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

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

re-positioning...

A sextant is an instrument generally used to measure the altitude of a celestial object above the horizon. Making this measurement is known as sighting the object, shooting the object, or taking a sight. The angle, and the time when it was measured, can be used to calculate a position line  on a nautical or aeronautical chart. 

Friend, brother Randy Hein in a recent talk at The Place opened with the navigational instrument the Sextant, and the heroic journey of Ernest Shackleton, and the crew of the " Endurance " to the Antarctic.

Disaster strikes, on 27 October, with the position at 69°05'S, 51°30'W, Shackleton gave the abandon-ship order and the men, provisions and equipment were transferred to the ice. On 21 November 1915, the wreck finally slipped beneath the ice. For almost two months, Shackleton and his men camped on an ice floe hoping that it would drift towards Paulet Island approximately 250 miles away. On 23 December Shackleton decided to start sledging towards the island, but because of the constantly changing sea ice the party only managed to march a few miles before Shackleton decided to set up another more permanent camp (Patience Camp) on another floe, and trust to the drift of the ice to take them in the right direction. After a another month or more on the sea ice floe the weather beaten crew set out in three small lifeboats. Shackleton had frequently chosen to have the most rebellious crew members close to him,( wisdom for all leaders ) in order to quell discontent amongst the party. The difficult task of navigating the crossing was left to the Sextant. Ensuring they were on the correct course was of utmost importance as missing their target would certainly have doomed the team.

Is it a stretch to weave the journey of the church, your faith community into such a heroic adventure?

The church has crashed into an ice flow of culture, economics, empires, religions, philosophies, secular humanism, individualism, etc...mainly because of ignorance...and blind navigation. The ship has crashed, and is taking on water and sinking.

Good faith communities always travel with a Sextant in hand. It is always sighting, shooting...taking sight of the object above the horizon...the goal of it's journey, Jesus and His Kingdom.

Randy uses the Sextant, along with " 4 Core Values ", like the points of a compass to navigate the faith community on a heroic adaventure of faith amidst the stormy seas that surround the church.

I encourage you to listen to podcast on The Place's site ... ... ... ( Condensed Core Values ) HERE.

how radical...is your orthodoxy

We've heard the term " Radical Orthodoxy " being bounced around the the realm of cyberspace.  It was a treat to hear the leading thinkers and founders of the movement, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock in conversation, opening the depth of what they see as radical orthodoxy. The podcast is about 51 minutes. The conversation reaches back to pre-modern faith of pre 1300's...and looking forward past postmodernity.

Have a listen...is this orthodoxy to radical for you?

This past week CBC “Ideas” ran a program looking at the movement, and now you can download the podcast. Here is the description:

On Radical Orthodoxy

The modern world seems bent on its own destruction. A theological movement called “Radical Orthodoxy” believes it has uncovered the roots of the modern mistake. David Cayley talks to the movement’s founders and leading writers, John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock.

CBC Ideas

christian sub-culture...how many people can we drown in the shallow end of the pool

 

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.

Brennan Manning podcast...Ruthless Trust

Dick Staub, Seattle resident and well known faith and culture conversationalist has a great podcast he's pulled out of his archives. Brennan Manning is the Catholic-priest-turned-itinerant-evangelist who wrote the popular Ragamuffin Gospel. In Ruthless Trust he explores the question: “Can God be Trusted,” and moves the conversation beyond simple intellectual assent to a deeper experience of joy found in passionately trusting God. A gem of an interview found in the Dick Staub archives from a man who knows whereof he speaks.

My book case contains every book Brennan has written. I find myself constantly going back to them, like the joy in visiting a dear old friend. I had the wonderful experience a few years ago with a group of friends, to hang out and listen to Brennan for a weekend. I can remember seeing him, and seeing this weak tired aged man and thinking...he's never going to make it through the weekend.

But when ever it came time for him to speak, it was like he plugged into something that was way beyond him. I have never heard such wisdom, clarity, simplicity, compassion and humility. Anyways, if you've never heard Brennan speak before, I highly recommend listening to Dick's interview with him...

This is Part One of a series of Four

New Monasticism...MPR

Lighting candles as devotion. (David Silverman/Getty Images

My friend James Kingsley first gave me the heads-up about this over at " The Locals " here in Victoria. Minnesota Public Radio Host, Kerri Miller has a great podcast and conversation around new monasticism. It took awhile to come up with the link, due to MPR's audio site being down. But after an e-mail, and also discovering Kerri and her husband had treked around Vancouver Island last summer...we managed to get the link to the podcast...you can listen...Here.

A new generation of religious communities is springing up around the principles of "new monasticism," in which people live among and provide hospitality to those in need. Midmorning looks at how these communities work and their surprising influence on mainstream Christians.

Guests

Diana Butler Bass: has studied emergent congregations, including new monasticism. She's the author of "Christianity for the Rest of Us."

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: runs the Web site, New Monasticism.org, which outlines the 12 marks or principles of the communities. He co-founded, with his wife Leah, Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina. He's the author of the book, "To Baghdad and Beyond."

Maria Kenney: part of Communality in Lexington, Kentucky.

Again Kerri, thanks for going out of your way, digging up the link...and for making us aware of this interesting conversation around monasticism that is still reverberating around faith communities trying to live faith more authentically.

Listen to New Monasticism podcast Here...courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio.

Eugene Peterson...The Way of Jesus in spiritual formation

I have read many of Eugene Peterson's books, His translation of the Bible, " The Message " is one I keep coming back to when writing my own reflections. I also had the opportunity to meet him in a conference at Regent College a few years ago...his wisdom, and passion has always influenced me.

I just finished listening to Eugene Peterson on a podcast in which reflected on Jesus Christ as " The Way, The Truth and The Life ". He sounds the alarm of how present day Christianity has been so preoccupied with Truth, that it has forgotten the way of Jesus. Here are some word bites that seem to jump out at me as I listened...

We have a chrsitianity of depersonalization...we have depersonalized God and people, or God and neighbour.

Discovering Jesus' Truth, in Jesus' Way...we get the Jesus Life.

We live in the age of a " Techtonic Shift ", of being consumed with learning, knowledge of having to figure it all out.

2 Things basic to christianity are very counter cultural to the North American way of life. American culture is stubbornly resistant to christianity

• Spirituality is not about us...it's about God
• Spirituality is not a life project of becoming a better person

It is the reality of Christ...within, being in...and Christ for us.

North American Spirituality is all about us...more and more us, less God.

North American Spirituality is obsessed with the ways, and means. There is a shocking indifference to the chief ends of man...purpose. Ways, and means must always be appropriate to the ends.

We know so much...but live so badly.

Spiritual formation requires discernment in 4 areas

1. Congregation/ Community

• gives a Body of Christ Identity
• community is not about us, it is about God
• Eucharist shapes the community
• community is the means in which God works through us
• consumer church is an anti-christ church

1. Scripture

• text keeps the church alive
• imprtance of reading them rightly and formatively
• scripture although we can relate to it, is not about us...it is about God
• it is, God, revealing God
• is not about finding rules in which we can save ourselves, it is about God speaking life into us
• today we tend to read scripture as information, technoligized and depersonalized

1. Resurrection

• is about God, the crucifixion is about us
• the reality of Jesus resurrection in our lives
• Holy Spirit breathes resurrection into us
• christianity today wants to eliminate the mystery out of the resurrection
• it is alarming, the rate at which mystery is being banished from our sanctuaries

1. Patience

• spiritual formation is slow work that can't be hurried, it is urgent work that can't be procrastinated
• In the N.A. church, slow and urgent are not compatible
• patience is the prerequisite to " The Way " of Jesus
• we are addicted to short cuts, and fast food
• you can't pump up the christian life on steroids
• the faster we move, the less we become.

This is Eugene Peterson at his finest, with a timely, passionate message for the " church "...the whole church.

I encourage you to listen to the podcast here, it is from the folks at Allelon...it is 57 minutes in length, every minute timely and relevant to all of us...

Please, check it out >>>>>>>http://www.allelon.org/media/files/6.mp3