Created reason, evolving sense

I learned yesterday that the Creation Museum in the southern US features a display that presents 'Human Reason' on one side and 'God's Word' on the other (visible in the virtual tour), with 'attempts to question' as one way humanity has gone astray.

There are clearly many ways to respond to this, by far the easiest being either dismissive or critical. With my own God-given human reason I've been thinking about this and the harder, restorative path is to find a way to connect the Christian family together. I struggle to think of a more difficult job, but that's precisely why it's important. We need to learn to sit with each other as different, all of us. I do not know how, not yet, and I don't even know how willing I am, but I know I ought to want to be willing, and I suppose we have to start somewhere.

The more I read about restorative justice, the more I am of the opinion that it starts at the individual level. We need to have the courage, honesty and enough self-worth to restore ourselves, to open our eyes to God's offered healing. It's only then that we'll be able to change systems, institutions and processes on a bigger scale. It's only then that we won't fear people who are different from us. It's only then that we will have the empathy to care for other human beings as made in God's image and the awareness of life to care for our planet.

So this is precisely where restorative justice meets spirituality. As usual I have too many themes and thoughts buzzing in my head to be coherent. I'm reading Girard and associated literature, which comes close to connecting the dots. I also have Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Enns and far too many other books to mention. I think Lederach's conflict transformation has a lot to offer too, and I might write more about that another day.

Here's what I know today. In the spirit of willingness, perhaps the truth in separating human reason from God's word is that books (any Book, in fact) will only get you so far. This morning, after a Pentecost sermon on the importance of deep breathing, I managed to inhale a little of my sister-in-law's courage to tell my faith community about her ongoing fight with cancer. I got upset, as I thought I would, and felt entirely surrounded, sometimes literally in a hug (or four), but mostly with a feeling of being held and loved, and those holy moments, more than any historical doctrine or abstract principle, more than reason, are what defines and roots my faith.

Sometimes when things make the least sense,
we can sense the most.