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.
Haunted by Dorothy Day.
OK, before you feel the urge to point it out, I know that this is probably the most misquoted line in cinema history. The words, "play it again, Sam," are never uttered in the the classic 1942 film Casablanca. Instead, Ilsa (played by Ingrid Bergman), says "Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake." Accurate, but not really fit for our purpose this week. What do I mean? Well, we're revisiting a topic that was on our agenda a couple of weeks ago but which, due to some unforeseen circumstances, we didn't actually get to. So we're literally going to play it again. Just after Easter, we were going to talk about one of the episodes that leads up to the climactic events of Holy Week, Jesus flipping the tables of the money changers and merchants and driving them from the Temple. Take a look at the PubTheo entry for April 7 for the full outline of the discussion topic. But suffice it to say, Jesus makes quite a scene, and in the process leaves us with some things we can contemplate. Join us for the conversation this evening, Tuesday April 28, and help us figure out what tables Jesus would flip and who he would drive from the Temple today. The discussion starts at 7pm 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.
What to hold onto when the truth varies.
An article in The Washington Post from a week or so ago (I'll link to it in a minute) caught my eye as it brings us back to a topic area we've spent some time with before, the intersection of faith and technology. Specifically it's about Artificial Intelligence. But unlike the last time we discussed this, we're not playing around with Chatbot Jesus. It turns out that last month, the AI company Anthropic, creators of the Claude chatbot, convened a summit with Christian leaders, from both Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions, for advice on how to steer Claude's moral and spiritual development as it reacts to complex and unpredictable ethical queries from users. For example, advice on how to respond to users grieving the loss of a loved one, or whether the chatbot considered itself a "child of God." According to the article from The Post ( which you car read by clicking this link ): “They’re growing something that they don’t fully know what it’s going to turn out as,” said Brendan McGuire, a Catholic priest based in Silicon Valley who has written about faith and technology, and participated in the discussions at Anthropic. “We’ve got to build in ethical thinking into the machine so it’s able to adapt dynamically.” Attendees also discussed how Claude should engage with users at risk of self-harm, and the right attitude for the chatbot to adopt toward its own potential demise, such as being shut off, said one participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the conversations. The summit comes as the rapid spread of AI across society puts Silicon Valley leaders under pressure to account for the impact of their technology. Concern about job losses to automation has grown as more businesses have embraced AI. OpenAI and Google have been sued by the families of people who died by suicide after intense and personal conversations with chatbots. Anthropic officials say that they plan to convene similar meetings with representatives of other religious and philosophical traditions. That this is just the start of their effort to give Claude a moral foundation. What do you make of this? Does this raise more questions in your mind than it answers? And how comfortable are you with the idea that chatbots need a moral foundation? What exactly are we creating with this technology? Do we even know? Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, April 21 at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. The discussion starts at 7pm.
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 problem of bloodthirsty delight
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 Lord is Ris en Indeed.
After a longer hiatus than originally planned (due to travel, schedule conflicts, Holy Week, and Easter) we're are back! Just in time to talk about Jesus flipping tables, The story from Matthew's Gospel is a familiar one. And it's part of the larger account of the events of Holy Week. In Matthew 21: 12-13, after his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus heads to the Temple where he ... makes a bit of a scene: "The Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them 'It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a den of robbers." John's Gospel adds the detail of Jesus using his belt as a whip to drive the merchants, money changers, and the sacrificial livestock from the premises. In Mark and Luke, Jesus accuses the Temple authorities of thievery and preying upon the poor who were forced to purchase doves for sacrifice since they couldn't afford lambs. A little historical context is helpful here. Scholars tend to agree that the selling of animals was commonplace for the purpose of making sacrifice, and that the money changers were present to convert the variety of currencies in circulation to the accepted currency for paying Temple taxes. Some analysis suggests that Jesus' act was triggered by the money changers' routine cheating of their customers. Others suggest the Temple establishment sided with the aristocracy and Roman authorities by lending funds from the Temple treasury to the poor who were in danger of losing their land to debt, thus saddling them with an unsustainable burden that had the effect of concentrating even more wealth in the hands of the elite. Finally, there is some speculation that this was the act that precipitated Jesus' arrest and eventual crucifixion. Given that the Gospels all place it in the Holy Week narrative, this seems plausible. In short, this may have been the final straw for the Temple authorities. So what do you think about all this? Is this really the reason for Jesus' persecution and execution? Because he disrupted the "economic model" of the Temple? In other words, what is the meaning of this scene? How do you think it fits into the Gospel narrative, not just of Holy Week, but the whole trajectory of Jesus' ministry? And what lessons do you take away from this episode? A popular sign popped up at the recent "No Kings" protests that took place around the country a few weekends ago: "Don't Sit at Tables Jesus Would Have Flipped." What would those tables be today? We're going to talk all about flipping tables in our conversation this week. Join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday April 7, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. But please refrain from flipping the tables there. We want them to keep inviting us back.