I found in the woods in Maryland a wildflower, the bloodroot flower. It blooms very early in the spring, around the time of Lent and Easter, depending on when Easter falls. The reason why it’s called the bloodroot is because the root itself, if you press it, you break it, you’ll get a red dye that can be used as a dye. But the bloom itself only lasts a day. But it comes out of the sepulcher of the earth. And what it leaves is these heart-shaped leaves. And that is a microcosm of resurrection for me.
I have a wild imagination. You know, I mean, I’ve described the stakes in my vegetable garden in the wintertime as crosses on which bodies are draped, you know. I don’t mean that in a gory sense. The geese in the sky remind me of the crosses that pilgrims have carved into ancient Christian sites. I think there are signs of the cross all over creation. How do you account for that? Well, clearly, we’ve forgotten, we’ve forgotten paradise, we forget God. And that’s why I think we have scripture to remind us.
—Vigen Guroian, from his interview with Krista Tippett in On Being’s “Restoring the Senses: Gardening and an Orthodox Easter”
Guorian is Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia and author of The Fragrance of God and Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
You know, at one time I worked for the World Council of Churches and we were based in London. I came from Africa. There was someone from Taiwan. There was someone from Malaysia, someone from the States, and then someone from Latin America, and he introduced me to Latin American liberation theology. And I came to visit for the first time in the United States and here encountered black theology. So all of that was a very significant part of what helped to open my eyes. Mercifully, there isn’t anything like the so-called self-made person.
I mean, they are people who helped to form me. And then discovering that the Bible could be such dynamite. I subsequently used to say if these white people had intended keeping us under they shouldn’t have given us the Bible. Because, whoa, I mean, it’s almost as if it is written specifically just for your situation. I mean, the many parts of it that were so germane, so utterly to the point for us…
When you discover that apartheid sought to mislead people into believing that what gave value to human beings was a biological irrelevance, really, skin color or ethnicity, and you saw how the scriptures say it is because we are created in the image of God, that each one of us is a God-carrier. No matter what our circumstances may be, no matter how awful, no matter how deprived you could be, it doesn’t take away from you this intrinsic worth. One saw just how significant it was.
Theodicy Defined: The Power of God and the Problem of Evil
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Tethered between stone and sky. (photo: Enrico Marongiu/Flickr, cc by-nc-sa 2.0)
This week’s show has a theological term in its title that sounds obscure, even impenetrable: “Monsters We Love: TV’s Pop Culture Theodicy.” Depending on your view of an omnipotent God, it could be both. ”Theodicy” attempts to answer ancient questions like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and “If God is good, why does evil exist?”
The television shows mentioned in “Monsters We Love” are filled with “amoral zombies” and “loving vampires” and “righteous serial killers,” as Krista Tippett puts it. At the core of this theodicy is the question of what makes “good” people different from characters we can register instantly as “evil.”
The Greek philosopher Epicurus came up with his own twist on the problem of evil, the “Epicurean Paradox”:
“Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil.”
Merriam-Webster describes theodicy as a “defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.” And on the free will of human beings, one explanation of free will theodicy suggests that God values good choices from humans only if we have the free will to make them. This leaves the possibility for a misuse of free will, and evil choices. For St. Augustine, evil results from the failure of humans to exercise moral responsibility, not God.
What is it about watching the moral failing of others that draws millions of viewers to these TV shows? Maybe it has nothing to do with their final choices or even their failings. For me, it’s empathy for seeing someone else struggle between choices of good and evil in situations where it’s not clear to me how free their will actually is.
Centenarian Woman Thanks God and Deputies Who Defied Court Order to Evict
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“I knew that they know what they were doing. God don’t let them do wrong.”
~Vinia Hall
Here’s one of those feel-good stories that makes you smile for human decency and feel a little bit sad knowing that this act of kindness may be an exception. On Tuesday, WSB Channel 2 in Atlanta reported that Vinia Hall, a 103-year-old woman, and her 83-year-old daughter were about to be evicted from her home when deputies of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office and hired movers defied a court order to evict the two from their foreclosed home in northwest Atlanta.
For the purposes of this project, take note of the strong expressions of faith in God “making it right” and citations of the Bible, by Ms. Hall and also by a neighbor and community activist too.
Q:If you want to find God try spending 30 yrs. in a siberian prison.
Anonymous
Dear Anonymous:
Did you (or someone you know) spend three decades in a Siberian gulag? If so, let’s talk! We definitely want to hear about your experiences and ways of thinking about the divine in the world. Here’s my email address: tgilliss@onbeing.org and my phone number: 651.290.1354.
If not, might I recommend reading Slavomir Rawicz’s epic tale “The Long Walk” (the movie is not nearly as good as the book) — a miraculous story of a Pole being imprisoned in a Siberian gulag in 1939 and then escaping and trekking thousands of miles to freedom. He might have some insights into the nature of God and man that could further this conversation.
I look forward to your reply,
Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The reality emerging out of the Exodus is not just a new religion or a new religious idea or a vision of freedom but the emergence of a new social community in history, a community that has historical body, that had to devise laws, patterns of governance and order, norms of right and wrong, and sanctions of accountability. The participants in the Exodus found themselves, undoubtedly surprisingly to them, involved in the intentional formation of a new social community to match the vision of God’s freedom.
For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls, may God bless your souls.
—Troy Anthony Davis, speaking to the prison officials who executed him by lethal injection at 11:08 in a Georgia prison last night, according to an eyewitness account from an Associated Press reporter.
About the photo: A demonstrator outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia, on Wednesday, September 21. (photo: Erik S. Lesser/AFP/Getty Images)
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Sari Nusseibeh Discovers God in Cambodia
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom, Cambodia (photo: Ran Phang/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh comes from one of the oldest families on record in Jerusalem. His Muslim ancestors have been in the Holy Land since at least the seventh century. Earlier this year, Nusseibeh traveled to Cambodia where he glimpsed inside another ancient civilization. And it was there, as he tells it in the audio link above, that he had an epiphany about God:
“One thing that struck me was the four faces in many of the gates that were on those temples of Buddha. I was asking the guide what they stood for. He said, “Care, compassion, charity, and equality are the four faces of Buddha in those temples. And as he said them I just felt, to me, this is God. And I’m not a Buddhist.”
Listen to more of our interview with Sari Nusseibeh in this week’s show, “The Evolution of Change.”
Learning to Pray: A Poem
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“The self doubt is crippling.” (photo: Meredith Farmer/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The Pushcart-nominated poet Yahia Lababidi wrote us this lovely note: “I’m a big admirer of your noble mandate and the fine work that you do. Kindly find two poems below from my new collection: Fever Dreams.”
Here’s the first of those two poems from the Egyptian writer, “Learning to Pray” — a lovely meditation on living life charitably and with intention:
Long susceptible to the pious heresies,
of mystics, martyrs and other fanatics
mad enough to confound themselves
with God, and declare it free of egoThose spiritually reckless creatures
contemptuous of all rule books,
traffic signs and speeding tickets
in such a hurry were they to arriveNo social drinkers, these revelers
they drank to get drunk, alone
that they might stay that way
sobriety being the only sin…But what of us without stamina
for such superhuman attention
or the patience to stand in line
inching towards the checkoutMight we forge our own language
(until we can speak in tongues)
by asking of our every action
does this, or that, please You?
Riven means broken, it means shattered or wounded or unhealed, and I think that notion is very important to me and my notion of God and of religion: that we are broken creatures, very broken creatures. And I don’t think of God as necessarily healing that brokeness as much as participating in it.
—Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine from his interview with Radio Open Source on his book of poems, Every Riven Thing.
“Shattered” (photo: David Shield/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
