Burning Man and Heretics

I've been working on this post for over two weeks. It's a toughie. I'm thinking out loud, on the fly, so I reserve the right to recant, reword or clarify what I've said here.

Please bear with me, it's not often I ask you to tune in for such a long post. And while I don't expect this subject to initially seem relevant to most of you, I encourage you to read it nonetheless, because I think the bottom line question is relevant to all of us:

"What is Christianity missing that drives people to express their spirituality through events like Burning Man?"

Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting that I approve of this event, that I am interested in attending it, or that it is a substitute for Jesus-centered spirituality; I do suggest here that a serious look at this phenomenon might somehow help us understand the spiritual needs and desires of current culture.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Recently, The Ooze has been talking about John Morehead's article on the event called "Burning Man". I have also recently heard Mike Frost , author of Exiles, speak on the subject of Burning Man in part of a series of podcasts at Resonate. I mention these two things to lend credibility and context to this post.

My sister has attended Burning Man 7 times and my youngest brother was a "virgin burner" (first-timer) this year, destined to return. I know most of you will have no clue what this is about, so I will sum it up as simply as I can. But since I've never been, I'm not going to try to be too thorough about it, instead I'll cite resources if you want to know more.

At the end of each summer, tens of thousands of people (somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000) camp out in the Black Rock Desert. Black Rock City becomes Nevada's 5th largest city during this event. Burning Man attendees establish a "city", complete with their own power, sewer, recycling, rules and lawkeeping. At the end of the week they set a 40 foot tall wooden "man" afire, hence "Burning Man". The purpose or symbolism of "the man" is somewhat vague and so I won't try to explain it here.

Can I have Gomorrah that?

Each year there is a theme that ties together the art, contributions and camps that people create and participate in. From the Burning Man website:

"Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance....There are no rules about how one must behave or express oneself at this event (save the rules that serve to protect the health, safety, and experience of the community at large); rather, it is up to each participant to decide how they will contribute and what they will give to this community."

Pack it in, pack it out, leave no trace and do no harm. Other than that, do whatever the hell you want. It's a lovely free-for-all, and for obvious reasons it greatly appeals to (especially younger) liberal people. The Goddess Venus is said to preside over this event, if you can imagine what that might mean. Yes, there is a certain amount of organization, but it is much more like a rave than a retreat. It seems to have it's good points: no commerce, only barter or gifting, and the intense desire to return the desert to it's pre-invasion state after each event; but somehow everything I have read conjures up images of Mad Max or Waterworld: sweaty, dirty people driven to the bleeding edge of sanity by heat, thirst and primal need.

You can find excerpts of an article called "The Man Has No Hands: The Abridged Diary of a Virgin Burner" at the Burning Man website. At the bottom of the article, you can find the address to a .pdf of the entire article. This is the link my sister provided me with in order to better understand the phenomenon that is Burning Man. If you want to know more, start there. Be forewarned, this article and other links on it's site contain profanity, descriptions of immoral behavior, photographs containing nudity, and other possibly offensive material.

My sister, her ex-fiance and my brother all claim it is an intensely spiritual experience, and this fascinates me because of the context. But I can't ignore the fact that it is filling a need, or at least appears to fill a need, for spiritual enlightenment that haunts young people today.

OK, so it might seem to the casual observer to be "enlightening" only in the fact that attendees throw all reason, morality and caution to the wind for a week of *ahem* craziness. But I can attest, there is clearly reality in the claims of it being a life-changing experience, it's true. I have heard first-hand how the people I know who have attended have been changed by what they have learned about themselves, how they relate with others, and their place in the universe.

So What's My Point?

I am the oldest child in my family, and I seem to have come into adulthood on the last vestiges of conservatism, when it was still cool to be a Christian - and my faith managed to survive the maturation process. Not so my sister and two brothers, who all come at 4 year intervals to my birth. They were raised in the same family with the same values, the same church, and the same faith. It has always perplexed me how they came out of childhood with no real interest in God at all, much less Christianity.

I'm not saying that I judge them for it or that I am concerned about this fact for each of them as individuals, but I have never understood how 3 people coming out of the exact same context of life as I did could turn out so differently from me? Is it that I'm the only one who received God, the only one who truly met Him? What is the difference? How is it I can be hungry for God the Father of Jesus, and they can be hungry for the god of themselves, the god who is in themselves, or the gods they perceive to be in the world? We all were introduced to the same God as children? Why did Jesus "stick" with me and not with them?

The closest any of them get to God is this: "God is some kind of something or someone somewhere, but I don't know who or what or where."

What is a Heretic, anyway?

I am reading "A Heretic's Guide to Eternity" by Spencer Burke. I was about halfway through, and at lunch the other day with my friends Pam and Donna, they asked me what I thought so far. My answer was something I hadn't expected to say, at least in light of some of the reviews of this book by two people whose opinions I respect.

I said, "So far I haven't read anything I astutely disagree with."

I have since finished it and I hope to talk more about this book in depth, because I believe it has opened up the framework for my vision of "unchurch". Once again, self-labeled "heretic" Spencer Burke's strange thought processes have changed me. However, I had to turn my copy in to the library because it was due and someone else had a hold on it (makes me wonder who that is - I want to meet them!), so I have to wait until I can pick up a copy of my own - I've decided it's one for my bookshelf to be written and highlighted in.

I borrow at least twice in this post from Spencer's choice of words: in talking about the church and morality, he refers to the church seeing themselves as the "gatekeepers" of Christianity or morality or truth. Forgive me, but I like that imagery.

I find myself not so concerned with or rattled by with what Spencer is trying to say as some people are. So far, his ideas sit fairly well with me. Then again, I'm not any kind of theologian, I'm just an average Jane Christian trying to figure it all out. I am looking at this book from the perspective of how it can help me relate my faith to my siblings (and others like them), I'm not looking to claim that Spencer's theology is going to stand up under intense evangelical scrutiny. But in reality, in some strange way, it works for me, and I might go so far as to say that for me, the intense Biblical scrutiny and focus on certainty favored by evangelicals are a thing of the passing of modernity - maybe we need to outgrow all that.

I know what God is doing in me is so relevant and necessary to my siblings. I realize that the Christianity that currently exists will not ever appeal to people like them. However, I do believe the REAL Jesus, not the evangelical, conservative modern version of Jesus, but the radical, just, and kind Jesus WOULD appeal to them. Social awareness, justice, caring for the poor, respect for the environment, love of the arts and creativity in general, being aggressively aware of doing no harm to others but rather only kindness - these are all things they can agree with.

I'm not trying to water down Jesus - OK , well maybe I am. I think if Jesus is presented in light of the Grace and Kindness about Him rather than the Judgement and Truth, we might get somewhere with some people; people who think all Christians are like Pat Robertson or James Dobson - people who say Hurricane Katrina was punishment for sin or that Planned Parenthood promotes lesbianism. I wonder if Truth is supposed to be a by-product or result of Grace. Not the gatekeeper of it.

Is it possible (and I suppose this is a rhetorical question) that Jesus is simpler than the church has made Him to be in modern times? Could it be that Jesus really can and does meet us where we are - regardless of church attendance, praying a sinners prayer, taking communion, or any of the other traditions of the church? Might I be able to present, over time, my siblings with a Jesus that they can take with them wherever they go, a Jesus that will be happy with them for caring for others, caring for the environment, being generous. Not that He is happy with *just* those things, but might He see them as progress, part of the equation? Rather than being an angry Jesus, primarily concerned with "sins, maybe these good things can be the precursor to faith in Christ? Or at least seen as being valuable in the journey?

Does the church have to be the gatekeeper of morality, lifestyle, behavior? Can Jesus know us and love us and accept us WITH our shortcomings and not just despite them?

Does the sense that the church says Jesus is all about being good and moral prevent people from knowing Jesus? Does the church chase people away? Jesus welcomed, touched, loved, and believed in the people whom the Jewish society considered to be the worst sinners among them. Did He relate to them with rules or with love? What did Jesus have to say about religious rituals, anyhow? That they create people who are clean on the outside only.

I'm starting to wonder: Can we begin to learn from Burning Man? What is the draw? Well, I'll tell you...

It's biggest draw, the gravity, the magnetism is simple.

All Are Welcome.

Come as you are. We will love you and accept you and respect you. We will appreciate your gifts and talents. We will support you in whoever you are.

Is the message of Jesus really so different? Has the church, in it's preoccupation with judgment and righteousness, forced society to create alternative places of acceptance? Is that what Jesus taught?

I don't want to get into a big discussion about repentance and lifestyle change as being part of a life with Christ. Maybe He doesn't care about the outward evidence of change, but rather that we are willing to embark on the process with Him, come what may. Maybe we will renounce homosexuality or alcohol or greed. Maybe we won't. But do we think that Jesus will reject anyone who wants to, sincerely desires to, walk with Him, even if they don't ever change?

That's a sad state of affairs that a giant man made of wood and set afire is more easily "worshipped" than the Jesus the church has made available to people.

Any comments? I may be way off-base, really confused, terribly lost. But then again...maybe not?

In his book, Spencer talks about how once a month or so, his "church" group takes their lunch down to a local park to have a picnic. They bring lots of extra food, and they invite whoever is nearby to come eat with them. This sometimes (often?) includes homeless people in the area.

He relates what one homeless woman says: "Some people come here to feed us; you people come here to share a meal with us."

That's who I want Jesus to be in my life.

I don't want to focus on "feeding" people who don't know Christ, as if saying, "I'm the "have" and you are the "have-nots", let me feed you."

I want to sit down and share a meal with them; as if saying, "We all are hungry, so let's sit and eat together".

Maybe this is the ideal that Burning Man really evidences? Could something so pagan as this event, at least in some ways, teach Jesus more authentically than the church?

Sigh. I guess that's the end. Thanks for reading.