Tending the Part of the Garden We Can Touch
Can we create a community that makes sense of the traditions we grew up with, discovers the wisdom of the many other spiritual traditions, and finds a framework for navigating our current world?
The world’s gone MAD.
Or maybe it’s always been this way? I could make an historical argument for that, and others certainly have1. Or maybe this sort of craziness ebbs and flows, the intensity of events waxing and waning through the centuries, with some decades feeling more extreme than others.
Regardless, these days it certainly feels extra intense.
Of course there’s the question of how news and social media amplify and potentially distort how we absorb, understand, and deal with all these things. The problem being that media is mostly concerned with raising awareness of these problems (clicks) without giving us much of an outlet to actually do something constructive in solving the problems. (We know taking action generally reduces anxiety.)
And certainly I’m writing from the perspective of a relatively comfortable American, experiencing nearly all this through a screen, while many experience these (and far worse) situations face to face.
It occurred to me recently that had I been able to exorcise my life of news and social media over the last 20 years I’d probably have almost no idea that things were “getting so bad.” And some, like the author Steven Pinker, have made compelling arguments that life on earth (at least for humans) has never been better when we measure things like violence, oppression, and crime against their historical norms.
And maybe that makes us feel a little better about everything, but probably only briefly, because our collective societal anxiety about the present day and what the future might hold is largely inescapable.
As I’ve thought about this subject my mind continues to circle back to the general lack of leadership in all areas of society today. Wise leaders who might point us back to things that really matter. Leaders who could remind us we have far more in common with one another than our differences, and why it’s important that we work hard to come together to acknowledge and even celebrate those points of commonality. Leaders who would give a call to action, and help us each understand what we might be able to do to solve some of these problems, to help reduce the pain that many are feeling.
It’s my belief that the single largest failure of leadership of the last decade hasn’t been our politicians (although yes, they have failed us and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future), but rather our spiritual and religious leaders, particularly of the Christian faith.
Christianity was the faith of both my upbringing and much of my adult life, and I still consider Jesus of Nazareth to potentially be the most important human to have ever lived. Hopefully these credentials allow me to root for a Church that embraces the community, supports the downtrodden, and cares about the world we leave for our grandchildren, while setting the example of loving everyone else (regardless of their skin color, political party, sexual preference, previous actions, or geographical location) as we do ourselves.
Unfortunately that’s not what we’ve seen. In fact I’d argue that MTV did more in the last thirty years to raise awareness about equality and drive positive social change than the Church has, to the great chagrin of many a ‘90’s era Youth Pastor.
A few years ago it was a conversation with my-then-second-grader that did more to change the way I thought about the environment and the earth I’m leaving for her and her children than anything I’ve ever heard from a pulpit.
And I only have to look at the example of Jesus himself, who seems to have remained largely silent on politics2, despite living in occupied territory, oppressed by a brutal regime, and who spent his days doing what he could to help those in need, and teaching a larger message, while also embracing a life of poverty himself.
I’m certain there have been some leaders within “Christianity” who have been the exception, and individuals like Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, Brian McLaren, Mirabai Starr, and Rob Bell are all doing incredible work. These individuals are truly voices in the wilderness, and I’ll do my best in future posts to highlight what I’ve learned from each of them. (In fact, the name of this substack is inspired by Rohr’s framework of Order→Disorder→Reorder.) But the reality is these leaders are largely unknown, or at least haven’t yet had the reach to change the trajectory of “Jesus followers” in America in a meaningful way.
In fact when I began my research to launch Reorder I was hoping to find resources that would allow me to make sense of the traditions I grew up with, discover the wisdom of other spiritual traditions, and create a framework that would be useful for navigating and making meaning of life. But aside from the positive voices I mentioned above, what I found was mostly cynicism, hurt, and even rage.
Going back to Richard Rohr’s framework of Order→Disorder→Reorder, it’s clear that many have rejected the current Christian Order of today, and have moved into Disorder, or deconstruction, as it’s popularly known. But it seems that’s where they’re stuck, unable to progress, or find true freedom. Unable to thrive. As I explored many of the #deconstruction accounts I found it sad to see how consistently cynical and spiteful some of them could be.
Let me be clear, I know first-hand just how dysfunctional the church and Christians can be. I have stories. Personal stories. For myself, from close friends, and from hundreds of acquaintances of just how ugly the Church and so-called Christians can be. And for many years I was trapped in a downward spiral of hurt and hostility towards the church and church leaders who left me feeling discarded and worthless.
So I understand the cynicism and spite, and how it can be a part of the process.
But it was only in finding community with others who’d had similar experiences, and/or who’d also begun to question the tenets of their faith, that my healing was able to begin. Together, with these other individuals, we could share our experiences, support one another, and explore how we might move forward beyond the pain and regret of ever being involved with the Church or Christianity in the first place. And over time we began to find a way to reframe the experience as something that ultimately made us stronger and more dynamic as we began to move forward with our lives.
(Note: while I’m suggesting a way forward that may be helpful, I’m not being prescriptive for you or for any particular individual. There are truly horrific things that have happened within churches, and at the hands of those we once trusted, including every abuse imaginable. I’m a big proponent of therapy and have experienced tremendous benefits from therapy myself. I believe therapy, community, and a continuous drive to understand myself have been a successful recipe of healing for me, but everyone has to figure that part out for themselves.)
One tiny bit of wisdom I’ve recently come across is from the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, who wisely instructs us to “Tend to the part of the garden you can touch.”
And so that’s what we’ll be trying to do here with Reorder. Tend to the part of the garden we can touch. Sharing insights we’ve found helpful. Passing along info that could be useful. Creating a community where we can make sense of the traditions we grew up with, discover the wisdom of the many other spiritual traditions, and hopefully find a framework for navigating and making meaning of this crazy world.
This is what we’ll be doing at Reorder. We hope you’ll join us.
Who are the individuals you consider to be having the most positive impact on Christian thought today? Let us know in the comments section…
Tony Gilroy, creator of the incredible Star Wars show Andor, when asked if the themes featured in the show are meant to reflect our world’s current societal challenges, reminded the interviewer that the show’s “contemporary resonance…is usually in the eye of the beholder. Oppression is oppression. You can drop the needle at any point on this planet in the last 6,000 years, and you can find it. All these things are the same.” See also Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now.
After that last several years it seems clear that if there ever were to be an AntiChrist of the flavor laid out in the book of Revelation, it would take very little manipulation on his part for the Christians (or at least the American Evangelicals) to quickly abandon their values and reinterpret their faith in order to embrace him. All this figure would need to do is say a few of the right words and promise to give them the things they really want, and in no time this community of “believers” would become unrecognizable to the Jesus of the New Testament. They’d become inward and sequestered, incapable of loving even their neighbors, much less their enemies. In fact one could argue that perhaps this has already occured in many American congregations. Note: After many years of study I don’t believe The Revelation to be a Prophetic roadmap of our future, but we’ll save that for another post, so be sure to subscribe.
Excellent post! Glad to have found you via the Cottage. I would consider MLK as a positive influence for Christianity in modern times.
Lots of good points here. I too have found the deconstruction accounts a bit dreary, though I don't generally spend a lot of time there--so many things to read otherwise! If you ever do a post on the Apocalypse, let me know--I've been a part of an ongoing exegetical discussion (sadly not in English) on the New Testament eschatology, and we've just wrapped up John's Revelation. Not sure what you mean by "inspired" or "prophetic" (we'd have to unpack these terms), my take is more literary: apocalypses were a popular genre back in the day, and obviously they had to engage Christian motifs somehow. From the other apocalypses I've read, John's work is really the least problematic, meaning, it leaves a lot of things out in the open.