“Well, there’s a rabbi nearby,” said the farmer. “His tent is just beyond this olive grove. Let’s go ask him what he thinks about our problem. I agree ahead of time to abide by his decision about what you and I should do.”
The other man nodded and they walked together to visit the sage.
The rabbi greeted them and gave them both some water to drink. The three of them sat down in the tent, which was cool and pleasant.
“Rabbi,” began the farmer, “this man tells me I must run with him to Jerusalem immediately. Because of the ram’s horn.”
“Why would you not accompany him?” inquired the rabbi.
The other man interrupted: “He won’t come to see the Messiah! They say the Messiah has arrived. He’d rather finish planting this one little tree in the middle of nowhere. Can you believe it?”
“Believe what, my son?” asked the rabbi. “That the Messiah is waiting in Jerusalem or that this farmer wants to plant his tree?” The rabbi was weary and kind all at once. He had seen and heard a lot of things in his life but seemed quite content in his tent.
“I am confused by your question, Rabbi,” said the man in a hurry to reach the city.
“Then you are beginning to stop and think, my son. That is good.”
The farmer was thinking about his sapling, laying and baking on the hot earth, still unplanted. He spoke: “Rabbi, I have pledged to my friend that I will abide by your judgment on this situation. Perhaps you can direct us.”
The rabbi smiled as he sat and thought for a moment. Then he considered his two visitors with a serene look. There was a twinkle in his eye. He leaned a bit toward the farmer and said, “First plant the tree. It’s more of a sure thing.”
THIS STORY IS TAKEN from an old rabbinic parable and it speaks to the purpose of this book. The early devotions and aspirations of the world’s three major organized religions convey stories and ideas that completely refute the terrifying trend of extremism, violence, and terrorism committed in the name of these traditions. Not one of these traditions was meant to turn its followers into cult members nor have their disciples morph into the slaves of self-proclaimed, often brutal “deliverers.”
This cautionary notice appears in the early Bible: “If a prophet (the term here used as a warning) or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.”
At its core, religion is not supposed to tell you what to think; it’s supposed to tell you to think. Within a hundred years of the origin of the sapling story presented above, Jesus pointed to a mulberry tree and challenged his apostles to think of the tree’s grace and power and use the tree as a metaphor for faith. Seven centuries later, Mohammed declared: “If a Muslim plants a seedling or cultivates a field, whenever a bird a human or an animal eats of it, it will be counted as a charity for him.” He is also quoted in Islamic verses as admonishing a fellow cleric who made a bigoted remark while they attended the funeral of a Jew. The Prophet replied, “Was he not a human being?”
The big religions—which loved the Earth, pleaded for social justice, and upheld personal freedom, and, yes, applauded love—appear to have been co-opted by fundamentalists and zealots. Hate crowds the pages of theological manuals, excommunication notices, and fatwās. This is not just recently; the path of religion is drenched with blood and littered with bones. Like a bad dream, we seem to be reliving its most melancholy and medieval travesties; we are living in a world of televised crusades and theological wars. It leaves us sitting in all-but-empty churches listening to useless pieties and waiting in choking, endless security lines filing past digital checkpoints. We are uncomfortable, wary, tired, and jumpy. If it’s not another suicide bomber or civil war atrocity, then it’s the latest scandalized bishop or charismatic preacher or disgraced rabbi. It leaves people like you and me shaking our heads and proclaiming: “I don’t know what to believe!”
And what person of any intelligence, any mercy, and any humility would not be asking this question? We are hardly all atheists; we need faith and caring and some rituals to connect us to our childhood homes, our parents, and our grandparents. We see something in a lit candle—a festive hope or a remembered soul. We find relief in confession; we get comfort and pleasure from holiday meals; we like to feel we can kneel on the earth, on a rug, or on the floor of a pagoda and speak quietly with God. We just want to trust the officers of God’s houses, and we want to make sense of what’s become a skewed scripture.
We don’t want somebody to tell us he or she is a messiah; we’d prefer to discover messianic moments by ourselves.
What of the little guy who can’t keep pace with all the edicts or can’t afford the membership dues or whose son or daughter falls in love with someone from “outside the faith?” All this guy wants is peace and acceptance, and he’s not even dealing with cults or fanatics. He’s dealing with a church or a mosque or a synagogue, and what he is getting is rejection and judgment. For God’s sake, we clergy should be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
We will find a lot to believe in again when we are permitted to stop confusing faith with the saga of a few lionized male leaders. When we stop hearing the ram’s horn as tyranny but as music. When we maintain respect for traditions but keep glory at arm’s length. When we are smart enough to sprinkle the salt of skepticism upon the hard-won bread of life.
Spirituality is the story of thousands of everyday people going about their nonsensational lives until, when trouble or cruelty or cancer call, necessity intervenes, and they show up, line up, reach out, and sometimes even pray. And there is hope when those prayers are not crushed by the small-mindedness of church leaders who care more about their power than our piety.
“Take off your shoes,” God admonishes Moses at the site of the Burning Bush. “You are standing on holy ground.” What was this God actually saying? Moses was not at the Vatican. He was not at the Mosque of Omar. He was not even in Jerusalem. He was in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere. In other words, wherever you feel God, that is holy ground; and what you feel and what you experience is real and it is what you believe.
A wise pastor of the Gospel once told me, “Religion works best as a salad. It has to have a variety of ingredients mixed together to come out good. Each one of us is an ingredient.”
These days, too many people are inbred from childhood to follow extremist chief rabbis and self-righteous evangelicals and sexually deviant priests. There are imams who have lost their minds and any connections with Mohammed. The majority of Muslims, who honor the Prophet’s historic message, have watched their faith become transposed in a regrettable way.
Mohammed was a complex and charismatic man who embraced all of the preceding faiths, affirmed the prophetic qualities of Moses and Jesus before him, and who stated: “Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you well you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong you will do wrong. Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do well and not to do wrong if they do evil.”
This is the beacon in whose name mothers send their children to be suicide bombers? Moses is the freedom marcher and teacher in whose standard clerics in Jerusalem spit at teenage girls, who excommunicate one another, and yearn for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock. Jesus asked, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?” What are you to believe? One thing worth knowing is that the religions have somewhat fossilized into archaic, even dangerous organisms, spewing out hate and division, enslaving minds, and that you have to go back to the beginnings to rediscover that each one of us is God’s equal child and all we have to believe in is pastoral kindness.
Just because some of God’s professionals and profiteers have lost contact with the rhapsody,