That said…. a large majority of U.S. citizens oppose the mosque.

This reality poses a moral dilemma to the promoters of the Islamic center. What kind of insensitivity would ignore a large majority (63% 72%) of their neighbors who have asked you to relocate your project to another part of the city?

Those who oppose the mosque are clearly out of step with the inalienable values of this country. Yet for the mosque developers to go ahead with their building plans near Ground Zero would only insult the vast majority of their neighbors, thus undermining any intentions of “good will” they claim to bring.

The mosque developers have a tremendous opportunity to capitulate with generosity and charity towards their neighbors by building in another part of that great city. In doing so, Muslim faith would be shown to the USA in a most transcendent manner. But to build in the face of overwhelming opposition (regardless of that opposition’s moral standing) would simply add fuel to the collective fire of religious fear and mistrust — something this world does not need.

If I were a Muslim proposing to build the community center, I would use this international media platform to show Islam as a religion of peace and reconciliation that makes every effort to love and get along with its neighbors, even when those neighbors can be real jerks.

for the limited number of spaces
available in heaven. Only so many

spoons fit in one drawer your mother
would say

and the same is true for clothes
and closets

shelves and cans and let’s be honest
hearts and loves.

I cannot love you because I love another
is a problem

that sometimes gets admitted
over wine

in a restaurant
filled with people choosing

this dish over that meat
choosing something that will fill

the middle of their beings
or leave them slavering like a cheetah

who missed and pass that
would you? and let’s be friends. Yes

let’s drink to being friends
and then we can all go on our way

remembering the best part
about being chosen is that

you do not have to stop
for anyone along the way.

- Betsy Johnson-Mille

Brink quotes philosopher Philip Clayton,

“The days are gone when we can just list the doctrines…mother church can decide and we can just sit there with those as a given.  Given is no longer a given. And I think there is an attitude of radical uncertainty and radical doubt.  And rather than saying can we integrate doubt and faith, I want to speak of a faith which incorporates the radical doubt, which is the doubting miraculously finding faith within it.”

Clayton articulates an important shift:  a faith not built upon persuasive propositions (if you’ve not heard a better argument, you’ve not talked to the right people) but upon wrestling with life’s mystery and paradox. Faith born of deep probing doubt. Faith that exists in harmony with doubt, not in opposition to it.

Fromont quotes existential psychologist Rollo May,

“…People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks the user from learning new truth, and is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt…”

Pretty obvious stuff, but so often lost in the passion of religious fervor:  absolute certainty as a marker of toxic religion – a posture of certainty that snuffs out the small voice of creation – a rigidity of mental logic that that bounds and gags the transcendent freedoms of Spirit.

May concludes,

“…The person with the courage to believe and at the same time to admit his doubts is flexible and open to new learning, and I’d add, open to new depths of meaning and new vantage points from which to gain new or different perspectives. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: [rather] it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment…”

When discussing religion and spirituality, I prefer the word “confidence” over certainty. And sometimes “confidence” is too strong a word. Hope, however, is never too strong.  A shared hope is always welcome in any community. Hope is a bridge between communities. Hope promotes inclusion and safety. Hope lives on, even in the face of death. Hope is the yeast of faith.

As new generations accelerate and deepen the shift from institution-centric, lay-clergy models of religion to networked sharing and collaboration — what Duke theologian David Morgan calls an extended community of interpretation — theology will change, perhaps radically. And among the major changes will be the way we collectively re-imagine and re-envision our certainties, confidence, hope, and faith.

As this collective re-imagining transforms religion from the inside-out, from the bottom-up, from expert to amateur… may it not coalesce into yet another static propositional confession. May doubt (the posture of honest uncertainty)  remain authentic and always new – and not become a religion unto itself. May religion be continually redefined as (re)generative, inclusive, shared experience, offering a depth of freedom not found in ideas, but in what the best ideas always point to. Inertial. Pointing father. Pointing beyond the visible horizon.

One of the 20th century’s greatest scientific thinkers, Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, talks about faith, doubt, religion, and uncertainty in this engaging four-minute film. Time well spent.

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that could be wrong… I don’t have to have an answer; I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things.” – R. Feynman

From Jeremy’s pen (excuse syntax – this is live blogging – ital mine):

christianity is fundamentally violent…against the principalities and powers. Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King ruptured the systems. System is not that which you see, but that which you see through…these people doing something powerful.

Revelation not about revealing. We think revealing…God whispering in the year. A theologian talks about God like a biologist talking about bio-life. The question is not is Christianity true, but what does it mean when it claims to be true…we then just assume its like the truth of biology. Revelation does not mean we have information about God, like a biologist has something on bio-life.

The desire to speak of God is ancient. If you can name God you can have power. But is this idea of NAMING something that God plays along with? Possible to exist in reality and so majestic that it cant exist in the mind. God not anonymous. He is hypernonymous…don’t know something because there isnt access. God is not unknown because he doesn’t exist; he cannot be known because he cannot be grasped because of the excess…like the sun.

The Bible is divine because of the tension and problems and difficulties. Of course you are going to have a breakdown of words when you have the infinite entering into the finite. Of course we are going to blow up and combust.

The unnamable is omninamable…when confronted with the trauma of God not reduced into silence, but into poetry, prophecy, and preaching. As soon as you name God you create him in your image. Theology is like us trying to draw God. Jesus tears up our images of God, not paint them. As soon as we start putting words to God peoples God’s look like them…God is not the patch of meaning on the wind of our unknowing…he is the patch of unknowing we put on our wind of meaning.

Moses…Jacob wanted to know God’s name. But he didnt give it. We dont name God, he names us.

The point of incarnation is not God being revealed and we now understand it…its now the mystery is here and brought among us and lives with it. The mystery is deepened. The mystery touches us.

The superfluous is the most necessary.
Voltaire

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
Margaret Mead

I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
Georg Hegel

We are never prepared for what we expect.
James Michener

To be believed, make the truth unbelievable.
Napoleon Bonaparte

What we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
Sydney J. Harris

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
Henry David Thoreau

Always be sincere, even if you don’t mean it.
Harry S. Truman

Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.
Oscar Wilde

War is a series of catastrophes which result in a victory.
Georges Clemenceau

First I dream my painting, then I paint my dream.
Vincent van Gogh

We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.
Walt Kelly, From Pogo

I want peace and I’m willing to fight for it.
Harry S. Truman

Study the past, if you would divine the future.
Confucius, in Analects

Love is a kind of warfare.
Ovid

All works of art should begin…at the end.
Edgar Allan Poe

and my favorite…

The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
Maurice Chapelain

no wait, this is my favorite…

A man chases a woman until she catches him.
Anonymous