The Song of Solomon is a steamy romance between a man and a woman.  For thousands of years, Jewish and Christian theologians attempted to define the Song of Solomon as a long allegory about God’s love for humanity.  God was the lover and human beings were the beloved.  This was a creative interpretation of the text, but certainly not the first meaning that leaps off the pages.

Religious Naturalism (RN) has two central aspects. One is a naturalist view of how things happen in the world—in which the natural world is all there is, and that nothing other than natural may cause events in the world. From nature we came, in nature we are, to nature we go… The other is appreciation of religion with a view that nature can be a focus of religious attention – the ‘cosmic religious feeling’ as Einstein called it.

But the Bible is not just a sacred book
It is also human book
full of the writings of the spiritually young
who only partly understood

“I want to be free!” screamed Little Flower, as loudly as she could – which wasn’t very.All the flowers around her sighed in the breeze.  “There she goes again….””I want to fly!” she roared, though it sounded more like a whimper.

We respond in awe to our life in God’s realm.
The Essence of Creation encompasses us,

Went with the gotta go urge
On a week ending, road bending
Wheels a turning ramble
Past the malls and urban tangle

The several dozen poems in this collection echo numerous Biblical Psalms, providing spiritual expressions for contemporary meditation and life. The inspirations for these poems are broadly selected from Abraham’s family, Kings David and Solomon, the Prophets, Jesus, and Epistle writers. For most of the universal emotions which make the 2500 year old praises so poignant, from cries of despondency to elation, there are expressions in this book to convey many yearnings to the ears of God. Topics, concepts, and language are current.

At the end of a short story by Heinrich von Kleist there is the line: “I would not have found you to be such a devil if you had not presented yourself as being so angelic.”

I realized that this can apply to our conceptions of God. We have been told many bizarre things about God that have led to unrealistic expectations. So I start with the famous quote from Bonhoeffer “God is weak and powerless in the world…” and explore a proper relationship given this fact.

As a follow-up to last week’s post, “Thank You for the Body that Loves Me,” I present another meditation on our earthiness, another in a series of reflections from my earlier books that I hope may lift our spirits in this new year. The series opened with “Peace of Mind” and will continue throughout the season of Epiphany and, who knows, maybe beyond.

For forty days and forty nights
you wander in the wilderness
and face temptation
of body, heart, mind and spirit.

Both my sexuality and my spirituality conspired to persuade me that embodiment is good, a sacred trust, a holy way of being.

My sexuality impelled me to love another intimately, physically, even worshipfully at its better moments. My spirituality, being incarnational, inspired me to love others personally and politically, wishing them shalom: health, well-being, justice, equality, peace.

Mary Oliver was a great North American mystic. She called herself a ” praise poet,” but she did not come to her sense of praise easily for she had been sexually abused by her father as a child. The day she graduated from high school she left home and never returned. She says it took her years to get her life back. “For years and years I struggled just to love my life.”

These timely new verses seek to update the spirit and language of the carol to today’s earth, “torn with strife,” while reflecting the Old Testament insight that nature sings joyously in honor of the creator.

My mind is a maze with the turns of the journey

The wise men wandered while aimed at the star

Their ears had the form of the wings of the angels

Attuned to the music they sang from afar

For Mary Ellen Kilsby
Before the morning star, I bore the Word from the womb

What is coming we yearn to know
As fallen leaves herald winter snow
Will what comes be worth the wait ?
Will past hungers our future sate?

A sparrow was in her tree singing to the dawn. But before the song was complete, a spark somewhere flashed and a tree somewhere ignited. Because the forest was dry, the fire spread from tree to tree faster than though. The whole forest seemed to explode in flame.

The gospel reading prescribed for this Sunday (Mark 3:20-35) paints a daunting picture of the perceptions of the people of Jesus’ hometown. The folks who knew Jesus, including his family worried that he might just be “out of his mind.” This is indeed a contrast to the ways in which Jesus is typically portrayed. This is a dangerous Jesus who ran the risk of being perceived as deranged. In his book “The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus” Robin Meyers captures some of this danger when he points to Mary Oliver’s poem “Maybe” in which Jesus’ “melancholy madness” is seen by his fellows as more dangerous than a storm. Safely ensconced in our imaginations, Jesus is rarely allowed to threaten the status quo to which we cling for dear life. Are we prepared for the stormy waters that would be stirred up should we take Jesus at his word? Maybe…