This is the Third and Final report on what this nationwide forum (co-sponsored by Wired Magazine and NYU) calls
"Open Source Religion:"
The Project's Team Home Page has been here.
Ultimately, how Open is our Source?
Or, to put our final query another way: How open are we to Ultimate Sources?
Over the past five weeks, our team first explored the cultural shift toward Open Source Religion in all its self-expressive diversity. Then, we pondered the nature of the friction that accompanies such a deep-seated, cultural transformation.
But, in this era of open-source religion, we finally must come to terms with the Three Most Important Spiritual Questions of Our Age: Why should I get out of bed in the morning? How will I make it through another stressful day? And, at the end of the day, where is the evidence that anything I did today mattered?
These are echoes of the timeless religious questions: Why are we here? How shall we live? And, in the end, where is the resonance of good and evil in the universe?
Want to see those questions played out in an individual life? Team Member Stephanie Birch’s short essay in this final phase of our work is a strikingly clear snapshot of these daily reflections. In her piece, this young journalist moves through a typical day, starting with reflections on home and family, through work at her office, to final thoughts about her experiences. At one point during her day, a coffee-break conversation at her office about cutthroat management styles prompts her to wonder: “What is success and how far is too far in achieving it?”
If we’re honest with ourselves, this is the kind of open-source reflection that most of us pursue on a daily basis without even pausing to identify it as spiritual.
These basic, daily, universal questions are woven into the DNA of religion: a long double helix spanning and twisting through the millennia –- one outer strand of religion offering “revelation to be accepted;” the other outer strand offering “quest to be pursued.”
The world’s most enduring religious traditions include both strands.
Islam, for instance, is both submission to a religious revelation, but also a call to pursue daily spiritual challenges and, even, the global quest of the Hajj. To see these principles reflected in an individual life, read team member Sarah Alfaham’s essay in response to our third inquiry, which she calls: “Staying Fit Through Muslim-Colored Lenses.” Watch the way she relates to relatives, to the traditions they are expressing, to her community and to her own aspirations. This is a beautiful snapshot of a well-integrated, eyes-wide-open, open-source religious life.
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Spiritually Exploring "A Day Outside the Walls"
In many cultural settings down through the ages, one strand of the religious DNA seems to dominate. And, our group overwhelmingly agrees that -– for better or worse -– we’re in the midst of a cultural setting in the U.S. where the “quest” strand (the strand of individual self expression or “open source”) has turned squarely toward us until it dominates our vision of faith.
So, how open is our source? How clearly do we see? And what do we perceive?
After two decades of covering religion’s impact on American life for the Detroit Free Press, as the group's editor in this project, I can report that the ground, indeed, is shifting beneath our feet. Most of the exciting spiritual news these days unfolds outside the walls of organized religion. It echoes from books, music, movies, television, Web sites, grassroots organizations and the under-the-radar choices of ordinary people that build until they suddenly seem to surface.
So, to explore this final question, most of our team members spent what our team described as A Day Outside the Walls, trying to discern spiritual meaning in American life from a wide variety of perspectives. Then, they produced brief essays.
As in our first two waves of queries -– strong patterns emerged (even though our team members are well aware that we’re not a random sampling of Americans).
When people set out to record a day’s reflections outside the walls of organized religion, the first thing many people noticed was the exterior of those walls. “You can’t help but see the walls,” wrote team member Wayne Baker, recording a whole array of houses of worship that he passes in his daily commute to the office. “You pass them everyday, a continuous reminder of the presence of religion in our lives.”
From noting such physical walls, it’s just a little leap to perceiving the cultural walls of religious tradition in other forms.
Team member Beckie Supiano noticed the prayer candles and incense for sale at a grocery store in Chicago—tangible evidence of widespread religious practice. Then, she also spotted a personal shrine maintained by the shop’s Indian owners--evidence that such religious artifacts are put to use in the neighborhood.
Leaping even further, team member David Cohn suddenly perceived the ritual of a graduation ceremony in a new way: “The calling of names, one by one, so people can be applauded by friends and family, receive a certificate and walk off the stage again. Oh my gosh! It was my Bar Mitzvah all over again, I realized. Granted there was no chanting. But Dean Lemman, dean of Columbia’s journalism school, was essentially acting as the rabbi—head of the ceremony, who as the head of this institution was granting people their masters degree—and pushing them into ‘adulthood.’”
Once one’s vision expands, spiritual walls are everywhere.
On his Day Outside the Walls, team member Tim Moran, a freelance journalist, covered a press conference at a venerable Michigan landmark, the stately Detroit Athletic Club. Arriving that day, he noted that the DAC is “another form of temple, this one to the world of business and success.” And, even the press conference with automobile-industry experts took on spiritual forms. “In the upper room, there’s communion of sorts among those dedicated to the religion of cars. Apostles of design are being quizzed mildly by the Pharisees of the press.”
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The Challenge of Perception in a Concrete World
At this point, are we sounding silly?
Hardly.
This question of perception lies at the core of religious tradition. It’s pointedly explored in Eastern traditions, especially Buddhism. But it also lies at the core of the Abrahamic traditions. For instance, Psalm 96 is a hymn that celebrates unfolding spiritual perception until, near the end of this ancient song, “the trees of the forest sing for joy.” And, the young Rabbi Jesus once was warned by local authorities that his followers were becoming too boisterous with their religious expressions in the city’s streets—to which Jesus acidly replied from a whole new level of perception (in Luke 19): “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
The question then becomes: Once we’re floating out here in this open-source cosmos of spiritual reflection -– how do we tell a singing forest from a looming hurricane and how do we tell a shouting stone from an Improvised Explosive Device?
Team Member Joe Carson, an evangelical Christian, zeroed in on this point in his response, describing his own “mental eyeglasses.” And, what’s striking about his response is that he actually provided Three Daily Answers in his response -– without having seen the specific Three Daily Questions as detailed in this final report.
His essay is brief, but diamond sharp: Carson wrote, “I assent to all of the following theological contentions as a basis of a hopefully reasonable faith, but a faith nonetheless, not something empirically and logically provable.”
Remember our 3 Questions? Why get out of bed? How do I survive a stressful day? And where is a sign that my life matters? Without the Questions in front of him, Joe wrote these Answers:
“1.) God exists.
“2.) God cares about me, personally.
“3.) It is important for me to try to ascertain and advance God’s will in and through my life on planet earth with my fellow earthlings and other parts of created order.”
Pretty strong answers to all 3 questions.
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The Quest for Clarity Among Rolling Stones
As it turns out, clarity is a challenge even larger than conflict in an age of Open Source Religion.
That’s not merely your editor preaching. Pick up the May 3-17, Fortieth Anniversary edition of Rolling Stone magazine and read the spiritual voices of the nationwide forum chosen by that magazine’s editors. They didn't pick any spiritual softies for their reflections on the past four decades.
Nevertheless, our question of CLARITY rings like a bell throughout the Rolling Stone interviews.
From the Rolling Stone Editors themselves: “The future seems unknowable, the past some distant land that bears no relevance to the instantly revisable clicks and playlists of our lives right now.”
From novelist Tom Wolfe (described as "a non-believer” himself): “Anyone who thinks that religion is bad for society is out of his mind. We are now beginning to see what happens when we don’t have it.”
From cultural titan Norman Mailer: “When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend either to use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it.”
And, from rocker Patti Smith: “Maybe the kids on MySpace will have an anthem that will get them out in the streets. I don’t know what they’re gonna do.”
Here at Assignment Zero, our own team member Marcy Jeffree Corneil put it this way in a quote worthy of that chorus from Rolling Stone: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. But how will I know when I’m ‘there’?”
Our spiritual vision keeps playing tricks on us, doesn’t it?
Team member Mel Bricker set out nobly on his Day Outside the Walls, expecting to find his profound spiritual reflections at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in “an exhibit of Picasso’s influence on American artists.” And, primed for this venue, he did note a few nice perspectives.
But it’s the final line that’s the achingly beautiful note in his brief essay. Riding home with a somewhat disappointing mixed bag of reactions to the art show, he looks up at his fellow passengers on Bay Area Rapid Transit (the subway out there) and –- pop! -– “There were moments of delight and joy in their eyes.”
A vision better than Picasso -- glimpsed in the eyes of the people sitting next to him on a subway.
Bricker’s certainly not alone in this element of spiritual surprise.
Team member Rabbi Robert Alper expected to find his spiritual insights in the visually exotic “Pan’s Labyrinth,” but wound up leaving the theater early, exhausted by the ponderous film. Then, almost by accident, in the theater lobby he witnessed a 12-year-old girl summoning the moral courage to confess to the theater manager that she had cheated on her ticket price.
The theater manager was so touched by this spontaneous confession that he refused to accept the “two wrinkled dollar bills” she offered to repent of her sin. It was a moment of spiritual clarity and reconciliation that unexpectedly touched the weary rabbi as he headed home.
Alper wrote: “That’s how I encountered The Good—the very Good—outside the walls.”
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Threatening Tribalism in these Strange Days, Indeed
We're not naive. There are ominous--even deadly--forces rumbling through this surprising era of spiritual change.
Team member Chris Warner-Carey scratched his head at the “tribalism” that’s a constant temptation in communities of vigorous self-expression. And, pushed even further, religious tribalism can explode into violence aimed at innocent outsiders.
Team member Victoria Hart Gaskell asked: “When everyone’s ‘opinion’ becomes ‘gospel,’ what happens to an actual faith tradition? Does it finally become open-sourced into something unrecognizable or entirely new, or does it disappear altogether?”
John Lennon prophetically described the problem this way:
“Everybody’s talking and no one says a word
“Everybody’s making love and no one really cares
“There’s Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stairs. …
“Nobody told me there’d be days like these!
“Strange days, indeed!”
But, we’re a hopeful lot. Our forum of 40 from an enormous range of religious perspectives spent more than a month wrestling with these historic questions—and, that alone, is a testament of spiritual aspiration.
“Even with the troubling aspects, I welcome the open-sourcing of religion much more than I am troubled by it,” Gaskell ultimately decided.
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Finally, Walt Disney, a Fat Cat and 2 Spiritual Daughters
To leave this journey on a threatening note would not be true to the tone of our team.
Everyone who is worried about the future should read Team Member Cait Ramshaw's marvelous essay on the spirituality of Disney World. Cait, who goes by “DefSufi” in our group, narrates her day at Disney as a delightful movement from cynicism about the cult of Disney (“Entering Disney is very much like going to a mega-church. You give your first donation at the parking gate and … you get a little Disney sermon on the way in.”)—to a surprising affirmation of spiritual lessons we all can learn, even at Disney World!
There’s an amazingly pragmatic affirmation of life in the world-famous park, she writes, as if surprised by what she wound up concluding.
The overall spiritual lesson is: “Once you accept your circumstances, you can work with them, even if you can’t change them,” she writes, adding later, “And when I look at life in the ‘real world’ -– which several religions teach is just as much a Fantasy Land as is a section of Disney World -– it’s very much the same. I can’t make my mandatory work week shorter than 40 hours, but I can choose a job that I like, associate mostly with people I like, peacefully tolerate those I don’t and make my day pleasant.”
And, it's impossible to read team member Gail Katz's final essay without wanting to brew a comforting cup of tea and ponder a bright future dawning. After charting a typical day of her own open-source, religious activism, Katz settles back for the night, confident (without even saying it in so many words) that she's got life-affirming answers to all the day's Three Questions. She writes, "As I curled up under the warmth of the blankets against the chill of the night with my fat cat beside me, just before I turned out the light, I pondered how much spirituality had heightened my day."
Finally, there’s not a more eloquent affirmation in our whole stack of our team's third-wave essays than the closing of Marcy Jeffree Corneil’s piece: “My daughters are among the most spiritual people I know. During her undergraduate years, one of them wanted to go into full-time ministry. But now neither of them -– in their late 20s, one married, one engaged, no children on the horizon -- is comfortable with organized religion. Their lives exemplify my understanding of open source religion.”
Then--and don't miss this--then, Corneil writes this final line as a mother addressing her daughters' future: “It is my fervent prayer that they will both be seekers and deliverers of spirituality with those around them, and that they will raise their children in relationship with the Creator.”
What a benediction, hmmm?
Open. Source. And, Religion.
A REPORT BY ...
Sarah Alfaham, Robert Alper, Sarah Arthur, Wayne E. Baker, Craig Bamsey, Shelley Bates, Jeff Beamsley, Sofia Begg, J. Brent Bill, Stephanie Birch, John Melvin Bricker, Joe Carson, David Cohn, Marcy Jeffree Corneil, David Crumm, John Emmert, Victoria Hart Gaskell, Cynthia Hernandez, John Hile, Geri Larkin, Lisa Gray Lion, Gail Katz, Kathy Macdonald, Gregg Mann, Karen Masters, Torrey Meeks, L.A. Millinger, Tim Moran, David Myers, Joseph Naujokas, Michelle Poblette, Cait Ramshaw, L.E. Rayburn, Beckie Supiano, Chris Warner-Carey, Anna Wood.
LONG VERSION of "Our Story Thus Far" WRITTEN by David Crumm
(Creative Commons License allows team-members to repost and write their own versions as well)
I Agree, we should all be able to examine the source code for the 5th Dimension.
Posted by: Pervasive Distributed Computing | May 30, 2007 at 08:49 PM