June 2016 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

"Journey Reflection" > JUNE most viewed blog posts
by John C via Dialogue 30 Jun '16

30 Jun '16

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Fwd: How god became god. Dealing with thrownness
by James Wiegel via Dialogue 30 Jun '16

30 Jun '16

Interesting review. Here is a brief excerpt. The book explores metaphorical interpretations of Genesis–and Smoley engages in his own parables, which he returns to in his short, effective exegesis of practical mysticism. One of the unitive themes of How God Became God is Smoley’s metaphor of a “water table underlying everything we call reality,” a transcendent consciousness, a “living, vibrant, moving presence…” The world of the five senses…is simply a crust that floats on this eternal presence. Smoley identifies this presence with the Ground of Being, or Spirit. And, he tells us, We can say that there are points in this crust of reality where the water of the Spirit breaks through…Those “wells,” shall we say, are moments of encounter with the Sacred. Despite its many desert-like stretches of barbarism, its faulty transmission, its biases and flagrant myths, the Bible, Smoley demonstrates, seethes beneath the surface with sacred springs. ♦ > Subject: How god became god > > http://parabola.org/2016/04/28/god-became-god-scholars-really-saying-god-bi… Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Pope Francis

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7/30/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXVI - The Eighth Thesis, The Ascension of Jesus
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 30 Jun '16

30 Jun '16

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If Jesus’ ascension must be regarded as a literal event that occurred in history, it is now beyond the capacity of our 21st century minds to accept it or believe it.”</em></p> </blockquote> <p> The late Carl Sagan, one of the world’s most esteemed and well known astrophysicists, said to me at a conference in Washington, DC, just two years before his death: “Jack, do you know that if Jesus literally ascended into the sky at the time of the ascension, and even if he traveled at the speed of light (approximately 186,000 miles per second), he has not yet escaped our galaxy?” It was a typical Sagan tour de force delivered against what he experienced as the small mindedness of traditional religious believers. Carl, who was Jewish by ethnic background and atheist by theological persuasion, was well known for having little patience with what he thought of as absurdities offered by religious people as something designed to be literally true. Yet the fact remains that for most of Christian history this story, has been uncritically presented in both church and society at large, even though it makes no sense in our post-Copernican world. Many magnificent portraits of Jesus ascending into the sky have been painted by the master artists of the ages and they hang today in the great museums of the world. A number of them have also been reproduced in stained glass and they continue to occupy prominent places in the churches of the world. If an artist was commissioned to paint scenes from the life of Jesus on the walls of an Italian Church in the Middle Ages, the first scene would normally be some aspect of the virgin birth and the final scene would almost surely be some aspect of the ascension of Jesus. These two scenes were thought to have framed the limits of his earthly life — his arrival in this world and his departure.</p> <p>We noted earlier in this series that the miraculous birth of Jesus is referred to in only two of the four gospels and that neither of these stories became part of the Christian tradition until the ninth decade. This fact hardly confers objective truth on either of the two virgin birth stories. Since that is so, then it is even more problematic to ascribe history or objectivity to the story of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, for this story appears in only one gospel and it may well be as late as the tenth decade. The first mention of the ascension of Jesus is found in the 24th chapter of the gospel of Luke (vs. 44-53). That particular narrative is, however, not the well-known or well publicized ascension passage. According to Luke the resurrected Jesus made appearances over a period of forty days. Following his final appearance, and serving the purpose of announcing that resurrection appearances were now ceasing, Luke concludes his gospel with these words: “Thus he (Jesus) led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” It is worth noting that the words “was carried up into heaven” are missing from many of the most ancient manuscripts and may well be a later editorial gloss to bring the story more into line with the version described in the first chapter of Acts, which is far better known. When we come to this ascension narrative in the book of Acts, we need to be made aware that we are dealing with the same author who wrote the gospel of Luke. The book of Acts is simply volume two of Luke’s two-part corpus. It is in this second volume that we find the familiar and much more elaborately detailed narrative of the ascension of Jesus. When most people think of the ascension they are drawing their details from the book of Acts. Listen to the actual words found in this source: “As they were looking on, he (Jesus) was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold two men stood before them in white robes and said, ‘Men of Galilee why do you stand looking into heaven. This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:10-11).</p> <p>There is only one other reference to the ascension in the New Testament and that comes in the final chapter (chapter 20) of the authentic Fourth Gospel. (By this I mean to imply that chapter 21 of John’s gospel is widely regarded as a later addition to this book and from the pen of a different author.) This reference comes in the account of the risen Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene (20:11-18), to which we referred when we were dealing with John’s resurrection material. Here in this narrative Jesus speaks her name: “Mary.” In the speaking of her name, we are led to believe that she finally saw his identity, which until that moment had been hidden from her. She turns, says the writer of the Fourth Gospel, calls him “Rabboni,” which is a rather intimate form of the word Rabbi, and rushes toward him. Jesus appears to hold her off saying: “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” The Fourth Gospel is normally dated between the years 95-100, well after Luke-Acts, so I think it fair to say that he was drawing on Luke’s material. That is the sum of the places in the New Testament where an explicit mention was made of what came to be called the ascension. It is thus a late-developing part of the Jesus story.</p> <p>We note first a couple of obvious contradictions. Ascension in Luke brings the appearances of the risen Christ to an end. In John, the ascension of Jesus precedes all other resurrection appearances except the one to Magdalene. Luke in Acts tells the ascension story with narrative details; John provides no details whatsoever, referring to the ascension as if people would know what the word meant. There is no doubt that it is Luke’s narrative in Acts that placed the story of Jesus’ ascension into the Christian understanding, so I will focus on that narrative in the development of this eighth thesis.</p> <p>First, the framework. The Bible, like most things written during the time of its compilation (circa 1000 BCE and 140 CE), assumed that the earth was the center of a three-tiered universe. Heaven, the abode of God, was clearly above the sky, while something, usually fearful, was thought to be located beneath the earth, in time it became known as hell or the abode of the devil, though that note is not dominant in the New Testament until the Book of Revelation, written in the tenth decade. Ancient people had no concept of the vastness of space. The sky seemed near enough to place them in the direct gaze of God, but the closest they could come to God physically was to climb to the top of a mountain. So Moses had to go up a mountain to receive the law. A story in Genesis reveals that human beings thought they could build a tower high enough to reach heaven (Genesis 11). Matthew’s birth narrative assumed that the sky was the floor of heaven, which meant that a star could be dragged across the floor of heaven so slowly that wise men could actually keep up with it. Given these assumptions, for them to have Jesus return to God at the end of his earthly life, meant that they had to portray him as rising into the sky. It made perfect sense in the small universe they believed they occupied.</p> <p>Luke had one other agenda. As we noted earlier, Luke had turned the resurrection of Jesus into a literalized, resuscitation of a deceased body. For Luke, resurrection seemed to imply that Jesus has resumed his pre-crucifixion physical life. When a truth, incapable of being expressed in words, is literalized there are some unanticipated consequences, which become obvious immediately. If resurrection meant being restored to one’s previous life, bound as it was by time and space, then what does one do with that life then? How does one get that physical life out of this world? Usually the way we depart this world is to die. Jesus, however, tried that and it did not work. So the question was: “Was he bound to walk the paths of this planet earth through all eternity?” If one literalizes the resurrection then one must develop an exit story appropriate to a resuscitated body. That is exactly what Luke did in his gospel. In the narrative of Jesus’ ascension, Luke created a plausible exit story, but it was never meant to be more than a story.</p> <p>Carl Sagan reminded us that if we literalize the story of the ascension of Jesus, but do not understand the size and shape of the universe in which that story presumably took place, the result is absolute nonsense. Can we get to heaven by rising up into the sky? Of course not! If we rise into the sky far enough, there are only two options. One is to achieve orbit. The idea of Jesus in perpetual orbit around this earth with his white tunic waving in the breeze does nothing for my spiritual life! The other is to have Jesus sink into the infinity of space. Heaven is not above the sky, I don’t care how many athletes point to the sky when hitting a home run, making a goal, kicking a football through the upright from sixty yards away or sinking the winning basket. When we in the western world point to the sky, we are pointing in exactly the opposite direction from someone who lives in the Far East. Words like “up” and “down” become meaningless in the infinity of space.</p> <p>Since we know it would take light still traveling at the approximate speed of 186,000 miles per second, more than 100,000 years, to go from one end of our galaxy to the other, a literalized ascension story does nothing except to make Carl Sagan literally accurate.</p> <p>There must be a meaning to this story that has simply eluded us in our literal attempt to understand the Bible. There is, and we will turn to it next week.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">here</a>.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Katherine May via the Internet, writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question:</h4> <p>Thank you for your weekly emails. They are always informative and interesting. I’ve also read your books over the years and enjoyed your thought-provoking ideas and perspective. I am a nurse-psychotherapist in private practice and an adjunct professor for a psychiatric and mental health nurse practitioner program at a university. I will be teaching a course next year, which I have developed, entitled: “Depth Psychotherapy: Caring for the Soul.” I have studied James Hillman, Thomas Moore and have participated in many workshops and studies in Jungian Psychology for over two decades.</p> <p>James Hillman spoke and wrote a lot about his disappointments around psychotherapy. Modern day treatment of mental health issues is caught in the “spirit of the times” medical model, including over diagnosing and overuse of medication to “relieve symptoms” and “improve functioning” as its primary goals.</p> <p>Since “psyche” is a Greek word translated in English as “soul” and “therapy” means to “minister, care, serve,” I’m interested in studying how we can better connect psychotherapy practice back to its original meaning. I’m wondering if you would be willing to share your view of “soul,” how soul expresses/manifests in life and any ideas about a psychotherapy that could “minister” or “care” for the soul? Also, your ideas about the differences between souls and spirit and mind.</p> <p>Thank you so much for your efforts and care in answering these questions.</p> <p> </p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Katherine,</p> <p>Thank you for your letter and for your professional work dedicated, as it is, to the wholeness of life.</p> <p>I find human words “squishy” when trying to define topics which words cannot fully embrace. The Greeks used the word <em>soma</em> to refer to bodies, but they also used the word <em>sarx</em>, which got translated as “flesh.” The word “<em>psyche</em>” could mean mind, but the Greeks also used the word “<em>nous</em>” to refer to the mind. <em>Psyche</em> could also mean “<em>soul</em>.” The words are anything but precise.</p> <p>The Hebrew word “<em>nephesh</em>” is translated as “soul” or “spirit,” but it literally means breath. <em>Ruach</em> was the Hebrew word for “wind,” but it also meant “spirit”. So I don’t find it helpful just to assume that words convey a consistent message. Words are, however, all that human beings have to use, but in the non-scientific, inexact areas of human experience, they leave much to be desired.</p> <p>In my opinion both psychotherapy and all the healing arts have one primary goal, which is to make people whole. The sign of wholeness is not found in any particular religious formulation, but is an expression of a deeper level of self-acceptance, one that expresses itself in the ability to give yourself away in love to another. The word “grace,” so freely used in religious circles, means the recognition that we are ultimately not self-made people, but are dependent on another for both life and love, which for me are synonyms for God. Obviously the gift of life is given to us by our parents. Not as obvious, but equally true, is that we have to be loved into the ability to love. We cannot give away what we have not received. We are driven by our own biology to be survival-oriented and thus self-centered. The grace of love is the only thing that can lift us beyond our survival needs and enable us to live for others.</p> <p>The healing disciplines deal with both the physical and mental distortions that have been passed on to us in the course of life. This fact should free us from moralizing, one of the favorite pastimes of religious people. Judgment is difficult, however, when we know that unloved people hurt others, that abused children are likely to turn into being abusive adults and that, in biblical language, “the sins of the fathers (and mothers) are passed on to the third and fourth generation.”</p> <p>Your task and mine is to bring wholeness to life. If using words like “soul” are helpful, that is fine; if not, feel free to abandon those words. Wholeness comes to our bodies, minds, spirits and souls in a variety of ways. The task of the would-be healer is to enable every person, no matter how badly he or she has been wounded by life, to find the courage to be all that he or she can be.</p> <p>Enjoy your life of service to others.</p> <p>John Shelby <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Read and Share Online Here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img align="none" height="165" style="width: 371px;height: 165px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="371" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/e126c963-4a1…"></a></div> <h3 class="aolmail_null" style="text-align: center;color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong at Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA - July 11th - 15th, 2016</span></h3> The purpose of the course will be to establish the fact of history that the three Synoptic Gospels are the products of the First Century Synagogue, in which Jesus was wrapped inside the Hebrew Scriptures, organized by the liturgical cycle of the Synagogue, invested with Jewish messianic interpretations and are reflective of the story telling traditions of the Jewish people. Biblical literalism was imposed on the gospels by Gentile Christians after 150 CE, unaware of </div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td align="center" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_abb87f68-3abe-45d6-b5ce-2cc352cd83c8 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>

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ICA Global Archives Fall Sojourn Invitation and Spring Report
by Beret Griffith via Dialogue 29 Jun '16

29 Jun '16

Announcement of 2016 fall sojourn dates Monday - Friday, September 12-16, 2016 And ICA Global Archives 2016 Spring Report In memory of Gordon Harper and Steve Harrington Introduction Work on organizing the rich legacy of work of the Ecumenical Institute, the Order:Ecumenical and Institute of Cultural Affairs, residing in the ICA Global Archives, has been in process for many years. This work has come to feel like an endless marathon and we have felt the need to recast the work. Those of us working on the task are in the process of looking toward the future; coming to terms with the limits of our capacity to continue the work; and creating ongoing processes to respond to requests for access to archival materials. As we engaged in deep conversations about the future of the global archives we decided to engage Bruce Williams to guide us in creating an action plan for the next 18 months. We will be mining the common memory of people familiar with historical documents to determine which of the 20,000 documents currently on file in the archives need to be added to the 2000 existing digital documents. The creation of an intern program will increase the core of people working on the archives and make it possible for archive work to continue. The creation of a dynamic archive website will create access to archive collections.We will build a research support system for documenting and distributing outcomes of current ICA initiatives. Robust operations will provide the underpinning for these efforts. There is a growing awareness among people of the need for radical, significant and structural change on planet Earth. Making available the historical residue of EI, O:E and ICA experiences around the world, the ICA Global Archives is a research treasure which has the capacity to empower and enable dialogue within current awakening movements. Digitization of Critical Documents Team Members: Beret Griffith*, Steve Ediger, Jean Long, Marge Philbrook, Wendell Refior There are 20,000 documents in the ICA Global Archives. Only 2,015 documents have been digitized. The Document Digitization Team will develop a plan to scan and digitize the most important documents within the FileMaker Pro database of 20,000 entries. We will begin by asking select colleagues to determine categories in the Category List with which they are familiar. They will be given a section from the FileMaker Pro database. They will select individual documents for scanning. To enable this process FileMaker Pro has been printed and put into notebooks to track the work. The system of pulling, scanning and re-filing materials will be refined. Criteria will be developed for determining document selection based on societal need. People will need to be trained in the scanning process. Jack Gilles and Frank Knutson tested the selection process and selected documents which are in line for scanning. Individual and ICA archive collections around the world will be catalogued. It will be necessary to gather collection information for each of the collections. The ICA Global Archives location in Chicago will maintain a list of all global digital resources. Finally, digitized documents will be analyzed and collection decisions made. Victory is the digitization of critical documents by the end of 2017 and a listing of EI/ICA archival material around the globe. Creating A Dynamic Website Team Members: Paul Noah*, Frank Knutson, Steve Ediger, Wendell Refior, Doug Druckenmiller The task is to design and implement over the next year and a half a website which appeals to multiple user groups i.e. religious groups, students, casual observers or the curious. The steps to doing this are: - Research existing websites that meet the needs of identified generic user groups. - Write user stories about how the sites are used. - Build a site map for our content. - Find a designer to build the website from the user criteria we have developed and is compatible with ICA objectives. - Figure the cost impact of maintaining the site into the future. - Develop and refine the content. - Hand the completed site over to ICA. Victory is a completed website. Research and Funding Strategies Team Members: Doug Druckenmiller*, Jack GiIles, Oliveann Slotta, Steve Ediger, Jim Wiegel The Funding strategy for the archives depends on reorienting our strategy from digitizing the archives to building a research support system for documenting and distributing the outcomes of current ICA initiatives. This allows us to build infrastructure for fundable projects that will as a matter of course provide the necessary mechanisms to collect, archive and disseminate project results. Major project grants are always required to provide a plan for this activity. As a first prototype and example of this an archival component for the Town Meeting Climate Change Action being undertaken by the ICA will be developed as the model for other types of research initiatives. Thus, the archives is a critical research component of ongoing programs. Once an archive component has been envisioned, it will be captured in a concept paper to be presented to an international conference as a first step in identifying funding targets for a research effort. Academic research networks will have a stake in the research effort and provide contacts and collaborative support. They will also identify, collaboratively frame, and network the funding targets. Once a prototype grant is developed and submitted, other specific grant applications can be written for at least 5 major programs. Victory is a funded and established research partnership. Archives Operations, Interns and Volunteers Team Members: Steve Ediger*, Wendell Refior, Tim Wegner, Douglas Druckenmiller, Sally Fenton Operationalize the intern program We identified two ways to increase human resources as the core of people working on the Global Archive by developing internships and creating alliances with interested project-based groups. Both of these can be accomplished with minimal expenditures on our part. We already have begun to develop connections to intern programs. In addition to providing pre-professional work on the archives, our collection will become known around the academic community and potentially attract graduate level students that want to use the collections as research material. Last semester, Dominican University provided two interns that have been working on the Town Meeting collection to provide material for the planned Town Meeting Climate Change Action project. An additional two interns signed up for this semester. Additional universities to contact include DePaul, UI-Chicago, UI-Urbana-Champaign and possibly others. One key concern is the cost of intern supervision. A strategy to minimize undergraduate intern supervision is to have graduate student interns take on an active management role as part of their internship.Then we can begin identifying projects, recruit interns and work the program each semester. After a few rounds, we will evaluate the program. Another method for increasing our work capacity will be to engage groups already working to further ICA projects. A number of groups are coalescing, including some folks working on the New Religious Mode and others working on Training Inc. In particular the Training Inc group has been meeting virtually for over a year, participated in the Fall 2015 Sojourn and plans on participating in the Fall 2016 Sojourn. We believe that by identifying and connecting with these groups and offering them the infrastructure of our archive tools they can develop their own work. In order to do this, we’ll start with Training, Inc., identify group members, develop a liaison function between them and the Archives Advisory Council, have them participate in the archive process for their materials, and evaluate the pilot. Victory is an operational intern program and working relationship with one project-oriented group. Archives Operations All objectives hinge on a well-thought out and defined set of standard operating procedures and a robust technology foundation. We need to update documentation for operational procedures and plan for sufficient technology capacity. Archival documents both physical and digital are distributed across the world and Internet requiring standardized operations in technology and process. We will document our technology infrastructure and create a capacity building plan to sustain future operations. We will inventory our operations and add missing elements and update them. This set of tasks would make a great project for a grad student. Currently, certain aspects of the technology are well-managed and coming into focus. For instance our work on the FileMaker Pro archives database has been enhanced with the ability for users to access the database from any Internet connection in the world through a hosting service that Archives Advisory Council members are currently funding. Beyond that we have bits and pieces stored all over the place, some in a website managed and paid for by Tim Wegner and other pieces on the ICA Server. Unfortunately, the ICA server is just about out of room and we are unable to replicate the digital documents stored elsewhere. We will create a plan outlining tasks necessary to address all aspects of the technology infrastructure. Victory is a completed Operations Manual and Technology Plan. Conclusion: A New Paradigm The Archives Team has documented its plan and commitments for bringing the ICA’s historical assets into an accessible, interactive research dynamic. We foresee new relationships with groups and individuals that will bring both opportunities and support for the ICA. New people have stepped forward to replace two giants of our team’s journey, namely Steve Harrington and Gordon Harper. We have given ourselves an 18 month window to bring the archives operations into a working virtual reality. We look forward to having continuing support of the ICA-USA as a vital resource for ICA programs, relationships, support and reputation. During the summer of 2016 the Archives Advisory Council will plan for the fall 2016 sojourn. You Are Invited to the ICA Global Archives Fall Sojourn - On Site & Virtual Monday - Friday, September 12-16, 2016 Contact Jean Long: Cell 720-633-5008 Email: jean.long512(a)gmail.com

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6/23/16, Spong: Addressing the National Conference of the American Humanist Association
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 23 Jun '16

23 Jun '16

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They came from all across the United States and abroad with the Netherlands, in particular, being well represented. By and large they were a well-educated group made up largely of professional people: doctors, lawyers, business leaders and academics. Their single most identifying mark, however, was that they were overtly non-religious – perhaps anti-religious. Their publicity material featured a quotation from Kurt Vonnegut, the late novelist, extolling the virtues of living without God. I had been invited by this organization to receive an award and to address this conference. I shared both of these privileges with one other person. His name was Dr. Jared Diamond, a renowned scientist and former professor at UCLA, who is the author of numerous books. I was to receive the Humanist Association’s annual “Religious Liberty Award.” Dr. Diamond would be honored as “The Humanist of the Year.” Previous winners of this award, I learned, were Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and novelist Joyce Carol Oates. It was an impressive list.</p> <p>I found it a fascinating experience to enter this conference, as I did, as a representative of organized religion. Clad in the purple shirt and clerical collar of my profession, my wife and I presented ourselves at the registration desk to receive orientation materials, a schedule of activities, meal tickets and name tags. Above this registration desk was a banner that proclaimed “Good without a God.” I felt very much like a Mexican immigrant might feel at a Trump rally!</p> <p>I thought about that banner’s message and I did not disagree with it. I have known and respected atheists whose lives were not only good, but noble. The quality of goodness does not depend on a belief in God. Perhaps what I understand better than that is that the opposite of their slogan can also true. One can be “evil with God!” I thought of the anti-Semitism that has been the great “contribution” of the Christian Church over the centuries. I recalled that the Crusades were organized by the Vatican to kill “infidels,” which was the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries’ word for Muslims. I thought of Christianity’s complicity with slavery, the “Bible Belt’s” support of segregation, the church’s denigration of women over the centuries and the abuse of the LGBT community of people by organized religion. Yes, one can be good without a God and one can be evil with one. It is also true that people can be evil without a God and good with one. Having a God or not having a God seems to me to be no guarantee or even an indicator of goodness.</p> <p>Everyone that I met on a personal level at this conference was incredibly warm and gracious. I saw one person, who had attended lectures I had delivered in a church in Western North Carolina over a number of years. She had always wrestled with what she called the unbelievable aspects of the various religious explanations with which she had grown up. She was absolutely glowing when she greeted me. “I have finally found the community in which I belong,” she stated. I was delighted for her. Religion sometimes does strange things to people.</p> <p>Another delegate greeted me with a lovely smile, then shared with me the fact that the last book she read before deciding that she was no longer “a believer” was my book: <em>Why Christianity Must Change or Die</em>. That book, she said, “pushed me right out of the door of organized religion.” An author never knows quite what effect his or her writing will have on his or her reader. It was interesting to me that this woman seemed to say this as a compliment!</p> <p>I discovered that the reason I had been chosen to receive their “Religious Liberty” award was related to two things. One was the role I had played over the last fifty years in the various battles for justice, as people of color, women and the LGBT community struggled for full acceptance in the life of our church and country. The other was what they perceived to be my attacks on the kind of religious literalism with which most of them grew up and were today in vigorous rebellion against. I found it fascinating how familiar they were with my writing. I have discovered many times that those, who are themselves most overtly anti-religious, are also deeply, sometimes even emotionally interested in the religion they claim to reject. Carl Sagan, who was what I call a “God-intoxicated atheist,” fitted that category.</p> <p>At the banquet during which the awards were given, the two honorees spoke. During my presentation, I walked them through just a bit of contemporary biblical scholarship. The Bible is a human document, written between two and three thousand years ago and it makes assumptions that no one today can still make with any intellectual credibility. The earth is not the center of a three-tiered universe, God does not live above the sky. Human beings were not created perfect, only to fall into “original sin.” Stories of a virgin birth are not about history. Miracles, people need to recognize, do not enter the story of Jesus until the 8th decade of the Common Era. Thus for anyone in the church to speak of the Bible as the “Word of God” becomes irrational. One surely does not want to blame God for all of the things in the Bible. For me, these statements are so mundane, so commonplace in the field of academic biblical studies that they are not even debatable. The fact is, however, that to my audience that night, they had never heard a representative of the Christian Church say these things. My talk received a standing ovation and elicited a number of questions to which I was given the privilege of responding. After that address, there was a lively sale of my books.</p> <p>I am sure that Professor Diamond’s address was far more tailored to this group’s expectations than was mine. I, nonetheless, found his address absolutely fascinating. He spoke on the two reasons that, in his mind, belief in God no longer made sense. The first of his reasons came from the field of evolutionary biology. Human beings are “developed animals,” he said, not a special creation. He illustrated that with the discoveries of genetics and with the fact that all of us today carry some of the genes of Neanderthal people in our makeup. The idea that there is something unique, godlike or eternal about human life has, he suggested, no basis in science. The second reason, which in his mind destroyed the possibility of one being able to believe in God, came from the field of astrophysics. In the vastness of the universe, inhabited by perhaps as many as a trillion galaxies, the evolutionary probability is that intelligent life exists in many more places than just on planet Earth. This means, Dr. Diamond suggested, that life is a product of nature and that God is little more than a human myth.</p> <p>I am not unfamiliar with either the field of evolutionary biology or astrophysics. I have read extensively in both areas. He told me nothing about which I was not already familiar. What did surprise me about Dr. Diamond’s address, however, was that the God he believed to have been destroyed by these two areas of exploding human knowledge is a deity in whom I too have not believed in for decades. This brilliant man was still operating out of a concept of God that represented what I would call a 4th grade Sunday school mentality. How could he be so learned in one field, and so limited in another? The answer to me is quite clear. The Christian Church, in its institutional form, makes little or no effort to educate its people theologically. Adult education in most churches is naive, juvenile and easily forgettable. It does not address the great issues of our day for fear of being controversial. It does not reflect the knowledge available in the Christian academies, keeping that knowledge secret from most congregations. It does not free the Christian faith to engage the knowledge revolution that is rampant in our generation. How can one in a post-Darwinian world, for example, still talk about human life being created perfect only to fall into original sin? The Christian Church in almost all of its forms continues to protect from challenge, the childish fantasies of most churchgoers. We would rather have our members quiet and placid rather than stirred up and questioning.</p> <p>Recently I had a conversation with an Episcopal priest of my church, who decided that for the Trinity Sunday liturgy he should revert to the traditional language of the late 19th century. Why did you make that decision, I wondered? This priest responded that the language of the Trinity seemed to fit better inside the more ancient forms of liturgy. Then, as if to justify his decision, this priest went on to say how many people in his church that day had expressed their delight in hearing the ancient liturgical words being used again in worship.</p> <p>It was an interesting argument put forth by a gifted priest, but one who has yet to embrace the meaninglessness of yesterday’s theological words for today’s people. I did not press the issue, but the facts are that those who expressed delight in this traditional, liturgical language of another world will all be dead within twenty years, while the use of this language among younger and educated people produces exactly the effect that I met at the American Humanist Association convention and in their speaker, Dr. Jared Diamond.</p> <p>Because some of today’s Christians have a sentimental attachment to the liturgical patterns of the past, which portray God in pre-Copernican terms, as an external being, living above the sky, possessing supernatural power, who enjoys being flattered (we call it praise in church) and who is moved when we human beings grovel like slaves before this deity on our knees, begging for mercy, does not shield us from the fact that this God is no longer believable. That God will never be resuscitated. Our only choice is to accept this deicide or to transform, in a radical way, what the word God means. My presence at the gathering of the American Humanist Association made the choice quite clear. Christianity needs to have churches and clergy, who understand the issues and who are prepared to address them.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Read the essay online here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Louis Altman from Florida writes:</span></p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"> Question:</h4> <p>I recently spent a weekend with you at a Unitarian Universalist church in Sarasota and then I heard you again at the national meeting of the American humanist Association in Chicago.</p> <p>I am a Humanistic Jew, past president of the Society for Humanistic Judaism and a member of the UU Church. At Sarasota I understood you to say that we must reject supernatural theism in favor of some other form of theism, which is so difficult to define that you described it as attempting to “nail smoke to a wall.”</p> <p>This leads me to ask, why not go directly from supernatural theism to secular humanism in a form which is represented by Humanistic Judaism and by the Sunday Assembly accommodated by so many UU churches? Humanism seems to me to offer the community aspect of traditional religion without the supernatural underpinnings. Why then should we deal with the intermediate form of theism at all, which cannot even be defined in rational terms?</p> <p>I have another suggestion, which I offer with great respect. Please do not make any more remarks which treat transgender people as though their gender is optional. Their gender is inborn, just as everyone’s gender is inborn, even though in the case of some transgender people the genitalia are out of sync. I know this because I am the father of an adult transgender son, born ostensibly female. Seeing this issue through my eyes might help you to see it in a different light.</p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Louis,</p> <p>Thank you for your letter. I found the congregation and the clergy of the UU Church of Sarasota to be a very exciting faith community. I am glad you have found a home in that congregation.</p> <p>Let me, however, correct both of your statements just slightly. I do not reject supernatural theism “for some other form of theism” as you seem to have heard. I reject supernatural theism and all other versions of theism as inadequate human words to seek to understand our experience of God. Theism defines God as a being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere external to the world and not only ready but capable of intervening in some miraculous way. What we need to develop is an entirely new way of interpreting our experience of transcendence. I do not think secular humanism is the only alternative or even the best alternative. It was the German Reformed theologian, Paul Tillich, who first moved me from thinking of God as a being to thinking of God as “Being” itself. It is still human language and thus still inadequate to capture the essence of God but it is a step in the right direction. I regard humanism as a good word, but “secular humanism” is not near broad enough to make sense out of what I call my “God experience.” I acknowledge the reality of a dimension of life that I call “Otherness,” and describe as wonder and mystery, concepts which the word “secular” does not capture. Deep down I consider myself a humanist. I think Christianity, when properly understood, is profoundly humanistic. How else can the words placed into the mouth of Jesus by the author of the 4th Gospel be understood: “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly” be understood?</p> <p>In regard to your reference about my use of the word “transgender,” once again I do not think that you heard what I said properly. The “choice” I was talking about had nothing to do with being transgender. I fully recognize and accept the wisdom of science that sexual orientation is a given not a chosen. The choice to which I was referring was the choice that transgender people had as to when to ask questions in the format under which we were operating, which called for a rotation of order between males and females to achieve gender balance in the question period. Transgender people have the choice, I said, as whether they will line up as males or females.</p> <p>I wish you well.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Read and Share Online Here</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img align="none" height="180" style="width: 279px;height: 180px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="279" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/7a0c6ff1-8f8…"></a></div> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size:20px"><strong>Common Dreams Conference 2016 “Progressive Spirituality: New Directions”</strong></span></div> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;">September 16 - 19th, South Brisbane, Australia</div> The conference will allow you to explore future expressions of faith and spirituality as well as eco-theology, inter-faith dialogue, and indigenous spirituality. Key speakers: Dr Diana Butler Bass, Fred C. Plumer, Dr Val Webb, Michael Morwood and others. </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"> <div class="aolmail_vcard"> </div></div></td></tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </center> <center> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_44cbcd79-6573-4f3b-889a-f28b163485d1 td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style> </center><img height="1" width="1" src="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/open.php?u=b51b9cf441b059b…"> </div> </div>

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6/16/16, Spong: On Celebrating my 40th Anniversary of Being the Bishop of Newark
by Ellie Stock via Dialogue 16 Jun '16

16 Jun '16

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People came from across the nation and throughout the Diocese of Newark, which encompasses the Jersey suburbs of New York City, stretching from the Hudson River to the Delaware Water Gap. Clergy and people, who served so many years ago, gathered in St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, on June 5th to remember their time in history.</p> <p>I became the Episcopal bishop in this diocese in June of 1976. I was 44 years of age. My picture from that time, which was on the cover of this anniversary bulletin, looked young, even cherubic. One might even wonder if I had yet begun to shave! It was, however, my privilege to serve this remarkable diocese for 24 years. Those years covered the presidencies of Jerry Ford through Bill Clinton. They were tumultuous years both for church and state. The intellectual revolution that started as long ago as the 16th century with Copernicus and went through Freud and Einstein into our day, had eaten at the fabric of both religious understandings and our social structures and values. It was also the era that gave us the civil rights struggle, the reaction to the divisive war in Vietnam, the rise of feminism, the first Iraqi war, and the gay movement, all of which would feed the emotions of our people during my years as bishop. Most of us did not know how deeply our unadmitted racism, sexism and homophobia really went and was.</p> <p>The choice facing the Christian Church when I arrived in the bishop’s office was to engage these issues and, in the process, to become radically controversial, or to ignore these issues and to become totally irrelevant. Death comes by boredom more frequently than it does by conflict. I made a decision; we would engage our turbulent, changing world both intellectually and socially. It was a fateful decision, but clearly, even in the retrospective gaze of a 40-years later perspective, it was the right decision.</p> <p>First, we committed ourselves to the eradication of all vestiges of racism in our common life. The Diocese of Newark had the first black cathedral dean in the United States. Instead of electing a Suffragan or assistant bishop, who would have been, in all probability, one more white male, we instituted a visiting bishop program, in which three or four third world bishops would be in residence in the Diocese of Newark for long periods of time each year. In this program on three occasions, we welcomed a South African bishop named Desmond Tutu, as well as other African bishops from Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia. From Latin America we brought in the bishops of Puerto Rico, Panama, Cuba and Venezuela. From Asia we brought in the bishops of Taiwan and Hong Kong. The people of our diocese became accustomed to seeing black, Latino and Asian faces sharing in our common life while wearing the vestments of and performing the functions of a bishop. Consciousness rose and racism retreated. Today the Presiding Bishop of the entire Episcopal Church is an African-American. I beam with pride, knowing that the Diocese of Newark had a hand in making that possible.</p> <p>We also embraced the cause of women, fighting for both their equality and their ordination. A group of women deacons known as the “Philadelphia Eleven” had been irregularly ordained in 1973 by three retired bishops, directly challenging the anti-female bias present in the then all-male authority structures of our church. Two of those eleven served in our diocese. We joined the fight and when the priesthood was finally opened officially to women in 1979, this diocese ordained three new female priests in the first ten days of that January and had services designed to recognize and “regularize” those who had been among the Philadelphia Eleven.</p> <p>Because the Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, it was not enough just to pressure the American Church to remove its own anti-female bias. So when an English deaconess, who had been refused ordination to the priesthood by the Church of England, appealed to the Diocese of Newark to “test my vocation,” we did and in time, joined by Mervyn Stockwood, the liberal Anglican bishop of Southwark (South London), we ordained that woman, Elizabeth Canham, to the priesthood in the glare of television cameras from ITV in London. The New York Times covered this ground-breaking ordination on the front page of its Sunday paper. Elizabeth was assigned to work as a curate at one of our churches, but when she went home on holiday, she was besieged with invitations to celebrate the Eucharist in private homes because no church in England would permit her to function as a priest inside its doors. When Alan Webster, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, invited Elizabeth to celebrate the Eucharist in the deanery of St. Paul’s, packed as it was, with members of the “Movement for the Ordination of Women,” the Anglican bishop of London, Graham Leonard, became apoplectic. He finally left the Anglican Church for the Roman Catholic Church, so that he could live out the balance of his days without the “corrupting presence of women priests.” More than a decade later the Church of England finally authorized the ordination of women. Better late than never.</p> <p>As a direct result of our visiting bishop program, women priests were ultimately ordained in Kenya, Uganda and Liberia. We also appointed a woman priest to be Anglicanism’s first female archdeacon. What a trouble-making diocese we were in the cause of justice!</p> <p>In 2006, our national church finally made the issue of women in the priesthood moot by electing Katharine Jefferts-Schori to be the Presiding Bishop of the entire Episcopal Church. Today almost 50% of our clergy are female.</p> <p>Spurred by this growing success, we then turned our attention to another dehumanizing prejudice. We appointed a far-ranging task force, and assigned to it the somewhat innocuous name: “The Task Force to Study Changing Patterns in Family Life.” The Rev. Dr. Nelson Thayer, a member of the faculty at the Theological School of Drew University chaired this effort. In 1987 this task force presented its report to the Diocesan Convention calling on the Episcopal Church: “to recognize, to welcome and to bless liturgically the sacred commitments of our gay and lesbian members.” The convention voted: “to receive this report with appreciation and to commend it to our congregations for a year of study.” After that intensive year of study and listening to the witness of our gay and lesbian members, the recommendations of that task force were adopted by an overwhelming majority at our annual convention. The Diocese of Newark had assumed the leadership of the Episcopal Church in the struggle for the full inclusion of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people into both the church and the society.</p> <p>In these activities our diocese became a beacon of hope and a magnet for those who had felt the church’s homophobic rejection. We accepted that vocation and we did not lower the pressure. In June of 1989, we ordained to the diaconate an openly gay and partnered man and placed him on the staff of our church in Hoboken, with the charge to develop what we called “The Ministry of the Oasis,” designed to create a place where gay and lesbian people could find the love and acceptance that would enable them to come back to their once rejecting church. In December of 1989 in that packed Hoboken church we ordained that gay deacon, Robert Williams, to the priesthood. He and his partner were introduced as a family at that service. He was the first openly gay, openly partnered person to be made a priest in the Episcopal Church. Our church had not authorized this action officially, but it had also never prohibited this action so it was perfectly legal. Three bishops and about eighty of our diocesan clergy participated in the service. So did the public media, protesters, picketers and people quoting from Leviticus! The Christian Church has had many homosexual clergy in its ministry over the centuries, but we had always pretended that they were not there. The church likes to hide from reality inside the myths that it has itself created. This diocese destroyed those myths! Hostility flowed. There was talk of a heresy trial to expel this bishop. Angry letters were written, petitions were signed; we were spat upon when entering a church to give a lecture. Sixteen death threats were received, but we persevered. Ultimately the church moved to change its official policy. When I retired as the Bishop of the Diocese of Newark, we counted 35 openly gay and lesbian clergy on our clerical roster. Thirty-one of them lived in publicly acknowledged partnerships. Today in our church this battle is over. Gay and lesbian clergy are serving in every office our church has to offer. Gay marriage is now commonplace throughout our churches and legal in our nation.</p> <p>One does not change practice without also changing thought. So this diocese also challenged both theological formulas and liturgical practices. We established a program called “New Dimensions,” which brought the scholars of this world to help us think through yet again what it means to be a Christian. In order to live, Christianity could no longer hide inside the words of our traditional past. We had to find a way to be Christians in our modern world.</p> <p>These were the things we celebrated at this 40th anniversary service, acclaiming the heroes of those struggles, men and women, ordained and lay, a bit older today than they were during the days of conflict and change. The church that had called us into ministry had changed over the years of our service. It is now more whole, alive and honest. This renewed church we hand to the next generation. When I listened to the sermon at this service, delivered by Janet Broderick, the brilliant, first female rector of St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, I had no doubt that my church was ready to enter tomorrow with a new, competent hand on the guidance system.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p>Read the essay online <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">here</a>.</p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">To my readers:</h2> <p>This week’s column was written before the tragedy of the Orlando, Florida massacre.</p> <p>Dear Friends,</p> <p>I grieve deeply over these attacks. I grieve even more when one of our candidates for the presidency of this nation seeks to use this tragedy to score political points. I am amazed to hear not only innuendo from one of them, but also actual hints that the president of the United States is either so weak and inept as to be helpless in the face of this threat, or is actually in collusion with these terrorists, thus revising the charges this candidate once made that our president was not born in the United States, but in Kenya, and is really a Muslim. As lawyer Joseph Welsh once said to Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin when he was on a witch hunt for communists: “Have you no sense of decency?” Those words are once more totally in order to be spoken in our national life at this time.</p> <p>I also grieve that terrorism is now linked with homophobia, which makes one of America’s most oppressed minorities newly vulnerable. I recently learned from members of the Orlando gay community that the Orlando killer had himself not only been to this gay club on a number of occasion, but that he also had contacted some of his victims previously through a gay dating app, presumably seeking to line up sexual encounters. I recall well that some of my church’s most homophobic clergy turned out to be self-hating and deeply repressed gay men. If repressed homosexuality turns out to be a factor in this tragedy then I fear it will once again open the floodgate of hostility toward the LGBT community. It makes me want to march once again in the New York City Gay Pride Parade in an act of solidarity.</p> <p>This nation’s rising consciousness about homosexuality will not be suppressed or turned around, but mentally sick people will make others their victims, before this prejudice joins other such shameful moments in our nation’s history as the witch hunt of Salem, Massachusetts. A dying prejudice can sometimes be a lethal force in our society. I never want to underestimate the power in human beings to do evil to their fellow human beings.</p> <p>The gun laws in this country will also once more be debated. The ratio of guns to American citizens is the highest in the world—eighty guns for every hundred Americans. Despite the political rhetoric that suggests that the 2nd Amendment is about to be repealed, I know of no candidate for president who calls for such an action. What has been called for is the banning of the sale of assault weapons that have no purpose being in the hands of anyone except those in the Armed Services fighting to keep this nation free. There is nothing in the 2nd Amendment that should permit an individual to own an assault weapon with a magazine holding thirty bullets. No one hunts with such a weapon. No one needs such a weapon to protect his or her safety. It is nothing other than a weapon of war. If individual citizens can legally own an assault weapon then why not sell them a tank or a canon? Gun laws can be made sane, safe and sensible under the terms of the 2nd Amendment. The current political rhetoric that suggests the contrary is irresponsible, ignorant and profoundly dangerous.</p> <p>I love my country I grieve that so many of my fellow citizens today feel such fear, anxiety and insecurity that they can respond to the politics of hate. We will honor the victims of the Orlando killings by building a nation based on hope for a better tomorrow for all Americans, not on vengeance, exclusiveness and the fear of those who are “not like us.”</p> <p>John Shelby Spong <a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Read and Share Online Here </a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"><h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <h3 class="aolmail_aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 26px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="color:#0000FF">Bishop Spong at the Chautauqua Institution, NY - June 27th - July 1st, 2016</span></h3> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…"><img align="none" height="266" style="width: 444px;height: 266px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" width="444" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/7b794e88-c38…"></a></div> This week is about Jewish storytelling. John Shelby Spong explores the Bible’s literary and liturgical roots—its grounding in Jewish culture, symbols, icons, and storytelling tradition—to explain how the events of Jesus’ life, including the virgin birth, the miracles, the details of the passion story, and the resurrection and ascension, would have been understood by both the Jewish authors of the various gospels and by the Jewish audiences for which they were originally written. <p> </p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600" id="aolmail_aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" class="aolmail_aolmail_footerContent"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" valign="middle" id="aolmail_aolmail_utility"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: left;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center><center><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="aolmail_aolmail_canspamBarWrapper" style="background-color:#FFFFFF; border-top:1px solid #E5E5E5;"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="top" style="padding-top:20px; padding-bottom:20px;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_8a6a0d29-83a1-4afd-903c-58dfba4688bf td{color: black;} .aolReplacedBody #aolmail_AOLMsgPart_2_71dfab9b-79fe-4bc9-bed6-d32f06cd1e2e td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody .aolmail_aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody .aolmail_aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style></div> </div>

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Winds & Waves magazine - contributions for August 2016 issue
by ICA International via Dialogue 13 Jun '16

13 Jun '16

To read in your browser click here Dear colleagues, and potential contributors to Winds and Waves, Welcome to the second half of 2016! We hope you have enjoyed reading past editions of Winds & Waves. Our next issue will be published in August, 2016. This may well be the last edition in its current form, as we explore ways to reach more folk globally, and share thinking and action in a range of social media platforms. We will keep you posted. Please forward this invitation to anyone you know who might like to contribute. We invite you and or a colleague or organisation you know or work with, to contribute an article for this issue? The magazines broad aim is Sharing ideas that work and the articles range widely in both content and style. If you have a story idea to discuss, please write to Isabel, Robyn or Peter at the addresses below. The following are various sections of the magazine: Feature articles, How-to tips, Book reviews, Interviews, Photo essays, News Briefs, Whats On, Boardroom and Readers write. For more information on these sections and ideas on what and how to write, please see the attached Guidelines for W&W contributors. You can read the past editions of the Winds and Waves magazine at our new website: www. ica-international.org The deadline for submission of articles is: July 9 Indication of article you are submitting Aug 7 deadline to submit articles Aug 21 editing completed Aug 31 publish August WW We need to know if you or someone you know is contributing by July 9 so we can liaise as needed. Please respond to the following points by July 9: a. Proposed Title.......... b. A brief summary in a couple of sentences (or just the first paragraph of the article)............ c. Estimated length............ d. The number of photos, or diagrams if any, that will accompany the article.... Your name & email .................... and author's name & email ..................... Guidelines for articles if required, see here: http://windswaves.icai-archives.org/emails/guidelines-for-articles.htm With many thanks in anticipation, Robyn Hutchinson and Isabel de la Maza Contributions Coordinators, for the W&W team Robyn Hutchinson: hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com Isabel de la Maza: isadelamaza(a)vtr.net Peter Ellins: peter(a)icai-members.org PS Attention: ICAs and all its friends and partners around the world!!! We want to enrich and extend our connections. The GLOBAL ICA CHANNEL is alive and growing!....You can join any of the conversations, hosted by ICA Ukraine. Here are some online opportunities: a conversation with your ICA team about history, caring, collaborative projects and your vision of future; human development hot topics, worldwide dialog using ToP methodology; our peer to peer conversations which show ICAs Global face; broadcasting your ICAs and partners events; open your own program and to be a centre of engagement to your mission. If you want more information just reply to this email, or to Svitlana, and we will help you get connected. Svitlana, ICA Ukraine. svetasalamatova(a)gmail.com If you did not receive a copy or notice of the last edition of the magazine, please contact: Peter Ellins: Email: peter(a)icai-members.org; or Robyn Hutchinson: Email: hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com

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Winds & Waves magazine - contributions for August 2016 issue
by ICA International via Dialogue 13 Jun '16

13 Jun '16

To read in your browser click here Dear colleagues, and potential contributors to Winds and Waves, Welcome to the second half of 2016! We hope you have enjoyed reading past editions of Winds & Waves. Our next issue will be published in August, 2016. This may well be the last edition in its current form, as we explore ways to reach more folk globally, and share thinking and action in a range of social media platforms. We will keep you posted. Please forward this invitation to anyone you know who might like to contribute. We invite you and or a colleague or organisation you know or work with, to contribute an article for this issue? The magazines broad aim is Sharing ideas that work and the articles range widely in both content and style. If you have a story idea to discuss, please write to Isabel, Robyn or Peter at the addresses below. The following are various sections of the magazine: Feature articles, How-to tips, Book reviews, Interviews, Photo essays, News Briefs, Whats On, Boardroom and Readers write. For more information on these sections and ideas on what and how to write, please see the attached Guidelines for W&W contributors. You can read the past editions of the Winds and Waves magazine at our new website: www. ica-international.org The deadline for submission of articles is: July 9 Indication of article you are submitting Aug 7 deadline to submit articles Aug 21 editing completed Aug 31 publish August WW We need to know if you or someone you know is contributing by July 9 so we can liaise as needed. Please respond to the following points by July 9: a. Proposed Title.......... b. A brief summary in a couple of sentences (or just the first paragraph of the article)............ c. Estimated length............ d. The number of photos, or diagrams if any, that will accompany the article.... Your name & email .................... and author's name & email ..................... Guidelines for articles if required, see here: http://windswaves.icai-archives.org/emails/guidelines-for-articles.htm With many thanks in anticipation, Robyn Hutchinson and Isabel de la Maza Contributions Coordinators, for the W&W team Robyn Hutchinson: hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com Isabel de la Maza: isadelamaza(a)vtr.net Peter Ellins: peter(a)icai-members.org PS Attention: ICAs and all its friends and partners around the world!!! We want to enrich and extend our connections. The GLOBAL ICA CHANNEL is alive and growing!....You can join any of the conversations, hosted by ICA Ukraine. Here are some online opportunities: a conversation with your ICA team about history, caring, collaborative projects and your vision of future; human development hot topics, worldwide dialog using ToP methodology; our peer to peer conversations which show ICAs Global face; broadcasting your ICAs and partners events; open your own program and to be a centre of engagement to your mission. If you want more information just reply to this email, or to Svitlana, and we will help you get connected. Svitlana, ICA Ukraine. svetasalamatova(a)gmail.com If you did not receive a copy or notice of the last edition of the magazine, please contact: Peter Ellins: Email: peter(a)icai-members.org; or Robyn Hutchinson: Email: hutchinsonsydney13(a)gmail.com

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Lela Jahn In Her Own Words
by Don Bayer via Dialogue 10 Jun '16

10 Jun '16

Today would have been Lela Jahn's 76 birthday. I made this post today on her Facebook page and post it again here for those of you who did not share that platform with her. As I believe most of you are aware, Lela died a peaceful death on 12/19/2015. There were memorial services held in San Francisco, Wisconsin for her family and Indiana for my family, earlier this year which many of you attended. A key part of those services was a video that was prepared. Below is a link to that video for those of you who have not been able to view it. It is not just a story of all the amazing things Lela did around the world caring for others, rather the video, perhaps more interestingly, in her own words, explains why she did all the remarkable things she did. It is about 15 minutes in length, so pour an extra cup of coffee or a glass of wine, as the time of day merits, and for one more time be inspired by this wonderful woman. https://vimeo.com/169947109 Don Bayer

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Seeking house sitter
by Judi White via Dialogue 10 Jun '16

10 Jun '16

Looking for someone who is ready, willing and able to house sit Sep 11 to October 18 this year. I live in Crescent City, Florida in a small but comfy home w a lake view from a porch h w a continual breeze. Climbing stairs is necessary.I have two cats for you to get to know. Quiet neighborhood. Great for a Fall vacation of a lifetime. If interested, reply personally to sophiacircle(a)gmail.com or call 3865696956. Peace, Judi White

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