformative religion takes us on journey from shallowness to real depth. It is possible to be spiritual and to have meaningful spiritual practices that are not done in community or shared with others. But these practices take on the dimension of religious depth only when they are shared in community.

For example, you can dance by yourself or chant by yourself or meditate by yourself and receive some benefit from these practices. But the really deep work begins when you share these practices with others. Because it is in the moment of encounter with the other—in the sharing, in the chanting, in the dancing, in the silence—that one faces challenges and multidimensionality that cannot be found in solitary practice.

Any spiritual practice can help you feel more in touch with yourself or more centered in your own body or consciousness. But shared practice—which is at the heart of transformative religion—takes you deeper.

Anything that is done with others (as opposed to alone) is inherently messy. But it is this messiness itself that leads to depth. In encounters and engagement with others our assumptions are challenged, our perspectives are multiplied, and our aims are broadened.

The world is more complex than can be fathomed or appreciated by one person alone. One lone voice might be about longing for union, but many voices joined together are about the actual experience of union, even with all its awkwardness and occasional disharmonic moments.

Matthew Fox talks about “one river, many wells.” To get to that river beneath the wells we need the depth that practicing in community gives us.

If religious transformation is our goal, then our journey must be one that takes us to the depths and does so in the company of others.

Transformation Through Story, Song and Verse

Although information can be conveyed by various means, wisdom tends to be passed along mostly by story, song and verse. Mere knowledge is one thing, but wisdom requires that we make a shift and transform the way we look at things. It requires that we go deeper than normal language and thinking allow us to go.

Stories, songs and poems bring us to a place where we can make a leap toward something new—or at least toward some new way of looking at things that we thought that we already knew. Creative expression—and attention to creative expression—opens us up to ideas in a way that rote learning cannot do.

Metaphor is at the heart of almost every creative endeavor. Wisdom stories are extended metaphors that give insights about the nature of the universe and the workings of the human mind.

Songs and poems combine metaphors—both small and large—with tone, rhythm, rhyme, and many other elements to create a structure that points both to itself and to something beyond self. And—to the extent that stories, songs and poems are universal—they point beyond both self and other as they break down that somewhat arbitrary distinction.

One of the most bothersome things in the world to me is the way in which scripture is so often taken only literally—by both believers and non-believers. What a waste to regard such great works of imagination as signifying nothing beyond the shallowest interpretation of them.

When we want to speak wisdom, when we want to communicate to and from the deepest part of our being, we need these stories, songs and poems.

Joan Chittister tells a wonderful story about a Hindu spiritual leader:

Once upon a time, as the Master lay dying, the disciples begged him, for their sakes, not to go.

"But if I do not go," the Master said, "how will you ever see?"

"But what are we not seeing now that we will see when you are gone?" the disciples pressed him.

And the spiritual Master said, "All I ever did was sit on the river bank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river."

This story says something important point about religious transformation: we can point to the river, we can even give out handfuls of water, but what's needed is to see the river, to feel it, to play in it and drink from it and be made new in it.

What's God Got To Do with It?

For centuries, the dominant Western image of God has been one of omnipotence—a being who is all-powerful and who controls the destiny of heaven and earth and all who dwell there. But that’s not the only image of God. And it’s an image that says more about our culture than it does about God.

Franciscan friar and social activist Richard Rohr has said: “Your image of God creates you.” Thus, if we imagine God as all-powerful and all-controlling, we become a people who hunger for power and control. If, however, we imagine God as one who suffers with us, we become a people who act out of compassion and mercy. Similarly, if we imagine God as that which calls us to do good, then we become a people who listen for that “still small voice.”

As process theologian Catherine Keller has pointed out, there is no Biblical term for omnipotence. In fact, the closest thing to an expression of God as omnipotent in the Bible is “the Almighty,” a rather inadequate translation of the Hebrew term El Shaddai, which literally means “the one with breasts.” It is a term that suggests a nurturing deity, one that is the source of life. But it does not suggest omnipotence.

There are many images of God in the Bible: God the creator, God the destroyer, God the pillar of cloud and

fire in the wilderness, God the breath of the prophets. And there is also the image of God as that which is beyond all knowing, that which can never be seen, a mystery that is never fully understood.

If it is true that our image of God creates us, then it is up to us to choose. In some ways, no image of God at all (essentially an atheistic understanding of ultimacy) is the truest image as it acknowledges our ultimate unknowing and leaves it up to us to do something with this perceived void.

However, whatever image of God we choose (even no image at all) has a profound effect on who we are and how we act.

If we are to be agents of transformation in the world, our image of the ultimate must be open-ended, forever becoming something other than what it is or has been, something that is more of an invitation than it is a declaration. Something more like the pillar of cloud and fire than the embittered dispenser of merciless judgment.

For far too long, we have cowered behind images of God as omnipotence, images that have been contrived and controlled by those in power—the empire-builders, the colonizers, the conquerors—in order to retain and exert and expand their dominance over others.

Religious transformation requires us to shed the oppressive garment of omnipotence and instead put on what the apostle Paul called “an armor of light”—a newfound layer of awareness and illumination that enables us to see things both as what they are and as what they might become.

Transformation and Process

We are always on the edge of the unknown. We tend to live our lives in denial of this fact, but it’s true nonetheless. We simply do not know with certainty what will happen next. We can dance with statistics or play odds and percentages, but we are still on the edge of the unknown.

The past is churning into and under the future on the edge of this very moment. And it is on the edge of this very fine line that life happens and transformation takes place—if we are awake to what is going on in and around us.

Rabbi Moshe Leib said: “The way in this world is like the edge of a blade. On this side is the netherworld, and on that side is the netherworld, and the way of life lies in between.”

Some things may be etched in stone, but they won’t be etched in stone forever, because even the stone itself is in the process of transforming. When we are aware of and engaged with this process, this “way of life in between,” we are doing the work of transformation.

Catherine Keller is a theologian who writes about process. She describes life as a world of becoming, a “way of open-ended interactivity.” She says: “Faith is not settled belief but living process. It is the very edge and opening of life in process. To live is to step with trust into the next moment: into the unpredictable.”

So what can we do to take this step into the next moment, to live faithfully on the path of transformation?

Process thinker and political scientist William E. Connolly talks about two modes of perception: “We participate in at least two registers of temporal experience, action-oriented perception and the slower experience of the past folding into the present and both flowing toward the future. The first is necessary to life; the second is indispensable to its richness.”

Action-oriented perception comes more easily to us, but we cannot fully appreciate the fullness of life unless we can couple our action-oriented perception with the churning of past into future that takes place moment by moment, on the edge of the knife that is now.

In other words, we must cultivate an awareness that goes beyond “this versus this” (a world of false dualisms) toward “this becoming this” (a world of process and constant change). Always.

Transformation as Waking and Walking Together

In my last post, I wrote about how religion, if it is to be transformational, must be countercultural. Perhaps the most countercultural religious message ever is this one: “Awaken!”

We sleepwalk through most of our lives, and our culture tends to support this sleepwalking. If you bring even the tiniest bit of real awareness to this very moment—in all its horror and beauty—you will be changed, and you will be lured toward changing the world.

But rather than bringing our attention to this moment, our conformist, consumerist culture constantly encourages us to do things that keep us spiritually asleep. Most of what we buy, watch, read, eat, drink or otherwise consume might as well be a sleeping potion (and a lot of it is just that).

Resistance to the dominant culture requires building an alternative with other people and supporting one another in our efforts to see (and act upon) things as they really are—rather than through the filters of fear and unreasoned conformity.

Real and meaningful spiritual growth will not be gained by naming the problem and then transcending it—which has sometimes been the orthodox religious response to suffering and evil in the world. Mere transcendence (whether it is achieved in this world or any other) does not transform anything.

Rather, we move forward on the path of transformation by naming the problem and incarnating the compassionate response in community with others.

But, if we are to walk together, rather than sleepwalk together, we must adopt some way of walking that (1) keeps us on the path, (2) keeps us going in the same direction on that path and (3) can bring us back to the path when we inevitably stray from it.

The early American Puritans were not nice people in many ways. In fact, they were often hard-hearted, mean, judgmental and exclusivist. However, they did something really beautiful when they started articulating

their concept of covenant.

For example, in the 1632 covenant of the Center Church of Hartford, we find these words: “walking together therein, with all brotherly love and mutual watchfulness to the building up of one another in faith and love...”

There are dozens of other examples of such covenants from this era, in which members of the church pledged to God and to one another to walk together in the ways of love—not some mushy, idealistic love,
but a kind of love that results in building something real, something that can only be built when we all pledge to walk together.

Religious transformation requires covenant (or something very much like it) in order to become an actual human undertaking rather than just a nice idea.

Religion and the Status Quo

In an earlier post, I stated: "Maintaining the status quo is not a religious undertaking. On the contrary, transformation is the only option for religious institutions if they wish to thrive."

In one way, this might seem like an obvious point. If one of the primary aims of religion is transformation, then things staying just as they are would represent a failure of religion.

On the other hand, religion has frequently been used to prop up the status quo. And not just once, but time and time again. In fact, it's hard to think of any religious tradition or movement that has not been co-opted at one time or another by the powers that be to maintain power and control. In these cases, religion becomes essentially domesticated and stripped of its power to transform.

But those of us who are at all influenced by the dominant culture (and in the case of contemporary America, it is a consumerist corporatocracy) tend to be blind to anything but how we can thrive or survive in the current circumstances.

Transformative religion calls us to look at our culture not just from our own individual perpective, but from a more divine perspective. As St. Teresa of Avila said: 

The Divine has no body on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, 
no feet but yours, 
Yours are the eyes through which the 
Divine compassion is to look out to the world.

In other words, we are called not just to see how our narrow interests are served by the status quo but to see through the eyes of divine compassion, to allow our hearts to break for those who are ill served by current circumstances, and to work to change those systems and situations which are oppressive rather than liberating.

Religious transformation is--and must be--counter-cultural. Always.Otherwise, religion becomes merely a prop or decoration.

Transformation and an Ethic of Risk

In her seminal work, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, Sharon Welch wrote, “We are well aware of the costs of systems of injustice but find it impossible to act against them, because no definitive solutions are in sight.”

Welch, a social ethicist (and my instructor and advisor at Meaville Lombard Theological School), argues for moving from an ethic of control to one of risk.

In many ways, we inherited an ethic of control and power from orthodox monotheistic characterizations of the divine as being absolutely omnipotent—all-powerful and all-controlling. In an effort to emulate this notion of the divine, we strive to master and control all that we encounter. Such is the history of Western civilization.

And we (at least those of us who have been members of the dominant groups in our culture) tend not to get involved in situations if we do not believe we have a chance of controlling the outcome.

But our true power lies not in working toward omnipotence but rather in recognizing and reaching toward that which is ominpotential—in other words in moving away from conceptions of the ultimate as all-powerful and instead moving toward the ultimate as all-possible. But to make this move, one must be willing to live with considerable uncertainty and risk.

In a famous midrash about the Israelites leaving Egypt, Moses and the Israelites come to the Red Sea, and, with Pharoah’s army rapidly approaching, God tells Moses to lift his staff and command the sea to part so that the Israelites might cross safely to the other side.

However, in this version of the story, Moses raises his staff and commands the waters to part, but nothing happens. He tries again; still nothing. The Israelites are terrified as they can now hear the hoofbeats of Pharoah’s charioteers getting ever nearer.

At last, a man named Nachshon steps forward and begins wading into the sea. He goes in up to his knees, and his friends and family call out for him to stop, but he goes further still. He walks into the sea until the water is up to his waist, his chest, his chin.

Finally, when the water has covered Nachshon’s mouth and nose, the Red Sea parts, and the Israelites cross safely on dry land just before the water crashes over the Egyptians, forever freeing the Israelites from the cruel grasp of the Pharoah.

Nachshon understood that we are co-creators of our own destinies and, as such, are called to take risks.

In order to free ourselves from the tyranny of control, we must risk wading into the uncertain sea of infinite possibility. When we do so, we are following the path of transformation.

The Role of Compassion in Transformation

In southern Poland in 1942, Samuel Oliner, then age 12, hid in an attic while the Nazis took away his family, drove them to a nearby woods and killed them, along with 1,000 other Jews. Oliner wandered around in a grief stricken stupor for several days before he made his way to the home of a non-Jewish family he had known before the war.

The woman of the house took in the young Oliner and fed and comforted him. Then she let him stay in their attic for some time and taught him how to pass for Catholic. He learned the catechism and the Lord’s Prayer and how to genuflect and say the rosary. Oliner then found work at a farm where he spent the rest of the war after having changed his name and identity.

When he grew up, Oliner became a sociologist and started studying why some people were capable of great acts of kindness like that which he had experienced at the hands of the remarkably caring woman who saved his life. When he interviewed other people from this era who had aided the Jews to determine why they did what they did, he got responses like these:

• “Our religion says we are our brother’s keeper.”
• “I sensed I had in front of me human beings that were hunted down like wild animals. This aroused a feeling of brotherhood and a desire to help.”
• “I was always filled with love for everyone, for every creature, for things. I am fused into every object. For me everything is alive.”
• “[My parents] taught me to respect all human beings.”

These replies are based in profoundly religious sentiments that speak to a deeply felt sense of interconnection with others, even those different in significant ways from oneself. This sense of interconnection coupled with moral commitment motivated many people to do things for others at a time when providing such help was extremely risky and sometimes fatal.

Compassion of this sort is both instinctive and learned. In other words, we each have the capacity for great compassion and for acting on this compassion, but such altruism must be cultivated and nurtured. In fact, Oliner found that the strongest predictor for determining which Germans helped rescue Jews during World War II was having memories of growing up in a family that placed a high priority on altruism and compassion.

Without such compassion, people are much less likely to take meaningful moral action in the world. Without such compassion, transformation of self and others is impossible.

We do well to remember that compassion is the engine that drives transformation. For the sake of ourselves and our children and the world, we must nurture and cultivate and teach compassion in all that we do. When we are faithful to this task, we are on the path of religious transformation.

Transformation and the Sacred "And"

During my first year of seminary, I was working each morning at a men’s homeless shelter. I was there Monday through Friday 6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m., and then I would walk two blocks to my day job as a fundraiser for a major university.

While the geographic distance between those two places was only a couple of blocks, they were actually worlds apart.

• At the shelter, I was dealing with people who had not a dime to their name. At work, I was dealing with people who had given—or were considering giving—multi-million dollar gifts to fund professorships or scholarships or other major endowments.
• At the shelter, everything was falling apart or held together through temporary, makeshift means. Everything at my office was pristine by comparison—fresh paint, new carpeting, state-of-the-art technology.
• At the shelter, the clients were mostly invisible to the world at large unless something went very wrong. At my office, our donors were among the most visible people in our society.

Two worlds just two blocks apart. And I dwelt in both.

Learning to hold that disparity was great training for ministry. When you set out on a path of service to the wider world, you soon find out that everywhere there are huge chasms of difference. Many of them are the results of terrible and often shameful injustices.

But whatever their origins or reason for existence, one must recognize that they exist before one can hope to do anything approaching meaningful service. It requires a great deal of hard work to hold both in one’s consciousness—especially without attempting immediately to judge or resolve them in some way.

But that embrace of all things exactly as they are is a necessary first step.

The work of transformation requires us to hold in a similar way this fundamental disparity: (A) the way things are and (B) the way things might be. Our tendency is to glance at A (but not too closely) and then try to wish our way into B. Or, if we happen to be pretty comfortable with the way things are for us (without regard for the rest of the world), then we don't even worry much about either A or B.

But religious transformation can occur only when, together, we shine a light on how things are right now, and then, together, discern how to live our way into what might be. In this way, we do not transcend the present world. Rather, we incarnate the world that might be.

Transformation through Interruption and Flight

William James, the famous American philosopher of religion, used the metaphor of perching and flight to describe how human consciousness moves along the path of transformation. Like birds following a stream, we tend to fly, perch, then fly again in a slightly different direction, zig-zagging our way toward whatever destination we reach.

The moments of perching are when we gather ourselves, take a look around and determine what direction we’ll take next. Perching gives us some measure of repose and an opportunity for reflection and rest.

But it is during flight that interesting things occur. The moment birds leave their perch, they are aware that all is not exactly as they thought it might be: the wind is slightly stronger or coming from a different direction than it had been; that tree ahead, which at first appeared to be a good perching place, now appears to be the stalking place of a falcon; the movement and calls of other birds inform them that trouble is on the way or that the weather is about to change.

It is during flight—especially during those parts of flight that bring us in close proximity with others—that our expectations and our assumptions are interrupted and challenged. The interruptions that we experience cause us to change the course of our flight sometimes and give us something to think about and to integrate into our changed selves when next we perch.

While perching, we reflect on the information and intuitions we gained while flying, and then, with an altered perspective, we take to the air again. If we stay on the perch too long, we are less likely to gain the new experiences we need in order to transform ourselves or one another or the world.

Dynamic religious community provides us a place for intentional interruption. In such a place, covenant becomes the container for a free and open discourse and discernment that acts as an interruption from our individual perchings. Discourse and discernment in a free, covenantal religious community are what gives it its power and are the ways in which it moves ahead.

While religious community can also be a place to perch from time to time, it loses its purpose when it fails to take flight. It is only when we fly that we begin to experience the promise of transformation, of moving from the old self to the new, from old attitudes and actions to new ways of thinking and acting in the world.

Far too often in religious community, we tend to work toward perching and nesting as our ultimate goal, laboring under the delusion that once we get something perfectly settled and “right,” then we shall not have to move from our place ever again. But life has a tendency to make us fly, whether we want to or not. Better to take flight of our own volition than to be dumped to the ground when the bottom falls out of our rotting nests.

When we are able to perch with an eye toward where we will fly next, we are following the path of discernment that will transform each and every one of us in deep and often unexpected ways.

The Nature of Transformation

When I was in my 20s (and occasionally since then), I was what I would call a lost soul. For me, that means being unable to imagine my life as a journey. There have been times in my life when everything seems to be a string of somewhat related but not deeply connected events. At those times, I am unable to imagine anything like an arc that connects the various phases and stages of my life.

At some point in my 30s, I began to understand that I was being held back by my expectation that life would unfold in a linear fashion—that one thing would lead to another in a neat progression. And when that progression failed to materialize, all I could perceive was chaos. The moment I was able to let go of linearity was the moment that my life as a journey (at least metaphorically) began.

Therein lies a truth about transformation: it does not occur in a straight line (or even a wiggly one). It’s more like a circle, but not quite. We do keep coming round and round to the same issues/problems/challenges in our lives. But, if we are on a path of transformation, each time we come round to that familiar challenge, we find that we have gained a bit more awareness—awareness about ourselves and others and the world—that helps us choose a slightly different direction.

In short, transformation moves in a spiral. We go around the circle one way or another, but, when we are undergoing transformation, we move in a third dimension outward (or upward or downward). Such is the transformative path.

In religious transformation, the outward (or upward or downward) direction depends upon our individual and shared discernment. The beauty and the challenge of religious transformation is that we have a profound influence upon one another’s paths, as well as our shared path. In the free religious tradition, we are transformed not by marching in lockstep with one another but by listening to the voices of others and the still, small voice within and by acting as we are called to do.

Often, religious communities and institutions are limited by their inability to imagine growth and transformation as a spiral path rather than one that is strictly linear. When the expectation is that we are on a straight and narrow path that leads in just one direction and that our worth and value can be measured by how far we have progressed on that very particular path, then we are on a death march. Little if any meaningful growth takes place in a straight line.

So, the challenge becomes reimagining the course of religious transformation, not as a mere linear progression, but as a spiraling orbit. Rainer Maria Rilke provides an astoundingly rich metaphor for the path of religious discernment and transformation:

I live my life in growing orbits
Which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon,
or a storm, or a great song.

Introduction to Religious Transformation

My intention in creating this blog is to do some thinking and sharing about the nature of religious transformation in our time. If religion is that which binds us together and transformation is a dramatic or thorough change in form, then religious transformation is a term that describes at least three separate but related phenomena:

·         First, in religious community, the fact of being bound together by a shared covenant, with free and open discourse and discernment, changes us each in dramatic ways. In other words, what transpires between and among us in authentic religious community is bound to change each of us—and change us in ways, both large and small, that we cannot possibly predict beforehand.

·         Second, religious transformation suggests that in order to stay bound together in any meaningful way, our congregations and other religious organizations and institutions must exist in a state of perpetual change.  Maintaining the status quo is not a religious undertaking. On the contrary, transformation is the only option for religious institutions if they wish to thrive.

·         Third, religious transformation inevitably expresses itself as movement outward toward change in the larger community and the world. Real and meaningful religious transformation is undergirded by a vow to that which is larger than just those few gathered together and compels us to work to fulfill a specific mission both within and beyond our walls.

All three of these ideas center on this notion that the very things that bind us together will (and must) change us and change themselves and lead individuals and institutions toward changing the world.

Many religious organizations and communities are failing in one or more of these three areas: individuals are not being meaningfully transformed, the organizations themselves have stagnated and resist changes at all costs, and these communities are not acting upon a larger vow in any important way.

Although I am writing from the perspective of a Unitarian Universalist minister, I believe that the challenge of religious transformation is one that must be engaged by any religious institution that aspires to be something beyond a social club or support group or narrow advocacy organization. All three of those undertakings I just named are worthwhile and important endeavors, but they are not necessarily religious.

When Jesus said: “Unless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 20:24), he was providing an apt metaphor for religious transformation on all levels.

Bearing fruit requires a kind of death, a dramatic change that must occur not just once but again and again. Our former selves must die, our old ways of being with one another must pass away, our failed ways of

engaging with the world must perish. It is only in this way that we can live into the great promise of religious transformation.

In upcoming posts, I will dig a bit deeper into each of the points I made above and will explore some of the underpinnings and implications of religious transformation in our era.