Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this while awaiting execution in a Nazi prison.

"Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves," We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer."

A New Christianity

A New Christianity
"The task before Western civilization today . . . is the greatest [our] civilization has ever faced. It is a complete reconstruction that is demanded. . .
"Nothing but Christianity can carry the Western peoples through this unparalleled crisis. But it must be Christianity in its purity and its fullness, not a Christianity wasting its energy on doctrinal controversy, broken by denominational divisions, or absorbed in taking care of its machinery. It must, in short, be a Christianity neither intellectualized, nor sectarianized, nor institutionalized.
"It must be a Christianity, born as at the first, in the hearts of the common people, simple, democratic, brotherly: like a tree, its top in the sky but its roots deep in common earth; treating institutions, even the most venerable, as the mere temporary contrivances that they are; with the faith of Jesus in the human heart and in the ultimate triumph of love, and a willingness, like His, to find a throne in a cross." [Salem Bland, The New Christianity, 1920!! ]

I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.... Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
- Amos 5:21-24

God Said Betty is Beautiful (In an off-centre, authentic and straight to the heart kind of way.)

Could there be a better way to be beautiful?
I don't think so!

Ugly Betty/Beautiful Betty? You decide!

Taken from paradoxum a mystical place where
'a gentle tongue can break bones' ~ king solomon

be sure to visit someday

Betty Joyce...
"...the Iroquois Indians attributed divinity to retarded children, gave them an honored place in the tribe, and treated them as gods. In their unselfconscious freedom they were a transparent window into the Great Spirit - into the heart of Jesus Christ who loves us as we are and not as we should be, in the state of grace or disgrace, beyond caution, boundary, regret, or breaking point."
In that moment on the airplane, after reading those lines, it struck me...
Betty Joyce was an icon of Jesus Christ.

I first met Betty Joyce when I was a young boy...probably 8 or 9 years old. She lived with her parents in a house that abutted our churches parking lot. My family lived in a parsonage on the other side of the parking lot so we were backyard neighbors...kind of. Betty Joyce lived with her parents...Betty was mentally handicapped............

(Read rest of post at
http://www.paradoxum.squarespace.com/journal/2006/5/26/betty-joyce.html)


That was a wonderful post. I had heard from Native artist, Bill Brissette, that some native people revered developmentally disabled children. Bill created a beautiful painting of my son Josh (20 years old in body 1 year old in mind, infinite in spirit). Bill took a scribble that Joshua had made on a canvas and developed a painting that told a wonderful story. It showed an empty cross with a blood soaked cloth drapped over the arm (my son's scribble was the outline of the cloth). Joshua was dressed in buckskin, sitting in a rickety wooden wheelchair (circa 1860), an arm reached past the cross to my son and was gently lifting him to his feet. It spoke to me about Jesus reaching across barriers of time, space, culture, race, disability and prejudice and false valuations of all kinds. I thot that was so true. Jesus has come to erase the barriers and to make us accept and love one another as Betty Joyce modeled so powerfully for you.
Sadly instead of taking down the dividing wall, we (the church) have erected new barriers and walls of condemantion and exclusion.
We need to rediscover Jesus in the least of these, that will be redemption.

Thank you Frank for introducing me to Betty.
She and her story are beautiful to me.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE CHURCH?

My pastor surprised me a few months back. He told a story about someone asking Billy Graham what was the biggest problem in the church today and without a minute's hesitation Billy replied 'Racism'. My pastor said he didn't understand the comment until he went to speak at a black church in Florida. Something clicked and he is a convert now.

I personally think my pastor has one tiny step to take and he will be into the blue sky of truth.

What is at the base of racism is a false sense of pride and superiority and a perverted need to think of ourselves as better than someone else.
People with disabilities of all kinds aren't victims of racism but they are victims of perverted pride and rejection by the 'in-crowd'.
If the problem at root of all the churches struggles was defined as prejudice of any kind (and not just the specific and particularily ugly kind called racism) I would say Billy G. and my pastor have it just about right.

So to all you who want to improve the church please keep loving and including the eccentric, the different, the outcast, the challenged and the challenging of all sorts. They are the cure to the disease of false valuations and prejudice that is so common in our 'In Crowd' church culture.

LH

We Make Jesus Ugly

This is from a young lady struggling to be an authentic follower of Jesus.
I think she is in a stream of thought and practice that God would like to see become a transforming torrent.
I believe that if we begin to think act and live in the way explained in this post we will see a sweeping revival of faith in North America no less powerful or important than the earlier Great Awakenings in American history.

Solidaridad


"The point here is that it is very easy for us to confuse our own ideas of glory, with those of god.
And so Jesus pretty much says; if how we are living privileges us over others; if how we are living excludes others; if how we are participating in the world makes it so that others cannot also fully participate; then we are like the tyrants, we are not like Jesus - Because Jesus came not to be served, but to serve.
So, I am trying to be a Christian.
I want to be a Christian because even though we clearly fall short;
even though week after week we hear Jesus' good news and manage to make it bad news for so many;
even though, like the disciples, we seem to just not get it...I want to live my life, I want it to be shaped according to an ideal that is good news to the world.
On a practical level, we have to start by asking - how do we make Jesus ugly? How do people say that Christians make Jesus ugly?
It's a pretty easy question to answer: we make Jesus ugly when we exclude; we make Jesus ugly when we define Christianity in strict rigid ways that basically function to determine who's in and who's out; we make Jesus ugly when instead of treating each other as people of sacred worth, we condemn and dehumanize one another.
We know the ways we make Jesus ugly - we must instead focus on what Jesus calls us to participate in.
Jesus calls us to participate in a world, a system, a glory, that includes and welcomes those who would be excluded. A glory that loves those who would be hated; that makes first, those who would be perceived to be last.
Jesus calls us to participate in a system that works.
It loves and serves all, not just some.
If we can focus on trying to look more like Jesus, and stop trying to make Jesus look more like us - then as Christians we won't be a people that make Jesus ugly, but we will instead be people who participate with Jesus in being good news to the world. "

Read full post here
http://marydaly.blogspot.com/2006/11/we-make-jesus-ugly-reflections-i-gave_05.html

The Tyranny of Normalcy

This post is from a Blog called Idle Rambling Thoughts of an Abstract Thinker (a wonderfully creative and self deprecating name given to a thoroughly wonderful and creative blog. Check it out sometime http://whatbox.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_whatbox_archive.html)
This reprinted post gives profound insight into the pain that is experienced by parents of children who are different in any significant and noticeable way.
Please read it and weep with people who love those who are seen and treated as being different, 'not normal'. Too often these people are singled out for unfair and hurtful responses from others who are desperate to establish their own standing in the hierarchy of the tyrannical and unChristlike Kingdom of 'Normality'.

My friend David Watson, whom you have read about in earlier posts, often asks in words almost unrecognizable by even those who know him well;
"WHAT IS NORMAL?" which being translated means, "WHAT IS NORMAL?"
http://impossibleape.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_impossibleape_archive.html


Here is Jenn's moving post form Idle Thoughts Blog.

If we learned to be open and affirming to everyone, especially the weak and the outcast, we would be closer to living in the Kingdom that Jesus came to deliver to us.

The Most Dangerous Place In the World Is Between a Mother and Her Child

"Friday night a terrible thing happened. I'll spare you all the crummy details, but in a nutshell Noelle crashed a birthday party for a little girl she considers to be her best friend. When we were in Hilton Head, Noelle spent time picking out the perfect birthday present for this girl. She was not invited to the party, but found out that it was going on and, since the girl hosting it lives on our street, Noelle took her present up there to give to this 'friend'. (I wasn't home at the time.)
Now, maybe it's just me, but I am of the opinion that any normal mother would have invited Noelle in and told her child that she is going to be nice and gracious. But this mother is not normal. Suffice it to say that Noelle was not invited in, and the birthday girl HID inside from her while the other party guests stood around laughing their snobby little asses off.
Two years ago, this little girl told Noelle that if she kissed a tree she could come to her party. Of course Noelle did it, and of course she wasn't invited. Then another girl told her to stand up on a table at school and sing some stupid song and she could come to her party. Second verse, same as the first. This is what it means to have Asperger's. Completely devoid of social skills or even comprehension of social dynamics. Noelle simply doesn't 'get it' and continues to believe these kids are her friends.When I try to explain to Noelle what's going on here, she makes excuses for these girls. I really thought that her therapist had reached a breakthrough and worked through some of these issues with her, but I see now that she still has a long way to go.
As a mother, it is so incredibly painful to stand by and watch this happen. I have tried over the years to talk with the mothers of these girls, to no avail. As you might imagine, they are part of the problem. There's no point in even trying to talk to them. All I can do is cradle my child in my arms, wipe her tears away, tell her that those girls are missing out on an awesome friend, and try to keep from killing the brats. "


Responses
Mary Beth said... How utterly heartbreaking that must be for you. It broke my heart to even read it.....
Aola said... Oh, God, Jen... I just sat here and bawled reading this. It brings up all those same horrible feelings I go through with Emily. She's the same way, as soon as someone pays her any kind of attention she thinks they are friends and then her heart gets broken over and over. I'm so sorry.

impossibleape said... My heart breaks for all the children, and adults for that matter, who are rejected for various reasons. We Christians really need to find ways to address this sort of thing in our churches and in society. I don't know if the mothers in this story attend any church or have any religious pretentions but even if not our churches need to lead the way by taking Jesus seriously when he says the last will be first and the first will be last. It almost requires an exaltation of those who suffer innocently as your daughter has. Her forgiving attitude is far more Christ like than mine towards those who have dispitefully used her.All I can sayis God Bless your precious little girl, she is a bit of Jesus to us and with us all.




Mary Beth said... Another thought, while I'm still fuming about this...Jennifer, you state that Asperger's renders Noelle "completely devoid of social skills." As a society at large, and as Noelle's neighbors, people should be filling in where she experiences this void. They should be going out of their way to be helpful and gracious, and to show tremendous hospitality, knowing that, for Noelle, learning such social skills is going to be a lifelong process. How about loving her into those skills instead of shaming her?
Jennifer said... Actually, one girl's mother teaches Sunday School! I guess I should define what I mean by social skills because I happen to think Noelle is the one acting socially appropriate here. What I mean is that AS kids are unable to read social cues from others such as "go away, we don't like you", etc. which leaves them vulnerable to be the butt of every joke. They also take everything very literally, so if a kid says "go take a hike"... she will. She's a female Forrest Gump. And I think we can all learn a few things from Forrest.


impossibleape said... Jenn can I use your daughter's story over on my blog? One of my life ambitions is to getChrsitians to recognize that Jesus visits us everyday in Noelle's and Joshua's and Forest's shoes, but far too often He is turned away.

Jennifer said... Gosh, I'd be honored IA. :)





What is normal?
Apparently it is people putting others down, judging, and excluding them.


What is normal?
Parents' hearts breaking as they see their children treated cruelly or simply shut out from life.


What is normal?
Religious people playing and reinforcing the 'normal game' but moving it to a higher level by claiming it is God who determines and enforces normal (usually that means, 'be like us in all our self righteousness') .

But one day, normal will be people caring for each other in open-hearted acceptance and loving interactions. Normal will be including and valuing the least of these my brethren as beautiful reflections of God's very image. Christ in our very presence.

What will be normal on that glorious day will be

'Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done On Earth as it is in Heaven!'

So This Is Why The N.Y. Met's (Baseball's Greatest Underdogs) Play in Shay Stadium

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech thatwould never be forgotten by all who attended.After extolling the school and its dedicated staff,
he offered a question:"When not interfered with by outside influences,
everything nature does is done with perfection.
Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as otherchildren do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"

The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child, likeShay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, anopportunity to realize true human! nature presents itself, and it comes,in the way other people treat that child."Then he told the following story:

Shay and his father had walked past apark where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball.
Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?"Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if ! his son wereallowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and someconfidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps. Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shaycould play, not expecting much.
The boy looked around for guidance and afew boys nodded approval, why not?
So he took matters into his own hands andsaid, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning."
Shay struggled over to the team's bench put on a team shirt witha broad smile and his Father had a small tear in his eye and warmth in hisheart.The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted.
In the bottom of the eighth inning,
Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind bythree. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstaticjust to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as hisfather waved to him from the stands.In the bottom of the ninth inning,
Shay's team scored again.
Now, with two outs and the bases loaded,
the potential winning run was on base and Shaywas scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay batand give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was allbut impossible 'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the batproperly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate,the pitcher, recognizing the other team putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life,
moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly soShay could at least be able to make contact.
The first pitch came and Shayswung clumsily and missed.
The pitcher again took a few steps forward totoss the ball softly towards Shay.
As the pitch came in, Sh! ay swung at theball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over, but the pitcher picked up the soft grounderandcould have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman.
Shay would have been out
and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threwthe ball right over the head of the first baseman,
out of reach of all team mates.Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling,
"Shay, run to first! Run to first!"
Never in his life had Shay ever ran that far butmade it to first base.
He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed a! nd startled.Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!"
Catching his breath,Shay awkwardly ran towards second,
gleaming and struggling to make it to second base.

By the time Shay rounded tow! ards second base,
the right fielder had the ball,
the smallest guy on their team,
who had a chance to be the hero for his team for the first time.He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but heunderstood the pitcher's intentions and he too intentionally threw theball high and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward third basedeliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming,
"Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay"
Shay reached third base,
the opposing shortstop ran to help him and turned him in thedirection of third base, and shouted,
"Run to third! Shay, run to third"

As Shay rounded third,
the boys from both teams and
those watching were on theirfeet were screaming,
"Shay, run home!"
Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate,
and was cheere! d as the hero who hit the
"grand slam" and won the game for his team.That day," said the father softly
with tears now rolling down his face,the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world."Shay didn't make it to another summer and died that winter,
having never forgotten being the hero
and making his Father so happy and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

Got MLK? Got the Real Thing!

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Psychic Love Connection------Froggie Style

A lonely frog telephoned the Psychic Hotline and asked what his future holds. His Personal Psychic Advisor tells him, "You are going to meet a beautiful young girl who will want to know everything about you." The frog is thrilled, "This is great! Will I meet her at a party?" he croaks. "No," says the psychic, "in biology class."

I was sent this by a semi-retired pastor who is still taking the call to preach and laugh well into his late 80's.
We all should be so much fun at any age.
Bless You Rev. Stanley Hammond.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd. - Flannery O'Connor

Evidence for Creation Receives Nobel Recognition

Today’s New Reason To Believe-Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Evidence for Creation Receives Nobel Recognition:
The biblical description of the universe received scientific validation with the announcement of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics. RTB’s cosmic creation model entails a singular beginning (Genesis 1:1), continual cosmic expansion (cf. Isaiah 42:5), and constant laws of physics (Jeremiah 33:25). The combination of the last two leads to a universe that cools over time. These characteristics define a big-bang universe. Additionally, although originally smooth, the universe must become clumpy by the growth of galaxies and galaxy clusters. The ripples in the early universe that permit the future clumping were detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) in the early 1990s, further confirming that humans live in a big-bang universe. As a testament to the importance of this discovery, the lead scientists were recently awarded the Nobel Prize for their work. This recognition affirms the validity of RTB’s cosmic creation model, which includes big bang cosmology.
Phil Schewe and Ben Stein, "A Baby Picture that’s Worth a Nobel Prize," Physics News Update 795 (2006): #1.
Related Resource
"Big Bang-The Bible Taught It First!" by Hugh Ross and John Rea
Product Spotlight
Creation As Science by Hugh Ross

Does Anyone Out There Resonate with this Haggard Thought?

From the Resonate Internet Discussion. (Bill says it better than I can at this moment):


Warren, your question bothered me some [which is good] - because Ididn't know how to answer. And to make matters worse I feel a pontification coming on.

My mum is now in her 80's - and she is lefthanded. In school she was caned as a 'klute'. In Latin, lefthandedis 'sinister' in French 'gauche'. But now we know that it is simply a kind of standard deviance in God's creation. We know there is a continuum, with most folk being clearly right handed, some clearly left handed and some in the middle. I suspect we will find the same about sexual orientation.

Before acceptance, however, comes tolerance.Tho I don't like the analagy much, unlike our Muslim brothers and sisters, most Christians have come to tolerate interest on money[usury]. Not only tolerate, we've come to participate in the system. Our churches take out mortgages and members have RSP's. Yet in the bible usury is condemned at least as often as homosexuality. We admit women without hats, even with braided hair, and, gasp, allow them to speak instead of requiring they ask their husbands later.

Many Christians are offended by gay pornography, overt sexuality atGay Pride days, and, particularly, by promiscuity. Makes sense. We'd be offended by the same among heterosexuals. But . . .What if we accept the fact that homosexuality is not going to go away. It's always been there in human society [and among other critters as well, but that's a different matter] then what's the best way for a Christian to respond?
Wouldn't we want to encourage, notdiscourage, sexual fidelity? Stability? If a gay couple wants to stand before God, make a commitment to be sexually faithful to theother, to be honest, and loving, and kind, and supportive - why would we oppose this?
If we inisist on denying them the chance to have God-blessed, prayer-fused, commitment based relationships we will be forcing them into the nether realms, the dark corners of hidden sexuality.

So Warren I want to encourage your community to support/tolerate Gay marriage, to prayerfully engage in exporing the areas of ambiguity [and there are many] with healthy, committed Christian gay couples.This was a help in my life. Why oppose commitment? Why oppose folk wanting God to be integral to their union?This is probably familiar to most folk, but some might not have seen this nice animated bit on
'The Gay Agenda"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/02/18/fioreagenda.DTL

For what its worth, I had a pretty strong conversion on this, I was,at one time, vehemently opposed. . .Bill




amen
The Impossibleape

couldn't have said it better myself
(but I will try someday)


anyone wishing to visit o'bill can do so at
http://theoldbill.typepad.com/

We Need Fewer Congregations and More Communities.

Ted Haggard has admitted to sexual indiscretions with a male prostitute. He has resigned from his positions with his church and as head of a large National Evangelical organization thathas been speerheading Anti-Gay marriage legislation.
Many things have been said about this sad but hopefully useful confrontation between evangelical fantasies (religious and sexual) and the real world.

Here is my 2 cents worth

I am always disturbed by our Evangelical ability to proclaim that God loves everyone but will automatically cast same-sex oriented people into the lake of eternal fire. How can we not see the monstrous inconsistency of such a claim? As people who profess to have the mind of Christ I wonder if we even have active, fully working human minds and hearts.
This is a real blindspot in our theologies and our lives. Until we can get past our deep seated prejudices and learn to think and act in a new way, our proclamation of the 'good news' will continue to be seen as hypocritical and even hurtful.

Someday I hope to be able to outline some ways for us to view sexuality that doesn't make us and God into monsters and yet doesn't contradict the teachings of Christ.

But for today I will simply offer this quote from the Canadian emergent church internet conversation called Resonate.

I hope this wonderful comment will Resonate with you and with the CEO style church government at many places of worship.


"We build large organizations and place people at the distant top..Loaded with power and prestige.. and alone..And then we are surprised when they fall..If we had more communities and fewer congregations we would see fewer of these issues..and when they did occur they would be less public, and would more likely engender a process of healing wonder if the churches where these things occur have any idea that they share the guilt in the falling of the leaders?"

Leonard Hjalmarson
resonate

Surely This Was A Good Man

"There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, and others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto individual and social salvation. ... The suffering and agonizing moments through which I have passed over the past few years have also drawn me closer to God. More than ever before I am convinced of the reality of a personal God." - Martin Luther King Jr.











Martin surely was a good man. A real man. A fallible man. A dreamer. An imperfect but nonetheless good man. I wish I could be more like him......minus the suffering and the vilification of course (and yes dear, even minus the adultery as well).






There is no smooth road to Calvary
and no road to Ressurection
that doesn't pass over that rugged hill.

How Low Can a Saint Go?

Here are a couple of questions from a Beliefnet quiz.



Q9. The Byzantine princess Anna did not want to marry St. Vladimir because:
1. He murdered his brother
2. He raped his sister-in-law
3. He practiced human sacrifice
4. All of the above

Q11. Before her conversion, St. Olga disposed of her enemies by:

1. Poisoning their borscht
2. Burning or burying them alive
3. Shipping them off to Siberia
4. Force-feeding them galumpkis


You can take the rest of the quiz at

http://www.beliefnet.com/section/quiz/index.asp?sectionID=10002&surveyID=353

Its good to know that plastic saints are not altogether representative of real ones.


I wanted you take this test before I offer a quote from, and a comment about, one of my all time favourite people. A Saint really, he just happened to be human as well.
From examples I saw in the quiz some of the Saints actions were more than a little bestial before they got on the Gospel Road. So my soon to be revealed hero looks not too bad if we are rating him on the Bell Curve!



Maybe we can aspire to be a bobble head doll on someone's dashboard someday.
(Not too darned likely, but hey we can dream can't we?)



















disclaimer....I personally believe John Paul II deserves to be venerated as a hero of the faith, so I am in no way am suggesting that he is unworthy of beatification and sainthood.
Go Karol Wojtyla!

The Rascally Wit of A Sometimes Unhappy and Unprincely Man

HOW ELSE but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

I love this Victorian Era Dandy.
He sure knew how to tweak the cheeks of the most dour matron to entice a guilty smile.

He spent time in Reading Goal (Jail) for corrupting a youth and offending the pride of the Marquis de Queensbury (ironically the Marquis was a no-holds-barred barroom brawler when it came to the legal ring).
In our day Oscar would be guilty of the crime of sexual abuse because his young lover was not only a male but a tender-aged young'un as well.
So while I love the rascally heart of this strangely spiritual prodigal profligate, I in no way see his imprisonment as a martyrdom or an undeserved punishment.




















But I do love his twinkling wit and his life long battle with the angels.
Apparently the man who wrote 2 of the most beautiful and spiritual children's stories ever devised (The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince) was caught by those angels as he lay dying in Parisian exile.
He received entrance into the kingdom through the water of Catholic baptism, the prayer of contrition, and the priestly administration of last rites .
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
I for one (if I make it) will delight in meeting this rascally sinner in the garden of paradise.

Chuck Colson On Paying Our Over Due Bills

http://www.informz.net/pfm/archives/archive_347764.html

'The Unpaid Bills of the Church'
or
'HUG A WICCAN THIS ALL HALLOW'S EVE'

October 31, 2006
"Imagine losing all your friends at once," a woman named Margaret Ann told Catherine Edwards Sanders, the author of Wicca's Charm. Margaret Ann was talking about her decision to leave her Baptist faith and become a Wiccan during her college years. "My family ganged up on me and refused to discuss it with me at all," she recalls.
Sanders adds, "All of her friends, except one, deserted her. Not one of the members of the Christian group [on campus] bothered to ask why she liked Wicca. . . . Other Christian students would only talk to her to tell her that they were praying for her."
At another point in the book, Sanders tells the story of what happened to a group of Wiccans in Orange County. As they were practicing a sunrise ritual, a group of Christians surrounded the Wiccans with their cars and blared loud Christian rock music at them.
What's wrong with this picture?..................................

As I said yesterday, Sanders writes that many Wiccans were driven to their religion in the first place by the actions of Christians—like some women who were treated like "second-class citizens" in their churches, and turned to Wicca. Art Lindsley of the C. S. Lewis Institute says that Wicca and other forms of neo-Paganism are a result of "the unpaid bills of the church." The Church is supposed to be a place where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Our whole worldview is built on the idea of a loving God who created every person in His own image. When we fail to put that worldview into practice, people lose interest in Christianity. ..........................

So how should we as Christians reach out to Wiccans? For one thing, we can take time to study and understand what they believe and the issues that are really important to them—issues like the environment. We don't have to worship the earth to understand why many Wiccans are so concerned about it. But even more importantly, we must live out our own worldview through our actions, treating all people with love and respect. He whom you would change, remember, you must first love, as Martin Luther King, Jr., taught us. And if we do this, we will start paying some of those unpaid bills ourselves.

Beautiful is the moment

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can do only as much as God makes us able to; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.- Archbishop Oscar Romero, from his last homily, March 23, 1980



The next day, March 24 1980, a right wing death squad burst into the cathedral and gunned Bishop Romero down as he officiated Mass.

He is worthy of a Beautiful People post. I will have to get onto it when I revive the Beautiful People string.

stay tuned.


My 2 cents

The words, the life, and the death speak for themselves.
(martyr means witness.)

Bishop Romero is a hero of the faith,
need I say more?
I love this because I need to know that whatever I accomplish in life, whatever I can contribute, whatever I have, whatever I am is all in God and if my life appears to be a small hill of beans, it is God's hill, and that is enough to make it significant and even beautiful in its own way.

Announcing a NEW Feature

I am starting a new series of posts. You may recall my 'Beautiful People' series using the theme of suffering yet faithful people who exemplified loving commitment and authentic lives. I'll get back to that again in the future but today I am embarking on a new series featuring some of my favourite quotations. Of course many of my favourite quotes come from the 'authentically Beautiful People' I admire...could it be any other way?

I will try to add my 2 cents worth to explain why I like these particular sayings or teachings...but only about 2 pennies worth per quote.

My verbosity on plentitudiness occasions preceding this individual module of infinitesimal time has known no bounds or satiety.

That has got to stop.



Here is my personal guarantee:

"2 cents or it is free!"


"LOSS IS TRANSFORMATIVE if it is met with faith. Faith is our chance to make sense of loss, to cope with the stone that rolls around in the hollow of our stomachs when something we loved, something we thought was forever, is suddenly gone."
David J. Wolpe, Making Loss Matter

About today's quote:
Meaning is very meaningful to me.

Suffering can undermine our experience of meaning but it may also be full of deep mystery (aka obscured meaning).




anyone need a refund?

THIS TIME BEING STOOD UP IS A GOOD THING

Tuesday, October 25, 2006

‘STAND UP’ Count Reaches 23,542,614!

By now you should have heard about the amazing response to the 'STAND UP' campaign that took place a week-and-a-half ago. In case you didn’t, let me share what happened.

In 24 hours on October 15-16, over 23 million people in more than 100 countries collectively called on their governments to bring an end to world poverty! Guinness Book of Records officials called it, "the largest single coordinated movement of people in the history of the Guinness World Record."

Micah Challenge organized church participation in the worldwide campaign, which saw participants from Ghana to Zimbabwe, from Canada to the Emirates, and from Indonesia to Togo taking part.

In Jaipur, India 38,000 cricket fans “stood up” at the start of the India vs England match. In Mexico, several hundred thousand people stood up at football matches led by nine Football Clubs. Hundreds of thousands stood together for one minute at an anti-poverty music concert in Mbare slums in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. And thousands more stood in Times Square, New York, all declaring their support for the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which all 191 UN nations signed onto in the year 2000.

In Sierra Leone, the 'Stand Up' weekend started with a seminar attended by 52 church leaders. Over 500 churches participated in the 'STAND UP'.

In this country, Canadians stood in centres large and small, in churches and parks and schools from Courtenay to Capreol and Charlottetown, from Thunder Bay to Tillsonburg and Toronto. While over 50,000 Canadians were officially recorded, many others also took part. In so doing, they gave a clear message to our leaders to uphold the promises they made in 2000.

It’s a message they need to hear! While a number of nations have increased their Official Development Assistance to 0.7% of GNI as promised, Canada is still only at 0.32%. I truly believe that for a country blessed with so much, it’s time we did the honourable thing. We need to step up to the plate.

Cutting world poverty in half by 2015 and raising the percent of foreign aid giving to 0.7% of GNI were two of the key promises all UN nations agreed to.

The phenomenal response to the ‘STAND UP’ campaign sends a clear message. People care. Canadians care! And I would add, “So does God!”

As we approach the MDG target date of 2015, I assure you that Micah Challenge Canada will be working hard to make that point on behalf of the world’s poor.

In the spirit of Micah 6:8

Paul Robinson
National Coordinator
Micah Challenge Canada
519-688-9445 (o)
paulrobinson@micahchallenge.ca
www.micahchallenge.ca (Canada)
www.micahchallenge.org (International)

“And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8
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Review of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion.

From the London Review of Books.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching
Terry Eagleton

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins · Bantam, 406 pp, £20.00

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday...................................

What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case? Dawkins, it appears, has sometimes been told by theologians that he sets up straw men only to bowl them over, a charge he rebuts in this book; but if The God Delusion is anything to go by, they are absolutely right. As far as theology goes, Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.
A molehill of instances out of a mountain of them will have to suffice. Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that........................................
Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.
This, not some super-manufacturing, is what is traditionally meant by the claim that God is Creator. He is what sustains all things in being by his love; and this would still be the case even if the universe had no beginning. To say that he brought it into being ex nihilo is not a measure of how very clever he is, but to suggest that he did it out of love rather than need..............................................................
Because the universe is God’s, it shares in his life, which is the life of freedom. This is why it works all by itself, and why science and Richard Dawkins are therefore both possible. The same is true of human beings: God is not an obstacle to our autonomy and enjoyment but, as Aquinas argues, the power that allows us to be ourselves. Like the unconscious, he is closer to us than we are to ourselves. He is the source of our self-determination, not the erasure of it. To be dependent on him, as to be dependent on our friends, is a matter of freedom and fulfilment. Indeed, friendship is the word Aquinas uses to characterise the relation between God and humanity.
Dawkins, who is as obsessed with the mechanics of Creation as his Creationist opponents, understands nothing of these traditional doctrines. Nor does he understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us. Dawkins’s God, by contrast, is Satanic. Satan (‘accuser’ in Hebrew) is the misrecognition of God as Big Daddy and punitive judge, and Dawkins’s God is precisely such a repulsive superego. This false consciousness is overthrown in the person of Jesus, who reveals the Father as friend and lover rather than judge. Dawkins’s Supreme Being is the God of those who seek to avert divine wrath by sacrificing animals, being choosy in their diet and being impeccably well behaved. They cannot accept the scandal that God loves them just as they are, in all their moral shabbiness. .........................................................
Jesus, who pace Dawkins did indeed ‘derive his ethics from the Scriptures’ (he was a devout Jew, not the founder of a fancy new set-up), was a joke of a Messiah. He was a carnivalesque parody of a leader who understood, so it would appear, that any regime not founded on solidarity with frailty and failure is bound to collapse under its own hubris. The symbol of that failure was his crucifixion. In this faith, he was true to the source of life he enigmatically called his Father, who in the guise of the Old Testament Yahweh tells the Hebrews that he hates their burnt offerings and that their incense stinks in his nostrils. They will know him for what he is, he reminds them, when they see the hungry being filled with good things and the rich being sent empty away. You are not allowed to make a fetish or graven image of this God, since the only image of him is human flesh and blood. Salvation for Christianity has to do with caring for the sick and welcoming the immigrant, protecting the poor from the violence of the rich. It is not a ‘religious’ affair at all, and demands no special clothing, ritual behaviour or fussiness about diet. (The Catholic prohibition on meat on Fridays is an unscriptural church regulation.)
Jesus hung out with whores and social outcasts, was remarkably casual about sex, disapproved of the family (the suburban Dawkins is a trifle queasy about this), urged us to be laid-back about property and possessions, warned his followers that they too would die violently, and insisted that the truth kills and divides as well as liberates. He also cursed self-righteous prigs and deeply alarmed the ruling class.
The Christian faith holds that those who are able to look on the crucifixion and live, to accept that the traumatic truth of human history is a tortured body, might just have a chance of new life – but only by virtue of an unimaginable transformation in our currently dire condition. This is known as the resurrection. ..........................................
Now it may well be that all this is no more plausible than the tooth fairy. Most reasoning people these days will see excellent grounds to reject it. But critics of the richest, most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap by savaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook. The mainstream theology I have just outlined may well not be true; but anyone who holds it is in my view to be respected, whereas Dawkins considers that no religious belief, anytime or anywhere, is worthy of any respect whatsoever. This, one might note, is the opinion of a man deeply averse to dogmatism. Even moderate religious views, he insists, are to be ferociously contested, since they can always lead to fanaticism....................................................

Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. .....................................................

Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals................................................................

The book is full of vivid vignettes of the sheer horrors of religion, fundamentalist or otherwise. Nearly 50 per cent of Americans believe that a glorious Second Coming is imminent, and some of them are doing their damnedest to bring it about. But Dawkins could have told us all this without being so appallingly bitchy about those of his scientific colleagues who disagree with him, and without being so theologically illiterate. He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual.

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University. His latest book is How to Read a Poem.

A Simple Skeptic's Faith, A Sinful Skeptic's Hope

If someone needs to believe the Bible literally, verbatim and from cover to cover to be a Christian then I don't think any reasonably fair-minded and somewhat educated person could say that Christian faith as proclaimed by most Evangelicals is still an option in our day.

I sympathize with the 'integrity dilemma' many educated and morally concerned people face. It isn't easy to be a believer in 2006 (although I expect it was not all that easy in AD 33). To understand things about the world, history, science and life makes it practically impossible to have the kind of faith that many in the Evangelical world say is needed to be saved. Demanding assent to things that are not true has made the Evangelical faith inaccessible to many honest seekers and skeptics.
It is too hard for me too, but I still confess my faith in Christ. Reading about Jesus in the gospels gives me good reason to declare that God was definitively revealed in the person of Jesus. According to the gospels Jesus taught world-shattering things, he showed a way to break down false barriers of condemnation and rejection, pride and self-delusion, and in short he turned his world (and ours) upside down. In the gospels encounter an internally consistent story (little details that don’t exactly jive really don’t excite or bother me) that tells us about a man who died a horrible death with humility, love and dignity, and who (according to witnesses under pain and execution of death testified to its reality) arose to transform the lives of individuals and empires. The story indicates that He can and hopefully will do this again.
Such is my faith but it is not an entirely good fit with most of contemporary Evangelical Christianity because it centres on Jesus to the extent that it ignores the flotsam and jetsam thrown up in the wake of an evolving progressive revelation that God is unfolding and has been unfolding for the past 15+or- billion years and even beyond time itself.
IMHO much of Old and even New Testament writings are not God's word to us today (and I don't believe all of it was God's word to those contemporary with its composition. Even Jesus taught that much that was considered law was provided by man's hardness of heart and not God's heart and purpose. Paul himself declared that at least some of his teaching was not conclusively and indisputably from God. i.e. and “I THINK I have the spirit.”1 Corinthians 7:40)

We are not going to find incontrovertible evidence of comic book 'poofing creation’. We are not going to find proof that every story in the Bible (indeed even many of those written as historical accounts) will be proven by or even strongly supported by archaeological evidence or convincing inference. We will not likely get the powers of magic that charlatans say they have and that we are supposed to possess.
We will continue to live in a story of God's activity that doesn't lend itself to the kind of incontrivertible proof that some skeptics say they need in order to believe or that many false teachers say is available if we only believe what they teach.

What we have is different. It is the teaching, life, and person of Jesus Christ.

If the words of Jesus do not reach into a person's heart, where our creaturely frame, our frail broken emotions, and our innate mysterious ‘God image’ meet, then faith will be impossible for that person in this life.


HOWEVER;
My understanding of Jesus character tells me that those who genuinely want to know but can not 'get it’ now may very well be given a witness that is sufficient to divide sheep from goat, heaven gifted from hell deserving. Perhaps that witness is the what we call the Holy Spirit and may be that ‘lighted figure’ referred to by people speaking of their near death experiences (NED's). That witness will be our last and best opportunity to see Truth face to face and either chose to humble our selves before it and receive it or to pridefully reject it.
I am not an easy evangelical but I do believe Jesus did teach that it all comes down to this moment of decision. Will we humble ourselves before Him (not before preachers, teachers, evangelists, church leaders, men stealers and those who make merchandise of believers) and acknowledge our need for Him and his mercy and forgiveness or will we insist that our ways are better than the offered grace? In this I am Evangelical through and through.

Grace remains the key and it extends to the interstices between life and death itself. This grace will be equally available to Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, rich man, poor man, wiseman, fool, genius, mentally challenged and all other category of humanity. In that moment of final decision, if God is gracious (and I believe that is the message of Jesus, that God is gracious) then all for whom faith has been impossible in this life will have a chance to see and believe. If they can surrender any bitterness or unforgiveness towards God for the pain in our unfolding creation and the cloudiness of our perceptions in this life, then I expect that they will receive God’s forgiveness, which has been provided to all in Jesus Christ.
To hopeful skeptics and uncertain believers everywhere I want to say that, if get I ‘there’, if there is a ‘there’ to get to, I expect to see most of you ‘there’. At least I hope so, and I think I may have the spirit (but that is a matter of faith isn’t it?) so it may very well be true but only time will tell.

LH

A New Exodus

David Beckman, president and CEO of Bread for the World.

"Hundreds of millions of people who are desperately poor are finding ways to improve their livelihoods and feed their children," he said. But as Beckman noted, "The biggest challenge facing evangelicals is to participate in this GREAT EXODUS, to be aware God is rescuing lots of people from poverty and to help make it happen."
"I hope we see dramatic progress," Beckman said. "I hope it doesn't take 50 years."


I hope so too.

Out of the Bitterness of Death Comes a Certain Sweetness (a riddle)

Judges 14:14 (King James Version)
14And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.

In the story of Sampson we are given an anecdote about a time that the great Hebrew strongman tore apart a Lion with his bare hands. After returning to the scene of the struggle he found a beehive inside the carcass. He reached in and pulled out a handful of honey that he ate with great satisfaction.
On his return to town he challenged his adversaries to solve a riddle he devised from the experience he just had.

Unfortunately his lover betrayed the secret and told his enemies the answer and so Sampson had to make good on the bet.

Of course he, being the impetuous, hot tempered boy he was, set about tying the tails of foxes together, setting them on fire and letting them loose to burn all the Philistine's crops.
PETA would not likely make Sampson a poster boy for their cause in a million years.

Anyway I have had an experience like this recently.

I was reading about a young pastor and his wife from Saskatchewan who suffered a great tragedy over the past weekend.
Shantelle the Pastor's wife had been battling cancer and it had appeared that she had a remarkable (dare we say miraculous recovery) but over the weekend she suffered a brain aneurysm and died suddenly.
It is one of those things that make you wonder what kind of joke life really is.

But when I went to Shantelle's blog I discovered that on the Thanksgiving weekend (Oct. 9 in Canada) she had posted a piece that so moved my heart.

Her death is making many, many people look at her blog and grieve. But it is also showing those who look with insight, that here is a sweetness even in the belly of death. Perhaps you will see something beautiful in that deep, deep sorrowful place.

Please visit her blog and look over the videos that the bitter news of her death led me to discover.

http://prairierascal.spaces.live.com/blog/

Behold, Out of Bitter Death Comes Bitter Sweetness.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D52rJd9GX10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXipk9yEtaE