The Unclad Soul

What is Real? The HBO series, “Westworld,” is a tough to watch show about a futuristic park; sort of a perverted Disneyland for rich adults. It offers people a chance to live out their worst fantasies with “hosts,” who are human-like and life-like robots. As you can imagine things go horribly wrong. You can’t create an environment of no consequences no matter what awful things you do, without disastrous results. Even if you do them with and to robots. We were created with a conscience, the ability to self-limit our actions, if we know they will harm or destroy others. This is an essential part of our humanity. In Westworld, those innate boundaries are eliminated. In one insightful scene, Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) the programming director of Westworld, is talking privately with one of the beautiful hosts, Delores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood).  Delores is becoming confused. She questions her purpose. She’s having disturbing dreams she doesn’t understand. In the scen...

In my innocence I grew up believing in the goodness of people and all things. My parents and grandparents modeled this in front of me. I saw in them patience. Joy. Human warmth. Integrity. I felt their love and affection. I observed and absorbed their goodness.  I grew up extremely sheltered because of this. My world was small, provincial, full of church life.  I had great school friends. As a teen my buddies were not necessarily honor roll, but they were smart, athletic, and fun to be around. My girlfriends were cute, clever, flirtatious and, yes, honor roll.    Aren’t most girls? In college I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I loved my speech and radio and TV production classes. But then, after an emotional church service I attended, I believed, as it was described then, that I was being “called into the ministry.” It wasn’t until I had my first rural church as a single, young, naive minister, barely out of college, that I began to understand t...

If there was a Jordan River nearby today, where Naaman’s leprosy was washed away. If we were blind Bartimaeus begging for help, when Jesus passed by and healed him himself. If all the mysteries and ministries of the present and past, could undo the virus and bring us wellness at last. Then the world would sigh a breath of relief, and people everywhere could manage the weight of their grief. But the miracles now are in the hands of the few, physicians and experts still looking for clues. These are the champions day in and day out, who stay in the fight and work through the doubts. It’s not a time for grandstanding and political games, or egos of glory and small minds with no shame. The virus is real and the numbers are people, and the fears are giants and the consequences lethal. We cannot despair and we cannot give in, we must trust the science for the virus to end. And while we are waiting in a time so distressing, we have to remain calm while the professio...

I was channel surfing yesterday evening looking for anything remotely positive and stumbled on world traveler Rick Steves’ program on PBS.  He was in Nazaré, Portugal and the scenes were magnificent. Calm, blue sea. Families with children playing on the beach. Quiet little villages of happy people walking the streets and working in open markets.  It all seemed so far from the real chaos in the world with the now labeled COVID-19 virus sweeping the globe, political upheaval across Europe, the impossible-to-describe calamity in Syria, the wretched corruption and cruelty of Netanyahu in the Middle East, and of course the alarming disintegration of our own election process and the shameful division and rancor of our people.  I long for summer and a beach getaway. There is something transfixing and transformative about the ocean.  And yet I cannot stop thinking about those who have no way to escape; the oppressed; those tortured by chronic illness and dis...

I don’t know if there is a heaven or  if there is a hell; but I know where paradise is.  Out in the country where the cattle graze, where the dogs play,  where the trees hang low  and the pace is slow.  Out along the old dirt roads where the fields are plowed and the wheat is sowed; and up on the hills, where the big bucks hide, and down below where the field mice crawl and the chicken hawks fly.  Paradise is where the fire pit burns and the beers are consumed,  where the laughs are shared and the city’s lampooned.  It’s cold nights in the warm house where the TV lights the dark, and the recliner welcomes with a comfortable embrace and the journey of sleep starts.  It’s morning dew  when the air is clean and the grass shimmers in the sun. It’s daily chores and work well done; it’s the flutter of birds over the trees, down in the low spots where the creeks run. It’s the end of d...

You probably know by now that Mary Oliver is one of my favorite writers. She was a poet and essayist and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in literature some years ago. She died last year. But she left a treasure of books of poetry and essays that will enlighten and thrill readers for long years to come. In one of her books, she tells how each summer she would visit the beach. There she would collect various stones to take home with her at the end of her trip. She would later put them in a glass vase, fill it with water, and display it in her living room. She noticed that the water in the vase would eventually disappear. She assumed it just vaporized into the air. But she was curious, so she filled the vase again and sealed the top with aluminum foil. As days went by the water slowly vanished. And Mary Oliver decided the stones were thirsty and were drinking the water. She admitted she didn’t have conversations with the stones, and she was sure they didn’t have feelings as we do. Bu...

It is a sad conclusion on my part that religion today is failing us. It has, historically, had a shady past creating some of the most brutal and oppressive acts on human life in spite of whatever good it has produced. But today, worldwide, it is often the fuel of cruel prejudices, hatred, and violence. The wars of the Middle East all have their origins in religious disputes. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran, religious clashes and the refusal to honor other beliefs, often just other interpretations of their own beliefs, have led to the slaughter of millions of helpless people. Today, Evangelical Christianity, in our own nation, has become one of the most confusing, deceptive, shallow and self-serving belief systems anywhere. The hypocrisy of modern Christianity has swallowed it whole and left it a mocked and rejected object of derision. Clearly, there are exceptions. But a wide-spread image of religion in our world today is one of withering decay. I grew up in the...