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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
06 September 2026
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 4SEP26
10 May 2013
“Do you WANT to be made well?” Man, I Wish Jesus Wouldn’t Say Things Like That (a sermon) 5MAI13
HERE is a great sermon by Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber, the Sarcastic Lutheran, about how God sees us and what he will do for us if we let him. As always, I really encourage you to click the link and listen to her sermon....
“Do you WANT to be made well?” Man, I Wish Jesus Wouldn’t Say Things Like That (a sermon)
May 6, 2013 By
2013-05-05 NBW Sermon <—-click here to listen along.
2Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay many invalids — blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. -John 5:2-8
This weekend at the retreat we kept a running list of overheard quotes from each other. Here are a few for your enjoyment. There was the person who said “I’m totally making my own deodorant now. Come smell my pits. I smell awesome”
And the guy who got the fire going who said “when you’re this flaming, who needs kindling!”
But the one that struck me was when someone said “There’s something satisfying about hating someone.” To which someone replied “Yeah, there’s definitely a pay off.”
I can relate to that. When we seriously don’t like someone we like to think that we hate them because they are awful horrible no good people – and that might be true. But if I’m totally honest, I have to admit that there also is a payoff to hating someone. Maybe I get to feel like a better person than them, or maybe then I don’t then have to look at what I did wrong in our relationship, or maybe I then don’t have to look at my own awful, horrible, no-goodness.
It feels gross to admit the truth about the payoffs we get from the things that harm us – because to do so feels perilously close to minimizing the very real pain and suffering that come from things that harm us. But admitting that there is a payoff to hating someone who hurt me is not the same as saying that what that person did was ok. Or that my pain is not real.
And if we are honest, there are payoffs, not just to hating people, but to so many things in life that hurt us.
I mention all of this because in our Gospel text for today Jesus encounters a man who was ill and had been sitting at the pool of Bethesda for 38 years. And honestly this has to be the most insensitive healing text in the Bible, because Jesus asks him the really harsh question: “do you want to be made well?” and the guy doesn’t even answer the question, when asked if he wants to be made well he says no one will help me into the water and when I try to get in other people get in the way.
I don’t want to be a jerk, but seriously? That’s the guy’s answer? Not to diminish his illness but it makes me wonder what the payoff might have been to staying ill since when asked if he wanted to be made well he didn’t seem very interested.
This is a sticky issue, but this week I started thinking about how hard it is to be honest about the pay offs we get from things we say we want to be free from. You can ask any alcoholic in recovery about this. When I was still drinking I’d bemoan my hangovers and the fact I couldn’t manage to keep a decent job. But there was a payoff. I got to live without any real responsibility and do as I like no matter how it effected others and the best payoff was that I got to be inebriated whenever life or basic human emotions or the results of my bad decisions started feeling too bad.
It’s not just drunks though. Not by far. Some of you spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need which boosts your mood until you get the bills which is then so depressing you have to start the whole damn thing over and shop some more just to boost your mood. All while you complain about how in debt you are in. It’s like clutching our bills by the side of the pool at Bethesda and having Jesus walk by and say “Do you really want to be free from the bondage of debt”. Jesus is just the worst some times.
Being honest about what the payoff is to staying in a situation I say I want out of is just more truthfulness than I feel comfortable with. But that’s the kind of truth Jesus seems to always be putting up in my face when I read texts like this one.
It all reminds me of Paul’s letter to the Romans when he said I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.Some things are so true they hurt a little
But that’s the whole point, I think. Jesus said that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. I like David Foster Wallis’ take on that. He said sure the truth will set you free, but not before it’s done with you.
Here’s the problem. In this day and age we are understandably sensitive to the dangers of what we call blaming the victim. And I get this. There are things that happen to us that are surely beyond our control. I didn’t have much of a part in having an auto-immune disorder when I was 12. Richard does not contribute in anyway to his own deafness. And to imply so is cold hearted.
So don’t mistake me. What I’m talking about is situations like this: there were a few months of my life I came down with a “touch” of hypochondria. We were living in Longmont and I was a stay at home mom with a baby and a toddler. I was exhausted all the time and got sick a lot that Winter and I started to think that something was seriously wrong with me. And secretly, without being totally conscious of it, I really hoped something was wrong with me. Nothing fatal. Maybe like, a totally treatable form of cancer. And then I could kind of get a hall pass. A break from everything. A hospital stay started to look awesome. Someone else would bring me food and I could lay around all day watching tv and taking narcotics. What’s not to love? After ending up in my doctor’s office for the 3rd time in 6 weeks demanding that he run tests on me since I was sure I was sick…my doctor looked me in the eye and said Nadia, nothing’s wrong with you. You just have to deal with your life.
As a side note: I was so humiliated that I actually never went back to that doctor. But I also have never since then feared OR hoped that something was wrong with me. I picked up my mat and walked out of his office.
Of course it’s not always like that. I wonder if that day when Jesus was walking along the pool at Bethesda if there were many other people who were legitimately sick and lame and beyond help. There must have been. I wonder if he saw this one guy. I mean, really saw in him what he could not see in himself. I wonder if Jesus knew that this man had given up and knew that he could be made well. See, it’s a weird healing text because not only does Jesus say “do you want to be made well?” he doesn’t do the normal healing thing he just says “stand up – take your mat and walk” Stop waiting for someone to carry you. Stop waiting for other people not be in your way. Why? Because you can. I wonder if Jesus said: nothing’s wrong with you. You just have to deal with your life.
In the face of Christ this man was confronted with the truth. And that truth may have stung, like truth so often does, but it also set him free. But the fact that he was able to take his mat and walk away obviously had very little to do with his own desire to be healed. What it had to do with is God’s desire for his healing.
That’s God’s thing. Seeing us. Offering the truth. Restoring that which is broken. Pursuing our healing long after we’ve given up. Loving us into wholeness. And wanting us to be made new, to be made whole, to take up our mats and walk.
So come to this healing place in front of you– no one has to carry you to this table of grace. And here there is no one to get in your way. Come to this table tonight and bring the mats you think you are stuck laying on and lay them at the feet of your savior who bids you walk and be free. Amen.
06 December 2012
Favorite Spiritual Songs: Religious Music Chosen By The HuffPost Community 6DEC12
MUSIC has power, religious music can inspire, lift you out of a funk, heal, invigorate, and reinforce your faith. This from HuffPost, and if you have a favorite spiritual song you can submit it to them for consideration to this list. Not all the videos I have below are from the article's list, I found them when viewing those on the list and they spoke to me. Let them hear your voice.....
Music has been called the language of the soul and the
sacred can be heard in songs across religious traditions. Every person
has a favorite spiritual piece of music that we turn to in good times
and bad. Earlier this fall, we asked the HuffPost Religion community what spiritual songs lift them up. Below is a list of all our favorites.
What song lifts you up? Tell us in the comments so we can add your most loved spiritual song to the collection.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/06/spiritual-songs-religious-music_n_2200602.html#slide=1811229
What song lifts you up? Tell us in the comments so we can add your most loved spiritual song to the collection.
15 September 2012
Sometimes It Hurts; a Sermon on Healing 9SEP12
FROM Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber, a beautiful sermon on healing and salvation for all of us. Do yourself a favor and listen to the sermon because the words are much more powerful spoken than read....
NBW sermon 9-9-12 <——-click here to listen along. Sermons are a spoken act.
Given our Gospel reading, I thought it might be fun to start tonight with a little American history lesson. So here we go: For most of the 18th and 19th century, long before it was a vacation spot, Martha’s Vineyard was a bi-lingual community. It was a bi-lingual community because everyone spoke both English and, interestingly enough, not French, or Spanish…but sign language. See, deafness was a recessive hereditary trait and Martha’s Vineyard was a pretty isolated genetic population which meant that any given person on the island could have both hearing and deaf siblings. As a matter of fact, in the mid 1800’s there were areas of Martha’s Vineyard where 25% of the population was deaf. So deafness was just a trait some people had, like blondness or tallness. And everyone spoke sign language.
But everyone didn’t speak sign language in the region of Decapolis where the healing of the deaf man takes place and so “THEY” whoever THEY is…THEY brought to Jesus a deaf man with a speech impediment and BEGGED Jesus to lay his hand on him. The text doesn’t say a word about what the deaf guy wanted.
So this week I started wondering if Jesus showed up in Martha’s Vineyard 150 years ago when deafness was just a trait and not a disease would the collective “THEY” have brought him a deaf man to heal. Because it would kind of be like them bringing him a man born blonde and BEGGING Jesus to fix him.
And I get that there was not a whole lot of talk about psychology and identity politics and disability rights in Biblical times…but I couldn’t help thinking that THEY were using this man’s deafness to be what a family systems expert would call their “identified problem”.
Hey Jesus – we, the people who are just fine brought you the broken guy so you can fix him.
I can’t help feeling like it would have been more realistic if all of the THEYs who brought the deaf man to Jesus also would have also sought healing for themselves.
But that’s not how we operate. We let the obviously broken people carry all the brokenness for us. It’s quite the convenient system really. Like when someone is obviously an active alcoholic, we are thrilled not to have to look at our own drinking.
This system we have where we all agree on who the real drunk is and who the real liar is and who the real emotionally needy person is and who is obviously disabled person works really well for us. That is, until Jesus shows up and ruins it.
Because when Jesus showed up I think it’s interesting that he took that deaf man away from the THEY. He removes him from that system. He sticks his fingers in his ears and spits and touched his tongue and looks to heaven and the text says he sighed. He looked to heaven and sighed. And the thing is, Jesus didn’t then rebuke the man or his deafness…he didn’t say I cast out the demon of deafness. He just touched him, looked to heaven, sighed and said “BE OPEN”.
It’s a wonderful statement for healing isn’t it? be open.
It’s an image that’s stuck with me all week. This might sound weird but all week I kept picturing Jesus sticking his fingers in each of your ears and saying “BE OPENED”. And then in the same daydream, before I could stop it, I pictured Jesus’ Holy and unwashed fingers in my own ears. He sighed he looked to heaven and he said Be Opened. To which I said “no thanks”.
See, It’s painful to be open. There’s no control in it. No self-determination. But Jesus is like that, taking us away from whatever the THEY thinks about us, getting all up in our business and insisting on our wholeness.
Be opened he says.
Be opened to a life where you aren’t the broken one anymore.
Be opened to the possibility that there is healing in the world and it might not look like you think it should.
Be opened to knowing that your own brokenness doesn’t need to be hidden behind someone else’s brokenness.
Be opened to the idea that you are stronger than you think.
Be opened to the idea that you aren’t as strong as you think.
Be opened to the fact that you may not ever get what you want and that you will actually be ok anyway.
Be opened to finally being happy.
Be opened to your own need for healing especially if you yourself are a healer.
Be opened to life and life abundant.
Maybe that’s what healing really is.
We think it’s about identifying what’s wrong with someone else or with ourselves and then having that thing cured, but I wonder if spiritual healing has more to do with being opened than being cured.
There’s a famous Evangelical Christian named Joni Erikson. She became a quaraplegic as a teenager and went on to write a lovely memoir about that story and her relationship with God. Having lost the use of her arms she eventually learned to paint by holding a brush in her teeth. She was a real hero of mine growing up. Which is why when I was watching 24 consecutive hours of bad Christian television a few years ago for a book I was writing I was dismayed when Joni Erikson appeared as a guest on the 700 club…because even I can’t be snarky about this woman. She is a lovely human being and what she said in that interview forever changed how I view the issue of healing. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of well meaning and enthusiastic “prayer warriors” often offer to pray for Joni to be healed of her quadriplegia, and unlike me who would likely roll my eyes and say give me a break she never refuses prayer. But from her wheelchair Joni Erikson says to them, Could you instead please pray for the times when I cherish inflated ideas of my own importance … the times when I fudge the truth … the times when I manipulate my husband to get things my own way…sin…’mam if you want to pray for me pray that I receive the power of resurrection to put to death the things in my life that displease God.
The THEY she encounters might keep praying for a cure but Joni Erikson is opened.
My friend Sara this week told me about a friend of hers who that very day was just hours away from dying. She told me that for 15 years her friend had dealt with different cancers and treatments and that he was completely at peace about his own death. She then described this sick man as the most healed person she knew. He was opened.
But it’s not easy. Healing can hurt. It can feel like a loss as much as it can feel like a gain.
Because sometimes healing feels more like death and resurrection than getting a warm cookie and glass of milk.
Maybe you are someone who has for so long been the one who suffers depression or illness or dysfunction that you are simply more comfortable that way because frankly when you stay sick no one expects much from you. And that’s easier.
Maybe you are someone who deals so much with the brokenness and sickness of others in your work that you forget that you are in need of healing too.
Maybe you are someone who has experienced healing of hospitality here in this community and you have yet to be healed through offer the same thing to others.
Maybe you, like myself, would rather not admit to needing anything form anyone. Including Jesus.
And to all of this I picture Jesus sticking his fingers in our ears, looking to heaven, sighing and saying “be opened”. Be opened becasue there is more.
In the kingdom of God the kingdom innagurated by the crucified and risen one there is more, which is exactly why after these healings Jesus told people not to go and blab about it. He knew that without knowing the end of the story, without the cross, they’d just get it wrong. Because when Jesus hung from the cross, he did so as the ultimate innocent victim, the world’s scapegoat as though to say This. Ends. Here. You just can’t look at the cross and think “Wow, good thing Jesus did that for the people we’ve identified as being the problem around here.” The healing love of God poured out through the death and resurrection of Christ which opens us up, sometimes even against our will is for you and it’s for me and it’s for the redemption of all creation.
In a letter to a friend who was struggling with faith, Flannery O’Connor wrote What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and just leave the rest to God. amen
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/09/sometimes-it-hurts-a-sermon-on-healing/
NBW sermon 9-9-12 <——-click here to listen along. Sermons are a spoken act.
31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” -Mark 7:31-37(My thanks to Richard Russeth and Jody and Stephanie Olson for their willingness to talk to me this week about their experiences with Jesus and deafness and this particular text.)
Given our Gospel reading, I thought it might be fun to start tonight with a little American history lesson. So here we go: For most of the 18th and 19th century, long before it was a vacation spot, Martha’s Vineyard was a bi-lingual community. It was a bi-lingual community because everyone spoke both English and, interestingly enough, not French, or Spanish…but sign language. See, deafness was a recessive hereditary trait and Martha’s Vineyard was a pretty isolated genetic population which meant that any given person on the island could have both hearing and deaf siblings. As a matter of fact, in the mid 1800’s there were areas of Martha’s Vineyard where 25% of the population was deaf. So deafness was just a trait some people had, like blondness or tallness. And everyone spoke sign language.
But everyone didn’t speak sign language in the region of Decapolis where the healing of the deaf man takes place and so “THEY” whoever THEY is…THEY brought to Jesus a deaf man with a speech impediment and BEGGED Jesus to lay his hand on him. The text doesn’t say a word about what the deaf guy wanted.
So this week I started wondering if Jesus showed up in Martha’s Vineyard 150 years ago when deafness was just a trait and not a disease would the collective “THEY” have brought him a deaf man to heal. Because it would kind of be like them bringing him a man born blonde and BEGGING Jesus to fix him.
And I get that there was not a whole lot of talk about psychology and identity politics and disability rights in Biblical times…but I couldn’t help thinking that THEY were using this man’s deafness to be what a family systems expert would call their “identified problem”.
Hey Jesus – we, the people who are just fine brought you the broken guy so you can fix him.
I can’t help feeling like it would have been more realistic if all of the THEYs who brought the deaf man to Jesus also would have also sought healing for themselves.
But that’s not how we operate. We let the obviously broken people carry all the brokenness for us. It’s quite the convenient system really. Like when someone is obviously an active alcoholic, we are thrilled not to have to look at our own drinking.
This system we have where we all agree on who the real drunk is and who the real liar is and who the real emotionally needy person is and who is obviously disabled person works really well for us. That is, until Jesus shows up and ruins it.
Because when Jesus showed up I think it’s interesting that he took that deaf man away from the THEY. He removes him from that system. He sticks his fingers in his ears and spits and touched his tongue and looks to heaven and the text says he sighed. He looked to heaven and sighed. And the thing is, Jesus didn’t then rebuke the man or his deafness…he didn’t say I cast out the demon of deafness. He just touched him, looked to heaven, sighed and said “BE OPEN”.
It’s a wonderful statement for healing isn’t it? be open.
It’s an image that’s stuck with me all week. This might sound weird but all week I kept picturing Jesus sticking his fingers in each of your ears and saying “BE OPENED”. And then in the same daydream, before I could stop it, I pictured Jesus’ Holy and unwashed fingers in my own ears. He sighed he looked to heaven and he said Be Opened. To which I said “no thanks”.
See, It’s painful to be open. There’s no control in it. No self-determination. But Jesus is like that, taking us away from whatever the THEY thinks about us, getting all up in our business and insisting on our wholeness.
Be opened he says.
Be opened to a life where you aren’t the broken one anymore.
Be opened to the possibility that there is healing in the world and it might not look like you think it should.
Be opened to knowing that your own brokenness doesn’t need to be hidden behind someone else’s brokenness.
Be opened to the idea that you are stronger than you think.
Be opened to the idea that you aren’t as strong as you think.
Be opened to the fact that you may not ever get what you want and that you will actually be ok anyway.
Be opened to finally being happy.
Be opened to your own need for healing especially if you yourself are a healer.
Be opened to life and life abundant.
Maybe that’s what healing really is.
We think it’s about identifying what’s wrong with someone else or with ourselves and then having that thing cured, but I wonder if spiritual healing has more to do with being opened than being cured.
There’s a famous Evangelical Christian named Joni Erikson. She became a quaraplegic as a teenager and went on to write a lovely memoir about that story and her relationship with God. Having lost the use of her arms she eventually learned to paint by holding a brush in her teeth. She was a real hero of mine growing up. Which is why when I was watching 24 consecutive hours of bad Christian television a few years ago for a book I was writing I was dismayed when Joni Erikson appeared as a guest on the 700 club…because even I can’t be snarky about this woman. She is a lovely human being and what she said in that interview forever changed how I view the issue of healing. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of well meaning and enthusiastic “prayer warriors” often offer to pray for Joni to be healed of her quadriplegia, and unlike me who would likely roll my eyes and say give me a break she never refuses prayer. But from her wheelchair Joni Erikson says to them, Could you instead please pray for the times when I cherish inflated ideas of my own importance … the times when I fudge the truth … the times when I manipulate my husband to get things my own way…sin…’mam if you want to pray for me pray that I receive the power of resurrection to put to death the things in my life that displease God.
The THEY she encounters might keep praying for a cure but Joni Erikson is opened.
My friend Sara this week told me about a friend of hers who that very day was just hours away from dying. She told me that for 15 years her friend had dealt with different cancers and treatments and that he was completely at peace about his own death. She then described this sick man as the most healed person she knew. He was opened.
But it’s not easy. Healing can hurt. It can feel like a loss as much as it can feel like a gain.
Because sometimes healing feels more like death and resurrection than getting a warm cookie and glass of milk.
Maybe you are someone who has for so long been the one who suffers depression or illness or dysfunction that you are simply more comfortable that way because frankly when you stay sick no one expects much from you. And that’s easier.
Maybe you are someone who deals so much with the brokenness and sickness of others in your work that you forget that you are in need of healing too.
Maybe you are someone who has experienced healing of hospitality here in this community and you have yet to be healed through offer the same thing to others.
Maybe you, like myself, would rather not admit to needing anything form anyone. Including Jesus.
And to all of this I picture Jesus sticking his fingers in our ears, looking to heaven, sighing and saying “be opened”. Be opened becasue there is more.
In the kingdom of God the kingdom innagurated by the crucified and risen one there is more, which is exactly why after these healings Jesus told people not to go and blab about it. He knew that without knowing the end of the story, without the cross, they’d just get it wrong. Because when Jesus hung from the cross, he did so as the ultimate innocent victim, the world’s scapegoat as though to say This. Ends. Here. You just can’t look at the cross and think “Wow, good thing Jesus did that for the people we’ve identified as being the problem around here.” The healing love of God poured out through the death and resurrection of Christ which opens us up, sometimes even against our will is for you and it’s for me and it’s for the redemption of all creation.
In a letter to a friend who was struggling with faith, Flannery O’Connor wrote What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and just leave the rest to God. amen
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/09/sometimes-it-hurts-a-sermon-on-healing/
17 December 2010
Neurotheology: This Is Your Brain On Religion 15DEZ10
THIS is a really interesting story from NPR....and everyone will have an opinion, it is just important, as stated in the article, to have a respectful and open mind...
For thousands of years, religion has posed some unanswerable questions: Who are we? What's the meaning of life? What does it mean to be religious?
Principles of Neurotheology
Read An ExcerptIn an effort to address those questions, Dr. Andrew Newberg has scanned the brains of praying nuns, chanting Sikhs and meditating Buddhists. He studies the relationship between the brain and religious experience, a field called neurotheology. And he's written a book, Principles of Neurotheology, that tries to lay the groundwork for a new kind of scientific and theological dialogue.
Newberg tells NPR's Neal Conan that neurotheology applies science and the scientific method to spirituality through brain imaging studies.
"[We] evaluate what's happening in people's brains when they are in a deep spiritual practice like meditation or prayer," Newberg says. He and his team then compare that with the same brains in a state of rest. "This has really given us a remarkable window into what it means for people to be religious or spiritual or to do these kinds of practices."
Newberg's scans have also shown the ways in which religious practices, like meditation, can help shape a brain. Newberg describes one study in which he worked with older individuals who were experiencing memory problems. Newberg took scans of their brains, then taught them a mantra-based type of meditation and asked them to practice that meditation 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks, they came back for another scan, and Newberg found some dramatic differences.
"We found some very significant and profound changes in their brain just at rest, particularly in the areas of the brain that help us to focus our mind and to focus our attention," he says.
According to Newberg, many of the participants related that they were thinking more clearly and were better able to remember things after eight weeks of meditation. Remarkably, the new scans and memory tests confirmed their claims.
"They had improvements of about 10 or 15 percent," Newberg says. "This is only after eight weeks at 12 minutes a day, so you can imagine what happens in people who are deeply religious and spiritual and are doing these practices for hours a day for years and years."
Newberg emphasizes that while neurotheology won't provide definitive findings about things like the existence of a higher power, it will provide a deeper understanding of what it means for a person to be religious.
"For those individuals who want to go down the path of arguing that all of our religious and spiritual experiences are nothing more than biological phenomena, some of this data does support that kind of a conclusion," Newberg says. "But the data also does not specifically eliminate the notion that there is a religious or spiritual or divine presence in the world."
Because of that, Newberg says the success of neurotheology hinges on open-mindedness.
"One could try to conclude one way or the other that maybe it’s the biology or maybe God's really in the room, but the scan itself doesn't really show that," Newberg says. "For neurotheology to really work as a field it needs to be very respectful and open to both perspectives."
Principles of Neurotheology
"Neurotheology" is a unique field of scholarship and investigation that seeks to understand the relationship specifically between the brain and theology, and more broadly between the mind and religion. As a topic, neurotheology has garnered substantial attention in the academic and lay communities in recent years. Several books have been written addressing the relationship between the brain and religious experience and numerous scholarly articles have been published on the topic. The scientific and religious communities have been very interested in obtaining more information regarding neurotheology, how to approach this topic, and whether science and religion can be integrated in some manner that preserves, and perhaps enhances, both.
If neurotheology is to be considered a viable field going forward, it requires a set of clear principles that can be generally agreed upon and supported by both the theological or religious perspective and the scientific one as well. The overall purpose of this book is to set forth the necessary principles of neurotheology which can be used as a foundation for future neurotheological discourse and scholarship.
It is important to infuse throughout the principles of neurotheology the notion that neurotheology requires an openness to both the scientific as well as the spiritual perspectives. It is also important to preserve the essential elements of both perspectives. The scientific side must progress utilizing adequate definitions, measures, methodology and interpretations of data. The religious side must maintain a subjective sense of spirituality, a phenomenological assessment of the sense of ultimate reality that may or may not include a Divine presence, a notion of the meaning and purpose in life, an adherence to various doctrinal processes, and a careful analysis of religion from the theological perspective.
In short, for neurotheology to be successful, science must be kept rigorous and religion must be kept religious. This book will also have the purpose of facilitating a sharing of ideas and concepts across the boundary between science and religion. Such a dialogue can be considered a constructive approach that informs both perspectives by enriching the understanding of both science and religion.
It is at the neurotheological juncture that the science and religion interaction may be most valuable and help establish a more fundamental link between the spiritual and biological dimensions of the human being. Therefore, neurotheology, which should provide an openness to a number of different perspectives, might also be viewed as a nexus in which those from the religious as well as scientific side can come together to explore deep issues about humanity in a constructive and complementary manner. There, no doubt, will be differing view points that will be raised throughout this process, some of which may be more exclusive of one perspective or the other. However, it should be stressed that for neurotheology to grow as a field, it is imperative that one remains open, at least somewhat, to all of the different perspectives including those that are religious or spiritual, cultural, or scientific.
In addition to the complex interrelationship between science and religion over the years, neurotheological research must draw upon the current state of modern scientific methods and existing theological debates. Science has advanced significantly in the past several decades with regard to the study of the human brain. Neurotheology should be prepared to take full advantage of the advances in fields of science such as functional brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and genetics. On the other hand, neurotheological scholarship should also be prepared to engage the full range of theological issues. That theology continues to evolve and change from the more dogmatic perspectives of the past, through natural theology and systematic theology, neurotheology must acknowledge that there are many fascinating theological issues that face each religious tradition.
When considering the primary reasons for developing neurotheology as a field, we can consider four foundational goals for scholarship in this area. These are:
1. To improve our understanding of the human mind and brain.
2. To improve our understanding of religion and theology.
3. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of health and well being.
4. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of religion and spirituality.
These four goals are reciprocal in that they suggest that both religious and scientific pursuits might benefit from neurotheological research. The first two are meant to be both esoteric as well as pragmatic regarding scientific and theological disciplines. The second two goals refer to the importance of providing practical applications of neurotheological findings towards improving human life both individually and globally.
Given the enormity of these tasks to help understand ourselves, our relationship to God or the absolute, and the nature of reality itself, neurotheology appears poised to at least make a substantial attempt at addressing such issues. While other theological, philosophical, and scientific approaches have also tried to tackle these "big" questions, it would seem that neurotheology holds a unique perspective. It is one of the only disciplines that necessarily seeks to integrate science and theology, and if defined broadly, many other relevant fields. And this is perhaps the greatest gift of neurotheology, the ability to foster a rich multidisciplinary dialogue in which we help others get it right so that we can advance the human person and human thought as it relates to our mental, biological, and spiritual selves.
Excerpted from Principles of Neurotheology by Andrew B. Newberg. Copyright 2010 by Andrew B. Newberg. Excerpted by permission of Ashgate.
Andrew Newberg ... And This Is Your Brain On Buddha: As part of his research, Andrew Newberg studied the brain activity of experienced Tibetan Buddhists before and during meditation. Newberg found an increase of activity in the meditators' frontal lobe, responsible for focusing attention and concentration, during meditation. He found similar results in a similar study of older individuals experiencing memory problems.
Principles of Neurotheology
By Andrew B. Newberg
Paperback, 284 pages
Ashgate
List price: $29.95
Read An ExcerptNewberg tells NPR's Neal Conan that neurotheology applies science and the scientific method to spirituality through brain imaging studies.
"[We] evaluate what's happening in people's brains when they are in a deep spiritual practice like meditation or prayer," Newberg says. He and his team then compare that with the same brains in a state of rest. "This has really given us a remarkable window into what it means for people to be religious or spiritual or to do these kinds of practices."
Newberg's scans have also shown the ways in which religious practices, like meditation, can help shape a brain. Newberg describes one study in which he worked with older individuals who were experiencing memory problems. Newberg took scans of their brains, then taught them a mantra-based type of meditation and asked them to practice that meditation 12 minutes a day for eight weeks. At the end of the eight weeks, they came back for another scan, and Newberg found some dramatic differences.
"We found some very significant and profound changes in their brain just at rest, particularly in the areas of the brain that help us to focus our mind and to focus our attention," he says.
Is This Your Brain On God?
More than half of adult Americans report that a spiritual experience has changed their lives."They had improvements of about 10 or 15 percent," Newberg says. "This is only after eight weeks at 12 minutes a day, so you can imagine what happens in people who are deeply religious and spiritual and are doing these practices for hours a day for years and years."
Enlarge Courtesy of Andrew Newberg Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia.
Courtesy of Andrew Newberg
Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia.
"For those individuals who want to go down the path of arguing that all of our religious and spiritual experiences are nothing more than biological phenomena, some of this data does support that kind of a conclusion," Newberg says. "But the data also does not specifically eliminate the notion that there is a religious or spiritual or divine presence in the world."
Because of that, Newberg says the success of neurotheology hinges on open-mindedness.
"One could try to conclude one way or the other that maybe it’s the biology or maybe God's really in the room, but the scan itself doesn't really show that," Newberg says. "For neurotheology to really work as a field it needs to be very respectful and open to both perspectives."
Excerpt: 'Principles Of Neurotheology'
Principles of Neurotheology
By Andrew B. Newberg
Paperback, 284 pages
Ashgate
List price: $29.95
If neurotheology is to be considered a viable field going forward, it requires a set of clear principles that can be generally agreed upon and supported by both the theological or religious perspective and the scientific one as well. The overall purpose of this book is to set forth the necessary principles of neurotheology which can be used as a foundation for future neurotheological discourse and scholarship.
It is important to infuse throughout the principles of neurotheology the notion that neurotheology requires an openness to both the scientific as well as the spiritual perspectives. It is also important to preserve the essential elements of both perspectives. The scientific side must progress utilizing adequate definitions, measures, methodology and interpretations of data. The religious side must maintain a subjective sense of spirituality, a phenomenological assessment of the sense of ultimate reality that may or may not include a Divine presence, a notion of the meaning and purpose in life, an adherence to various doctrinal processes, and a careful analysis of religion from the theological perspective.
In short, for neurotheology to be successful, science must be kept rigorous and religion must be kept religious. This book will also have the purpose of facilitating a sharing of ideas and concepts across the boundary between science and religion. Such a dialogue can be considered a constructive approach that informs both perspectives by enriching the understanding of both science and religion.
It is at the neurotheological juncture that the science and religion interaction may be most valuable and help establish a more fundamental link between the spiritual and biological dimensions of the human being. Therefore, neurotheology, which should provide an openness to a number of different perspectives, might also be viewed as a nexus in which those from the religious as well as scientific side can come together to explore deep issues about humanity in a constructive and complementary manner. There, no doubt, will be differing view points that will be raised throughout this process, some of which may be more exclusive of one perspective or the other. However, it should be stressed that for neurotheology to grow as a field, it is imperative that one remains open, at least somewhat, to all of the different perspectives including those that are religious or spiritual, cultural, or scientific.
In addition to the complex interrelationship between science and religion over the years, neurotheological research must draw upon the current state of modern scientific methods and existing theological debates. Science has advanced significantly in the past several decades with regard to the study of the human brain. Neurotheology should be prepared to take full advantage of the advances in fields of science such as functional brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and genetics. On the other hand, neurotheological scholarship should also be prepared to engage the full range of theological issues. That theology continues to evolve and change from the more dogmatic perspectives of the past, through natural theology and systematic theology, neurotheology must acknowledge that there are many fascinating theological issues that face each religious tradition.
When considering the primary reasons for developing neurotheology as a field, we can consider four foundational goals for scholarship in this area. These are:
1. To improve our understanding of the human mind and brain.
2. To improve our understanding of religion and theology.
3. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of health and well being.
4. To improve the human condition, particularly in the context of religion and spirituality.
These four goals are reciprocal in that they suggest that both religious and scientific pursuits might benefit from neurotheological research. The first two are meant to be both esoteric as well as pragmatic regarding scientific and theological disciplines. The second two goals refer to the importance of providing practical applications of neurotheological findings towards improving human life both individually and globally.
Given the enormity of these tasks to help understand ourselves, our relationship to God or the absolute, and the nature of reality itself, neurotheology appears poised to at least make a substantial attempt at addressing such issues. While other theological, philosophical, and scientific approaches have also tried to tackle these "big" questions, it would seem that neurotheology holds a unique perspective. It is one of the only disciplines that necessarily seeks to integrate science and theology, and if defined broadly, many other relevant fields. And this is perhaps the greatest gift of neurotheology, the ability to foster a rich multidisciplinary dialogue in which we help others get it right so that we can advance the human person and human thought as it relates to our mental, biological, and spiritual selves.
Excerpted from Principles of Neurotheology by Andrew B. Newberg. Copyright 2010 by Andrew B. Newberg. Excerpted by permission of Ashgate.
13 September 2010
SERMON ON THE WOMAN WITH THE BENT BACK 12SEP10
FROM the lady preacher who calls her blog 'Sarcastic Lutheran', she often post great sermons and life lessons. Click the header to go to her blog.....you'll have to go there to see what other have e mailed her in response to her request......
Sermon on the Woman With the Bent Back
Luke 13:10-17
10Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
We know very little about the woman who was healed in our text today. The text is silent on the question of why was she healed and others weren’t. We don’t know why she bore the pain and humiliation of a bent back. Perhaps modern physiologists might be able to give a diagnoses, you know, now that we know SO much about human beings. Perhaps the source of her crippled physique was chiropractic in nature, perhaps a lack of calcium. Medically there’s only conjecture on our side of the 2,000 years that separate us from her.
None of us may have ever experienced the spinal reality of such a thing but The infirmity of the woman who was healed in our text for today seems spiritually familiar doesn’t it? Because her collapsed posture is the physical representation of being se encurvatus en se…, the self curved in on the self which, incidentally, is Luther’s definition of sin. Myopically unconcerned for anything but the self and having no thought for God or the neighbor. In other words, bent in a manner in which we see nothing but our own feet. We can come by it naturally – embodying the messages we receive from society and our families and our selves – that we are not thin enough, smart enough, rich enough, like our sister enough, or enough enough. This can just bend us in. Then add to it our cultural obsession with the self and the notion that we are our own Gods and the result is a deformity of identity. One particularly insidious example being our inability to forgive ourselves for not being God. For not being God! For making mistakes and getting things wrong and not hitting the mark. Hard to say which is worse – trying to be God for myself, or punishing myself for not managing to do something that isn’t actually possible in the first place.. What bends us over so that we see only self are the voices from inside or outside that try to overpower the sound of God naming us as God’s own.
It’s hard to say what it was like for her that day when everything changed. We think of this text in Luke as a healing narrative but really it was nothing less than an exorcism. Well, that and another opportunity for Jesus to pick a fight with the nice religious folks since all of this happened on the Sabbath. In all fairness the leaders of the synagogue were just doing their job when they said to the crowds that it was the Sabbath day of rest and not a time for healings. But see, Jesus does not violate the Sabbath by healing her. He fulfills it. By healing her he actually does Sabbath TO her. He physically embodies in her what Sabbath is, namely a time for putting aside our handiwork so that we might witness the handiwork of God. She is passive, in the midst of the faithful where she is restored to an upright position, no longer turned in on herself and is named as a Child of God’s promises. That sounds pretty sabbathy to me.
After she is seen, touched, and healed by Christ, she is named by him as a daughter of Abraham and restored to the dignity and wholeness of being a child of the promise. You know, this is the only place in the Bible where the term daughter of Abraham appears. Here Jesus places her in the history of God’s promises. And the promise to which she has claim...the promise to Abraham was not that his children and children’s children would be super rich and important and fabulous…the promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be a blessing to all nations. The good news for Abraham had little do with himself and had a lot to do with God’s love for the whole world.
So this daughter of Abraham is blessed to be a blessing. She encounters the Christ and For the first time in 18 years stands upright and praises God not because she got what she wanted but because praise is simply the consequence of wholeness.
Here’s where we finally learn what the purpose of her healing was. The purpose of her healing is not fulfilled when she stands up straight and it’s not fulfilled when she is named and it’s not fulfilled when she praises God. The healing is completed when the community witnesses new life in their midst and rejoices. In other words, her healing from God had less to do with her and more to do with God’s love for the whole world.
Having seen God’s mercy in the upright body of this daughter of Abraham, the community rejoices for having God in their midst. Right there in the mess of their broken lives and fractured hopes and crippled bodies. Right there in the midst of the hypocrites and religious legalists. There is where God shows up.
It’s the same for you actually. Your encounter with God’s grace has a purpose. Your being freed from the tyranny of self has a purpose. Your being acted upon by God…being made whole has a purpose: and it’s not so that you can collect higher self-esteem and a sense of well-being in order to Spiritually feather your nest. God does all of this for the good of your neighbor. It’s always been like that with God. You know why God gave us the 10 commandments? Because God demands obedience? So that you will be happy? nope. Because God loves your neighbor and would prefer you not steal from them or sleep with their husbands.
Having been restored by God, having been healed of being bent in on herself, this daughter of Abraham then bore Christ into her community. So if you too have been freed from bondage, if you have been shown selfless love, raised from the dead, restored to wholeness it is for the benefit of the community. Don’t keep it to yourself. Because like the bent woman, you really are blessed to be a blessing.
This week I asked you to email me examples of where God is healing you where you feel free and where you still feel bound. So, as an experience of doing Sabbath to each other hear now where God is at work.
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