Dear Friends in Christ,
Studying other religions has been very helpful to me–it has really opened doors and expanded my horizon–but it is also very frustrating when concepts make me think outside the box of Western religious thinking. For example, John B. Cobb (a prominent scholar of Comparative Religion) sums up Eastern ideas about human Enlightenment in these words: “Enlightenment is the realization that what one seeks is what one has always been.” This is so counterintuitive to someone brought up in a religion of change, conversion, repentance, striving to become something new and different from what we have been in the past.
Now, one way to go here would be to decide who is right–Western conversion to something new or Eastern Enlightenment that I am now and always have been what I need to be. Another, more complex, way to approach this would be to ask what both perspectives have to teach me. Actually, we find this dual perspective in the Bible–theologians call it the doctrine of “already, but not yet.” I am already a child of God, created in God’s image, and yet I fail to be what I am! I am it even as I’m striving to become it.
In the winter time, I tend to be very Western; very discouraged, restless, hoping life would change pretty radically. In the summer time, on the other hand, I become more Eastern, content with the beauties of life and nature. The seasons of the year really affect my mood.
As an anguished Westerner, OMG even a Lutheran, i.e. an artist of existential anguish, I really need those times of refreshment when I let go of all that overwrought striving and live in the moment. I need times when I look around me and see what a beautiful world we live in. Soon enough, there will be a chill on the breeze and the leaves will start to turn and we will get back to work trying to make the world a better place, trying to make ourselves better people. Conversion and renewal are important tasks. But maybe we’ll do that work better if we let go of some of our despair, fear, angst. God has already given us all that we need. God’s grace is sufficient for us.
So I hope you will have a lovely summer. Get some rest, have some fun. Do your work with joy in the knowledge that God is with us. In the fall, all the activities and programs will rev up again. We’ll have some successes, some failures. We will do our best. But in the end, we’ll let go and rest in God’s parental embrace. What we seek is what we already are: children of God.
Yours in Christ,
–Pastor Bastien
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