The Radicalization of Walter K. Booker (and why I'm OK with it...)

Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'

- Dr. Angela Davis

Lately I've heard numerous 'news' stories describe the "radicalization" of various religious zealots as a rationale for why they commit atrocities.  Like most, I suppose, I tend to judge them with a knowing (and, truthfully, condescending) "tsk, tsk" and then say a short prayer for their victims before moving on with my comfortable life.  And then one day I realized that I've been radicalized, too....

Increasingly at mid-life, I find that my thinking - and, I hope, very being - is far more radical than in my youth in many ways.  For example, I now consider myself a...

• Radical Feminist
• Radical Humanist
• Radical Life-ist

What's a Radical Feminist, you ask?  Well, in my (developing) formulation, it's a person who no longer believes in any limitations placed on those of the female gender voluntarily (which differentiates these from the natural [and legitimate-to-consider] physical ones).  I am against patriarchy in all of its forms, which is a really hard position to hold as the ostensible patriarch of my little clan ... but then my wife is my partner and equal in every way (and, truth be told, my better in most ways), so I'm not really the patriarch, am I, really?

(Reminds me of a time in my youth when my late, sainted mother suggested that I go ask my father to bless a purchase that she had already made on my behalf.  When I asked her why I should seek agreement on something that had already been done, she noted that it was important to let my father feel that he was involved and in charge.  Sure enough, my dad gave his blessing and then all was well ... except that I felt sad for the King as he sat on his throne in our den thinking that he actually knew what was going on and was presiding over it....)

That it will be novel to have our first-ever female president eventually strikes me as both sad and absurd in the 21st century.  Simply out, we must get beyond gender (in the sense of it being a restricting factor) as it warps  our shared reality and encourages self-limiting choices that are, on the whole, negative for us as a human race....

(And don't get me started about the absurdity and profanity of how too many of us treat our fellows in the LGBTQ community: suffice it to say that whoever you are and however you identify is your choice, reflective of the unique humanity with which you've been gifted ... and anyone who seeks to deny this for any reason - religious or otherwise - is an inhuman ass.  Your being LGBTQ or whatever doesn't affect who I choose to be in any way, so for me or anyone else to pretend that it does is just fundamentally dishonest and inhumane.  Be who you are on this one short trip of life that we get - and share - and know that whoever that turns out to be, I'm happy for and supportive and celebratory of you!)

And what's a Radical Humanist?  Well, in this still-developing formulation, I'm moving beyond the religious differences that we've chosen to divide us and focusing on what I consider to be the ultimate reality of our lives: that we are all equally human - which, to me, as a believer, means that we are all Children of God - and thus we are all deserving of having that humanity affirmed, supported and celebrated always.  I don't care if you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Sikh or an atheist, you're a human being and I believe that you deserve to be both allowed and encouraged to be who you are and that your uniqueness should be celebrated by us all.  None of us is better than any other of us, but we are legitimately different and these differences should be recognized, appreciated, explored and celebrated.

Hence, as a Radical Humanist, I'm also a fervent believer in and practitioner of Diversity & Inclusion.  It's pretty clear to me that the profound diversity in the natural world suggests that God (= He/She/It) is a believer in the power of uniqueness, otherwise why would we have so many different plants, animals, people, etc.?  Following on this, then, it's incumbent upon us to appreciate this idiosyncracy and try to leverage it for our mutual/collective benefit.

(Which is where I bring back in the concept of gender and, by example, suggest that it should be gotten beyond as a limiter in our thinking and experience but be absolutely and appropriately celebrated to the extent that being female is a very different and wonderful experience of our humanity.)

Or, put more positively, it's incumbent upon us to celebrate and learn more about our differences, not be scared by and 'Otherize' because of them.  Of course, let's acknowledge that this respectful exploration takes work, which is why so many decry so-called political correctness now: it's really an admission that they'd prefer that you respect what's different and good about them without them having to make the effort to do the same with respect to you.  Last I checked, successful, long-term relationships all seem to require abiding by the Law of Mutual Benefit, so any effort to shirk one's responsibility to understand as much as to be understood isn't likely to work well....

Another aspect of my Radical Humanism is my evolving and increasingly fierce embrace of ecology and acceptance of my individual and our collective responsibility to appreciate, respect, honor and cultivate this one sacred place that we've been given to live.  Anything that degrades or demeans Mother Earth is just as inappropriate and harmful as anything that does so with respect to any of its inhabitants (including the animals whom we tend to consider as lessers because we've been taught to presume that they don't have souls and thus are supposed to be ruled, for some reason, by those of us who claim to have them ...).

In sum, my Radical Humanism leads me to feel compelled to celebrate this One Life that we share - and/with all of God's Creatures and Children who share it - which is why I consider myself to be a(n evolving) Radical Life-ist, too.  (Yeah, I know, I need a better term for this; feel free to offer suggestions!)

What this means is simple: that in every moment of my existence and with every gift that I have been given and/or developed and in any and every way, I am compelled to affirm my own and others' uniqueness and right to exist and contribute and therefore that I am compelled to get beyond my comfort zone, reach out to those who may be different (but certainly in no way lesser) than me and to do the admittedly often challenging work of getting to know, affirming, supporting and celebrating their uniqueness and right to exist, too.

In the words of the insightful and inspiring Bishop John Shelby Spong, as a Radical Life-ist, I'm called to live fully, love wastefully and be all that I can be ... and, in so doing, to affirm, support and celebrate each and every one of God's other creatures in doing the same.

Not surprisingly, then, I find so much of our world repugnant and disheartening.  Our politics in America are toxic and mystifying: so many of us claim to be Christians and yet support policies that are the very antithesis of our Patron's example.  Our new Administration is an abomination in so many ways, including its appalling tendency to divide and diminish the humanity that it's supposed to serve while enabling the poisoning of our communities, the choice of commerce over citizens, the continuing disenfranchisement from voting rights and healthcare options, etc.  And then there's the ugliness in the rest of the world....

It hurts.  A lot.  (And, sometimes, too much.)

And yet I remain hopeful because there is a "still more excellent way," that of Radicalism.  Not only is being a Radical a more edifying way to live - to cite just a single example, the letting go of the impulse to hate and to fear and to inhumanity is so incredibly freeing - but it offers the opportunity to 'flip the script': instead of focusing on what's bad or wrong, we can revel in the myriad instances of what's beautiful, of what's right, of what's affirming, of what's supportive, of what's celebratory, etc., that occur in virtually every moment of every day and then build on them.

No, I'm not a pie-in-the-sky optimist or utopian, just a reality-based Radical.  Our choices are as clear as they are stark: we can contribute to the ugliness in our world and kill ourselves from the inside out or focus narrowly on ourselves and our own interests and accept our own gradual withering away morally and otherwise or we can engage lovingly with life and our fellow Children and Creatures of God and keep doing the bravest thing possible: joining hands with those who share this journey in time and keep putting one foot in front of the other toward a better and more humane existence.

As I've aged - and possibly matured - more and more I've moved from that middle, selfish choice to the radical third one and, in so doing, have experienced more of the beauty - and heartache - of life.  But, I've also experienced something unexpected: a profound, fundamental and animating joy that comes from living fully, loving wastefully and trying hard and failing every day at being all that I can be.

And, so, dear friends, I share my journey with you and invite you, too, to become a Radical....

So when I try to make sense of what I believe is my experience of the transcendent,

I use three concepts.

I experience God as “the Source of life” empowering me to“live fully.”

I experience God as “the Source of love” freeing me to “love wastefully,”

by which I mean to love without stopping to count the cost;

without pausing to determine whether the recipient of that love is an appropriate recipient.

I experience God as “the Ground of all Being,” who gives me the courage to be all that I can be.

If that is what God means to me then I worship this God by

“living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I am capable of being.”

My mission as a Christian is not “to convert the heathen” as we once asserted,

it is rather to assist in the task of helping all people

“to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that they are capable of being.”

This is a Christianity grounded in a radical understanding of humanity.

- Bishop John Shelby Spong

Not in spite of, but because of....

In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel

enlarged, not threatened, by difference....

 - Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

One of the sweeter ironies of my adult life is that I now voluntarily attend church more often than my sainted mother and far more than I grudgingly did as a teenager being lugged there by her oh so many years ago.  I go to feed my soul, to share in a community of spiritually-minded fellow human beings and to nurture - and, most often, restore - the innate sense of hope that I treasure but so often feels besieged by life of late.

And today's service was one of those spiritual gifts that brings me back to the sanctuary at least three weeks out of every four now.  We had a guest preacher, the Rev. Dr. Sonia E. Waters, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who just happens to be the Much Better Half of my dear friend and priest, the Rev. John A. Mennell.  (Like me, he's married way up, a gift for which we are both thankful and that we revel in often.)  She taught - and I do mean taught, even as she preached - a sermon on the Samaritan Woman by the Well in the Gospel of John.  And it'll go down in my all-time top 10 sermons.  Here's why: simply put, Rev. Waters (or Sonia, as she seems to prefer being called), flipped the script in such a paradigm-shifting way that it left an indelible mark and was one of those 'a-ha!' moments that rocks you in the present and lingers long and lastingly thereafter....

For those of you unfamiliar with the story of the Samaritan Woman by the Well as portrayed in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, let's just say that it features a highly unusual interaction, in this case between Jesus and an unnamed stranger of a different gender ... and, thanks to Rev. Waters' illumination, I will never quite conceive of it - and, more importantly, its much deeper meaning - in the same way ever again.

[Rev. Waters' treatment was such a paradigm shift that it reminded me of others in my spiritual history spurred by the likes of Bishop John A.T. Robinson, theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, Bishop John Spong, Rev. Mennell - yeah, her husband's contributed a few over the years, too (which must be yet another thing that they have in common) - and the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks.  For example, the latter's exposition of the Lord's Prayer in his extraordinary The Politics of Jesus has so indelibly marked me spiritually that I have always conceived of this seminal prayer differently and more powerfully and resonantly ever since.  So, too, I suspect will I now see the Woman by the Well.]

In reviewing the context of the meeting and subsequent discussion between the protagonists of this story, Rev. Waters noted that it was unusual in antiquity for a Jew and a Samaritan to discourse (which we've mostly forgotten is the context of the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan) as well as for a man to speak to an unaccompanied woman.  So unusual, in fact, that the Disciples tried to dissuade Jesus from having it.  But He persisted.  And what follows was such a powerful moment, born of the interaction of strangers, that the woman was converted as were many of her neighbors when she shared her testimony thereafter.  

Further, the well is a familiar setting in biblical history, where many a woman met a man who changed her life.  More broadly, Rev. Waters noted, the well was a crossroads where different people met in the ancient world because they all had a common need, for water.

And this is the kernel from which she extracted a powerful testimony and lesson: that we are all different but share a common humanity and therein lies an opportunity to live into God.

But difference scares us, so we have a tendency to 'Otherize.'  As Rev. Waters described it, "It's our human nature to erase difference," which leads us to want to seek likeness and reject variety.  When faced with the opportunity to open ourselves to some who's different - be it a difference rooted in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. - we have choice, to be loving or to give into our fear, distance ourselves and virtually always demonize or in some way demean/deem the Other as lesser.

And yet those of us who claim to follow a person who always chose love too often choose fear....

But, as Rev. Sonia noted, Jesus chose the Woman by the Well because she was different: it was her difference that offered the possibility to bridge a gap in ancient culture and belief.  She pointed out that "Jesus doesn't (try to) fix her," but knows her and accepts her as she is, despite her difficult history.  She continued that "What Jesus is saying here is that shame is a useless emotion at the crossroads of God's Knowledge (of) and Love (for us)."  In fact, she pointed out, "differences are the exact things that can change us."  It's in our Otherness relative to each other that we can learn to live into God's love ... and thus we are called by God "not in spite of (our differences) but because of" them.  We all have difficult life histories - yet another thing that we share as human beings - and thus in these gifts of varied experience we find that "God has equipped (us) in the crucible of (our) own lives to be a vessel of Living Water," a living embodiment of His/Her/Its Love.

Hmmm....

As I sat and listened to Rev. Sonia speaking softly but passionately, I was jolted in one of those spiritual paradigm shifts that I've experienced over the course of my life: in fact, it's our difference that's the gift, even though we prefer similarity.  It's our difference that offers us the choice to fear and revile or to love and embrace.  It's our difference that makes us fallibly human and fearful or divinely human(/humane) and loving.  It's our difference that's why we're called to love as God loves, without respect to difference.  It's our difference that makes us the same, all and to a person, Children of God and vessels of Living Water ... if we choose to be.

So what will it be for you today?  Will you fear and avoid (and possibly demean) the Other?  Or will you embrace his/her/their Otherness as an opportunity to practice what Jesus preached by example in His life: love for all?

It's up to you.  And me.  But rest assured that God is calling us.  The question is how will we answer?  Will we choose fear or love?  Will we shrink from opportunity and separate ourselves to our mutual detriment or will we realize our full potential, be all that we can be, engage fully and love wastefully (as Bishop Spong suggests, based on Jesus' example)?

Today, thanks to Rev. Sonia, I now realize that our differences are our gifts and that we are called because of them.  Therein lies opportunity, specifically the opportunity to choose between fear and love.  And, following Rev. Dr. Hendricks' suggested moniker, as a self-considered Follower of Jesus, I'm committed to choosing love, as challenging and scary and messy as that may be at times.  Difference, the natural variety that Darwin noted so long ago, isn't a barrier but an invitation if we choose it.  And if I'm really going to follow Jesus, it means, just as He did with the Woman by the Well, I'll choose to love....

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- Jesus Christ, as quoted in

The Gospel of St. John, 13:34-35