1. My eyes were cruising up and down my Twitter feed when this quotation from Brandan Robertson popped up. It's the first time I'd ever heard of him and if you want to know more about him and his ministry, his life, and his work are summed up in the article about him over at Wikipedia.
I read his quotation and provided my own context. I thought the timing of coming across this quotation was uncanny given that I'd been rereading Rumi and reflecting back on my experience as a student, chaplain's assistant, and instructor at Whitworth.
Here's what Brandan Robertson posted:
Religion and Spirituality should be creative endeavors.
If your faith doesn’t free you to be curious, imaginative, and playful, it’s probably not a healthy faith. Take it easy. We’re all finite beings trying to comprehend the infinite.
Personally, I would recast the second sentence and write it something like this: "A healthy faith frees you to be curious, imaginative, and playful." Or, I might leave out the words "A healthy" and just say, "Faith frees you to be curious, imaginative, and playful."
I'm attracted to Brandan Robertson's insight. I'm less attracted to the implicit criticism I think he's leveling at others about what is or isn't "a healthy faith".
While a student at Whitworth, and in the nearly fifty years since then, I came to understand that living a life grounded in faith is what has driven my curiosity to explore ideas, perspectives, a variety of ways of experiencing spirituality (both secular and religious), and to revel in the boundless wealth of how writers, thinkers, scientists, wisdom teachers, and others engage the mysteries of existence.
As I've aged, I've explored more deeply and settled more and more fully into a flawed life shaped largely by my ongoing Christian liberal arts education. This approach drove my studies, especially of Shakespeare, as a graduate student after graduating from Whitworth, informed the way I approached teaching courses at Lane Community College, and continues to inspire the breadth I pursue in the books I read today as well as the documentary and fictional movies I watch and the music I listen to.
Essentially none of these books, movies, and music is explicitly Christian. Nor, of course, were my courses at Lane Community College.
But my playful faith moved me to encourage the free play of the mind in myself and in my students. This playfulness is far from frivolous. It resists absolutism but not critical examination. Playfulness encourages expansion, delight, flexibility, curiosity, imaginative thinking, creativity, discovery, errors, and openness.
That's it on this subject for now. For better or worse(!), I'll return to it in future posts.
2. As I slowly move forward in reading Rebecca Gigg's book, Fathoms, I'm tossed back and forth between awe and grief. Whales are complex, complicated, mysterious, elegant, and mighty. Reading about their songs, migration habits, anatomy, sensitivities, and essential role in the ocean's and the globe's ecology moves me. But, human activity like whale hunting, shipping, war at sea, dumping waste, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, and other things we do to support our ways of living have had a long term destructive impact on whales. Reading about this is grievous and the scale of human invasiveness upon the lives of whales (and other marine creatures) is beyond anything I had ever imagined -- as is its destructive impact.
3. Normally, I digest the news by looking back upon events after some time has passed rather than depending on day to day coverage. Today was different, for the most part. I spent time today reading about and listening to experts in epidemiology sharing insight about the recent surge in Covid-19 cases, the mutation known as delta, and the CDC's response.
I'm also trying to keep somewhat current with the local fires burning nearby in wooded lands not far from Kellogg.
I've been staying indoors a lot because of the heat and smoke in the Kellogg area, both because the heat makes me feel nauseous and because I don't want to expose my compromised respiratory system to the smoke.
I'm also trying to gain an objective understanding of the Covid situation in Shoshone County. Cases have increased. The percentage of local people vaccinated is pretty low. These facts, along with the smoke and heat, will probably move me to lie low for a while -- but not quarantine. I'll carry a face covering with me and be ready to slip it on if I determine I need to.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
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