The Empty Chair

 

It is almost Memorial Day, which means summer is around the corner. Seasonal shops and restaurants (most importantly ice cream stands) are reopening in our part of New Hampshire. Summer residents are trickling back to town. Tourists will be here any day now.  

I finally hauled our wicker furniture out of the shed and arranged it on our screened porch. As I write this I am sitting outside for the first time this season, enjoying the rumblings of a warm thunderstorm and listening to the birds.  

God speaks so clearly in the summer. I am always aware of Divine Presence, but summer is especially revelatory. In summer the Kingdom of God is amplified through the medium of the natural world. These days it takes very little to overwhelm me with the palpable presence of the Divine.  

At such times I marvel how so many people can miss the Presence of God - even religious and spiritual people. People search for an experience of God. They pray faithfully and meditate for hours. They study scripture and do all sorts of spiritual exercises, hoping to catch a glimpse of Glory. They read spiritual books and go on retreats. Meanwhile I could not escape God’s Presence if I wanted to. And why would I want to? 

Years ago a man told me that during his daily devotions he placed an empty chair before him and imagined Jesus sitting in that chair. He said it helped his prayer life to picture Jesus sitting across from him. I do not need to imagine Christ.  I see Christ. Nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

The apostle wrote, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” I know what he is talking about. There is no longer a “me.” There is only Christ, the All in All. The Eternal Logos dwells in this earthly tabernacle we call the body. God shines through every inch of the natural world. Christ is in every saint and sinner, in every Christian and atheist, in every Jew and Muslim, every Republican and Democrat that I meet. No one is outside God.  

Nothing that happens in life is outside the work of God. Every event bears divine fingerprints. Scripture says, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” That is why the political rhetoric of this election year does not frighten me.  

Both political parties are warning of a dystopian apocalypse if the opposing presidential candidate wins the election. It is certainly true that bad things may be on the horizon for our country. Yet it is still true that all things work together for good for those with eyes to see.  God works even through the plans of the enemy.  

Every face bears the image of God. Jesus peers through every set of eyes. In every chair Christ sits. We can use techniques like an empty chair to imagine Christ, but that the chair is not so empty after all. In the empty places is the fullness of Divine Presence. As Scripture says, “Christ is all, and is in all.”  

The Times Are A-Changin'

The college protests over the Gaza war are causing me to reminisce. They remind me of the antiwar demonstrations I participated in while a college student in the late 1960’s. Back then young men were being drafted to fight in a war in Southeast Asia that many of us saw as immoral. 

At the time we were not old enough to vote against the politicians who were sending us to war. (Draft age was 18 and voting age was 21 until 1971.) So we made our voices heard the only way we could. The same thing can be said of the civil rights movement of that era. If you aren’t allowed to vote, you find some other way to make your voice heard. That time in my life shaped my spirituality and gave me an appreciation for the lives and writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. 

Today’s protests are somewhat different. From what I understand, the protests of 2024 have more in common with the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980’s, calling for the universities to disinvest from a nation that was seen as unjust and oppressive. All these protests have the common feature of the exercise of free speech. 

Universities should protect free speech. That is especially true of the expression of views that are unpopular with the government. Of course, society needs to deal with political violence, but universities are crushing free speech using police action even when the protests are peaceful and nonviolent. They are choosing armed force as a first response rather than a last resort.  

The swift suppression of free speech on college campuses is being advocated by both the political right and left, Republicans and Democrats. That is because both major political parties are uncritically pro-Israel and want to silence alternative views. Protesters are instantly labeled antisemitic and terrorist sympathizers.  

Politicians are not hearing what these voices from college campuses are saying. They never stop to think they may have something to learn from these students. They never open their minds to the possibility that there may be another way to view the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.  

Most of the protesters calling for an end to the Gaza war are not antisemitic or terrorists any more than those who opposed the Vietnam War were anti-American or communists. They want peace and justice for all parties involved. They want an end to the suffering and what they see as biased foreign policy. They do not want American tax dollars being used to bombard and starve civilians.  

If American policy is any indication, Americans view Israeli lives as more worthy to be protected than Palestinian lives. That is a problem. All lives matter. The 34,000 lives lost in the Gaza war are just as valuable as the 1200 lives lost in the Hamas terrorist attack. All lives are sacred. All people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable human rights.  It is not about taking sides. It is about human life, freedom and justice.  

From a spiritual perspective there are no Israelis and Palestinians, no Arabs and Jews. We are all one humanity, made in the image of God. Nations are accidents of geography. Borders are nothing more than lines drawn in shifting sand. Race is a miniscule variation of genes; we are all sisters and brothers.  Ideologies are castles in the air. Religions are creations of the human mind.  

There are no essential differences between people. We are all one. Our neighbor is ourself. God commands, “Love you neighbor as yourself.” Our neighbor is the image of God reflected to us. Therefore how we treat our neighbor reveals our attitude to their Creator. “What you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters you do to me,” said Jesus. Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”  

Look how American society treats the homeless and immigrants, Jews and Muslims. See how people in the Holy Land are being treated. There is no justification for the murder of 1200 Israeli civilians on October 7. And there is no justification for the killing of 34,000 Gazans, most of them civilians and children.  

The young people on our college campuses are seeing what most older Americans cannot see. This is a generation that was not born when 9/11 happened. WWII and the Holocaust are ancient history. They cannot remember a time when Israel was not a Middle Eastern superpower. They see only the disproportionate bombing and starvation of a vulnerable civilian population in Gaza by a superior military power. They cannot see how it can be justified. 

Young people are calling attention to a serious moral problem in American policy toward Israel and Gaza. But our leaders are tone deaf. They are not listening. They are not willing to consider the possibility of changing American foreign policy in the region.  They are stuck in the past. That needs to change. Perhaps these demonstrations are the beginning of that change. I hope so. As Dylan sang, “the times they are a-changin'.” 

Come mothers and fathers 

Throughout the land 

And don't criticize 

What you can't understand 

Your sons and your daughters 

Are beyond your command 

Your old road is rapidly agin' 

Please get out of the new one 

If you can't lend your hand 

For the times they are a-changin' 

Penguin Spirituality

I saw a video the other day that has stayed with me. It was a National Geographic clip of a group of emperor penguin chicks taking their first swim. This was no tentative dip in the ocean. This was a dramatic plunge off a fifty foot cliff. If you want to view the video, here it is on YouTube.  

It makes me wonder what evolutionary urge leads them to perform such an act of courage. It also immediately made me think of spirituality. Speak of a leap of faith! This is not the safe religion of traditional Christianity. This is a leap into the unknown. Spirituality at its best is a dive into the Unknown.  

One cannot really know God. Our minds are too small. The god we think we know is a creation of the human mind, crafted in our own image and reflecting our own values. God can only be experienced by unknowing, as the anonymous author of the medieval classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, said.  

These penguin chicks had never been in water. They did not know what water was. They had never flown in the air. They knew nothing about height and depth. Yet they instinctively knew this was their destiny. Therefore as a group they traveled to the edge of their known world. 

When they got to the end of their world, they paused. The ones in the back urging forward the ones in the front. Then one brave soul made the first leap into the abyss, flapping useless wings, plunging into the unknown. This pioneer of penguin faith surfaced and frolicked in the water. Then the next one dove in, and then the next. Then two at a time. Then three or four at a time. Some falling and others diving.  

Some chicks entered the water more gracefully than others. Some did a belly-flop. Ouch! I can feel their pain! But all survived and swam through the water as if it was second nature.  The lure of the ocean is instinct, written in their genes. One could say that it is their first nature.  

Likewise God is our first nature. We have an instinct for the Divine. God is our calling and our destiny. God is written in our genes. We come from God and return to God. Throughout our lives we “live and move and have our being” in God, as the apostle said. It is our nature to dive into Divinity. “Deep calls to deep,” the psalmist says.  

This is the source of all genuine spirituality. It can feel terrifying to be on the edge of a precipice, peering into the unknown.  Whether that unknown is life-threatening illness, imminent death, or a new expression of religious faith. But when we take the dive, we find our true nature. We are free to be who we have always been. This is what it means to be born of the spirit ... and the water!