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.