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"A Garden for God"

My younger son Sam and I went camping in southern Illinois this past summer in an area called the Garden of the Gods.  It’s a series of sandstone cliffs and deep gorges formed some 350 million years ago when its sandstone base was uplifted by geological forces. 

One evening, we hiked to the tallest cliff, sat at the top, and watched the sun set into the trees across the valley miles away. On our way up the cliff I was anxious, thinking about some difficult issues with which I was dealing. I wasn’t carrying a backpack but it felt as if I were bearing a heavy load. Have you ever felt like that?  When we reached the top, I stared out at the vastness and thought of all the ancient people who’d sat in that exact same place mulling over their problems, as I was doing. Then I thought of how majestic the view was around me and how one day I will die and how all my current problems that now feel so large and looming were so insignificant in the great, grand scheme of life. And the world and our future, instead of seeming so fragile and hazardous, seemed solid and enduring and powerful to me.

I was reading a biography of the writer E. B. White not long ago and it mentioned how E. B. White was a hypochondriac and spent most of his life, from the age of ten on, worrying he would die. Instead, he lived to be 86 years old.  At the age of 81, when it finally occurred to him he might not expire anytime soon, he bought a canoe, tied it to the top of his car, went on a trip, and finally began enjoying life.  But it took him 81 years to realize his situation wasn’t as precarious as he’d imagined.

I’m a lot like E. B. White. If there is the smallest wisp of a cloud in the sky, I will see a thunderstorm, maybe even a tornado.  Maybe I’m not the only one like that.  There seems to be much anxiety in our world.  I suppose that’s always been the case but now it seems especially so.  If we’re not fretting about the economy, we are worrying about health care, or political intolerance, or global warming, or what kind of world we’ll leave our children, and whether their opportunities will be as abundant and full as our own.

Unfortunately, religion has not always been a helpful partner. Sometimes, instead of teaching us about faith and trust, it has simply given us another set of problems to worry about—the state of our souls, God’s opinion of us, whether we measure up, and where we might end up.  This has the unfortunate effect of making us self-centered, and we become so concerned about ourselves we forget about others.

But occasionally I will meet someone whose experience with a loving God is so overwhelming and powerful, they see in an instant that all the things they were taught to worry about are not a threat at all.  Like E. B. White, they’ve discovered their situation wasn’t nearly as perilous as they’d imagined.

That experience is often accompanied by a shift in priorities, a change of focus. They move from centering on self to centering on others.  Their world opens.  Their compassion, once confined to their own kind, has blossomed into a deep passion for the earth and everyone on it.

Not long ago, I was speaking about caring for the earth at a conference, just a few remarks in response to a question someone had asked, and a man came up to me afterwards and said he was tired of this new emphasis on caring for the earth. 

New emphasis? I thought, how is that new?  It was the first responsibility God gave us. The environmentalists didn’t dream this one up.  God did.  Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make people in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…” This idea of earth care isn’t new.  We just haven’t been doing it, so it seems new to us.

“Have dominion over…” The Hebrew word used here means “to lead in procession.”  Isn’t that an interesting image?  To lead in procession. So God creates the earth and the heavens and all the animals and plants and humanity, then says to men and women, “I’m putting you in charge of leading the way.” Well, that’s a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility.  It’s a sobering thought.  Because humans have the responsibility for caring, for leading the way, for setting the example.  That’s part of the deal. We humans get to be up front but we can’t ever forget that others are coming behind us. We have to be mindful of that.

That’s why our land is in such jeopardy right now, why our nation is in such peril. There has been a collective forgetfulness that others were coming behind us. Our churches forgot it. Our political leaders forgot it. Our business leaders forgot it.  We were leading the procession, but forgot others were following behind us and would have to suffer the consequences of our decisions.

From an early age, many of us were taught it was our job to save souls. But what if our souls were never at risk? What if God loves us as we love our own children, who have nothing to fear from us?  What if we began to think seriously and deeply about the real work God calls us to—having dominion over the earth, leading the way. Not in an oppressive, dictatorial sense but with a sense of stewardship, mindful of those coming behind us; mindful of our children, their children, and their children; making this earth once again, a true garden for God and a true garden for all God’s children.

Perhaps that’s what that wise Quaker, William Penn, meant when he said, “True religion doesn’t turn us out of the world, but enables us to live better in it and excites our endeavors to mend it.”

That, friend, speaks my mind. 

Conversation with Philip Gulley

Lydia Talbot: Welcome back, Phil.

Philip Gulley: Good to be here.

Talbot: Seeing you transports me back to where I grew up in Indiana. It’s a joy to have you back!

Gulley: Always good to see you.

Talbot: It almost seems as though the message you’ve just conveyed is a love song for your children, Sam and Spencer, and for the future of your unborn grandchildren and all of ours, caring about the future of our planet.

Gulley: Isn’t it funny? When you have kids you finally start thinking about those kinds of things. We just live in this bliss and then when we have children and then start to have grandchildren, we think, “Boy, what kind of world am I leaving them?”

Talbot: But you say in your book, “If the Church Were Christian,” that the church may not truly be the vehicle for rejuvenation and regeneration.

Gulley: Well, I would certainly argue that in the past it hasn’t been and that the priorities in the church have really been misplaced, especially in causing us to be concerned about things that were never in jeopardy, things that we didn’t have to fear, and all of the things that we should have been tending to. This sense of stewardship we’ve let slide.

Daniel Pawlus: I wonder if we can unpack that a little bit more, Phil. You fascinate me as a writer because you’ve got the Harmony series and Porch Talk and this small town aspect in your writing. And then your spiritual writing is very provocative. It asks some very deep questions of our understanding of God, of organized religion. Do you have the greatest challenges with the institutional church? Is that what you’re trying to say in part through this book, that there’s a lot of different ways to worship but we should really have a healthy skepticism about how things have been done and perhaps how we’re going to do them in the future?

Gulley: That’s a good word: healthy skepticism!

Pawlus: Speak to that a little bit.

Gulley: Well, I remember the great Southern Baptist preacher, Will Campbell, who said that all institutions are evil for they invariably become more interested in their on-goingness…

Pawlus: Self-perpetuating?

Gulley: …in self-perpetuation, more than they do in the virtues and values that gave them birth. And I think that’s happened in the church, where we now see it and I suspect it’s always been the case.

Pawlus: How do you communicate it? There’s a lot of people that are unchurched. There’s a lot of people that have fallen away and called themselves spiritual now but not of a certain religion. How are you going to communicate the word of Jesus, and so forth, if you don’t have an institution or a place for people to gather to do that?

Gulley: Well, I think that’s always the tough issue and the tough matter. I think it’s why I stay in the church, though I tend to be critical about it. I do find that when it gets it right, when it lifts up those qualities—and it does get it right—there needs to be people in the church, just as there have been people in every religious movement, who have a prophetic edge and who call people back.

Talbot: But the prophetic edge is what makes one faithful, isn’t that right? And isn’t that why your credentials have been in question by a movement over some time to rescind them in the Religious Society of Friends? Can you say more about that?

Gulley: Yeah. I just had my big heresy trial and I hate to say I won, but my recording as a Quaker pastor wasn’t rescinded. And it was because of the very issues that I raise in the Grace book.

Talbot: Say more about those issues.

Gulley: This idea that God’s really does include all people, that God is eternally concerned about the well-being of all people and that some of the orthodox theology that we have been taught and have perpetuated really don’t embody the ethic of Jesus.

Talbot: And that we’re called to be open and affirming of all people regardless of sexual identity, regardless of racial or ethnic identity, that we are all God’s children.

Pawlus: I’m curious, Phil. You have this innate need to question things. It’s part of your calling. Where does that come from do you think? You talk in the book how you grew up Catholic a little bit. That didn’t work for you. You searched and found Quakerism. It’s worked. You’ve had some challenges within that. But that’s part of your consistent theme in your writing, to ask these questions.

Gulley: Probably from my mom. She was principal of a Catholic school when I was growing up. But was very—I won’t say cynical, that’s too hard a word—she had a healthy skepticism about religious matters and really taught me to question not only authority but particularly religious authority.

Talbot: The institutional church perhaps?

Gulley: She taught me to question that.

Talbot: What was your mother’s name? We have to name our mothers!

Gulley: Gloria Gulley. A wonderful woman.

Pawlus: So what do you hope when people read this book that they’re going to take away from it? Is it just an expanding look at the institutional church? What are your hopes in writing this book?

Gulley: If the only thing they do is realize that the church is a human institution founded by humans and that we can change it—we can change its priorities; we can change its doctrines; we can make it more responsive, more caring, more loving, more reflective of the values in the heart of Jesus—if that’s all they do, to realize that it’s a malleable institution and we can change it, then I will be happy.

Talbot: Tell us about Ben and Dora.

Gulley: Oh yes. They were one of the first Quaker couples that I was exposed to who really embodied this notion of earth care in their simple way. They lived very simply. They were quite wealthy because of inheriting a lot of land in an area that was developing, but lived on one social security check so they could give the other away and used their land to raise crops which they distributed to the poor people in our town. They just lived very modestly. When they died I was just amazed at the wealth they had and then at how it was dispersed because I had just always assumed they were people of very modest means but in fact they weren’t. They shared widely and lived simply and were just a wonderful example to me of how people ought to live when they’ve been given this great treasure.

Talbot: You use the word “share” and another story in your book is about Roland Kreager, sharing the world’s resources.

Gulley: Yeah. He heads up a little Quaker organization called the Right Sharing of World Resources. Roland, about twenty years ago, began doing this micro lending, largely to women in developing nations, funding their start-up businesses. In the past twenty years it has turned around village after village, employing women in local businesses who then employ other people and really raise the standard of living in those communities.

Pawlus: There was another passage in your book that struck me, talking about a fresh and a relevant experience of God. Phil, you say, “We desire a fresh, relevant experience of God but fear any insight beyond our creeds and Scriptures believing it will be unfaithful or even sinful.” Can you speak to that a little bit more?

Gulley: Well, it seems to me that’s the trap that we’re in now and it’s largely because I think the church has been so creedally based. We have convinced ourselves that any spirituality beyond or outside the creeds is somehow displeasing to God. We forget that what creeds are is simply a snapshot of where the church was at one time and that we’re always called, I think, as people of faith to grow beyond that and to further our understanding of what God might be calling us to do in this age. I think that might be one reason I remain a Quaker.

Pawlus: This is part of what attracted you to Quakerism, wasn’t it? Less of a creedal base, but you’ve encountered some challenges even within that.

Gulley: Sure. Historically, Quakers have not subscribed to creeds.

Talbot: Or war.

Gulley: Or war. But then again I think that points to the inevitability of institutions becoming fossilized and becoming ice instead of flowing water. And that’s always the tendency.

Pawlus: There’s a story in the book about a pastor that you mention. We’re always focused on church growth, bringing more people in the door. This woman pastor that you had met was very confident in her role and realized it wasn’t about growth. Talk a little bit about that.

Gulley: Right. She realized it was simply about hospitality and accepting people where they were. So she moves into this community that, by its very nature, is a very traditional community. Yet her openness and her willingness to accept people where they were, to question long-held truths, made that place a very vital place where people who were very broken, people who were searching, people who had been hurt in life—and isn’t that all of us?—found that they could be welcomed and had their questions taken seriously. So soon this little place became a bigger place and a vital, loving place.

Pawlus: That’s a great example.

Talbot: Philip Gulley, it’s a joy to have you back.

Gulley: Well, it’s always good to be here.

Talbot: Keep on keeping on. Disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed!

 

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