We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The Jewish Bible is full of miracles from G-d. Yet, in the Book of Esther, G-d’s intervention is not mentioned.Rabbinic commentary says that the hand of G-d is hidden but manifest in the saving of the Jews from the genocide plans of Haman.That may well be so. However, if there was divine intervention, it took the trembling will and the actions of a few of his earthly humans to bring about the good outcome.
Reminds me of this story. On January 1, G-d tells a very good, pious and observant man that in reward he will win the lottery that year. The man waits and waits, and on December 31 asks G-d why he hasn’t won the lottery yet. G-d answers, “meet me halfway, buy a ticket.”
It is up to us, each and everyone of us, regardless of religion, to buy a ticket, to speak and act for safety from sworn enemies and to further justice in this world. This year, the reading aloud in our synagogues of the Megillah, the scroll of the Book of Esther, is on Saturday and Sunday. Haman’s name is drowned out by noisemakers, groggers, and Mordechai and Esther’s names are cheered. Purim is accompanied by celebrations for the children – to fix the meaning of Purim in their minds, and the adults giving food packages to the needy and to friends – to build community and spread blessings of plenty and caring.
In an apparent connection made by Hitler between his Nazi regime and the role of Haman, he stated in a speech made on January 30, 1944, that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews could celebrate "a second Purim".[51][50] Seconds before he was hanged, Streicher called out "Purim Fest 1946!"[51]
Haman exists in every generation, and must be confronted, or allowed to prevail. We are G-d’s hands.
Purim is a fun holiday, so here’s SpongeBob’s version of the Megillah.
It happens every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed comes strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand is a bucket of shrimp.
Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts....and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier. Soon, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, "Thank you. Thank you."
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. Invariably, one of the gulls lands on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat - an old military hat he's been wearing for years.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away and old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like "a funny old duck," as my dad used to say. Or, "a guy that's a sandwich shy of a picnic," as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better. His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued. (after 24 days at sea...)
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, "Thank you." That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
(Max Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp.221, 225-226)
According to Rickenbacker, each person on the rafts converted to Christianity after the experience.
PS: By 1910, Rickenbacker was racing cars. Touted as the first man to drive a mile a minute, he received the sobriquet "Fast Eddie" (giving rise to a nickname borne by many men named Edward since his time). Eddie raced in the 1912, 1914, 1915 and 1916 Indianapolis 500. His only finish in the race was in 1914 when he finished 10th. In the other three races, he did not finish due to car failure. Notably, in the 1916 race, he started on the front row in 2nd place. Eddie was also an Ace in WW I with 22 enemy planes to his credit and started Eastern Airlines back in the 30's. Eddie left us back in 1973, but he was a pilot in two wars, an Ace, and received the Medal of Honor. He was also on the overseas air mail stamp some years ago. And he never forgot his debt.....
The Alpha course was developed in response to people who wanted to have the opportunity to investigate the claims of the Christian faith. Over ten weekly sessions, including a day or weekend away, guests hear the claims of the Christian faith. After the presentation, course attendees have a chance to question what they heard and discuss the validity of the claims. The support of all the major Christian denominations has enabled the Alpha course to spread rapidly around the world. Today, Alpha is run in over 160 countries and has been translated into more than 100 languages. Courses can also be found in many contexts including churches, homes, workplaces, military bases, colleges, schools, and prisons. There are many reasons why people enjoy attending the Alpha course. For some it’s the no pressure, non-judgmental atmosphere, others enjoy building relationships with new friends, while others appreciate the chance to discuss deep questions of life that they don’t otherwise get the chance to ask.
WHAT HAPPENS AT ALPHA?
Each Alpha course begins with a meal or refreshments providing a chance to relax and get to know others. There is then a short talk, which looks at a different aspect of the Christian faith each week. This is followed by a time of discussion in small groups of about 10 people. Everyone is welcome to contribute their opinion, ask questions and discuss with the rest of the group.
Alpha courses run in a wide variety of locations and at different times of the day. Courses vary in size, from one small group meeting in a home, to hundreds of people in a larger venue. Some courses are held over morning coffee or during a lunch hour, though most are evening courses, typically lasting 2 hours. Whatever the course size, people tend to remain in the same small groups for the duration of the course so they can get to know each other, continue discussions and deepen friendships.
The whole course usually lasts for 10 weeks, with a day or weekend away about half way through. The emphasis is upon exploration and discovery in a relaxed and informal environment.
The Alpha course consists of a series of talks addressing key issues related to the Christian faith.
TOPICS
Week 1: Who is Jesus? Week 2: Why did Jesus die? Week 3: How can we have faith? Week 4: Why and how do I pray? Week 5: Why and how should I read the Bible? Week 6 Full Day: Who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit do? How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?How can I make the most of the rest of my life? Week 7: How does God guide us? Week 8: How can I resist evil? Week 9: Why & how should we tell others? Week 10: Does God heal today?
The course curriculum is the book Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel. Each talk reflects one of the chapters from this book. Please note: There is no obligation to attend all ten sessions.
WHAT THE PRESS SAYS
The New York Times "A novel approach to Christian education that has been catching on nationwide."
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian "What Alpha offers, and what is attracting thousands of people, is permission, rare in secular culture, to discuss the big questions - life and death and their meaning.“
The Express London " Alpha makes Christianity relevant to modern life." Los Angeles Times “Alpha helps people navigate through Christianity.”
WHAT PAST GUESTS SAY
Anthony: "I didn’t expect the warm welcome I received, the interesting discussions or the lack of pressure to speak in the small groups that followed. I found that I could express any doubts about Christianity, and that my opinions would be respected. If I had an issue with something, I had a forum to voice it with no need to apologize."
Rebecca: “Our church was offering this course and my husband and I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to share in this spiritual journey. We go to church with our two kids, say our prayers, etc. but something was missing. We wanted to find out what was missing.”
Cynthia: I decided to take the Alpha course because I was unsure what it was I believed. I needed something to fill the empty place in my life. I started attending Alpha to seek answers to those basic questions about my faith and who God was.”
Heather: “I was the typical 20 something who had attended church as a child, but once I became an adult I stopped going. When I returned to church I felt like something was missing in my life. The Alpha course helped me understand more about God.
All about monotheism, Abraham, and a mental experiment creating religion amnesia: How Did God Get Started?
One quote from the lengthy essay by Colin Wells:
...faith is the unassailable citadel to which religion withdrew after reason had overrun much of its original territory. And, let’s be honest, storming religion’s territory is what rational inquiry came into this world doing. In the face of such relentless, even terrifying, psychological pressure, it makes sense that our collective embrace of the supernatural, if it was to persist without dissolving completely, would have to tighten to the point of obsessiveness.
But faith is also a mobile citadel, a portable fortress. Having evolved precisely to occupy the territory inaccessible to reason, faith evolved mechanisms to move fluidly with the boundaries of that territory, or, as with apocalypticism, to blithely revise its truth claims about the imminent end of the world as fast as they’re discredited by the world’s contrarian perseverence. Faith’s quicksilver essence can never be rationally pinned down: the harder you press, the faster it squirts out from under your finger. Like the alien monster in countless movies, faith only gets stronger every time you shoot at it.
If this model is correct in its psychology, monotheistic faith will spread across the globe together with reason—as indeed it seems to be doing already, whether through outright conversion or the subtle moulding of older traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism into more monotheistic forms. Faith and reason help define the package we call Western civilization. We might even say that they do define it, and that they also account for its stunning global success.
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless youturn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
It's never a good idea to go through an Advent without watching this version of A Christmas Carol.
To state the obvious, the story is a metaphor, using Christmas as the setting, in which a man is reborn in Christ by the mystical power of the Holy Spirit (as represented by the "spirits,") transforming his soul from a grouchy, self-centered drudge into a loving, generous, and joyful creature.
Many Christians, as I do, pray for some bit of that transformation and rebirth in our souls each Advent, as we remember and celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is right and fitting to "walk and talk with Jesus." Without Jesus, our relationship with God grows cold and abstract, the contractual relationship of a creature to its Creator. With Jesus, the very same Jesus who entered the world in the event we celebrate at Christmas, our relationship with God is interpersonal. It is passionate and intimate, characterized not only by worship and reverence but also by tender mercy and forgiveness, love and mutual understanding. With Jesus, we can know God and be known by God through and through. With Jesus, we have footsteps in which to walk. With Jesus, we have the transformative presence and power of God with us even in our most human and most painful moments.
This 2003 movie, which had the misfortune of being overshadowed by Gibson's The Passion and was never released in theaters, would make a good Christmas present.
Sticking tightly to the language and sequence of this very literary Gospel which was written 2 centuries after Christ's death, the 3-hour version captures all of the key moments of Christ's ministry, and is especially good at capturing the rabble-rousing, reckless and provocative style of his ministry and its inevitable culmination on the cross. It's easy to see why people wanted him out of the way - he was a big trouble-maker and no-one was insulated from his demands or his harsh judgements. Not a go-with-the-flow guy, and John depicts more the Jesus of Truth than the sweet Jesus of Love, yet love of God is the whole story.
The role of Pilate is small but fascinating, and made it clear that we are all Pilates. What would I have done? Probably what Pilate did. Captain Vere in Billy Budd. The story of Pilate is a Greek tragedy, and I feel sympathy for his fate. My only complaint about the film is that Jesus spends more time talking about his relationship with God than he does preaching the rest of his message that was to change the world. I am not a Bible student - but that focus is a reflection of John's Gospel, which was a message to gentiles - "He is in me and I am in Him" - obviously not a message designed to engage the Jews of the time: "Crucify him. Crucify him."
The Jews were not quite ready for a Messiah, nor is anyone, anywhere, any time. How are we to know whether a messiah is the real thing? Pilate is us, and the Jews are us. A holy dream in which we ourselves play every role, as we do in all dreams. Anyway, powerful and very moving stuff, and the narration by Plummer adds a lot.
Something special for those who want to hear and see.
We've been thinking about all of the charming pagan Saturnalian, and especially the pre-Christian German, aspects of modern American Christmastime. A good brief history Here. Lots of interesting details. One quote:
Celebration of birthdays — even including that of Christ — was rejected as a pagan tradition by most Christians during the first three hundred years of Christianity, but the matter became increasingly controversial. Partly in reaction to the claims by Gnostics that Jesus had not been mortal, Christians began to emphasize the Nativity. The Incarnate God as a lovable infant born to a holy mother evoked powerful instinctive emotions. The third century Christian writer Tertullian supported observance of Christ's birthday, but condemned the inclusion of Saturnalia customs such as exchanging of gifts and decorating homes with evergreens. Chapter 10 of the Book of Jeremiah begins by condemning the heathen practice of cutting a tree from the forest to "deck it with silver and gold".
The Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe was associated with a profound rejection of the Roman Church and a return to scripture as the ultimate source of spiritual authority. There was no scriptural support to be found for celebration of Christmas, no commandment that Christ's birthday be observed and no date of birth had been given that could be used for the celebration. Martin Luther called Rome a modern "Babylon" — parallels could be drawn with the mother-goddess worship of the ancient Babylon. The birthday of Mithras and the festivals of Saturnalia for the celebration of Christ would be symptoms of the paganism upon which the Romans had built the Catholic Church.
In 1583 the Presbyterian Church suppressed the observation of Christmas in Scotland because there are no biblical references to Christmas celebrations nor any biblical commandments to celebrate the birthday of Christ. The Church of Scotland continued to discourage the celebration of Christmas, which remained a normal working day in Scotland until 1958. Hogmanay (December 31) was the main day of Scottish celebration.
English Puritanism was probably the most extreme manifestation of the Protestant reaction against the Roman Church. Exodus 20:4 could be taken to indicate that God does not want to be worshiped the way pagans worship their gods — with idolatry such as Christmas trees and Nativity Scenes (much less revelry, drinking and gluttony). Oliver Cromwell campaigned against the heathen practices of feasting, decorating and singing, which he felt desecrated the spirit of Christ. Christmas was called such names as "the Papist's Massing Day" and "Old Heathen Feasting Day". Cromwell's government abolished English Christmas celebration by an act of Parliament in 1647, and the ban was not lifted until Cromwell lost power in 1660. But the tradition of caroling at Christmastime did not resume again in England until the 1800s.
and
Although Christmas was not widely celebrated in New England until 1852, it was popular in the American South beginning with the Anglican settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. The Virginian colonists were the first to establish eggnog as a holiday beverage. ("Nog" may come from the word grog, meaning any drink made with rum.) Dutch influence in the settlement of New York City (New Amsterdam) helped make New York a mostly pro-Christmas state, although there was still an anti-Christmas New England influence. In 1836 Alabama became the first State to recognize Christmas, which finally became a federal holiday in 1870.
My conclusion at the moment is that it's a Pagan holiday - with the baby Jesus added to the mix as Roman marketing. Every culture needs a party season. The real Christian holy day is Easter. I never heard of an Easter Party, and Easter parades are only in the movies.
No, I am not a Grinch. I love Christmas, especially Christmas Eve in church. I like all the parties, too, to catch up with my million friends. I do not enjoy vacuuming pine needles, which is why I keep a pet Spruce Grouse around the Farm. Dang thing follows me everywhere.
I find that guides help me with this, and with many other things.
That's Fra Angelico's (aka Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, aka Guido di Pietro) Adoration of the Magi. When you're in Florence, take the bus ride 20 minutes up the hill to Fiesole and see his little chapel and monastery. It's an active convent now, so they might not let you in. Our thanks to the BD art fiend and art-finder pupette (now Wall-Streeter but still art-finder) who turned us on to that chapel.
BTW, we think it's more fun to stay in the pastoral hills of old Etruscan Fiesole when visiting Florence. The bus runs until late, it's a quick cheap one-Euro ride, you get to ride with the locals, and the views are great. On our last visit, I think we only needed to use a cab once. Our pupette's Georgetown abroad semester was out of the old Rockefeller villa in Fiesole. Cool place. I should revisit those pics one of these days.
This year’s calendar offers a way to think about two important dates in Judaism, the birth of today’s Israel and Chanukah. The two dates represent the importance of struggle to accomplish a Jewish state as well as the struggle to deserve a Jewish state.
Four days after I was born, the modern state of Israel was ratified by the United Nations partition vote on November 29, 1947. Here’s a video recollection. By happenstance of the Jewish lunar calendar this year, Chanukah begins two days later with the first of eight candle lightings on December 1st.
In the video, a commenter says that with the UN resolution Jews were no longer the object of history, acted upon by others, but the subject, taking control over their own fate. Divine intervention may have helped but it was the struggles of man that fulfilled the two-millennia of prayers.
A humorous take is that at the beginning of a year G-d tells a pious man he will be rewarded by winning the lottery before year end. Months pass and come late December the pious man asks of G-d why he hasn’t won yet. The response: “Meet me halfway, buy a ticket.”
The creation of modern Israel is when Jews got the message.Similarly, the two books of Macabbees on the origin of Chanukah offer contrasts between struggles of man and divine intervention. The first book is a fairly straight-forward reputable history. The second book contains more of the divine. (Here’s an analysis of the books of Maccabees, and theories of why they are not included in the Jewish bible.)
Maccabees (left); Hasmonean Kingdom 140-37 BC (left)
The most accepted theory of why the books of Maccabees are not included in the Jewish bible is that the Maccabee Hasmonean dynasty was not of the house of David and that it was itself later corrupted by Hellenism, due to its failure to live up to its nationalistic founding, and because the Jewish bible’s canonizers avoided provoking the Romans after their destruction of Israel, murder of as many Jews as they could and the dispersal of Jews to relative refuge elsewhere.
With the creation of modern Israel, as well as Jews promoting Chanukah as a counter to the lures upon their young of Christmas festivities, Chanukah has risen from a minor to a major Jewish holiday and the books of Maccabees are read more often.
The same tensions exist for modern Israel as for the Hasmonean and succeeding Herodian and diaspora era Jews.
To what extent is the influence or antipathy of other powerful states to be accommodated or resisted? To what extent can the core nature of the Jewish state be compromised? To what extent are the survival of the state of Israel and the fate of Jews in their own hands?
History and current events are why the original Maccabees are today’s models. Those, within or outside, who counsel surrender of vital interests or defeatism would bring upon Israel and Jews another diaspora, at best, and another likely slaughter.
One historical detail I picked up in reading Philbrick's wonderful Mayflower is that the Pilgrims only permitted civil marriage ceremonies - no religion involved, and no preacher present.
As Calvinists, the Pilgrims/Puritans/Separatists of colonial New England viewed the Anglican sacraments as Papist, and thus representative of the Anti-Christ - and they meant it. As a consequence, Congregational Churches, the heirs of the Puritan movement, still have no sacraments per se, although many have liberalized (or backslided?) to the extent of doing baptism, communion - and, of course, weddings which, even if not technically sacramental, are viewed as sacred vows. People long for a touch of the sacred and sacramental.
It is fascinating to be reminded that our nation's deepest roots are in Calvinist theocracy: pre-enlightenment, for better or worse. They viewed the Indians as equals (though living in spiritual darkness), but they hung some Quakers in Boston�as blasphemers (but mainly tried to just send them away).
They even hung an ancestor of mine, who ran away from her husband and kids in Kingston, Rhode Island and was caught on a trail outside of Boston, headed north. Her crime? She refused to return home. We suspect she was not overly fond of her husband, who had previously been suspected of throwing his first wife overboard on the way to Rhode Island in 1640.
I have a retired friend who spends around 6 weeks each year at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. Quite a few people do this sort of thing. It's a Trappist monastery (Cistercian, with strict rules) with guest houses for retreatants. (They do take in married couples as retreatants and you probably need to be Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure.)
He does whatever labor is assigned to him - from baling hay to cleaning toilets, observes the rules of silence, and makes it to all of the Masses (beginning after the morning bells at 3 AM).
He returns home "cleansed and refreshed by the Spirit." The guy was a drop-out seminarian, USMC in Vietnam, and, as he describes himself, a "kick-ass businessman." He is, indeed, a tough SOB who loves the Lord.
The Abbey is an old plantation on the Cooper River, north of Charleston, donated to the order by the Luce family.
All worship was to him sacred, since he believed that in its most degraded forms, among the most ignorant and foolish of worshippers, there has yet been some true seeking after the Divine, and that between these and the most glorious ritual or the highest philosophic certainty, there lies so small a space that we may believe the Saints in Paradise regard it with a smile.
Via Potemra, who says "It’s from Elizabeth Waterhouse’s Thoughts of a Tertiary, and it was used by Evelyn Underhill as one of the epigraphs to her classic book Worship"
Each year at the start of the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, I ask a question, usually how to be more constructive and helpful in my personal relationships in general or with a special person. The answer eludes me and it troubles me that I cant see the way.
As I go through the days of prayer and reflection, various alternatives come from my mind, only to be rejected as too unreal or hollow or evasive or inadequate to the need.
On Yom Kippur, which begins tonight, the longest night and day of prayer, and of a 25-hour fast, the worry that I wont find the answer gets more urgent. My fear rises of not finding the answer. As my mind gets submerged in repetitious prayers and wanders, as I get more light-headed with hunger, as the prayers of repentance get more fervent, an answer always comes late in the day, from my heart.
Its never what I thought it would be. It is complete. It is not complex, though requires more focus, discipline, understanding. It always works for the coming year.
Life is only complicated when avoiding simple truths.
The miracle brings me closer to the person I want to be. It keeps me coming back for more.
Just returned from the second day of Rosh Hashanah services. We search within ourselves for error, correct it, and develop ways to be better. As the Jewish new year begins, the Torah reading for today is Bereshit Bara Elohim: In the beginning G-d created
A millenia ago, Biblical and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote a homily in which bereshit could be rendered bishvil reyshit, For the sake of beginning did G-d create the world.The point is that weve been given our start, and then what we do with ourselves is in our power. Another famous Jewish Rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, wrote, The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself.
My Rabbi, then, passed out this quote from Harry Potter author JK Rowlings Harvard Commencement Speech: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Rosh Hashanah starts tonight. My ever-active boys sat still, watched, listened, learned, and had fun with this Lady Gaga inspired Rosh Hashanah performance. Who am I to argue with Lady Gaga anymore!
A few translations:
Days of Awe = The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, for especially intense introspection, self-correction and launching on better behaviors toward others.
Mahzor = Special holiday prayer book
Shofar = Rams horn, usually, blown from Biblical times to announce holidays, and at Rosh Hashanah to trumpet the Rebirth of the World and of us. In the Bible the day is called Yom Teruah, the day of the sounding of the shofar.
Shanah Tovah = Our greeting to others for a good year, a shortened version of "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year."
My men's Bible study group had a good discussion about prayer and worship early yesterday morning, but we ended up focusing on how we do, or fail to, make space to let God into our daily lives, and to open the door for guidance and inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
We discussed how, in Acts 13, they fasted and prayed as a way to invite the Holy Spirit to guide their missionary intentions. We discussed how quieting the mind and turning off the Blackberry can be a sort of "input fasting."
The discussion reminded me of what a friend once advised me when I felt my prayer wasn't "working" (I don't mean I wasn't getting the right answer: I mean that I didn't feel I was in communion). My friend wisely said "When conversing with God, you need to STFU some of the time. You're talking too much to be able to listen. That's not a relationship."
I am not a child. I do not need to be told what to do in life most of the time (except by She Who Must Be Obeyed, on occasion. eg: "Call the vet," and "Take your BP meds," and "Bring hence some mint from the garden," and "You can't go to town in those filthy wrinkled pants."). But I do want and need God via the Holy Spirit as my co-pilot to give me light in the tough times, to lift me up in the good times, and to help keep my life aligned, as best I can discern it, with God's will.
So I need to clear out the junk and make more mental space for that. Fall Cleaning. Otherwise, I'm just another animal, controlled by desires and interests, and constrained and regulated by ordinary reality. It's all really His space, isn't it?
Tuesday night was the first night of the Hebrew month of Elul. This month is special in preparation for the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We search ourselves for our failings, commit to cease them, sincerely apologize to those weve harmed, and create new ways of behavior. The process is called Teshuvah, or return. This doesnt mean we have come all the way or achieved perfection, but rather we have made the sincere and real efforts to come closer to being and acting as we understand G-d desires for us.
When Moses ascended Mount Sinai for forty days to receive the Ten Commandments, G-ds Law, the Hebrews were fearful he wouldnt return and created a Golden Calf to worship and party. When Moses descended, in anger he smashed the tablets. G-d has not decided what to do with you, and requires the Hebrews to abandon their former ways and corruptions of living as slaves in Egypt. G-d instructed Moses to again climb Mount Sinai to receive a replacement. Forty days later, during which time Moses asked of G-d to forgive the Hebrews sin he was instructed that the Israelites repent of their weakness and faithfully observe certain holy days. Moses returned with the Ten Commandments and G-ds forgiveness.
The first day of Elul is the second time Moses went up on Mount Sinai, and 40-days later, when Moses returns, Yom Kippur, is when our fate is sealed based upon our acts.
It is not our sins toward G-d that most matters but our sins toward each other. A central reading during Yom Kippur is from Isaiah in which it is not our pieties that earn us G-ds favor but how we treat each other, particularly those more in need. Before our sins toward G-d can be forgiven, we must first earnestly strive for the fine balance of G-ds earthly standards of justice and mercy.
As distinct from holy days, like the Sabbath, during Elul we do not cease the work that can distract from our focus on G-ds way, or dress up to enter a sanctuary and pray our devotions as we would in entering the Lords palace. We continue our mundane activities while our Lord is consciously invited into our fields to see how we daily live, correct and improve ourselves.
I think that the religious faith of most average Christians waxes and wanes over time, sometimes even in the course of a day. I do know people whose faith seems to be 100% and rock solid. In the end, I don't find thinking about the topic of strength of faith particularly useful or productive. God is a mystery to me, as is existence itself (and most other things too), but I believe that in prayer and in practice one can come into relationship with God - or at least with Jesus.
Atheists have no evidenceand certainly no proof!that science will ever solve the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Just because other difficult-seeming problems have been solved does not mean all difficult problems will always be solved. And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation "ex nihilo" (from nothing). His eventual explanation entailed a Supreme Being standing outside of time and space somehow endowing it with existence (and interfering once in a while) without explaining what caused this source of "uncaused causation" to be created in the first place.
This isor should begrade-school stuff, but many of the New Atheists seemed to have stopped thinking since their early grade-school science-fair triumphs.
Right, sort-of (I don't think we even know what we don't know). Science is not a religion. It's just a formalized, rigorous mode of inquiry from which most of the data and facts and theories are inevitably replaced over time. It is incapable of handling the Big Questions and Big Truth, but it sure can be useful. For example, we currently believe that "gravity" doesn't exist as a "force," but it's a handy concept anyway. Someday, our talk of "forces" wil be viewed as little more than 18th century gods.
Chesterton: ""If there were no God, there would be no atheists."
Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.
Perhaps governments cannot really replace God - as much as they might like to.
At the doctors office this morning I picked up a magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, of course dated November/December 2009.
An article caught my eye, How Did Israel Become A People?, by Abraham Faust, based on his book (hold on for a doozy of a title) Israels Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance (2007) which won the Biblical Archaeology Society Award for Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology.
Briefly:
The Israel that is mentioned in the Merneptah Stele [13th Century B.C.E.] is indeed the Israel of the Iron Age. And it can be identified archaeologically. The rich archaeological database, and its analysis with appropriate tools, allows us to trace the Israelites and to decipher many of the internal and external processes that characterized the group from the beginning of the Iron Age onward.
So much for arguments about Jews being a recently externally imposed colony on historically Arab land. The peoples in Israel at the time of the 13th Century B.C.E. were Israelites, Canaanites, long gone, and then Philistines, from elsewhere in the Mediterranean, with some Egyptian invaders for a time in between.
Faust promises another article about the development of Israels Jewish religion.
Im going to be returning to the website of Biblical Archaeology Review, as there appear to be many interesting, scholarly articles and book reviews from various religious and academic viewpoints.
"Abba," the Aramaic word for "father," was sometimes used by Christ as a term for his true Father in heaven.
Jesus spoke Aramaic, almost certainly knew enough Hebrew to study the texts, and may have known some Greek too. Greeks, like the Romans, were all over the place. Must have been like that multicultural bar scene in Star Wars.
His use of "Dad" for God was transformational.
I do not view God as having any gender, but I love the way Christ spoke of God as his Dad. Real Dads, however much they may aspire to be role models and to be strong and reliable supports for their kids, are only human and thus always deeply flawed.
Yes, I greatly enjoyed Bruce's Father's Day post early this morning, especially the music. Jew, Christian, Moslem - whatever. If that song doesn't bring a tear, you have a problem. "Only you created tears, and only you can wipe them away forever."
I like the idea of "truth without value." How come it took me this long to find that concept? AVI's final paragraph of The Morality of Nonbelievers:
The Christian answer, as I have suggested, may be no truer than the others. It may be just one more variation of photosynthesis. I offer here no defense of that. Perhaps there is some other explanation outside of mankind no, it would have to be outside of life itself no wait, it would have to be outside of this accidental planet and even the accidental universe that would make something in morality real, and true, and valuable. But absent any such, there isnt anything that qualifies as morality and there is simply no meaning beyond the masturbatory for a nonbeliever to give himself any credit for having one equal to the believers.
I agree with everything AVI says, and I feel motivated to think harder about things which affect me which have truth but little value.
Lux et Veritas, as they say in Rome. They used to say it in New Haven, too.
John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of what we now call Methodism (the term was originally used as an insult but was eventually adopted by Wesley), and his brother Charles spent some time in Savannah, GA. I lost a bet about that at a dinner party last year, which cost me a bottle of good Montrachet.
Methodism was the ultimate source of our 12-step programs: the Wesleyans liked to have methods for spiritual discipline. John Wesley was an evangelist, and liked to preach outdoors. He tried to convert the Georgia Indians.
He was a "by faith alone" preacher.
He got in a bit of a problem with a Georgia lady, and eventually returned to England. Here's a piece on Wesley in Georgia, and here's a Wesley bio.
The hymns written by John and Charles Welsey are among my favorites. Charles wrote 6000 hymns. John even produced a hymnal but, as this site notes,
Today people are much more familiar with some of Charles Wesley's hymns than with John Wesley's sermons.
A paradox of faith is that only by giving away (our) judgments and notions can we attain anything like Godly wisdom. Only by saying, I surrender my notions of what would make me happy, to wholly accept yours, can we hope to find true happiness and that peace which defies all understanding. Jesus went through an awful lot to demonstrate the power (and value) of thy will be done, and yet, we still struggle with it; we still resist, and want our own way.
Anne LaMott likes to quote a priest-friend of hers: You can safely assume that youve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Or, taken another way, you can safely assume that youve created God in your own image when it turns out that the plan God has for the world is, by happy coincidence, precisely aligned with your positions.
When I need a dash of perspective and feel open to a new thought, I check out One Cosmos to see what Gagdad has been thinking about. He reads books that I would not get around to reading.
(I wish he would leave the politics alone - not that I disagree with his - but I find the combination grating and disconcerting.)
A sample of Gagdad's recent musings:
...it is hopeless to defer to biology as to the nature of Life as such. As I mentioned in the book, a biologist knows no more about the nature of life than a watchmaker does about the nature of time. As I have noted before, although it is obvious to me that the cosmos manifests intelligent design, I do not rely on this to inductively leap the conclusion that God therefore exists. This is like proving the existence of time by studying watches.
Truth must be sufferered... Why is that? Because to know a truth -- i.e., genuine objectivity -- is death to the ego. But once the ego is out of the way, it doesn't hurt at all. In fact, it kind of tickles.
As I understand it, the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) view God as both immanent and transcendent. I do, I suppose. However, I know little to nothing about theology.
I fell into this subject while thinking about the word numinous (from Latin numen - a spirit which inhabits a thing or place). My Pastor referred to "numinous experiences," by which I believe he meant moments in which God's presence is strongly felt. I like the word very much.
...to be a secular extremist is to be a fully horizontal man, and thus, to commit not only spiritual, but intellectual, suicide. It is the ultimate cosmic inversion, for it is to elevate our fallen state to the highest virtue. It is "to love only terrestrial life, to the detriment of the ascending and celestial path," to be "exteriorized," and to "love only outer things, to the detriment of moral and spiritual values." Ultimately it is "to sin against transcendence, thus it is to forget God and consequently the meaning of life; and outwardness is to sin against immanence, thus to forget our immortal soul and consequently its vocation" (Schuon)
Read the whole thing, and be tolerant of Gagdad's rambling and his idiosyncracies. I like the parts about Truth, and about intelligence.
We often reflect here on what our secular, pop-culture horizontal gods are today: ideologies, Gaia, science, self, governments, etc., even orgasms. When I consider the things that help me locate myself on a point above the x axis, "to fly like an eagle while being chained to the floor," I come up with poetry, song, prayer, moments of communion with others, and random moments of self-oblivious immersion in some aspect of Creation. My links to the vertical and to the things that cannot be touched. It's the job of preachers to assist that link too, isn't it? Alas for me, much of Scripture tends to speak more to my mind than to my soul, and True Beauty only blinds me. Working on those things, though.
I attended the funeral of a colleague and pal of 20+ years early this afternoon. Jewish funeral, very short notice. Just took him and his wife to dinner ten days ago. Massive stroke. Second close death for me in one week. They played Louis Armstrong. The last year of his life was probably the best he had ever had. Recently retired (wife still working), biking through Asia with his lovely Mrs - who is a doctor, a month in Cabo, visiting kids in Lake Como and in California. Loved four things the most: deep thinking, bicycling long distances, his family - and good meals with good wines. Always cheerful, except when stupidity or dishonesty pissed him off. So modest, I never knew he was a Harvard grad til today at the funeral. Full scholarship, worked as a janitor for spending money. Tough for me to lose two special pals who loved life so much, in one week: I am not old yet. It connects to this "passing through" theme for me right now:
The issues around being a Christian in the real world are a regular topic for Bible study groups - and likely for students and followers of any religious discipline. "In the world, but not of it" is the way a part of John 17 is often paraphrased, viewing this life as a swift passage to another version of existence.
Anchoress posted this well-known (but new to me) second century letter to Diognetus, presenting an ideal version of A Christian In The World, in her Paradoxes of Christianity:
Christians in the World
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not theirwives.
They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven.
"We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised." (KJV).
"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness." (1 Corinthians 3:19)
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:18)
"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (1 Corinthians 1:21)
My men's study/confessional group has been reading the Letter to the Hebrews for a couple of months. One of the topics we stumbled into this week was a discussion of obedience to God, and dutifulness. (Here's a recent post on obedience via Vanderleun.)
While we guys all seem to acknowledge the need for discipline for spiritual growth, many of us confessed our tendency to lazily and self-congratulatingly replace a life in the spirit with "Christian" dutifulness and "doing good." We more or less ended up thinking of moral and religious dutifulness, if lacking the Holy Spirit and the direction of God, as clanging cymbals - empty noise. Of course, that was one of Christ's teachings.
From a Christian standpoint, pride in one's Christian dutifulness and righteousness is a devil's snare - as is pride in one's humility. From Screwtape's Letter #14 with his advice to his apprentice Wormwood:
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, By jove! Im being humble, and almost immediately pridepride at his own humilitywill appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attemptand so on, through as many stages as you please.
"I once abided in the infinite, and all I got was this lousy belly button."
Our umbilicus, he says, is our reminder that we have already passed from one mode of being to another. One quote:
...just as our physical body bears the scar of its incompleteness and separation, so too does our soul bear its own version of this. For it also has a "hole" at its center that we may spend our lives trying to deny or fill in inappropriate and ultimately fruitless ways. But the hole is there for a reason. It is actually a theomorphic and theocentric hole, and there is no way to fill it unless one is properly oriented to the source of one's being. We are connected to the source of our being by a vertical channel, or OMbilicus, through which energies pass up and down, in and out -- we call these energies aspiration (?) and grace (?) (the latter of which must be in-spired to become operative).
He does not mention the term "re-birth," but that's part of what his post is about. I know that some of our readers think Gagdad Bob is an annoying nut, but I have found plenty of his transcendental imagery to be useful to me (including his metaphor of "verticality").
It is an affliction of middle age, especially if one has spent much time and effort in life preoccupied with the daily, practical, dutiful, material, and mundane - as what Gagdad calls a "Flatlander" - to find oneself asking "Is that all there is?" ...and to do all sorts of wacky and reckless things to deal with that question and with that emptiness, which things, indeed, bear no soul-nourishing fruit but are only empty distractions of the "How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall" sort.
Yet what a crazy question that is for me or anybody to ask - "Is that all there is?" - in the midst of this buzzing, blooming miraculous and frightening cosmos which is packed with road signs of all sorts (including our humble belly buttons), pointing to God.
OK, that's enough preaching and platitudes for one day at Maggie's.
Here's a real question: Is God female?
The medical/spiritual image of a human belly button is h/t Theo. That "Nexus" shirt is right on the button, as it were, isn't it?
The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (tank cardinal) and caricatured in North America as the Enforcer or even the Rottweiler. The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzingers was hardly a household name.
- Deacon Kevin McCormack, on Religion on the Line (radio): "If there were no Easter, there would be no Christmas."
- My Pastor in church this morning (paraphrased): "If we cannot believe that Christ rose from the dead, or are on the path to believing it, then we're wasting our time here." (I think that is debatable, but I like totally get his point. - the illumination comes from stepping into the light. Many things in life are like that. Maybe most things.)
Had we stood in that crowd that day, it is a forgone conclusion that we would have been part of the sneering mob, ushering him to eternal doom.
He who knew no sin, took ours on to Him, and became the sacrifice for us that each of us deserved.
Good Friday may be a day of celebration for you. But not for me. It is a day of conviction, meditation, remembrance, and sorrow.
Sorrow that a God who never had to, sent His only son, to suffer everything I have always deserved.
The realization of this is the beginning of gratitude. But on Good Friday there was nothing to be grateful of for sure. Only some vague promise that He might return.
On Good Friday, the only hope we had dared to believe in was dead. Evil had won, mockers had succeeded, traitors were enriched, and the enemy of everything good declared victory.
On Good Friday even God the Father turned his back.
It was the smell, not just of death, but of abandonment, hopelessness, emptiness, and defeat. It was all encompassing, it was suffocating.
On THAT Friday there was nothing good...nothing good for anyone.
On Good Friday hell rained down everything it could on Him, and fortunate for us, He was strong enough to take it!
One never knows where Lent will take you. A month or two ago, I was fairly certain that I knew what painful, self-flagellating things I needed this Lent for, but it has led me in another direction entirely, and a direction which offers more joy than pain.
It has led me to another level of the relational aspect of faith, as my posts during this Lent have indicated. It crystallized in my mind when I was contemplating my relationship with dogs during a recent night-time post-prandial dog-walk with my pal with ceegars. I generally connect with dogs pretty well, and think I have a good idea of how much of the bond is real and how much is imaginary.
Everything we experience in life is relational, in a sense - including to inanimate things and abstract things. It's how we are constructed. If I can delight in the slobbering kisses of a dog, what is it in me that prevents me from fully delighting in the (not-slobbering) kisses of God?
I won't go on with this because it's too personal and probably boring for anybody who isn't exactly where I am, but maybe you can get my drift. I am a work in progress.
Joshua and Caleb are the only Jews from the original exodus from Egypt 40-years earlier who are specifically permitted to enter the promised land of Israel. Even Moses wasnt.When others wavered, Joshua and Caleb never did, from faith and courageous optimism and actions.Others in the exodus wavered and needed to have their children educated in their purpose before they could enter Israel.
At the Passover Seder tonight traditional prayers and foods remind us of the trials and purpose of the exodus.The centrality of Jerusalem to Jews across the millennium is seen at the conclusion of the Seder when we all say Next Year In Jerusalem, as in every removal of the Torah from the ark we sing, For from Zion [Israel] shall come forth Torah and the Word of Hashem [G-d] from Jerusalem.
The manner in which the Seder is conducted is intended to educate the children, a wise one, a wicked one, a simple one, and one who doesnt know to ask, as are all adults whether Jewish or other. Hence, we begin the narrative of Exodus (Haggadah) with the Four Sons.
The Torah refers to four sons: One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. What does the wise son say? "What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?" You should tell him about the laws of Pesach, that one may eat no dessert after eating the Pesach offering.
What does the wicked son say? "What does this drudgery mean to you?" To you and not to him. Since he excludes himself from the community, he has denied a basic principle of Judaism. You should blunt his teeth by saying to him: "It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt. For me and not for him. If he was there he would not have been redeemed."
What does the simple son say? "What's this?" You should say to him "With a strong hand Hashem took me out of Egypt, from the house of servitude."
And the one who does not know how to ask, you start for him, as the Torah says: "And you should tell your son on that day, saying 'It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt.'"
The passage of the four sons raises many questions:
When Christ rode into Jerusalem down from the Mount of Olives on a colt (or small horse, or donkey - whatever) on Palm Sunday, he was greeted with Hosannas by excited crowds who believed him to be the Messiah.
His teachings and his miracles had become famous. People threw their cloaks on the road and, presumably, palm leaves, for his horse to walk on.
Much of their enthusiasm was unwarranted, however: the Jews were hoping for a political messiah (using the word "king"), more than they were hoping for the messiah who came to tell them that much of what they believed about being in relationship with God was wrong - and claiming that he had the authority to say so.
"Salvation," for the crowds, meant salvation from the Romans, and "the kingdom of God," in the Hebrew Bible, referred to the literal restoration of a nation of Israel under God, as had been promised to David. There was no concept at the time, I believe, of the now-Christian idea of salvation or the Christian idea of "the kingdom of God." Furthermore, Jesus had no interest I am aware of in politics or governance and had no beef with the Romans.
A radical for sure, in his apparent renunciation of the ordinary world.
My own view is that it refers to God's domain, ie the universe of those souls who seek relationship with God - not any literal kingdom but a "spiritual" (I hate that word), unworldly kingdom. Maybe "transcendent" is a better word.
I suspect that the Jews who welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem were deeply disappointed to discover that Jesus' mission was not worldly, but other-worldly: only a few handfuls of people remained to constitute what the scholars term the "Christ cult" after the crucifixion. It took Paul's inspired work to rebuild on the foundation.
(That's just my amateur take on it all. I am no expert.)
29When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30saying, Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it? just say this, The Lord needs it. 32So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the colt? 34They said, The Lord needs it. 35Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven! 39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, order your disciples to stop. 40He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.
The Jewish holiday of Passover begins this year next Monday night with the first Seder. (Translation = Order or sequence and content of the prayers, symbolic foods, and retelling of the Exodus, with emphasis on educating the children.) Many Christians also celebrate the Passover Seder, which was their Last Supper.
Less known is that the Exodus was central to the minds of the new United States' Founding Fathers. The first committee of the Continental Congress assigned to design our Great Seal, the symbol of our sovereignty, was comprised of three of the five men who drafted the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Franklin chose a design of "Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity." The motto: "Rebellion To Tyrants Is Obedience To God," which was later adopted by Jefferson as his personal motto.
The above is drawn from this website about the US' Great Seal. Click around the site. It is fascinating.
Here's a relevant quote:
"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher." Abraham Lincoln
Our sermon today was one of the ones I would have liked to have taught/preached myself, had I the ability and the calling.
(It followed one of our missions updates about the prison ministry we support (good stuff indeed, but as a friend said in our Lenten Lunch study group afterwards, "Can we be as sharing of Christ's love to our next-door neighbor with the BMW as we can to the sick, the despairing, and the folks in prison?")
The sermon seemed unusual to me in being a preaching against religion. Our Pastor, instead, held up the vision of the primacy of a personal relationship with God through Christ, bypassing much of what is often referred to as "religion." I suppose it was, in part, a preaching about the sins of piety, spiritual pride, righteousness, pro-forma ritual, and self-righteousness but I cannot do justice to the message.
A personal relationship with God through Christ...that sounds kind of ordinary, but I suppose I was ready to hear the "relationship" part in a new way. Less abstract; more felt. I understand how the "religion" part is meant to be a help in building, guiding, and maintaining the relationship, but it can be a hindrance too. Religion can easily become idolatry.
He spoke about how he has learned to tell when he is out of relationship with God by his reactions to life and people, and mentioned, interestingly, that having been raised and lived all his life as a Christian was a handicap to him as a Christian because he feels that he has never had the experience of being entirely out of relationship.
He was speaking on Luke 18:9:
He spoke also this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others.
"Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this:
God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.
But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldnt even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner!
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
"Jesus tells us that everything we had ever thought about how to approach God is wrong."
After church yesterday, my Lenten study group listened to a DVD of Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, teach on the prodigal son. (We are using Keller's Prodigal God as our guide this Lent.)
Among other fascinating points, Keller observes that Jesus used the parable to depict two kinds of lost sons - the seemingly-"good" kind and the obviously-"bad" kind. The elder "good" son is crippled with the sins of spiritual pride and self-righteousness, and the younger is just an everyday rotten kid. However, Keller's main point in this regard is that neither son loved the father - they both focus on what they can get from the father (the inheritance in the elder's case, and a job in the prodigal's case) rather than on loving the father. They are lost because neither is in a loving relationship with the father.
Keller holds up a vision of a Christianity which consists of a transformative relationship of love and communion with Christ and God which is, as he puts it, "beyond morality and beyond religion." He invites us to be reborn in a loving relationship with the Father. The fruits of that - the "fruits of the Spirit" - may emerge after and be more than the "clanging cymbals" of empty, dutiful, or self-validating virtue.
I like this message because I have never directly associated Christianity as being centrally about doing "good" or being "good." Indeed, I sometimes think a good church sign might be "Sinners only, please." Good character and behavior are damn important in life and important to the people we are involved with, but not basic to Christianity. Being respectable, honest, dutiful, responsible, self-controlled, reliable people are primarily secular and/or psychological issues, despite Calvin.
In Christ's time, the Pharisees (represented by the elder brother) were scrupulous about doing the right thing but lost track of their relationship with God during their search for goodness and correctness. Christ gave them hell for their pursuit of rightousness and, famously and scandalously, chose to hang out with lepers, whores, tax-collectors and the like (the sinful younger brother who might, someday, have to recognize a need for redemption).
One of my comments in our group was in this vein:
"Seems to me that there are many rational, practical, mature caring adult, legal, narcissitic, relational, and emotional reasons to be a good and upright person in this world and to live a life of decency and honor, but getting on the Father's good side and getting the Father to do what we want is not one of them."
As one reviewer of Keller's book asks, "Which brother am I?" My private answer: "A bit of both and, I hope, a bit of loving son."
A Great Story (1973)
It's never a good idea to go through an Advent without watching this version of A Christmas Carol. 
From Tim (not Ted) Dalrymple's 
This 2003 
We've been thinking about all of the charming pagan Saturnalian, and especially the pre-Christian German, aspects of modern American Christmastime. A good brief history 
The creation of modern Israel is when Jews got the message.
My men's Bible study group had a good discussion about prayer and worship early yesterday morning, but we ended up focusing on how we do, or fail to, make space to let God into our daily lives, and to open the door for guidance and inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
From 
John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of what we now call Methodism (the term was originally used as an insult but was eventually adopted by Wesley), and his brother Charles spent some time in Savannah, GA. I lost a bet about that at a dinner party last year, which cost me a bottle of good Montrachet. 
When I need a dash of perspective and feel open to a new thought, I check out 
Fancy theological words for 
The issues around being a Christian in the real world are a regular topic for Bible study groups - and likely for students and followers of any religious discipline. "In the world, but not of it" is the way a part of 
One Cosmos comments in 
A quote 
When Christ rode into Jerusalem down from the Mount of Olives on a colt (or small horse, or donkey - whatever) on Palm Sunday, he was greeted with Hosannas by excited crowds who believed him to be the Messiah. 
Our sermon today was one of the ones I would have liked to have taught/preached myself, had I the ability and the calling. 
After church yesterday, my Lenten study group listened to a DVD of Tim Keller, Pastor of