letting it read you...

"We come to a biblical text, raising questions about its relevance to our present daily lives, only to find that the text questions us about our relevance to the way of Christ.

"We come to a biblical text, raising questions about its relevance to our present daily lives, only to find that the text questions us about our relevance to the way of Christ.


Who are your heroes in real life?
Let’s go with Jesus. Not the gay-hating, war-making political tool of the right, but the outcast, subversive, supreme adept who preferred the freaks and lepers and despised and doomed to the rich and powerful. The man Garry Wills describes “with the future in his eyes … paradoxically calming and provoking,” and whom Flannery O’Connor saw as “the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of [one’s] mind.”
From John Cusack in June 2008 Vanity Fair.
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| a litany of the person - anonymous trappist monk |

( China Beach, Vancouver Island, Juan de Fuca Trail )
For the expanding grandeur of Creation,
worlds known and unknown,
galaxies beyond galaxies,
filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations:
We give thanks this day.
For this fragile planet earth,
its times and tides, its sunsets and seasons:
We give thanks this day.
For the joy of human life,
its wonders and surprises, its hopes and achievements:
We give thanks this day.
For our human community,
our common past and future hope,
our oneness transcending all separation,
our capacity to work for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression:
We give thanks this day.
For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism,
for understanding of views not shared:
We give thanks this day.
For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world,
who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom:
We give thanks this day.
For human liberty and sacred rites;
for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose:
We give thanks this day.
We pray that we may live not by our fears but by our hopes,
not by our words but by our deeds.O. Eugene Pickett

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God,’ you will say, ‘if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?’ Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.” This from Soren Kierkegaard (Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard).
( ht..to Paul Fromont aka Prodigal Kiwi(s) )

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here. ( Wendell Berry )
We strive for what we don't have, and reach back for what we've lost...and we have missed out living in the moment. Simplicity...sounds so simple, so easy...and yet, it is something so forgotten.
There was a memorial service at church this afternoon, for a young man who is not apart of our faith community...but still is a child of God, created in His image...and loved by God.
He someones neighbour out here on the peninsula, the suburbs, surrounded by houses and other folks on all sides. Dan had a wife, married for 22 years, two children 13 and 15. Dan took his own life last Sunday evening.
Dan was well liked by his neighbours...on the surface, all looked well. On the surface, all looked well. But underneath, deep inside...a life was falling apart...unravelling...and nothing left to hang on to. Dan didn't know Jesus. I can't help wondering, that that might have made a huge difference...
“If one longs for depth in life we must focus on a very few things. There is so little time in one’s brief lifetime. And what is that one thing? We are saying it is Jesus. I choose to go deep-sea diving in that ocean. Jesus said, “I am the way, truth, and the life.” Is that true or false? By faith I say it is true, so I give my entire life to that deep exploration.” ~Gordon Cosby
“I want to let go of whatever doesn’t take us deeper, whatever takes more time and energy and efforts than it yields, and together with others I want to embody that transforming presence in the world. This might not be most important for you, but for me, it is all that ultimately matters.” ~Gordon Cosby
I wonder how many other neighbours out there, that on the surface, all looks well. That inside, life is unravelling like an old rope. I wonder if just taking a few minutes to talk about Jesus...the Spirit might lead them to the way, to truth...and to real life. I wonder, in that, they would find something to hang on to...
Listen to Dick Staub, Part two... " The Culturally Savvy Christian " ... a stunning wake up to the prevailing christian sub-culture of the North American evangelical church.
Click ... < HERE > ... to listen.
I have followed the writing of Simon Barrow for years, he is always in the forefront of the conversation around faith and society. He constantly seeks to erase the artificial boundary the church has constructed between the sacred and the secular...from God and the world that surrounds us. The following are a few bytes from Simon's article, I encourage you to read it all. They are timely words, the church desperately needs to give ear to...
What this means is that the God of whom Christians traditionally speak (the source, transformer and destiny of life) cannot, by definition, be fitted into a gap, a box or a slot. Ironically, many outside the church seem to understand this better than those inside it – even though those in it, especially if they are bishops, are supposed to have learned at least a bit of theology.
Moreover, there is a biblical case for saying that the God of the prophets and of Jesus is supremely uninterested in “religion” as a specialist activity extricated or set against the rest of life. On the contrary, the prophets oppose ritual devoid of ethical commitment and human solidarity. Similarly, Jesus challenges the Temple system and the monopoly of religious leaders over the ordinary people, and Paul says that the important gifts of the Spirit are a new way of living not a spiritual ego-trip.
All of this ought to be relatively uncontroversial to a church that has come to terms with the dynamic of the Gospel that formed it. But instead its mind has been seized by fear, and by “religious” distortions of its message shaped by an alliance with governing powers and ideas – ones that have encouraged an essentially dualistic mindset.
Because the world is continually foisting “religion” (which depends on an idea of a god alien to the world) upon us, an alternative community is needed to sustain a different, non-dualistic understanding. It does this through worship (learning not to mistake anything in the world for God, and not to reduce God to anything in the world) and through prayer (learning to receive life as a gift to be shared not a product to be manipulated to our advantage). Strictly speaking these activities therefore have nothing to do with “religion” as it is conventionally defined these days. In fact they stand in opposition to it.
The upshot of all this is that the Christian Gospel, at least – I don’t seek to speak on behalf of other faith perspectives – cannot and should not depend upon obsessively ring-fencing bits of worldly life for God, as if God needed or asked us to do this.
So if Christians are invited to share their experience, insights and understanding on TV and radio, great; but they should not try to keep others out. Indeed they should welcome conversation and dialogue. Otherwise they are contradicting their message, which is about gift not possession.
And this...
Similarly, the job of the church is most definitely not to give people the entirely false impression that God is only present when they are in power, or that the presence of “secular” persons or ideas means the exclusion of God – as if God were a competitor for space within the world, constantly in danger of being “squeezed out”.
The message of the incarnation, on the contrary, is that – in opposition to what is usually supposed – God, while remaining beyond our grasp, is a life-giver who is not against the flesh, but who comes to us in and through it, affirming and transforming “the earthly” in the direction of a living which is truly unrestricted, unlike a good deal of our rather mean attempts at it.
This means that the job of the church in post-Christendom has nothing to do with defending Christian oases in a spiritual desert, or demanding, as of “right”, the sort of “God slots” which actually end up confirming people’s suspicion that God is a weakling in need of propping up, or a human-crafted consumable alongside others – albeit with a distinctly unfashionable religious label.
Instead, the job of the church is to speak and act in such a way that people can look at life and other people and see – not something less than what is around and in them, but something bigger, something more beautiful, truly liberating and hopeful beyond mere calculation. This is tough, because life is also tragic and difficult. Not denying its underlying goodness takes guts, imagination and self-giving.
And to finish it off...
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out many years ago, the “religious” god is destined to die, because this is not the unconditioned God who is met – paradoxically – in the tortured body of Christ, in the poor, and in all kinds of “non-religious” people and things which have much more to do with fullness of life (what God gives) than organized religion and metaphysics. God does not need self-appointed political defenders, but those who live life unconditionally.
Read the whole article...here.