Faith by Phil Fox Rose
As the viral video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” by Jefferson Bethke, approaches 18 million views, I will add my response into the clutter. I’ve seen pro-life responses. I’ve seen Catholic exceptionalism responses. I’ve seen atheist and non-Christian responses that agree but then have their own conclusions. I am not interested in getting into theological debate, or in driving wedges between people. I want to make a simple point. It’s the same point I often make to friends who say they’re spiritual but not religious. And to some atheist friends right after they’ve explained why they don’t believe in God.
It is this: What you are calling religion is not what I call religion, and it is not the definition of religion. The God you blame or are angry at or don’t believe in is not my God. You’re experience is real, without a doubt. And I honor that. You are speaking from hurt. Your encounters with religion, as given to you by parents and authority figures, were messed up. And there’s no question that Jesus devoted a lot of attention to denouncing those types of religious behavior and expression. But the religion that hurt you or disappointed you is not all organized religion.
You’re experience is real, without a doubt. And I honor that. You are speaking from hurt. Your encounters with religion, as given to you by parents and authority figures, were messed up. And there’s no question that Jesus devoted a lot of attention to denouncing those types of religious behavior and expression. But the religion that hurt you or disappointed you is not all organized religion.
What we call a religion is made up of three things: belief that there’s something more than this material world; a … Continue reading Re: Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
It was all of 13 minutes after midnight on Tuesday night when I went to look up something in Wikipedia… even though I knew the blackout protest was coming and had posted about it. If you didn’t know what was going on or would like to learn a little more about SOPA and PIPA, with hopefully a slightly spiritual angle, read on. But I want to stress, this is not a partisan issue. As I’ll explain later, the line between supporters and opponents has little to do with party affiliation. As Wikipedia said, in its message about participating in the blackout:
It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web… although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not.
If you’re not interested, forgive my using this, oh, let’s call it a point of personal privilege. SOPA and PIPA are bills before the U.S. House and Senate, respectively, that aim to fight copyright infringement in the digital sphere. As such, their supporters are portraying them as simply fair. But the bills present a clear-cut dividing line between the interests of big business and the interests of free and vital internet and tech industries. And since a good amount of the public conversation (including this column) is on the internet, that means free speech. The health and vitality of speech on the net is of personal importance. I hope I can explain why it is important to you too.
What’s the big deal about SOPA and PIPA?
In a nutshell, piracy and bootlegging are already illegal. (You’ve seen that obnoxious message from the FBI at the beginning of every DVD that you can’t fast-forward through.) But … Continue reading What Works: SOPA, PIPA and the Illusion of Control
Faith by Phil Fox Rose Many “alternative” gift articles suggest non-gifts — things like giving to charity in the person’s name, or giving service rather than a thing — but choosing a present specifically for another person, wrapping it playfully and offering it to them can tap into love, charity, selflessness and hospitality. I refuse to let consumerism win by equating gift giving with money and greed. I want you to buy gifts, real physical gifts. So how do we choose gifts in a mass consumer culture?
There isn’t just one approach. You might choose items made locally; or by individuals; or from small manufacturers that treat their employees well. If you’re not buying directly from the supplier, you will be considering the retailer too. Let’s call it “conscious” gift shopping. The spiritual principle here is to consider the whole gift: what it will mean to the recipient; what it’s made of; how it was made; who made it; how it got to your hands. I think everyone can embrace supporting individual craftspeople and small businesses over multinational corporations. At least for Christmas.
… Continue reading What Works: Conscious Gift Shopping
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
We are told it is natural to thirst for fulfillment in aligning our life with God’s plan for us and to thirst for the kingdom of heaven on earth to be made manifest around us. So how is this compatible with the idea of accepting everything exactly as it is? This tension is expressed in the Serenity Prayer, which I’ve written about here before. In one line we ask for the courage to change what we can; in another the serenity to accept what we can’t. The prayer’s author then adds a request for the wisdom to know the difference. Well, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?
Usually in this column, I at least take a stab at giving some advice. But here all I can do is acknowledge the tension. For myself, I focus on acceptance. Because that’s what I need to emphasize. Whether it’s my maleness, my intellectual temperament, my upbringing, the culture I live in, or something less easily label-able, I was primed in life to want to figure things out, fix them, have answers. So, balance is restored when I lean towards acceptance — when I stop trying to control things and just let them be — when I accept reality in the present moment exactly as it is.
Most of us, most of the time, need this side of the scale emphasized as a counterbalance to the modern world. Someone whose M.O. has always been inaction may need to emphasize willingness to change, though, to restore their balance.
I was primed in life to want to figure things out, fix them, have answers. So, balance is restored when I lean towards acceptance… But it’s not that simple, because I also have a history of standing at … Continue reading What Works: Between acceptance and thirst
Faith by Phil Fox Rose I probably should have had an obit for Steve Jobs ready to run. We had a dry run when he resigned as head of Apple a few months ago. But I didn’t, and many others have accurately chronicled the facts, so instead, for my regular personal spirituality column, I’m going to look at a few things we can learn from him.
Though I never had the pleasure of meeting the man, Steve Jobs’ work and influence affected my life often. At different times, I came close to working for both Apple and Pixar, the latter before he took it over. The first personal computer I ever bought was a Mac 512, no hard drive, for $2,600 (in 1984 money; that’s the equivalent of $5,400 today). Compared to my current MacBook, it had 1/800th the RAM, 1/600,000 the storage, and maybe 1/1000th the processing speed. The excitement as my wife and I brought home that machine and started exploring its revolutionary features was unlike anything I’ve experienced since with technology. Though iPods, iPhones and iPads are amazing, and the internet may be a more important shift, they are not as groundbreaking as was that moment. That was the arrival in my home of personal computing, of the home computer. All these later breakthroughs have built on that. Several years later, I was honored to write a landmark cover article for PC Magazine, at that time the nation’s tenth largest magazine, explaining the benefits of the Mac’s operating system to DOS and Windows users, and I wrote a column about the Mac for several years after that.
Follow your heart For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would … Continue reading What Works: Lessons from Steve Jobs
Culture by Phil Fox Rose The Way, written and directed by Emilio Estevez (Bobby) and starring his father, Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now, The West Wing, The Departed), is rather obviously about the spiritual journey. The Camino de Santiago, called “The Way,” is a literal spiritual journey, a 1,000-year-old 500-mile pilgrimage route across the Pyrenees. The lead character Tom (Sheen) takes a physical journey to Spain and eventually on the Camino while also taking a spiritual journey starting with word that his son (Estevez) has died. Many of the other characters Tom meets along the way are on their own spiritual journeys, whether they are Camino pilgrims or not.
Despite being built around a religious pilgrimage, however, The Way is not a “faith-based” film; rather, it is a movie about a human story, and the human story. There is no preaching; there are no soppy scenes meant to tug at the spiritual heartstrings. Estevez’s writing reveals a sophisticated understanding of the beautiful brokenness of people, the glorious absurdity of it all. One of the overarching themes is how Tom gets thrown together with other pilgrims. Not only was it his intent to travel alone, but if he were to travel with others, these are definitely not the others he would choose. But it is precisely through struggling with each other’s imperfections that we are challenged, pushed outside our comfort zone, and, sometimes, forced to grow spiritually whether we like it or not.
The Way
Written and directed by Emilio Estevez Starring Martin Sheen, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wageningen, James Nesbitt PG-13 115 minutes Release date: October 7, 2011 (limited); October 21, 2011 (wide)
I asked Estevez about this aspect of the film, and he said: “If we are honest, I think the first thing we’d agree on about ourselves is that we … Continue reading The Way: A Pilgrimage Worth Taking
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
Swedish river scene, Jan van Goyen, 1596-1656
I often hear people talking about living in the present moment as if it is a struggle, some cosmic game of attempting to grasp something that is fleeting, illusory. They say things like, “the moment I have it, it’s gone.” While this is true and can be frustrating, the last thing present moment awareness is about is grabbing serenity. I have always liked the metaphor of the river (borrowed from my Christian contemplative practice of centering prayer) in talking of the flow of thoughts. Imagine the stream of consciousness as a river, with boats and debris representing thoughts. You’re sitting on the bank of the river watching it. Normal awareness has you looking at each individual boat-thought, following it down the river with your eyes — and to strain the metaphor, getting on it and opening hatches — then suddenly shifting your awareness to another boat and so on. If your mind is particularly cluttered, you can feel overwhelmed by all the boats you have to look at and it can feel like that classic I Love Lucy skit with the conveyor belt at the chocolate factory, like you’re falling behind and they start slipping by. There can be a sense of panic that a thought that’s getting past you without attention is important and you’re missing it.
Present moment awareness is simply sitting on the bank and watching the river, not the boats. Boats cross your field of vision and you do see them, but you don’t follow them with your eyes or get on them. They’re not out of focus, but you don’t focus on them.
The present moment is where reality is, where God is. When you remove the obstacles from being … Continue reading What Works: Cultivating presence
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
Vermeer's "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"
My last column, about waiting patiently for a late bus, provoked some interesting comments and reactions (on the site and directly) that tease out the bigger issues involved. While I wrote about waiting for someone who’s late, two commenters brought up the flipside of the same time management coin — what to do when you’re going to be late yourself through no fault of your own. Fellow Busted Halo contributor Ginny Moyer wrote:
I have often been in situations where freeway traffic is crawling along, which is pretty high on the frustration-meter. In those situations, there really IS nothing to do but just let go and crawl right along with it. That requires a certain kind of surrender, which is not easy for me … but it’s a skill worth cultivating. When I stop fighting it and just let it go, I can feel my stress level drop dramatically. “It is what it is” is a very helpful mantra for me, in those situations.
And Emily said,
I also think of saying that mantra “get there when i’ll get there” is like a little prayer to the Holy Spirit saying, I trust you, guide me. It has given me the best relief when I used to have road rage.
I’ve written two earlier columns about being late, here and here. Whether you’re waiting for someone who’s late or you’re running late yourself, the answer, of course, is the same: accept that this is what’s happening and, if you can’t change it, don’t stress. In the same way that in my scenario, “the bus will arrive when it arrives,” if you’re running late (and there’s no way to do anything about … Continue reading What Works: Waiting Patiently Follow-up and Martha and Mary
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
One of the most popular columns I’ve ever written is about struggling with being on time. It led to a TV interview and, almost two years later, people still regularly bring it up in conversation. But working on your own on timeness can lead to an interesting new issue: being on time when others are not.
It’s one thing to be on time and have everything go smoothly. You can point to your on timeness and feel a sense of self-satisfaction at having contributed to the proper flow of the universe by having aligned yourself with the way things are meant to be. Call it spiritual pride or call it enjoying the fruits of “skillful means,” we all enjoy it when we do the right thing and things go our way. But what about when you are on time and someone else isn’t?
There’s a long-distance bus I catch fairly often in the summer coming back to the city at the end of the weekend. My stop is in the middle of its route and, almost every time, the bus is about 10 minutes late. The place we wait isn’t covered and today it was 15 minutes late, in pouring rain. This is not convenient. I know it will probably be late, but I still have to make sure I’m there on time because every once in a while it is, and it doesn’t wait around for me if I’m late.
When the scheduled time arrives and the bus doesn’t, I see other travelers start checking the time. (I was going to say “checking their watches” but most people don’t check watches anymore, they check cell phones.) At first they do this as if to check their internal clock: “Isn’t … Continue reading What Works: Waiting patiently
Faith by Phil Fox Rose
You have just enough time left if you act now to join me in the Million PALA Challenge — a national campaign to get people active. (Sign up and join us at “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.) This challenge has been going on for a year, and I’m sorry about the last minute notice, but you still have time. I learned about it just recently from Kevin Sorbo, whose organization, A World Fit For Kids, is an official partner of the presidential program responsible for the challenge, and signed up myself.
To complete the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award (PALA) challenge and receive an (emailed) PALA certificate “signed” by co-chairs Drew Brees and Dominique Dawes, you have until the end of September to log six weeks in which you are active for at least half an hour each day for five of the seven days. (Or one hour per day for those under 18.) You register on the website and log and track your activities there. The Million PALA Challenge is a campaign to get one million Americans to complete this plan.
Make the commitment to be just a little more active for the next six weeks. Sign up for the Million PALA Challenge, then join me in our group. Once you’re logged in, this link will take you to the Busted Halo page, or you can find us by searching for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845.
I’ve created a group you can participate through. (After you sign up, search for “Team Busted Halo” or group #935845 and join us.) You can just sign up on your own, but I figured I might as … Continue reading What Works: The PALA Active Lifestyle Challenge
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