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Let It Go (A New Nativity)

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:36+00:00December 14, 2016|

Have you ever been in the grip of something? Something that wouldn’t let go of you or that you couldn’t let go of? Have you ever felt possessed or been obsessed by something? Or, after doing something, asked, “Whatever possessed me to do this or that or the other thing?” What about being gripped by fear? Or overtaken by anger? Or grief? Or anxiety? Or stress? Or lust—that is, an overwhelming desire to have something or someone? Have you had the experience of being in the grasp of infatuation—that is, something that felt like love but was more like fear of being deprived of the object of your attraction?

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The Road Not Taken

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:36+00:00December 9, 2016|

The road not taken. The poet Robert Frost’s famous line has been used so often, many think of it as a cliché. But it yet carries poetic power, because many, if not most, if not all of us have roads not taken in our lives, roads whose destinations are hidden from us, just as the lion Aslan explains to the children in The Narnia Chronicles that we are not told what might have been

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The Leader I’d Like to Have

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:21+00:00November 4, 2016|

I would not like a leader so presumptuous as to say this when proclaiming her or his candidacy, nor giving an inaugural speech. Only Isaiah and Jesus could get away with that, in my book. But I would like a leader who repeated this privately as a prayer at the beginning of every day in office, and before every meeting and every decision. It’s good for leaders to be reminded, not just of their prophetic and pastoral roles, but of their responsibility to do what’s right and best.

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Becoming What We Behold

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:16+00:00October 27, 2016|

Daily we behold terrible and diminishing things, not just in the newspaper and on the news, but in films, television programs, books, plays, even music. Daily we also behold our “golden calves” of consumer products in ads, commercials, and our neighbor’s latest acquisition. Daily we are bombarded and distracted by e-mails, text messages, and the multiple layers of the internet. If, as in Evelyn Underhill’s estimation, we become what we behold, we are becoming a mess of noise, violence, and greed with little room for the divine, the holy, and God.

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Held by God

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:11+00:00October 11, 2016|

Jesus experienced or was experienced as being a child of God, the essence of Yahweh, and the mystical gospel writer John declared that Jesus came so that we might all be children of God. So I have a mystic’s reason for my experience. I encourage you—no, I urge you—imagine yourself being held and touched and cuddled by God. Imagine God dwelling in you, your breath, your body, your touch. It feels good because it is good.

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A Flower’s Tears

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:58:01+00:00September 9, 2016|

I had just read a quote from landscape artist

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Killing God

By Chris Glaser|2022-08-07T01:08:02+00:00August 23, 2016|

When we conceive an all-powerful God, then God is responsible for all that’s wrong with the world—in her word, “a monster.” And I have pastorally and personally witnessed those who suffer or those who suffer loss doubting God’s intentions or God’s existence. An omnipotent God who fails to care must be distrusted or killed. I believe Christianity is conducive to this way of thinking, as it conceptualizes a God of compassion, willing to be vulnerable to the point of death—all out of love.

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Reform or Revolution?

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:50+00:00August 10, 2016|

The reason I bring this up is all the talk about “revolution” in this current election. A history professor with us explained that Nicaragua had experienced a true revolution, but by contrast, she shared many historians’ view that the so-called “American Revolution,” was actually a rebellion, because it did not turn upside down the class system, putting “lower” classes, however defined, in charge. It was still largely governed by wealthy, educated, propertied white men. I was a little peeved at her for disillusioning me about our seminal American event, but I saw her point. Still, our Founding Fathers and Mothers did set in place a system potentially “of the people” that would radically transform the government, society, and culture. Yet we are a representative democracy, not an absolute democracy.

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“Deliver Us from Evil”

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:45+00:00July 28, 2016|

But “deliver us from evil” includes the qualifier “us.” It’s not all about me, but all about us, and that expands the possibilities of evil worldwide: war, poverty, ignorance, violence, inequality, disease, divisiveness, environmental destruction, and all the “isms” that divide us. Again, I don’t expect God to solve the problems as much as inspire a solution—in me, and in the spiritual communities collectively praying this prayer.

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Everything You Wanted to Know about God but Were Afraid to Ask

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:45+00:00July 21, 2016|

Months ago I mentioned on this blog that I had finally picked up Karen Armstrong’s book, "A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam" ... Armstrong explains how talkative Christianity became in the West, with its emphasis on doctrine and systematic theology. Instead, in Eastern Orthodox understanding, we need silence to understand/experience God, which I believe is central to a spiritual life.Of course, then we might come back to a religion “of the heart” and the subjectivity that is potentially dangerous. But communing with God was to be of the mind as well, and within the context of a spiritual community and a spiritual tradition that can serve as correctives.

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“Turn To, Not Against Each Other”

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:43+00:00July 13, 2016|

“Shoot first. Ask questions later.” “The best defense is a good offense.” These seem to be the mantras of our time. Waking as we do each morning to a new shooting in our country or bombing in our world, accompanied by sights and sounds of shots and explosions, shouting and screaming, followed by the heart-rending wailing of the grieving, gives new impetus to the cry: O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us.

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Find Your Orlando

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:34+00:00June 15, 2016|

At first I intended only to post this rainbow flag at half-mast in front of a church—so overwhelmed and silenced I was by the carnage at the LGBT nightclub in Orlando this past weekend. May those who lost their lives rest in peace. May those who are injured heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. May those who lost loved ones find healing ways to grieve.

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Eight Steps Toward Sainthood (Wink)

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:31+00:00June 1, 2016|

These days of “do-it-yourself” improvement techniques have spawned an industry of providing sometimes simplistic solutions to life’s problems. So my title is a little tongue-in-cheek. I don’t present what follows as “dramatic truth,” or “divine revelation,” let alone “the secret”! At the same time, I remember a friend reared as a United Methodist telling me he had never been given a spiritual path until he was introduced to The Twelve Steps. Another United Methodist—a college professor or mine—shocked everyone by candidly answering “no!” to an ordination question, “Are you on the road to perfection?”

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Out of the Closets and into the Kingdom

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:30+00:00May 25, 2016|

As the experience of many gay persons will testify, “coming out” is not a once-and-for-all experience, but a continuing process. So the movement towards the Kingdom, somewhere outside the closet, or the Kingdom’s movement toward the closeted, is one which continues until the final Promise is fulfilled: God’s gift of God’s own future, the Kingdom.

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New Meaning in the Cross

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:25+00:00May 14, 2016|

“Don’t you believe in the Trinity?” a friend asked last week, after I reacted negatively to a stranger saying that Jesus is God. I admit, I overreacted a bit, calling the latter belief idolatry, though discretely not to the person who asserted it. The person declaring Jesus their God did not affirm this in the context of Trinity: Jesus apparently stood as “Lord” all by himself in this man’s view.

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The World’s Wounds and Ours

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:23+00:00May 10, 2016|

Given what is going on in the world these days, the U.S. presidential race, the damage many of us have suffered at the hands of our spiritual communities, and my personal involvement as part of a support team for a friend in recovery, this meditation for Day Fifty-Eight seems particularly relevant. Each med begins with a quote from Henri and is followed by a brief prayer. “We are part of a chain of wounds and needs that reach far beyond our own memories and aspirations.” Henri Nouwen, The Road to Peace, edited by John Dear

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Why Men Get Angry

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:23+00:00May 4, 2016|

Two weeks ago, grieving the death of my neighborhood

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Wounding God

By Chris Glaser|2023-10-17T13:57:17+00:00April 7, 2016|

It is a sacred challenge to administer justice without vengeance. Jesus calls us to go the extra mile beyond retribution (“an eye for an eye”) and love our enemies. But real love holds the beloved accountable.

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