OpenSourceSpirituality

You don't has to

2011-09-10T11:29:00.000+02:00

Milton Erickson tells the following story:

One Sunday my wife Betty and I were reading the newspaper. Our daughter Kristi walked up to her mother, grabbed the newspaper, and threw it on the floor.

Her mother said, "Kristi, that wasn't very nice. Pick up the paper and give it back to Mommy. Tell her you're sorry."

"I don't has to," Kristi said.

Every member of the family gave Kristi the same advice and got the same reply. So I told Betty to pick Kristi up and put her in her bedroom. I lay down on the bed and Betty propped Kristi on the bed beside me. Kristi looked at me contemptuously. She started to scramble off, but I had a hold on her ankle. She said, "Wet me woose!"

I said, "I don't has to."

And that lasted four hours. She kicked and struggled. Pretty soon she freed one ankle. I got hold of the other. It was a desperate fight - like a silent fight between two titans. At the end of four hours, she knew that she was the loser and said, "I pick up the paper and give it to Mommy."

And that's where the axe fell. I said, "You don't has to."

She threw her brain into higher gear and said, "I pick up the paper. I give it to Mommy. I tell Mommy sorry."

And I said, "You don't has to."

And she shifted into full gear. "I pick up paper. I want pick up paper. I want to tell Mommy sorry."

I said, "Fine."

God Version 1.0 by Robin Mann

2011-07-14T11:45:00.000+02:00

God Version 1.0

   I don't believe in a God up in the sky
   Who sits in heaven and never hears me cry.
   I don't believe in a God who's far away --
   I believe in Jesus living here with us today.

   I don't believe in a watchmaker above,
   Set this world going but now is not involved,
   Who from a distance is watching as we fall --
   I believe in Jesus' God who suffers with us all.

   I don't believe in a tyrant on a throne
   Who wants to punish us for every wrong we've done,
   Who keeps a tally of each mistake and crime --
   God wants to have mercy on us each and every time.

   I don't believe in a God who keeps a shop,
   Who checks each item and puts a price on top,
   Who wants dividend on each investment made --
   God is always giving and refuses to be paid.

   I don't believe in a patriarchal chief,
   A judge who never had mercy on a thief,
   The Lord and Master who must be waited on --
   God is mother-sister just as much as father-son.

   God is beside us, God has no other home,
   No other family, we are God's flesh and bone;
   He-she is with us and with all humankind --
   Loving Her creation always occupies Her mind.

    (Robin Mann, 1991.)

Kahlil Gibran on Love

2011-06-23T11:07:00.000+02:00

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips

A light in the darkness

2011-06-14T14:57:00.000+02:00

Always, our darkness contains a seed of light
that struggles to grow into brightness.
Evil so hungers for good that often
it will consume itself in its longing.
For light is the truth of all existence.
   - Joy Cowley

Our life has its seasons, and God has the reasons
why spring follows winter, and new leaves grow,
for there’s a connection with our resurrection
that flowers will bud after frost and snow,
so there’s never a time to stop believing,
there’s never a time for hope to die,
there’s never a time to stop loving,
these three things go on.
     - Shirley Murray

Meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13)

I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour
and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness,
the Voice in my silence.
     - Helen Keller

I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look
up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will
change for the better, that this cruelty too will end,
that peace and tranquillity will return once more.
     - Anne Frank

May the blessing of light be on us, light without and
light within.
     - Celtic

Holy Week 2011

2011-04-20T08:56:00.000+02:00

I thank you for becoming weak, Lord Jesus,
so I don’t have to be strong.
I thank you for being willing to be considered
imperfect and strange,
so I do not have to be perfect and normal.
I thank you, Jesus, for being willing to be disapproved of,
so I do not have to try so hard to be approved and liked.
I thank you for being considered a failure,
so I do not have to give my life trying to pretend I’m a success.
I thank you for being wrong
by the standards of religion and state,
so I do not have to be right anywhere, even in my own mind.

From Hope Against Darkness by Richard Rohr, p. 38

Eyes of Faith

2011-03-28T12:42:00.000+02:00

There is supernatural dimension to everything. The most ordinary object and the most commonplace event have a divine quality. Everything in life is a stone that builds a heavenly structure. If we are blind to this and live only according to what we can see and touch, we will stumble stupidly through a dark maze.

When we live by faith we see things another way. Those who trust only their physical senses will not perceive the riches that hide beneath outward appearances. If you see the hand of God in ordinary events, even in disasters, you will accept whatever comes your way with respect and pleasure. You will welcome things that terrify others. They may be clothed in rags, but you will respect the majesty hidden beneath those rags.

Think of God's poverty as he lay crying and trembling on some hay in a manger! If you were to ask the citizens of Bethlehem their opinions of the baby Jesus, you would get ordinary responses. If he had been born in a palace among all the splendor of a prince, people would have been eager to honor him. Not so with a child in a stable.

Now go ask Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the magi. They will tell you that in this absolute poverty they see something beyond words that is the glory of God. It is the very things which cannot be perceived by our senses that nourish and enlarge faith. Seeing less, we believe more.

---Jean-Pierre de Caussade: Abandonment to Divine Providence

Circle

2011-01-11T14:06:00.000+02:00

He drew a circle that shut me out--
   Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
   We drew a circle that took him in!

   (Edwin Markham 1852-1940)

For the Time Being

2011-01-02T19:23:00.000+02:00

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

From: For the Time Being by W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Dandelion clock

2010-12-23T09:50:00.000+02:00

"Come to Us, Emmanuel" from matthew leahy on Vimeo.

Dandelion clock

Hope is a dark elusive child
curled in the womb
cradled in our arms.
It can be lost,
disappear,
blown on the wind like a dandelion clock.

Its going,
its ebbing away
leaves us
grieving,
empty,
hopeless.

‘But’ is a hopeful word.

But even as the gossamer
powder puff
disintegrates,
the seeds are carried
to cling to distant crevices.
As it recedes
it reseeds
to grow again.

God, giver of peace,
grow hope within and around us.
God of steadfast love,
never leave us hopeless.

(From: The Pattern of our Days, The Iona Community)

Christmas

2010-12-21T15:35:00.000+02:00

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.

   The self-sufficient, the proud, 
       those who, because they have everything, look down on others,
       those who have no need even of God --
   for them there will be no Christmas.

   Only the poor, the hungry,
       those who need someone to come on their behalf,
   will have that someone.

   That someone is God,
       Emmanuel, God-with-us.

   Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God...

-Archbishop Oscar Romero-

The name of God

2010-11-01T15:03:00.000+02:00

what a struggle we have
with your name, God.

for some,
it's a dry and dusty word,
better suited
for the grave of history.

for others,
it is caught on the tip
of our tongues,
     and just can't seem
     to escape our lips.

for many,
it is more a word
we use in anger,
or frustration,
or pain.

take this crumbling,
cracking word,
renew it,
refresh it,
reshape it
into that Living Word
that reminds us
you are always with us
     as you have been before we could speak.
Amen.

(c) 2004 Thom M. Shuman

Miracles

2010-10-17T13:40:00.000+02:00

A hermit has persevered for thirty years. One day he said to himself, 'I have now spent so many years here and I have had no vision and performed no miracle as did the Fathers who were monks before me'. And he was tempted to go back into the world. Then he was told, 'What miracle do you want to perform that would be more extraordinary than the patience and courage God has given you and which allowed you to persevere for so long?'
A Desert Father
cited by Marcel Driot, from The Desert, An Anthology for Lent, John Moses

How Wealthy Are We?

2010-10-11T15:35:00.000+02:00

From the standpoint of material wealth, we have difficulty realising how rich we are. Robert Heilbroner, who has written dozens of books on the subject of the economy, suggests that we go through a little mental exercise that will help us count our blessings. Imagine doing the following, and you will see how daily life is for more than a billion people in the world.

First, take out the furniture: leave a few old blankets, a kitchen table, maybe a wooden chair. You've never had a bed, remember?
Second, throw out your clothes. Each person in the family may keep the oldest suit or dress, a shirt or blouse. The head of the family has the only pair of shoes.
Third, all kitchen appliances have vanished. Keep a box of matches, a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a handful of onions, a dish of dried beans. Rescue the moldy potatoes from the garbage can: those are tonight's meal.
Fourth, dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, take out the wiring and the lights and everything that runs by electricity.
Fifth, take away the house and move the family into the tool shed.
Sixth, no more postman, fireman, government services. The two-classroom school is three miles away, but only two of your seven children attend anyway, and they walk.
Next, cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and book clubs. This is no great loss because now none of you can read anyway.
Move the nearest hospital or clinic ten miles away and put a midwife in charge instead of a doctor.
Throw away your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Leave the family a cash hoard of ten dollars.
Give the head of the family a few acres to cultivate on which he can raise a few hundred dollars of cash crops, of which one third will go to the landlord and one tenth to the money lenders.
Find some way for your children to bring in a little extra money so you have something to eat most days. But it won't be enough to keep bodies healthy--so lop off 25 to 30 years of life.

This is how over 80% of the world’s population live. Let’s begin to be thankful for what we do have and stop complaining about what we don’t have.

Adapted from a list by economist Robert Heilbroner.

For Our World by Mattie Stepanek

2010-09-10T17:34:00.000+02:00

We need to stop.

Just stop.

Stop for a moment.

Before anybody

Says or does anything

That may hurt anyone else.

We need to be silent.

Just silent.

Silent for a moment.

Before we forever lose

The blessing of songs

That grow in our hearts.

We need to notice.

Just notice.

Notice for a moment.

Before the future slips away

Into ashes and dust of humility.

Stop, be silent, and notice.

In so many ways, we are the same.

Our differences are unique treasures.

We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts

To nurture, to offer, to accept.

We need to be.

Just be.

Be for a moment.

Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,

Like children and lambs,

Never judging or vengeful

Like the judging and vengeful.

And now, let us pray,

Differently, yet together,

Before there is no earth, no life,

No chance for peace.

September 11, 2001

The old man and the scorpion

2010-09-06T16:18:00.000+02:00

There's a parable told about an old man who used to meditate each day be the Ganges River in India.

One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand painfully and giving him much pain.

Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the mediator, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"

The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, does not change my nature to save."

It is in God's nature to save (Luke 15:1-10)

A Franciscan Benediction

2010-09-02T12:16:00.000+02:00

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

How baffling you are, oh Church

2010-08-28T13:34:00.000+02:00

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely.
And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another?
I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,
for they are the same faults I carry in me.
And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ.
I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else.

From Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes

Faith

2010-08-15T16:42:00.000+02:00

May our faith be a little more wild,
and a little less guarded.

May we wonder a little more,
and fear a little less.

May we dip more than a toe
in the great sea of faith.

When we reach out to hold something,
may we find you already holding us.

When we stray into questions and doubt,
may we find you waiting with a new adventure.

When we find answers,
may we go back and look for the question.

May we have a faith that lifts stones,
rather than rakes the sand;
a faith that fidgets,
rather than behaves;
a faith that keeps stretching,
rather than becomes moribund.
a faith that stays up late,
rather than wanting early nights.

Help us discover the doing of faith
rather than its management;
exploring the outer edges,
rather than retreating to the centre;
making new words,
rather than wasting play-time defining the old ones.

May we live through faith,
for the Faith,

and God,
may we find you doing the same.

So be it
Amen

as a mother loves her child

2010-08-01T14:05:00.000+02:00

Hosea 11: 1-11 shows God's unconditional love for Israel and should remind us that God will always love us no matter what we've done. God is always waiting to receive us into God's arms of love - just as a mother loves her child (Isaiah 49: 15; Luke 13: 34).

THE SHINING WORD "AND"

2010-07-21T12:11:00.000+02:00

THE SHINING WORD "AND"

"And" teaches us to say yes
"And" allows us to be both-and
"And" keeps us from either-or
"And" teaches us to be patient and long-suffering
"And" is willing to wait for insight and integration
"And" keeps us from dualistic thinking
"And" does not divide the field of the moment
"And" helps us to live in the always imperfect now
"And" keeps us inclusive and compassionate toward everything
"And" demands that our contemplation become action
"And" insists that our action is also contemplative
"And" heals our racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism
"And" keeps us from the false choice of liberal or conservative
"And" allows us to critique both sides of things
"And" allows us to enjoy both sides of things
"And" is far beyond anyone nation or political party
"And" helps us face and accept our own dark side
"And" allows us to ask for forgiveness and to apologize
"And" is the mystery of paradox in all things
"And" is the way of mercy
"And" makes daily, practical love possible
"And" does not trust love if it is not also justice
"And" does not trust justice if it is not also love
"And" is far beyond my religion versus your religion
"And" allows us to be both distinct and yet united
"And" is the very Mystery of Trinity

From: Richard Rohr, The Naked Now

Trevor Hudson - What is your picture of God?

2010-07-12T14:52:00.000+02:00

Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young

2010-05-31T16:18:00.000+02:00

Originally written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997. More well known as "The Sunscreen Song" by Baz Luhrmann.

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Truth on its way to being truer

2010-05-18T11:35:00.000+02:00

1 Corinthians 13:8-13

A phrase sticks in my mind from recent reading. . . . "Truth on its way to being truer. . . ." Can something true become truer? In absolute terms, no, it's either true or it isn't. But, in terms of our understanding of truth, surely the answer is yes. Our understanding is only partial, and our grasp of the truth something that has to develop and mature. An apple's an apple from the first swelling of the bud, but there's little joy trying to eat it at that stage. It needs time to ripen.

If we could grasp that it would save so much pain and conflict. We fight so hard to protect "the truth", yet often we are only fighting to protect our own imperfect understanding of it. Like children, we cling to our first experiences. We hold tight to a few proof texts we learnt in our spiritual adolescence, as though that was the limit of what God has to teach us. Really, the truth we know is only the hors-d'oeuvre, a first course to whet our appetite for what comes later. The problem is that we're too insecure to follow the truth wherever it leads; we prefer to cage it, tame it, pretend that we possess it all.

Truth has to move on, not abandoning but enriching what went before. The end result is a deeper truth that may look very different from our original version. I remember an early orchestral concert in my teens. The power and drive of Sibelius' Second Symphony floored me. It opened my mind to new things, but it's not the only music I listen to now.

Truth is a life-long, inner pursuit, but we make it with him: we in him, he in us (John 17:21,23). The truth lives in us, encouraging, leading us into deeper truth; and helping us to work it out in daily living.

"God is on the point of your pencil, on the edge of your ploughshare," as Teilhard de Chard in says. I'm not sure I grasp the full meaning of that, but it contains the assurance that he's part of my life, sharing what I do, what I am. Even sharing my search for deeper truth, and leading me into it.

It's comforting, Lord, to think I have the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Reassuring, to peg the world down,
hold it fast in the chains of my small knowledge.
Tie it up and relax.

But Lord, the truth's a sleeping giant.
And when he wakes
all my Lilliputian certainties are torn out, screaming,
by a twitch of his hand.
My little dogmatisms damaged past repair.

Your truth stands towering over me.
However far I reach on tiptoe,
however much I try,
it stays beyond my reach.
Too great to hold, too high to comprehend.

Forgive my arrogance.
I can't reach further than truth's shoelace
and yet I claim to know it all.
I try to tame you,
hold you in the cage of my timidity.
Make you predictable and safe.
The truth is -
and there I go again, Lord, telling you -
it frightens me to think that all the world I see out there
is only a beginning..
That as I walk, hesitating, towards the far horizon
it moves away.
However much I see and learn, there's more.
And what I hold, though precious, is still partial,
the dim image of the glories yet to come.

Lord, turn my mind around.
Help me to realise that what I see
as never-ending quest, a constant learning,
is not a threat, but an adventure, lived with you.
Help me to understand that the infinity that beckons me,
is an infinity of love.

And as I take the road afresh, each day,
I’m not sure where it leads, or where I’m going,
but I’m going there with you.
And that’s enough.

From: No Strange Land by Eddie Askew
(all proceeds support The Leprosy Mission)

Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean (Acts 11:9)

2010-05-03T08:22:00.000+02:00

Fred Craddock, tells about a church he knew. He remembered it as the status church, First Church Downtown, it was called. Everybody who was anybody went to that church, when Fred was a boy. Not just anybody could walk in there and join. Income and proper attire seemed a membership requirement at First Church. Need was say? People of Color need not apply.

As you might imagine, First Church did not receive many new members. Members simply grew older. As an adult, Fred learned that First Church had closed. Too few people of the “right type,” I guess.

Fred had occasion to go back to town and discovered that old First Church was still standing. But now it was a restaurant, a fish restaurant. He walked in the big gothic doors and, sure enough, where there had once been pews, now there were tables, and waiters, and diners. He looked down the nave of the old church and where the communion table had once stood, now there was a salad bar.

He walked out the front door, back down the steps, muttering to himself, “Now, I guess everybody is welcome to eat at the table.”

(From a sermon by William Willimon, "When the Outsiders Become Insiders")

Covenant Prayer

2010-03-28T20:21:00.000+02:00

God of the Covenant,

I place my life in your hands – for it to be yours to direct and not mine

May you decide what I should do and with whom I should do it;

May you guide when I should be active and when I should rest;

May you sustain me when I am well and when I suffer;

May you be reflected in me when I am praised and when I am challenged;

May I give thanks to you when I enjoy abundance,

and when I know what it is to go without;

May my whole life be given in service of your love and salvation,

use all that I have and all that I am for your purposes;

And may I always remember that you, O God, and I belong to each other.

This is my commitment - I stand by it.

And I ask that you, Jesus, bear witness to it.

Amen.

(a translation of the traditional Methodist Covenant Prayer by John van de Laar of Sacredise)

Move off the page

2010-02-27T12:23:00.000+02:00

You, majestic sovereign…move off the page!

Move off the page to the world,
move off the page to the trouble,
move out of your paged leisure
to the turmoil of your creatures.

Move to the peace negotiations,
and cancer diagnoses,
and burning churches,
and lynched blacks,
and abused children.

Listen to the groans and moans,
and see and hear and know
and remember, and come down!"

(Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann).

Prayer based on 1 Corinthians 13

2010-02-01T11:43:00.000+02:00

Love is patient;
for our quick-temperedness:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is kind;
for our indifference towards others:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not envious;
for our petty jealousies:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not boastful;
for our pretentiousness:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not arrogant;
for our opinionated views -
Lord, have mercy:
Christ, have mercy:

Love is not rude;
for our crass behaviour:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love does not insist on getting its own way;
for our false sense of our own importance:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love is not irritable;
for our resentful behaviour:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Love does not rejoice in wrong-doing;
for our rejoicing in all the wrong things:
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

May God show us mercy,
forgive us our sins against love
and lead us to life that lasts:

AMEN.

(adapted from a prayer at http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/bfletch/c213.html)

Prayer of the Despised

2010-01-14T16:14:00.000+02:00

Today we come to you, Lord, we, the despised. We are not a sorry procession, but a repugnant one. We do not even arouse compassion or hatred, tenderness or sympathy. We are simply despised; we disgust people. The leper arouses compassion. The fiercest criminal stirs up hatred or terror. The mentally ill or the retarded inspire pity or protectiveness. But there is no place reserved for us in the catalogue of the works of mercy.

I, Lord, am a drug addict; for all practical purposes, I have resigned from the human race, I have lost all hope of regaining my self-control, of becoming myself again. There are other people who have drugged, not their bodies, but their consciences and hearts. But nobody despises them. At worst, they are feared.

I, Lord, am a homosexual. I don’t like women. Now and then, I go with another man. I commit fewer sins than my brother who certainly does like women and who even takes up with other men’s wives. But no one at home or outside turns their nose up at him; they don’t find him repugnant; on the contrary, sometimes they even admire him. But everyone, both men and women, shy away from me. And I am acceptable only to someone who, like me, also feels that he has been cast off by normal society.

I, Lord, am a drunkard, but a poor one. I’ve been on the bottle for many years. They don’t want me at home because they’re ashamed of me, and so I’m left to stagger around the streets like a sick dog. When people see me coming, they hastily cross to the other side of the street. Even a beggar occasionally has the consolation of having someone approach him and although hurriedly, put a small coin in his hand. But nobody comes near me; except perhaps a policeman to hustle me off to jail.
Yet, Lord, there are others who also get drunk, but they do it at exclusive parties in the suburbs and, because they are influential, people only laugh good-naturedly at their drunken antics. They are readily forgiven and, if necessary, excuses are found for them by their hangers-on, who cover up for them. No policeman ever lays a finger on them. I wonder-am I more repugnant when drunk than they are, just because I get loaded on cheap wine, while they do it on expensive whiskey, vodka, and gin.

I, Lord, am a prostitute. I can’t claim to be one of the girls, not any more. Because now I’m old and fat and tired. I have no one now to pay the rent of an apartment for me and buy me nice things. I am one of those who have to be satisfied with what my “customers” feel like giving them. I no longer have a nice apartment to entertain my clients in, and I don’t have money to advertise in the newspapers as a “masseuse”. I have to be satisfied with hanging around cheap bars in the slums or street corners in the cold and rain, hoping some poor wretch will be willing to pay me a few coins for the remnants of my favors. People passing in their cars look down their noses at me and quickly turn away so as not to meet my eyes. I am despised even by the high class call girls who, glittering with jewels and wrapped in furs, glide by in big cars driven by their so-very-respectable “patrons”.

We and so many others whom society does not even pity; we the despised of the earth, who arouse neither hatred nor pity nor fear, but only disgust, today we come to you, who are sinless, because we believe that, if you do exist, you will not despise but will even forgive us.

We aren’t trying to hide or to make excuses for the sins that have caused us to be cast off by society. We only hope that perhaps you, who not only forgive, but also excuse, will be able to avoid humiliating us further and to tell us, as once you told a man possessed by the devil, that saving us will let others see your glory and mercy in us.

Remember, you said you came to save what is lost. And who is more lost than we who do not even arouse pity? Sometimes a ray of hope lets us dream for a moment that perhaps you may bring yourself to love even us.

- Father Juan Arias

Will you come and follow me (The Summons)

2010-01-12T14:17:00.000+02:00

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around,
Through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Lord, Your summons echoes true when You but call my name.
Let me turn and follow You and never be the same.
In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show.
Thus I'll move and live and grow in You and You in me.

-- John L. Bell (Iona Community, Glasgow.)

(From “Heaven shall not wait” Wild Goose Publications 1987)

The Sout Project

2009-12-02T18:54:00.000+02:00

This is a first for this blog.

I am not a prolific blogger (I prefer the more interactive environment of Facebook and Twitter) and I am not good at putting my thoughts "on paper". I am more of a relational person - I enjoy one-on-one or small group interactive discussion. But, one thing I am definitely not is a reviewer - Oh, I love to discuss stuff but, again, it's a case of "let's chat over coffee".

In this case though, I felt I had to make an exception. That's because I was asked to review something that I believed in the moment I first heard about it. I believed in it because it holds to some of the values that I hold most dear: Collaboration, Diversity, Spirituality, Inclusiveness. The project I'm talking about is "The Sout Project":

From the website:

sout : salt (rhymes with “note”, Afrikaans)

1. A preservative and flavourant.

2. From the Sout(h).

The Sout Project is ready for launch, with its debut album, “Story”.

This fresh expression of "world emergent" music has been conceived and recorded in Cape Town, South Africa.

While deeply engaged in diverse musical traditions, and oozing creative musicality, "Story" is more than just an album: it represents a vision, woven into song. Eclectic and ecumenical, the music emerges from a spiritual journey which is being shared by many others across the world.

Featuring the American writer and visionary Brian McLaren, the dazzling African choir Siyaya, the haunting Xhosa traditional musician Madosini, the poignant voice of "tribal elder" Annemie Bosch, and a dizzying array of exotic instruments & organic electronica, the Sout Project is a broad collective of creative people, singers, instrumentalists, writers, and prophets, curated and cajoled by composer/producer Nic Paton.

“Story” will appeal to spiritual seekers and seasoned worshippers alike, as it frames the concerns of today’s world as well as some ancient responses to perennial questions, in an inclusive, open ended invitation to take part in the Divine drama, this Story in which we find ourselves.

The album is truly diverse and eclectic and, it is deeply spiritual. It seems to draw on the ancient traditions of contemplative spirituality (like Taizé) while blending traditional African sounds with a hint of Eastern and even modern electronica and house beats.

To be quite honest I am not a huge fan of electronica and house music but I found that the unique blend grew on me. It reminded me very much of the "Spirits: Music for the Soul" series of CD's (which are amongst my favourite CD's).

It is extremely diverse and will not appeal to all. Some may find it a bit repetitive at times (especially lyrically) but when one understands the contemplative disciplines (e.g. Meditation) one will be familiar with the place of repetition. Some (traditionalists) may not like all the "imagery" like, "You are our network and we are the nodes" (in the song "Story" based on the ancient Celtic prayer, "Be thou my vision"). But, "everything can change if we learn and live a new story beginning today, beginning now, beginning with you and me" (same song).

And that may be the lesson of this project; we need to learn to live a new story that breaks the pattern of "fear, revenge and greed" that we have been living and that what's this project attempts to do.

I applaud Nic Paton (grandson of the author Alan Paton) for this effort. Nic has always been slightly (OK, maybe not so slightly) subversive but his passion for Inclusiveness and for the Love of God (prevalent from his first collaboration with "Friends First") will continue to force us to think outside of the box and to embrace the Other (the neighbour that Jesus refers to in the parable of the Good Samaritan) and will help lead us to the Peace his grandfather fought for.

It is this that is captured in the CD for me and the more I listen to it, the more I find myself challenged to think beyond my own story - to take the traditional and find new ways of expressing it (or giving expression to it). It is a testament to the work of David Bosch (whose wife Annemie makes and appearance on the CD) who spearheaded a Post-Colonial understanding of God's mission in the world.

Listen to it. Give it a chance. But, above all, be willing to embrace that which is Other in order that we might all grow. I could have been more critical of this project but, I believe in it's spirit and I believe we all have something to learn from that spirit.

Thanks Nic for challenging us. Keep going!!!

There’s a wideness in God's mercy

2009-11-09T12:09:00.000+02:00

There’s a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There's a kindness in God's justice
Which is more than liberty.

There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

But we make God's love to narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify God's strictness
With a zeal God will not own.

If our love were but more simple
We should take God at God's word;
And our lives would be illumined
By the presence of our Lord.

From: Frederick William Faber (1814-63) alt.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

2009-09-23T15:35:00.000+02:00

Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. And they would play hide and go seek. And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade.
And the boy loved the tree…
Very much…
And the tree was happy…

But time went by, and the boy grew older. And the tree was often alone. Then one day the boy came to the tree and the tree said: “Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy.”
“I am too big to climb and play,” said the boy. “I want to buy things and have fun. I want some money. Can you give me some money?”
“I’m sorry” said the tree,” but I have no money. I have only leaves and apples. But, take my apples, Boy, and sell them in city. Then you will have money and you’ll be happy”
And so the boy climb up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away. And the tree was happy…

But the boy stayed away for a long time…and the tree was sad. And then one day the boy came back and the tree shook with joy, and she said: “Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and be happy.”
“I am too busy to climb trees,” said the boy. “I want a house to keep me warm,” he said. “I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?”
“I have no house” said the tree. The forest is my house. but you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy”
And so the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house.
And the tree was happy…

But the boy stayed away for a long time. And when he came back, the tree was so happy she could hardly speak. “Come, Boy” she whispered, “Come and play”
“I am too old and sad to play,” said the boy. “I want a boat that will take me far away from here. Can you give me a boat?”
“Cut down my trunk and make a boat,” said the tree. “Then you can sail away…and be happy.”
And so the boy cut down her trunk and made a boat and sailed away.
And the tree was happy…
But not really.

And after a long time the boy came back again. “I am sorry, Boy,” said the tree, “but I have nothing left to give you — my apples are gone.”
“My teeth are too weak for apples,” said the boy.
“My branches are gone,” said the tree. “You cannot swing on them.”
“I am too old to swing on branches” said the boy.
“My trunk is gone,” said the tree. “You cannot climb”
“I am too tired to climb,” said the boy.
“I am sorry” sighed the tree. “I wish that I could give you something…but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry…”
“I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”
“Well,” said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, “well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down, sit down and rest.”
And the boy did…
And the tree was happy…

The Furious Longing of God

2009-09-17T10:40:00.000+02:00

"The apostle Paul may have understood the mind of Jesus better than anyone else who ever lived. He sums up his whole understanding of the message of Jesus in Gal. 5:6 when he writes, 'The only thing that matters is the faith that expresses itself in love' . . .

. . . Back in the late ‘70s, I was living in a monastery in Philadelphia. Some millionaire friends from New York City called and asked if I’d like to come up to the city for the week, go to a play on Broadway, eat at Sardi’s. This, dear reader, was not a hard decision to make.

One evening we went to a play and, after the first act, we went out in the street for intermission. The tuxedoed husbands got into a dense discussion with their bejeweled, evening-gowned wives on the influence of the German philosopher Schopenhauer on Samuel Beckett’s “Theatre of the Absurd.” Obviously they asked me what I thought.

I was about to deliver an observation so profound that it would render the discussion moot for eternity, when she walked by. She was not one of the beautiful people. She wore a cab driver’s cap, double-breasted man’s suit with the pockets ripped out, holes in her nylons, and tennis shoes.

As she approached, I noticed she was peddling “Variety” newspapers, the show biz paper. In those days it cost 75 cents. So, in a gesture of great generosity, I reached in my pocket, handed her a dollar, and waved her away, then returned to my wealthy friends awaiting my next astute observation on the absurd.

And then she said, “Father?” In those days, I knew I couldn’t distinguish myself by my virtues, so I distinguished myself by my clothing; I always wore the collar. “Father, could I talk to you a minute?”

I snapped, “What? Can’t you see I’m busy? Do you make a habit of interrupting people in the middle of a conversation? Wait over there and I’ll speak to you when I’m done.” She whispered, “Jesus wouldn’t talk to Mary Magdalene like that.” And then she was gone.

I’d treated the woman as though she were a thing, like a vending machine you put your money into, and out comes your choice. I’d shown no appreciation at all for the little service that she was performing. No interest whatsoever in the little drama of her daily things. Not one ounce of cordial love impregnated with respect for the sacred dimension of her personality.

Frankly, I was so caught up in trying to impress my millionaire friends with how aesthetically brilliant I was that I missed her. If she had even a sliver of a negative self-image when she approached me, I had made a mountain out of a molehill.

Now let’s suppose, just suppose, that this woman came to church on Sunday and there was Brennan Manning, in the pulpit, exhorting her to believe that God loves her unconditionally as she is and not as she should be. My hypocrisy outside the Shepherd Theatre that night made the theatre of the absurd look inviting.

How could she believe in the love of a God she can’t see, when she couldn’t find even a trace of love in the eyes of a brother wearing a clerical collar whom she could see? A shriveled humanity has a shrunken capacity for receiving the rays of God’s love.

And they’ll know we are Christian by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Or not. "

From Brennan Manning’s latest book, The Furious Longing of God.

Based on Psalm 84

2009-08-20T12:03:00.000+02:00

Bombs overseas and murders in our streets;
families with homes one day are homeless the next.
O, Lord, our souls yearn, even faint to worship you.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

Demonic displacements in our cities
and unrighteous gentrification in our towns!
O Lord, our souls yearn, even faint, to worship you today.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

We search for your peace and cry out for your presence,
looking for a city whose builder and maker is God.
Thank you, for even the sparrow has a home with you; and so do we.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
we are forever praising you!

(from Africana Resources, United Methodist Church USA, )

On Prayer

2009-07-28T16:06:00.000+02:00

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

by Poet, Czeslaw Milosz

Prayer and Life

2009-07-27T16:19:00.000+02:00

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship, and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.
--Thomas Kelly

Thomas Merton

2009-06-25T10:22:00.000+02:00

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude," Abbey of Gethsemani

Mysterium tremendum

2009-06-02T15:29:00.000+02:00

In the Celtic triple spiral, there is a space where the three spirals connect. It is both a place of meeting and of sheer mystery. Its vast, vibrant emptiness reminds me that, in this life, we will never know all the names of God. Even as the Trinity evokes, it conceals. We will never exhaust the images we use to describe the One who holds us and sends us, who enfolds us and impels us in our eternal turning.

From: http://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/05/12/trinity-sunday-a-spiral-shaped-god/

Christian Spirituality

2009-05-05T08:35:00.000+02:00

Christian spirituality is not a life-project for becoming a better person. It is not about developing a so-called deeper life. We are in on it, to be sure, but we are not the subject. Nor are we the action. We get included by means of a few prepositions: God with us (Matt. 1:23), Christ in me (Gal. 2:20), God for us (Rom. 8:31). With, in, for: They are powerful, connecting, relation-forming words, but none of them makes us either the subject or the predicate. We are the tag-end of a prepositional phrase.

Sooner or later in this life we get invited or commanded to do something. But in that doing, we never become the subject of the Christian life nor do we perform the action of the Christian life. We are invited or commanded into what I call prepositional participation. The prepositions that join us to God and God's action in us within the world—the with, the in, the for—are very important, but they are essentially a matter of the ways and means of being in on and participating in what God is doing.

From: Transparent lives by Eugene Peterson

Touch me and see

2009-04-21T14:20:00.001+02:00

Jesus,
you say,
touch me and see.

I touched you today
when I saw the dogwoods in bloom.

I touched you
on the path by the river
in the greetings of the joggers.

I clung to you
in sorrow
grieving the loss of a friend.

I touched you
this morning at Mass
in the Eucharist.

I touch you
a hundred ways

every
day

(from the Centre for Liturgy, University of St. Louis)

Following the Christ

2009-04-15T10:18:00.002+02:00

Jesus is the microcosm; Christ is the macrocosm. There is a movement from Jesus to the Christ that you and I have to imitate and walk. A lot of us have so fallen in love with the historical Jesus that we worship him as such and stop there. We never really followed the same journey which he made, which is the death and resurrection journey. We don't become the "Body of Christ.”

Unless we make the same movement that Jesus did—from his one single life to his risen and transformed state, we probably don’t really understand what we mean by the Christ—and how we are part of the deal! That is why he said "follow me.” The Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced by, and redeemed by, is the RISEN Jesus who has become the Christ, which is an inclusive statement about creation. Stay with this in the days ahead, and it will all become very simple and clear. But central enough to change the way you see everything!

Adapted from Fr. Richard Rohr, The Cosmic Christ

It was on the Sunday

2009-03-30T11:04:00.004+02:00

It was on the Sunday that he took on the city.

Religious freaks usually appear in the desert urging folk to come into
the open air and find God through getting back to nature.
God, you see, doesn't live in the city.
He prefers the smell of a garden to that of a gutter.
He likes to see children jumping creeks, not raking through garbage bins.
And far better in his eyes are lovers lounging in the long grass than
cramped up in a single bed.

The city is for sin. God doesn't go there.

The Lord is my Shepherd,
not my social worker.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures,
not shrinks' couches.
He leads me beside still waters,
not trickles of urine from a drunk's bladder.
And on the mountains are the peace messenger's feet beautiful,
not in the middle of the road.

It was on the Sunday that he took on the city.

From: Stages on the Way

Just a note: this is not meant to be read literally - it is irony reflecting how Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem and how he turns our religiosity on it's head.

Pushing against the rock

2009-03-29T14:28:00.002+02:00

I've posted this story before, but today I was reminded of it in the context of prayer:

There was a man who was asleep one night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light and the Saviour appeared. The Lord told the man He had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock pushing with all his might. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain.

Seeing that the man was showing signs of discouragement, Satan decided to enter the picture placing thoughts into the man's mind such as; "You have been pushing against that rock for a long time and it hasn't budged. Why kill yourself over this? You are never going to move it? Etc." Thus, giving the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. These thoughts discouraged and disheartened the man even more. "Why kill myself over this?" he thought. "I'll just put in my time, giving just the minimum of effort and that will be good enough."

And that he planned to do until one day he decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Lord. "Lord" he said, "I have laboured long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock a half a millimetre. What is wrong? Why am I failing?"

To this the Lord responded compassionately, "My friend, when long ago I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to me, your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled; your hands are callused from constant pressure; your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven't moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith and trust in my wisdom. This you have done. I, my friend, will now move the rock."

Bad news? Good news? Who knows?

2009-03-24T16:07:00.001+02:00

There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbours and friends, trying to exist and fulfil a peaceful life. One day news arrived from far away, that his old loving father had died. His neighbours gathered to grieve, but the farmer simply said, "Bad news? Good news? Who knows?"

In time relatives brought a very fine horse of great cost and fine breeding, left to the farmer by his father. All the villagers and neighbours gathered in delight with him to celebrate his good fortune, but he just said, "Bad news? Good news? Who knows?"

One day the horse escaped into the hills and when all the farmer's neighbours sympathized with the old man over his bad news, the farmer replied, "Bad news? Good news? Who knows?"

A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good news. His reply was, "Good news? Bad news? Who knows?"

Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad news. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad news? Good news? Who knows?"

Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good news? Bad news? Who knows?

Listening to Life

2009-03-17T15:05:00.001+02:00

Within the Christian tradition life is lived as though human beings are continually being addressed or called to in one way or another. The process of nature, the flux of history, all that happens to each individual every twenty-four hours is a ‘mighty sum of things forever speaking’.
J. Neville Ward, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, p. 3

Prayer, Fasting and Mercy

2009-02-25T09:18:00.003+02:00

Today is Ash Wednesday the start of Lent. It is traditionally a time of fasting (or giving something up). Rituals are an important part of our Spirituality but we must remember why we do them and not just do them or they lose their power to transform:

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself. Saint Peter Chrysologus

This year consider adding works of compassion (mercy) during Lent rather than (or in addition to) giving something up. It needn't be something big - just a small gesture of love to someone in need.

The LORD says, "Shout as loud as you can! Tell my people Israel about their sins! They worship me every day, claiming that they are eager to know my ways and obey my laws. They say they want me to give them just laws and that they take pleasure in worshiping me." The people ask, "Why should we fast if the LORD never notices? Why should we go without food if he pays no attention?" The LORD says to them, "The truth is that at the same time you fast, you pursue your own interests and oppress your workers. Your fasting makes you violent, and you quarrel and fight. Do you think this kind of fasting will make me listen to your prayers? When you fast, you make yourselves suffer; you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on. Is that what you call fasting? Do you think I will be pleased with that? "The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives. "Then my favor will shine on you like the morning sun, and your wounds will be quickly healed. I will always be with you to save you; my presence will protect you on every side. When you pray, I will answer you. When you call to me, I will respond. "If you put an end to oppression, to every gesture of contempt, and to every evil word; if you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then the darkness around you will turn to the brightness of noon. And I will always guide you and satisfy you with good things. I will keep you strong and well. You will be like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never goes dry. Your people will rebuild what has long been in ruins, building again on the old foundations. You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses."
(Isa 58:1-12 TEV)

All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten

2009-02-18T11:32:00.002+02:00

All I Really need to Know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life-learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup-they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned-the biggest word of all- LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world- had cookies and milk abut three o' clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if an governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true-, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

From: All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.

Religion and Relationship

2009-02-09T08:43:00.002+02:00

Humans do not want a God of love, because a lover always makes demands. That is the very nature of love and humanity doesn't want it. We seek to hide from it and destroy it. So people sought to destroy Jesus, brother to creation. The people did not want relationship; they wanted religion.

Should that seem so unreal to us? It is the same for us today. It is the same for the Church for the last two thousand years. Humans do not want love relationships; we want religion and all its trappings because that is much more comfortable.

A love relationship continues to challenge and make demands. It also offers a joy that we cannot tolerate: too near, too lavish, too spacious. What might we do with such freedom?

from The Great Themes of Scripture, p.113

The Spirituality of Service

2009-01-29T14:48:00.002+02:00

Each activity of daily life in which we stretch ourselves on behalf of others is a prayer of action - the times when we scrimp and save in order to get the children something special; the times when we share our car with others on rainy mornings, leaving early to get them to work on time; the times when we keep up correspondence with friends or answer one last telephone call when we are dead tired at night. These times and many more like them are lived prayer.

-RICHARD J. FOSTER in Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home

THE CALF PATH

2009-01-12T14:35:00.001+02:00

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,

And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path.1

But still they followed—do not laugh—
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;

And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;

For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;

For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah! Many things this tale might teach—
But I am not ordained to preach.

—SAM WALTER FOSS

When I die

2009-01-08T16:35:00.003+02:00

One of my great spiritual heroes is Mattie Stepanek. One of his poems, "When I Die (Part II)", written when he was 9 years old contains these words:

"When I die,
I want to be,
Just like I want to be
Here on earth."

I wish more people would get this. Mattie was (is) a Peacemaker. So many people focus on the afterlife as an escape Mattie saw it as a continuation. Eternal life begins now. Why wait?

Spirituality is about experiencing the eternal here and now. It's about realising and making the eternal a reality here and now.

When I Die (Part II)

When I die, I want to be
A child in Heaven.
I want to be
A ten-year-old cherub.
I want to be
A hero in Heaven,
And a peacemaker,
Just like my goal on earth.
I will ask God if I can
Help the people in purgatory.
I will help them think,
About their life,
About their spirits,
About their future.
I will help them
Hear their own Heartsongs again,
So they can finally
See the face of God,
So soon.
When I die,
I want to be,
Just like I want to be
Here on earth.

--Mattie Stepanek

A new vision for 2009

2009-01-07T09:36:00.002+02:00

Almost a month without an update so I have added this from one of my daily devotions

Question of the day:
How has Jesus taught us to see for ourselves?

In the Gospel of Matthew we are told “The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be all darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkness, what darkness that will be” (Mat. 6:22-23).

Here Jesus tells us that it is all a matter of seeing. It is possible to have “light” inside of us that is not really light, answers that are not really wisdom. And Jesus comes not so much to fill our minds with the right answers as to open our minds so that we can see for ourselves.

from A New Way of Seeing/ A New Way of Being; Jesus and Paul

Current mantra:
Taste and SEE the goodness of our God

Searching for God

2008-12-09T10:59:00.005+02:00

There is a wonderful Chasidic story about the child of a rabbi who used to wander in the woods. At first his father let him wander but over time he became concerned. The woods were dangerous. The father did not know what lurked there.

He decided to discuss the matter with his child. One day he took him aside and said, "You know, I have noticed that each day you walk into the woods. I wonder, why do you go there?"

The boy said to his father, "I go there to find God."

“That is a very good thing,” the father replied gently. “I am glad you are searching for God. But, my child, don't you know that God is the same everywhere?”

“Yes,” the boy answered, “but I'm not.”

in David J. Wolpe, Teaching Your Children About God

Light

2008-12-09T09:36:00.004+02:00

When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.

I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light in to dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light - truth, understanding, knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of me - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of life.

Quoted by Robert Fulghum, It was on Fire when I Lay Down On It

a Silence and a Shouting

2008-12-02T09:32:00.001+02:00

a Silence and a Shouting

An extract from the book by Eddie Askew
available through The Leprosy Mission
or contact TLM Trading Limited and request a catalogue
(all proceeds support The Leprosy Mission)

Books on prayer are published so often these days that to read them all would leave very little time left to pray; but I have been using one recently called It's me, O Lord by Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick. There is a description of prayer which is more of a poem and a meditation than anything else. Here it is:

"The important thing about prayer is that it is almost indefinable. You see, it is: hard and sharp, soft and loving, deep and inexpressible, shallow and repetitious, a groaning and a sighing.

"A silence and a shouting, a burst of praise digging deep down into loneliness, into me. Loving. Abandonment to despair, a soaring to heights which can be only ecstasy, dull plodding in the greyness of mediocre being - laziness, boredom, resentment.

"Questing and questioning, calm reflection, meditation, cogitation, A surprise at sudden joy, a shaft of light, a laser beam. Irritation at not understanding, impatience, pain of mind and body hardly uttered or deeply anguished.

"Being together, the stirring of love shallow, then deeper, then deepest. A breathless involvement, a meeting, a longing, a loving, an inpouring.''

Prayer is . . . resentment . . . irritation . . . impatience. Does that surprise you? It took me a long time to learn to bring my resentments to the Lord, as well as my joys and requests. Yet l think we should. Our whole lives should be, are, open to God and He knows what is there deep down. It is only by bringing our anger and irritations out into the open that He can deal with them, even direct them, for good. That is good psychology, and it is good Christian living too. And in the cleansing process comes the realization and experience of love - shallow, then deeper, and a real meeting and involvement with the Lord.

Lord, teach me to pray.

It sounds exciting, put like that.
It sounds real. An exploration.
A chance to do more than catalogue
and list the things I want,
to an eternal Father Christmas.

The chance of meeting you,
of drawing closer to the love that mode me,
and keeps me, and knows me.
And, Lord, it's only just begun.
There is so much more of you,
of love, the limitless expanse of knowing you.
I could be frightened, Lord, in this wide country.
It could be lonely, but you are here, with me.

The chance of learning about myself,
of facing up to what I am.
Admitting my resentments,
bringing my anger to you, my disappointments. my frustration.
And finding that when l do,
when I stop struggling and shouting
and let go
you are still there.
Still loving.

Sometimes, Lord, often -
I don't know know what to say to you.
But I still come, in quiet
for the comfort of two friends
sitting in silence.
And it's then. Lord, that I learn most from you.
When my mind slows down,
and my heart stops racing.
When I let go and wait in the quiet,
realizing that all the things I was going to ask for
you know already.
Then, Lord, without words,
in the stillness
you are there . . .
And l love you.

Lord, teach me to pray.

Broken We Kneel

2008-11-27T10:38:00.000+02:00

One day [my daughter] Emma saw a woman
Walking toward us covered in a veil and asked the
Inevitable, “What’s that, mommy?”

“Emma,” I answered, “that lady is a Muslim from
a far away place. And she dresses like that – and
covers her head with a veil – because she loves
God. That is how her people show they love God.”

My daughter considered these words. She stared
at the woman who passed us. She pointed at the
woman, then pointed at my hair, and further
quizzed, “Mommy, do you love God?”

“Yes, honey.” I laughed. “I do. You and I are
Christians. Christian ladies show love for God
by going to church, eating the bread and wine,
serving the poor, and giving to those in need. We
don’t wear veils, but we do love God.”

After this, Emma took every opportunity to point
to Muslim women during our shopping trips and
tell me, “Mommy, look, she loves God.” One day,
we were getting out of our car at our driveway at
the same time as our Pakistani neighbors. Emma
saw the mother, beautifully veiled, and, pointing at
her shouted, “Look, mommy, she loves God!”

My neighbor was surprised. I told her what I had
taught Emma about Muslim ladies loving God.
While she held back tears, this near stranger
hugged me, saying, “I wish all Americans
would teach their children so. The world would be
better. The world would be better.

Taken from Broken We Kneel
By Diana Butler Bass

(Quoted from McLaren, B. A Generous Orthodoxy. Pgs 298-299)

Christmas can [still] change the world. This year, Give Presence.

2008-11-26T09:04:00.000+02:00

An Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker

2008-11-20T13:51:00.004+02:00

I submit this not because of Obama but because of the Spirituality this letter contains (esp. from the second paragraph on) - I think it speaks to all of us.

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

What is Real

2008-11-20T10:50:00.003+02:00

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

From: The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Pretty Amazing Grace

2008-11-01T14:51:00.002+02:00

Pretty amazing grace is what You showed me
pretty amazing grace is who You are
I was an empty vessel
You filled me up inside
and with amazing grace restored my pride

Pretty amazing grace is how You saved me
and with amazing grace reclaimed my heart
love in the midst of chaos
calm in the heat of war
showed with amazing grace what love was for

You forgave my insensitivity
and my attempt to then mislead You
You stood beside a wretch like me
Your pretty amazing grace was all I needed.

Stumbled inside the doorway of Your chapel
humbled and awed by everything I found
beauty and love surround me
freed me from what I fear
ask for amazing grace and You appear

You overcame my loss of hope and faith
gave me a truth I could belive in
You led me to a higher place
showed Your amazing grace
when grace was what I needed

look in a mirror I see Your reflection
open a book You live on every page
I fall and You're there to lift me
share every road I climb
and with amazing grace You ease my mind

Came to You with empty pockets first
when I returned I was rich man
didn't believe love could quench my thirst
but with amazing grace You showed me that it can

In Your amazing grace I had a vision
from that amazing place I came to be
into the night I wandered
wandering aimlessly
found Your amazing grace to comfort me.

pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing
pretty amazing

You overcame my loss of hope and faith,
gave me a truth I could believe in.
You led me to that higher place
showed me that love and truth and hope and grace were all I needed.

--Neil Diamond from his latest album "Home Before Dark"

Spirituality

2008-10-20T14:47:00.003+02:00

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
---Anthony de Mello

Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

2008-10-20T09:28:00.005+02:00

There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbours and friends, trying to exist and fulfil a peaceful life. One day news arrived from far away, that his old loving father had died. His neighbours gathered to grieve, but the farmer simply said, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

In time relatives brought a very fine horse of great cost and fine breeding, left to the farmer by his father. All the villagers and neighbours gathered in delight with him to celebrate his good fortune, but he just said, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

One day the horse escaped into the hills and when all the farmer's neighbours sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?"

Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

(Ancient Chinese story told in Anthony de Mello's book, "The Song of the Bird")

Chinese idiom: Sai Weng Shi Ma, Yan Zhi Fei Fu

PUSHING AGAINST THE ROCK

2008-10-20T09:19:00.003+02:00

There was a man who was asleep one night in his cabin when suddenly his room filled with light and the Saviour appeared. The Lord told the man He had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock pushing with all his might. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain.

Seeing that the man was showing signs of discouragement, Satan decided to enter the picture placing thoughts into the man's mind such as; "You have been pushing against that rock for a long time and it hasn't budged. Why kill yourself over this? You are never going to move it? Etc." Thus, giving the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. These thoughts discouraged and disheartened the man even more. "Why kill myself over this?" he thought. "I'll just put in my time, giving just the minimum of effort and that will be good enough."

And that he planned to do until one day he decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Lord. "Lord" he said, "I have laboured long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock a half a millimetre. What is wrong? Why am I failing?"

To this the Lord responded compassionately, "My friend, when long ago I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to me, your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled; your hands are callused from constant pressure; your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven't moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith and trust in my wisdom. This you have done. I, my friend, will now move the rock."

Our greatest fear

2008-10-15T08:34:00.001+02:00

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson
(sometimes (incorrectly) ascribed to Nelson Mandela)

Political Spirituality

2008-09-20T19:23:00.004+02:00

OK, I know this is not really what this blog is all about but I have said before that politics and Spirituality cannot be separated.

As you may have heard, today the ANC decided to recall the President of SA, Thabo Mbeki. According to ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe this was done "as an effort to heal and unite the ANC". That's all fine and well, my question is, "What about the COUNTRY!!!!" What about the people???

The only reason I can see the ANC would want to "heal and unite the ANC" is because they are concerned about next years elections. There seems to be no concern about the criminal intent of either Jacob Zuma or Thabo Mbeki or anybody for that matter. The real issue surely is the criminality of the arms deal. A commission of inquiry is what is needed to get to the bottom of the issue not party politics.

Once again, we have a case of government serving their own needs instead of the country or the people.

Once again we pray, "Your Kingdom come (Lord God) your will be done on earth as it is in heaven".

We need God's people to play a prophetic role once again and hold our government accountable.

OK, rant over.

Spirituality

2008-09-17T16:53:00.003+02:00

This is a wordle of this blog:

If Only I Had Known

2008-09-17T13:54:00.002+02:00

If only I had known the cost of human greed,
perhaps I would have reached out more to those in need.
But now I see the truth across the great divide!
If only I had known and changed,” the rich man cried.

If only we could see which bargains in the store
are made in dismal sweatshops that oppress the poor.
For each subsistence wage—each tiny, crippling stitch—
makes wider the divide between the poor and rich.

And, too, if we could hear a mother’s lullaby;
she’s singing now to calm her hungry toddler’s cry.
For rich ones came one day, took land and water rights,
and left the poor with hopeless days and hungry nights.

If only we could learn what keeps us wanting more:
we build our bigger barns so we’ll feel more secure.
But you alone, O God, give true security;
possessed by our possessions, we cannot be free.

O Christ, if we could know God’s will for all the earth!
And yet, by your own Spirit, you have shown God’s truth:
“Do justice, help the poor, share life and love and land,
and when you see the hungry, open wide your hand.”

by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

It all comes back to you!

2008-09-15T15:49:00.000+02:00

Even the simplest everyday actions can have an impact on the environment. And in the end they all come back to us.

Lord God, your love has called us here

2008-09-08T09:08:00.002+02:00

Lord God, your love has called us here
As we, by love, for love were made',
Your living likeness still we bear,
Though marred, dishonoured, disobeyed;
We come, with all our heart and mind,
Your call to hear, your love to find.

We come with self-inflicted pains
Of broken trust and chosen wrong,
Half-free, half-bound by inner chains,
By social forces swept along,
By powers and systems close confined,
Yet seeking hope for humankind.

Lord God, in Christ you call our name,
And then receive us as your own,
Not through some merit, right or claim,
But by your gracious love alone;
We strain to glimpse your mercy-seat,
And find you kneeling at our feet.

Then take the towel, and break the bread,
And humble us, and call us friends;
Suffer and serve till all are fed,
And show how grandly love intends
To work till all creation sings,
To fill all worlds, to crown all things.

Lord God, in Christ you set us free
Your life to live, your joy to share;
Give us your Spirit's liberty
To turn from guilt and dull despair
And offer all that faith can do,
While love is making all things new.

Brian A. Wren (1936 – )

Q & A (Matthew 16:13-20)

2008-08-27T09:49:00.001+02:00

when it shows up
on the test
('who do you say I am?')
i quickly flip open the book
and copy out the answers . . .

for
'Son of the living God'
has become a research paper
(hopefully expanding into
a dissertation)
with experts, writing
in several languages,
quoted to support my view,
but a real Person:
calling me to follow;
willing to open my shut mind;
hoping to send me out
to confront the powers
in my corner of the world?

and
i have said
'Lord'
so many times
that i have lost count,
but the instances
i have (actually,
willingly, eagerly)
given you control of my life?
even if i include the
thumb on my counting hand,
i still have several fingers
left over . . .

so maybe i need
to close the book,
and open my self
to you.

(c) 2008 Thom M. Shuman

2008-08-27T09:46:00.000+02:00

You are known. I know you. I created you. I am still creating you. And I have loved you from your mother’s womb. You have fled - as you now know - from my love; but I love you nevertheless and not-the-less, and however far you flee, it is I who sustain your very power of fleeing; and I will never finally let you go. I accept you as you are. You are beloved, and you are forgiven. I know all your personal sufferings. I have always known them. For beyond your understanding, when you suffer, I suffer as well. I also know all the little tricks by which you try to hide - from yourself and others - the ugliness you have made of your life. But know that, from my view, you are beautiful, more deeply within than you can see. You are beautiful because you yourself, in the unique person that only you are, reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way which shall never end. And I, perhaps I alone, truly see the beauty that you shall become. Through the transforming power of my love, which is made perfect in humility and weakness, you shall become perfectly beautiful - in a unique and irreplaceable way, which neither you nor I will work out alone, for we shall work it out together.
-Charles Robinson-

Sanctus Real

2008-08-18T10:40:00.000+02:00

If weakness is a wound that no one wants to speak of
Then "cool" is just how far we have to fall
I am not immune, I only want to be loved
But I feel safe behind the firewall

Can I lose my need impress?
If you want the truth I need to confess

I'm not alright, I'm broken inside
And all I go through, it leads me to you

Burn away the pride
Bring me to my weakness
Until everything I hide behind is gone
And when I'm open wide with nothing left to cling to
Only you are there to lead me on.

Honestly, I'm not that strong.

I'm not alright... that's why I need you.

- Sanctus Real

The Flame

2008-08-14T10:06:00.001+02:00

“THE FLAME”

(lyrics by Joe Henry, sung by Trisha Yearwood
at the closing ceremony of the 1996 Olympics)

Oh come ye now unto the flame: keep it through the night
Nourish it and share its warmth and spend its precious light
The torch is passed among us all to help us understand
A covenant of brotherhood that joins our open hands

We are standing at the edge faced with just one choice
Help each other to be kind and let our hearts rejoice
As different as we seem to be, we are still the same
Divided by our separate walls, but joined before the flame

Oh come ye now unto the flame: keep it through the night
Shelter and embrace its warmth and spread its precious light
The darkness makes us all afraid, but we are not alone
The beacon of our common love will guide our journey home

The Spirituality of the Cellphone

2008-08-13T10:59:00.003+02:00

On the 30 March 2008 Shane Hipps did a talk at Mars Hill on The Spirituality of the Cellphone. It is really amazing. You can download it here and I would highly recommend that you do - it is well worth the listen.

It's actually more about the spirituality of the electronic age in general and speaks about how electronics disconnects us as much as it connects us. There is no substitute for physical presence.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think

I CHOOSE

2008-08-05T10:41:00.003+02:00

It's quiet. It's early. My coffee is hot. The sky is still black. The world is still asleep. The day is coming. In a few moments the day will arrive. It will roar down the track with the rising of the sun. The stillness of the dawn will be exchanged for the noise of the day. The calm of the solitude will be replaced by the pounding pace of the human race. The refuge of the early morning will be invaded by decisions to be made and deadlines to be met. For the next twelve hours I will be exposed to the day's demands. It is now that I must make a choice. And so,

I CHOOSE LOVE...

No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves.

I CHOOSE JOY...

I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical . . . the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God.

I CHOOSE PEACE...

I will live forgiven. I will forgive so that I may live.

I CHOOSE PATIENCE...

I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Rather than complaining that the wait is too long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clinching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage.

I CHOOSE KINDNESS...

I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone, kind to the rich, for they are afraid, and kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me.

I CHOOSE GOODNESS...

I will go without a Rand before I take a dishonest one. I will see the good in others when it is hard to find. I will confess before I will accuse. I choose goodness.

I CHOOSE FAITHFULNESS...

Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My associates will not question my word. My spouse will not question my love. And my children will never fear that their parents will forget them.

I CHOOSE GENTLENESS...

Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice, may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.

I CHOOSE SELF-CONTROL...

I am a spiritual being. After this body is dead, my spirit will soar. I refuse to let what will rot rule the eternal. I choose self-control.

LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, AND SELF-CONTROL...

The Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek God's face. When this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest.

The Shack

2008-07-21T13:08:00.002+02:00

I finished this book over a week ago but I've been putting off commenting on it partly because I don't really know where to start and I don't want to do the book an injustice but also because I'm not sure how to respond. This is not a review just some thoughts:

I enjoyed the book.

I loved the theology.

I found parts deeply profound and moving.

I found some of the conversations to "trite" and "easy" (here's where I start to struggle).

Having been through some really difficult times myself I though that Mac accepted things too easily - but I realise that is a little unfair - I just wanted him to fight a little more. At times it reminded me a little of the "Touched by and Angel" TV series - a little too soppy.

Having said that I know that it was originally written for Paul's children to introduce them to some deep themes - and Paul obviously has a strong personal faith and has worked through the issues he grapples with in the story personally. That's why I'm hesitant to "criticise". I know that it's not a theological treatise on Theodicy. I just know that people I've dealt with struggle more deeply with these issues than Mac seems to have.

It was very personal for me too as my greatest fear in life is to lose one of my children and I don't think I'd let God off so easily if it happened to me.

But that is the strength of the book - it allows us to grapple a little with some very real issues. It gives us a launch-pad to work through those issues ourselves.

I think the key is to remember that it is a STORY - stories can be powerful tools of healing but they are tools - they can never provide all the answers.

I think everyone should read this book but don't expect too much from it - it can change you and your thinking or it can just be a good story.

(Hopefully the fact that I've rambled a bit will show you how I struggled to write this - READ THE BOOK FOR YOURSELF!)

2008-07-18T08:39:00.000+02:00

God’s Love

This morning a chain of thought began as I watched my daughter going off to school. It’s difficult to explain but a wave of love suddenly welled up within me and I actually felt a physical pain within me. This started me thinking of God’s love for us. I have always said that I have begun to understand God’s love far more since having children. One of the images that God uses to illustrate God’s love for us is that of Parent-Child.

I love my children in a way that is different from the way I love my wife – not less, just different. The love I have for them is different from the love I felt in the early days of my relationship with my wife – that young love of infatuation that also caused a physical pain within me (you know what I mean). And I thought, “Wow! God loves me like that too. I wonder if it also causes that kind of pain for him?”

My children irritate me at times, they frustrate me, they even make me really angry at times – but I still love them with a love that is so deeply entrenched within me. One of my greatest fears is of something bad happening to them – it would . . . I don’t know really – but it would hurt – BIG TIME!!! It would even destroy a part of me. That’s how God loves us.

But then I thought, God also uses images of loving us like a spouse and even like a lover (just read Song of Songs). Then I thought of Hosea and how God used Hosea’s life to illustrate God’s love for us. God asked Hosea to marry a prostitute – an outcast, one who is un-loved and God asked Hosea to buy her back even after she had betrayed Hosea and ended up being sold into slavery – and God used Hosea to show how God loves us.

That’s how God loves us. Are you getting it? God’s love is BIG – VERY BEEEG!!!! And, nothing can separate us from that love.

In view of all this, what can we say? If God is for us, who can be against us? Certainly not God, who did not even keep back his own Son, but offered him for us all! He gave us his Son---will he not also freely give us all things? Who will accuse God's chosen people? God himself declares them not guilty! Who, then, will condemn them? Not Christ Jesus, who died, or rather, who was raised to life and is at the right side of God, pleading with him for us! Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship or persecution or hunger or poverty or danger or death? As the scripture says, "For your sake we are in danger of death at all times; we are treated like sheep that are going to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us! For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below---there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:31-39)

2008-07-17T15:03:00.000+02:00

"Spirituality I define as becoming conscious of and intentional about our relationship to God. I say conscious of because I firmly maintain that we are all already in a relationship with God and we have been so since our very beginning, whether we know that or not, believe that or not. Spirituality is about becoming conscious of that relationship. I say intentional because I see spirituality as being about paying attention to that relationship, being intentional about deepening that relationship and letting that relationship grow. Just as human relationships grow and deepen through spending time in them and paying attention to them, so also our relationship with God grows in this same way."

~From the sermon "Jesus and the Christian Life" by Dr. Marcus J. Borg

2008-07-15T19:14:00.002+02:00

Morgan (7) & Tyla (4) (my daugther's) are playing:

Tyla: I kill you!
Me (from the background): No killing allowed (trying to instill pacifist leanings into children)
Morgan: But Dad, there's always bad guys
Me: Yes, but no killing allowed!
Morgan: So, what do we do with the bad guys?
Me: Put them in jail - no killing allowed
Morgan: What if they get sick in jail and die?
Me: Well, that's different . . . just so long as you're not killing . . .
Morgan: OK! So, you go to jail, get sick and die!

2008-07-14T09:29:00.000+02:00

"Somewhere someone"

The kingdom of love is coming because:
somewhere someone is kind when others are unkind,
somewhere someone shares with another in need,
somewhere someone refuses to hate, while others hate,
somewhere someone is patient - and waits in love,
somewhere someone returns good for evil,
somewhere someone serves another, in love,
somewhere someone is calm in a storm,
somewhere someone is loving everybody.
Is that someone you? (jke)

2008-07-14T08:38:00.003+02:00

This morning I did something that seemed very small and insignificant to me - just being polite and friendly really - but the response was, "Are you from heaven?".

This got me thinking - isn't this what it's all about? Wouldn't it be great if we all lived as if we were from heaven?

When I say "heaven" I don't mean some place up in the clouds where angels play harps, I mean God's Kin-dom - the universe the way it's designed by God to work - the kind of world God dreams of for all people.

If everyone just treated one another with respect and dignity (dare I say love) we might experience heaven on earth - God's Kin-dom come on earth as it is in heaven.

I hope more people think I'm from "heaven" - I would love everyone I interact with to think I'm from "heaven" because then I might be a part of God's dream to mend the universe (and all universes beyond).

2008-06-26T11:37:00.003+02:00

The Gift of Worship

From:
http://floodgateproductions.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=271

2008-06-17T11:27:00.001+02:00

Some not so Zen Wisdom (yes, humour is also spirituality):

* Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me alone.
* The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.
* It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbors' newspaper, that's the time to do it.
* Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
* Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else.
* Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
* If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
* Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
* If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
* Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
* If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
* Some days you're the bug; some days you're the windshield.
* Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
* A closed mouth gathers no foot.
* Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
* Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
* Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
* Never miss a good chance to shut up.
* Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2008-06-09T10:01:00.001+02:00

Thot for the Day:

Religion is a social construct of a much deeper reality

2008-05-15T08:58:00.003+02:00

Bloggers Unite is an initiative designed to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By challenging bloggers to blog about a particular social cause on a single day, a single voice can be joined with thousands of others to help make a real positive difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or support 3rd world countries.

Today's the day to blog about Human Rights.

It always fascinates me how people sometimes react when we talk about human rights within the context of Spirituality. Some people seem to think theirs no relationship between the two. I believe that Human Rights and Spirituality are extremely closely related.

Spirituality is, in part, about becoming truly human and so anything that robs us of being truly human is an issue of Spirituality.

A few days ago I was teaching about the "Kingdom of God" that Jesus spoke about so frequently when one lady suddenly said, "Doesn't that mean that we (Christ-followers) should be more involved in politics?" and I was overjoyed because that's exactly it.

Jesus said, ""(God) has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed (Luk 4:18)

He also taught his followers to pray saying, "may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Mat 6:10)

The Kingdom of God that Jesus was talking about is realising God's dream for the universe
here and now not escaping this world one day when we die.

We are all invited to bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free the oppressed. That's Spirituality!

So, whatever we do, we should striving to liberate people from oppression and injustice. Whatever your passion is let's make sure that our Spirituality is not divorced from the realities around us.

Stand up for Human Rights today and every day in small ways and in big ways - any way you can.

2008-05-03T19:56:00.001+02:00

spoilsport

personally
(and please don't
take this personally)
there are those times
when i wish i were an
orphan . . .

then,
i could ditch
my Easter outfit
and put on my
all-too-human skin
again;
then,
i could
be cranky
without guilt
belaboring the point;
then,
i might just enjoy
treating people
the way they seem
to enjoy treating me.

But nooooo!
You have to go
and make Spirit
my sibling . . .

and spoil all my sin.

(c) 2008 Thom M. Shuman
(based on John 14:15-21)
http://prayersfortoday.blogspot.com/2008/04/spoilsport.html

I have never met Thom but I wish I could - he is one of my heroes of the faith.

2008-04-16T16:57:00.000+02:00

Motivational Quotes of the Day for April 16, 2008
http://www.quotationspage.com/mqotd.html
----------------------------------
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
           -- Benjamin Disraeli

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.
           -- Arthur Ashe

The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you.
           -- Anita Roddick, A Revolution in Kindness, 2003

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
           -- Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure, Rosebud, 1993

2008-02-18T16:27:00.002+02:00

NOTICE

Attention! Behind these doors we worship regularly with liars, thieves, gossips, backbiters, people with troubled marriages, alcoholics and drug addicts. We welcome hypocrites and jealous, envious, coveting, materialistic sinners of all sizes, shapes and colours.

But the good news is that we all have something in common. We have all learned that the Church, the body of Christ, is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. We have all learned that the Lord is our rest, that he reaches out to save us, and that we are the redeemed community of the saints.

We come here to worship and to praise God, and to continually plan how we might be better agents of change, salt and light in a darkened world that needs the good news that Jesus saves. You are welcome, but be warned, that we take Christianity seriously!

2008-02-11T09:00:00.000+02:00

Dandelion clock

Hope is a dark elusive child
curled in the womb
cradled in our arms.
It can be lost,
disappear,
blown on the wind like a dandelion clock.

Its going,
its ebbing away
leaves us
grieving,
empty,
hopeless.

‘But’ is a hopeful word.

But even as the gossamer
powder puff
disintegrates,
the seeds are carried
to cling to distant crevices.
As it recedes
it reseeds
to grow again.

God, giver of peace,
grow hope within and around us.
God of steadfast love,
never leave us hopeless.

Galloway, K (ed.) The Pattern of our Days, 1996: Wild Goose Publications

2008-02-02T02:10:00.000+02:00

this year

i've gotten rid
of all junk:
chips, chocolate, cola;
the fridge is now stocked
with fruits, veggies, juice -
this is the year
i get into shape!

no more contrived reality,
no more glazed eyes
from watching "Idol" wannabes;
it's public radio and tv,
it's a stack of bios from the library -
this is the year
i form new habits!

but you would
take my twisted logic
about 'who deserves'
and reshape it
into compassion;

you would
take my bitter heart
and fill it with
hope and joy;

you would
take my hurtful ways,
and reform them
into acts of gentleness;

this is the year
you take delight
in making me
a servant!

(c) 2008 Thom M. Shuman
http://prayersfortoday.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-year.html

2008-01-16T03:51:00.000+02:00

"Hospitality has lost its edge in the contemporary church.
We no longer see it as a weighty moral issue;
it is now more about manners than morals...
But the hospitality of Jesus was controversial.
He chafed against the limits of social propriety
by welcoming prostitutes and adulterers,
crooks and outcasts into his gracious presence.
His hospitality knew no limit.
It was not just indiscriminate: it was promiscuous."

"The Other 'H' Word,"
Mark Ralls,
The Christian Century, 2005.

2007-12-10T02:51:00.000+02:00

Ok, I know that this is not really what this Blog and this site is all about (or is it?) but I need to vent:

I am getting sick of all the anti-Pullman propaganda being spouted by Christians. I’m referring to the controversy around the release of the movie The Golden Compass based on Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials.

One of the first problems I have is that Christians state that their problem with Pullman is that he is an atheist who is promoting atheism¹. It fascinates me that these same Christians actively promoted Michael Drosnin’s, The Bible Code despite the fact that Drosnin was also a self-confessed atheist who stated when asked if the bible could have been written by a time traveller.

I've thought about it. I don't know. I'm a reporter and can't go past the hard evidence. There is a code, therefore there is an encoder. I don't know who or what it/he/she is.²

I do not deny that Pullman is an atheist who may well have said that “My books are about killing god” but does that mean that children who watch the movie or read the books will want to do the same?

I have read all the books as well as several interviews with Pullman and I have to say that I don’t see what all the fuss is about. In some ways all I see is a kindred spirit.

Pullman’s grandfather was an Anglican clergyman who had a big influence on Pullman after his father died when he was 7 years old. Pullman spent time at church and Sunday school and believed in God as a child³.It was only later that he changed his mind.

I read Pullman’s Dark Materials as an attack on institutionalised religion and, in that, he has my full support. The Church has much to be ashamed of – we are responsible for all sorts of atrocities, not just in the past but currently. One only has to look someone like Fred Phelps to be ashamed of a certain aspect of Christianity. I wish that Fred Phelps’ god was dead – and I think that’s the god that Pullman “kills” at the end of the trilogy.

It’s important to note that the “Authority” that is killed is not actually a god at all and especially not the Creator God of Christian orthodoxy. What is destroyed is an evil organisation and a deceptive and manipulative entity. Surely Christians shouldn’t be upset about that.

Pullman writes fantasy about other worlds and other dimensions. Surely children are not gullible enough to equate those worlds with ours. Please note that when I say children I mean those over the age of 13 (the movie was PG13 in the USA – this has been watered down to a PG rating in South Africa and I’m not sure I support this). I would not allow my 6 year old daughter to watch this movie or read the books simply because I think the violence and themes are too mature for her. I don’t think any child under 10 should be exposed to these images or themes either but that has nothing to do with my “religious” convictions – it has to do with my spirituality and that of my children. And some children can handle mature themes better than others.

Here is a list of some well-balanced Christian views about Pullman and his writing’s, I would advise Christian parents to read up thoroughly before making decisions based on one view-point only:

http://live.hollywoodjesus.com/?p=1191

http://live.hollywoodjesus.com/?p=1182

http://live.hollywoodjesus.com/?page_id=1161

http://www.damaris.org/pullman

http://www.damaris.org/cm/church/pullmanmaterial

http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=619

http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=621

Footnotes:

1. http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

2. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9706/04/israel.bible/drosninlog.html

3. http://www.fish.co.uk/culture/features/pullman_interview.html

2007-10-17T00:08:00.000+02:00

I have heard this story before but was reminded of it by a friend:
http://www.occasionalsightings.blogspot.com/

Cuppa

The story is told of the man whose son complained about the terrible circumstances he was facing. The boy said he didn't know how to cope with the adversity of his life.

The father took his son into the kitchen and had him put water in three pots. He had the boy put a carrot in one, an egg in another, and coffee beans in the thrid. Then they put the pots on the stove, turned on the heat until the water boiled for several minutes in each pot. They then turned off the burners and, using a pair of kitchen tongs, removed the carrot and the egg from their pots, and poured the contents of the third through a strainer into a cup. The dad asked the boy what happened to each. In the first pot, the carrot had become soft; in the second, the egg had become hard, and in the third, the water had changed to coffee.

"The lesson," said the father, "is this: adversity can make you soft by weakening your resolve and sapping your strength; or adversity can make you hard, by making you bitter or mean; or you can change the water of adversity into the coffee of opportunity."

I've been trying to make coffee the last 6-8 weeks. In fact, a lot of coffee! We have had continual, repeated, aggravating, pain-in-the-kazoo, frustrating problems with our internet and email server. The technicians have been out, multiple times, and each left with assurances
that 'you won't have any more problems." And within 24 hours, we would have to call back.

I've lost emails that I thought had reached people, and not received emails folks thought I had gotten (and wondered why I had not responded). We can't maintain our website efficiently. And I finally gave up on trying to do Occasional Sightings. Indeed, my 'strength' (at least cyber-wise) has been sapped, and I border on bitterness towards the service provider, when not wanting to throw the whole system out the window!

But now, I've decided to make coffee. I am trying to do so while using a breath prayer in such moments. I use the word 'frustration' in mine right now, but you can put your own emotion in:

Breathing in, I know frustration is in me.
Breathing out, I know the feeling is unpleasant.
(after a while), Breathing in, I feel calm.
Breathing out, I can let go of the frustration.
(after a while longer) Breathing in, I am at peace.
Breathing out, I offer peace to others.

Can I pour you a cup of coffee?

(c) 2007 Thom M. Shuman

2007-09-17T09:19:00.000+02:00

The Ungrateful Scorpion

Henri Nouwen told a parable about an old man who used to meditate each day
be the Ganges River in India.

One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion
drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the
scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling
his hand painfully and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw
what was happening and yelled at the mediator, "Hey, stupid old man, what's
wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil
creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that
ungrateful scorpion?"

The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's
nature to sting, does not change my nature to save."

2007-07-30T08:34:00.000+02:00

Love your shadows

Each of us has characteristics we define as ‘good’ and those we define as ‘bad.’ The parts of ourselves that we continually reject want to be acknowledged and loved. Until we honour these aspects, they will continue to assert themselves. They will do whatever they can to get our attention.

What aspects of yourself do you reject?

Take a few moments to open to the parts of yourself that you do not love. See each one honestly for what it is. Explore the wounds and the motives that gave rise to its condition. Love a wounded part of yourself and it will heal.

"Strangely enough we strengthen love in ourselves when we raise into consciousness the shadow side of our lives. Conversely, when we keep negative feelings out of sight, they smother the love that seems to lie deeper and closer to the real self. This is probably why there is so much pain in not loving. The life that is not able to express the love which is so integral to it grows deformed."

-- Elizabeth O'Connor

From: http://www.higherawareness.com/

2007-06-28T02:13:00.000+02:00

UNTITLED RANT
by Daniel Walter
Thursday, Aug 18, 2005

The hour comes, the performance starts,
And all of us here are playing a part.
Another Sunday morning, and here we all sit,
And I try to see God through all of this sh**.

“Worship time” is a concert, it feels like a joke,
It’s hard to worship God through the lights and the smoke.
A “Worship Experience,” so meticulously planned,
But whose plan is it, is it God’s, or is it man’s?

We have all the tools, We’re so hip and so trendy,
And we have such plans, bigger buildings, more spending.
The sound system, the lights, sermons on Power-point,
Is it just me, or are we missing the point?

Week after week, it's always the same,
And it's starting to feel, well, phony and lame.
These people that I’m supposed to call my “Faith Family,”
Most of them are strangers, few really know me.

We’re told : “Look around beside you, look at all the empty seats,
Now go out and invite the people you meet.
There are people out there who need to be here,
‘cause we have a message that they need to hear.”

“Bring people to Jesus” ? Don’t you mean bring them in?
“Equip them for ministry” ? You just want them “plugged in.”
Often I wonder, Can this really be serious,
Are the answers really in another four-part sermon series?

We’re so convinced that we’ve got it right,
But there’s a beam in our eyes that’s blocking our sight.
Isn’t church more than filling the seats?
Would anyone notice if I wasn’t here next week?

Is this worth my time? Lately there’s been a doubt,
And my thoughts have been turning to leaving, getting out.
God, are you here? It’s so hard to know,
I’m having trouble seeing you through all of this “show."

http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=1116

2007-06-25T10:58:00.000+02:00

Galatians 3: 23-29

I am growing more and more concerned that we have lost the RADICAL SUBVERSIVENESS of God’s Word and the above passage is a prime example.

When I talk about God’s Word – I mean the message of Christ – the Gospel (Good News) – John 1 talks about Jesus as The Word – Jesus is the embodiment of the Word of God.

Everything in the OT points forward to Christ

Everything in the NT points back to Christ

“Christ is in the old concealed
Christ is in the new revealed”
– Rex Mathie

Somehow we have become so focussed on the container that we’ve missed the contents (or as Martin Luther said – so focussed on the cradle we miss the baby lying in it).

The bible contains the Word of God (Christ) – somehow we’ve come to believe that the bible is Christ => it’s all about Jesus!!! We’ve missed the content.

Now, I know this sounds radical but think about it – do you think Jesus was treated like he was by the religious leaders of the day because his message was a comfort to them. No, his message made them uncomfortable. He was accused over and over again of blasphemy and eventually crucified for blasphemy.

In the passage we read it appears as if Paul is effectively saying that you can leave out a large part of the bible – many people would have believed he was compromising the Word of God – watering it down – sound familiar?

2000 years later nothing has changed – those who attempt to interpret the Bible through Christ are accused of compromising God’s Word. Those who believe that the bible (and especially The Law) only finds it’s meaning in Christ are accused of watering the bible down or worse of being heretics.

Paul argues that he is, in fact, taking scripture seriously. Abraham is his example (3:6-9). Abraham found favour with God before there was any such Law. The promise to Abraham was not just for the nation of Israel but for all the world. Gentiles come to favour with God not on the basis of keeping the Law, but simply as Abraham does: by faith.

Paul the goes on to explain the purpose of the Law:

His explanation is quite negative. The Law was designed to expose people's need of God by showing how they fail (3:10-14, 19-22). Even though given by God, it played a very indirect role. It was not set up to offer an alternative to Abraham's way of responding to God. Its function was to drive people to the point where they saw Abraham's way of responding to God as the only way forward.

The Law, he suggests, puts a curse on us and traps us in guilt and failure. For Paul, the death of Jesus was an act whereby he took the curse on himself in our place and released us from it.

God treats us the way he treated Abraham and expects from us only what he expected from Abraham.

The Law is not meant to enslave us or to create superior/inferior people – it’s there to show us our need for God. To show us that nothing we can do can win us favour with God – God has done it all through Christ and we rely on that by faith.

For it is by God's grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God's gift, so that no one can boast about it. (Eph 2:8-9)

So, in Christ, (through our faith in him) we are all the same (in terms of our status with God) but we remain unique individuals.

We put Christ on like a coat (v. 27) but we don’t lose our identity.

We become one with Christ. We enter the sphere of his power and influence, especially understood as love.

As God's love flowed in Christ, so that river continues to flow and in baptism we celebrate our new relationship with him by diving into the river, as it were (or by placing our infants in that stream where it is flowing in the community of faith)

We don’t have to all be the same. We don’t have to all agree. We mustn’t try to force others to conform to our standards.

God is at work in all of us transforming all of us so that we can begin to bear the fruit of the spirit (Gal. 5: 22). The problem is that when I look at the Church I very often don’t see this fruit but the opposite – condemnation, conflict, intolerance, judgmentalism, etc.

Let’s focus on producing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and let’s stop judging the lives of others – we can leave that to God.

With acknowledgement to William Loader for some of his thoughts that I borrowed http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/CEpPentecost5.htm

2007-06-07T11:03:00.000+02:00

Bono in conversation.

Harry Belafonte is one of my great heroes. He's an old-school leftist and holds on to certain principles like others hold on to their life. He told me this story about Bobby Kennedy, which changed my life indeed, pointed me in the direction I am going now politically. Harry remembered a meeting with Martin Luther King when the civil rights movement had hit a wall in the early sixties: [impersonating croaky voice of Belafonte ] "I tell you it was a depressing moment when Bobby Kennedy was made attorney general. It was a very bad day for the civil rights movement." And I said: "Why was that?" He said: "Oh, you see, you forget. Bobby Kennedy was Irish. Those Irish were real racists; they didn't like the black man. They were just one step above the black man on the social ladder, and they made us feel it. They were all the police, they were the people who broke our balls on a daily basis. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the civil rights movement. We knew we were in deep trouble. We were crestfallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and groaning about the turn of events, when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop the bitchin': "Enough of this;' he said. "Is there nobody here who's got something good to say about Bobby Kennedy?" We said: "Martin, that's what we're telling ya! There is no one. There is nothing good to say about him. The guy's an Irish Catholic conservative badass, he's bad news." To which Martin replied: "Well, then, let's call this meeting to a close. We will re-adjourn when somebody has found one thing redeeming to say about Bobby Kennedy, because that, my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass." So he stopped the meeting and he made them all go home. He wouldn't hear any more negativity about Bobby Kennedy. He knew there must be something positive. And if it was there, somebody could find it.

Well, it turned out that Bobby was very close with his bishop. So they befriended the one man who could get through to Bobby's soul and turned him into their Trojan horse. They sort of ganged up on this bishop, the civil rights religious people, and got the bishop to speak to Bobby. Harry became emotional at the end of this tale: "When Bobby Kennedy lay dead on a Los Angeles pavement, there was no greater friend to the civil rights movement. There was no one we owed more of our progress to than that man;' which is what I always thought. I mean, Bobby Kennedy is still an inspiration to me. And whether he was exaggerating or not, that was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don't respond to caricature-the Left, the Right, the Progressives, the Reactionary. Don't take people on rumor. Find the light in them, because that will further your cause. And I've held on to that very tightly, that lesson. And so, don't think that I don't understand. I know what I'm up against. I just sometimes do not appear to.

From: Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas p.86

2007-06-06T11:50:00.000+02:00

By Meister Eckhart. (13th century)

What good is it to me
if Mary gave birth to Jesus 1400 years ago,
if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture…

What is the test that you have indeed undergone this holy birth?
Listen carefully.
If this birth has truly taken place within you,
then every single creature points you toward God…

God is creating the entire universe fully and totally in this present now.
Everything God created in the beginning –
and even previous to that…

God creates now all at once.

2007-05-23T10:53:00.001+02:00

Defining “Spirituality” is extremely difficult. I am not sure that any one definition could do it justice. I am also sure that my definition will be constantly changing (developing, evolving).

These are just a few of the definitions that come close for me:

Ø [Spirituality] is the self-transcending character of all human persons, and everything that pertains to it, including, most importantly, the ways in which that perhaps infinitely malleable character is realised concretely in everyday life situations.
(Richard Woods, Christian Spirituality, p. 9.)

Ø The Quest for Meaning and Purpose (in Life).
(A working definition by Steven Lottering)

Ø Searching for the sacred within the precincts of the ordinary.
(Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy, p. 28.)

Ø The journey towards wholeness
(Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy, p. 29.)

Ø "Its mans quest, desire, and attempt to fully understand their potential in life, and their desire to reach their potential, thus fulfilling their reason for being alive." – DrD

What say you?