Pub Theology 10/15/14 -- Willie and wisdom from unexpected sources
Peter Trumbore • October 14, 2024
A couple of weeks ago we had a conversation about wisdom, what it is, where it comes from, whether we consider ourselves wise, and so on. I was thinking about this when I ran across an article about a book country music legend Willie Nelson wrote nearly 2o years ago. Nelson, now 91, wrote The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart, when he was a young man of 72. As you can guess from the title of book, Nelson's philosophy and outlook owe a lot to Eastern religious traditions.
According to the article I ran across (you can read it by clicking on this link), Nelson, who was raised in Protestant churches in Abbott, Texas, began to suspect that the songs he was writing as a teenager, about experiences and heartbreaks that he was too young to know firsthand, might have been the consequence of past-life experiences. He came to the conclusion that he had led many past lives. “I haven’t run into anything I haven’t seen or heard before. I also feel as if I can put myself in the place of just about everyone I see, and that gives me the feeling I’ve been in their shoes before.”
Beyond his belief in reincarnation, Nelson also came to think of the world's many religions as "a thousand paths to a single destination,” with the goal of bringing us closer to the divine. In short, Nelson has a lot of views that are consistent with some of what we've talked about in our PubTheo conversations over the last 11 years. So we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of the nuggets of wisdom that Nelson shares in his book, and see what we have to say about them. The following is taken from Nelson's book and borrowed from the article mentioned above:
- The easiest mistake on earth is to forget to appreciate what you have right now. Happiness exists at just one time. And that time is now. You can be happy about how yesterday turned out, but you can’t be happy yesterday. You can only be happy today, this hour, this minute … now.
- Slow down. Not just your body but your mind. God is all around us, but it takes stillness to know his message.
- Breathing is its own form of meditation. Breathe from your chest; breathe from your gut; breathe from your heels. Breathing can calm you and put you in touch with your own spirit. It can deepen your contact with the world around you. If you concentrate and listen to your own breathing, what you will hear is the sound of God.
- As soon as you admit to yourself that everything good you do comes back to you twenty times over, then your life will change in incredible ways. Doing things because they’re the right thing to do—and not for some tangible gain—will ultimately reward you in better ways than money, power, or fame.
- Connections to those around you, to the world around us all, and to the universe that stretches into the great beyond are things that define us.
- The older I get, the more I realize it’s never too early to start appreciating the people in your life. If you love your family, it’s essential that you tell them. If you can make someone feel better with just a few words, why wouldn’t you use them?
- Love is what I live on. Love is what keeps me going. When in doubt, I try to remind myself that the path to God is paved with love.
Join us at Casa Real in downtown Oxford on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 7pm as we consider the wisdom of Willie Nelson. Our discussion will start there and then we'll see where else it wanders.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Christians and (Gay) Pride
Pope Leo on the challenges of our times
Some years ago I was having a conversation with a student when she noticed the Jesus action figure on the bookshelf behind my desk. What, doesn't everyone have a Jesus action figure in their office? Anyway, this led to a conversation about churches and church traditions. She had grown up in the Pentecostal church and asked me what I thought of the practice of speaking in tongues. I told her it wasn't part of my church tradition, but that I understood it as one of the gifts of the spirit that Paul identifies in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, though I admitted my own skepticism that the way speaking in tongues is typically practiced was actually divinely inspired. And I followed up with a question of my own. I asked whether in her church she had ever encountered someone with the gift of the interpretation of tongues, another on Paul's list. She said she hadn't, though she didn't attach any real significance to that. I was reminded of this conversation in church on Sunday when one of our readings was that very section of Paul's letter. In it he identifies the variety of gifts that the spirit may impart, emphasizing that for all of the differences in gifts, they all come from or flow through the same spirit. Here's Paul's list: utterance of wisdom through the spirit; utterance of knowledge according to the spirit; faith; gifts of healing; the working of powerful deeds; prophecy; discernment of spirits; various kinds of tongues; and the interpretation of tongues. I reading up for this topic, I came across a piece written by a Pentecostal writer who says that when he finds himself in periods of spiritual crisis he prays in tongues for wisdom from God. I honestly have no idea what that means in practice. Perhaps I've not sufficiently opened myself up to receive the Holy Spirit. Or maybe I just don't get it. I suspect I'm not the only one baffled here. So let's talk about it in our conversation this evening. What do you make of Paul's list of the gifts of the spirit? Do you take their meaning literally, or is this more metaphorical and rhetorical? Have you ever experienced any of these gifts firsthand, either in yourself or witnessed in others? If you were coming up with such a list today, what would be on it? Join us for the discussion this evening starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. The weather is beautiful, so we may be out on the patio. Look for us there. And a reminder, this is our last meeting before we take our break for the summer. We'll swing back into action in September.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Over the bent world broods
With mid-May upon us, and summer on the doorstep, we are well and truly into spring, typically seen as a season of renewal. A couple of things have brought this to my mind this week. And not just the flowers growing up and around and through the old animal skulls that we artistically left in the chaos garden behind the house when we moved in two springs ago. For context, these used to hang on the wall in the garage at our old house. First, in typical New York Times fashion, their podcast The Daily last week ran a piece on what was claimed to be Americans' "revisiting of religion," and "putting secularism on hold." I listened to the thing, and what it seems to be based on is anecdotal evidence drawn from conversations that the writer of their Belongings newsletter has had with friends, acquaintances, and her family members over the last year or two of her writing the newsletter. Classic New York Times! But still something to contemplate, especially her argument that this turn back to religion is being driven by people's desire for community, connection, and meaning in their lives. Second, and in an echo of our topic of discussion last week, The Washington Post last week ran a piece by a religion professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington proposing that the government's release of new previously classified material on UFOs was offering support and recognition of a new religion, belief in UFOs. The author writes: "UFO belief is not a religion in the traditional sense. There are no centralized leaders: no popes, no universally recognized doctrines, no sacred text and no institution capable of enforcing orthodoxy. Yet it increasingly performs many of the functions historically attributed to religion. It organizes communities of belief, creates narratives of revelation, offers cosmological meaning and establishes interpretive frameworks through which people understand mysterious experiences and humanity’s place in the universe." A key idea here is that UFO religion is profoundly anti-institutional, built on a foundation of distrust of government, mainstream media, academia, and organized religion. But again, driven by people seeking community, connection, and meaning. Finally, over the weekend there was a White House-sponsored all-day prayer event on the National Mall in Washington D.C. aimed at "rededicating" America as "One Nation under God." Of course it was a decidedly Christian and evangelical version of God that was the focus. Still, thousands showed up and participated. More people looking for and apparently finding some kind of connection, community, and meaning. And a form of renewal at least in the eyes of the organizers and participants in the event. We're going to talk about the idea of renewal in our conversation this week. Are we in a time of spiritual or religious renewal in this country, as the above examples suggest? What would such a thing look like? Would we know it if we saw it? And is it renewal at all, or something different? Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm Tuesday, May 19 at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
The Feast of the Ascension