Ron Cole : unplugged, unorthodox, heretic

the Kingdom...in God's mind

The Kingdom is to ...

begin to bring in the shalom prophesied by Isaiah and embodied in Jesus. We'll keep on until we are interconnected and intertwined with the whole world. There is a new world coming. It must come because it is in God's mind and God has willed it.

What we do with intensity and focus in our own neighborhood, the one in which God has set our community--your community--will enable us to reach out in affection to the whole globe. To the whole human family. To the whole created order.

The time has come when all limited patriotic boundaries must be transcended. Everything is interconnected. We are related in affection to everything. ( Gordon Cosby )

The Kingdom, in God's mind...this was the vine that Jesus was attached, that he calls us to graft into...this is where the radical scandalous redemptive imagination of re-creation flows from.

May your Kingdom come, on Earth as in Heaven.

Tune in, Turn on, let it Flow...a new Genesis, a new Creation...The Kingdom of God.

 

Prison ministry ...rekindling hope

 

This weekend the band is visiting a lower mainland prison. I still remember our first visit a couple years ago now. The anxiety, the apprehension...not out of fear, but more out of a place of disconnect. Playing the music is the easy part, there is a sense of distance between us and them...the music, the instrument are all things you can hide behind. But it is engaging with the inmates afterwards. What would I say?What would we talk about? Would we find some space for some deep conversation, that place where the Psalmist says...deep, calls to deep. Or would it just be superficial chatter, merely scratching the surface...skin deep. 

So as we packed up, I met D. We had a chance to walk, and talk for a bit. D was just finishing up a 25 year sentence, I didn't have to ask what he did...the time for the crime sort of said it all. We talked about the usual stuff, life in the prison, sports, music...and family. Just before, it came time to leave...I asked D if I could pray for him. He said, yes. My only after thought was...I wish I knew what I was going pray for before I asked him.

There was this profound silence, as we as we sat there with my arm around him...it was deafening. In a sense it felt like a long time. It felt like that space, where there is a bit of static as a radio searches for a frequency. God...in my mind, I said...give me something to say. Nothing, more searching...more static...and then suddenly, with crystal clear clarity. One word...Hope.

D, I said, " What do you hope for?" He hoped he could reconnect with his family. He hoped he could mend broken relationships. He hoped he could avoid falling back into drugs and alcohol. He hoped he could manage his anger. He hoped he could find some meaning in his life.

I said, D...man, there is a God hoping, and praying for exactly the same thing...and he has never ever given up on you.

I told him about a Father that had two sons. How the young son had become fed up with life at home. He felt that somehow, and somewhere life must be better than here. He would ask his Father for his inheritance, and set off in search of this better life. So, he went and saw his father and asked for everything owed to him. He packed his bags, and headed down the driveway, off into the horizon...to a better life.

The better life, soon morphed into a life of self gratification, the pursuit of buying happiness, pleasing his body while his soul withered away like a raisin in the desert heat. He spent his money, on drugs, wine and women, gambling everything away until the better life vanished like a mirage...this ever green oasis one minute and gone the next. 

He soon found himself homeless, penniless, starving...rooting through garbage bins, fighting for food with the rats, and alley cats. In his heart he longed for home. Even the thought of just going back, and being a servant for his father. He'd tell his father he screwed up bad, and ask for forgiveness. In the darkness of his soul, this faint glimmer of hope flickered, sometimes on the verge of almost being snuffed out.

One day at the lowest point yet, starving, emaciated down to skin and bones he decided he would go back home. So, he set off crawling, staggering, limping...he made his way home.

But little did he know...everyday, morning and evening his father would walk out to the end of the driveway gazing off to the horizon hoping to see his son coming home. The father's heart ached, he longed for his son's return.

Then it happened. One morning just as the sun was rising, the dawn of a new day, the father saw the silhouette  of a person staggering towards him.

The father ran, like a mad man, crazy, filled with passionate love...he sang, he danced. He grabbed his son, embraced him...he kissed him, he could not stop kissing him. And all this, before the young broken son could utter a word asking for forgiveness. The father placed his robe on his naked son, and placed his ring on his finger. He called the servants to throw a feast in celebration in the return of his son.

D, I said...there is a God who hopes and prays for you. And, he's been standing at the end of the driveway waiting for your return. D, I said...do you think it's time to go home.

( my paraphrase of Luke 17: 11-24 )

So we head off to the mainland, and I clutch one thing close to my heart and soul...and that is hope. It is said that man can live for about 40 days with out food, about 3days with out water and about 8 minutes with out air...but only 1 second with out hope. It's our prayer, and through the profound mystery of the Spirit of God, that He will blow and rekindle any dying flickering flames of hope we come across.

Brian McLaren @ God Complex Radio

 

 

Apologies for the lack of engagement as of late. Still fighting the flu and cold, so mainly resting reading and listening. A podcast I've been listening to for awhile is "God Complex Radio ", if you're looking for gracious hosts, an open table of stimulating conversation...I encourage you to pull up a chair and join in.

This week they invite Brian McLaren to pull up a chair where Carol engages him in questions around future church, the role of women in church leadership. Jesus said, a grain of wheat must die in order for there to be life and abundant growth. Carol and Brian ask a more profound question...maybe some churches must die, in order for the church be vibrant?

Anyway...tune in, turn it up, listen, think...engage them with your questions here...

 

To Hell and Back: the gospel of inclusion

 

 

Scandalous, radical, beautiful...redemptive imagination beyond belief. To good to be true...only time will tell.

an economy of military imagination...

Where a whole nation is militarized the way of military life becomes part and parcel of it's culture. War becomes stimulus for it's economy. It lives in an environment of fear. Violence becomes the norm. It is a highly polarized society...where middle ground vanishes. Truth becomes the best told lie. It is the society of us and them...me and you. Tolerance becomes intolerable. Love becomes more fantasy than reality. Hope evaporates  into despair. A nation looses it's imagination. 

                          

Where a nations heart is, is imagination is soon to follow...

insight on insite...from a nurse, a christian perspective

Meera Bai says...I work at InSite, Vancouver's supervised injection site for IV drug users. It's where I choose to work as a nurse—and as a Christian. Trying to follow the command of God to seek out and care for those in need of mercy has led me to find grace and pass it on among these people in the streets of the Downtown Eastside, the very definition of a marginalized population.

                      

Often, participants at InSite are forced to sleep outside at night. Not having a warm, safe bed takes its toll on bodies, and special care is needed for feet. An InSite staff member chats with me behind the desk as he fills up a basin of warm, soapy water. Kneeling on the floor, he gently strips damp socks off the swollen foot of a participant and lowers it into the soothing water.

Washing feet here isn't an oddity from a discomfiting Bible story, but a regular occurrence. Foot baths are healing—for body and soul. As I fill up another basin, I marvel at the timelessness of this act of community. The humility necessary for all involved in washing feet produces beautiful vulnerability and relationship, which, unsurprisingly, creates change.

So why am I here? Aren't I enabling drug users to continue their awful habits? Aren't I wasting charitable funds that could be directed to other projects (and, let's acknowledge the implication, more "worthy" recipients)?

Read the full article here...In ( Christian Week ), " Why I help Addicts Shoot Up."

the new, the last Adam...a genesis of faith beyond religion

  

Shhhhhhhh! listen, you can hear it...rocks moving around, grating and grinding. Look, down at your feet...they are wet. You can hear that faint trickle of water in the background. Yeah, I know, I can hear you asking...what is it?

It's that dam you've built early on in your faith journey. You might not even remember consciously doing it, but you did. All those facts, the stones of certitude that you nicely stacked with precision, interlocking with one another. Your dam was thick, and high. You built your levee, thinking you'd keep faith on one side, and the world on the other. You were pretty darn confident it would hold. 

The urge is to poke your finger into the leaking hole. But do you really think that is going to work? There is an ocean on the other side. It's literally a Tsunami of humanity...of plurality, of color, of language, of politics, of faiths, of culture, of injustice, of environmental devastation and exploitation, of philosophy and ideologies... ... ...

Scared, don't be. Get ready to be immersed, engulfed, get ready to be in the midst of it all. The biggest question of all, will your faith survive in this tsunami of humanity.

The other day,while having coffee with a friend my imagination was held captive by Paul's analogy of Jesus, as the second Adam, or the last Adam. So that evening, I read;

 The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 

The thought of Jesus being the last Adam, a life-giving spirit causes the hard drive encased in my skull to spin, whirling like crazy. The neurons, the microprocessors spark, igniting each other. It's as if the dark space of my mind is lighting up like a starry night. This is where I discover redemptive imagination.

Adam, in Hebrew, means " earth ". And it is also ascribed to Phoenician and Babylonian origins, meaning " man, or mankind."

What does it mean for Christianity today, to have Paul drag Jesus back down the corridor of history, and metaphorically call Jesus, the last Adam...a life-giving spirit. For me, it opens the the flood gates of something so redemptive-ly profound it leaves me awestruck and breathless.

A new vision for " earth " and " mankind " is unavoidably apart of this new life-giving spirit.

Adam in the story of Genesis was pre-religion, it was a relationship that was profoundly communal. It was God, man and creation. Adam would hear the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze. This is not a God that confines his existence in any religion, but is consumed by a relationship with all humanity, and with the fullness and diversity of all creation.

If Paul wants to drag Jesus metaphorically back to Adam, does he not have to bring him back to the reality of this relationship? Jesus becomes pre-religion, and post-religion. He becomes not concerned in a relationship with religion...but, a relationship with all humanity, and all creation.

Another thought comes to mind. If Paul brings Jesus back to Adam, Jesus comes carrying some heavy baggage. Jesus can not be separated from the reality of the Kingdom. Jesus without the Kingdom is like life without the force of gravity. Without gravity, life falls apart, it spins off into infinite space into an infinite void. The same is for Jesus, without the Kingdom there is no redemptive imagination, there is no hope, there is no abundant life...the story ends.

So now incredibly, the garden becomes the Kingdom and the stewardship that humanity was given for the garden, for all creation...becomes the stewardship of the Kingdom. It is the mind blowing reality of, " May your Kingdom come on earth, as in heaven." Now! And the stewardship explodes in to the divine redemptive imagination of Jesus. It becomes the abundant life for " all " not just some. As in Genesis, the rivers that flowed out of the garden to nourish creation, now become rivers of justice flowing from  the infinite divine redemptive imagination of the Kingdom. All humanity becomes stewards of the Kingdom. We cultivate, we plant, we nurture the reality of God's justice and compassion into the midst of a broken and fallen humanity. It is the Kingdom becoming tangible, coming into fullness.  

Jesus being the new Adam, the last Adam fills my mind with redemptive imagination. It can become a profound story that engages all humanity beyond religion to a profound beautifully mysterious communal relationship between mankind, earth and God, but also engages all creation to be consumed by a vividly breath taking vision of the Kingdom beyond heaven. 

 I leave you with a short video of a guy whose mind has been filled with the same redemptive imagination for years, calling " US " all humanity to re-think everything. 

transformation...

I do dimly percieve that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and re-creates. That informing Power or Spirit of God. and since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He is alone.

And is this Power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the supreme good.

But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if he ever can. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. This can only be done through a definite realization. more real than the five senses can ever produce. It is not proved by extraneous evidence but in the transformed living and character of those who have felt the presence of God within.

(The Essential Ghandi...pg 18)

remembering your friend's silence...

This comes via Peter Rollins...Jay Bakker, points out the narrowness of the road...

 

the silence of friend's...is profoundly loud.

A beautiful comment from Kathryn Rutz sent via FB...Ron, from where I'm sitting I'm also hearing a roar of exclamation, relief, returning, gratitude, and hope. It's a very beautiful and very wide embrace in which you can also see little puffballs all over: so many clutches of damp tissues from years and years of tears. Every tribe has these wads of kleenex: mothers, families, friends from all tribes, those asking forgiveness, those saying "you're home", those who have tasted reconciliation for the first time, those happily astonished by the freedom to read Scripture, those who have felt judgment and pain, those who are wondering what it means to love, those who felt left behind, those bound by doubt. There is so much room here, and so many wounds to be washed and let go. Hold, succor, bless, love.

there really is a place for " ALL " of us...get past the sex

 

The suicide of Tyler Clementi is tragic...I'm writing this blurry eyed, my eyes welled up with tears. Could we really have hurt him anymore? Having to live a life in secrecy. Having to pretend to be someone you're not. The bullying, the abuse ...the hate. We are a culture consumed with sex. We really can't see past it. From pornography, to sex appeal, to looking sexy, the right kind of sex, what sex can marry what sex.

My God! what has happened to relationship...the fact that two people regardless of sexuality can live in a loving, caring, compassionate relationship...or is it merely about the right parts fitting together. Does that mean any thing today? There really is a place for " ALL " of us...it is here, and it is now. 

Be honest...in the above video of Dan and Terry, what did you really see.