Ron Cole : off the map...navigating life.

The Invitation...

The Invitation

"It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

Once I tried...

This knowledge is dangerous

And to subversive –––

Here it is –––

God is wild

God is untamed and uncontained

Once I tried to fold God’s words

To fit inside my pocket

Make them slip into a neat package

That would be easy to carry

Easy to make sense of

Easy to look out at the world

Saying, this belongs, this does not,

She gets in, she stays out

And all the while referencing

My words, on my paper in my pocket

To see, and reassure myself

That I was right.

The whole world fit

Inside my ideas about God

Inside my personal pocket

Everything and everybody

Had a proper place

I knew it all

And it felt good

And safe.

But then, that trained

And contained God

Rebelled against my

Enforced enclosure

That wild God said,

No, no, no!

 

 

I am bigger than you

Bigger than your mind

Bigger than words

Bigger than the world

Bigger that all the worlds

Bigger than Big, huger than huge

And I won’t be contained by the puny you

And your imagined knowledge and learning about me.

I don’t want your knowledge

I can’t stand your limitations or confining definitions

I am as far above your mind,

As the heavens are above the earth,

All I want of you,

All I require of you,

Is your faith and your love

That’s it, that’s all.

Hold me as the highest.

Seek me first.

Seek me and not where I live

Seek me and not what you want me to be

Seek me and not what you think about me

If you try to hold me

I’ll escape

If you try to control

Me, watch out!

Instead, don’t put me in your pocket

Read my words, learn my words, love my words and

Put them down, and

Carry me instead,

Carry me in love,

Me in your heart

Says God,

Be open to me

a journey into Advent :: The Place

A special evening of creativity to journey across the threshold in to the profound mystery of Advent...

Hi - Thought you might like to know about a special event we're having for Advent in Cafe Suburbia at Lambrick Park Church.  

I've attached a couple of posters here that have the details on where, when and what.  As to "who":  we've got Cindy Davis,  Ryan MacLeod (music), Matthew Davidson (music and spoken word), Carla Funk (poetry),  Kristy Westendorp (spoken word), Janet Doherty,  Jason Nobel & James Nesbitt (art), Rob Campbell (photography)...

The evening starts at 7 PM and will include a 1 hour Advent program /service.

If you would like to know more, feel free to contact me.   And please - spread the word / share the poster to others you think might be interested to come.

peace, hope, joy and love,

Christine Neufeld 

Fistful of Mercy...

Beautiful music, stunning lyrics...

 

Fistful of Mercy from Fistful of Mercy on Vimeo.

If your definition of supergroup is, "A group of musicians previously associated with other musical catalogs coming together to form a new one," then the birth of a new supergroup will commence at 8 p.m. Thursday at Easy Street Records in West Seattle (4559 California Ave SW). The show is free. If you need reminding, here's a quick refresher on the players involved: Ben Harper: You may remember him from your college days, particularly when he was fronting the dominant Innocent Criminals, a band that peaked with 1999's Burn to Shine. Lately he's been working with the less-satisfying Relentless7. Dhani Harrison: Yes, his dad was the cool Beatle. Joseph Arthur: Maybe you saw him at the Triple Door in January.

 

rekindling redemptive imagination...

                                            ( image courtesy of Chris Briley )

Wendell Berry’s critique of western progress is always staggering. As always, he procures incredible insight with a sort of blunt wisdom that reaches beyond rhetoric and our flimsy presuppositions. We , all creation, find ourselves in a profound space of uncertainty. We've climbed as high as we can climb on the myth of certainty. We teeter back and forth in the space frozen in fear, grasping to the breaking pieces of certainty. We watch the hope that we might save ourselves break away in our hands. These words, from poet and prophet Wendell Berry...

The world is babbled to pieces after
the divorce of things from their names.
Ceaseless preparation for war
is not peace. Health is not procured
by sale of medication, or purity
by the addition of poison. Science
at the bidding of the corporations
is knowledge reduced to merchandise;
it is a whoredom of the mind,
and so is the art that calls this “progress.”
So is the cowardice that calls it “inevitable.”

 Written decades ago, the poem is incredibly poignant, mystical, and even prophetic:

When I hear the stock market has fallen, 
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live 
stupidity, error and greed in the palaces 
of fantasy capitalism!” I think 
an economy should be based on thrift, 
on taking care of things, not on theft, 
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin. 
My purpose is a language that can make us whole, 
Though mortal, ignorant, and small. 
The world is whole beyond human knowing.

Jesus asked questions, good questions, unnerving questions, re-aligning questions, transforming questions.  He leads us into liminal, and therefore transformative space, much more than taking us to a mountain, the myth of certainty. He subverts up front the cultural or religious assumptions that we are eventually going to have to face anyway.  He leaves us betwixt and between, where God and Spirit can get at us, where we are not at all in control, where divine imagination gives rise to something beyond. Hope. Maybe this is why we have paid so little attention to Jesus questions and emphasized instead his seeming answers. They give us more a feeling of success and closure. We made of Jesus a systematic theologian, who walked around teaching dogmas, instead of a pilgrim, engaging transformer of the humanity, the redemptive imagination of God...the reality of new creation.

Jesus always reminds us that God is all wisdom, we had best not try to concoct our own hope by providing ourselves with pat or immediate answers about great and intentionally unanswerable questions. 

I'm reminded of the story of the " rich young man." The young man asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. We too, may think we have given everything away, that we too are good. But we still, cling to one thing...our " wealth " of human knowledge. Here comes that challenge. We have a history in which we've climbed a mountain to the myth of certainty. We have amassed great knowledge, and yet, we've come to the tip of it, and teeter dangerously...ready to fall. And, Jesus asks us to sell all we possess...and follow him into the reality of life.

Sadly, we want Jesus to answer, to reassure us of our certainty, of the hope in our knowledge. Jesus is so much mystery, and so many questions. I used to have lots of answers, lots of knowledge, but I've had to give it all away. Jesus is the biggest mystery in my life, and in it, I have found the radical scandalous redemptive imagination of God. And in the mystery, the questions and the unknown...is the Hope of all creation.

The church needs to re-kindle the mind of Christ...the language of divine redemptive imagination, to a new creation, the Kingdom. This is our only hope.

Bruce Cockburn...a creativity to help us see

Great interview with Drew Marshall and Canadian music icon Bruce Cockburn. Open, vulnerable, like sitting in your living room with a friend, Bruce talks about humanity, God, spirituality...and Christianity. He comments about in a Christian consumer culture, that the " Christian Music Market " is bankrupt in terms of creativity. Poet, artist, truth-seeker, a man alive to the nudgings of God...through music he engages God and man, bringing the two of us closer together. Just a beautiful conversation!

You can listen to it >>> HERE

text messaging...

( Image courtesy of photo shop text portrait )

Re-Text Us

We confess you to be
text-maker,
text-giver,
text-worker,
and we find ourselves addressed
by your making, giving, working.

So now we bid you, re-text us by your spirit.
Re-text us away from our shallow loves,
into your overwhelming gracefulness.
Re-text us away from our thin angers,
into your truth-telling freedom.
Re-text us away from our lean hopes,
into your tidal promises.

Give us attentive ears,
responsive hearts,
receiving hands;

Re-text us to be your liberated partners
in joy and obedience,
in risk and gratitude.
Re-text us by your word become wind. Amen.

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

Thanks to J.R. Woodward