'Oh, The Humanity'

Spirituality Column #68
February 26, 2008
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

‘Oh, The Humanity’
By Bob Walters

Being “human” can be great … and not so great.

When someone does good things for mankind, we give them a “humanitarian” award.

When we do something sinful or stupid, i.e., make a mistake, we are quick to point out, “I’m only human.”

When the 800-foot-long German airship Hindenburg burst into flames 200 feet above the ground as it approached its mooring tower in Lakehurst, NJ, May 6, 1937, killing 35 of 97 souls on board plus one ground crewman, WLS Chicago radio reporter Herb Morrison famously cried out on that live national broadcast, “Oh, the humanity.”

The many iterations of “human” most definitely concoct a mixed bag of implication.

“Humanity” and “humanitarian” conjure an aspiration to our better and caring nature, that divine and moral aspect of our being that pursues and reveres justice and doing the right thing; that wants things to work out gently and OK for all God’s children.

Being “human” typically seems a condemnation or at least an acceptance of fallenness; a reference to the way we mess things up and find ourselves at a distance from God because he is divine and we are, well, “only human.”

There has been one perfect human in history, and that was Jesus Christ: fully God, fully human, fully love, and fully sufficient to solve our “human” problem.

We simply must never stop at “I’m only human.” That phrase should be a starting point to moving on, growing up, maturing, changing and receiving what God has already told us we acquire in Christ, through the fruits of the Holy Spirit:
- To be in the kingdom of God
- To get rid of the negative (sin)
- To be creative
- To have a bond of love with the people around us.

Take a look at Galatians 5:16-26. It covers St. Paul’s advice (vv. 16-18, 25-26), our human sinful side (vv. 19-21) and our fruitful, divine side (vv. 22-24).

We must not be blind to the perfect path God creates so that we, even in our human imperfection, can be accepted by God perfectly and eternally. Jesus Christ came as fully God and fully human to create a divine communion with humanity.

Why a human? It takes one to know one.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has had more human moments than he cares to count, and is thankful God counts faith.

Know the God You Pray To

Spirituality Column #67
February 19, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Know the God You Pray To
By Bob Walters

Pope Benedict was recently asked how Christianity is different from other religions.

He responded that in every religion, human beings seek God. Christianity, he said, is a religion in which God also seeks man.

As a Christian, I like the idea that God is looking for me because I am looking for Him. How do I know God is looking for me? Because He sent Jesus Christ to establish an eternal relationship with me, you … all of us (John 3:16).

I accept that my human pursuit of Christ is imperfect, but know that in my faith I have the assurance that God is on the other end of that relationship perfectly trying to find me. The Bible tells me so. So does the Pope.

A friend recently lamented to me that he was indeed trying to find God in prayer, but couldn’t. He cited an author he read who had searched Ashrams in India for prayer, meditation, enlightenment, etc.

When I asked him the name of the God he was seeking, I tacitly (and to my chagrin) went a little overboard it seems in challenging his interpretation of God. “You Christians always sound like that,” he said. “You won’t tolerate the thought that someone else might be right.”

Still, I asked him to name the name of the God he was seeking. If prayer is talking to God, isn’t it a good start, I reasoned, to know with Whom one is trying to talk?

He couldn’t say, but trusted the lady Ashram author as the more appropriate broker of his hoped-for, deeper prayer life with God, the Divine, or whatever. He just couldn’t say What or Who the Divine was.

I wonder sometimes why people make it so hard. Truly and too often, I lament my own inability to convincingly share the following wonderful news:

God is already looking for us, the Holy Spirit is already in us, and Christ has already created a bridge for us to an eternal relationship with God.

If we want that, all we have to do is ask, and then be still. We will know that He is God (Psalm 46:10).

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is pretty sure that prayers are best delivered when properly addressed and not when sent out "General Delivery."

Valentine's Day for the Birds

Spirituality Column #66
February 12, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Valentine’s Day for the Birds
By Bob Walters

It’s surprising what turns up when you Google “St. Valentine” and “Patron Saint of Love.”

I didn’t expect the heart of the matter to be Geoffrey Chaucer. Or to learn of several St. Valentines, none formally recognized by Catholic sources as “love” saints. Or to discover Ste. Dwynwen.

Let me try to put what I found in order. Three martyrs named Valentine from the 3rd and 4th centuries were beatified (sainted) long ago by the Catholic Church. One was evidently beheaded in 270 A.D. by Roman Emperor Claudius II and there is a legend, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, about him marrying young lovers against the Emperor’s wishes.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, which on matters Catholic I think trumps Britannica in its authority, makes no reference to this. It says the various Sts. Valentine defended Christians and were executed (FYI, “martyr” means you were killed for your faith. If you are merely maimed or beaten, you are a “confessor”).

Feb. 14, for legendary but unconfirmed reasons, was very early-on selected as the Feast of St. Valentine on the Catholic ecclesiastical calendar. An old pagan fertility holiday was Feb. 15, and some suggest a Valentine correlation (think All Saints Day and Halloween). All unconfirmed.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says this: “The popular customs associated with St. Valentine’s Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e., halfway through the second month of the year, the birds begin to pair.

“Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read: ‘For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day, Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.’”

Birds! That story, and variations of it, appear throughout the Google search: birds pair-up in mid-February, so Valentine’s Day became a human mating celebration.

Interesting that the Catholic Encyclopedia mentions Chaucer, a Brit, but Encyclopedia Britannica does not. Even the often-wacky but occasionally accurate populist Wikipedia insists no Valentine “love” link existed before Chaucer.

According to the Catholic Singles page on CatholicPeople.com, the Patron saint of lovers was a beautiful Welsh maiden later known as Saint Dwynwen who in order to become a nun, sacrificed her love for a young man deeply smitten with her.

Valentine’s Day cards, today second in number only to Christmas cards, came along around 1840 birthing the greeting card industry. Yet nothing but imputed modern legend suggests any of the several ancient Sts. Valentine had anything to do with love.

For pure love, I don’t think any Saint beats the Lord Jesus Christ. As for Eros and Cupid, Song of Songs in the Old Testament tops anything they ever thought of.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wishes all you lovers blue skies and candlelit dinners.

My Friend George

Spirituality Column #65
February 5, 2008
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

My Friend George
By Bob Walters

We are, each one of us, unique.

Our Carmel neighbor George Bebawi (beh-BOW-ee), I think you’ll agree, is a little more unique than the rest of us.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1940 to an Egyptian Christian physician and a Hungarian Jewish homemaker, George was raised from the age of 5 by his Hungarian Jewish refugee grandmother Sara … in an Islamic Cairo neighborhood.

As a Jew he studied the Torah and the Talmud in Hebrew, and also memorized the Arabic Koran – all of it – in order not to be too different from his Muslim neighbors and friends.

In his late teens George and his grandmother converted to Christianity, and George studied and became a priest in the Coptic Church, the Christian orthodox sect unique to Egypt.

In 1965 George won a scholarship to Cambridge University in England where by 1970 he completed his MLit and PhD in theology and philosophy. He also studied psychotherapy with Britain’s legendary Frank Lake.

George’s native language is Arabic, but he can speak and/or translate in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Latin, Coptic, German and English … and a couple of others I forget. His first “job” at Cambridge was translating the Coptic Bible into German. Because he is distrusting of modern Bible versions, for his Bible classes George typically translates straight from the Greek or Hebrew.

He is among the world’s most recognized scholars on Eastern Christianity, and has taught major world religions at universities in the Middle East, at St. John’s College, Nottingham, England, and Cambridge, from which he retired in 2004. That’s when he moved here to Carmel to marry May Rifka, an American of Lebanese descent.

George is an expert on Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other religions. He was first assistant to the Coptic Bishop of Cairo. He worked in the Vatican. While at Nottingham he taught Christian meditation to Buddhist monks. He once publicly debated the Dalai Lama in Birmingham, England. He knows exactly what is so miserably wrong with The DaVinci Code … and can explain it.

And he loves to laugh. Recently deceased pastor Russ Blowers, who never missed George’s weekly Wednesday lectures at East 91st Street Christian Church, called George “a completely free man in Christ” … which is to say that George’s deep, passionate, joyous and spiritually profound faith in Christ is free from legalism and sectarian convention.

George is one very smart and unique dude, and it is impossible to ignore the pure power of the Holy Spirit when you’re around him.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) should probably write a book about this guy. Until then, see georgebebawi.com.  [Update 1-10-13 - Or come to his class at E91 Wednesday's 6:30-7:45 p.m..  It's free and open, and George is currently teaching 1 Corinthians. Contact me for details, or just show up!]